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Today I’m reviewing Dash, a governance/privacy focused coin. Dash forked off from Bitcoin with the name DarkCoin and later re-branded to Dash.
TL;DR: Dash is easy to use and has exciting governance/privacy features.
The Dash (DarkCoin) project launched January 2014 and was mostly ignored until the Bitcoin civil war made investors look to governance coins.
The DASH token has a market cap of $2.2 billion (1 DASH = $300). It processes around 5,000 transactions per day.
I usually write these reviews on the weekend. This one is different. The goals are many and time consuming. It took weeks to complete the review. Enjoy!
Max Keiser has been a Dash supporter for some time.
You can skip to the end of this 2,100 word review by searching this page for the word conclusion.
EDIT: Some HackerNews readers think gifs are used excessively. To remove them, type this in the browser console: document.querySelectorAll(‘img[src$=”gif”]’).forEach(_ => _.parentNode.parentNode.remove())
Goals for the Review
Compile and install Dash from source-code Download the Dash blockchain Buy DASH and send it to my node Install a mobile Dash wallet Send DASH to the mobile wallet Buy a product or service with DASH BONUS: Become a masternode BONUS: Vote with the masternode for a proposal BONUS: Create a proposal using the masternode
The Dash Landing Page
The Dash landing page has stock photos of business people and uses a “business blue” color. 😓
The Shake debit card looks interesting. It probably has low limits and high fees like all other cryptocurrency debit cards. Maybe I’ll look at it later. Or just go straight for the Misconduct Wine.
Compiling and installing Dash from source-code
I scroll to the bottom and find a link to the Github page.
That is one of the busiest footers I’ve ever seen. I also see a link to “Masternode”. I’ll look at that later.
The Dash Github Project
I notice a few things here. There are 13,337 commits. This reads as “elite” in leetspeak. I wonder if it’s a joke or accident.
The last commit to Dash was April 5th. That’s 172 days ago. I’ll see if there are other branches with more recent changes.
I look at the v0.12.2.x branch.
The Dash v0.12.2.x branch was changed only 4 hours ago! The Dash project must be actively developed.
Downloading the Dash node source-code
I go back to the master (latest stable) branch on Github and look for instructions.
I don’t see any install instructions in the README . I’ll look in the INSTALL file.
The INSTALL file asks me to look in the doc folder.
I check out build-unix.md .
Easy enough. I’ll use Amazon AWS to create a cloud computer.
I pick Ubuntu 16.04 as the operating system.
I choose a computer with 2 CPU cores and 8 GB ram. This will make compiling Dash from source-code and syncing the Dash blockchain fast.
My Linux machine is running. I go back to the Dash GitHub page to find a download link.
I copy the link and clone the project using git .
I realize I forgot to install the dependencies. I’ll do that now.
The dependencies install without any problems. 👍 Next I’ll build the Dash node binaries.
cd dash
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
make install
Building the Dash node from source-code takes around 20 minutes.
OBJECTIVE 1 SUCCESS!
Compile and install Dash from source-code
I start the Dash node.
The Dash node is downloading the blockchain. I’ll go have lunch. 🍔
The Dash blockchain is downloaded.
OBJECTIVE 2 SUCCESS!
Download the Dash blockchain
Buying DASH Tokens
To buy DASH tokens I need a wallet address. I’ll find one with terminal.
I forgot to set the RPC username and password in the Dash config.
Much better. I can now see my Dash address.
I use ShapeShift to buy a small amount of DASH like in my Monero review.
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In this episode, Brit returns to tell us stories of his travel, and he, along with Sam, Cork, and Peaches, talk about the last couple games and look ahead to NYCFC
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A gunman opened fire on two plain-clothes police officers in a south London street this morning.
The officers were shot at after confronting two men “acting suspiciously” in Sandmere Road, Clapham, at about 4.20am on Sunday.
Police said a man aimed a gun in their direction.
A single shot was fired but fortunately the bullet missed and neither policeman was injured.
A police helicopter was scrambled and armed officers descended on the area this morning.
One local tweeted: “There's police blocking my road and a helicopter circling above. What's happening?
“The police have got guns, massive ones, and are hovering outside of their cars.”
No weapons were found after police scoured the area.
Chief Inspector Roy Smith, who is based in Brixton, also tweeted about the incident.
“I have just seen the two officers who were shot at during the early hours of this morning,” he said.
“Pleased to report both officers are uninjured.”
A man has been arrested in connection with the incident.
A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said enquiries were ongoing.
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An equatorial storm on Neptune has caught astronomers' eyes.
Astronomers studying Neptune have been following a large storm on the ice giant unlike any seen in the past.
Using one of the Keck Observatory's 10-meter adaptive-optics-equipped telescopes, Imke de Pater and graduate student Ned Molter (both at University of California, Berkeley) spotted a bright storm complex spanning at least 30° in both latitude and longitude centered near the planet's equator. The storm brightened between observations taken on June 26th and July 2nd.
The storm was initially thought to be the same Northern Cloud Complex first seen by the Hubble Space telescope in 1994, after the Great Dark Spot imaged by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in its 1989 flyby had disappeared. But measurements of this storm's location show it to be something completely different.
A large, high-pressure vortex system deep within Neptune’s atmosphere is thought to drive the white storm clouds. As methane gases rise up in the vortex, they cool below the condensation temperature, forming clouds in the same way that water vapor does on Earth.
The location of the vortex caught astronomers by surprise, though. “Historically, bright clouds have occasionally been seen on Neptune, but usually at latitudes closer to the poles, around 10 to 60 degrees north or south” says de Pater. “Never before has a cloud been seen at, nor close to the equator, or anything so bright.”
Neptune is the windiest planet in the solar system, with observed equatorial wind speeds of up to 1,000 miles per hour (450 m/s). Since wind speeds vary drastically with latitude, a storm crossing more than 30° of latitude should quickly break apart. Something, such as an underlying vortex, must be holding it together. But a long-lasting vortex right at the equator would be hard to reconcile with our current understanding of the planet’s atmosphere.
It's possible, given the storm's extent, that it's not a vortex after all but rather a huge convective cloud, similar to the one spotted on Saturn in 2010.
“This shows that there are extremely drastic changes in the dynamics of Neptune’s atmosphere, and perhaps this is a seasonal weather event that may happen every few decades or so,” de Pater says.
Neptune orbits the Sun every 160 years, with each season lasting 40 years. We’ve only had a close look at the planet for less than 30 years.
Amateur Observations
Some intrepid amateurs also detected the storm in the weeks preceding the Keck observations using telescopes of 10 inches or more. Experienced planetary imagers using high-speed video cameras and frame-stacking software have a good chance of capturing the storm (appearing as a bright off-center spot) on the diminutive disk of the planet.
Read Keck Observatory's press release here.
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Cryptocurrency was what made an entry into the financial sector to address the concerns raised by the centralized infrastructure. It helped in achieving anonymous transactions and thus aided in reducing the charges levied by the third party service providers. Subsequent launches of cryptocurrencies were aimed at resolving a host of issues and in fact, worked through every aspect of human community at large. Bitcore is one such capable crypto coin that plans to change the scenario where crypto assets are going through a panicky situation.
Bitcore – What Exactly is It?
Bitcore is essentially a fork for Bitcoin and aims at solving a few issues plaguing the Bitcoin. It copies almost all the features of Bitcoin but runs on its own platform. In fact, it does come with a host of features that would make it a better option than Bitcoin.
It was rather difficult and challenging plans ahead through its roadmap. It has plans to surpass Bitcoin and looking to position itself as the number one payment coin in the future ahead. The focus of now has been to make the currency available to as many people as possible. There are regular airdrops every week.
The Future Ahead
How will Bitcore function is indeed an interesting option. It will be able to succeed if it comes up with the really unique features. It has a faster mining mechanism in place as of now and uses a completely different mining algorithm.
The hybrid fork nature of Bitcore makes it one of the fastest options. The association with SegWit and Bloom can make it one of the fastest cryptocurrencies with just 2.5 minute block time. The 10 MB block size will allow it to mine a whopping 17.6 billion transactions per year. It can be estimated that it can theoretically perform the transactions that Bitcoin can perform in a year, in just three days.
The speed is what can make Bitcore a capable currency for the day to day transactions. Moreover, running the Bitcore would take small storage space and as such, it can even run on smartphones. They will soon be launching BTXM machines for the two-way transactions and a unique FIAT gateway. The BTXM will work like an ATM transaction that we are used to.
Is it worth the Efforts?
Well, should be ideally. They already have a well-designed roadmap quite well planned. The focus right now has been to integrate with multiple wallet platforms. It will soon integrate itself into the payment processors for an efficient and hassle free usage for the real world purposes. It has been working on a few cutting edge technologies to stay ahead in the march.
The unique features would be what would help any new cryptocurrency to stay afloat. We would expect Bitcore to come up with such specialised applications soon. In fact, they have already been through the road with initiatives like lightening network, atomic swaps and similar options. The exact outcome will only be visible once the entire platform is ready.
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An update on Pwit. He now has a sweater for when he wants to get comfy and fire claws for when you insult his poetry.
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From the outside, not much distinguishes Jerry Williams Jr.’s ranch-style home from those around it on a quiet suburban street in Northridge.
Step through the front door, though, and it’s apparent that somebody unusual lives here.
There’s the entryway lined with gold and platinum records. There’s the cozy bedroom into which a white grand piano has been squeezed. And out back there’s the swimming pool, empty of all but a few inches of murky water, with a painting on the bottom depicting Williams astride an enormous white rat.
The image will be familiar to fans of Williams’ alter ego, the funk eccentric Swamp Dogg, who put it on the cover of his cult-favorite 1971 album “Rat On!” Back then, this skilled singer and pianist was looking to rebrand himself after years as a journeyman R&B act and producer for the likes of Gene Pitney (“She’s a Heartbreaker”) and Doris Duke (“To the Other Woman [I’m the Other Woman]”).
“Total Destruction to Your Mind,” which came out in 1970, announced the arrival of an outspoken sonic adventurer; “Rat On!” doubled down on Swamp Dogg’s outré vision with a heartfelt provocation called “God Bless America — for What?”
Now, at age 76, Williams is taking another hard left with “Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune,” a surprising new album that maintains his experimental streak even as it demonstrates his perseverance in an unforgiving business.
Due Friday, the record was produced by Ryan Olson of the Minneapolis synth-pop band Poliça and features input by Olson’s frequent collaborator Justin Vernon of Bon Iver. And as its title promises, it leans heavily on the vocal-processing software made famous by T-Pain (in hits like “Buy U a Drank”) and Kanye West (on his album “808s & Heartbreak”).
The strangely touching result, laced with electronic bleeps and beats that make Williams sound like a bummed-out android, represents a radical reframing of the psychedelic Swamp Dogg style.
“Yeah, I suppose it does,” Williams acknowledged on a recent afternoon. “I like it, though. It’s the best thing I’ve done since the ’70s.”
Sitting in his blue-carpeted living room next to a vintage jukebox stocked with tunes he wrote or produced — including Johnny Paycheck’s “She’s All I Got” and “In Between Tears” by Irma Thomas — Williams said the album grew out of a typically wacky impulse: What would happen if, like so many veteran singers, he made an old-school crooner’s album — but warped the vocal performances in the manner of Zapp and George Clinton?
“Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune” opens with a rendition of “Answer Me, My Love,” the winsome ballad popularized by Nat King Cole, and closes with a take on Hoagy Carmichael’s indelible “Stardust”; in between are originals about romance and loneliness and the hard luck of a man trying to make a buck.
Each is as solidly built as you’d expect from someone who estimates he’s written nearly 2,000 songs. Yet the startling production takes the music far away from the land of “So-and-So Sings the Great American Songbook.”
Swamp Dogg in his pool, which features a painting inspired by the cover of his 1971 album “Rat On!” (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Olson said Williams encouraged him to go as wild as he wanted with his arrangements, which he created out of material Williams had originally recorded at home. (The two met when Williams approached Olson about possibly reissuing an old record through Olson’s label, Totally Gross National Product.)
“I warned Swamp — I was like, ‘This is kind of messed up,’” the producer said. “But I sent it back and he was all for it: ‘This is insane and I love it.’”
For all the artistic daring of their collaboration, Williams was forthright about why he sought out Olson and Vernon to oversee “Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune,” and that’s the clear-cut commercial success the two men have enjoyed with the Grammy-winning Bon Iver.
“He sold way over a million units on his first album,” Williams said of Vernon’s 2007 debut under the Bon Iver name. “So I said, ‘He’s got something going on, and I want some of it.’”
Asked whether he worried that the new album’s highly doctored sound might turn off fans accustomed to a more organic approach, Williams scoffed.
“My last album sold 4,000,” he replied. “I ain’t got no people to turn off.”
Williams’ close attention to numbers makes sense for a guy with decades’ worth of stories about all the times he’s been ripped off in the record industry.
Among them, in his view, is the lousy deal he got when 50 Cent sampled an old track of his a few years back: a measly $25,000 up front, he said, with no residuals. (Having learned his lesson, he claims he asked for a 10-cent royalty on each record sold when Drake’s team recently tried to clear a sample — a request he’s pretty sure scared off the Canadian rapper.)
Still, you have to scratch your head at some of Williams’ reasoning. Setting aside its quality — and of course the fact that its back story has led to publicity like the article you’re reading — “Love, Loss, and Auto-Tune” is an improbable blockbuster.
From anyone else, an album this weird would represent a passion project, not a cash grab.
In a way, though, Williams’ self-belief seems key to the whole over-the-top Swamp Dogg enterprise. Without it, it’s hard to imagine how he ever would’ve climbed on that giant white rat, which here we are still talking about nearly half a century later.
At his house, where a small dog slept at his feet — the dog’s name is Lowe because Williams’ granddaughter “either found him or stole him” in front of a Lowe’s store — the singer grew uncharacteristically soft as he remembered how his wife and longtime manager, Yvonne, showed him the ropes of Swamp Dogg Inc. before her death in 2003.
“She was laying in the hospital, had me bring her the books saying what we owe,” he recalled quietly. “She said, ‘Look, you know I’m-a leave you — I got to go.’” Williams said he didn’t believe her. “But she was right.”
Was it hard to pick back up after she died?
“Nah,” he said. “She told me, ‘Don’t let nobody deter you — you’re on the right road.’”
The phone rang; it was Williams’ physical therapist, calling about an appointment to work on a back injury.
He couldn’t come today, Williams said. He had some business he had to attend to.
mikael.wood@latimes.com
Twitter: @mikaelwood
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FUCK IT MAYBE THE SHELL IS GOOD FOR YOU
111 shares
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The plaintiff in last summer’s historic Supreme Court case legalizing gay marriage nationwide is backing Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonButtigieg stands in as Pence for Harris's debate practice Senate GOP sees early Supreme Court vote as political booster shot Poll: 51 percent of voters want to abolish the electoral college MORE in 2016.
Jim Obergefell announced his support for the Democratic presidential front-runner on Monday.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We have fought not only to change laws, but to change hearts, and now we need a president who will help us fight to eliminate the injustices that occur regularly in our community,” he said in a statement, according to The Guardian.
“The best person to do that is Hillary Clinton,” Obergefell continued. "I refuse to let Republicans undo the progress that we’ve made, and that is why we need Hillary Clinton in the White House because she will be by our side as we break down barriers and finally reach full equality.”
Clinton then argued Monday that she plans to defend same-sex marriages should she win the Oval Office next year. She also promised that she would expand protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans as well.
“There are still too many places where LGBT Americans are targeted for harassment and violence, and there are too many young people who are uncertain and scared of what their future might hold,” Clinton said in the same statement.
"Right now in America, you can get married on Saturday and be fired from your job on Monday just because of who you love,” she said.
“I see the injustices that are happening in our country, and that is why I’m committed to working with Jim and others to end discrimination against the LGBT community once and for all,” the former secretary of State added.
The Supreme Court issued a landmark 5-4 decision last June legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
Obergefell v. Hodges requires that every state recognize the practice nationwide under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protections Clause.
Clinton currently leads the race for next year’s Democratic presidential nomination by a wide margin, boasting a 21-point lead nationally over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), according to the latest RealClearPolitics average of samplings.
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Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Former UKIP councillor Kerry Smith was asked whether he would apologise for the comments that led to his resignation
A UKIP candidate who resigned on Sunday has said he may have been a victim of "black arts" within the party.
Kerry Smith stepped down as a candidate for South Basildon and East Thurrock after the Mail on Sunday reported leaked phone calls in which he made offensive comments about gay people.
Mr Smith told the BBC that his comments were no worse than the language in the TV comedy Only Fools and Horses.
UKIP said he was no longer a party member and "can do what he likes".
In a recording obtained by the newspaper, Mr Smith made offensive remarks about gay people, other UKIP members and Chigwell in Essex.
In his first broadcast interview since resigning as a party member, Mr Smith said ambitious people in UKIP needed to be "very, very afraid" in case more secret recordings existed.
Speaking to the BBC's Tom Barton, he said his comments were no worse than the language in the TV comedy Only Fools and Horses, and said he had been "too politically incorrect".
After apologising "unreservedly" he added: "My language, for the record, was no worse than watching an old episode of Fools and Horses to be fair. I come from the East End, the word was never offensive and if you talked politically correct where I grew up you were battered for being a boffin." He said this was no excuse.
Mr Smith said the constituency had "become a real farce as far as the national party's concerned".
Before Mr Smith was chosen last week, the former Conservative MP Neil Hamilton withdrew from the selection process for the seat after a letter querying his expenses claims was leaked to the media.
A UKIP spokesman said of Mr Smith: "He's not a member of the party. He can do what he likes. We don't recognise that story."
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came home for Christmas break to find that my package has arrived!! she did a great job picking out my gifts!! im a huge Steelers fan! i love them and cant wait to use them.
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2 killed when jet crashes in Indiana neighborhood
Tom Coyne, Associated Press | AP
Show Caption Hide Caption Two killed when private jet hits 3 homes Two people were killed and at least three injured, when a private jet hit three homes in South Bend, Indiana, Sunday afternoon. Authorities now say everyone on the ground is believed to be accounted for. (March 18)
A private jet crashed Sunday into homes in a northern Indiana neighborhood
The jet was apparently experiencing mechanical trouble
A coroner is saying people were killed when the plane crashed
SOUTH BEND, Indiana (AP) — A private jet apparently experiencing mechanical trouble crashed into an Indiana neighborhood, hitting three homes and leaving two people aboard the plane dead, authorities said.
The crash Sunday injured two other people aboard the Beechcraft Premier I twin-jet and one person on the ground, South Bend Assistant Fire Chief John Corthier said. Corthier said officials believe everyone connected with the damaged homes had been accounted for and there were no known missing people.
The jet had left Tulsa, Oklahoma's Riverside Airport and crashed late Sunday afternoon near South Bend Regional Airport, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Roland Herwig in Oklahoma City said.
South Bend Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Maggie Scroope said three people injured in the crash were being treated there; one was in serious condition and two were in fair condition.
The plane was registered to 7700 Enterprises of Montana LLC in Helena, Montana. The company is owned by Wes Caves and does business as DigiCut Systems in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It makes window film and paint overlay for automobiles.
A woman identifying herself as Caves' wife answered the phone at their home Sunday and said, "I think he's dead," before hanging up.
Although authorities believe everyone was accounted for, Corthier said firefighters still want to search a heavily damaged home.
"I believe they said they're going to have to tear down a portion of the house to make it stable. That probably won't happen until (Monday)," he said.
Jet fuel inside another house posed a hazard, Corthier said.
"The leaking has stopped, but there is fuel in the basement. That is one of our major concerns, the fuel," Corthier said.
An engine company was en route to the airport when its members witnessed the crash, Corthier said.
"Our arrival on the scene was immediate. Our working to get the occupants out started immediately. We were able to get some of the occupants out of the plane right away," Corthier said.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigator arrived on the scene Sunday night.
Part of the neighborhood southwest of the airport was evacuated after the crash, and Corthier said it was possible some residents would return to their homes Sunday night.
Electricity was cut off to part of the neighborhood.
Mike Daigle, executive director of the St. Joseph County Airport Authority, said the jet attempted a landing about 4:15 p.m., went back up and maneuvered south to try another landing, but eight minutes later the airport learned the plane was no longer airborne.
"There was an indication of a mechanical problem," Herwig said.
Stan Klaybor, who lives across the street from the crash scene, said the jet clipped the top of one house, heavily damaged a second, and finally came to rest against a third. Neighbors did not know if a woman living in the most heavily damaged house was home at the time, and a young boy in the third house did not appear to be seriously injured, Klaybor said.
"Her little boy was in the kitchen and he got nicked here," Klaybor said, pointing to his forehead.
His wife, Mary Jane, regularly watches planes approach the airport.
"I was looking out my picture window. The plane's coming, and I go, 'Wait a minute,' and then, boom," she said.
"This one was coming straight at my house. I went, 'Huh?' and then there was a big crash, and all the insulation went flying," she said.
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As voters in Scotland readied for the polls Thursday to decide whether the country should break from the United Kingdom, headlines splashed across the front pages of UK and Scottish newspapers focused on the momentous decision and the divisive history behind the desire for independence.
The Guardian called it "The Day of Destiny" while The Independent referred to the situation as "The 307-Year Itch." The Times took a more straight-forward approach with the headline "Scotland Decides" and The Daily Mirror led with a pleading tone: "Don't Leave Us This Way."
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The Witcher is getting the anime film treatment from Netflix, which recently also launched a popular live-action series based on the books by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. With the Henry Cavill-starring series proving to be a major success for the streaming service, Netflix is hoping that lightning strikes twice with the anime movie.
The animated film is called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf and it comes from Lauren Hissrich and Beau DeMayo, who are both producers on the live-action series, as well as Studio Mir, the animation studio best known for Voltron: Legendary Defender and The Legend of Korra.
According to a description of the movie via Eurogamer, Nightmare of the Wolf will center on Geralt’s mentor, Vesemir: “Long before mentoring Geralt, Vesemir begins his own journey as a witcher after the mysterious Deglan claims him through the Law of Surprise.” This is a prequel, then, delving into the man who shaped Geralt into the witcher he would become.
No casting has been revealed yet, although fans have been petitioning for Mark Hamill to play Vesemir on the live-action series. Hamill, who is known for his excellent voice work, has said on Twitter that he’d be interested in the role, although he admitted that he hadn’t heard of The Witcher before the fan casting began. Time will tell if this particular dream comes true.
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New York City’s school system is the largest in the country. It's also one of the most segregated.
One of the latest data points: Only seven black students were admitted to the elite Stuyvesant High School this year , out of 895 seats.
The system was already deeply divided when Mayor de Blasio, a former school board member whose children attended public schools, took office in 2014 .
Since then, he has made reducing inequality a cornerstone of his tenure.
Now, a panel he appointed wants to eliminate many of the gifted programs and selective admissions processes that have led to mostly white and Asian schools in a largely black and Hispanic school system.
[Eliminate gifted programs in New York? It’s a momentous decision for Mr. de Blasio.]
The problem
As The Times’s Eliza Shapiro wrote: “New York screens more students for its schools than any other city in the country, and those screened schools tend to have a disproportionately white and Asian enrollment.”
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Special delivery! Busty Dominica Phoenix has a special package for you - but don't you have a special package for her, too? With those fantastic, just-right tits and long, silky smooth legs, she's the perfect brunette to get your juices flowing. And in true SexBabesVR fashion, this slutty star is a craven, cock-starved encounter just waiting to happen. Feast your eyes on her lips wrapping around your cock in glorious 5K+ resolution, listen to her slurp and lick you with the skills only a pro can have in binaural sound, and get a glimpse of her tits shaking as you bend her over and take her doggy style hard and fast. It's never enough for her, she'll beg for a good fucking as you turn her over and lay her back on the bed, feet up on your shoulders, with that smouldering gaze going straight into your eyes. Live out your fantasies with the help of SexBabesVR and get to know Dominica Phoenix like you never have before!
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State officials have long suspected that some of the most frequent winners are cashing lottery tickets for customers who don’t want to claim the money themselves because they owe taxes, child support, or other debts, which would be garnished from their winnings. In exchange, the professional cashers, known as “10 percenters,” are believed to keep a cut of the prize money, likely 10 percent.
Statistics suggest it’s nearly impossible to win the lottery that frequently. But Massachusetts has more repeat lottery winners than any other state, people who redeem so many winning tickets that they raise questions about the integrity and oversight of the $5 billion state lottery, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis of nearly 11 million lottery records from 34 states.
Over the last six years, four members of the Jaafar family of Watertown have cashed in more than 7,000 winning lottery tickets and collected a cool $11 million.
Reports from the state auditor’s office dating back nearly two decades have warned that such practices are rampant and may be costing the state and federal governments millions in lost tax revenue. But such warnings have not stopped Massachusetts from turning into a haven for lottery players who win more than 1,000 times a year, easily outpacing the most frequent winners in Georgia, Ohio, and other large states who typically redeem fewer than 100 tickets per year.
“I do not know if our oversight is lacking in comparison to other states,” said Michael R. Sweeney, executive director of the Massachusetts Lottery Commission. “What I do know is our oversight needs to do better, can be better, and I guarantee you will be better on this issue.”
Beginning Oct. 1, the lottery plans to institute a new policy designed to crack down on professional ticket cashers. The policy will allow the state to freeze payouts to customers who redeem six or more prizes of $1,000 or more during a 12-month period. Players who are suspended will have an opportunity to appeal and show they are not violating the law. Sweeney said it is legal to cash other people’s tickets, but illegal to do so if the goal is to help them dodge taxes or debts.
Despite that prohibition, Massachusetts has had more than 50 residents cash more than 200 lottery tickets worth at least $600 each over the last six years, giving the state more repeat winners than any other state for which data is available, according to the analysis by PennLive.com and students from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The Fund for Investigative Journalism supported the project.
Some of the winners assert they are professional gamblers who spend most of their time and money buying scratch tickets, and barely break even. But the tickets they cash come from so many far-flung stores, officials say, it is hard to believe they are buying them alone, and not collecting them from others.
“In some instances, it almost makes you wonder if there would be enough hours in the day to even buy that number of tickets,” Sweeney said.
Ali M. Jaafar of Watertown is a typically quizzical case. A 59-year-old who has run his own taxi and phone-card businesses, he won the lottery more than 1,400 times last year, the highest total in Massachusetts and nationwide.
Over the last six years, he has won more than 5,800 times, collecting $8.9 million. But he wasn’t just buying from his local variety store. His tickets were purchased at 1,200 stores in 160 communities ranging from Springfield to Nantucket.
“Do not want to talk about it,” Jaafar said, and rolled up the window of his Ford Explorer, when asked by two reporters how he manages to win the lottery so frequently.
If Jaafar is buying thousands of tickets, he hasn’t made an impression at the four stores in Watertown, Somerville, and Allston where most of his winning tickets were purchased. Clerks at those stores said they had never heard of Jaafar.
Three other members of the Jaafar family — Yousef, Munif, and Mohamed — are also frequent lottery winners. Over the last six years, they’ve cashed 1,200 tickets worth more than $2.1 million.
And that’s not the only questionable activity they’ve been involved in.
Last October, Yousef and Mohamed Jaafar were among 47 people indicted by a New Jersey grand jury for allegedly taking part in a massive fraud ring. Prosecutors say the scheme involved residents of Florida, New Jersey, and Massachusetts who set up bogus companies, which demanded payments from other companies and individuals. Prosecutors say the victims were duped into handing over $50,000 to $450,000.
Yousef and Mohamed Jafaar each pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree conspiracy, and are due to be sentenced in November.
Lynn is home to the player who has cashed the most tickets nationwide over the last six years: a 79-year-old named Clarance W. Jones.
Jones, who calls himself a professional gambler, has cashed more than 7,300 tickets for more than $11 million over that time period. Perhaps improbably for a man of his age, his tickets were purchased at 1,400 stores in 150 cities and towns, including Nantucket.
In 2011, he successfully defeated an effort by state officials to collect taxes on his prize money by claiming that he spends as much on the lottery as he wins. As proof, he produced boxes of losing lottery, Keno, and horse-racing tickets that his attorney said had been kept in a storage locker. Professional gamblers are entitled to deduct their losses under federal and state tax rules.
Jones also submitted into evidence a manual he had written entitled “The Gambler,” which contained his “trade secrets” for beating the Massachusetts lottery, which he called “the easiest lottery system.” Those “secrets” included buying tickets in the middle of a pack, where he believed the winning tickets are grouped, and buying from stores that had recently sold prize winners, reasoning they had a greater chance of selling another jackpot.
Contacted by phone, Jones told a Globe reporter to call his attorney, who did not return phone messages.
Sweeney, of the state lottery, pointed out that Massachusetts may have more lottery winners because residents here spend $746 per person per year on the lottery, more than residents of any other state. Massachusetts also devotes the highest percentage of its lottery revenue to prizes, giving people more opportunities to win large sums.
Still, Sweeney acknowledged that some players rack up so many wins that they must be bending the rules. “It defies legal logic,” he said, “and it mandates a deeper drill-down, in my opinion, of all the appropriate agencies and state and federal organizations.”
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@
globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @mlevenson.
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A mulher negra que teve a bolsa revistada por um policial militar dentro de um ônibus, no dia 16 de janeiro em Curitiba, após ter sido acusada por um idoso de ter furtado uma carteira, está sendo investigada pela Polícia Civil por conta de denúncias anônimas. Em entrevista à RPC, nesta quarta-feira (29), o delegado Marcelo Magalhães afirma que a história pode ser diferente do que se sabia até então. Na ocasião, o objeto furtado foi encontrado com uma mulher branca e a mulher negra foi apontada por algumas pessoas como vítima de racismo.
Segundo Magalhães, as duas mulheres envolvidas na ocorrência seriam amigas e, inclusive, fariam parte de uma gangue criminosa. “As denúncias indicavam que essas duas mulheres envolvidas no vídeo que viralizou teriam participação em uma associação criminosa voltada para a prática de furtos em coletivos. Elas também diziam que elas seriam amigas”, disse o delegado.
Em outro trecho da entrevista à RPC, o delegado afirma que existem fotos que comprovam que as duas se conheciam. “No momento daquele vídeo, temos a informação de que elas afirmavam que não se conheciam. Mas isso contraria as fotos que recebemos através das denúncias que mostram elas no mesmo grupo de pessoas e em uma dessas fotos elas chegam a comentar ‘indo trabalhar'”, afirmou Magalhães que não sabe se o comentário na foto se refere a algum trabalho formal ou se seria um jargão utilizado por criminosos.
O caso
Toda a ação policial no dia dos fatos investigados foi registrada em vídeo por uma passageira e viralizou em uma rede social. As imagens mostram o momento em que os policiais vão até a mulher negra indicada pelo idoso e revistam sua bolsa em busca da carteira furtada. Pouco tempo depois, outra passageira se aproxima dos policiais dizendo que viu o furto e que na verdade a autora do crime seria uma mulher branca. Os policiais se dirigem até a jovem acusada, pedem para outra mulher puxar um objeto de dentro da calça da suspeita e confirmam tratar-se da carteira furtada.
A vítima que teve a carteira furtada, os passageiros que testemunharam toda a situação e as duas mulheres envolvidas serão ouvidas pela polícia para prestarem todos os esclarecimentos.
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By Renee Hannon
Introduction
Over the past million years, our Earth displays a rhythmic beat when exiting full glacial cycles and entering interglacial warm periods. The characteristics and duration of these systematic warm periods provide an excellent dataset to help prognoses of future climate patterns. Astronomical Milankovitch cycles play a major role and trigger internal Earth processes that control the rapid onset and gradual cooling of interglacial warm periods. This post examines the duration of these interglacial warm periods as a key analog dataset compared to several published statistical and complex climate model projections. Results indicate climate models where the initiation of glaciation depends strongly on CO 2 concentrations over astronomical controls significantly overpredict the duration of the present-day warm period compared to past interglacial analogs.
Glacial Cycles
During the past 800 kyrs there are nine glacial cycles with approximately eleven interglacial warm periods including the Holocene present day as shown in Figure 1. The present day is currently within an interglacial warm period and has yet to enter a mild or full glacial period. The length of our current interglacial period and history matching of past glacial cycles has been modeled by many scientists such as (Imbrie, Crucifix and Rougier, Vettoretti and Peltier, Berger and Loutre, Calovet al., Ganopolski, et. al., Archer and Ganopolski, and Tzedakis et. al,).
Figure 1: A traverse of the past interglacial-glacial cycles over the past 800 kyrs. Cycles are datumed on the termination of the glacial period and onset of the interglacial warm period. EPICA Dome C isotope temperature estimates are plotted as curves in 1° C increments on the horizontal scale (cold to left and warm to right). The vertical scale is time in 20 kyr increments. Actual age is plotted on each cycle. Interglacial warm periods are highlighted in red (> -2° C) and the coldest portion of the glacial period in blue. Eccentricity cycles are noted on top. Marine isotope stages (MIS) are also noted.
These glacial cycles last approximately 100 kyrs. However, they are not exactly 100 kyrs in duration as described by Javier and in my previous post here. Figure 1 shows they range from 76 kyrs in Glacial Cycle IX to 119 kyrs in Glacial Cycle II. While there is error of +/- 3 kyrs on the exact pick of the termination datum, that does not change the observations below.
In Figure 1, the 400 kyr eccentricity cycle is clearly evident in the glacial cycle duration and interglacial character. Glacial cycles are shorter in duration during nearly circular orbits which occur every 400 kyrs. The nearly circular orbits occur during Glacial Cycles IX and V which are MIS 19 and 11, respectively, are less than 90 kyrs in duration. They have brief mild glacial periods. Since the current Glacial Cycle I is occurring in a nearly circular orbit, several scientists project this cycle will be short with the next glacial maximum occurring in 55 kyrs to 100 kyrs as suggested by Crucifix, Imbrie, Berger, and in my previous post here.
The glacial cycles increase in duration during the 400 kyrs following each nearly circular orbit. Older Glacial Cycles IX to VI increase in duration from 76 kyrs to 102 kyrs and more recent Glacial Cycles V to II increase in duration from 89 kyrs to 119 kyrs. The older glacial cycles last a total of less than 370 kyrs combined while more recent glacial cycles span greater than 400 kyrs. This suggests the eccentricity cycle that started 800 kyrs ago was shorter in duration than the most recent eccentricity cycle that started 400 kyrs ago. Earth is currently in a nearly circular orbit and at the beginning of the next 400 kyr eccentricity cycle.
Glacial cycles that occur during predominantly elliptical orbits such as Glacial Cycles VII and III tend to have interglacial doublet periods (MIS 15a and 15c, MIS 7 a/c and 7e). Interestingly, the following 100 kyr cycle after the elliptical orbit tends to be equal to or longer in duration. It also contains a stunted second interglacial warm period such as MIS 13a and a longer mild glacial period.
Interglacial Warm Periods
Earth is currently in an interglacial period. There have been at least 10 interglacial warm periods during the past 1 million years that serve as analog datasets. The duration of the interglacial warm periods ranges from 5 to 35 kyrs. They are recognized in benthic oxygen isotopes in marine sediments (Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005) and with deuterium isotopes from ice cores in Antarctica (EPICA) as shown in Figure 1. Antarctica dome C isotopes are corrected to temperature and then multiplied by 0.5 to approximate global temperatures.
Figure 1 shows interglacial warm periods shaded in red using a global temperature for the Dome C isotope data of a minus 2° C cutoff. This is a lower cutoff than my previous climate traverse which uses a minus 1° C cut-off. The cutoff was lowered in Figure 1 because the older interglacial warm periods are not as warm as the more recent five warm periods and many would not make a minus 1° C limit. The present day warm period is 1 to 2° C cooler than the past four interglacial periods.
In a series of workshops of the Past Interglacials Group (PIGS) they defined interglacial duration periods as a time when sea level is greater than minus 20 meters relative to present day and the Northern Hemisphere (NH) is predominantly ice free except for the Greenland ice sheet (Berger, A., et al).
These workshops established isotope and CO 2 limits that define an interglacial period as shown in Figure 2. Benthic oxygen isotopes δ18O in marine sediment records, during interglacials, range from 3.5 to 3.73 0/00. Antarctic deuterium isotopes, during interglacials, are minus 403 0/00. Deuterium isotopes of minus 403 0/00 are closely equivalent to the minus 1° C global temperatures used in this post. Both minus 1 and minus 2° C cutoffs are examined in this article.
Figure 2: Generalized schematic of interglacial warm periods for MIS 5e and 9e. Note these warm periods are 1 to 2 degrees C warmer than present day (orange dotted line). The color bar on top refers to the different phases of an interglacial period. The horizontal axis is relative time in thousands of years and the vertical axis is global temperature relative to present day (oC). Direct measurement limits are highlighted in red callout box.
The continuous and direct measurement of isotopes provides a robust dataset for interglacial comparisons and evolution. Associating these measurements with relative sea level and lack of Northern Hemisphere ice is a good proxy. Conversely, sea level measurements and the lack of NH ice are indirect and interpretable observations. Sea level curves are relative measurements impacted by many factors including isostatic rebound, tectonic uplift/subsidence and even hurricanes. Importantly, sea level curves are discontinuous and only cover a portion of the record. There are no consistent historical datasets available to confidently measure sea level. This suggests sea level and NH ice presence are less reliable to use for history matching climate models and that isotopes provide a more continuous and reliable dataset.
Milankovitch Cycles, notably summer insolation minima and obliquity, are recognized as the key triggers for termination of glacial conditions and initiation of ice sheets (Berger et.al, Tzedakis, Imbrie). Figure 2 summarizes Earth climatic processes associated with the warm onset and eventual cooling after the astronomical trigger. The cooling of warm periods is more gradual than their inception. When cooling occurs, temperatures drop over time with an average slope of m = 0.35 as calculated here. This highly consistent cooling slope suggests that natural temperature decline is repeatable and controlled by similar processes. Once cooling has started, it will take internal oceanic-atmospheric processes 3 to 4 kyrs to initiate ice sheets in the NH, drop sea levels and exit the interglacial period.
Interglacial Duration Analogs
Berger, et. al established a dataset of the duration of past interglacial warm periods using various methods. In this post, that dataset was expanded to include two EPICA global temperature limits of minus 1 and minus 2° C. Figure 3 is a histogram of the interglacial duration dataset. In general, these warm periods during the past million years range from less than 5 kyrs to 35 kyrs, with MIS 11 being the longest in duration.
The present-day Holocene, also referred to MIS 1, is currently longer in duration than MIS 7e and several of the older interglacial periods. It is similar in duration to MIS 5e and 9e, but not as long as MIS 11, so far. Internal characteristics and detailed comparisons of the younger interglacials have been described in a previous post here.
Figure 3: Plot of the past interglacial warm period durations from Berger, PIGS dataset. Dome C global temperatures of minus 1 and minus 2° C limits were included.
There are notable differences between the older warm periods and the youngest five warm periods during the past million years. The different isotope and CO 2 methods are fairly consistent in defining the younger interglacials (MIS 1 to 11) and less consistent in older interglacials. The LR04 marine isotope (orange) tends to show shorter warm period durations than the Dome C isotopes particularly in the older interglacials. The Dome C minus 2° limit in light blue tends to be the most lenient cutoff and almost always overestimates the duration. Defining interglacials by CO 2 limits (red) is the most inconsistent variable and tends to underestimate the warm period durations. The younger interglacials have CO 2 concentrations higher than the 260-ppm limit except for MIS 7ac. None of the older interglacials have CO 2 greater than 260 ppm except MIS 19. This suggests the presence of CO 2 during recent interglacial warm periods has increased naturally with time and higher CO 2 concentrations are associated with these warmer periods.
The warm duration dataset in Figure 3 was plotted on a frequency plot to evaluate probability, or frequency of occurrences, as shown in Figure 4. This graph shows the relative proportion of each duration to the total distribution over the past million years. Fifty percent of the time an interglacial duration lasts approximately 16 kyrs. Ninety percent of the time or a majority of the time an interglacial period lasts at least 10 kyrs. Only ten percent of the time or rarely does an interglacial period last a 32 kyrs or longer.
Figure 4: Excel Pareto plot of interglacial durations using various temperature, isotope, and CO 2 limits over the past million years.
These past interglacials provide a key analog dataset for the current and future interglacial warm periods. Why does this matter? For scientists, analogs are valuable to increase confidence that concepts, hypotheses and theories are underpinned with historical data. Analogs demonstrate what is known versus unknown. The description of analogs is essential to create a common understanding of Earth and climate models input, output and their limitations.
‘[Intellectual] Growth comes through analogy: through seeing how things connect, rather than only seeing how they might be different’. —Albert Einstein
History of Climate Model Projections
This section is a brief historical overview of climate model projections for the duration of the present-day interglacial warm period. It is not intended as a discussion of various models or computational algorithms of the models. The intent is to compare model projections of the present day warm period to historical analog data. Figure 5 shows various published authors’ model projections for the current warm period duration compared to the paleoclimate analog dataset.
Figure 5: Climate model projections compared to the mean (blue) and mode (orange) of past interglacial durations after Berger, et. al. Model durations for present day (MIS 1) are shown in green (low side) and red (high side). Past analogs means/mode range from 5 to 30 kyrs while models project the present-day warm to extend from 20 kyrs up to 100 kyrs. All model projections were adjusted by 12 kyrs to include the existing MIS 1 warm duration to date.
Early projections for the Holocene interglacial cooling by scientists such as Imbrie in 1980 were statistically derived and used relatively simple models based on past interglacial analog data. These projections suggest cooling begins in about 25 kyrs from present day and glaciation in about 55 kyrs. The influence of CO 2 was not included.
Climate models became more sophisticated as computing power increased. They included ice-sheet models, coupled oceanic-atmospheric models as well as orbital and insolation (solar radiation) influences. Anthropogenic CO 2 emissions increasingly came into the spotlight during the
1980’s and climate models began running sensitivities on the impact of various CO 2 concentrations.
In 2002, Berger and Loutre estimated that the present day warm period will have a duration of 50,000 years with the next glacial maximum in 100,000 years. They point out eccentricity will be nearly circular within the next 25,000 years which reduces the influence of precession. Consequently, insolation variations will be suppressed over the next 100,000 years. Their models begin to use CO 2 concentrations in addition to insolation controls which defers initiation of glacial conditions. Concentrations of human induced CO 2 ranging from 750 ppm to 220 ppm were modeled. Berger and Loutre state, “Only for CO 2 concentrations less than 220 ppmv was an early entrance into glaciation simulated.”
In 2004, Vettoretti and Peltier’s complex 3D fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model (GCM) challenged that observation. They concluded in the absence of modern anthropogenic GHG influence that the next glacial inception is less than 10 kyrs and at most 20 kyrs into the future when obliquity is at a minimum and insolation is reduced in the Northern Hemisphere. They present a schematic for the evolution of CO 2 with orbital parameters to explain the time lapse of CO 2 to decreasing temperatures. They conclude, “Our analyses suggest that insolation forcing is by far the most significant driver of the glacial inception process with GHG concentration playing a secondary role.”
In 2005, Archer and Ganopolski, using a coupled climate-ice sheet model conclude that insolation minima are tightly correlated with ice sheet nucleation and growth. Also, an increase in baseline pCO 2 will require a deeper minimum insolation. Therefore, the nucleation threshold for initiation of glaciation depends strongly on CO2 concentrations in their model. As a result, the present day warm period is predicted to last 50 to over 100 yrs. Modeled future pCO2 trajectories for anthropogenic CO 2 of 300, 1000, and 5000 Gton C releases were evaluated. Constant CO 2 concentrations do not decrease naturally below 280 ppm as observed in past analog data to allow for initiation of the next glaciation.
Crucifix and Rougier’s 2009 model was a 3D stochastic system bounded by a Bayesian framework. This model focused primarily on variations of internal Earth processes; ice volume, atmospheric CO 2 and deep ocean temperature. It appears astronomical insolation and obliquity factors were not included in the model. They note a weak predictability of CO 2 in the model and the CO 2 dynamics during interglacial periods was not satisfactorily reproduced. Their figure 8 shows a wide distribution in the input parameters during the present day and near future as shown by spaghetti chaos. Parameters were trained based on the preceding interglacial period which improved the deviation in the data (their figure 9). The model projected the next glacial inception in 40 to 50 kyrs from the present with peak glacial conditions in 60 kyrs.
In 2016, using a model of intermediate complexity, Ganopolski, et. al. continued promoting CO 2 relationship to insolation in their history matching of ice volume and sea level and subsequent projections. Their publication states,
“Our analysis suggests that even in the absence of human perturbations no substantial build-up of ice sheets would occur within the next several thousand years and the current interglacial would probably last for another 50,000 years.”
Even more interesting, Ganopolski, et. al claim that,
“Moderate anthropogenic cumulative CO 2 emissions of 1,000 to 1,500 gigatonnes of carbon will postpone the next glacial inception by at least 100,000 years.“
An interglacial duration exceeding 100,000 years would skip three obliquity cycles. This would make our current Glacial Cycle 1 the longest glacial cycle as well as the longest interglacial period observed during the past million years. In stark contrast, the past glacial cycles that include both interglacial and glacial conditions during nearly orbital eccentricity cycles are all shorter than 90 kyrs (Figure 1).
In 2017, Javier and Tzedakis, et al. used new and different methods to evaluate astronomical controls on interglacial onset and pacing for the past million years. Tzedakis developed a statistical model using orbital forcing and elapsed time to correctly classify all but two interglacials during the past 2.6 million years. Both Javier and Tzedakis conclude that obliquity is the dominant astronomical parameter driving ice volume changes. As Tzedakis states,
“The phasing of precession and obliquity influences the duration of interglacial periods over one or two insolation peaks, leading to shorter (~ 13 kyr) and longer (~28 kyr) interglacials.”
Javier also recognized a 6.5 kyr lag between interglacials and obliquity cycles. Of note, neither scientist used CO 2 concentration to drive interglacial pacing.
Discussion
Several modelers conclude that decreasing insolation and obliquity are primary triggers for glacial inception with CO 2 playing a secondary role (Vettoretti and Peltier, and Calovet et.al.). Their projections of the current warm period ranges from 20 to 30 kyrs and fits within the range of past analog warm duration data. Tzedakis classified interglacials statistically using external astronomical data only and CO 2 was not included.
Other modelers allow CO2 concentrations during this weak eccentricity cycle to be a critical driver in the initiation of glaciation. In the cases where CO 2 concentrations require a stronger insolation trigger, the present day warm period is extended by 50 to 100 kyrs (Berger and Loutre, Archer and Ganopolski, Ganopolski, et. al). Constant CO 2 concentrations are incorporated into their models and do not vary naturally as seen in past interglacial coolings. Berger states, “…the relationship between astronomical parameters and CO 2 trends is expected to be indirect and complex.”
Figure 6 illustrates past glacial-interglacial cycles compared to interglacial model projections of 20 kyrs, 50 kyrs, and 100 kyrs for the present day.
Figure 6: Climate projections in vertical red bars for present-day warm duration shown in Glacial Cycle 1. See Figure 1 for label descriptions. The model projections are from present day and are added on top of the existing 12 kyrs of present day (MIS 1) duration.
Projections of 50 to 100 kyrs interglacial durations are well outside the range of past analog data as shown in figures 4, 5 and 6. The 100 kyr model projection for present day warm duration far exceeds the range of past analog data during the last million years. The 100 kyr projection suggested by Ganopolski et. al. extends the current warm period as long as an entire glacial cycle. Such a large deviation from the last million years of historical analog data and interruption of the natural rhythm of Earth’s glacial cycles warrants further scrutiny.
Crucifix and Rougier believe that the evaluation of paleoclimates is a multi-disciplinary process and should include field scientists, mathematicians, climate modelers, complex systems experts and statisticians. Further, climate modeling is not merely a technological problem that can be solved with more complicated models and faster computers.
Finally, climate models have two basic building blocks; Earth’s climate history and a projection of the future. History during the past million years is reasonably verified by scientific data and proxy information. The future is an interpretive blend of conjecture and science. It is imperative that any climate model be rigorously history matched and only a successful history-match should be used as a base case. The natural base case needs to be clearly defined and presented before adding assumptions and projecting into the future. Unfortunately, several climate modelers have a singular focus on using CO 2 concentrations to trigger initiation of glaciation over astronomical processes resulting in extended projections that conflict with paleoclimate analogs. CO 2 dominated model projections should not be considered a base case for decision making, but merely an unproven sensitivity in overall climate model studies.
Conclusions
Over the past million years, glacial-interglacial cycles range from 76 kyrs to 119 kyrs in duration. The 400 kyr eccentricity cycle is evident in the glacial cycle duration and interglacial pattern. Glacial cycles are shorter than 90 kyrs in duration during nearly circular orbits every 400 kyrs. Glacial cycles contain interglacial doublet periods during more elliptical orbits every 400 kyrs. Earth is currently in a nearly circular orbit with analog data indicating the current glacial cycle will be less than 90 kyrs long.
The past ten warm interglacial periods range from 5 to 35 kyrs in duration. Cumulative probabilistic evaluation using different variables including CO 2 concentration limits for interglacials demonstrates that only ten percent of the time or rarely does an interglacial warm period last 32 kyrs or longer. Fifty percent of the time an interglacial warm period lasts 16 kyrs. Earth has been in an interglacial warm period for approximately the past 12 kyrs.
Climate model projections for the extent of Earth’s warm period range from 10 kyrs to over 100 kyrs beyond present day. Models that emphasize astronomical controls such as insolation and obliquity show glacial inception in the next 10 to 30 kyrs. These projections fit within the range of paleoclimate analogs and should be considered the base case. Models that project glacial inception in the next 50 to over 100 kyrs suggest that CO 2 concentration affects climate more than astronomical variables. These projections are outside the range of past interglacial analogs and even exceed the duration of the entire interglacial-glacial cycle. They far exceed the analog datasets and should not yet be considered reliable as a base case scenario.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality – Albert Einstein, Address to the Prussian Academy of Sciences (1921)
Acknowledgements: Special thanks to Andy May and Donald Ince for reviewing and editing the article.
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Frustrations from KU fans unable to see the six men’s basketball games broadcast only by Jayhawk TV during recent years are now a thing of the past.
Thanks to a new agreement between KU and its media partners, which includes an expanded lineup of Spectrum Sports, Cox Cable, KMCI, MidCo Sports Network and ESPN, the blackout associated with those six early season, men’s basketball games has been eliminated.
Jayhawk fans across the country, including in Kansas, now will be able to see every KU basketball game either through one of the cable providers listed above or via ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer streaming platform known as ESPN+.
“We are thrilled to have an inclusive and expanded media coverage solution for our KU alumni and fans,” said new KU athletic director Jeff Long in a press release. “A special note of thanks to Spectrum Sports for not only elevating our coverage over the last four years, but for helping us get to this point with an internal production solution. With our over-the-air and cable partners, paired with our ESPN+ agreement, we are pleased that more Jayhawks than ever will be able to follow us.”
KU administrator Jim Marchiony, who has been with the athletic department for years and, therefore, been privy to complaints from disgruntled fans in Kansas who were unable to see the early season basketball games, said Thursday’s announcement was a direct result of listening to the frustrations of its fan base.
“We have been attempting to structure it this way for a few years now,” Marchiony said.
Very little about the specifics of the content will change, outside of who can access it and how.
Through its in-house video production arm known as Rock Chalk Video, Kansas Athletics, during the 2018-19 school year, will show roughly 100 live KU sporting events — up 20 or so from the old deal — and continue to offer additional hours of original programming via a 30-minute pregame show and 60-minute postgame show for every home and away KU football and men’s basketball game, along with replays of select KU coaches’ weekly Hawk Talk segments.
That, too, will now be available to a new set of eyes.
“This will be the first time that anybody outside of the state of Kansas will be able to access the pre(game) and postgame shows,” said Todd Kober, KU’s associate AD for external branding.
As for folks in Kansas who have DirecTV or Dish Network as their television provider, Kober said anyone with those satellite services who is within range of KMCI would be able to pick up the six early season men’s basketball games over the airwaves.
Those not in range now will have the option of accessing the games through ESPN+, which requires an Internet connection and carries a monthly subscription fee of $4.99 per month. But, according to KU administrators, it's a significant upgrade over the ESPN3 system that previously blacked out those games for Kansas residents.
Marchiony said the expanded service would not be “a drain on our budget,” and added that any additional revenue coming KU’s way likely would be offset by the added production costs experienced by Rock Chalk Video.
Marchiony also said the financial elements of the new deal were minimal since ESPN would absorb a large portion of the production costs given the fact that so many of KU’s 100 or so live events would be available via ESPN+.
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Essendon veteran Dustin Fletcher has been ruled out of Saturday night’s clash against Richmond with a hamstring strain.
Fletcher’s hopes of becoming the club’s all time games record holder have been put on hold with the veteran currently sitting equal with Simon Madden on 378 games.
Football Operations Manager Steve Alessio said Fletcher suffered the injury at training last week.
“Dustin last weekend hurt his hamstring during training, we tested it out during the week but he is going to miss this weekend’s game with a hamstring injury,” Alessio said.
“It is disappointing for Dustin and us that he won’t be out there for his 379th game.”
Groin issues have meant Fletcher has played only 13 matches in this his 21st season.
The 38-year-old has recently indicated his desire to play on next season but a decision will be made in consultation with the club over the coming weeks.
Up Next Hocking offered one match ban Why not share? label.close Share This Article Share on Facebook
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This week’s brawl is Heroes of the Stars. Travel to Braxis Holdout to battle against the Zerg forces (and the enemy team) with some of the Koprulu sector’s most powerful Heroes.
Rules
Shuffle Pick Choose from one of three randomly selected StarCraft or StarCraft skinned Heroes before entering the battle on Braxis Holdout. Be quick about it though, you only have 30 seconds to choose!
Standard Play No talent or level restrictions.
The first team to destroy the enemy Core wins!
Rewards
Complete three matches of Heroes of the Stars to earn 1,000 Gold and the following portrait:
Find out more about the new Heroes Brawl game mode on our Brawl site; and as always, you can find more information on this week’s Brawl by clicking the Brawl Info button at the bottom of the play screen when preparing to queue for this exciting new game mode.
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Students at the University of Texas in San Antonio sparked controversy with the launch of a new magazine entitled “No Whites Allowed.”
The publication is the brainchild of a group of students whose objective is to highlight people of color — more specifically, “queer” people of color.
While the magazine didn’t receive the university’s approval or authorization, flyers were still disseminated announcing the launch of “No Whites Allowed.”
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Representatives for the publication responded to widespread backlash by saying white people and straight people were welcome to attend the launch party, but neither are required for success. While some students feel ostracized simply for being white, others are more combative.
Launching a magazine titled “No Whites Allowed” is far from being all-inclusive and tolerant. No one wants to see something this ridiculous in circulation.
Do you agree that protesting is acceptable, but rioting is not? Yes No Email Address (required) By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement Results Vote
There would be protests and talk-show appearances nationwide if a “No Blacks Allowed” magazine were launched. Students would be suspended, and heads would roll.
[lz_ndn video=32863785]
There’s no doubt students have become adept at marketing and using social media for attention to a cause. Rather than focus on the positive, these students attached negativity to the title of their publication for shock value just to create buzz.
They’ve effectively cast a dark cloud over their publication.
MORE NEWS: Secretary DeVos Champions Private and Parochial Schools As Threats Loom for Their Closure
What sort of content can be found inside a magazine called “No Whites Allowed”?
There are plenty of ways to focus on a minority community and bring the positivity needed for support. Naming a magazine “No Whites Allowed” does nothing to encourage or support people of color. In fact, having a polarizing title associated with a project for minorities only serves to create resentment.
Related: You Won’t Believe What Illegal Aliens on Campus Want Now
It feeds the notion that white people are responsible for the troubles faced by today’s groups of minorities.
The magazine is supposed to be a creative outlet for “queer” people of color, where they can be heard. According to the creators, there’s absolutely no other “safe space” for people of color to express themselves. There definitely isn’t anything called social media or the internet.
I have seen many successful young people achieve amazing things without needing a safe space.
Naturally, the magazine launch party was held at a vegan restaurant. An organizer was quoted as saying, “Inclusion is not inherently good, and exclusion is not inherently bad.” With such cutting-edge rhetoric, I can see why they had trouble coming up with a productive title.
Giving so much power to hatred completely masks creativity and transforms the idea of tolerance. There isn’t a day in my minority life that I’m thinking, Golly, gee … white people sure have held me down.
I have seen many successful young people achieve amazing things without needing a safe space.
Related: Liberal Writer on Campus Blames Shootings on ‘Toxic Masculinity’
I’m literally imagining a publication full of terrible poetry slams and squiggly drawings. If that’s the case, I’m pretty sure no one wants to be allowed.
Angelina Newsom is a U.S. Army veteran and an OpsLens contributor. She served 10 years in the military, including a deployment to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. She studies criminal justice and is still active within the military community. This OpsLens article is used by permission.
Read more at OpsLens:
The True Cost of the Obamas’ Lavish Lifestyle While at the White House
Statistics Dispel Why Minneapolis Mayoral Candidate’s Push to Disarm Cops Will Fail
(photo credit, homepage image: UTHSCSA Laredo, CC BY-SA 3.0, by AMAPO; photo credit, article image: Main campus, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, CC BY-SA 3.0, by Zereshk)
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Oh boy. There's not a fibre in my body that would have believed that, what has become one of the longest days of my life, would also be what will become one of the most memorable days of my life, considering the way it all kicked off in the wee, dark hours of this morning.
For those of you who have been following my journey along the Inca Trail as part of a larger month-long G Adventures tour of Peru and Bolivia, you would know that I signed off yesterday's entry, day 3 on the Inca Trail, crossing fingers hoping for good weather this morning. I mean, we've heard stories over the past few days about groups that have trekked all the way in dry weather only to wind up in an unidentifiable Machu Picchu covered in low, thick cloud – not something I wanted to encounter.
"All the finger crossing in the world, however, was not going to save us this morning."
All the finger crossing in the world, however, was not going to save us this morning. Up and at it before 4am, the nightmare reality of having to deal with heavy rain as we made our way up to Intipunku (the Sun Gate), overlooking the ruins of Machu Picchu, became all too real. By the time we had washed, packed, eaten and broken camp, there were already a number of groups ahead of us waiting at the park entry check point. Not too keen on lining up behind in the rain, we decided instead to take shelter at the campsite restaurant/bar building along with scores of others and wait for our turn to head down.
Patience paid off as we eventually had our credentials verified and we set off as a group, away from Wiñay Wayna and into the damp darkness with our head lamps on hand to light the way. Only a couple of hours hiking was required this morning through a forest of large trees and giant ferns, before a final push upwards towards Intipunku, where we would either be met with breathtaking views over Machu Picchu, or, being more realistic considering the current weather conditions, views over a valley filled with dense cloud.
Alas, although the rain had stopped by the time we reached the Sun Gate, the ruins that we so desperately wanted to lay our eyes upon, were blanketed in swirling cloud.
Intipunku (the Sun Gate)
"So what's this Sun Gate thing all about", I hear you ask? Well, for those of us who had taken up a resting spot near our guide, Nancy, we received a quick rundown on the significance of the ruin. Consisting of two discernable stones flanking a narrow passageway leading through a crevice in the mountain, the gate is consistently struck by the first rays of sunlight each morning. Hence, the name "Sun Gate".
Given the vast focus Inca religion placed on the worship of the sun and the essential role it played in all aspects of life, providing light, warmth and fuel to their crops, it's safe to assume that this place of worship would have played host to many ceremonies in ancient times.
Right now, however, we were just hoping that the sun was going to answer our collective prayers and burn off the cloud which, thankfully, looked to already be dispersing as we made the decision to start the descent along the trail that led directly into Machu Picchu.
About 300 metres down the gentle sloping trail, from the back of our group I began to hear a number of gasps as we approached the clearing of another, smaller temple ruin. Sure enough, in the short time we had taken to hike down to this next point, the screen of cloud that was obscuring any views we had of the valley lifted and there it was – the stunning, silent, mysterious, Machu Picchu drenched in sunlight.
It was really interesting to observe the split reactions of our group at this point.
On one hand you had a bunch who instantly reached for their cameras and set about madly snapping away, filling up their precious memory cards with their first glance of this ancient wonder of the world. On the other hand, there was a group of us who chose to take a moment, sit down, stare and just reflect on the magnitude of what we had accomplished over the past few days, and the significance to our lives of what we were about to explore and experience...
...then we TOO got our cameras out and started snapping madly! Haha!
After hundreds of frames had been snapped – panoramic shots, telephoto shots, individual shots and shots with friends (that's me and the big man, Sam, above), it was time to continue past the odd grazing Llama and into the actual grounds of Machu Picchu.
Although we had been hiking the same stone pathways as the ancient Incas for the past couple of days, there was something special and surreal about treading this final section.
With a few minutes up our sleeve to observe the magnificent stone walls and unfinished structures from a different perspective prior to assembling and meeting Julio down at the visitor centre, the cameras started firing again. In a little over an hour's time Machu Picchu was likely to be overrun by tourists traveling up to the site on day tours from nearby Aguas Calientas, so it was somewhat a priority to grab as many "unblemished" scenic shots as we could, while we could.
Reaching the visitor information centre, we were immediately met by the beaming, unmistakable smile of Julio, our lead guide on the Peruvian leg of this G Adventures tour. Julio was all ready to congratulate us all on completing the Inca Trail and propose a toast using a couple of champagne bottles that he distributed to the group.
Simon and Rob (above) took on the job of popping the corks, and the cool bubbly liquid was soon flowing into small plastic cups which were raised for multiple toasts in honour of finishing, of Nancy’s expert guiding over the past few days, and to the Incas, without whom we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be standing where we were.
Machu Picchu – A day of ancient exploration
With 20-30 minutes of free time allocated to take care of whatever "comfort" things we needed to do (change clothes, hit the loos etc) we also had a brief opportunity to check out the visitor centre, gift shop and snack bar to stock up on munchies in preperation for the next few hours that would be spent exploring every last square foot of the magical site.
It's funny, while we whole-heartedly appreciated the semi-sanitary pay toilets, have the opportunity to purchase drinks and put our daypacks into storage (allowing us to "take the load off" for the remainder of the day), I couldn't help but be a little dismayed with even the existence of the large visitor centre so close to the site. It undoubtedly impacts the romance of the experience.
I had the same feeling when I visited Stonehenge in England a decade ago. Had I been forced to hike over rolling green hills and descend into a hidden valley protecting the massive formation of druid stones, I probably would have appreciated the occasion more than I did. Pulling off the highway, getting out of the car and walking no more than 20m to stand at the foot of the circle kinda crueled it for me. Just saying...
Anyway, with Nancy's expert and informative guidance at our disposal, we spent the next 2 hours visiting and becoming familiar with the more notable sections of Machu Picchu. Features such as the "Watchman’s Hut", "Intipata" (Inca bridge), "Temple of the Three Windows", "Intihuatana", the "Main Plaza", "Condor Temple", "Intimachay", "Ceremonial Baths", "Temple of the Sun", "Royal Sector" and more.
I could literally spend the next 2 weeks writing all about each of the aforementioned ancient attractions in turn. Although I appreciate all my reader's thirsts for knowledge, I have neither the time, nor the literary stamina to indulge in that exercise right now, so the fairly comprehensive collection of images following will have to do you all this time around.
Just know that Machu Picchu is absolutely everything you would expect the ancient wonder to be, and more! As evidenced by the hundreds, if not thousands of shots I took over the course of the day, I was well and truly blown away by the experience. Hopefully you'll be able to absorb some of my amazement from the following shots.
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It's hard to imagine any photo of the ruins without this iconic rock featuring prominently. While the hike to the top of this mountain is known to be quite treacherous, you can pay to be part of two regulated groups that make the climb daily. While the views from the top would no doubt have been quite spectacular, I wasn't about to devote a couple of hours of exploration time to yet another ascent.
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Just like in the stone walls found throughout Cusco, the stone blocks are so tightly and accurately aligned that despite the lack of any kind of mortar, it's impossible to slide even a coin in between the huge bricks.
The three steps you can see to the bottom right of the entrance is representative of "Pachamama" (Mother Earth). The inside walls of the cave (roped off to tourists) are covered with perfectly united cobblestone bricks punctuated by four, door-sized trapezoidal niches.
I'm not sure why the above photo is one of my favourites from the day. Maybe it has something to do with the multiple elements – Huayna Picchu shrouded in cloud, terraced ruins of Machu Picchu under blue skies and a couple of birds in flight. Nice.
The view from the urban sector back up towards the "Watchman's Hut" where I had read presented one of the best all-inclusive vantage points over Machu Picchu. It's where the watchman would have been stationed, so I guess that makes sense.
Nancy demonstrates how two simple slabs of stone could be effectively used by the Inca people to crush grain and prepare food.
This little guy (above), an Andean Rabbit, was spotted perched in one of the high niches in the walls of the "Principle Temple". I guess he feels safe since tourists are not permitted to enter the temple due to the danger the weakened rear wall (due to seismic activity) presents.
Left to Right: Sam (🇬🇧), Leonie (🇩🇪), Johnny (🇳🇿), Molly (🇬🇧), Sophia (🇬🇧), Florian (🇩🇪), Victoria (🇬🇧), Rob (🇬🇧), Me (🇦🇺), Lou (🇬🇧), Helen (🇬🇧), Simon (🇦🇺), Ali (🇦🇺), Atholl (🇬🇧), Anna (🇦🇺), Sara (🇦🇺).
On the road leading to the top of the pyramid where "Intihuatana" is located, there's a stone (above) which has been carved to imitate the shape of the distant mountains behind. Can you see it? Neat huh?
The winding road, clinging tightly to the steep slope of the mountain that carries hundreds of tourists to and from Machu Picchu down to the nearby village of Aguas Calientes every day, is a modern engineering feat in itself.
Remember what I was saying earlier about the "Watchman's Hut" being perhaps being one of the best vantage points in the whole site? Here's the proof (above). Iconic profile picture anyone?
Back up to Intipunku
Despite the soaring heat and the fact that after 4 days of solid hiking my bad knee was no longer my friend, Rob and I made the decision to follow through on our earlier plans to hike back up to the Sun Gate in an attempt to capture the view "from the top" that we missed this morning because of all the cloud cover. Armed with an estimated amount of water to keep us going for the 1km hike back uphill, we set off at a relatively easy pace.
Once arriving at the elevated viewing position, the rewards were immediate. Machu Picchu in all its beautiful glory to our left and the soaring, vegetation covered surrounding mountains rising up from the Urubamba River, to our right.
With our agreed meeting time back down in Aguas Calientes rapidly approaching, Rob and I headed back down to the visitor centre, pausing briefly to snap a last couple of frames, grabbed our respective gear from storage and boarded a rickety old bus back down the mountain along the winding road we had spied from the ruins earlier in the day.
I'd love to describe what would have been a pretty hair-raising experience, I am sure. But the reality is I think I snoozed nearly the whole way down until the raging waters of the Urubamba were right alongside the bus.
I took a little bit of time to explore the banks of this powerful river before heading up to the tourist strip where I would meet the rest of the group for lunch. The power of the thrashing water was awe-inspiring.
I took a bit of video of what I was witnessing, and hopefully it will give you a bit of an idea of what I saw. Anyone got a kayak?
A little down time in Aguas Calientes
For all intents and purposes, the town of Aguas Caliantes is simply a tourist trap built around a train station, obviously constructed to allow visitors to be delivered on the doorstep of Machu Picchu.
Even the main restaurant strip sits directly on a section of the train platform. Filled with colour, music, activity and smells that would cause absolutely anyone to start salivating, it was the perfect place to meet the rest of the crew who had made their way down at various times throughout the afternoon.
I have to be honest, while the first full-sized meals on offer to us for a good few days was an attractive prospect, it was the "tallie" beers that I had my heart set on. I was hot, tired, and an ice-cold bottle of Peruvian Pilsen had been on my mind since climbing aboard the bus topside. I think my resultant smile (below) says it all.
As was the case for Rob up on the Inca Trail a couple of days ago, today was Simon's birthday – an occasion we were more than happy to celebrate. I mean it was the perfect excuse for more rounds of "Pisco Sours" and cake... let's not forget the cake!
The long wait
The process post-lunch was supposed to be real easy. Get our gear together, head through town to the main train station, board a train back to Cusco around 3:30pm, settle back into our Hostel Corihausi for a good night's sleep before some of us take off for the Amazon tomorrow.
Travel wouldn't be travel without a few hiccups to challenge the best laid plans, and this evening has been no different. As I sit here writing this, we still don't know if we're going to get out of Aguas Caliantes tonight. * sigh *
Let me explain.
There's no doubt that we had our fair share of rain on the Inca Trail, but we had no idea that there had been so much rain in the area over the past couple of days that a number of land slides over the train tracks has made it difficult for us to get back to Cusco by rail. I can't really tell you too much about what has happened because the flow of information from authorities to rail staff and then to waiting, anxious passengers here is pretty poor.
All that has been left for us to do is explore town a little, check out the markets, invest a few Sols at pretty much every bar in town (without getting TOO drunk) and play LOTS and LOTS of cards.
I think we all feel a little sorry for Julio. He's been glued to his phone for the best part of the last 4-5 hours trying to find out from the G Adventures office in Cusco what's going on and attempt to make alternative arrangements in case we do get stuck here (in a town with VERY limited vacant accommodation options). We're all starting to get tired and a little cranky and, bless him, he's shouldering all the frustration.
Nothing we can do at this point other than visit another pub, play some more cards and keep checking to see if there is any new developments. I guess I'll fill you all in on what happened tomorrow night from deep in the Amazon Forest (I hope)!
📌 NOTE: For those of you who’d like to learn more about Machu Picchu, check out this great article on the National Geographic website: Top 10 Machu Picchu Secrets
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My Santa was amazingly generous and sent me four keychains along with a lovely note from the UK. I love them all so much and opening the package was easily the best part of my week. The keychains have made a fantastic addition to my keychain collection. I can't even begin to express how much I enjoyed this gift! Thank you so much, Santa!
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Amazon keeps building out its Alexa ecosystem by adding more features and integrating products. But the platform has more potential than just allowing, say, your Fire tablets in on the voice control fun. But now Alexa has a new ability, Announcements, that lets customers speak into one Echo device and have the message barked out of all the other ones in a network. Basically, it gives your Alexa-connected house a one-way intercom feature.
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When Obama announced Friday the formation of a technical advisory group to review our SIGINT programs, I naively believed “outside” and “independent” meant “outside” and “independent.”
Fourth, we’re forming a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies. We need new thinking for a new era. We now have to unravel terrorist plots by finding a needle in the haystack of global telecommunications. And meanwhile, technology has given governments — including our own — unprecedented capability to monitor communications. So I am tasking this independent group to step back and review our capabilities — particularly our surveillance technologies. And they’ll consider how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how these surveillance technologies are used, ask how surveillance impacts our foreign policy — particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. And they will provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy, and our foreign policy. [my emphasis]
I also naively believed this was an effort to take up Ron Wyden and Mark Udall’s call to get an independent review of the program, which the rest of the Senate Intelligence Committee thwarted a year ago.
We also proposed directing the committee’s Technical Advisory Group to study FISA Amendments Act collection and provide recommendations for improvements. We were disappointed that our motion to request that the Technical Advisory Group study this issue was ruled by our colleagues to be out of order.
Nope!
In the memo Obama just released ordering James Clapper to form such a committee, those words “outside” and “independent” disappear entirely.
I believe it is important to take stock of how these technological advances alter the environment in which we conduct our intelligence mission. To this end, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I am directing you to establish a Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies (Review Group). The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust. Within 60 days of its establishment, the Review Group will brief their interim findings to me through the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), and the Review Group will provide a final report and recommendations to me through the DNI no later than December 15, 2013. [my emphasis]
And neither Obama nor the Intelligence Committees get to hear from this Group themselves. It all goes through James Clapper.
What on Friday was an outside and independent group is now branded by the Director of National Intelligence as the Director of National Intelligence Group.
At the direction of the President, I am establishing the Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies to examine our global signals-intelligence collection and surveillance capability. The Review Group will assess whether, in light of advancements in communications technologies, the United States employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.
Huh. It took exactly 72 hours for that good idea to fizzle into a navel gaze directed by the guy who lies to Congress.
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DESCRIPTION:
Redheaded teen babe gives a nice blowjob to her fuck buddy He lick and finger her pussy Then he fucks her pussy hard and deep in many positions She tastes the cum in the climax
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CHARLEVOIX COUNTY, Mich. — Charlevoix Police and Fire may switch from a full-time fire department to a volunteer fire department in order to pay their EMS providers more.
The proposal stems from a growing need for emergency medical services in the area, UpNorthLive.com reports.
"Through the years we have had less and less fire calls and more and more ambulance calls,” said Shirley Gibson, City of Charlevoix City Council 3rd Ward. “That means that's where we need to focus where we put our money."
In 2014, there were 832 EMS calls and 107 fire calls.
In order to retain EMS services, the county said it has to pay more to maintain wages that are competitive with other EMS services in the area. The money will come from the switch from a paid fire service to a volunteer fire service.
"Saving the $190,000 a year will enable the city to pay the EMS individuals a competitive wage,” said Gibson. “We haven't been paying that much for years and that's been an issue."
EMS serves the city of Charlevoix, Charlevoix Township, Hayes Township, Marion Township, Norwood Township, and a portion of Eveline Township.
Charlevoix Police and Fire has a total of 19 firefighters, but only one is full time. The department serves the city of Charlevoix and a portion of Eveline Township. The department has been losing fire service contracts with other townships, and there isn’t enough money to maintain the service.
"The volunteer organization was here before this happened. This isn't anything new,” said Chief Gerard Doan, City of Charlevoix Police and Fire. “The only thing that’s changing is the person in-house. We will still have people responding to your fire needs when the call arises."
If approved, the transition from a full-time fire department to volunteer will go into effect sometime in August.
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I wanted to watch a movie with him HE told me to call him after the first 30%.
56,313 shares
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The Pony Scrolls V EQUESTRIA Flutterborn By MCWopper Watch
237 Favourites 30 Comments 11K Views
This is my wallpaper of fluttershy in skyrim.
i have been waiting for someone to create an image in the style of mlp featuring fluttershy crossed with an awsome video game.
I was never expecting that i ended up creating one because all my previous attempts in 2d art have failed.
and allot of credit to he4rtofcourage for the helmet shape and shadowillHCR for the battleready fluttershy vector i could not make this without those 2 people.
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic © Hasbro
The Elder Scrolls Skyrim © Bethesda
IMAGE DETAILS Image size 1920x1080px 676.5 KB Show More
Published : Nov 16, 2011
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The Fourth of July is not only America’s birthday, but also the anniversary of one of the boldest experiments in American letters.
On July 4, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a small cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts and began writing “Walden,” the autobiographical book that would define his legacy.
Thoreau was many things – naturalist, political dissident, professional crank – but he was also one of our earliest and most memorable media critics.
His reservations about the limits of journalism resonate with particular urgency today, as a massive oil spill near my home state of Louisiana underscores what Thoreau found lacking in media culture.
“I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper,” Thoreau told readers of “Walden.” “If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed ... we never need read of another....
“To a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”
Thoreau had other ideas about what was newsworthy, as I’ve been reminded recently while perusing editor Damion Searls’s masterly abridged new version of Thoreau’s journals. The journals are a sustained record of the natural world – the slant of light in a summer sky, the flow of sap from New England maples, the arrival of spring birds “more sure than the arrival of the sailing and steaming packets.”
In Thoreau’s time, as in ours, nature didn’t usually didn’t make news unless it was touched by obvious trouble.
If war, as one wit famously observed, is “God’s way of teaching Americans geography,” then environmental disasters such as the BP oil spill seem to be the primary way that Americans learn about ecology.
In “Walden” and his other writings, Thoreau argued for a less fragmentary understanding of land and water, one based on a daily intimacy with the realities of how man and nature interact.
It’s a grasp of the natural world that the news cycle, with its emphasis on crisis and conflict, seems ill-suited to sustain.
Thoreau said that his decision to move to the woods of Walden on Independence Day was merely an accident of the calendar. Coincidental or not, Thoreau’s timing reminds us that his sense of America’s possibility was inextricably linked with the wonder of its landscape.
That connection is worth remembering on this Independence Day, as an ongoing oil spill places our natural bounty at risk.
Danny Heitman, a columnist for The Baton Rouge Advocate, is the author of “A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House.”
More Independence Day related items:
More from Danny Heitman:
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Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., hasn’t officially started her first term in office, but she’s already pushing a massive, far-left proposal that would fundamentally transform much of the economy and push the country closer than ever to socialism.
For several weeks, you might have heard Ocasio-Cortez reference the creation of a “Green New Deal,” but until recently, few people knew what would be included in the plan. In a draft resolution to form a select committee in the House that would help develop legislation to put her plan in action, Ocasio-Cortez finally outlined numerous proposals that she says should be part of future Green New Deal legislation. Taken together, the many ideas included in Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal would be the most radical policy shift in modern U.S. history, dramatically increasing the size and power of government and running up the national debt by trillions of dollars.
According to Ocasio-Cortez, the Green New Deal, which has been endorsed by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and at least 40 House Democrats, would eliminate nearly all fossil fuels from the electric grid and force everyone in the country to buy from power companies selling only renewable energy.
This policy alone would create widespread economic chaos. Without government subsidies, renewable energy costs significantly more than many forms of traditional energy generation. My colleagues at the Heartland Institute found that electricity prices are, on average, increasing by 50 percent faster in those states that have created renewable power mandates compared to those that have rejected these economically destructive policies. This is especially troubling news for working-class and lower-income Americans, who spend much larger shares of their income on energy than wealthier families.
Not only is Ocasio-Cortez proposing to eliminate the hundreds of thousands of jobs in the fossil fuel industry in the United States, even though America recently became a net-energy exporter, she’s demanding this transition occur in just 10 years, from 2020 to 2030. This mandate would be virtually impossible to achieve because wind and solar energy sources still rely on back-up generation from fossil-fuel-powered energy when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal doesn’t merely advocate for a gigantic shift in the U.S. energy industry. Her draft resolution says one of the proposed House committee’s priorities would be “upgrading every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficiency, comfort and safety.” Taken literally, this mandate would cost trillions of dollars. There were about 136 million housing units in the United States in 2017, not including any businesses. Even if it would cost just $10,000 to “upgrade” every home and apartment, an extremely low estimate, this one relatively small part of her plan would cost more than $1.3 trillion.
Ocasio-Cortez’s draft resolution also proposes “eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing, agricultural and other industries, including by investing in local-scale agriculture in communities across the country,” as well as “eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from, repairing and improving transportation and other infrastructure, and upgrading water infrastructure to ensure universal access to clean water.” It’s not clear whether this would eventually mean the elimination of all gasoline-powered cars, but even if we assume private ownership of these vehicles would be permitted, the removal of affordable fossil fuels, including natural gas, from all industry would increase the cost of developing, manufacturing, and delivering all goods and services in the country. It would force companies to spend, at the very least, hundreds of billions of additional dollars more than they do now — expenses that would inevitably be passed along to consumers.
The proposal includes numerous other radical policies as well. For example, Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal would also create a single-payer healthcare system. If it’s anything like the Medicare for All plan promoted by Sanders, the cost of this single part of her plan would be $32 trillion over the first 10 years, according to estimates from the Mercatus Center. Ocasio-Cortez also says her plan would include a federal jobs guarantee “to assure a living wage to every person who wants one.”
You might be wondering where Ocasio-Cortez plans to get the tens of trillions of dollars it would cost to carry out these and the other socialist policies offered as part of her Green New Deal. According to the “Frequently Asked Questions” section of her draft resolution, Ocasio-Cortez says her proposal could be paid for using “the same ways that we paid for the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs, the same ways we paid for World War II and many other wars”: raising taxes, printing money, and creating new publicly owned banks.
Who would lead the charge in this radical new effort? Bureaucrats — the same people who can’t run the Postal Service or Amtrak without incurring huge amounts of debt and who haven’t managed to balance the budget in nearly two decades.
Although reports indicate House Democratic leadership plans to kill Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal for a new select committee, Green New Deal supporters say they are going to push forward and attempt to create legislation that would make these policy pipedreams a reality.
Make no mistake about it: This is one of the most dangerous and extreme proposals offered in modern U.S. history. It’s the sort of thing you’d see in the Soviet Union, not the United States. If we don’t stop the Green New Deal, our economy may not survive. This isn’t a battle we can afford to lose.
Justin Haskins (@JustinTHaskins) is the executive editor and a research fellow at the Heartland Institute and the editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.
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Reports surfaced today of the contents of Hillary Clinton's personal Gmail account, confirming suspicions that she is a senior citizen with shockingly normal behavior for someone in her age bracket. An anonymous hacker published nearly 21,000 messages sent to and from the former Secretary of State over the past ten years, including more than 3,000 unanswered emails sent to her daughter, Chelsea. Said the source, "We learned that Mrs. Clinton, a new grandmother, routinely accosted her daughter with message after message containing unsolicited parenting advice. Ideal first solid foods, night weaning techniques, treatments for baby's first cold. On one particularly prolific day, Clinton sent 22 messages inquiring about her granddaughter's diaper rash."
Also disclosed were details which revealed Clinton's utter disregard for standard best practices when using email. "We found hundreds of sent messages with a 'FW:' followed by a subject line written in all caps. 'WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL BEACHES YOU HAVE TO SEE TO BELIEVE' and 'TOP 10 DIRTY LIMERICKS ABOUT REPUBLICANS' were listicles forwarded to her entire address book in 2013. As one might imagine, these forwards seldom inspired a reply, though Bill did take a moment to type ':P' to the limerick email."
Further cementing her status as a senior citizen with a tenuous grasp of how to even use email were dozens of unsent drafts that appeared to be failed attempts at Google searches. As the source explained, "It took some time to determine what we were looking at, but we have confirmed that Hillary ventured to search for 'How to accessorize a pant suit' by entering that exact string of text into the body of an unsent email in December of 2010."
When asked to comment on these allegations, a Clinton spokesperson admitted that the former secretary's staff members were currently "hard at work trying to pry Hillary away from a lolcats animated gif."
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CLEVELAND — Maybe Ohio Gov. John Kasich didn’t get the memo about Republican unity. Or maybe he did, since he didn’t mention Donald Trump by name as he lambasted a huge portion of Trump’s policy platform Tuesday before and during the party’s formal vote to make the real estate mogul its presidential nominee.
Kasich is not speaking at his party’s convention in his home state. Trump mocked the governor for that on Monday, saying if he had lost as badly as Kasich lost the primaries to Trump, he wouldn’t want to speak, either. And Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, declared Kasich was “embarrassing” Ohio.
But Kasich did speak at events around the convention, including a U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce session on Tuesday evening, held as Republicans were nominating Trump at the Quicken Loans Arena just a mile away.
It was the second time that day that Kasich ticked off a list problematic Trump positions that Kasich saw as worldwide threats.
“I look at trade like I look at immigration, like I look at growing nationalism, like I look at isolationism,” Kasich said. “When you isolate, when you have excessive nationalism, when you’re anti-trade and anti-immigration, what good comes from that? What is that a formula for?”
Speaking earlier at a forum sponsored by the International Republican Institute, just a few blocks from the convention venue, he was more pointed.
“We all love our countries, but you know what doing nationalism to an extreme amount can mean,” Kasich told the crowd of Republican foreign policy experts without mentioning the Trump slogan of “Make America Great Again” or the string of speakers at Monday night’s Republican National Convention who argued Muslims, immigrants and civil rights advocates were destroying the country.
“We think NATO doesn’t matter? Are we kidding?” Kasich said at another point, without mentioning that Trump has argued the treaty organization is obsolete.
Rather than shutting down and shutting out the world, Kasich repeatedly argued for embracing it.
“When I look at immigration, I look at a new level of energy. I look at immigration as an opportunity,” Kasich said, without mentioning Trump’s pledge to build a wall. “We want people to come to Ohio. We want to integrate these folks. We want them to become part of our economic dynamo.”
While he said Ohio has had a rough time with free trade, he comes down in favor of more trade because of the upside, including the linkages and relationships he said it fosters.
And when all of those Trumpian anti-trade, anti-immigrant, nationalistic and isolationist inclinations are combined, it doesn’t look good to Kasich.
“What does that stew look like? What does that mean for the world? What does it mean for stability? What does it mean for peace? What does it mean for relationships?” Kasich asked. “I’m very worried about it. I’m very, very concerned about it.”
Trump did have defenders at the foreign policy event who spoke on panels after Kasich left, including marquee players who appeared at the convention Monday night.
One was retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who argued in his comments Tuesday that America “is definitely losing this war” against “radical Islam.”
“I am almost in total disagreement with the governor of Ohio,” Flynn said.
Another was Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who actually agrees more with Kasich than with Trump on NATO. “We have some disagreements in our party. That’s inevitable,” Cotton said.
Kasich did make sure to point out that he was not only talking about Trump, especially after being pressed about the party’s standard-bearer in the chamber of commerce conversations.
“I don’t want to spend my time here in Cleveland just talking about Donald Trump without talking about the other choice,” Kasich said, offering some jabs at Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
Welcome to Ohio, Mr. Trump.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.
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=== Brisingr ===Please rate and leave comments!Description===========Adds the sword "Brisingr" from the book "Brisingr" of the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini to the game.Details=======I was very interested in what Eragon's sword Brisingr might look like.After searching the internet and finding more or less disappointing illustrations I found a trailer for the 3rd book with the so far best design.Its in German, but the most imprtant part is the short glimpse of Brisingr ;-)The sword can be found under the Menoa Tree which is located west of the Imperial City. You can see a marker on the map, but you cannot fasttravel there.Inside the tree are two versions of the sword:1. A normal version which is slightly better than a Daedric longsword2. A flaming version with an extra fire damage enchantment (thanks to Mr V for his 'Bluefire Claymore')These swords might be a bit overpowered, but hey, it's a dragonrider's sword.NOTE: The container for the swords is a bit hidden. Search at the root of the tree.EDIT: Some people had a problem with nothing showing up when the mod was activated. Those can try the optional plugin file "TestingHall Addition" which adds the swords to the testinghall. Please post a comment whether it works with this esp.PS: You might also like my Zar'roc mod Install=======1. Extract the archive to [install folder]\Oblivion\Data\2. Start Oblivion Launcher, click 'Data Files', place a checkmark beside the 'Merong - Brisingr.esp' file3. Start the Game and have funUninstall=========1. Start Oblivion Launcher, click Data Files, uncheck the .esp file.2. Delete the files/folders associated with the mod.Incompatibility===============Only if the worldspace is used in another mod. I know none.Known Issues or Bugs====================If you find anything, leave a comment on the TESNexus page.History=======1.0: 2010/08/25 - Initial release.Contact=======Find me on TESNexus as 'Mérong'Credits=======Thanks to...Bethesda for creating Oblivion.Christopher Paolini for the great book "Eragon".Mr V for the flame-animation from 'Bluefire' Claymore'Tools Used==========Licensing/Legal===============Do what you want with this mod, but give me proper Credit!
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Fox 13 (Seattle), October 1, 2014
The Seattle School Board unanimously voted Wednesday to have public schools observe “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on the second Monday of October–the same day as the Columbus Day federal holiday.
The resolution, in part, said the board “recognizes the fact that Seattle is built upon the homelands and villages of the Indigenous Peoples of this region, without whom the building of the City would not have been possible.”
The resolution also says the board “has a responsibility to oppose the systematic racism towards Indigenous people in the United States, which perpetuates high rates of poverty and income inequality, exacerbating disproportionate health, education and social crises.”
It urges district staff to “include the teaching of the history, culture and government of the indigenous peoples of our state.”
Click here to read the full resolution adopted by the school board.
The Seattle City Council will vote next Monday, Oct. 6, whether to celebrate “Indigenous Peoples’ Day” on the same day as the Columbus Day holiday.
{snip}
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Mitch McConnell sneaked in a resolution – known as an authorization for the use of military force – on Wednesday night when all anyone could talk about was the blizzard traveling up the East coast.
The media was taken by surprise on Thursday morning.
The purpose is to authorize the president to fight ISIS though in some ways it will limit the next president but what is noteworthy about it is the fact that it does not limit his reach in terms of geography. The fear is that it allows martial law.
From Defense One:
The AUMF put forward by McConnell would not restrict the president’s use of ground troops, nor have any limits related to time or geography. Nor would it touch on the issue of what to do with the 2001 AUMF, which the Obama administration has used to attack ISIS despite that authorization’s instructions to use force against those who planned the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
ISIS is in the United States but we are not at a point where we need this extreme measure. Why give this power to this maniac in the White House?
The AUMF, known as “Rule XIV,” has not been placed on the calendar which means it could come up at any time and will. It’s being fast-tracked.
The resolution already has four Republican cosponsors: Sens. Lindsey Graham, Daniel Coats, Joni Ernst, and Orrin Hatch.
Some Democrats were critical of even the president’s own draft AUMF, warning that they’d need additional restrictions from the administration on troop levels and geographic boundaries before they could support any authorization, Defense One noted.
There is deep division over this bill and there will be debate. Hopefully they will specify to not include the US.
Obama has enough power to go after ISIS but refuses to do it. His rules of engagement have been absurd.
The devil will be in the details.
Martial law has no precise meaning but it has common features – it contemplates military force; government military personnel have the authority to make and enforce civil and criminal laws; and civil liberties are suspended. Martial law was declared by Lincoln during the Civil War – Proclamation 113 – and our National Defense Authorization Act included a provision, now removed, which stripped U.S. citizens of their constitutional rights.
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Indonesian church attacker 'obsessed' with ISIS
A knife-wielding Indonesian teen who tried to attack a priest at a church during a Sunday service was "obsessed" with extremist group Islamic State, a senior minister said on Monday.
Indonesian authorities are increasingly worried about a resurgence in radicalism in the world's largest Muslim-majority country, driven in part by a new generation of jihadis inspired by Islamic State (IS).
"From the cellphone that was seized by security forces, this youth was obsessed with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi," Chief Security Minister Wiranto told reporters, referring to the leader of the Middle Eastern militant group.
Wiranto, who goes by one name, said a note was found in the attacker's backpack that said "I love al-Baghdadi" but added the suspect had no known links to existing militant networks.
There were no serious casualties in the latest attempted attack, which happened in a church in Medan, northern Sumatra. Police said the attacker had attempted to stab the priest, who suffered minor injuries, and detonate a crude home-made bomb but failed after being restrained by other worshippers.
The suspect, identified as 17-year-old Ivan Armadi is under interrogation. Police seized bomb-making materials from his home after the attack and said he had learned to assemble a bomb through online research.
Counter-terrorism officials have said there are hundreds of IS sympathizers in Indonesia, where the vast majority of Muslims practice a moderate form of the religion. The country suffered its first IS-linked attack in January, when four people died in a gun and bomb assault.
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Story highlights 19 scholars of Mormon history filed a brief
The brief details discrimination faced by 19th century Mormon immigrants
Washington (CNN) A group of 19 scholars of Mormon history filed a brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals over President Trump's blocked travel ban, pointing out similarities between the treatment of Mormon immigrants in the 19th century and Muslim immigrants today.
"I was very concerned about the administration's targeting of Muslims," Nate Oman, a professor of law at the College of William & Mary and main author of the brief told CNN. Government targeting of Mormons in the 19th century was the closest historical parallel, he said, and "I thought it would be useful to look at that story and bring it to the court's attention.
Mob violence drove early Mormons from their homes in Missouri and Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s, and for decades after, the federal government attempted to restrict Mormon voting rights and halt foreign Mormon converts from immigrating to the US.
"The Mormon experience illustrates the harms that result from the government targeting a particular religion," the brief reads. "The federal government's actions against Mormons occurred at a time when First Amendment jurisprudence was in its infancy and the law blessed government actions that today would be blatantly unconstitutional."
Oman believes attempts to restrict Muslims from entering the country are based in fear, a similarity to Mormonism. "I think most of it is fear as a result of 9/11 and terrorist attacks," he said. "People assume Muslims are dangerous."
Read More
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Last week I noted how the data show Joe Biden firmly in the lead in the Democratic presidential contest despite media efforts to make it seem like more of a race than it is — and despite liberal hopes for a more exciting and more leftist candidate.
Today, I want to offer comparable real-talk to Republicans ahead of 2020. The real talk is this: Things aren’t looking good, and the best thing supporters of Donald Trump can do to help their guy and their party is see this moment clearly and work on him to alter his trajectory.
The first harbinger of Republican doom comes from the House. This year marked the first time since 2010 that GOP members of the House found themselves in the minority due to the gigantic Democratic victory in the midterm elections.
Since most Republicans in the House were elected when the GOP was in the majority, this year marks the first time they have had to suffer the uniquely bitter day-to-day existence of being almost completely powerless.
As a result, they’re dropping like flies. As of this moment, 13 Republicans have announced their intention to retire from the House, as compared to three Democrats. This is due in part to their hopelessness about recapturing the majority in 2020. But it’s also surely about prudently abandoning a Republican ship captained by Trump that they think is about to scuttle itself on the rocks.
Most striking, perhaps, is that five of the 13 are from Texas, which has gone Republican in every presidential election since 1980. Trump scored only 52% of the vote there in 2016, the worst such showing since Bob Dole got 49% in 1996.
Meanwhile, in 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke stunned the political world by coming within 2.6 percentage points of Republican Ted Cruz in the Senate race.
All this suggests growing Republican weakness not only in the Lone Star state but in the country at large. No one really expects a Democratic candidate in 2020 can win Texas, but it is a state undergoing rapid suburbanization. And it was America’s suburbs that revolted against Trump in 2018 and handed the Democrats 40 House seats formerly held by Republicans.
When Republican politicians in Texas find themselves awash in despair and look longingly for another way to live their lives because they don’t see things getting any better for them, you have to take that seriously as a message in a bottle.
And if we continue to see House retirements among Republicans, and I think we will, just remember this astonishing statistic by Twitterato Mike Gehrke: Of the 293 Republicans who were serving in both chambers of Congress when Trump became president, more than 32% are gone or will be gone by 2021.
Nationally, polling remains the biggest single indicator of Trump’s potential weakness in 2020. His approval rating stands at 42% in the Real Clear Politics average. There are those who look at this number and pooh-pooh it by saying that Barack Obama fell to this level the year before his re-election.
But recall that Obama actually got 54 percent of Americans to vote for him in 2008, and spent most of the first two years and eight months of his presidency with an approval rating above 50%. Obama’s challenge was re-engaging people who had already voted for him, and he did so successfully.
Trump? After his first week, his approval high-water mark in the RCP average came on May 12, 2019, when he reached … 45 percent. That’s a percentage point lower than his actual vote total. He hasn’t expanded his voter base either.
Even if Trump manages to get everyone back who voted for him the first time, given population trends and the fact that Democrats know down to the block level where they need to go to get votes in the three states that gave Trump the presidency, that won’t be enough to win him a second term.
True, we’re more than a year away from the election, and the Democrats haven’t picked their nominee yet. A lot can happen.
But the point here is that whatever Trump is doing is not working, or not working well enough. You’re not supposed to think such things if you are a Trump supporter because it suggests you’re not a loyal passenger on the Trump train.
Yet the only thing that will cause Trump to shift course to a more successful outcome is the sense that his supporters are losing heart and that his cause is losing its potency. It’s simple war logic: If you don’t understand the balance of forces arrayed against you, you lose.
jpodhoretz@gmail.com
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Bill O’Reilly has long helmed the most-watched show on cable news, but one prominent Republican has had harsh words for him: Gov. Jeb Bush, who once wrote that he had no respect for the host. And that tension highlights one of the ugliest stretches of Bush’s governorship.
On June 2, 2003, a Floridian named Omar Roberts—who didn’t seem to have any prior relationship with the then-governor—emailed Bush to praise him for a recent appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. Then he raised a concern: O’Reilly had been covering scandal involving Florida government entities, including the case of an autistic woman who was raped and impregnated while in state care.
“I would feel much better if you would just at least address these issues that O’Reilly is reporting either on his show or even on another interview with his friend, Sean Hannity,” continued Roberts. “I think that the issues of whether or not the Florida state leadership is to blame or if everything possible is being done—all need to be put to rest once and for all (or as much as possible).”
Then Roberts asked Bush to give him a heads-up if he ever went on the show. Bush replied to Roberts’ email a few hours later.
“Thank you for writing,” Bush said. “I did Sean’s show because he was in state and I respect him. O’Reilly on the other hand is someone who I don’t respect. I could give you many reasons but I won’t since it doesn’t matter.”
Bush then gave Roberts a little more background on the case of the autistic woman.
“Regarding the case of the woman raped, she was in a home licensed by the staten not in a state facility,” Bush continued [all typos sic]. “We revoked the license, have pushed gor a guardian for the mom and child. This is a tragic caseand we are on it. Mr. O’reilly won’t even seek information from our office on these matters. The department of children and families is a troublrf agency improving by the day. We will continue to strive to do better.”
A Bush insider told The Daily Beast that the governor gave O’Reilly a heads-up on these emails, and that the two men “have discussed and it’s water under the bridge.”
But in the early 2000s, O’Reilly leveled substantial criticism at Bush for his decision to push for two legal guardians in that case—one for the woman who was raped, and another for her fetus.
He also sharply criticized how Bush’s administration handled the case of Rilya Wilson, a young girl who disappeared from the Florida foster care system at age 4. She was gone for two years before authorities realized she was gone, and the head of the Florida Department of Children and Families resigned because of the scandal.
On a May 3, 2002, episode of his show, the host tore into the governor.
“Governor Jeb Bush says the state is reviewing the case, but the government can only go so far,” O’Reilly said. “I say baloney! The State of Florida can tell Americans exactly what happened here and arrest those responsible for criminal negligence.”
“To say they are investigating is simply a smokescreen, a Janet Reno tactic that is hollow and dishonest,” O’Reilly continued later. “Give us a status report on the investigation. Chances are that Rilya Wilson is dead because nobody cared about her. Her mother cared more about drug[s], her godmother cared more about money, and the State of Florida hired inefficient and possibly criminal people to look out for foster kids. How about a little outrage over that, Jeb Bush? How about some action?”
In a Jan. 13, 2003, segment, O’Reilly said Bush had “done a horrible job” handling the case and the department.
“We need people who take it personally, who want to help the kids,” O’Reilly said. “And with all due respect to Governor Bush, I have not seen one iota of that.”
O’Reilly also criticized Bush’s decision to push for a guardian for the fetus. The host discussed both issues in a May 20, 2003, segment, and had tough words for Bush.
“I have nothing against Jeb Bush, all right,” he said. “I don’t—you know, I know the man. I don’t have anything against him. But he just can’t seem to run the state vis-a-vis children and disabled people. This agency cannot perform. We have—this is going on six years that this has been in chaos, and I think everybody understands the situation. It’s indefensible.”
A few hours after the show aired, Jerry Regier, a social conservative activist who founded the Family Research Council, emailed Bush the text of an op-ed defending his decision to appoint a guardian for the fetus.
“I had’nt seen it and I am grateful,” Bush replied at 2:22 a.m. the next day [all typos sic]. “I got blasted on O’Reilly tonight about the rape and our inability to deal with it.”
Years later, O’Reilly has a nuanced view of Bush’s time in office. In a conversation on his show with Dana Perino on April 20 of this year, he said Bush “did a very good job in Florida.” And in March, he said he thought the former governor could beat Hillary Clinton.
But he wasn’t shy about criticizing Bush while he was in office. And that criticism seems to have hit home.
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Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The DEC said many people still not received any aid since the typhoon hit
An appeal by British charities to help victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines has raised more than £73m in a month.
The Disasters Emergency Committee, a group of 14 aid charities, said it was the fourth highest amount raised of any appeal in its 50-year history, and described the scale as "extraordinary".
But it said millions affected by last month's storm were still facing a huge task to rebuild their lives.
The typhoon killed almost 6,000 people.
It also devastated hundreds of towns and cities and left millions of people without food, clean water and shelter.
The DEC said the vast majority of the money raised since it launched the appeal on 12 November had come from individual donations.
Only three other DEC appeals have raised more, it said, and they had all run for longer.
The committee said the donations had helped it, along with its partners, to reach almost 1.6 million people with aid.
'Had to help'
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Tacloban city was among the worst hit urban areas
But it warned that almost 15 million people had been affected by the typhoon, which made landfall exactly a month ago, and some in more remote areas had still not received any emergency aid.
The priorities now for aid agencies are to provide longer term shelter, clean water and to secure food supplies, it said.
Highest DEC appeal totals £392m - Tsunami Earthquake Appeal, 2004
£107m - Haiti Earthquake Appeal, 2010
£79m - East Africa Crisis Appeal. 2011 (First month of fundraising only)
£73m - Philippines Typhoon Appeal, 2013
£71m - Pakistan Floods Appeal, 2010 Source: DEC
DEC chief executive Saleh Saeed said: "In homes up and down the country people have seen the devastation in the Philippines and decided that they simply had to help.
"In many cases we know they are facing considerable hardship themselves but they gave anyway."
He said the relief effort was ongoing but needed to be scaled up.
"We must also begin to support the affected people of the Philippines down the slow, hard road they face to rebuild their lives and livelihoods," he said.
Fundraising for DEC appeals continues for six months, so the final total will not be known until the end of March next year.
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A 2-degree rise in global temperatures may actually cause a massive increase worldwide. Scientists have found that if emissions rates don't change, there could be a jump in temperatures by 2030.
Under a business as usual scenario, the world is not expected to see global average temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial times until the 2040s. However, new research shows that this may not be the case, and temperatures may rise far more quickly than expected.
In this latest study, the researchers found worldwide warming extremes over land generally exceeded the rise in the commonly seen scenario. In fact, it exceeded it in some instances by as much as 6 degrees Celsius.
In addition, the extreme regional warming projected for Alaska, Canada, Norther Europe, Russia and Greenland could have global impacts, accelerating the pace of sea-level rise and increasing the likelihood of methane releases prompted by the melting of ice and permafrost regions.
"The temperature difference between global average temperatures and regional temperature extremes over land not only has direct climate impacts, it also means we may have to reconsider the amount of carbon dioxide we can emit," said Andy Pitman, one of the researchers, in a news release. "For instance, to keep extreme temperature changes over the Mediterranean below a 2-degree Celsius threshold, the cumulative emissions of CO2 would have to be restricted to 600 gigatons rather than the 850 gigatons currently estimated to keep global average temperatures increase below 2 degrees."
In fact, if a 2-degree warming happens worldwide, this would equate to a 3-degree warming in the Mediterranean and anywhere between 5.5 and 8-degree warming for cold extremes over land around the arctic.
The findings reveal the importance of curtailing emissions in order to keep our climate in check.
The findings are published in the journal Nature.
Related Articles
Climate Change: Ocean Warming May Have Doubled in Recent Decades
Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels May Threaten the World's Fish Stocks with Intoxication
For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).
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Following Brazil’s election of a far-right president, leaders on the left have planned demonstrations across the country
This article is more than 1 year old
This article is more than 1 year old
Opponents of Brazil’s newly elected far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, have vowed to hit the streets to oppose the intolerance and violence they fear he will inflict upon the world’s fourth largest democracy.
The once inconceivable election of the 63-year-old populist provocateur on Sunday represents a hammer blow to Brazil’s left and to millions of progressive Brazilians appalled by his hostility towards black, gay and indigenous people as well as the environment and human rights.
Who is Jair Bolsonaro? Brazil's far-right president in his own words Read more
“Never have we sunk so low, never have we been so repulsive to the world,” one prominent leftwing commentator wrote in Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo on Monday in an article headlined “Rock Bottom”.
But as Bolsonaro’s stunning triumph sunk in, leftwing leaders insisted they would not be cowed.
Guilherme Boulos, a 36-year-old social activist, told the Guardian: “There will be resistance, there will be opposition, there will be street mobilizations. Our voices will not be silenced.
“Bolsonaro won the election by exploiting people’s fears and their disillusionment with politics. But the fact that he won the election does not mean he owns the country,” added Boulos, who ran for the presidency for the Socialism and Liberty party (PSOL).
“Democracy is at real risk so we will build a democratic resistance … One week ago Bolsonaro said that anyone who opposed him could choose between prison or exile. We choose the streets,” he vowed.
Bolsonaro does not take power until 1 January, but the first protests against his administration are set to take place on Tuesday afternoon in cities across the country.
One will be held outside São Paulo’s brutalist art museum, the scene of wild pro-Bolsonaro celebrations on Sunday night. Another is expected in downtown Rio de Janeiro.
“My message is: ‘Resist!’ There is no reason to be afraid,” Boulos said. “We must show courage and serenity and remember that the defense of democracy is always the right side of history.”
In an online video message, Boulos told supporters the “dark clouds of intolerance and violence” hanging over Brazil would clear sooner than they expected.
Addressing Brazil’s president-elect directly, the leftist leader added: “In spite of you, Bolsonaro, tomorrow will be another day” – a reference to one of the most famous anti-dictatorship anthems composed by Chico Buarque during the 1964-1985 military regime.
Marcelo Freixo, a leading PSOL politician, said progressive politicians from both left and centre needed to form a pro-democracy coalition that could push back against Bolsonaro’s authoritarian tendencies in Congress. “He was elected democratically. This has to be recognised. But it is his obligation to preserve democracy and we have to mobilise to make sure this happens.”
Freixo, a federal deputy and veteran human rights activist in Rio de Janeiro, said one particular concern was Bolsonaro’s pledge to criminalise social movements. “Bolsonaro has clearly threatened activism. He has said he will put an end to activism … We cannot sit around waiting for this to happen.”
Speaking on the eve of the election, Workers’ party (PT) veteran Aloízio Mercadante pledged his party would also push back, shrugging off Bolsonaro’s pre-election threat that “red” opponents would be jailed or forced into exile.
“I didn’t leave during the dictatorship … I resisted. And I will carry on resisting,” said Mercadante, Brazil’s former chief of staff.
On Sunday night, Fernando Haddad, the defeated PT candidate, vowed to help spearhead the resistance movement to Bolsonaro. “I put my life at the service of this country.”
Elated devotees of Bolsonaro, who secured nearly 58 million votes compared with Haddad’s 47 million, continued commemorating his victory into the early hours of Monday.
“We’ll make the Americas great again,” tweeted Filipe Martins, a rightwing academic who backed Bolsonaro’s campaign.
“We think he can get the train back on the tracks,” said Iago Bünger, a 19-year-old student who was among thousands of supporters to converge on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista for commemorations.
'He's the saviour of the nation': Bolsonarianos celebrate Brazil's new order Read more
But Bünger also expressed nervousness about the future. “Sincerely, I have my uncertainties. Bolsonaro is an unknown quantity.”
“It’s an inflection point,” his friend, Luiz Guilherme Bassi, 16, said. “Might it go wrong? Yes. But at least he has the right ideas.”
There was uncertainty, too, in Brazil’s press.
Writing in the Folha de São Paulo, the political commentator Celso Rocha de Barros argued: “The catastrophe that struck Brazil on Sunday cannot be downplayed … We have the most extremist leader of all democratic nations.”
Even the conservative Estado de São Paulo, whose coverage has been considerably less combative towards Bolsonaro, expressed unease at what it called Brazil’s “leap into the dark”.
“Voters have chosen Bolsonaro without having the slightest idea of what he will do when he sits down in the presidential chair,” it warned in a front-page editorial.
The newspaper lamented how the mission of extricating Brazil from profound political and economic crisis now fell to a man famed for his “hateful, empty” rhetoric. “This does not bode well, precisely at the moment when the country needs clarity, competence and leadership.”
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Late last week, the US named and shamed its list of the worst offenders when it comes to protecting intellectual property; China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand, and Venezuela topped the "Special 301 Report" and earned the dubious distinction of being placed on a Priority Watch List (The Pirate Bay was also singled out for special mention). Together with the countries on the regular Watch List, the report called out a grand total of 46 countries, and the reaction has been fast and furious.
These Special 301 reports have been generated since the 1970s, but IP law didn't enter mainstream consciousness until the last decade or so. Now that topics like copyright and patent reform can make for front-page news, more people are complaining about the 301 process. An editorial running tomorrow morning (thanks to the miracle of time zones) in the Bangkok Post, for instance, takes on the US report, saying that the US government "has escalated its imagined dispute with Thailand far out of proportion."
The US continues to object to Thailand's practices surrounding generic copies of patented drugs, but the paper argues that "drug licensing is specifically legal in a way that open sales of songs and movies are not," and it feels like Thailand was unfairly singled out in part for trying to contain a public health crisis.
Taiwan, which was also named in the report, has "expressed regret" about being included in the list, according to the China Post. It was applauded for new law "aimed at ending illegal file-sharing over peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms," but the US wants to see a new law "regarding liability of Internet service providers for copyright infringements." It also wants a stricter crackdown on copyrighted material flowing through TANet, an ISP run by the country's Ministry of Education.
Canadian law professor Michael Geist takes his own potshots at the 301 process, which continues to place Canada on the Watch List, and he points out that Canada's own Department of Foreign Affairs doesn't think much of Special 301. "In regard to the watch list," said a Foreign Affairs official to the House of Commons last year, "Canada does not recognize the 301 watch list process. It basically lacks reliable and objective analysis. It's driven entirely by U.S. industry. We have repeatedly raised this issue of the lack of objective analysis in the 301 watch list process with our US counterparts. I also recognize that the US industry likes to compare anyone they have a problem with, concerning their IPR regime, to China and the other big violators, but we're not on the same scale."
And Israel, which made the top nine, was so upset about the possibility of remaining on the Priority Watch List that it filed an angry response with the US Trade Representative back in March, pointing out that calls for more DRM from US industries weren't required by any treaties that Israel had signed and that it saw significant problems with such measures. "The critiques and criticism of TPM [technological protection measures] both from business model perspectives and from copyright perspectives are almost endless," said the Israeli response, which wasn't enough to get the country off the hook.
One of the criticisms of the 301 process is that it is driven too heavily by American business interests; indeed, the 301 Report lists "affected industry groups and other private-sector representatives" as a major source of its information.
The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), which represents the BSA, ESA, MPAA, RIAA, and other major copyright business groups, has also responded to the 301 Report. Not surprisingly, it raised no significant objections and called the process "an important tool by which the US government has been able to secure improved protection and enforcement in our key markets around the world."
But not even the IIPA was fully satisfied by the 46 country list; it actually called on Canada to be upgraded to the Priority Watch List due to its failure to "facilitate the development of a healthy online marketplace for copyright materials."
Given the furious response to a proposed new copyright reform law in Canada that appeared ready to fill Big Content's Christmas stocking, the legislation that the IIPA wants to see may not be forthcoming soon... if it ever sees the light of day at all.
The IIPA, which does much to set the agenda of the 301 process, is coming in for criticism here in the US as well. William Patry, a top copyright scholar (and Google's lead copyright attorney), said last month that "the sheer arrogance and affront to the sovereignty of foreign governments by the IIPA's annual reports and effort to penalize those governments that do not toe the IIPA's line is breathtaking."
But it doesn't look like the IIPA has any plans to scale back on the rhetoric, which at the moment seems targeted especially at our neighbor to the north.
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
Ate at a friends house Helped with the dishes
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A 21-leaf clover discovered on June 3 by Iwate prefecture farmer Shigeo Obara has shattered the Guinness world record for most leaves on a clover stem (Trifolium repens L.). The current official record is held by an 18-leaf clover that Obara found in his garden in May 2002.
The record-breaking clover's 21 leaves each measure about 1 centimeter long and overlap each other like rose petals on a 3-centimeter stem.
Obara, a former food crop researcher, has been conducting independent research on clovers in his garden for over 50 years. He first became interested in clover mutations after discovering an unusual patch of 4-leaf clovers in 1951. Since then, Obara has been crossbreeding the plants in his garden to research the genes associated with leaf count, color, pattern and size.
Obara plans to file a new application with Guinness, although he is considering waiting a while. "We are likely to find clovers with more leaves," he says. Last month, a family member claimed to have found a 27-leaf clover, but the discovery was not confirmed.
While some say that 4-leaf clovers symbolize happiness, 5-leaf clovers symbolize wealth and 6-leaf clovers symbolize fame, it is unclear what 21-leaf clovers symbolize.
[Source: Yomiuri]
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Tonight at the Creative Arts Emmys, Norman Lear, 97, became the oldest Emmy winner in history with a victory in the category of Outstanding Variety Special (Live) for Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s ‘All In the Family’ And ‘The Jeffersons.’
“Thank you, thank you, and holy sh*t,” laughed Lear, who executive produced and wrote the special. “I got a great reaction, saying that when opening a Christmas present when I was seven years old. It’s 90 years later, and I feel much the same.”
Calling the project “one of the greatest things that ever happened to me,” the television icon gave much of the credit for the win to fellow executive producer Jimmy Kimmel, who was the driving force behind the project.
“It was all Jimmy Kimmel’s idea,” he said, while also thanking “all the farmers and the ranchers across the globe that have nourished me for all these years, and gotten me here tonight.”
Backstage, Lear and Kimmel talked about the next installment in the Live in Front of a Studio Audience franchise, which ABC in August picked up for two more outings — a live holiday special later this year, as well as another special in spring 2020.
“We are going to do [a special] again. In fact, in December, we’re going to do something,” Kimmel said backstage. “We haven’t revealed specifically what shows we’re going to do, but we are going to do it again on ABC in December.”
Lear beat out Our Planet narrator Sir David Attenborough for the title of oldest Emmy winner when the results of the evening’s final category, Outstanding Variety Special (Live), came in. Earlier in the night, Attenborough, who is 93, won a second consecutive Outstanding Narrator Emmy, this time for Our Planet. Last year, he became the oldest Emmy winner with his victory in the same category for Blue Planet II.
A TV icon, Lear is a 15-time Emmy nominee with five statuettes to his name. Live in Front of a Studio Audience was a one-night-only event, which enlisted all-star casts to perform episodes of Lear’s iconic sitcoms, All in the Family and The Jeffersons. While Live in Front of a Studio Audience was nominated for three Emmys, its only win tonight was for Outstanding Variety Special (Live).
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ohhhhh myyyy gooooddess!! i must be blind or something!!! i didn't notice that she hid part of her leg to pretend that it happened!!! i legitimately did not see it at all!!! i'm an idiot, idk how i missed it.
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Joint statement from Russia, Germany, France and Turkey followed summit on war-torn country
This article is more than 1 year old
This article is more than 1 year old
The leaders of Turkey, Russia, France and Germany on Saturday called for a ceasefire around the last major rebel-held bastion of Idlib in Syria to be preserved.
The four nations “stressed the importance of a lasting ceasefire” according to a statement read by Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at the end of a major summit in Istanbul.
Erdoğan, along with Russian president Vladimir Putin, French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel met to try to find a lasting solution to the Syrian conflict, in which more than 360,000 people have been killed since 2011.
After a joint press conference, Macron urged Russia, which supports the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, to exercise “very clear pressure” on Damascus for a “stable and lasting ceasefire in Idlib”.
Last month Turkey, which backs the rebels, agreed with Russia to create a buffer zone around Idlib amid fears of an impending assault on the northwestern province, which many feared would lead to a humanitarian disaster.
However clashes have continued in Idlib since. On Friday seven civilians were killed by Syrian regime artillery fire, the highest death toll since the ceasefire was reached.
A joint statement adopted at the end of the summit called for a committee to be established to draft a new Syrian constitution before the end of the year, “paving the way for free and fair elections” in the war-torn country.
The statement also spoke of “the need to ensure humanitarian organisations’ rapid, safe and unhindered access throughout Syria and immediate humanitarian assistance to reach all people in need.”
It also said that conditions needed to be created “throughout the country for the safe and voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced persons”.
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Alastair Grant/Associated Press
Serena Williams barely broke a sweat as she defeated Maria Sharapova 6-2, 6-4 to reach the 2015 Wimbledon women's final.
Sharapova put in a thoroughly disappointing performance in the first set, as Williams took just 33 minutes to close out the opener. The Russian showed far more resilience in the second set, but Williams remained comfortable throughout.
The result was confirmed by Wimbledon's official Twitter feed:
Williams will face Garbine Muguruza on Saturday, as the Spaniard defeated Agnieszka Radwanska in three sets earlier on Thursday.
Prior to the match, the Telegraph's Daniel Schofield described the rivalry between the pair as being "built on antipathy, mistrust and malice," but that rarely surfaced on such a one-sided occasion.
This was the American's 17th consecutive victory over Sharapova in a run stretching back to the 2004 final at All England Club, when the Russian won her only Wimbledon title to date.
Sharapova had not been entirely convincing throughout the tournament, with her serve in particular letting her down, and her poor record against Williams may have been weighing on her mind.
Pavel Golovkin/Associated Press
Three double-faults in the opening game gifted Williams a break, as Sharapova struggled for any sort of rhythm.
ESPN's Brad Gilbert provided insight into the 28-year-old's troubles:
A number of unforced errors into the net made things difficult for Sharapova in her second service game, but an excellent volleyed winner helped the Russian to hold.
Williams used the opening game as a springboard for the rest of the set, however, breaking her opponent again as she raced into a 5-1 lead with some powerful serves and exquisite returns.
As the New York Times' Ben Rothenberg noted, the 20-time Grand Slam-winner was scarcely made to work for her points:
Sharapova held her serve once more to make it 5-2, but Williams cruised to the first set, serving the final game out, 40-15.
As the BBC noted on its TV broadcast, the Russian made nine unforced errors and hit just four winners in the first set, compared with Williams' seven and 12, respectively. Those stats highlighted her inability to threaten Williams on the relatively rare occasions they played out significant rallies.
Two strong service games for Sharapova early in the second set hinted at a comeback as she improved the depth and location of her serve significantly, but Williams always looked comfortable.
At 2-2, Sharapova's resistance finally crumbled, and the 33-year-old broke her once again thanks to yet another double-fault.
Suzanne Plunkett/Associated Press
Along with her serve, Sharapova's groundstrokes remained a problem throughout the match, as she failed to find any real depth on her shots. However, the world No. 4 did show flashes of quality when she saved three break points to bring the score back to 4-3, admittedly courtesy of some uncharacteristically loose play from Williams.
The result was never in doubt though, as Serena battled back to 5-3.
Sharapova saved a match point while defending her own serve once more, but Williams closed the match out with ease on her own serve.
Ultimately, the semi-final was one of the most comfortable of Williams' career. The five-time Wimbledon winner rarely had to get out of first gear to overcome Sharapova on this occasion.
According to ESPN Stats & Info, Williams now has the third-most victories in women's Grand Slam competitions in the Open Era:
Up next for the world No. 1 is Muguruza, who impressed in her battling victory over Radwanska on Thursday. But the 21-year-old's lack of experience will give the American a big advantage in their showdown.
The youngster will have nothing to lose in her maiden Grand Slam final, but Williams is the ultimate closer, winning 20 of her 24 career finals.
A sixth Wimbledon title and another big step toward another "Serena Slam" awaits for Williams.
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A helicopter pilot flying supplies to hurricane-devastated areas of the Bahamas found villagers stranded in rubble on one of the islands.
NBC News reported that Justin Johnson— who owns Timberview Helicopters in Destin, Florida— was on his way to Fox Town on Little Abaco Island with his wife and a reporter.
During the flight, the reporter, Vic Micolucci, pointed to a debris field and asked Johnson if anyone was down there. Johnson initially said he did not think so, but he returned the next day to find 30 villagers stranded in the rubble in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian.
“He had this intuition that he had to fly back over,” Angela Johnson, Justin’s wife, said.
When Johnson landed at the site, he noticed people crawling out of the debris around him. The team immediately began handing over supplies and brought in more.
MEDIC Corps, the relief organization the Johnsons had been working with, said the village was initially overlooked because it was off the main roads and many of the residents did not speak English and many did not have vehicles.
The organization added that most of those rescued were Haitians who illegally migrated to the Bahamas and were afraid of being deported.
They “are afraid of being deported so it is sometimes difficult to provide evacuation to these communities and they aren’t the first to show themselves,” MEDIC Corps said.
The Abaco Islands received the brunt of Dorian’s impact, as it was a Category 5 storm when it devastated the area on September 1.
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Nbritton91 (8:04:40 PM) Hello, i have been contacted by a member of my clan
Nbritton91 (8:04:48 PM) He is claiming harrassment by you
manimal1 (8:04:49 PM) And SO
Nbritton91 (8:04:53 PM) Do i need to notify wargaming?
manimal1 (8:05:10 PM) If your member was
manimal1 (8:05:23 PM) being talked to by me
manimal1 (8:05:40 PM) HE IS A COWARD that RAN from A BATTLE
Nbritton91 (8:05:54 PM) I see you are upset
Nbritton91 (8:06:06 PM) But you must understand this is simply a game
Nbritton91 (8:06:20 PM) and that verbal abuse, such as this, is not the correct solution to your anger
Nbritton91 (8:06:36 PM) have you condsidered an anger therapy course?
manimal1 (8:06:38 PM) I get UPSET when TEAMMATES run or hiode from a BATTLE
manimal1 (8:06:46 PM) HIDE *
Nbritton91 (8:07:01 PM) Is there something wrong with your shift key?
manimal1 (8:07:23 PM) Dude who the hell u think u are
manimal1 (8:07:56 PM) 8225 gaMES YOUR A SCRUB
Nbritton91 (8:08:10 PM) I see
manimal1 (8:08:20 PM) u see what
Nbritton91 (8:08:35 PM) I see you are upset
Nbritton91 (8:08:42 PM) why are you so mad?
manimal1 (8:08:45 PM) LOL
Nbritton91 (8:08:54 PM) I have done nothing to provoke you
Nbritton91 (8:09:01 PM) Why are you insulting my statistics
manimal1 (8:09:03 PM) Did you not understand my 1st reply
Nbritton91 (8:09:16 PM) No i didn't
Nbritton91 (8:09:22 PM) please repeat your 1st reply
manimal1 (8:09:28 PM) OK LETS START OVER
Nbritton91 (8:09:29 PM) I would be most appreciative
Nbritton91 (8:09:31 PM) fantastic
manimal1 (8:09:47 PM) Did you OR DID YOU NOT talk to me 1st
Nbritton91 (8:10:18 PM) I contacted you yes, to ask you what the problem is
Nbritton91 (8:10:26 PM) i do not understand the problem as you have described it
Nbritton91 (8:10:33 PM) please re-explain the situation for clarity
manimal1 (8:10:59 PM) I said your member was a coward and hid in a BATTLE
Nbritton91 (8:11:04 PM) I am trying to understand why you are verbally assaulting a fellow clan-mate of mine
Nbritton91 (8:11:13 PM) Is there a difference between a battle and a BATTLE?
Nbritton91 (8:11:18 PM) for clarity
manimal1 (8:11:19 PM) BRB
Nbritton91 (8:11:38 PM) I'll wait
manimal1 (8:13:56 PM) Difference between a battle and a battle ARE YOU IGNORANT
Nbritton91 (8:14:31 PM) No i am not
Nbritton91 (8:14:36 PM) I am niether a scrub
Nbritton91 (8:14:39 PM) nor ignorant
manimal1 (8:14:40 PM) DO YOU PLAY TO WIN
Nbritton91 (8:14:44 PM) Yes
Nbritton91 (8:14:45 PM) Yes i do
manimal1 (8:15:21 PM) Then WHY do you let PEOPLE in your clan RECRUITER that HIDES
Nbritton91 (8:15:47 PM) I am so confused. Let me explain why i contacted you.
Nbritton91 (8:15:52 PM) I contacted you to give you a chance
Nbritton91 (8:15:55 PM) I was being nice
Nbritton91 (8:16:02 PM) I wanted you to provide me with a reason
manimal1 (8:16:02 PM) HAVE you EVER spent HARD EARNED MONEY ON THIS GAME
manimal1 (8:16:20 PM) Do u understand my reason
Nbritton91 (8:16:21 PM) I wanted you to provide me with a reason NOT to report you
Nbritton91 (8:16:26 PM) to wargaming
manimal1 (8:16:36 PM) Dude.
Nbritton91 (8:16:54 PM) I'm afraid i will be contacting them regarding your unaccaptable behavior
manimal1 (8:17:19 PM) REPORT ME IF YOU want. I never call out anhyone that BATTLES TO WIN
manimal1 (8:17:58 PM) I PLAQY TO WQIN . COWARDS need to BE REPORTED report your MEMBER
Nbritton91 (8:18:04 PM) Define play to win
Nbritton91 (8:18:17 PM) Provide me with proof that you "play to win"
manimal1 (8:18:21 PM) NEVER RUN from a fight
manimal1 (8:19:05 PM) <<<< Always 1st to a fight. MY STATS prove it
Nbritton91 (8:19:19 PM) Yes they do i'm afraid
manimal1 (8:19:28 PM) AND NEVER EVER HIDE ...... LIKE YOUR BOY DID
Nbritton91 (8:19:36 PM) My condolences in regards to the statistics
manimal1 (8:19:55 PM) 1 on 1` ME and YOU RIGHT NOW
manimal1 (8:20:26 PM) Your not that good DUDE
Nbritton91 (8:21:22 PM) Very well
manimal1 (8:21:33 PM) NO CAP
Nbritton91 (8:21:41 PM) Invite me to a training room sir
manimal1 (8:21:49 PM) Invite . What tier TUFF GUY
Nbritton91 (8:22:04 PM) Whatever tier you like
Nbritton91 (8:22:09 PM) I would prefer 10
manimal1 (8:22:22 PM) Ok t110s
Nbritton91 (8:22:55 PM) Very well, i await the invite
manimal1 (8:23:29 PM) I SAID IUNVITE ME
manimal1 (8:24:03 PM) How old are u
Nbritton91 (8:24:43 PM) I'm sorry personal info is against wargaming code of conduct
Nbritton91 (8:24:46 PM) I sent you an invite
manimal1 (8:25:32 PM) LOL your PATHETIC is BEING PATHETIC agaist WARGAMING conduct to
Nbritton91 (8:25:51 PM) Accept the invite please, i have a clan wars battle to attend in the near future
Nbritton91 (8:26:38 PM) I have sent you three invites now
Nbritton91 (8:26:54 PM) If you do not accept i will be forced to cancel our plans
manimal1 (8:26:55 PM) No your IGNORANT, Report me if you belive your COWARD team mate BUT YOU BEING IGNORED
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About Bell Media
Bell Media is Canada’s leading content creation company with premier assets in television, radio, out-of-home advertising, digital media, and more. Bell Media owns 30 local television stations led by CTV, Canada’s highest-rated television network; 30 specialty channels, including TSN and RDS, and four pay TV services. Bell Media is Canada’s largest radio broadcaster, with 215 music channels including 109 licensed radio stations in 58 markets across the country, all part of the iHeartRadio brand and streaming service. Bell Media owns Astral, an out-of-home advertising network of more than 30,000 faces in five provinces. Bell Media also operates more than 200 websites; video streaming services including Crave, TSN Direct, and RDS Direct; and multi-channel network Much Studios. The company produces live theatrical shows via its partnership with Iconic Entertainment Studios; owns a majority stake in Pinewood Toronto Studios; is a partner in Just for Laughs, the live comedy event and TV producer; and owns Dome Productions Inc., one of North America’s leading production facilities providers. Bell Media is part of BCE Inc. (TSX, NYSE: BCE), Canada’s largest communications company. Learn more at www.BellMedia.ca.
About Lionsgate
The first major new studio in decades, Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF.A, LGF.B) is a global content leader whose films, television series, digital products and linear and over-the-top platforms reach next generation audiences around the world. In addition to its filmed entertainment leadership, Lionsgate content drives a growing presence in interactive and location-based entertainment, video games, esports and other new entertainment technologies. Lionsgate’s content initiatives are backed by a nearly 17,000-title film and television library and delivered through a global sales and distribution infrastructure. The Lionsgate brand is synonymous with original, daring and ground-breaking content created with special emphasis on the evolving patterns and diverse composition of the Company’s worldwide consumer base.
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× Expand Oliver Lang/dapd via AP Photo Missing in action: 13 Middle East experts and zero coverage of Khashoggi
In 2016, two years before his assassination and two days after Donald Trump was elected president, the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was a guest speaker at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The think tank employs more than 30 fellows focused exclusively on Middle East affairs and has many more adjunct researchers and prominent trustees who regularly contribute to marquee media. They put out scores of policy insights, reports, and op-eds, and convene events with newsmakers on a weekly basis. But on the anniversary of Khashoggi’s bloodletting, only a single WINEP fellow weighed in.
A half-year before Khashoggi’s death, WINEP trustee and longtime Middle East peace-processor Dennis Ross wrote that Washington should “get behind” Mohammed bin Salman, whom he called a “revolutionary crown prince.” Ross, for his part, received $10,000 for writing an anti-Iran op-ed in 2018, from Trump booster Elliott Broidy; only in Washington could such a corrupt revelation not be a career-breaker (though Ross has since returned the money and dissociated himself from Broidy). Having served as Obama’s senior director for Gulf affairs, Ross has written widely about how to address Middle East conflicts. So where was Ross’s op-ed on Wednesday about seeking justice for Khashoggi?
This week, as journalists, researchers, and activists came together to mark the anniversary of Khashoggi’s brutal murder at the hands of the Saudi prince’s goons, a conspicuous silence fell over many of Washington’s so-called think tanks—most glaringly, on right-wing institutions that claim to focus on the promotion of democratic values. By willfully ignoring Khashoggi, they displayed a cynicism so profound that they shouldn’t be trusted to provide analysis on anything else.
The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies calls itself a “research institute” and claims the mantle of “free nations,” but I couldn’t find any coverage of the heinous assault on human rights and free speech that unfolded in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The American Enterprise Institute, a “think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world,” might as well drop that mission statement if they aren’t interested in the dignity—much less, the life—of a Washington Post contributor.
The Heritage Foundation, which has fed the ranks of the Trump administration, boasts a team of foreign-policy analysts who advise the highest rungs of power. But by ignoring the dismemberment of a journalist, they certainly are not living up to their stated goals of “Building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.”
The hawkish Hudson Institute, which regularly covers Middle East affairs and cheerleads for war with Iran, had no comment on their website or social media. Their commitment to “American leadership and global engagement for a secure, free, and prosperous future,” rings as hollow as hollow can be.
And what of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, with its 13 Middle East experts, several of whom focus on “human rights”? Zero coverage of Khashoggi, a lacuna that belies their charge of providing “strategic insights and policy solutions to help decisionmakers chart a course toward a better world.”
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These examples stand in startling contrast to how some other, not avowedly “freedom promoting” right-wing institutions have remembered the martyred journalist.
In July, the Brookings Institution hosted U.N. Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard to discuss her landmark report on the Saudi state’s crime. The Washington Post published a special section honoring their late contributor, including analysts from the Brookings Institution, Dartmouth College, the European Council on Foreign Relations, MIT, and more. The Project on Middle East Democracy, along with a dozen human rights organizations and 11 senators and congresspeople, gathered under the banner of Justice for Jamal at the Capitol last week. Fellows from the Wilson Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, New America, and the U.S. Institute for Peace also weighed in on Khashoggi—a pillar of the Saudi media whom many Washington researchers knew personally.
Not all the Khashoggi indifference has been confined to right-wing institutions, however. Consider the case of the Council on Foreign Relations, the clearinghouse of foreign-policy luminaries and international political clout. Last week, on the heels of the United Nations General Assembly, they hosted an event with Saudi Minister of State Adel Al-Jubeir, who as foreign minister last year served as lead propagandist for the Khashoggi cover-up. Where was CFR’s event this week assessing what the Saudi state’s crime means for the future of geopolitics, press freedom, and diplomacy? The only thing I could find on their social media regarding the butchered journalist was a September 17 tweet citing a quote from Elizabeth Warren: “The Saudi government’s role in the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi and its repression of its own citizens insults all who respect human rights and calls into question its reliability as a partner.”
The rot at these institutions echoes an anecdote from Warren’s book A Fighting Chance, conveying advice she had received from Larry Summers. Warren writes:
I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People—powerful people—listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.
I had been warned.
It’s now time to warn those think tanks that dismiss or assist in MBS’s cover-up: We notice what you’re saying, and what you overlook.
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The city hall spectacle following Mayor Rob Ford's crack-smoking confession became an even more bizarre sideshow Wednesday, with the appearance of a 71-year-old WWE wrestler challenging the mayor to an arm wrestle, and Ford blowing kisses to media as he escorted children through the offices for Take Our Kids to Work Day.
Outside the municipal headquarters, protesters wrote chalk messages on a wall urging Ford to resign. Inside, an agitated Ford supporter wearing a red sweatshirt interrupted a councillor's media scrum to give a fiery defence of the mayor.
But the appearance of WWE hall-of-famer, The Iron Sheik, carted into the building by wheelchair, brought a truly circus-like atmosphere to city hall.
"I want to see Mr. Ford," The Sheik shouted during a media scrum, saying he had "no respect" for the mayor.
"I just want to know: Is he a real man, or no?"
Aided by an assistant, The Sheik said he would "absolutely" put Ford in his signature "Camel Clutch" chin-lock, given the opportunity.
'What kind of mayor is he?'
"The man eats the cheeseburger and smokes crack. What kind of mayor is he?" he went on.
The semi-retired wrestler, who is in town for a roast event, extended an invitation for the mayor to meet him for an arm wrestle in Ford's office.
"What kind of role model is he for the Toronto city?" he said.
The Iron Sheik was asked multiple times by city hall security to keep his voice down.
"That's my voice. You want me to change my voice. I can't change it," he replied, before being asked to leave because he was too loud.
The Iron Sheik isn't the first pro-wrestling legend to challenge the mayor to a physical feat of strength. In August, Hulk Hogan lost to Ford in an arm wrestling match.
Defence of Ford Nation
The strange day at city hall was compounded by the fact it was also Take Our Kids to Work Day. At one point, Ford walked by and blew a kiss to a throng of journalists as he took a group of youths on a tour of his offices.
Ford Nation supporter Tajinder Bains says voters will continue to back Toronto's embattled mayor, even in light of his crack cocaine scandal. (CBC)
Coun. Mary-Margaret McMahon said Ford was setting a poor example.
"As a role model, I have some serious concerns with that. Hundreds of emails from residents, especially parents who have to explain to kids as young as six years old what crack is," she said.
The mayor, who refused on Tuesday to resign or take a leave of absence — even after admitting he used crack cocaine "probably in one of my drunken stupors" — continues to retain impassioned public support.
Speaking to media gathered outside the mayor's office, Tajinder Bains refuted the idea that Ford Nation was dead in the face of the mayor's scandals.
"Ford Nation is every single mother out there who is having a hard time paying their bills, every senior citizen who can’t afford groceries because inflation is too high. Every dad working two jobs to put his kids through a good school," he said.
"That’s who Ford Nation is and you’re saying you’re going to get rid of them? I doubt that, pal. I doubt that."
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News
Premier Stock Car Racing Series Returns to the Ohio Track during the Late May NASCAR Weekend
LEXINGTON, Ohio (October 8, 2019) – The ARCA Menards Series will return to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the first time since 1965 when it competes at the 2.258-mile, 13-turn road course on May 30, 2020. The race will be held in conjunction with the annual NASCAR XFINITY Series weekend, which in previous seasons had been scheduled in the month of August. The move to a new late spring date is to accommodate television coverage of the 2020 Summer Olympics.
The ARCA Menards Series last raced at Mid-Ohio in 1965, with Springfield, Ohio native Jack Bowsher earning the victory. Since then the series has raced only sporadically on road courses, with a single event on a modified oval at the defunct St. Louis International Raceway in 1986, a pair of races at Heartland Park Topeka in 1991 and 1992, a street circuit event in Des Moines, Iowa in 1994, a single event at Palm Beach International Raceway in 2010, a pair of races at Road America in 2013 and 2017, and nine races at New Jersey Motorsports Park from 2008 through 2016.
The Lexington, Ohio natural terrain road course has been home to world class road racing since its inception, and since the 1980s has hosted series such as the NTT IndyCar Series, the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, the SCCA Trans Am, plus various amateur and professional motorcycle series sanctioned by the AMA. Stock car racing returned to Mid-Ohio in 2013 when A.J. Allmendinger defeated Michael McDowell in a shootout. Other NASCAR XFINITY Seres winners include 2012 ARCA Menards Series national champion Chris Buescher, Regan Smith, former ARCA winner at Palm Beach Justin Marks, former Indianapolis 500 winner Sam Hornish, 2008 ARCA Menards Series champion Justin Allgaier, and Austin Cindric, who won August’s most recent race.
"We have worked diligently with Craig Rust and his team at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for several seasons trying to get the ARCA Menards Series back on their schedule, and we're really happy to make it happen for the 2020 season," said ARCA President Ron Drager. "We have a lot of excitement building for 2020 and additions to our schedule like Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course are a big part of it."
“We are thrilled to add the ARCA Menards Series to our NASCAR XFINITY Series weekend,” said Craig Rust, president of Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. “Each year, it’s our objective to showcase a very diverse schedule at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and bring the best of motorsports to our fans. ARCA fits that billing and is a great, returning addition to the 2020 schedule.”
Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course offers an exceptional family value. At all events, children 12 and under are admitted free when accompanied by a ticketed adult, plus free parking is available. The complete 2020 event schedule will be released later this fall. Visit midohio.com for more information.
ABOUT ARCA
The Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA) was founded by John and Mildred Marcum in 1953 and acquired by NASCAR in April 2018. The ARCA Menards Series, now in its 67th season, will sanction the former NASCAR K&N Pro Series East and West in 2020 with the series being rebranded as the ARCA Menards Series East and West. ARCA will continue to sanction weekly races at Toledo Speedway and Flat Rock Speedway as well as with two branded late model tours, the ARCA/CRA Super Series and the ARCA Midwest Tour.
ABOUT MID-OHIO SPORTS CAR COURSE
A comprehensive motorsports facility in Lexington, Ohio, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course sits on 330 acres and features a permanent road-racing circuit with two primary track configurations: 2.4-mile, 15-turn or 2.258-mile, 13-turn layout. Located 60 miles north of Columbus and 75 miles south of Cleveland near Mansfield, the natural terrain road course is commonly referred to as the “Most Competitive in the U.S.” and annually hosts a diversity of locally, regionally and nationally sanctioned race events for amateur, club and professional drivers and riders. It is also home to The Mid-Ohio School, featuring over 20 driving and riding courses, for teenagers to professional racers using Honda vehicles. Opened in 1962, Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course is owned and operated by Green Savoree Racing Promotions since 2011, just the raceway’s third private ownership group in its history.
For more information, visit midohio.com, ‘like’ its Facebook page @MidOhioSportsCarCourse or follow updates on Twitter @Mid_Ohio and Instagram @officialmidohio.
Media Inquiries:
Steve Bidlack, Manager Marketing and Communications
419-884-4000 (office) or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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Speed Drawing - youtu.be/UYQ9bEHc9lY This drawing took longer to make than I though it would. I was really busy last week, and it took a long time to get this picture done. I do like the way it turned out, though.Isabelle is (c): Nintendo
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Havana, Cuba (CNN) One bitter holdover of the Cold War slipped into the history books at 12:01 a.m. Monday, when the United States and Cuba re-established diplomatic relations. For the first time since severing ties in 1961, they reopened embassies in each other's capitals.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla traveled to the Cuban Embassy in Washington to raise his country's flag, an event that Cuban government officials said would be broadcast live on the island's state-run TV.
A Cuban delegation of diplomats, artists and veterans of the revolution commemorated the breakthrough with about 500 guests and more than likely down a few celebratory mojitos and shots of Havana Club rum.
U.S. diplomats in Havana have readied everything from new business cards to the embassy sign. But the festivities and flag-raising will have to wait for Secretary of State John Kerry's visit -- the highest-level trip by a U.S. official to Cuba since the 1959 revolution -- for the embassy reopening ceremony in August.
Starting Monday, U.S. officials said, the Cuban government will pull back some of the tight cordon of security that had surrounded America's diplomatic mission in Havana and no longer record the names of Cubans entering the building.
The Cuban and American heads of their respective Interest Sections will became charges d'affaires until ambassadors are named.
Plenty of longtime enmity to overcome
"A new stage will begin, long and complex, on the road toward normalization," Cuban President Raul Castro said in a televised address last week to the Cuban people. "Which will require the will to find solutions to the problems that have accumulated over more than five decades and hurt ties between our nations and peoples."
If there were ever two countries in need of a "new stage" of relations, they are Cuba and the United States.
Cuban Embassy sign
Already frayed ties between Washington and Havana snapped in 1961 when Cuban leader Fidel Castro threatened to expel American diplomats for meddling in Cuban affairs.
The United States had blasted the Cuban government's seizure of American property and the summary executions of officials from the Fulgencio Batista regime that Castro had overthrown.
"There is a limit to what the United States in self-respect can endure. That limit has now been reached," President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, announcing the rupture.
Swiss diplomats took over the maintenance of the seaside former U.S. Embassy and the sprawling ambassador's residence in Havana.
The failed U.S.-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro's declaration that his revolution was socialist, repeated CIA plots to assassinate Castro, and the Cuban Missile crisis further poisoned affairs for the decades that followed.
Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba Women wearing pants designed with the colors of the U.S. flag walk through Old Havana in Cuba in January. Many Cubans say displaying U.S. flags makes them no less patriotic about their own country, according to Patrick Oppmann , CNN's correspondent in Cuba. They have relatives in the States and a positive opinion of their neighbor to the north despite the antagonism between the U.S. and Cuban governments. Hide Caption 1 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba A man looks at a magazine stand in Havana in January. Hide Caption 2 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba A handkerchief in the colors of the American flag hangs on a clothesline in Havana in February. Hide Caption 3 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba A woman has her nails painted in the likeness of the Cuban and U.S. flags inside her Havana home in December. Hide Caption 4 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba The American flag is displayed on a Havana cobbler's sewing machine in January. Hide Caption 5 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba An American flag hangs next to a Cuban flag in an Havana barbershop in February. Hide Caption 6 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba American flags adorn a pedicab in Havana in January. Hide Caption 7 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba A woman wearing an American flag bandana gives her son some ice cream in Havana in January. Hide Caption 8 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba A car passes a man in Havana wearing a cap displaying the U.S. flag in February. Hide Caption 9 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba A man wearing an American flag sweatshirt walks through a street in Havana in February. Hide Caption 10 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba A man with the American flag on his sleeve stands with a woman in Havana in January. Hide Caption 11 of 12 Photos: The Stars and Stripes in Cuba Cuban and U.S. flags decorate the dashboard of a car in Havana. Hide Caption 12 of 12
But in 1977, during a brief period of improved relations in the Carter administration, Cuba and the United States opened Interests Sections in their former embassies.
A step below embassies, Interests Sections allowed the Cold War foes to have diplomatic dealings without officially restoring relations.
Keeping a diplomatic low profile in Cuba
Diplomats returning to the old U.S. Embassy in Havana found years of dust accumulated on the furniture and calendars from 1961 still on the walls.
Since the United States couldn't fly the American flag or name an ambassador to Havana, there were no obvious signs of a large U.S. diplomatic presence in Communist-run Cuba.
"Most Americans who visit Cuba seem to think there's no relationship, there's just a tiny room in the Swiss Embassy. And every day they are driving past the old embassy, but they don't know there's an embassy because there's no flag," said Vicki Huddleston, who was chief of the Interests Section from 1999 to 2002.
With 51 Americans and 300 Cuban employees, the U.S. Interests Section is one of the largest diplomatic missions of any country in Cuba.
But instead of improving relations with Cuba, the Interests Section often served as a lightning rod for confrontation.
The Cuban government plastered propaganda around the building, including one iconic sign that showed a fatigue-clad revolutionary telling a hissing caricature of Uncle Sam, "Mister imperialists, we are not the least bit afraid of you!"
Fidel Castro called the section "a nest of spies" and led frequent marches with hundreds of thousands of supporters in tow to protest U.S. policies.
Tarantulas would show up in the oddest places
Cuban intelligence kept a close eye on American diplomats' comings and goings.
"They had 3,000 to 4000 people that were focused on our personnel, trying to recruit them or harass us," said James Cason, the chief of the Interests Section from 2002 to 2005. "They would break into your house and do things to show they had control of your existence. In my days, if they knew you didn't like spiders, you would find a tarantula wandering around your room."
Cuban diplomats serving in the United States complained of similar harassment at the hands of American minders.
Cuban flags all but block out the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana during frostier diplomatic times.
Sometimes the intimidation backfired, as when Huddleston was informed that her Afghan hound, Havana, could no longer take part in local dog shows.
"You have been thrown out of the dog club because of your country's policies and your actions," Huddleston said the letter of expulsion read.
But negative publicity over the incident led Cuban officials to declare it all had been a mistake, since the dog really belonged to Huddleston's husband.
"The Cubans were really embarrassed," Huddleston said. "Fidel said he would give my husband's dog a pardon. "
Sometimes it was the United States that sparked diplomatic incidents, such as in 2006 when diplomats installed an electronic ticker across the top floor of the Interests Section to display information the Cuban government didn't want reported.
"We decided we would talk over the heads of the regime by putting the moving billboard in the top floor of our windows," Cason said. "And one day, to the surprise of the regime, we started off with, 'People of Cuba, how come we can go to your hotels and you can't?'"
The Cuban government responded by erecting a "forest" of 138 flag poles to block out the offending American messages. Eventually both the ticker and the flags came down.
'We have a formal relationship'
Despite the clashes that often grabbed headlines, in recent years the United States and Cuba have quietly increased cooperation on combating drug smuggling, migrant interdiction and protecting the environment.
Working together on areas of mutual interest is only likely to increase with the restoration of diplomatic relations, said John Caulfield, chief of the Interests Section from 2011 to 2014.
"As an Interests Section, we were kind of radioactive for Cubans," Caulfield said. "This is a signal to Cuba and all Cubans that even if we don't have a normal relationship, we have a formal relationship."
Caulfield said during his final years in Cuba, the thawing of relations was already underway, although his time in Havana was not without its intrigues.
Despite the ban on raising the American flag at the Interests Section, Caulfield said his staff presented him with a memorable and clandestine present when he finished his posting.
"They gave me a flag they had snuck up in the middle of the night and gave it to me as a going-away gift, and I really appreciated the gesture," Caulfield said.
Soon the United States will for the first time in 54 years again fly the American flag in Havana for everyone to see.
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Smeagol from Lord of the Rings movie, awesom Black and Grey drawing by Kinko White from Estonia
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Hanging out on a street corner in Bushwick, Brooklyn is quite a bit different now than it used to be. There are still bodegas here and there, but they're mixed in with plenty of organic markets and farm-to-table, nose-to-tail brunch spots -- or, as "Saturday Night Live" would have it, the occasional "artisanal mayonnaise" shop.
In a brilliant sketch about gentrification, three friends -- Keenan Thompson, Jay Pharaoh and this week's host, Kevin Hart -- hang out in their neighborhood and discuss what they've been up to of late. Recent activities include: Eating gelato on the street, painting landscapes while sipping white wine and hanging out with their "bitches" -- which, in Bushwick 2015, means running a booming dog-walking business.
Advertisement:
Watch the hilarious skit below:
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Despite a sour year in which Berkshire Hathaway posted a loss and was forced to write down $3 billion on its investments, Warren Buffett told shareholders that he wants to make a big acquisition.
There is just one problem: Prices are too high.
"In the years ahead, we hope to move much of our excess liquidity into businesses that Berkshire will permanently own. The immediate prospects for that, however, are not good: Prices are sky-high for businesses possessing decent long-term prospects," Buffett wrote in the letter released Saturday morning.
"That disappointing reality means that 2019 will likely see us again expanding our holdings of marketable equities," Buffett added. "We continue, nevertheless, to hope for an elephant-sized acquisition. Even at our ages of 88 and 95 – I'm the young one – that prospect is what causes my heart and Charlie's to beat faster."
He also said, however, that this was "not a market call," noting he did not know how stocks will actually behave this year.
Buffett said Berkshire Hathaway had $112 billion in cash at the end of 2018, despite taking a beating on its investment in beleaguered consumer giant Kraft Heinz. Investors were eager to find out what Buffett's plans were for Berkshire Hathaway's massive cash pile. In past years, Buffett has told investors he had not found anything to buy that wasn't overpriced.
Meanwhile, Berkshire Hathaway has taken a massive stake in Apple over the past three years. The business giant has also added to its bank holdings and took new stakes in airlines.
Buffett's annual letter comes days after Kraft Heinz, one of the company's biggest holdings, wrote down more than $15 billion on two of its most well-known brands: Oscar Mayer and Kraft. Kraft Heinz also trimmed its dividend and disclosed that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating its accounting practices.
The news sent Kraft Heinz's stock down about 30 percent and slashed the value of Berkshire's stake in the company by more than $4 billion.
It also led Barclays analyst Jay Gelb to slash his earnings estimate on Berkshire in half. The analyst also said in a note to clients that Berkshire's quarterly numbers will likely be impacted by "substantial catastrophe losses for the global insurance industry" due to the wildfires in California last year and Hurricane Michael.
Click here to review past letters. To review video of Berkshire's past annual meetings and other Buffett interviews go to CNBC's Warren Buffett Archive.
—CNBC's Liz Moyer contributed to this report.
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It's my cakeday, invest all your karma in me
182 shares
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Last night I sat in front of my computer for hours with a blank page open, trying to think about how I would finally write a presidential endorsement for The Verge. I wanted to be eloquent, sharp, and timeless — to make a poetic stand In Defense Of The Republic. But after a bit of tequila and a lot of writer’s block, I gave up, closed the tab, and went to bed.
Today I saw this video today of Donald Trump getting booed on his way in and out of a voting booth in his home state. It’s better than anything I could have written.
Here's a video of @realDonaldTrump getting booed on his way to vote for himself... pic.twitter.com/l0zWQrpFS9 — Harrison Greenbaum (@harrisoncomedy) November 8, 2016
In 1925, Baltimore Sun columnist H.L. Mencken surveyed the debate on evolution made famous in the Scopes trial -- a contest that set rationality and progress against dogma and fear. "On the one side was bigotry, ignorance, hatred, superstition, every sort of blackness that the human mind is capable of," Mencken wrote. "On the other side was sense." I cannot think of a more useful way to describe what we have seen in the campaign of Donald Trump.
Trump’s cynical quest for power will probably end today. He will not stand in the ranks of the dictators he admires. He will be remembered as a sad, small tyrant who rode a wave of Facebook hoaxes and Twitter hate to hijack a party. And for what? To promote his golf courses, hotels, and above all, himself. He will now be the punchline of a joke we tell each other every four years, until the end of our democracy, a long time from now.
Today Donald Trump’s campaign ended the same way his life in New York began: to the sound of ridicule.
So long, Mr. Trump. The haters and losers are winning.
Amazing how the haters & losers keep tweeting the name "F**kface Von Clownstick" like they are so original & like no one else is doing it... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2013
Trump’s success reveals weakness in our democracy
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NEW DELHI: BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Friday termed Rahul Gandhi 's hug to Prime Minister Narendra Modi a "childish act" and said Parliament will become a "chaotic place" if other members also start doing so.
"It was very juvenile behaviour and if everybody starts doing so then Parliament will become a chaotic place. The Lok Sabha Speaker is right as decorum has to be maintained in the House," Swamy told reporters on the sidelines of an event.
After a no-holds barred and scathing criticism of Modi on several issues including Rafale jet deal, Congress president Rahul Gandhi walked across to the prime minister and hugged him, a gesture which took the Lok Sabha members by surprise.
Modi, who initially looked nonplussed and did not stand up to hug him, recovered quickly and called Gandhi back and patted him on the back.
"This is what it means to be a Hindu," Gandhi said after coming back to his seat amid a big applause from his party members, including his mother Sonia Gandhi and other leaders present.
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Esses eventos naturais brilhantes e chamativos são raros e impressionantes. Para você presencia-los pessoalmente, terá que ter sorte e chegar na hora exata.
O arco-íris é um dos fenômenos mais incríveis da natureza. Pixabay/Domínio Público.
VAMOS DESCOBRIR...
Viagens coloridas podem leva-lo a murais de rua ou cidades lindas, mas quando se trata de espetáculos verdadeiramente únicos e vibrantes, a natureza é capaz de produzir os momentos mais inspiradores da Terra.
Quer seja graças à bioluminescência , aos padrões de migração anuais, ou apenas a fortes tempestades, esses fenômenos podem ser frequentemente difíceis de saber quando e onde aconteceram. Por isso aqui terá para você um vislumbre da natureza em fenômenos fantásticos que colorem o mundo.
Vamos descobrir:
A MIGRAÇÃO DAS BORBOLETAS MONARCAS
Em dias calmos, as árvores ganham vida com o as asas de milhões de borboletas monarcas. Foto: Joel Sartore, National Geographic Creative.
Milhões de borboletas monarcas fazem a migração anual para o sul de Canadato, no México, durante o inverno, onde transformam os abetos de Michoacán em uma exposição de arte natural viva e respirável. No entanto, a verdadeira explosão de cor ocorre quando elas acordam do sono nos pinheiros, voando pelo ar, transformando suas asas laranjas e pretas ricamente pigmentadas em uma pincelada cor de tangerina.
Quando e onde ver as borboletas: entre janeiro e março, em dias calmos e quentes, no México.
Leia também:
Um show de cores: borboletas fantásticas
VAGA-LUMES SINCRÔNICOS
Ao menos 19 espécies de vaga-lumes vivem no Parque Nacional Great Smoky Mountains , mas apenas uma dessas espécies é capaz de sincronizar seu show de luz hipnotizante. Foto: David Liittschwager, National Geographic Creative.
Uma vez por ano, como parte de seus rituais de acasalamento, os vaga-lumes de Smoky Mountains fazem um dos shows de luzes mais deslumbrantes e frustrantemente impossíveis de prever. Enquanto a maioria dos vaga-lumes não conseguem sincronizar o brilho de suas barrigas bioluminescentes, essa espécie faz disso uma arte, proporcionando aos visitantes um espetáculo de brilhos harmoniosos que ondulam pelas montanhas. Uma vez determinadas, as datas são anunciadas no site oficial, mas a concorrência é alta para se candidatar para uma vaga.
Quando e onde ver esses vaga-lumes: de final de maio a meados de junho nos EUA.
Leia também:
Os cupinzeiros bioluminescentes
CAÑO CRISTALES
Estas plantas vivem no leito do rio durante todo o ano, mas mostram suas cores brilhantes quando as condições estão perfeitas. Foto: Thomas Marent, Minden Pictures.
No norte da Colômbia, este rio deslumbrante recebe uma explosão de cores produzidas por uma planta aquática digna de seu nome. As cores caleidoscópicas cobrem o leito do rio Caño Cristales , dando a impressão de que a água está fluindo sobre a paleta de um artista. Com cores variando de vermelho terra a amarelo mostarda e lilás, deve ser visto para se acreditar.
Quando e onde ver esse rio: de junho a novembro, na Colômbia.
MIGRAÇÃO DO CARANGUEJO VERMELHO
Milhares de jovens caranguejos cobrem as rochas da ilha Christmas. Foto: Warerframe/Alamy Stock Photo.
Todos os anos durante a temporada de acasalamento, a população de caranguejos vermelhos da ilha Christmas deixa o berço e dirige-se para a costa, enfrentando estradas na companhia de multidões de pessoas que acompanham a caminhada. Recentemente, pontes e passarelas foram especialmente construídas para ajudar os caranguejos a evitar esmagamentos acidentais, mas prever as datas em que esses crustáceos de casca escarlate iniciarão a migração é complicado, uma vez que seguem não só o calendário lunar, mas também a estação úmida e das chuvas pesadas.
Quando e onde ver os caranguejos : no início da estação úmida, em outubro ou novembro, na Ilha Christmas, Austrália.
O DESERTO FLORIDO
Esta superfloração é única e rara, fazendo com que os anos de chuvas fortes sejam uma ótima razão para marcar uma viagem para ver o deserto colorido. Foto: Andrea Dominguez, Getty Images.
As super florações fazem aparições agendadas em todo o mundo, seja nos campos de canola da China ou nos desertos de Namaqualand. Por outro lado, no Atacama chileno – o deserto mais seco do mundo – as superflorações são menos que previsíveis. Na verdade, somente quando o volume de chuva é incomumente alto (geralmente graças ao El Niño), as planícies normalmente estéreis explodem em vida com uma variedade de flores multicoloridas.
Quando e onde ver a superfloração: De setembro a novembro, mas somente quando os níveis de chuva são muito altos, no Chile.
Leia também:
As flores mais cheirosas do mundo
AURORA BOREAL
As auroras boreais da Noruega estão entre as melhores do hemisfério norte. Foto: Getty Images.
As pinturas espaciais que colorem o céu da noite de alguns dos destinos mais ao norte do globo não são tão raras. Na verdade, a Noruega é um dos melhores pontos para ver as auroras boreais anualmente, embora as faixas verdes sejam mais fáceis de serem vistas, você terá que cruzar os dedos para ver as raríssimas luzes vermelhas.
Quando e onde ver as auroras boreais : de final de setembro ao final de março, na Noruega.
Leia também:
Auroras e outras manifestações do campo geomagnético
A DESOVA DOS CORAIS, AUSTRÁLIA
Todos os anos, os recifes de coral sob as ondas de Ningaloo na Austrália Ocidental desovam em sincronia, liberando minúsculos óvulos que flutuam até a superfície da água. Foto: Look/Alamy Stook Photo.
Os recifes de corais da Austrália são, possivelmente, um dos fenômenos naturais mais coloridos do mundo por si só, mas esses mundos subaquáticos têm uma carta ainda mais impressionante em sua manga – a desova dos corais. Descrita como uma tempestade de neve subaquática e antigravitacional, cada ano os recifes de coral sob as ondas de Ningaloo, na Austrália Ocidental, desovam em sincronia, liberando minúsculos óvulos que flutuam até a superfície.
Quando e onde ver a desova dos corais: até uma semana após a lua cheia, normalmente no outono, na Austrália.
Leia também:
O colorido mundo dos corais
AS LULAS BRILHANTES DA BAÍA DE TOYAMA
Durante a época de acasalamento, as lulas vaga-lume sobem até a superfície e proporcionam um show logo antes do nascer do sol. Foto: Mark Macewen, Nature Picture Library/Getty Images.
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Am i the only one around here Who thinks each subreddit should have a "best ever" tab?
104 shares
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News in Science
Viper's velvet black spots key to camouflage
Master of disguise Scientists have identified nanostructures in the ultra-black skin markings of an African viper that could inspire the quest to create the ultimate light-absorbing material.
The West African Gaboon viper (Bitis rhinoceros), one of the largest in Africa and a master of camouflage, has dark spots in the geometrical pattern of its skin that are deep, velvety black and reflect very little light.
Interwoven with white- and brown-coloured scales that are very reflective, this creates a high contrast that renders the snake difficult to spot on the richly-patterned rainforest floor.
The team of German scientists from Kiel University and the University of Bonn set out to find the secret behind the black spots' ultra-darkness.
To do this they compared the topography of the velvet black and pale scales.
They discovered the scale surface of the black areas was made up of tightly-packed, leaf-like microstructures covered in turn with nanometre-sized ridges.
One nanometre is equivalent to a billionth of a metre.
"The microornamentation in velvet black regions of the Gaboon viper skin is unique among snakes," they report in the journal Scientific Reports .
"Leaf-like microstructures with both nanoridges and hair-like nanoprotuberances that coincide with black skin colouration have never been described before."
Master of camouflage
The team theorise that the micro- and nanostructures, which protrude at slightly different angles, scatter and trap incoming light.
The pale scales reflected and transmitted more light than the dark scales. Differences in reflectance between pale and black scales were higher at short wavelengths of light below 600 nanometres -- a wavelength that corresponds with blueish-green colours.
This pattern of colouration provides the perfect camouflage ambushing prey in the low light at dawn and evening, or the green light in forests or blue light in clearings during the day.
The researchers say the low reflecting properties of the velvet black spots also have implications for enhancing the darkness of artificial materials.
"The structure-based velvet black effect could also be potentially transferred to other materials," they write.
The search for a high-absorbing, low-reflecting artificial material is highly prized in science for its potential use in specialised optical systems or solar heat capture, for example.
Some artificial ultra-black surfaces are already darker than the snake's spots, says study lead author Marlene Spinner of the University of Bonn's Institute of Zoology.
But introducing the snake's nanotechnology could potentially enhance their light absorbancy even more.
"The micro-ornamentation on the snake's velvet black scales is a further example that the same physical law applies to both nature and technology and leads consequently to similar constructions," say the researchers.
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IT'S SATURDAY, SEPT. 8, in Tyler, Texas, and it is officially "Jimmy Butler Day." The chancellor of Tyler Junior College has just bestowed an honorary degree on its most famous alumnus, followed by the city council handing the key to the city to the Sixers swingman, an honor not even bestowed upon native son Earl Campbell, an NFL Hall of Famer.
Later in the day, a beaming Butler, wearing diamond hoop earrings and torn jeans, looks on as the lobby of the school's gym is renamed in his honor, his jersey is retired and he is inducted into the school's Circle of Honor, making him the youngest graduate to receive that distinction.
During the Jimmy Butler Day ceremonies, Butler gives what longtime Tyler basketball coach Mike Marquis says are two of the most thoughtful and impassioned speeches he's ever heard, describing for students how, as a quiet teenager, he was able to springboard from Tyler to Marquette to NBA stardom.
"For me, when you're talking about basketball and where you come from, there's always going to be a lot of emotions," Butler says later. "That s--- is special."
Later that day, while coaching in the alumni charity game, a scowling Butler paces in front of the bench, yelling out defensive assignments and pick-and-roll instructions. Marquis considers asking Butler to chill a little, then thinks better of it. It's Jimmy Butler Day, after all. And like it or not, that red-line approach to all things hoops is a big part of who Butler is -- and why Sept. 8, 2018, is Jimmy Butler Day in the first place.
Almost seven months later, while reminiscing about the day's events and an honor long since overshadowed by his tumultuous and perhaps career-defining NBA season, Butler says: "It's crazy to think that was just [seven] months ago. ... It legit seems like it could have been two years ago."
Good Jimmy is an All-NBA player on a championship team. Bad Jimmy can derail a franchise. The Sixers are three months away from making a nine-figure decision on their 29-year-old wing. Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
TWO WEEKS AFTER leaving Texas, there's another Jimmy Butler Day -- of sorts.
In 2017-18, with Butler averaging a team-high 22.2 points and 36.7 minutes per game, the Minnesota Timberwolves won 47 games and made the playoffs for the first time in 14 years. And then, in a pattern that has come to define his NBA career -- and now, the Sixers' playoff chances -- "Good Jimmy," the aw-shucks, hard-working, small-town Texas kid, eventually gave way to "Bad Jimmy," the moody, aloof, combative and uncompromising diva with delusions of grandeur.
In July, Butler turned down a four-year, $100 million extension from the Wolves. Then, at the start of camp, upon surveying the state of the franchise, he announced to his longtime friend and mentor, and now former Minnesota coach, Tom Thibodeau, "This s--- ain't it," and demanded a trade. And then, on Jimmy Butler Day 2, he punctuated the ultimatum by summarily losing it in his first practice since the trade demand, in which he proceeded to challenge the manhood of young stars Andrew Wiggins and Karl Anthony-Towns -- and everyone else in the organization except Crunch, the mascot.
"Jimmy's approach has always been not whether he's right or wrong. It's about, 'Are you giving everything you have?'" Marquis says. "And some people don't like to be challenged like that. Society is changing. The old days of coach Bobby Knight and Gen. George Patton being a fiery motivator are not what today is acceptable. Jimmy's got some real old-school toughness in him. And guys don't like to be questioned about their effort."
But the expletive-laced tantrum worked.
A month later, Butler was traded to Philadelphia.
If the past few years have taught us anything, it's this: Butler's All-NBA, two-way greatness and his volatility make him one of the most compelling figures in this year's NBA playoffs. The league waits, popcorn at the ready, to see which Jimmy will show up for the Sixers, both for the next couple of weeks (or months) and into the summer, when Butler will be among the NBA's highest-profile free agents.
"I'll be here in Philly for a little bit, and this will be the next chapter," Butler says. "We have the opportunity to do something special. We know what we can do. We talk about it every single day with the coaches in practice and when we watch ourselves on film. We know what we can do. We know. It's all about going out there now and supposedly showing the world, even though I highly doubt anyone on this team gives a damn what the world thinks anyway."
Butler, who tweaked his back in his return to Minnesota, has led the NBA in minutes per game since 2013-14, the year he became a starter. Hannah Foslien/Getty Images
BUTLER'S IGNOMINIOUS RETURN to a cold and gray-skied Minneapolis begins with him getting booed at breakfast. The friendly-fire heckling from his Sixers teammates, meant to lighten the mood and prepare Butler for the real thing inside Target Center that night, continues through his routine Pilates session and the Sixers' shootaround at North Central University near downtown.
"Amir [Johnson] has been booing me since we woke up this morning," Butler says after the shootaround while reclining in the bleachers, his legs extended and his elbows out. Three hours before tipoff, after finishing his pregame routine inside a mostly empty Target Center, he sits courtside, striking the same relaxed pose. It's the forced body language of a villain who's eager for the world to know: I'm enjoying this.
That was an attitude Butler tried awfully hard to convey during his late-March return to Minnesota and his return the next week to Chicago, where he spent his first six NBA seasons. The emotional, late-season road trip to face the franchises Butler elevated and then incinerated served as a pre-playoff barometer of Butler's emotional state, his connection to his new teammates and, thus, the Sixers' playoff fate.
"Whether I'm home in Texas or in Chicago or Minnesota or Milwaukee, each place played a part, a major role, in me being the player and the person I am today," Butler says. "And I'm for real grateful for all of it."
Moments later, the Sixers tweet a picture of Butler's special Jordans, inscribed with the motto: You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Later, when he is greeted by a thunderous round of boos and Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" during pregame introductions, Bad Jimmy smiles and shuffles onto the court like a prizefighter.
In private, though, there's that other Jimmy: After finishing his warm-up, before he took the court, Butler camped out in front of the Wolves' locker room, looking like a lost kid or a politician -- bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands clasped together -- waiting to greet his former teammates and coaches with a series of slightly awkward, conciliatory hugs.
"I'll be here in Philly for a little bit, and this will be the next chapter. We have the opportunity to do something special."
It was classic Jimmy, a study in contrasts. As much as we want (or need, really) to define our elite athletes in oversimplified terms and roles -- good or bad, winner or loser, hero or villain -- the truth is they're just like the rest of us. Not all good and not all bad, but a combination of both on any given day. Butler's polarities, and his unwillingness to filter or hide them, are just far more pronounced than for the rest of us. In Minnesota, this left him seemingly oblivious to the wreckage he had wrought with the Wolves, who finished the season 12 games out of the eighth playoff spot and, since the All-Star break, ranked dead last in defense. "Being loved all the time, it's no fun that way," Butler says before the tip. "People will pay way more attention whenever they dislike you or hate you. Everything that you do they pay attention to because they have to nitpick something. I welcome it. I embrace it. Let's see what y'all can point out tonight."
Turns out, it's quite a bit. Like his personality, Butler's performance on the court in Minnesota vacillates wildly from moment to moment. He struggles on offense, to put it mildly, passing up open corner 3s and failing to generate any significant chances on his own. But rather than lashing out in frustration or losing interest, as Butler can do, he ratchets up his game elsewhere.
With the Sixers' best player, Joel Embiid, back in Philadelphia nursing a sore left knee, Butler takes over with 7 offensive rebounds, 5 assists and 2 steals -- the kind of dynamic performance on an otherwise off night that you'd expect to see from someone looking to land a max contract in the offseason. Butler finishes with 12 points on 4-of-17 shooting.
"Jimmy thrives under blankets of controversy and heat-of-the-battle type moments, and I greatly respect it," Philly coach Brett Brown says. "If you look at high-level competitors, it's part of their DNA, and it's certainly part of his DNA."
In search of a max contract this offseason and hoping to convince cash-rich teams such as the Lakers and Knicks that they could handle the unpredictable, supernatural force that is a fully vested Jimmy Butler, his Bad Jimmy alter ego was on its best behavior during the Sixers' last extended regular-season road trip. With a roster as good as Philly's, Butler is not required to be the face of the franchise (like he was in Chicago) or a mentor and motivator (like he was in Minnesota).
"Jimmy does seem to be having fun playing again," Marquis says. "The Sixers are fun to watch, and he seems to be happy. I know him well enough to know that there are bigger and better things ahead still for Jimmy."
Give Philly GM Elton Brand credit. He might have finally stumbled on a management formula that works with Butler: a $190 million carrot. Brand also has an escape clause, having made it clear that his expectations for this roster are nothing less than the Eastern Conference finals. Brown, Philly's coach, has smartly channeled Butler's intensity, and his need to have the ball in his hands, into the job of Sixers closer. "Whatever they need me to do, close games, guard people, I'm all for it," Butler says.
Still, there are times when Brown sounds a bit like a hostage negotiator, communicating to Butler through the media, keenly aware of a ticking time bomb on his roster. "Right from the get-go, Jimmy came in trying to fit in and be a good teammate," Brown says before the game in Minneapolis. "From that starting point, you've seen the growth of him, just putting his own thumbprint all over the place."
Late in the Minnesota game, it is squarely on the Wolves' windpipe. With 27 seconds left, Butler seals the win with two free throws and a self-satisfied sneer. Dejected Wolves fans boo him as they make their way out of the arena.
After the game, inside the Sixers' crowded locker room, Butler, his teammates and the gathered media are all tuned in to the final moments of the Elite Eight game between Purdue and Virginia. Instead of watching the NCAA game together on the big-screen TV, the Sixers bunch up in several smaller groups to follow the game on a handful of phones and computer screens. Maybe it's nothing. But the scene looks like the millennial, NBA version of the old quip about 26 Yankees leaving a team event in 26 cabs.
After Virginia seals the win, Butler signs his villain Jordans for a young fan before speaking briefly about his back -- "It's injured," he says -- and the reception in Minneapolis: "Not too bad, to tell you the truth."
Hearing this, Amir Johnson, standing in the far corner of the room, offers one last chorus of boos. Butler smiles. Today, on Jimmy Butler Day No. 3, he's in on the joke.
Perhaps no relationship is more important to the Sixers' 2019 hopes than the one between their franchise star, Joel Embiid, and Butler, whom the Sixers acquired to elevate the team into title contention. Nicole Sweet/USA TODAY Sports
EARLY ON A SATURDAY morning in early April, the gym at Roosevelt University, located just a block from Chicago's Grant Park, is a beehive of activity. As the school's golf and softball teams file out of the building in their forest-green uniforms, weaving through a sidewalk crowded with tourists and toward buses waiting on Wabash Avenue, the Sixers slip in, almost unnoticed, and begin to prepare for their morning shootaround. Dressed in a funky, tie-dyed sweat suit, Butler stands off to the side, still nursing his bad back. With the Sixers nearing the end of their trip, the TV inside the Roosevelt student-athlete lounge is playing "The Blues Brothers" on a loop -- just in case the road-weary team needs a reminder of which city it's now in.
In 2011, the Chicago Bulls drafted Butler out of Marquette with the last pick in the first round. The oft-told story of Butler's path -- from homeless teen in tiny Tomball, Texas, to a three-time All-Star in Chicago -- is so remarkable that it bears repeating here, even for the umpteenth time. Butler says his mother came to him one day when he was 13 and said, "I don't like the look of you ... you gotta go." Butler spent the next few years couch-surfing with friends and relatives until a local family took him in and guided the quiet and damaged soul to Marquis at Tyler Junior College. "So many guys are ultra-talents, but they haven't had to fight through the kind of adversity Jimmy has," Marquis says.
"He has so much fight in him, and he takes criticism for that, but you have to walk a mile in his shoes to really understand Jimmy. Where a lot of people, when they bump into failure, would rather complain or call home or get on the Xbox or go back to their dorm and pout, Jimmy was the opposite: He went right back to the gym and went back to work."
During Butler's first six seasons in Chicago, that work ethic, along with his quiet, intense drive and his rare two-way skills, willed the Bulls back into the playoffs, and it appeared that Butler had finally found a permanent home in Chicago. But before the 2014-15 season, when the Bulls offered him a four-year deal worth more than $40 million, Butler balked. Something didn't feel right. He had always thrived by gambling on himself, he explained at the time. And he was right.
That season, he won the NBA's Most Improved Player Award and signed a max extension worth more than $90 million, completing his transformation from last guy on the bench to face of the franchise.
Something beyond his bank account and Q-rating had changed, though. The quiet kid who had spent his formative years dependent on the hospitality of strangers was now solidly in control of where he would reside and with whom he would play. Butler was never going to give anyone, let alone an NBA team, the power to say to him again, "We don't like the look of you ... you gotta go."
"Jimmy thrives under blankets of controversy and heat-of-the-battle type moments, and I greatly respect it." Sixers coach Brett Brown
In his final two seasons in Chicago, Butler's relationships with his teammates, his coaches and the Bulls' front office got so bad that at one point he was dressing in a different room at the United Center. "I guess being called the face of an organization isn't as good as I thought," Butler told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2017. "You know what I learned? Face of the team, eventually you're going to see the back of his head as he's leaving town, so no thanks."
When it came time for the Bulls to rebuild, they decided to do it without Butler, shipping him to Minnesota after the 2017 season. On Butler's way out of town, his trainer, Travelle Gaines, torched the Bulls on social media, claiming that they had the worst culture in the league and that he had "met drug dealers with better morals than their GM."
RETURNING TO CHICAGO in the final week of the 2018-19 regular season, Butler seems to be a changed man, poised to finally make a run deep into the playoffs while playing with his third team in as many years.
"This week was special for me," Butler says of his various homecomings. "I appreciate being able to play the game I love, and seeing all these familiar faces from every step of the way was special. We just have to go out there and play and do what we are capable of doing."
Back at the Sixers' shootaround at Roosevelt, watching 7-foot Embiid sink Steph Curry-like trick 3s from inside a doorway 40 feet from the basket (with his feet stuck in a pair of red canvas loafers), Butler acknowledges the Sixers' center as "one of the most unstoppable players in the league right here." The normally gregarious Embiid responds with a barely perceptible nod. There don't seem to be any problems or issues, per se, but these two Sixers don't seem especially close, either. In fact, they interact with each other like cabinmates on the first day of summer camp: polite strangers bracing for an impending adventure -- or disaster.
Later that day, inside the United Center, where the 60-loss Bulls try to distract frustrated fans before the game with nonstop cat memes broadcast on the scoreboard, Embiid eats his chicken-and-pasta dinner by himself, sitting in the hallway outside the Sixers' locker room, watching Final Four action.
Fast-forward another week, and nagging injuries continue to keep Embiid off the floor, with his bothersome left knee preventing him from playing in Game 3 of the Sixers' first-round series against the Nets.
As the intensity escalates throughout the series and Philly needs to find the edge it is missing, the Sixers don't just turn to Butler for help -- they seem to transform into him. Butler promised to fill any role the team needed -- and he delivers. In Game 1, he is a scorer, with a career-playoff-high 36 points. In Game 2, he takes on more of a point guard role, dishing the ball out for seven assists. When Ben Simmons withers early in the series, Butler demonstrates to his younger teammates how to embrace the role of the villain. "Oh, I'm all for physicality," he gleefully responds after increased contact and chirping from the Nets.
His timing couldn't be better. In the third quarter of Game 4, Embiid knocks Nets center Jarrett Allen to the ground, going for a block. Brooklyn's Jared Dudley, who has been under Simmons' skin the entire series, takes exception, ramming Embiid from the side. Embiid is a force in the game, ending the contest with 31 points, 16 rebounds and 6 blocks. But before he can retaliate, Butler springs into action, cross-checking Dudley into the first row of seats and sparking a melee that results in ejections and fines for Butler and Dudley -- and a 3-1 lead in the series for the Sixers.
Afterward, Butler, sitting next to Embiid, speaks to the media. The two giggle and finish each other's sentences, like new bestest buddies.
"I'm just here to protect my big fella," Butler says, patting Embiid on the arm. "If somebody runs up on him, I'm gonna push him again."
"And I'm gonna pay the fine," Embiid interjects, "'cause he had my back." The Sixers swingman pumps his fist.
It is, once again, Jimmy Butler's day.
And in that moment, with Philly one win from advancing in the playoffs with newfound swagger, the brashness for which Butler has always been criticized suddenly looks a lot different.
It's an outcome to Butler's season-long saga that no one envisioned.
Bad Jimmy just might be really good for Philadelphia.
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Henry George’s 1879 book Progress and Poverty articulated the problem felt by many people during the Gilded Age — that despite the booming economy, many people were left behind in poverty. The book was a bestseller, and George became wildly popular, eventually being drafted to run for Mayor of New York City in 1886 as a candidate for the United Labor Party. Henry George’s message about the haves and the have nots helped ignite a movement of working people that swept the nation. Filmmaker Sarah Colt introduces Henry George.
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Just when you were thinking there's no hope for Luke Shaw at Manchester United, he confounds expectations. Still only 22, the left-back has played 90 minutes in four of the last five United games.
While only on the winning side once -- at Everton on New Year's Day -- Shaw can be pleased with his performances, as well as his full-game consecutive appearances. Jose Mourinho has been impressed by Shaw since he started figuring in his plans again during December, talking up his creativity and intensity.
The United manager has also emphasised Shaw's attacking intent, a quality vital for a United full-back and one which was evident when he came to Old Trafford in 2013 with Southampton and so impressed alongside another Saints player, Morgan Schneiderlin. Shaw was rapid, strong and comfortable attacking as his side outplayed United, but only drew 1-1.
It was United rather than Liverpool who signed both players for big money, yet neither move appeared to have worked out. But while the French midfielder was sold to Everton a year ago, Shaw has hung on at Old Trafford.
From Shaw's perspective, his time in Manchester has been hampered by injury. I've spoken to him every preseason and in Los Angeles this year he stressed: "I do think that I've been unlucky with injuries. My leg and now this. It was unlucky. I want to put them in the past."
Shaw had admitted that he wasn't as committed as he should have been in his first season at the club in 2014-15. More focussed, he started the second season much better before a horrific leg-break injury against PSV Eindhoven in September 2015. He came back for the 2016-17 season and started in Mourinho's first five league games, but he played poorly in the fifth at Watford, was dropped, then suffered a groin injury. He made a comeback only for a foot injury to end his season.
Perhaps understandably, he's looked rusty when he's returned in between those injuries and he was castigated by Wayne Rooney for not making an overlap in a FA Cup third round game against Wigan a year ago. Shaw's robust build can be a strength and a weakness. When match fit, he looks powerful and driven. When unfit, he looks heavy and sluggish. He'll hope to be sharp against Derby County at Old Trafford on Friday.
Luke Shaw and Jose Mourinho have endured a strained relationship at Manchester United. Catherine Ivill/Getty Images
Things looked to have improved early this term when in August he turned out for United's Under-23s team. However, he didn't start a single first team game until December against CSKA Moscow in a Champions League match that had little significance.
His teammates were convinced that Mourinho didn't rate him. United have been linked with several left-backs, from Tottenham's Danny Rose who seemed keen to push himself out of the London club and get back to the north of England from where he hails. United have also watched Fulham's Ryan Sessegnon, 17. Though talented, the club will be cautious about paying so much for a teenager after the Shaw experience.
United's left-back position was seen as the weak point for the team this season. Daley Blind, a midfielder who is caught by the fastest wingers, has occupied the slot; Matteo Darmian, a right-footed right-back, too. The versatile Ashley Young has excelled there and teammates joke that he's the new Cafu, the legendary Brazilian left-back. Marcos Rojo can play there as he does for Argentina, while United have also played three at the back without a conventional left-back.
Shaw seemed to have no future at United. The club had wanted him to be the left-back for 15 years, a new Denis Irwin or Patrice Evra. They certainly thought he had the talent, though Louis van Gaal doubted he possessed the application, mental toughness or character to become a first teamer.
Mourinho seemed to share his predecessor's reservations. United are not Southampton and Shaw took some time to get his head around the size of his new club, but he also wasn't given enough minutes to acclimatise. He started 18 games in all competitions in his first season at Old Trafford, eight in his second, 17 in his third and he's at six this season. Though injuries have clearly played a part, 49 starts in three-and-a-half seasons aren't sufficient. Indications are this might be about to change.
While there were people at the club who felt Shaw needed some soft love after a difficult time under Van Gaal and a serious injury, Mourinho went for a similar approach to the Dutchman and was publicly critical of the player, which didn't always go down well in the dressing room. As Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Anthony Martial could testify, he wasn't the Portuguese's only target.
The Manchester United left-back has impressed during an extended run in the side. Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images
United, especially Ed Woodward, want Shaw to succeed. It was Woodward who drove the £30 million deal to bring the player -- a childhood Chelsea fan -- to Old Trafford rather than to Mourinho at Stamford Bridge. Shaw became the most expensive teenager in world football, with a fantastic opportunity at United. That has yet to be fully taken.
Shaw was out of contract in June, though, as with other United players, he's had it extended, as much as making sure he doesn't lose for free as anything else.
Playing six games isn't enough to make United not look at alternatives, but if he can continue and the six become 16, then fans would love to see him rewarded -- and it'd certainly be cheaper than spending £50m on a full-back and one less position to worry about.
Shaw has worked hard and trained hard, but we've been here before with him and could have written a near identical piece a year ago. He keeps being offered another opportunity and, for now, appears to be taking it.
Let's hope he can stay injury free and play to his full ability for, as Sir Alex Ferguson once opined when he signed Patrice Evra: "With full-backs, it's like searching for a rare bird."
Shaw's performances have been all too rare, but he's making a fist of what is surely his final chance.
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The Tokyo Metro and Toei subway companies announced this week that as part of the preparations for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympic Games and to help foreign tourists, they will start providing free Wi-Fi at 143 subway stations throughout the metropolitan area beginning in December.
Of the 143 stations, stations in Roppongi, Asakusa and Ginza have the highest volume of foreign tourists that pass through them, officials said. Many foreign tourists in the past have complained about the inability to use wireless Internet while using public transportation in Tokyo.
Users will need to download the free Japan Connected Free Wi-Fi app before they can access the network. Each session is valid for three hours of service, and there’s no limit on the number of sessions for a single user.
Tokyo Gov Yoichi Masuzoe told a news conference that he hopes the new service will allow foreign visitors to easily navigate the metropolitan area transportation system, TBS reported.
Free Wi-Fi service has been available on all 1,452 Toei buses operated by the Tokyo metropolitan government since March.
© Japan Today
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The Navy has passed a major milestone in its quest to build an incredibly powerful new anti-aircraft gun.
Scientists with the Navy's Office of Naval Research have demonstrated a prototype system capable of producing from thin air the electrons needed to generate ultrapowerful, "megawatt-class" laser beams for the agency's next-generation system.
"The injector performed as we predicted all along," said Dinh Nguyen, senior project leader for the Free Electron Laser (FEL) program at the Los Alamos National Lab, N.M. "But until now, we didn't have the evidence to support our models. We were so happy to see our design, fabrication and testing efforts finally come to fruition."
He said the group is hoping to set a world record with the futuristic new weapon -- which could be the Holy Grail of military lasers.
FEL technology generates powerful laser beams by passing a stream of electrons -- those tiny, charged particles of matter -- through magnetic fields. Using electrons means avoiding the hassle of chemical fuels that are required for ordinary gas lasers, and bypassing the heating issue of electronic lasers.
FEL lasers can also be calibrated more specifically for anti-aircraft purposes, the Navy said, to adjust for precipitation, cloud cover, or humidity.
Quentin Saulter, FEL program manager for the Navy's research arm, said the implications of the FEL's progress are monumental. "This is a major leap forward for the program and for FEL technology throughout the Navy," Saulter said. "The fact that the team is nine months ahead of schedule provides us plenty of time to reach our goals by the end of 2011."
The research team hopes to have a full-power prototype by 2018, which would have the ability to instantly blast targets in the sky.
Navy ships have become vulnerable in modern times to supersonic missiles because of their slower defense systems, the agency worries. "The FEL is expected to provide future U.S. Naval forces with a near-instantaneous laser ship defense in any maritime environment throughout the world,” Saulter said.
Moreover, because future ships may very well use a form of electronic propulsion, there would be a readily available supply of electrons to power the raygun.
Originally invented by John Madey in 1976 at Stanford University, the project was picked up and pursued by the ONR in the 1980s -- and may finally become a reality.
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Nestled in the heart of Appalachia is a land of rolling mountain ridges, knobs and gaps, that hold unending beauty and wonder. Take a look at what Time to Climb discovered on our trip to West Virginia!
West Virginia is home to the Monongahela National Forest which has some of the most stunning rock formations and wilderness in the state. This mountainous national forest contains the 100,000 + acre Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area. Established by the US Forest Service in 1965, it is the first of its kind to act as more than a preservation. The Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation area highlights outdoor activities and is used for research. The open space also provides support for the surrounding communities by leasing sections to farmers and cattle herders. This collaboration with the local community has helped foster and maintain the area’s natural beauty & rural culture that has existed for hundreds of years.
Seneca Rocks:
Located in the self-proclaimed town of Seneca Rocks, this massive “Fin” ridge-line rises 900 feet above the Seneca creek and the town below. The rock is composed of Tuscarora quartzite with exposed cliffs that are roughly 300 ft in height. Seneca Rocks has 2 peaks – North Peak & South Peak (the tallest) – which are separated by a distinct notch. South Peak is also known as a “True Peak,” meaning it’s summit is only accessible by technical rock climbing. It is the only one of its kind found on the east coast of the United States.
Can you spot the climbers?
Seneca Rocks has a long history of world-class rock climbing. The first recorded ascent of the rocks was made by a team of 3 climbers in 1939 and included Paul Bradt, Don Hubbard, & Sam Moore. The team was surprised to find an engraving of “D.B. September 16, 1908” at the top of the rocks, which was believed to be left by a surveyor who was working in the area.
During World War II, these very rocks were used as a training ground for the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division in preparation for the invasions made in the mountains of Italy. The rock formation is home to hundreds of trad climbing routes, from single pitch slab to multi-pitch cracks. The routes range anywhere from 5.0 to 5.13 in difficulty.
Spruce Knob:
Standing at 4,863 ft in height, this peak is the highest point of West Virginia (and includes the the Allegheny Mountains and the Appalachian Plateaus). Spruce Knob’s prominence of 2,781 ft offers absolutely stunning views of the surrounding mountains. The summit has a distinct alpine feel and is covered in boulder/rock outcroppings with a dense spruce forest, Krummholz formation and the stunting of exposed trees. Such formations are not usually found in the the southern Appalachian range and are more common in the north woods of New England and Canada.
There is an abundance of wildlife at the top of Spruce Knob, including white tail deer, black bear, red squirrels and our friend (pictured above) the Appalachian cottontail rabbit who likes to hang out near the observation tower found at the summit.
The summit of Spruce Knob is accessible by driving. The road from the Gateway Restaurant (near the park entrance) to the summit parking lot is about 11-12 miles long. It’s a bit narrow and has some very sharp turns, so take your time driving through the park. When you reach the top, there is a trail around the summit that is half a mile long. It’s also wheel chair accessible! Upon reaching the far end of the trail (before looping back), you’ll notice 180-degree panorama views that allow you to look out from both sides of the ridge-line.
The loop back takes you into the woods, which offers shade and protection from the often high winds that accompany the exposed areas of the summit. Small bushes and thick moss adorn the forest floor, giving a mystical feel to your hike through the spruce forest.
Catching the sunset at Spruce Knob is a must if you are in the area. The vibrant colors that wash across the sky and pitch over the mountaintops is simply majestic. The observation tower allows you to get above the spruce trees and experience a unique 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains & valleys. If you are a photographer the “Golden & Blue Hours” here are phenomenal due to the prominence and isolation of the mountain.
To learn More about Seneca Rocks & Spruce Knob check out the following links:
Spruce Knob and Seneca Rocks National Recreational Area
Climbing Routes at Seneca Rocks
Spruce Knob
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All political parties bring out manifestos at the time of elections in order to inform prospective voters of their socio-economic vision for the country. The vision is largely influenced by the ideologies of the parties in the fray. Given the fact that the two major national parties, the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have been in the political arena for long or have been governing parties, it is taken for granted that their ideologies are well known, though ideologies are subject to nuanced interpretations and viewpoints of the leaders of the parties.
The economic part of the vision of the two parties does not differ much though nuances exist on the question of “growth first before distribution" (a relatively strident BJP viewpoint) and ineffectiveness of public spending on account of subsidies and special programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and food security (again a relatively strident BJP viewpoint). On the private sector’s role, both parties are practically on the same page.
The party that aspires to be a major national party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had a brief stint of power at Delhi. Its economic vision is not well known, though one could gleam it from some actions of the party in its brief tenure of office at Delhi and from some of the utterances of its leaders, Arvind Kejriwal and Yogendra Yadav. The party’s strategy seems to be veering round new colours of Gandhism and democratic socialism, the two concepts that pervaded the Indian economic scene in the early years after Independence. Its main areas of focus seem to be: power, water supply, primary school education with facilities especially for girl students (three actions that they took during their office stint and are critical in any future economic strategy), communication with the people on a regular basis—the mohallas (transparency and needs-based approach), objection to “crony capitalism" and a strong statement for withdrawal of government from business. This is a kind of Gandhism that seems to suggest that agriculture, manufacturing, and small-scale industries would have to be fostered within the private sector. The party has also opposed foreign direct investment (FDI) in the retail sector. It has announced total rejection of categorization of ideas as “left wing" or “right wing". Further, it wants urgent redressal of people’s short term needs, simple living for all ministers and officials (another streak of Gandhism), strong advocacy for ombudsmen and for hearing citizens’ grievances against corrupt politicians, bureaucrats, criminals and communal groups. The party also wants open and transparent communication about funding of elections (which could include state funding of elections). The only issue on which there has not been much mention is in the area of primary health and healthcare. But one would not be surprised if this too would have been a part of the party action-plan had the party stayed on in power for a little longer time.
Critics, however, point out that public spending will outpace the known revenue resources. This could be true in the very short run but given the limited tenure of office, one may have to carefully sift as soon as possible the party’s fundamental social and public policy for further clues about what the party will have spelled as its stance on these matters. By saying that the state should not be in business, the party seems to hint that publicly owned enterprises would be more speedily privatized and resources generated to take care of the party’s concerns for economic growth and economic equality.
The model of development that emerges from these viewpoints is not something new going by the debates on the development strategies in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and in India in the 1950s. The non-state business regime without regulatory overreaches and with strong anti-corruption mechanisms will enable absorption of relatively abundant labour in agriculture, small-scale industries, manufacturing activities and services sector. The party, however, has to provide an idea of what it thinks should be the incentives for work and conducting economic activities simply because the state will be out of business and business will be conducted by the private sector. This will raise issues related to fiscal and monetary policy and regulatory policies on which the party has to give some indication. It is also important to signal the party’s views on international economic and financial policies. Once Indian business is given such a huge role as the party seems to imply, one would like to believe that it is for large-scale foreign technical and financial cooperation.
Most other parties do not seem to aspire to be national parties in the strict sense of the term since their reach is restricted and their inclination is not to field candidates over the length and breadth of the country.
A. Vasudevan is a former executive director of the Reserve Bank of India. Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com.
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(Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Thursday set a Sep. 5 trial date for Joaquin Guzman, the Mexican drug lord known as “El Chapo” who is jailed in the United States on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Slideshow ( 5 images )
U.S. prosecutors have accused Guzman, 60, of running a global cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine smuggling operation as the leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, and playing a central role in a decade-long Mexican drug war where more than 100,000 people have died.
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said at Thursday’s hearing in Brooklyn federal court that potential jurors would be given a written questionnaire on March 23 to screen them before the trial.
Cogan had ruled on Feb. 5 that the identities of the jurors in the case would be kept secret for their protection. Guzman’s lawyer, Eduardo Balarezo, has asked Cogan to reconsider that ruling.
Near the close of Thursday’s hearing, Balarezo said that Guzman wanted to address the court directly, in order to tell his family to pay his legal fees. Cogan did not allow Guzman to address the court, but did ask him whether he agreed with Balarezo’s statement.
Guzman said he did, and also began to say that he wanted to talk about his health and jail conditions, before Cogan told him he would consider allowing him to speak at a future hearing.
Lawyers for Guzman have said in court papers that his health has deteriorated during his months in solitary confinement.
Balarezo told reporters outside the courthouse following the hearing that he had been paid part of his fee by some “friends” of Guzman, but that Guzman had so far been unable to instruct his family about further payments.
Mexican authorities captured Guzman and an associate in January 2016 by pulling over a Ford Focus they had stolen, after Guzman had fled through tunnels and drains from a raid on a safe house in northwest Mexico.
Six months earlier, Guzman had escaped through a tunnel from a high-security Mexican prison. Guzman was extradited to the United States in January 2017.
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Application of egg white in production of nanoparticles
(Nanowerk News) Researchers from Mashhad University of Medical Sciences proposed the application of egg white as the size-controlling agent in the production of oxide nanoparticles.
The researchers produced a type of nanoparticle at laboratorial scale in the presence of egg white through a simple method based on the principles of green chemistry (Ceramics International, "Size-controlled and bio-directed synthesis of ceria nanopowders and their in vitro cytotoxicity effects").
The aim of the group was to synthesize and evaluate the toxicity of cerium oxide (CeO2) nanoparticles through green chemistry method as a safe and novel approach. Cerium oxide nanoparticles have applications in medical issues in the production of cosmetics, including sunburn lotions, and even in the production of catalysts. Non-toxic cerium oxide nanoparticles have been produced through this method with average particle size of about 24 nm.
Egg white is a natural biomaterial that contains high amount of amino acids and various proteins such as albumin and lysosome. Amino acids have a structure that can play the role of stabilizer and size-controller in the synthesis of nanoparticles. In similar studies all over the world, efforts are made to use commercial and pure amino acids, which are usually expensive. However, egg white has been used directly in this research due to its availability and reasonable price.
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DPRating is a relatively well-known blockchain project rating agency in China. DPRating carefully evaluated the AERGO project from the aspects of Summary, Prospect, Overview, Project Fundamental, Team, Community and Popularity, Adjustable, Investable Quantitative Score 70.5 points, Share to AERGO fans.
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MTG.onl Tokens
The ultimate resource for discovering Magic: the Gathering token cards.
Tokens have been a part of the trading card game Magic: the Gathering (MTG) for over twenty years. MTG.onl is a fan site and database listing every MTG token and providing original and interesting posts all about token cards.
As of February 29th, 2020 , 1,115 token cards have been officially printed by Wizards of the Coast, spanning 124 different sets. View Tokens by set to discover them all. Compare the artworks and find the perfect token card for your next MTG deck.
463 different types of token can be created in MTG, our A-Z Token list lists all the tokens you will need for anything, ever!
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All over the country, there are offices, schools, workshops, banks, pharmacies, IT departments and factories where the failure of a colleague to arrive at work and thus miss a scheduled meeting would arouse some immediate questions. Such as: "Where is he?"
But not at MI6, apparently. When Gareth Williams didn't turn up at the office on 16 August 2010, there was not so much, initially, as an attempt to track him down, an inquiry of his family, or even a casual: "Strange, not like old Gareth to go Awol."
Instead, within the Vauxhall Cross headquarters of these guardians of national security, there was a bewildering lack of curiosity about the whereabouts of this super-fit, "world-class" code-breaking mathematician who had been seconded to the service from GCHQ, Cheltenham, had just completed a course enabling him to carry out covert operations, was hardly ever late, never had a day off sick, and had a journey to work that was but 1.7 miles.
Life at MI6 went seamlessly on. Mr Williams's line manager, known as "G" when he gave evidence at the inquest last week, merely "had a gut feeling that he was away doing something I was unaware of" – an explanation which suggests absenteeism in the service might be somewhat higher than is generally realised. "G" did try his phone, and also later went round to Williams's flat to give a tentative ring on his doorbell. But one, two, three, four, five, six days went by before, finally, on the seventh, the official alarm was raised.
That day, police entered his flat, and there in the bathroom, they found a large, red, zipped and padlocked North Face sports bag. And inside it was a very dead Gareth Williams. He had probably been there at least a week, the last known sighting of him being on the CCTV of Harrods on the day before he was due back at work.
This mysterious delay in taking any concerted action – and thus the non-discovery of his body for fully seven days – continues to trouble his family greatly, and has proved crucial. Williams had lain, in a bathroom and inside a plastic bag, for a week in August. By the time he was found, his body had significantly decomposed, as had any reliable forensic evidence. If he was drugged or poisoned, we shall never know. One of his superiors, deploying a nice line in understatement as she gave evidence behind a screen, conceded: "I appreciate the delay had some impact on the police investigation."
Mystery number two is how did he get there? Despite an apparent passing interest (if web searches are anything to go by) in bondage and the sexual thrills of being in a confined space, it seems inconceivable he could have placed himself in the bag, then zipped and locked it unaided. Police gave evidence to this effect, as did two experts in Houdini-like matters who have tried a total of 400 times to replicate such a manoeuvre. Fit and supple young men of the same build as Mr Williams – a keen cyclist and climber – could get into the bag, but could not find a way of closing the zip.
Small specks of another person's DNA have been found on the bag, adding to the obvious conclusion by police that Gareth had an assistant – or an assassin. It also seems likely that he was dead or unconscious before he went into the bag. The coroner's court heard from Detective Chief Inspector Jackie Sebire that he was in the foetal position, and there was no sign that he had scrabbled to get out. She said: "In my opinion he was very calm. His face was very calm. His hands were resting on his chest." There was no damage to the bag or his fingernails.
What on earth, then, went on inside the flat at the security services safe house at 36 Alderney Street, Pimlico, south-west London? The evidence suggests that, however upsetting it may be for his family, Mr Williams was a man of unusual tastes and habits. There were, in his apartment, female wigs, 26 shoes by designers including Stella McCartney and Christian Dior, a quantity of cosmetics and, in his bedroom, some £20,000 worth of designer women's clothes.
He was a frequent visitor to couture websites, and, the inquest heard, a regular browser and sometime purchaser at Dover Street Market – an edgy emporium in west London which carries a large range of designer clothes. Carol Kirton, who works there, said he regularly shopped in the store, saying the items were for his girlfriend.
This extensive and costly wardrobe was raised in court with a female friend, Sian Jones. She told the inquest she did not think he was a transvestite. "I feel he would have been able to confide in me ... and I would not have judged him." She said she saw him every few days and he "showered" her with gifts. Another friend, Elizabeth Guthrie, suggested the clothes might have been "Gareth's attempt at a support strategy for someone. They certainly would not have been for him".
The wigs were kept neat in netting; none of the cosmetics had been used, and many of the clothes – and they were of varying sizes, the inquest heard – were kept pristine in tissue. They may indeed have been a store of gifts for as-yet unidentified girlfriends, but there could be another interpretation. After all, if the hoard was not the collection of a fetishist, it was a very good imitation of it.
Could this be connected to his death? The bathroom was evidently a venue for at least one sexual climax for Mr Williams, traces of his semen were found on its floor. Did he have some companion in sexual, or pseudo-sexual, meanderings which involved being put into a confined space such as a sports bag?
This would not have been the first time some bedroom escapade had gone wrong. When he was working at GCHQ his home was in an annex let out by a Mr and Mrs Elliot, who lived in the adjoining house. One night, the couple heard Gareth's cries for help, and went to investigate. "We went upstairs and found him lying on the bed with both hands tied with material attached to the headboard," said Jennifer Elliot's written statement. She said that he explained how he had tied himself up as an experiment, but she wrote that she and her husband thought it "more likely to be sexual than escapology".
Mr Williams's career and its particular path are clearly a complicating context to the mystery of a brilliant man who served his country. His sister, Ceri Subbe, told the inquest: "He disliked office culture, post-work drinks, flash car competitions and the rat race. He even spoke of friction in the office. The job was not quite what he expected. He encountered more red tape than he was comfortable with."
Six months before his death he had completed an intensive course which would allow him to undertake what were described to the court as very tough operational tasks. But, according to his boss, he had applied for his three-year secondment at MI6 to be cut short – a request that was granted. There are also the unauthorised searches he made of security service databases about which the inquest heard. This was not, it seems, a settled man.
Neither police nor security services say they have reason to believe that his death was connected to his work for MI6. And, if any practitioner of "the dark arts" – as the lawyer for his understandably still-distressed family put it – wanted to kill him, surely it would have been a road "accident" while he was out cycling, an assignation on a bridge that would have ended with him "falling" into the Thames, or a simple bullet to the head? But not a modus operandi so outré that it would keep the media panting for an answer 20 months later.
The inquest continues this week. The mystery of how exactly Gareth Williams died, one fears, will go on much longer.
Remarkable coincidence?
Whatever the truth in the case of Gareth Williams, details of women's underwear and cross-dressing regularly emerge in the "presentation" of the deaths of intelligence agents.
Nicholas Anderson, former MI6 officer turned author, told The Independent on Sunday: "I am on verbal record to my own family, close friends and select lawyers that if anything ever happened to me – a straight man and a positive thinker – it would likely be made to look either like a suicide or that I died dressed like a woman.
"Over the years, it seems to me a favourite way of presentation. I, of course, am not suicidal in any remote way nor do I like to dress so. When I read in the press about Gareth Williams, women's clothes, and a wig, it all fits the usual scenario."
The IoS has come across at least 17 mysterious deaths – some dubbed suicides, others freak accidents – of MI6 agents, workers at GCHQ, or those linked to the defence or intelligence services over the past 50 years. Sexual overtones, asphyxia, or both, feature in a third of cases, and they are just the ones that are in the public domain and "open source", as spooks would say.
Stephen Drinkwater, 25, a clerk employed in a department at GCHQ where highly classified documents were copied, was found dead in his parents' house at Cheltenham in September 1983. A plastic bag was over his head and he had died from asphyxiation.
In March 1990, British journalist Jonathan Moyle, 28, who had been investigating claims that US civilian helicopters were to be converted into gunships for sale to Iraq, was found hanged inside a hotel wardrobe in Santiago, Chile. Eight years later, an inquest concluded that he had been "unlawfully killed" by a "person or persons unknown". Speaking in September 2010, his former fiancée said: "The British intelligence services tried to smear Jonathan suggesting he was sexually deviant."
Four years later, in February 1994, Conservative MP Stephen Milligan, 45, was found tied to a chair wearing women's underwear and with a bag over his head and a satsuma stuffed into his mouth. He was the parliamentary private secretary to the then defence minister Jonathan Aitken. Mr Aitken has since denied media reports that he also worked for MI6.
The same month that Mr Milligan's body was discovered, James Rusbridger, 65, ex-MI6 agent turned journalist, was found hanged at his house on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. He was dressed in a green protective suit, green overalls, a black plastic mackintosh and thick rubber gloves. His face was covered by a gas mask and his body was surrounded by bondage pictures. Consultant pathologist Dr Yasai Sivathondan said he died from asphyxia due to hanging "in keeping with a form of sexual strangulation".
In another case, an inquest in July 1997 heard how GCHQ worker Nicholas Husband, 46, was found dead wearing women's clothing after a bizarre sex ritual. Mr Husband, from Tewkesbury, had a plastic bag over his face and was wearing a nightie and a bra. He was found dead after he failed to show up for work in December 1996.
In March 1999, Kevin Allen, a 31-year-old linguist at GCHQ, was found dead in bed by his father at his home in Cheltenham. He had a plastic bag over his head and a dust mask over his mouth. An post-mortem revealed that death was due to asphyxiation.
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Chris Boardman says that transport planners need build segregated infrastructure to take account of the 60 per cent of people who say they would like to cycle but are put off by their perception that it is dangerous – but he warns that routes need to take people where they want to go without needless detours.
The former world and Olympic champion, now policy advisor to British Cycling, was speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who was guest editor of the Boxing Day edition of the show.
The pair, accompanied by the National Trust’s director for London, Ivo Dawnay, undertook a journey on foot – Boardman had his bike with him too – from St James’s Park, via Horse Guards Parade and Whitehall, to the Embankment.
Berners-Lee was introduced on the programme as someone who “enjoys riding a bike and… also drives a car, but he’s not convinced that the two belong together on the roads.”
Boardman has been a regular visitor to London this year, including giving evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group’s Get Britain Cycling Inquiry and, more recently, the House of Commons Transport Select Committee.
He told Berners-Lee: “This is the first time in fact I’ve brought my own bike [to London]. But having got here and just ridden across from Euston, it’s not a pleasant experience, shall we say, everything is very tense.”
Berners-Lee asked Dawnay: “We’re sitting in St James’s Park and it’s pleasant, it’s car-free, so is one technique perhaps joining up these green spaces to make them into perhaps greenways for bikes?”
Dawnay replied: “The green parts of London are either the Royal Parks or the London boroughs. But you’re quite right, some places like Hyde Park Corner are actually quite hellish places to get over.”
While it’s true that negotiating the road layout itself there can be very daunting, there are ways of avoiding the traffic, and the reality is that the Royal Parks do offer on- and off-road routes – the latter shared with people on foot – that do provide a pleasant way of getting across a large slice of the capital.
Heading from Knightsbridge or out of Hyde Park towards Constitution Hill, for example, a prime commuting route in the morning, cyclists can use crossings to reach the island that the Wellington Arch is located on, then ride across to join the shared-use path running along the south side of Green Park.
Exiting St James’s Park, Berners-Lee and his companions crossed Horse Guards Parade and under the arch of the Horse Guards building itself – not somewhere you can normally ride through, unless you’re a member of the Household Cavalry on duty and on horseback – onto Whitehall.
“Chris, we’re on a bike, what do we do?” asked Berners-Lee.
Boardman responded: “Well, it just got more complicated, we’ve gone from that lovely quiet space over there and now we’re moving back towards the traffic.
“There’s huge congestion areas in London. Where we’ve got much faster moving traffic, as we have here around Whitehall, that also presents a danger.
“There seems to be more space, but there’s more danger from traffic moving quickly as well.”
Heading down to the Embankment and looking for somewhere safe to cross, Boardman pointed out that it isn’t just cyclists who are short-changed by the people who plan our roads.
“We’ve got to walk, what, 30, 50 metres in the opposite direction than we want to go to get across two lanes of quite fast moving traffic,” he said, adding, “I almost feel like letting this piece run unedited so people can get a feel for how long it takes to get across a single road for a pedestrian.”
Asked by Berners-Lee his thoughts about the Embankment from a cyclist’s viewpoint, he went on: “We’ve got a huge, wide road here and it’s being used at the moment by all types of traffic but there is space here, if we wanted to, to allocate it to different types of users.”
That’s exactly what will happen if Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s East-West route, running along the EMbankment then via St James's Park to Hyde Park Corner and dubbed ‘Crossrail for the bike,’ becomes reality, but the point being made by Boardman has a wider application.
“The road space at the moment seems to be all about looking after cars,” he continued. “The 2 per cent of people who ride on bikes now around the country, they’re going to keep doing it no matter what, it’s the 60 per cent who aren’t sure, probably ‘would if you gave me a nice space to do it,’ they’re the ones we should be targeting, and they want separated road space.”
But, he added, thought needs to go into the process; routes have to get people from A to B in the way they want to go there, and not take well-intentioned but frustrating detours.
He cited the example of what are termed ‘paths of desire’ – look at an edge-of-town retail park surrounded by landscaping where arriving in anything but a car involves a longer-than-necessary walk and you’ll see what he means.
“I’ve seen some beautiful infrastructure which costs millions of pounds and in some cases it will go round a piece of greenery and then across that green field there’s a muddy patch right across the middle, and right there, that is human beings,” he explained.
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GoogleのWebブラウザ「Chrome」は、Flashコンテンツを表示するプラグインを標準搭載しているが、FlashコンテンツがノートPCのバッテリーを浪費している場合もある。そこで同社はプラグインを使用するコンテンツの表示を、デフォルトで重要なコンテンツのみに制限するように変更する。
変更後の「コンテンツの設定」では、Flashアニメーションなどプラグインを使用するコンテンツがあるWebページを開いた際に、メインコンテンツに含まれるプラグインコンテンツだけを再生する。ブロックされたプラグインコンテンツを表示したい場合は、ワンクリックで再生可能。
新しいプラグイン設定は、Betaチャンネルで提供されている最新のデスクトップ版Chrome Betaで4日から有効になり、まもなく正式版も変更される。正式版ですぐに変更したい場合は、Chromeの設定で[詳細設定を表示…]を開き、[プライバシー][プラグイン]で[重要なプラグインコンテンツを検出して実行する]を選択する。
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People read front pages of newspapers after the presidential election, in La Paz, Bolivia, on October 21, 2019.
Bolivia's presidential election has sowed widespread confusion. A preliminary count of almost85% of ballots had strongly indicated there would need to be a second-round runoff, with President Evo Morales in first place but with main rival Carlos Mesa within striking distance.
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Morales disagreed. Votes still to be counted would help give him the majority he needed to win outright, the leftist leader said in a midnight presser.
The official Cambio newspaper on Monday ran a front-page headline saying Morales' had won, securing his fourth successive term.
The uncertainty sparked fears among observers and diplomats about potential manipulation of the vote to avoid a risky second round, and of unrest that could follow in the landlocked nation, even as nearby Chile and Ecuador grapple with violence on the streets.
"The region is convulsing. In Bolivia so far there have been tensions but we could go from tension to convulsion if Morales tries to force a victory in the first round," said Bolivian political analyst Franklin Pareja.
Morales was seen leading with 45% of the votes against 38% for Mesa, according to a preliminary count of ballots by Bolivia's electoral board, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). Other pollsters also showed a tight race that would lead to a runoff vote.
Late on Sunday, however, the TSE halted the provisionary count with just 83.76% of the ballot done. That move prompted the official monitor, the Organization of American States (OAS), to demand to know why.
"It's crucial that this process is carried out quickly and transparently," the OAS said in a Tweet on Monday, as fears of unrest grew and Mesa said he was heading to the country's second city Santa Cruz to support groups mobilizing to demand the second round of voting.
Brazil's foreign ministry also expressed concern over the "unexpected interruption" of the official reporting of results.
The president needs over 50% or 40% with a 10-point lead over his closest rival to avoid a risky Dec. 15 second round runoff. If he wins, Latin America's longest continuous-serving standing leader would extend his rule to 19 years.
Morales, a former union leader for coca growers, has overseen a long stretch of political and economic stability for Bolivia, the continent's poorest country. His support has slipped amid slowing economic growth and concerns about government corruption and anti-democratic practices.
Political analyst Pareja said Morales would need almost all the outstanding votes to reach a majority, which though not impossible was highly unlikely. "(So) even if he does win, no one is going to believe him," he said.
(REUTERS)
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If our contemporaries as a whole could see what it is that is guiding them and where they are really going, the modern world would at once cease to exist as such, for the rectification could not fail to come about through that very circumstance. ~ Rene Guenon A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars. ~ H G Wells
Rene Guenon appeared in the world process at the time of the spiritual emptiness of the West. With all of history and geography pretty much known, it had become impossible to ignore the vast differences in spiritual experiences in the world. Guenon was able to sort them out and to reveal their deep similarity in terms of social organization, inner experience, and metaphysical principles. Yet his voluminous works are just a beginning. The logical consequences of his writings still need to be explicated. He himself suggested several areas for further research in those writings.
Although we don’t always make them explicit, we conform to the core of Guenon’s principles. That is not a slavish following, a “Guenonian scholasticism” as Evola called it. Evola himself, although calling Guenon the Master of the Twentieth Century, challenged Guenon on certain points. Sometimes he was mistaken but on other times he made key contributions. Furthermore, we need to distinguish between metaphysical principles which are apodictic and personal judgments which are at best informed opinions.
Guiding Principles
If worship of providence were forbidden, the natural consequence would be their fall, for a nation of fatalists or casualists or atheists never existed in the world, and we saw that all the nations of the world believe in a provident divinity, and have embraced only four principle religions: paganism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. ~ Giambattista Vico
We are not out to “prove” any Guenonian principles; for that, his own works need to be consulted. Rather, we accept them, even if provisionally, and draw out their consequences as if they are true.
First of all, the modern world is an anomaly in the world, as no civilization has ever been based on its principles, or, better said, anti-principles. Instead, they have all been based on what he calls Tradition, whose basic principles have been described throughout Gornahoor. Tradition means “handed down”, not a nostalgic return to some idealized past. Hence, it is not necessarily Luddite, as the example of the City of the Sun shows.
Traditional societies are hierarchical with specific functional areas and daily life was centered around the rites and rituals of an exoteric religious tradition. Beyond that, there is an esoteric tradition related to, but different from, the exoteric tradition. The esoteric tradition comprises various practices and metaphysical teachings that lead to higher states of being.
Exoteric and Esoteric
The relationship between the exoteric and the esoteric is expressed in this principle: every exoteric religious or theological statement is equivalent to an esoteric metaphysical statement. That is why we don’t get involved in theological disputes since they can’t be resolved at that level without appealing to faith or authority. Esoterism, on the other hand, results in gnosis, or certain knowledge. In other words, what the believer believes, the knower knows.
For example, the religious idea of monotheism is the metaphysical idea of the Absolute, i.e., there is one foundational principle of the world. Polytheism, hence, means competing principles with no underlying unity. Atheism is the denial of an underlying principle so everything that happens is the result of determinism or chance events. As Vico pointed out, no society based on atheism, fatalism, or chance events could survive for long. The modern mind considers atheism as simply another defensible opinion, but for the traditional mind the atheist is an enemy of the people and a danger to the state. He would have no more right to free speech than a quack physician who prescribes harmful and ineffective treatments.
Guenon’s next point is that the esoteric component has been lost in the West. We accept that, but not absolutely since it is an opinion not a metaphysical truth. Nevertheless, it is pointless to criticize bishops, popes, and so on, for that reason. The task, for us, is to delineate the features of a Western esoteric Tradition to prepare the way for its return.
A further point is that the esoteric should not be seen in opposition to the exoteric. Rather, those capable of and interested in pursuing and esoteric path should do it in the context of an exoteric path. These would be, at the risk of over-simplification, one of the many paganisms or one of the Abrahamic religions as Vico noted. The normal choice, however, is to choose the exoteric religion of one’s land. Hence, Guenon did not fully embrace Islam as a lifestyle until he migrated to Egypt.
The notion of picking and choosing and shopping around for one’s religion is absurd from the Traditional point of view. Religious pluralism is a liberal and modern idea. The opposite Traditional view is called “Integralism”, i.e., the nation as an organic unity. Evola’s solution of avoiding any commitment to a Tradition was an unfortunate choice and serves as a bad example.
A writer can praise the virtues of loyalty and fidelity in the abstract, but they must be tested in practice. Hence, a commitment to an exoteric religion can be a serious challenge to one’s loyalty and fidelity. However, we accept all its dogmas and rites as an act of will. (Faith is an act of intellect commanded by the will.) The point is that we are not out to reform the exoteric religion but rather to bring to light the latent esoterism in it.
We often hear the complaint that the exoteric teachings are not good enough or that there is not esoteric teaching, and on and on. That, for us, is simply too passive; if you are not finding anything better, then you probably don’t deserve anything better. A more active approach is to stifle the complaining while mining the hidden gold nuggets of esoterism.
As a reminder, anyone who is thriving under the exoteric religion does not need anything here. Esoterism is purely optional and is intended for those to whom the exoteric religion, as conventionally expressed, lacks all power and meaning.
Paganism
As we have seen, pagans considered that there was a semi-divine founder of their tradition who established the spiritual, religious, and political practices that dominated their everyday life. By maintaining the worship of the ancestors, and appeasing or propitiating the gods, providence would continue to guide the people. Hence, we see that the Indo-Aryan Brahmans could trace their lineage back to 21 rishis, each Greek city had its own divine founder, and Rome was founded by a few noble families.
Hence, any attempts to revive Western paganism are counter-traditional, unless a demigod arrives to start a new family. It is not possible to just jump into an existing stream. The other issue is that in a pagan society, the bulk of the population would be serfs, slaves, or shudras. No revivalist cares to mention that.
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Cal Crutchlow is set to try the 2017 Honda RC213V during a post-race test at Aragon next week.
The 2017 engine was recently given its debut in the hands of factory riders Marc Marquez and Dani Pedrosa at Misano. HRC has now asked LCR's Crutchlow, already race-testing an alternative chassis, to provide his feedback.
"Yes I will," Crutchlow said of the 2017 bike test. "At the end of the day, that's why I'm here, I'm here to test for them. I'm testing for them permanently throughout this year.
"We won't be testing on the same day as the other guys [next week]. We'll be trying to compare some stuff for the other [Honda] guys to try, so they are not wasting their time. And that's it."
While unwilling to provide any further details, Crutchlow did confirm he will again be using the alternative RCV chassis this weekend.
"Our intention is to use the new chassis again," said the Brno winner. " I have two of them. I had two in the last race also. But we do back-to-back comparisons, and the problem is that you waste too much time doing that, you lose too much time in sessions when you could be concentrating on one or the other.
"But at the last race, I still believe that the chassis we had was not the best chassis for that track, but the front tyre didn't help us either. We know that Marc tried the harder front tyre when he went testing after, and it was a lot better.
"But I will stick with what I've got, because we want to see what it's like at this circuit. What do I have to lose? I'm not fighting for a championship. So I can afford to say yes or no for us and for Honda."
The chassis was raced by Pedrosa at Barcelona in June, but subsequently rejected by the Spaniard.
"I know that sure, Dani raced it in Barcelona, and he was also on the podium in Barcelona. But there are some negatives to it. Maybe at that track, the negatives were emphasized a little. And if I rode it at that track, maybe they would have been even more than Dani, because of size, weight, wings, etc.
"But I can go back at any time, I could have used it for one session and took it off, it's just that I wanted to continue with it, we have decided to continue with it. Plus it's good that we have mileage on it.
"We don't think it would work for Marc's style, maybe. But that doesn't mean that it won't in the end. I think there are some areas where it could be improved.
"It's stronger in one area than the other, but the other chassis is stronger in another area. So we're actually gaining something in one area but giving something up somewhere else. [The two chassis] are like the complete opposite. In the end, why not carry on and gather information for Honda, because they can see the data."
The Englishman believes Honda's strategy of gathering data from a range of different chassis designs will ultimately pay off.
"We're on three difference chassis now. Marc and Dani are essentially on the same chassis- a little different because of size and how they ride - and mine is a little bit different.
"Honestly, to me it's a good thing. It's about trying to improve and getting information. I go back to what happens with Ducati and [Michele] Pirro. He rides round all week and they are improving from it.
"Look at how much they have improved from the Avintia bike he rode, which was my [2014] bike; he finished nowhere. And look at how he went in Mugello and Misano on a [2016] factory bike. He finished two seconds behind Dovi at the last race.
"It shows how much of a step they have made from having somebody testing all the time. I think it's good what they're [HRC] doing, and we'll continue to try and help them, because in the end, I want the best result for me as well. Not necessarily on that weekend, but over time. But it's not that what they have is good and what I have is bad, it's just different."
Despite the lack of a clear performance advantage for one or other chassis, Crutchlow believes it is important to stick with one design and not switch back and forth.
"The guys in the garage don't have to sit and siphon through data, to have a look and say, can we give 1Nm more torque out of that corner because you have a tiny bit less wheelie, but then the lap before, you exited 3 km/h faster and had less wheelie. It's pointless. You are better off sticking with one chassis.
"You know the time when Dani wasn't going well? When he was chopping and changing things. But I really do think that Honda are doing a really good job with what they are doing."
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Exclusive: Read the first two chapters of Rick Riordan's next Trials of Apollo book, The Tyrant's Tomb
It’s not easy being a kid, and it’s especially hard being a god trapped in the body of a kid.
Over the course of three books so far, Rick Riordan’s series The Trials of Apollo has found the titular Greek god transformed into a mortal boy named Lester Papadopoulos and tasked with relighting Oracles that have gone dark. This has not been a painless journey; by the end of the previous book, The Burning Maze, Apollo/Lester had lost his friend Jason Grace. Jason had first appeared in Heroes of Olympus, one of Riordan’s previous series about the children of Greek and Roman myth.
EW can exclusively reveal that the fourth book in the series is called The Tyrant’s Tomb; check out the cover below. As the book begins, Apollo/Lester and his companion Meg McCaffrey are set on returning Jason’s body to Camp Jupiter. On the way, they run into a pretty nasty undead monster.
The Tyrant’s Tomb is set to hit stores on Sept. 24. Read the first two chapters below.
Image zoom Disney Press
Excerpt from The Tyrant’s Tomb by Rick Riordan
1.
There is no food here
Meg ate all the Swedish fish
Please get off my hearse
I believe in returning dead bodies.
It seems like a simple courtesy, doesn’t it? A warrior dies, you should do what you can to get their body back to their people for funerary rites. Maybe I’m old-fashioned. I am over four thousand years old. But I find it rude not to properly dispose of corpses.
Achilles during the Trojan War, for instance. Total pig. He chariot-dragged the body of the Trojan champion Hector around the walls of the city for days. Finally I convinced Zeus to pressure the big bully into returning Hector’s body to his parents so he could have a decent burial. I mean, come on. Have a little respect for the people you slaughter.
Then there was Oliver Cromwell’s corpse. I wasn’t a fan of the man, but please. First, the English bury him with honors. Then they decide they hate him, so they dig him up and “execute” his body. Then his head falls off the pike where it’s been impaled for decades and gets passed around from collector to collector for almost three centuries like a disgusting souvenir snow globe. Finally, in 1960, I whispered in the ears of some influential people, Enough, already. I am the god Apollo, and I order you to bury that thing. You’re grossing me out.
When it came to Jason Grace, my fallen friend and half brother, I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance. I would personally escort his coffin to Camp Jupiter and see him off with full honors.
That turned out to be a good call. What with the ghouls attacking us and everything.
Sunset turned San Francisco Bay into a cauldron of molten copper as our private plane landed at Oakland Airport. I say our private plane. The chartered trip was actually a parting gift from our friend Piper McLean and her movie star father. (Everyone should have at least one friend with a movie star parent.)
Waiting for us beside the runway was another surprise the McLeans must have arranged: a gleaming black hearse. Meg McCaffrey and I stretched our legs on the tarmac while the ground crew somberly removed Jason’s coffin from the Cessna’s storage bay. The polished mahogany box seemed to glow in the evening light. Its brass fixtures glinted red. I hated how beautiful it was. Death shouldn’t be beautiful.
The crew loaded it into the hearse, then transferred our luggage to the backseat. We didn’t have much: Meg’s back- pack and mine (courtesy of Marco’s Military Madness), my bow and quiver and ukulele, and a couple of sketchbooks and a poster-board diorama we’d inherited from Jason.
I signed some paperwork, accepted the flight crew’s condolences, then shook hands with a nice undertaker who handed me the keys to the hearse and walked away.
I stared at the keys, then at Meg McCaffrey, who was chewing the head off a Swedish fish. The plane had been stocked with half a dozen tins of the squishy red candy. Not anymore. Meg had single-handedly brought the Swedish sh ecosystem to the brink of collapse.
“I’m supposed to drive?” I wondered. “Is this a rental hearse?”
Meg shrugged. During our flight, she’d insisted on sprawling on the Cessna’s sofa, so her dark pageboy haircut was flattened against the side of her head. One rhinestone-studded point of her cat-eye glasses poked through her hair like a disco shark n.
The rest of her out t was equally disreputable: floppy red high-tops, threadbare yellow leggings, and the well-loved knee-length green frock she’d gotten from Percy Jackson’s mother. By well-loved, I mean the frock had been through so many battles, washed and mended so many times, it looked less like a piece of clothing and more like a deflated hot-air balloon. Around Meg’s waist was the pièce de résistance: her multi-pocketed gardening belt, because children of Demeter never leave home without one.
“I don’t have a driver’s license,” she said, as if I needed a reminder that my life was presently being controlled by a twelve-year-old. “I call shotgun.”
“Calling shotgun” didn’t seem appropriate for a hearse. Nevertheless, Meg skipped to the passenger’s side and climbed in. I got behind the wheel. Soon we were out of the airport and cruising north on I-880 in our rented black grief-mobile.
Ah, the Bay Area . . . I’d spent some happy times here. The vast misshapen geographic bowl was jam-packed with interesting people and places. I loved the green-and-golden hills, the fog-swept coastline, the glowing lacework of bridges and the crazy zigzag of neighborhoods shouldered up against one another like subway passengers at rush hour.
Back in the 1950s, I played with Dizzy Gillespie at Bop City in the Fillmore. During the Summer of Love, I hosted an impromptu jam session in Golden Gate Park with the Grateful Dead. (Lovely bunch of guys, but did they really need those fteen-minute-long solos?) In the 1980s, I hung out in Oakland with Stan Burrell—otherwise known as MC Hammer—as he pioneered pop rap. I can’t claim credit for Stan’s music, but I did advise him on his fashion choices. Those gold lamé parachute pants? My idea. You’re welcome, fashionistas.
Most of the Bay Area brought back good memories. But as I drove, I couldn’t help glancing to the northwest—toward Marin County and the dark peak of Mount Tamalpais. We gods knew the place as Mount Othrys, seat of the Titans. Even though our ancient enemies had been cast down, their palace destroyed, I could still feel the evil pull of the place—like a magnet trying to extract the iron from my now-mortal blood.
I did my best to shake the feeling. We had other problems to deal with. Besides, we were going to Camp Jupiter—friendly territory on this side of the bay. I had Meg for backup. I was driving a hearse. What could possibly go wrong?
The Nimitz Freeway snaked through the East Bay flatlands, past warehouses and docklands, strip malls and rows of dilapidated bungalows. To our right rose downtown Oakland, its small cluster of high-rises facing off against its cooler neighbor San Francisco across the Bay as if to proclaim We are Oakland! We exist, too!
Meg reclined in her seat, propped her red high-tops up on the dashboard, and cracked open her window.
“I like this place,” she decided.
“We just got here,” I said. “What is it you like? The abandoned warehouses? That sign for Bo’s Chicken ’N’ Waffles?”
“Nature.”
“Concrete counts as nature?”
“There’s trees, too. Plants flowering. Moisture in the air. The eucalyptus smells good. It’s not like . . .”
She didn’t need to finish her sentence. Our time in Southern California had been marked by scorching temperatures, extreme drought, and raging wild res—all thanks to the magical Burning Maze controlled by Caligula and his hate-crazed sorceress bestie, Medea. The Bay Area wasn’t experiencing any of those problems. Not at the moment, anyway.
We’d killed Medea. We’d extinguished the Burning Maze. We’d freed the Erythraean Sibyl and brought relief to the mortals and withering nature spirits of Southern California.
But Caligula was still very much alive. He and his co- emperors in the Triumvirate were still intent on controlling all means of prophecy, taking over the world, and writing the future in their own sadistic image. Right now, Caligula’s fleet of evil luxury yachts was making its way toward San Francisco to attack Camp Jupiter. I could only imagine what sort of hellish destruction the emperor would rain down on Oakland and Bo’s Chicken ’N’ Waffles.
Even if we somehow managed to defeat the Triumvirate, there was still that greatest Oracle, Delphi, under the control of my old nemesis Python. How I could defeat him in my present form as a sixteen-year-old weakling, I had no idea.
But, hey. Except for that, everything was fine. The eucalyptus smelled nice.
Traf c slowed at the I-580 interchange. Apparently, California drivers didn’t follow that custom of yielding to hearses out of respect. Perhaps they gured at least one of our passengers was already dead, so we weren’t in a hurry.
Meg toyed with her window controls, raising and lower- ing the glass. Reeee. Reeee. Reeee.
“You know how to get to Camp Jupiter?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“ ’Cause you said that about Camp Half-Blood.”
“We got there! Eventually.”
“Frozen and half-dead.”
“Look, the entrance to camp is right over there.” I waved vaguely at the Oakland Hills. “There’s a secret passage in the Caldecott Tunnel or something.”
“Or something?”
“Well, I haven’t actually ever driven to Camp Jupiter,” I admitted. “Usually I descend from the heavens in my glorious sun chariot. But I know the Caldecott Tunnel is the main entrance. There’s probably a sign. Perhaps a Demigods Only lane.”
Meg peered at me over the top of her glasses. “You’re the dumbest god ever.” She raised her window with a final Reeee. SHLOOMP!—a sound that reminded me uncomfortably of a guillotine blade.
We turned west onto Highway 24. The congestion eased as the hills loomed closer. The elevated lanes soared past neighborhoods of winding streets and tall conifers, white stucco houses clinging to the sides of grassy ravines.
A road sign promised CALDECOTT TUNNEL ENTRANCE, 2 MI. That should have comforted me. Soon, we’d pass through the borders of Camp Jupiter into a heavily guarded, magically camouflaged valley where an entire Roman legion could shield me from my worries, at least for a while.
Why, then, were the hairs on the back of my neck quivering like sea worms?
Something was wrong. It dawned on me that the uneas- iness I’d felt since we landed might not be the distant threat of Caligula, or the old Titan base on Mount Tamalpais, but something more immediate . . . something malevolent, and getting closer.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. Through the back window’s gauzy curtains, I saw nothing but traffic. But then, in the polished surface of Jason’s coffin lid, I caught the reflection of movement from a dark shape outside—as if a human-size object had just own past the side of the hearse.
“Oh. Meg?” I tried to keep my voice even. “Do you see anything unusual behind us?”
“Unusual like what?”
THUMP.
The hearse lurched as if we’d been hitched to a trailer full of scrap metal. Above my head, two foot-shaped impressions appeared in the upholstered ceiling.
“Something just landed on the roof,” Meg deduced.
“Thank you, Sherlock McCaffrey! Can you get it off?”
“Me? How?”
That was an annoyingly fair question. Meg could turn the rings on her middle fingers into wicked gold swords, but if she summoned them in close quarters, like the interior of the hearse, she a) wouldn’t have room to wield them, and b) might end up impaling me and/or herself.
CREAK. CREAK. The footprint impressions deepened as the thing adjusted its weight like a surfer on a board. It must have been immensely heavy to sink into the metal roof.
A whimper bubbled in my throat. My hands trembled on the steering wheel. I yearned for my bow and quiver in the backseat, but I couldn’t have used them. DWSPW, driving while shooting projectile weapons, is a big no-no, kids.
“Maybe you can open the window,” I said to Meg. “Lean out and tell it to go away.”
“Um, no.” (Gods, she was stubborn.) “What if you try to shake it off?”
Before I could explain that this was a terrible idea while traveling fifty miles an hour on a highway, I heard a sound like a pop-top aluminum can opening—the crisp pneumatic hiss of air through metal. A claw punctured the ceiling—a grimy white talon the size of a drill bit. Then another. And another. And another, until the upholstery was studded with ten pointy white spikes—just the right number for two very large hands.
“Meg?” I yelped. “Could you—?”
I don’t know how I might have finished that sentence. Protect me? Kill that thing? Check in the back to see if I have any spare undies?
I was rudely interrupted by the creature ripping open our roof like we were a birthday present.
Staring down at me through the ragged hole was a withered, ghoulish humanoid, its blue-black hide glistening like the skin of a house y, its eyes filmy white orbs, its bared teeth dripping saliva. Around its torso uttered a loincloth of greasy black feathers. The smell coming off it was more putrid than any dumpster—and believe me, I’d fallen into a few.
“FOOD!” it howled.
“Kill it!” I yelled at Meg.
“Swerve!” she countered.
One of the many annoying things about being incarcerated in my puny mortal body: I was Meg McCaffrey’s servant. I was bound to obey her direct commands. So when she yelled “swerve,” I yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. The hearse handled beautifully. It careened across three lanes of traffic, barreled straight through the guardrail, and plummeted into the canyon below.
2.
Dude, this isn’t cool
Dude just tried to eat my dude
That’s my dead dude, dude
I like flying cars. I prefer it when the car is actually capable of flight, however.
As the hearse achieved zero gravity, I had a few microseconds to appreciate the scenery below—a lovely little lake edged with eucalyptus trees and walking trails, a small beach on the far shore, where a cluster of evening picnickers relaxed on blankets.
Oh, good, some small part of my brain thought. Maybe we’ll at least land in the water.
Then we dropped—not toward the lake, but toward the trees.
A sound like Luciano Pavarotti’s high C in Don Giovanni issued from my throat. My hands glued themselves to the wheel.
As we plunged into the eucalypti, the ghoul disappeared from our roof—almost as if the tree branches had purposefully swatted him away. Other branches seemed to bend around the hearse, slowing our fall, dropping us from one leafy cough-drop-scented bough to another, until we hit the ground on all four wheels with a jarring thud. Too late to do any good, the airbags deployed, shoving my head against the backrest.
Yellow amoebas danced in my eyes. The taste of blood stung my throat. I clawed for the door handle, squeezed my way out between the airbag and the seat, and tumbled onto a bed of cool soft grass.
“Blergh,” I said.
I heard Meg retching somewhere nearby. At least that meant she was still alive. About ten feet to my left, water lapped at the shore of the lake. Directly above me, near the top of the largest eucalyptus tree, our ghoulish blueblack friend was snarling and writhing, trapped in a cage of branches.
I struggled to sit up. My nose throbbed. My sinuses felt like they were packed with menthol rub. “Meg?”
She staggered into view around the front of the hearse. Ring-shaped bruises were forming around her eyes—no doubt courtesy of the passenger-side airbag. Her glasses were intact but askew. “You suck at swerving.”
“Oh, my gods!” I protested. “You ordered me to—” My brain faltered. “Wait. How are we alive? Was that you who bent the tree branches?”
“Duh.” She flicked her hands, and her twin golden scimitars flashed into existence. Meg used them like ski poles to steady herself. “They won’t hold that monster much longer. Get ready.”
“What?” I yelped. “Wait. No. Not ready!”
I pulled myself to my feet with the driver’s-side door.
Across the lake, the picnickers had risen from their blankets. I suppose a hearse falling from the sky had gotten their attention. My vision was blurry, but something seemed odd about the group. . . . Was one of them wearing armor? Did another have goat legs?
Even if they were friendly, they were much too far away to help.
I limped to the hearse and yanked open the backseat door. Jason’s coffin appeared safe and secure in the rear bay. I grabbed my bow and quiver. My ukulele had vanished somewhere underneath the inflated airbags. I would have to do without it.
Above, the creature howled, thrashing in its branch cage.
Meg stumbled. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. Then the ghoul broke free and hurtled downward, landing only a few yards away. I hoped the creature’s legs might have broken on impact, but no such luck. It took a few steps, its feet punching wet craters in the grass, before it straightened and snarled, its pointy white teeth like tiny mirror-image picket fences.
“KILL AND EAT!” it screamed.
What a lovely singing voice. The ghoul could’ve fronted any number of Norwegian death metal groups.
“Wait!” My voice was shrill. “I—I know you.” I wagged my finger, as if that might crank-start my memory. Clutched in my other hand, my bow shook. The arrows rattled in my quiver. “H-hold on, it’ll come to me!”
The ghoul hesitated. I’ve always believed that most sentient creatures like to be recognized. Whether we are gods, people, or slavering ghouls in vulture-feather loincloths, we enjoy others knowing who we are, speaking our names, appreciating that we exist.
Of course, I was just trying to buy time. I hoped Meg would catch her breath, charge the creature, and slice it into putrid ghoul pappardelle. At the moment, though, it didn’t seem that she was capable of using her swords for anything but crutches. I supposed controlling gigantic trees could be tiring, but honestly, couldn’t she have waited to run out of steam until after she killed Vulture Diaper?
Wait. Vulture diaper . . . I took another look at the ghoul: its strange mottled blue-and-black hide, its milky eyes, its oversize mouth and tiny nostril slits. It smelled of rancid meat. It wore the feathers of a carrion eater . . .
“I do know you,” I realized. “You’re a eurynomos.”
I dare you to try saying you’re a eurynomos when your tongue is leaden, your body is shaking from terror, and you’ve just been punched in the face by a hearse’s airbag.
The ghoul’s lips curled. Silvery strands of saliva dripped from his chin. “YES! FOOD SAID MY NAME!”
“B-but you’re a corpse-eater!” I protested. “You’re supposed to be in the Underworld, working for Hades!”
The ghoul tilted its head as if trying to remember the words Underworld and Hades. It didn’t seem to like them as much as kill and eat.
“HADES GAVE ME OLD DEAD!” it shouted. “THE MASTER GIVES ME FRESH!”
“The master?”
“THE MASTER!”
I really wished Vulture Diaper wouldn’t scream. It didn’t have any visible ears, so perhaps it had poor volume control. Or maybe it just wanted to spray that gross saliva over as large a radius as possible.
“If you mean Caligula,” I ventured, “I’m sure he’s made you all sorts of promises, but I can tell you, Caligula is not—”
“HA! STUPID FOOD! CALIGULA IS NOT THE MASTER!”
“Not the master?”
“NOT THE MASTER!”
“MEG!” I shouted. Ugh. Now I was doing it.
“Yeah?” Meg wheezed. She looked fierce and warlike as she granny-walked toward me with her sword-crutches. “Gimme. Minute.”
It was clear she would not be taking the lead in this particular fight. If I let Vulture Diaper anywhere near her, it would kill her, and I found that idea 95 percent unacceptable.
“Well, eurynomos,” I said, “whoever your master is, you’re not killing and eating anyone today!”
I whipped an arrow from my quiver. I nocked it in my bow and took aim, as I had done literally millions of times before, but it wasn’t quite as impressive with my hands shaking and my knees wobbling.
Why do mortals tremble when they’re scared, anyway? It seems so counterproductive. If I had created humans, I would have given them steely determination and superhuman strength during moments of terror.
The ghoul hissed, spraying spit.
“SOON THE MASTER’S ARMIES WILL RISE AGAIN!” it bellowed. “WE WILL FINISH THE JOB! I WILL SHRED FOOD TO THE BONE, AND FOOD
WILL JOIN US!”
Food will join us? My stomach experienced a sudden loss of cabin pressure. I remembered why Hades loved these eurynomoi so much. The slightest cut from their claws caused a wasting disease in mortals. And when those mortals died, they rose again as what the Greeks called vrykolakas—or, in TV parlance, zombies.
That wasn’t the worst of it. If a eurynomos managed to devour the flesh from a corpse, right down to the bones, that skeleton would reanimate as the fiercest, toughest kind of undead warrior. Many of them served as Hades’s elite palace guards, which was a job I did not want to apply for.
“Meg?” I kept my arrow trained on the ghoul’s chest. “Back away. Do not let this thing scratch you.”
“But—”
“Please,” I begged. “For once, trust me.”
Vulture Diaper growled. “FOOD TALKS TOO MUCH! HUNGRY!”
It charged me.
I shot.
The arrow found its mark—the middle of the ghoul’s chest—but it bounced off like a rubber mallet against metal. The Celestial-bronze point must have hurt, at least. The ghoul yelped and stopped in its tracks, a steaming puckered wound on its sternum. But the monster was still very much alive. Perhaps if I managed twenty or thirty shots at that exact same spot, I could do some real damage.
With trembling hands, I nocked another arrow. “Th-that was just a warning!” I bluffed. “The next one will kill!”
Vulture Diaper made a gurgling noise deep in its throat. I hoped it was a delayed death rattle. Then I realized it was only laughing. “WANT ME TO EAT DIFFERENT FOOD FIRST? SAVE YOU FOR DESSERT?”
It uncurled its claws, gesturing toward the hearse.
I didn’t understand. I refused to understand. Did it want to eat the airbags? The upholstery?
Meg got it before I did. She screamed in rage.
The creature was an eater of the dead. We were driving
a hearse.
“NO!” Meg shouted. “Leave him alone!”
She lumbered forward, raising her swords, but she was in no shape to face the ghoul. I shouldered her aside, putting myself between her and the creature, and fired my arrows again and again.
They sparked off the creature’s blue-black hide, leaving steaming, annoyingly nonlethal wounds. Vulture Diaper staggered toward me, snarling in pain, its body twitching from the impact of each hit.
It was five feet away.
Two feet away, its claws splayed to shred my face.
Somewhere behind me, a female voice shouted, “HEY!”
The sound distracted Vulture Diaper just long enough for me to fall courageously on my butt. I scrambled away from the ghoul’s claws.
Vulture Diaper blinked, confused by its new audience. About ten feet away, a ragtag assortment of fauns and dryads, perhaps a dozen total, were all attempting to hide behind one gangly pink-haired young woman in Roman legionnaire armor.
The girl fumbled with some sort of projectile weapon. Oh, dear. A manubalista. A Roman heavy crossbow. Those things were awful. Slow. Powerful. Notoriously unreliable. The bolt was set. She cranked the handle, her hands shaking as badly as mine.
Meanwhile, to my left, Meg groaned in the grass, trying to get back on her feet. “You pushed me,” she complained, by which I’m sure she meant Thank you, Apollo, for saving my life.
The pink-haired girl raised her manubalista. With her long, wobbly legs, she reminded me of a baby giraffe. “G-get away from them,” she ordered the ghoul.
Vulture Diaper treated her to its trademarked hissing and spitting. “MORE FOOD! YOU WILL ALL JOIN THE KING’S DEAD!”
“Dude.” One of the fauns nervously scratched his belly under his PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF BERKELEY T-shirt. “That’s not cool.”
“Not cool,” several of his friends echoed.
“YOU CANNOT OPPOSE ME, ROMAN!” the ghoul snarled. “I HAVE ALREADY TASTED THE FLESH OF YOUR COMRADES! AT THE BLOOD MOON, YOU WILL JOIN THEM—”
THWUNK.
An Imperial gold crossbow bolt materialized in the center of Vulture Diaper’s chest. The ghoul’s milky eyes widened in surprise. The Roman legionnaire looked just as stunned.
“Dude, you hit it,” said one of the fauns, as if this offended his sensibilities.
The ghoul crumbled into dust and vulture feathers. The bolt clunked to the ground.
Meg limped to my side. “See? That’s how you’re supposed to kill it.”
“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled.
We faced our unlikely savior.
The pink-haired girl frowned at the pile of dust, her chin quivering as if she might cry. She muttered, “I hate those things.”
“Y-you’ve fought them before?” I asked.
She looked at me like this was an insultingly stupid question.
One of the fauns nudged her. “Lavinia, dude, ask who these guys are.”
“Um, right.” Lavinia cleared her throat. “Who are you?”
I struggled to my feet, trying to regain some composure. “I am Apollo. This is Meg. Thank you for saving us.”
Lavinia stared. “Apollo, as in—”
“It’s a long story. We’re transporting the body of our friend, Jason Grace, to Camp Jupiter for burial. Can you help us?”
Lavinia’s mouth hung open. “Jason Grace . . . is dead?”
Before I could answer, from somewhere across Highway 24 came a wail of rage and anguish.
“Um, hey,” said one of the fauns, “don’t those ghoul things usually hunt in pairs?”
Lavinia gulped. “Yeah. Let’s get you guys to camp. Then we can talk about”—she gestured uneasily at the hearse—“who is dead, and why.”
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A China Southern Airlines flight was stuck in Shanghai for five hours after an elderly woman threw coins into the engine for “good luck.”
The 80-year-old stopped on the tarmac to make “blessings” as she was boarding her Guangzhou-bound flight and then threw nine coins into the engine turbine, according to the Independent.
Her “good luck” ritual prompted concerned passengers to alert airline staff, who conducted a full examination of the engine and evacuated 150 passengers.
Staff members found that one coin had landed in the engine and expressed concerns over the potential damage it could have caused had it been sucked into the mechanism.
The woman was later detained by police, the airline said.
“After investigation the involved passenger surnamed Qiu said she threw coins to pray for safety. According to Qiu’s neighbor, Qiu believes in Buddhism,” police said, according to the Daily Mail.
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Germany hunts bomb suspect in Chemnitz Published duration 8 October 2016
image copyright AP image caption Police failed to find the suspect in a raid on an apartment
Police in the eastern German city of Chemnitz have detained three people as they continue a search for a suspect believed to be planning a bomb attack.
Acting on a tip-off from the domestic intelligence service, police raided a flat but failed to find the suspect, Jaber al-Bakr, 22, who was born in Syria. He remains on the run.
Several hundred grams of "highly volatile" explosives were found at the property, investigators said.
They were destroyed by a bomb squad.
About 100 people were evacuated from the block of flats as the explosives were moved for a controlled detonation.
Two people in contact with Mr al-Bakr were detained at Chemnitz railway station and another person was detained near the flat in the Fritz-Heckert neighbourhood, Kathlen Zink of Saxony's criminal investigation office said.
She said they were suspected of being "linked with the suspect somehow" and had been taken in for questioning.
image copyright AFP image caption A robot capable of disarming bombs has been deployed at Chemnitz railway station
image copyright Getty Images image caption Police check cars at Berlin's Schoenefeld
The "where, when, how and why" of the planned attack remained unknown according to Tom Bernhardt, a spokesman for the same office.
He said the explosives in the flat were "relatively well hidden".
Saxony police have released pictures of Damascus-born Mr al-Bakr wearing a black, hooded sweatshirt with a colourful print.
They have not provided any information about how long he had been in Germany.
They have urged anyone with information about him to come forward.
image copyright @PolizeiSachsen
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's popularity has waned since her decision to open the borders to refugees and migrants last year, admitting more than a million people, many of them Syrian.
In July, an axe attack on a train near Wuerzburg and a suicide bombing in Ansbach wounded 20 people and were claimed by so-called Islamic State (IS).
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This article is more than 6 years old
This article is more than 6 years old
The Liverpool manager, Brendan Rodgers, believes Dejan Lovren will fill a leadership void at Anfield after the Croatia international centre-back completed a £20m move from Southampton.
Lovren is the third player to join Liverpool from the Saints this summer, following the signings of Adam Lallana and Rickie Lambert, and his capture takes the club’s pre-season spending to approximately £80m.
The 25-year-old started all three of Croatia’s World Cup matches in Brazil and Rodgers believes Lovren will add something that has been missing at the heart of the Liverpool defence.
“I think he’s a really commanding centre-half,” said Rodgers, on the official club website. “I’ve said since we lost Jamie Carragher that we needed that leadership. He’s a player that gives us that.
“He’s very strong, very commanding, but he can play. I’ve been really impressed with him.
“I watched him at Lyon, he came into the Premier League with Southampton and I know their players thought he was a big driving force for them and kept them defensively solid.
“He had a really good World Cup. I think he’s a player that can still improve, still develop as he’s in his mid-20s. He’s someone I’m really looking forward to working with.”
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FILE PHOTO: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks with reporters following the weekly policy luncheons on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 7, 2019. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that “nobody wins a trade war” but he hoped President Donald Trump’s tactics in negotiations China would put the United States in a better position to move trade talks forward with Beijing.
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Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band logged what was, according to the global guardians of such lore, their longest recorded set ever at Helsinki’s Olympiastadion this past July 31: four hours and six minutes.
Fans of the Boss can’t necessarily bank on a similar marathon at the Rogers Centre this Friday night, but they can more or less bank on . . . well . . . a marathon. Marathons are what Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band do for a living, after all, and have done for a living for years. They’ve staked their reputation on delivering concerts that habitually extend well beyond the accepted, industry-standard running time of 90 minutes or two hours.
That kind of dogged commitment to giving the people what they want doesn’t come without a serious commitment to pseudo-athletic musicianship from everyone onstage, nor without a willingness to go the extra mile financially when concert-hall curfews — typically set at 11 p.m. in this town — are blown through and local venue and union fees start piling up to the tune of tens and/or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If a prudently early start time isn’t observed going in, that kind of exhaustive stage show can actually gnaw into the headliner’s nightly takeaway from the show’s net profits in a fairly big way.
The 62-year-old Springsteen, who has been employing a 16-piece band in service of some of the longest shows of his career on the summer leg of his transatlantic Wrecking Ball tour, is obviously successful enough after more than 40 years on the touring trail that he can afford to crash past the three-hour mark on a regular basis.
Indeed, he’d be offending his tremendously loyal fan base if he dared sell it short even just once. Such a “display of energy and its depletion is part of what is expected of him,” a recent New Yorker profile noted, going on to quote Springsteen on concert length: “there is a commercial exchange, and that ticket is my handshake. That ticket is me promising you that it’s gonna be all the way every chance I get. That’s my contract. And ever since I was a young guy I took that seriously.”
“With the Boss, he’s maybe even painted himself into a bit of a corner,” ventures Toronto-based booking agent Jack Ross, who counts Bruce Cockburn, Sarah Harmer, Kathleen Edwards and Sam Roberts among his clients. “He’d probably disappoint fans if he went out and did a long show by anybody else’s standards that was two or two-and-a-half hours long.
“It has to be exhausting, although I do emphasize that for the artist, it is the very best time of their day . . . For a touring musician, life is sorta boring and there’s a lot of drudgery involved. The very best part of their day is the time when they’re onstage.
“That’s sort of their reward for driving around in a van or a tour bus and being away from home and having to talk about themselves all the time.”
There is, nevertheless, a fine line to be walked between delighting in the communal ecstasy of delivering a crowd a boffo performance for as long as you can sustain it and overstaying your welcome.
The audience — Boss fans probably in particular — tends to have jobs to face tomorrow and kids to attend to tonight. Is it really fair to make them stay for over three hours until “Born to Run,” which is typically deep in the encores?
Mind you, as most working musicians will tell you, there’s no hard-and-fast rule for figuring out how long you should stay up there.
“I really don’t want to ever cross that line, and that’s definitely something we’ve thought about lots,” says Jimmy Shaw, guitarist for Toronto’s Metric. “I’m not a fan of the two-hour show, man. It’s too much f---in’ rock.
“But it’s kind of band dependent. When you’re getting in a car with a bunch of your college buddies in Connecticut and driving to, like, a jam-band show in Maine, you kinda want it to go for three-and-a-half hours because you drove a long way and you’re on some really good drugs and it’s really fun, y’know?
“But when you’re seeing the Strokes play, you kinda want it to be 51 minutes because they’re cooler than you and you kinda want to leave with that impression that they’re off to somewhere way cooler than you could ever get into.”
Shaw notes that Metric feels compelled to deliver a longer set now that it’s popular enough to charge $40 rather than $15 for a ticket to its shows, which is no doubt also a consideration for a lifetime champion of the working class such as Springsteen. Three-and-a-half hours of rock ‘n’ roll for your $130 ticket to the Rogers Centre is an inarguably good deal compared to 90 per cent of the tours that come to Toronto charging similar prices.
After 15 years or so of attending rock shows for a living, mind you, this writer tends to tune out after 45 minutes or an hour. Three hours is a tough slog — although I’ve swooned through a couple of Cure shows that went on for three hours and barely even noticed the time passing. Obviously how much music one can take in one sitting is dependent on the depth of one’s personal fanhood.
Still, there aren’t a lot of artists outside the Grateful Dead/Phish jam-band circuit — where 20-minute guitar solos, let alone three-and-a-half-hour shows, are the norm — who can get away with such excess.
“You have to have two things,” opines Steve Jordan, overseer of the Polaris Music Prize and an enormous Springsteen fan. “One is you have to have hits, and two is you have to have albums. If you are a pop-hit act, you can have 20 hits or more and that would probably be a pretty decent show.
“But I think what keeps people’s attention for that long is not just the excitement of Bruce playing ‘Glory Days,’ but also him going back to his first couple of records or even playing outtakes that didn’t make the records, of keeping the true fans’ attention as well as giving the less engaged fans what they want, as well.
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“Prince is the same way. You’re gonna hear ‘Purple Rain,’ but hopefully you’re also gonna hear ‘Erotic City’ or ‘DMSR’ or something from The Black Album. Those are the ones, I think, who get away with it, the ones who can go even deeper than an album legacy or a legacy of hits — into a legacy of, like, B-sides and enough greatness that it goes deeper than even what ended up on the records.
“And also, they have to be f---ing amazing live bands.”
The latter statement is also true: few bands possess the physical ability to put it out there for hours on end the way Springsteen and the E-Street Band are celebrated for doing it night after night.
As Mike Levine, bassist for storied CanCon rockers Triumph — whose energetic sets historically topped out around the 100-minute mark — puts it: “We’d be dead. We couldn’t exist with sets that long.”
The key, says Levine, is not only just performing within one’s own limits, however, but knowing how much the audience can take, as well.
“You pace a show, right?” he says. “If you looked at it like a graph, you’ve gotta come out big and keep going big, then you keep it going and kinda settle the audience down and go through whatever material you really want them to pay attention to, and then you start peaking.
“You get that graph moving higher towards the end of the show and then in the encore you take them higher and then, when they’re really, really high, that’s when you go: ‘See ya later. Bye. Thanks for coming.’ You want to leave them buzzing on their way out as opposed to saying: ‘Oh, God, I’m so exhausted.’
“Then again, if you’re Bruce and you’ve got a huge body of work and your fans absolutely idolize you, you can do whatever the heck you want for those ticket prices.”
The artist's cut of the proceeds will suffer if the show goes long, but the cost varies — it can be as little as $500 for a solo act playing in a theatre, or tens of thousands in a stadium with a massive and complicated production. The crew working the performance get paid a premium, overtime rate for an extended show, and if the crew loading out your gear has to work past midnight, the artists gets dinged again.
But if your fans absolutely idolize you, too, it’s hard to give up the spotlight. PS I Love You frontman Paul Saulnier, for instance, figures no one wants more than 45 minutes of what he has to offer, but there have been occasions where he and drummer Ben Nelson have felt compelled to go long.
“Only a couple of times have we played over an hour and that’s just because we had a crowd that was just not getting enough,” he says. “But it’s happened a few times for us where the crowd sort of won’t let us stop. And that’s a crazy feeling. And I’ll be that probably happens every night to Bruce Springsteen. If he just wants to give people what they want, I’m cool with that.”
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EDITORS AND LIBRARIANS: KILL FROM YOUR SYSTEMS AND ARCHIVES NYHK102 SLUGGED OBIT LINDA BROWN ON MARCH 26, 2018. THE IMAGE DOES NOT SHOW LINDA BROWN. - FILE - This undated file photo, location unknown, shows Linda Brown. Brown, the Kansas girl at the center of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down racial segregation in schools, has died at age 75. Peaceful Rest Funeral Chapel of Topeka confirmed that Linda Brown died Sunday, March 25, 2018. (AP Photo/File)
EDITORS AND LIBRARIANS: KILL FROM YOUR SYSTEMS AND ARCHIVES NYHK102 SLUGGED OBIT LINDA BROWN ON MARCH 26, 2018. THE IMAGE DOES NOT SHOW LINDA BROWN. - FILE - This undated file photo, location unknown, shows Linda Brown. Brown, the Kansas girl at the center of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down racial segregation in schools, has died at age 75. Peaceful Rest Funeral Chapel of Topeka confirmed that Linda Brown died Sunday, March 25, 2018. (AP Photo/File)
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Linda Brown, who as a Kansas girl was at the center of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down racial segregation in schools, has died at age 75.
Her father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll the family in an all-white school in Topeka, and the case was sparked when he and several black families were turned away. The NAACP’s legal arm brought the lawsuit to challenge segregation in public schools, and Oliver Brown became lead plaintiff in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court that ended school segregation.
Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel at NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., said in a statement that Linda Brown is one of a band of heroic young people who, along with her family, courageously fought to end the ultimate symbol of white supremacy — racial segregation in public schools.
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“She stands as an example of how ordinary schoolchildren took center stage in transforming this country. It was not easy for her or her family, but her sacrifice broke barriers and changed the meaning of equality in this country,” Ifill said.
Peaceful Rest Funeral Chapel of Topeka confirmed Linda Brown’s age and that she died Sunday afternoon. No cause of death was released. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Her sister, Cheryl Brown Henderson, founding president of The Brown Foundation, confirmed the death to The Topeka Capital-Journal . She declined comment from the family.
The landmark case was brought before the Supreme Court by the NAACP’s legal arm to challenge segregation in public schools. It began after several black families in Topeka were turned down when they tried to enroll their children in white schools near their homes. The lawsuit was joined with cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that separating black and white children was unconstitutional because it denied black children the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. “In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”
The Brown decision overturned the court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which on May 18, 1896, established a “separate but equal” doctrine for black’s in public facilities.
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“Sixty-four years ago, a young girl from Topeka, Kansas sparked a case that ended segregation in public schools in America,” Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer said in a statement. “Linda Brown’s life reminds us that by standing up for our principles and serving our communities we can truly change the world. Linda’s legacy is a crucial part of the American story and continues to inspire the millions who have realized the American dream because of her.”
Brown v. Board was a historic marker in the Civil Rights movement, likely the most high-profile case brought by Thurgood Marshall and the lawyers of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in their decade-plus campaign to chip away at the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
“Her legacy is not only here but nationwide,” Kansas Deputy Education Commissioner Dale Dennis said.
Oliver Brown, for whom the case was named, became a minister at a church in Springfield, Missouri. He died of a heart attack in 1961. Linda Brown and her sister founded in 1988 the Brown Foundation for Educational Equity, Excellence and Research.
The foundation says on its webpage that it was established as a living tribute to the attorneys, community organizers and plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court decision. Its mission is to build upon their work and keep the ideals of the decision relevant for future generations.
“We are to be grateful for the family that stood up for what is right,” said Democratic state Rep. Annie Kuether of Topeka. “That made a difference to the rest of the world.”
___
This story has been corrected to show that Linda Brown was 75, not 76.
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UPDATE: This article has been ammended. Previously we reported 8chan to have been set up during the GamerGate controvosy. This has now been changed as 8chan was set up in October 2013.
In the wake of all the hate and harassment that’s being going on over the internet in the last few months, artist financial support website Patreon has made some adjustments to its community guidelines to take a stand against bullying, harassment, threats, and hate speech. Not only do the new rules disallow such things as the doxing of Patreon users, but also bans users raising money to fund the likes of pornography and harmful images.
8chan, a messaging board which was a popular meeting ground during the GamerGate controversy after the subject was bannned from 4chan, has been informed that it can no longer use Patreon to fund its hosting bills since the site is frequently home to materials such as illustarted child exploitation, paedophillia encouragement, and self-harm imagery. 8chan must either change, or leave Patreon by the end of the month. In response, the 8chan Patreon page is now requesting funds to help look after Hachi the cat instead.
8chan owner Fredrick Brennan was contacted by Patreon yesterday in a message that Brennan published to his Patreon page.
“Fredrick,
We understand your dedication to free speech in principle, but 8chan is currently being used for a number of activities that violate our new community guidelines. Because we’ve read your interviews and done significant research on 8chan’s story and philosophy, we are aware that you, yourself, don’t verbally support a lot of the activities on 8chan. It sounds like free speech is a core value for you, and you’re willing to prioritize that principle above all else.
While we understand your commitment to free speech, we will not allow 8chan to continue using Patreon, as several boards facilitate the distribution of harmful content and activity, such as illustrated child exploitation imagery. Other violations include facilitating the promotion and/or encouragement to commit self harm, and facilitating the promotion and/or encouragement of pedophilia practices. While we are aware that illustrated child exploitation imagery is not illegal in the United States, we take a strict stance, regardless of the law, on the usage of Patreon to fund or facilitate its distribution.
Because 8chan, in its current state, violates our community guidelines, we will be removing your page from Patreon at the end of the month, after the next payments cycle. If you feel like our decision was based on false information, if you’d like to change 8Chans content policies, or if you have further questions, please feel free to email us back.
-The Patreon Team”
The whole 8chan Patreon page is now dedicated to ‘Making videos of Hachi the cat’. It still retains all the supporters it had under the 8chan banner, and pulls in over $1,500 per month.
“Cats are great therapy, and every open source developer should have one,” explains Brennan on the page.
“Unfortunately, due to my debilitating disease, I cannot care for a cat by myself and must hire an attendant.
Even simple things like opening tuna cans and changing litter are impossible for me. As a reward, I will upload one video of Hachi every week and also document her progress and adventures in the world!
I hope that you will help me take care of my cat!”
Brennan states that he realises that over a thousand dollars is a lot to look after a cat, and will donate any remaining fund to charity. With the reputation 8chan has, this very probably means that the messaging board’s hosting costs are the ‘charity’ in question. The whole thing is clearly a joke, and how Patreon will proceed to deal with Brennan is as of yet unclear.
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David Thorne, the hilarious fella who turned one co-worker’s request that he design a missing pet poster into an insta-classic web meme full of dry sarcasm, doesn’t restrict his wry written responses to cat ladies. He also helpfully responds to his fans that call him a “foggot.”
Thorne is the man behind the website 27b/6, where innocent correspondence between he and other human beings quickly delves into the nonsensical. His exchanges are — and I don’t use this term lightly — laugh-out-loud funny. So when, earlier this month, a one George Lewis emailed David a one-line message (“I have read your website and it is obviously that your a foggot”), I knew I’d soon be peeing myself.
Explains David:
Sometimes people email me to tell me how their day is going, other times they email me to tell me that I am a dickhead and my website is stupid which I am already aware of due to many preceding emails stating the same thing. I don’t harbor behind a fake name and my email address is clearly listed so it is a simple process for people like George to express their opinion to me but as I never initiate an email correspondence, simply reply, I am not always sure why they bother. If I was hetroflexible, I am pretty sure I would already be aware of the fact and if I’m not, stating that I am is in error so either way it is a pointless exercise. I don’t email random people telling them that they have a pet cat named Charles on the off chance they do and are not aware of it.
Read from the top on down.
From: George Lewis
Date: Thursday 2 September 2010 6.51pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: No Subject
I have read your website and it is obviously that your a foggot.
From: David Thorne
Date: Thursday 2 September 2010 8.07pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: Re: No Subject
Dear George,
Thank you for your email. While I have no idea what a foggot is, I will assume it is a term of endearment and appreciate you taking time out from calculating launch trajectories or removing temporal lobe tumors to contact me with such. I have attached a signed photo as per your request.
Regards, David.
From: George Lewis
Date: Thursday 2 September 2010 8.49pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: No Subject
I didnt ask for a photo fag. and I meant faggot you homo. im not a fan so you can shove your signed photo up your ass. You would probably enjoy that. LOL!!!! Go suck your boyfriends dick in a gay club.
From: David Thorne
Date: Thursday 2 September 2010 9.17pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: Re: Re: Re: No Subject
Dear George,
While I do not have a boyfriend, I do have a friend who is homosexual and I once asked him “Do you ever think about having sex with me because you are gay?” to which he replied “Do you ever think about having sex with Rosie O’Donnell because you are straight? Same thing.” If I was inclined to have a boyfriend, I would select one my height and weight to save having to readjust the driver’s seat position. I am not interested in doubling my wardrobe as I wear the same outfit everyday to facilitate speedy identification should I ever be in a boating accident.
Although I have never been to a gay club as such, when I was about ten, a friend and I constructed a club house in my backyard using timber stolen from a building site down the street. Our club, which we named ‘The Kiss Club’ due to a certain band being popular at the time, employed an intensive entry exam in which the applicant had to know all the words to Love Gun and not be a girl. As we had no other friends and knew no girls apart from my sister, this made sense at the time. The next day after school, having managed to recruit several new members by promising laminated membership cards and changing the entry exam to ‘knowing the names of the band members’, we all rode to my place to partricipate in our first club meeting only to discover my sister, outraged by the ‘no girls’ rule and armed with four litres of paint left over from a recent bedroom redesign, had painted the clubhouse pink and added ‘ing’ to the end of the word ‘Kiss’.
Also, despite your inference, I have managed, up to this point, to avoid putting most things in my bottom. Primarily due to the possibility that I might enjoy it, get carried away, and move on to watermelons or midsize family autos. When I was about eight, I drew a face on my hand and practiced kissing it, which I will admit is a little gay, and I have often thought there would be advantages to homosexuality such as Abercrombie & Fitch reward points, successful couch fabric selection capabilities and the gift of dance. With or without a top on. This would come in extremely useful if I needed five hundred dollars and saw a poster advertising a dance competition with a first prize of five hundred dollars.
Regards, David.
From: George Lewis
Date: Thursday 2 September 2010 9.33pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: No Subject
If you livd close by gaycunt I would be over your place with five friends tonight.
From: David Thorne
Date: Thursday 2 September 2010 10.08pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No Subject
Dear George,
I knew we would get along well. We have only known each other for one day and already you are organising a party. I am not sure where Gaycunt is but if I did “livd close by” to it, I would definitely be up for that.
We could all sit outside on banana lounges discussing the best way to rebuild a 4WD transmission and agree, through shared stories of conquests supporting our assertions, that there is no basis to the proposition that those least assured of their persuasions are the first to condemn others for theirs. Although the ideal would be for everyone to be capable of love without fear, restraint, or obligation, clearly this does not apply to homosexuals.
At no time during the night would you comment on how much you liked my Abercrombie & Fitch pants or ask “is that a Marcel Breuer couch? I love the fabric selection” and when we danced, we would all leave our tops on.
Regards, David.
From: George Lewis
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 1.18pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No Subject
no fag I live in Charleston west virginia the best country in the world. I wasnt sying it would be a party. we would smash your fucking skull in and if you are calling me a fag you can get fucked becasue I have a girlfriend.
From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 1.56pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: Yeehaw y’all
Dear George,
Is she also your sister? I checked out her photos on your Facebook page and while she is not exactly my type, I accept that other people have different preferences. Even when those preferences include facial tattoos and stretch pants constructed from sufficient material to shelter a small village. And their livestock. Some men enjoy dancing with other men without their tops on while others prefer the company of a woman two KFC family buckets away from upsetting the planet’s rotational axis.
I read somewhere that Eskimos prefer women of girth as it provides warmth at night. I have seen the size of those igloos though and there is no way your girlfriend would make it through the opening. You could probably just construct one around her and despite the hassle of having to trudge out into the snow every day to catch and prepare the eighty seals required to maintain her mass, it would be like a kiln in there.
If I were an Eskimo, I would build my igloo next to a supermarket or on a tropical beach.
Regards, David.
From: George Lewis
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 2.01pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Yeehaw y’all
She isnt fat you fag. and that she got that tattoo is a teardrop becasue her family is dead.
From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 2.06pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: Re: Re: Yeehaw y’all
Did she eat them?
From: George Lewis
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 2.32pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Yeehaw y’all
Get fucked fag her family they died in a traffic accident. have some respect. Go put some more gel in your hair and dye it balck like a emo skinny fag. And how can you see my facebook page pictures?
From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 3.02pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yeehaw y’all
Dear George,
Yes, I have heard those motorhomes can be a bitch to steer. Especially around tight corners during a police chase or moonshine run.
I will concede to fifty percent of your description of me as a “skinny fag” being correct. If our bodies are temples, mine would be a heavily shelled Iranian mosque express. To rectify this, I have instigated a fitness and weight training regime. Once a week I carry two heavy garbage bags out to the sidewalk and jog back. As this week was my first session and I did not want to over exert myself, I took the car. Obviously with a few breaks in between to re-hydrate and stretch.
Although hardly an emo, I understand their pain. If I looked in the mirror and saw an anorexic version of Pugsly Adams staring back at me I would probably start cutting myself as well. I will admit to having dyed my hair once though. The product, misrepresented as ‘Natural Black’ instead of ‘Astro Boy black’, turned my hair as dark as an adequate simile describing just how black it actually was and stained my forehead and ears purple. In an attempt to blend the colour, I rubbed the remainder of the mixture onto my face, figuring it might look like a tan. I spent the following two weeks telling people that I could not leave the house due to agoraphobia, an illness usually self-diagnosed by the unemployed as an excuse to stay home and masturbate or play Wii.
I have access to your Facebook page due to the friend request you accepted from the Oscar Wilde profile I constructed yesterday. I assumed the name would hold no relevance to you and, consistency being the last refuge of the unimaginative, I typed ‘Redneck wearing baseball cap’ into google images to locate a photo you would identify and feel comfortable with.
Regards, David.
From: George Lewis
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 4.48pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Yeehaw y’all
Thats fraud. I will report you to the police and to facebook fag. i would shoot you in the face with my .32 if you were here right now.
From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 5.19pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: tarded
Dear George,
Yes, I’m fairly certain there is a worldwide criminal investigation network dedicated solely to bringing those who construct fake Facebook profiles to justice. I believe the punishment is tar and feathering in most parts of the world except West Virginia where you are stripped naked, oiled up and chased around a paddock while wearing a pig mask.
Apparently in West Virginia, this is also known as a ‘date’. Variations include substituting the paddock with a motorhome or the person with an actual pig. Or in your case, both.
Also, as it is probably far more acceptable for men in West Virginia to hold guns than hands, I will assume the term ‘shooting me in the face with your .32’ is not a euphemism.
Regards, David.
From: George Lewis
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 7.04pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: tarded
Ive deleted you from my facebook and reported you. i hope you die of aids fag. Dont bothering emailing me again becasue I wont read it.
From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 7.12pm
To: George Lewis
Subject: dneck
Yes you will.
From: George Lewis
Date: Friday 3 September 2010 7.16pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: dneck
No I fucking wont fag
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Israelis call for the release of Jonathan Pollard in 2013 | Getty Opinion American traitor, Israeli hero The Pollard case shows that the interests of Israel and America are often sharply at odds.
The U.S. government’s announcement that Jonathan Pollard will soon gain his release from prison is cause for celebration in Israel, and understandably so. There, Pollard is considered a patriot and hero. By engaging in espionage on Israel’s behalf, he placed himself at great risk. Once caught, he endured considerable punishment — 30 years in a federal penitentiary. Pollard has more than earned the gala welcome that will no doubt be his, if and when he arrives at Ben Gurion Airport.
Americans have equal reason to classify Pollard as a despicable traitor, who in spending all those years behind bars got precisely what he deserved. Pollard betrayed the country of his birth and is no more worthy of sympathy than convicted spies like Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen or John Anthony Walker. Whether Pollard acted out of love for Israel or from greed — both motives were seemingly in play — hardly matters. And although his legions of defenders contend that he caused no actual harm to the United States, senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials, past and present, vehemently disagree.
This difference of opinion regarding the about-to-be-sprung Pollard presents Americans with a teachable moment. Sadly, we can count on American politicians of both parties to close their eyes to what that moment has to offer. Here is an opportunity sure to go to waste.
Israelis have no problem grasping why their take on Pollard and ours should differ. They fully understand that on many occasions U.S. and Israeli security interests are at odds. And when that occurs they do not doubt what comes first. It’s Americans, insisting that “no daylight” exists between the United States and Israel, who perpetuate a false understanding of this relationship — a pretense that may benefit Israel, but certainly does not benefit the United States.
Their hero is simultaneously our traitor because the prerequisites of Israeli safety and well-being differ from the prerequisites of American safety and well-being.
That the government of Israel paid an employee of the United States government to provide it with exceedingly sensitive intelligence is but one example of Israeli actions that should puncture that pretense. Israeli officials make no bones about the fact that they will do anything necessary to ensure the security of the Jewish state. The Pollard case reminds us that they mean what they say, even to the point of compromising the security of their principal (and perhaps only) ally.
Their hero is simultaneously our traitor because the prerequisites of Israeli safety and well-being differ from the prerequisites of American safety and well-being. Those differences, on matters ranging from nuclear weapons to settlement expansion to the creation of a Palestinian state, are anything but trivial or cosmetic. They are, in fact, fundamental, comparable to Washington’s differences with Moscow over Ukraine or with Beijing over the South China Sea.
State security
On all matters touching on security, Israel plays hardball. It does not view itself as beholden to the United States or bound by American concerns, a reality that Israeli governments regularly affirm in word and deed. That seriousness ought to command respect. It should also elicit an equally serious American response. That response should take the form of a candid acknowledgment that where U.S. and Israeli security interests diverge, the United States need not be bound by Israeli concerns.
In negotiating a nuclear accord with Iran, of course, the Obama administration has done just that, which is what makes the deal such a startling departure from standard American practice. Obama has refused to defer to the demands of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and he just might get away with it.
Opponents of that deal have responded with a torrent of criticism. What’s so striking about their objections is that they consist largely of talking points that Netanyahu himself might have drafted. Obama’s American critics fail even to make any effort to distinguish between the U.S. interests and Israeli interests involved, preferring to sustain the fiction that those interests align.
Indeed, the critics seem less interested in evaluating the pros and cons of the agreement than in affirming their own “passionate attachment” to Israel. That phrase, coined by George Washington, warns of the dangers that result from indulging in misplaced affection for another country.
In what has become one of the most bizarre rituals of American politics, those aspiring to high office seek to establish the legitimacy of their candidacy by proclaiming to the heavens their depthless regard for Israel. Any U.S. politician out on the stump publically professing undying love for Canada or Mexico, America’s nearest neighbors, would be considered a whack job. A candidate declaring his or her love for Israel evokes bipartisan applause.
To their credit, Israelis profess no comparable passionate attachment to the U.S. Their fealty is to the state of Israel and rightly so. They reserve their admiration and gratitude for the likes of Jonathan Pollard, the American traitor.
In doing so, they make an important point, which Americans would do well to contemplate. Israelis understand that we and they are two different nations and two different peoples. The Pollard case and the Israeli response to news of Pollard’s impending release testify to the enduring nature of that separation.
Andrew J. Bacevich is writing a military history of America’s war for the greater Middle East.
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(AP) Emotions flow as Calif. police acquitted in death
By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press
SANTA ANA, Calif.
By the time all four verdicts were read clearing two California officers of killing a homeless man, people on both sides of the gallery were sobbing.
In the audience, the mother of Kelly Thomas wept into a tissue as someone shouted, “No!” A collective gasp went up from the gallery. Former police Cpl. Jay Cicinelli’s attorney pounded twice on the defense table, grabbing his client in a bear hug, as former Officer Manuel Ramos’ family clutched hands and cried.
Thomas, 37, died five days after a violent confrontation with six officers in July 2011. A surveillance camera at the busy transit center where the incident unfolded captured him screaming for his father again and again and begging for air as the police kneed him, jolted him with an electric stun gun and used the blunt end to strike him around the face and head.
It was a rare case in which police officers were charged in a death involving actions on duty. Jurors took less than two days to reach their verdicts.
Ramos, 39, was acquitted of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter on Monday. Cicinelli, 41, was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckus, who tried the case himself, said after the verdicts that charges will be dropped against Joseph Wolfe, a third officer awaiting trial.
The FBI said that it will review the evidence to determine whether federal action is justified.
Outside court, Thomas’ parents condemned the verdicts.
Ron Thomas said the verdict gave police “carte blanche” to brutalize people.
Ramos’ attorney, John Barnett, said jurors did their duty.
The defense said Thomas started the confrontation by refusing to heed police orders and was fighting officers so much that they called for backup multiple times. At one point, the lawyers said, Thomas tried to reach for Cicinelli’s stun gun.
Ron Thomas has countered that his son suffered from schizophrenia and didn’t understand the officers.
The video began with Ramos stopping Thomas on July 5, 2011, after the officer answered a call about a disheveled man jiggling the handles of car doors in a busy transit center parking lot.
Ramos grew frustrated with Thomas, who wasn’t following orders to sit on a curb with his hands on his knees.
Just before the altercation began, Ramos snapped on plastic gloves, made two fists and then held them in front of Thomas’ face as he said, “Now see these fists? They’re going to (expletive) you up.”
Cicinelli, who arrived a few moments later, jolted Thomas several times with an electric stun gun and used the butt end to hit Thomas in the head and face, breaking bones.
Thomas was taken off life support five days later.
A county pathologist concluded that Thomas died, in part, from asphyxiation caused by injuries he received during the confrontation.
Defense attorneys said Thomas suffered from an enlarged heart from drug abuse, and his exertions during the struggle were too much for him.
Thomas’ death led to days of protests in Fullerton, a Southern California college town, forced the recall of three City Council members and led the police chief to step down.
After the verdicts, Fullerton Police Chief Dan Hughes issued a statement urging people to express their feelings “respectfully.”
Several dozen protesters gathered outside the courthouse after the verdict waving signs, and a similar size crowd gathered at the transit center where the struggle occurred later Monday night, but both demonstrations were peaceful and there were no reported arrests. A memorial with flowers and candles was set up at the transit center, and people wrote messages to Thomas in a guest book.
During the trial, the defense told jurors that Thomas was not a peaceful, helpless man. They said he had a history of drug use and was homeless because he had attacked members of his own family.
Cathy Thomas testified that he choked her for several minutes during an argument, and Thomas’ grandfather said Thomas attacked him with a fireplace poker in 1995.
He did not have any drugs or alcohol in his system the night of the incident.
Only a handful of police officers nationwide have been charged with murder for actions taken while on duty, and convictions in those cases are rare, said Lawrence Rosenthal, a law professor at Chapman University School of Law and a former federal prosecutor.
Unless the prosecution can prove the officers falsified reports or covered up evidence, jurors are usually willing to acquit, he said.
Jurors are willing to forgive lapses in judgment rather than put an officer “in the cage with the same people that officer has spent his life arresting,” he said.
___
Associated Press writers Amy Taxin, Raquel Maria Dillon and Robert Jablon contributed to this report.
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business
Updated: Dec 25, 2013 23:26 IST
There is a phony ring to this whole story.
The telephone advisory committee (TAC) seems to have been reduced to a platform for doling out free telephone connections and free call quotas to members of parliament and political party affiliates.
The two public sector telecom companies — Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd — pick up the tab for the largesse so bestowed.
Telephone connections to members of TAC are issued with a two-year tenure, free of cost, along with a quota of 500 free calls per month. The TAC is supposed to consist of members of parliament and other prominent members of society, but in the absence of a transparent screening committee to select the members of the committee, it gets filled up by friends of MPs and party workers.
A single free fixed line phone connection and the free calls cost about Rs 2,500 per month. With more than 8,000 TAC members in 359 telecom districts, the facility is estimated to cost the exchequer about Rs 2 crore every month.
The tenure for the current batch of TAC members set up in 2011 expired on Monday, December 22. But just a few days earlier, on December 11, the department of telecommunications issued an order to extend the tenure of TACs in 342 telecom districts — with all facilities — till July 1, 2014.
And BSNL and MTNL have been asked to renew all the free telephone connections as well.
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JOHN Lewis has banned a customer from all of its UK stores after he returned 12 "faulty" televisions.
Paul Chambers, 54, from Solihull, West Midlands, suffers from epilepsy and needed the goods to be "visually perfect".
4 Paul Chambers has been banned from all John Lewis stores and websites, including Waitrose Credit: BPM Media
Mr Chambers had spent £900 for the Samsung and Panasonic televisions he bought from the store over a three year period.
But he recalls experiencing a number of problems with all of them, including "ghosting, calibrating and pixelating".
John Lewis told Mr Chambers they were ending their business relationship with him because they were "unable to meet [his] service needs" and "could not meet [his] expectations", BirminghamLive reported.
Mr Chambers said: "Every time I have taken them back the staff have been very friendly so I was shocked to receive this letter.
4 In a letter, John Lewis said they were 'unable to meet his service needs' Credit: BPM Media
4 Paul will no longer be able to use his myJohn Lewis card after spending up to £900 on televisions from the store Credit: BPM Media
"They have banned me from every John Lewis in the country and I can't buy anything off them online."
The letter read: "In light of your recent enquiries we now feel it necessary, and prudent, to terminate our business relationship with you.
"This decision applies to all John Lewis Department stores, JohnLewis.com and Waitrose. This will take immediate effect.
4 John Lewis said they hope he will not visit any stores because they do not want to embarrass him by asking him to leave Credit: BPM Media
"Please be advised we shall not process any orders you attempt to place by telephone or online channels.
"We have taken this decision due to our firm belief that we are unable to meet your service needs, nor do we believe our range of products will meet your expectations.
"We would therefore ask you not to visit the Solihull store or any other John Lewis branch.
"If you do we shall ask you to leave immediately, we would not wish to embarrass you in this way so we would ask you to comply with this request.
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Mr Chambers said his friend kindly lent him his TV, but he would have liked to returned to the store, to purchase another.
A John Lewis spokesperson later defended their decision, and said: "We're sorry to hear Mr Chambers is disappointed.
"We always want to deliver the very best service for our customers, so we never take this kind of action lightly or without investigation."
How to get a Waitrose coffee for just 1p
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