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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned that the Supreme Court's two newest Republican-appointed associate justices will "pay the price" if they rule on a high-profile abortion case in a way that abortion proponents don't like.
Schumer made the remarks at a pro-abortion rally in front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday scheduled to coincide with oral arguments in the high-profile June Medical Services v. Russo abortion case, which deals with a Louisiana abortion law.
Schumer began his remarks by noting that the court was hearing arguments for the "first major abortion rights cases since Justice [Brett] Kavanaugh and Justice [Neil] Gorsuch came to the bench." After saying each justice's name, the New York Democrat made a thumbs-down gesture that was met with boos from the rally attendees.
"We know what's at stake," the senator continued, growing increasingly louder as he spoke. "Over the last three years, women's reproductive rights have come under attack in a way we haven't seen in modern history. From Louisiana to Missouri to Texas, Republican legislatures are waging a war on women — all women — and they're taking away fundamental rights.
"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price," Schumer emphatically shouted to cheers from the crowd of abortion supporters. "You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."
Though, exactly what sort of "price" the justices might be expected to pay if they rule in ways that upset abortion proponents, Schumer didn't specify as he continued with this speech, which focused heavily on Democrats winning in the November elections.
The June Medical Services v. Russo case that the Supreme Court heard Wednesday is Kavanaugh's first one dealing with abortion since ascending to the bench in late 2018. It deals with whether or not the state of Louisiana can enforce a law that places hospital admitting requirements on abortion providers. Abortion proponents fear that the court may use it to significantly expand states' ability to restrict abortion access.
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Dennis Wise, an alleged Baltimore hit man, was released from prison this summer under the Unger ruling. Wise has maintained his innocence. In March last year, a 1966 murder conviction was vacated against Charles Scott. He had served 50 years of his life sentence for murder. Baltimore prosecutors have struck Unger deals with more than 100 prisoners, saying it's difficult to retry old cases after memories fade, evidence is missing, and witnesses have died.
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One third of the world's smokers live in China, so any effective policy reducing Chinese smoking could have enormous health impacts, even globally. The WHO reported in 2011 that there were many opportunities to curb tobacco use, opportunities which researchers put to the test. (Photo : Reuters)
Teenage girls exposed to secondhand smoke at home tended to show lower levels of the “good” form of cholesterol known to reduce heart disease risk, reports a study to be published in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
The same trend was not exhibited in teenage boys, however, report the study’s lead author Dr. Chi Le-Ha, of the University of Australia.
The finding is especially significant, Le-Ha said, given that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women in the Western world.
“Good” cholesterol, known as high-density lipoproteins (HDL), are responsible for picking up excess cholesterol in the blood stream and transporting it to the liver where it can be broken down.
Low-density lipoproteins (LDL), on the other hand, can create a waxy build-up that blocks blood vessels.
For this reason, HDL is considered key in combating heart disease risk.
To come to their conclusion, the researchers studied a longitudinal birth cohort of 1,057 adolescents born between 1989 and 1992 in Perth, Australia and information about smoking in the household starting at 18 weeks gestation until 17 years old. The scientists then performed blood tests to determine the teenagers’ cholesterol levels.
In all, 48 percent of those studied were exposed to secondhand smoke at home.
“The findings indicate childhood passive smoke exposure may be a more significant cardiovascular risk factor for women than me,” Le-Ha said in a press release regarding the study.
For this reason, the researcher said the study indicates a need “to redouble public health efforts to reduce young children’s secondhand smoke exposure in the home, particularly girls’ exposure.”
Other researchers included L.Beilin, S. Burrows, R. Huan, W. Oddy and T. Mori of the University of Western Australia and B. Hands of Notre Dame University in Perth, Australia.
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The coronavirus pandemic means DC superhero fans will have to wait a little longer to see upcoming live-action movies like Wonder Woman: 1984 or the Suicide Squad sequel, but the good news is there's a new animated DC film to look forward to. This summer sees the release of Superman: Man of Tomorrow, which finds Clark Kent working as an intern for the Daily Planet and learning on the job how to save the city of Metropolis. Check out an exclusive first look from the film below.
Image zoom WARNER BROS.
Darren Criss, who can be seen on Netflix this weekend starring in Ryan Murphy's new drama Hollywood, will lead the Superman: Man of Tomorrow cast as the big blue boy scout himself. Zachary Quinto, who got his start playing the murderous supervillain Sylar on NBC's Heroes, will here voice one of the greatest supervillains of all time: Lex Luthor. Alexandra Daddario (San Andreas) will voice Lois Lane.
That's the rundown on the biggest names in Superman's orbit. But Man of Tomorrow will also shine the spotlight on two less famous rogues: Lobo and Parasite. Lobo, an intergalactic bounty hunter who calls himself "the Main Man," will be voiced by Ryan Hurst (The Walking Dead) while Parasite (a.k.a. Rudy Jones) will be voiced by Brett Dalton (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Parasite is one of the most well-named characters in superhero comics: A monster who can literally suck the superpowers and life out of other beings. As such, he's one of the few villains who can actually pose a threat to Superman.
The rest of the voice cast includes Ike Amadi (Mass Effect 3) as fellow superhero Martian Manhunter, Neil Flynn (Scrubs) as Jonathan Kent, and Bellamy Young (Scandal) as Martha Kent. Superman: Man of Tomorrow is directed by Chris Palmer (Voltron: Legendary Defender) and written by Tim Sheridan (The Death of Superman), with Butch Lukic (Justice League, Batman Beyond) serving as supervising producer.
Superman: Man of Tomorrow becomes available on digital video, 4K Ultra combo pack, and Blu-ray combo pack this summer.
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BLACKSBURG, Va. -- A 19-year-old Virginia Tech student has been arrested on an illegal firearms charge after attempting to purchase 5,000 rounds of ammunition, authorities said Tuesday. Yunsong Zhao was taken into custody without incident Monday following an investigation that lasted several weeks, a university spokesperson told CBS News.
Zhao has been charged with one count of possessing an assault firearm without having U.S. citizenship, officials said. A university spokesperson said Zhao is no longer a student at the college following the incident.
Zhao has family in China and had been living in Blacksburg, Virginia, for six months at the time of his arrest, CBS affiliate WDBJ reports, citing court documents. He is being held at Montgomery County Jail and will appear in court on March 1.
Get Breaking News Delivered to Your Inbox
Police said Zhao also purchased a former police vehicle outfitted with special bumpers and had been researching bulletproof vests, WDBJ reports.
The university said police did not believe there was a threat to the community during the investigation.
"I want to personally thank each and every one of you in assisting us here in our efforts to keep all Hokies safe," Virginia Tech Police Chief Kevin Foust said in a statement posted to Facebook on Monday.
Alvaro Barros, a freshman from Brazil, said he knew Zhao from the university's summer program.
"He seemed like a normal guy, you know what I mean? Just someone trying to make friends and trying to blend in like everyone else," Barros told WDBJ.
"I was just shocked because he doesn't seem like the guy that would do it, not at all," Barros added. "So coming from a different country, you really see how people can be different inside than they are outside."
Max Weinberg, a freshman from Pennsylvania, told the station he was surprised and "kind of scared" that "somebody would try and do something like that."
Last April marked 10 years since a 23-year-old student shot and killed shot 32 people at Virginia Tech. Survivors returned to campus for a series of events that celebrated the lives lost on April 16, 2007.
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Philanthropic economist Gareth Morgan is calling for the eradication of cats from New Zealand.
"The fact is that your furry friend is actually a friendly neighbourhood serial killer," his new Cats to Go website, set up by the Morgan Foundation, says.
The site says cats have contributed to the extinction of nine native bird species and impacted on 33 endangered native bird species.
CLAWS OUT: Gareth Morgan wants action.
It goes on to say that killing cats is not necessary but is an option.
"We appreciate the fact that you have an emotional connection with your pet and that pet ownership is a rewarding experience.
"But there's a real problem with cats - they kill for pleasure, and most of that killing is out of your sight so probably out of your mind.
"If you think New Zealand's native species are precious and should be fostered then it's important you be a responsible cat owner.
"That means keep them inside 24 hours a day and if that's impractical then when the time comes ensure this is the last cat you ever own."
Morgan also suggests other ways to reduce the impact cats have on native bird populations.
"I am advocating responsible pet ownership, not for people to bop their pets on the head. To me a responsible pet owner has their cat neutered, keeps it well fed and indoors as much as possible, and puts a bell on them. Then when their cat dies I think people should consider not replacing it".
Councils also need to step up and manage cats like they do already with dogs, he said.
"All cats should be registered, chipped and neutered, while setting live capture cage traps on your property and turning the miscreants over to the local authority should be encouraged."
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On April 27, there was a mass shooting in the Chabad synagogue in Powoy, CA synagogue near San Diego. NBC's Ben Collins and Andrew Blankstein subsequently reported that an open letter was posted on 8chan with the same name as the shooting suspect. The writer of that manifesto took credit for an unsolved arson in a mosque in San Diego; the alleged shooter is now being investigated for that arson, according to the San Diego County Sheriff.
Former assistant Secretary of State Joel Rubin appeared on Fox News to discuss the shooting. When asked why anti-Semitism is on the rise, Rubin began talking about Trump's rhetoric, before he was quickly cut off and Fox went to commercial.
Fox guest on the rise of anti-Semitism since the election of Trump: "'Jews will not replace us' was the chant in Charlottesville" in August 2017, and just the other day the president essentially said they were fair" Fox then suddenly cut to commercial. pic.twitter.com/HPShadBKvu — John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) April 28, 2019
The program had just come back from commercials -- the entire segment with Rubin is roughly two minutes long. None of it was mentioned when Fox came back from commercial.
Last thing: In case you were wondering, there was absolutely no mention of this when Fox came back from commercial. pic.twitter.com/Q7gm9Y8gft — John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) April 28, 2019
Fox News is currently in an advertiser crisis -- and Fox executives like Lachlan Murdoch are arguing that “straight news” programs like this one are not pro-Trump propaganda like Fox opinion shows.
Update (4/28/19): On Twitter, Rubin downplayed being cut off.
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To display a verse or a range of verses, enter the reference into the search box and choose the translation in which you wish to view comparisons for.
To search by word or phrase, enter your query in the search box and choose the translation you wish to view.
The Interlinear Bible is keyed to the Greek and Hebrew text using Strong’s Concordance. Read the original and literal Greek or Hebrew text with Strong’s words using the King James Version or New American Standard. The interlinear allows for each parallel reading and lexicon study.
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Another suspicious package has been found at WA's Parliament House, after a number were sent yesterday, including to the Premier and the Treasurer's electorate offices.
The latest parcel, the fifth, was discovered this morning in Parliament's mail room, addressed to Premier Colin Barnett.
Police said preliminary testing has indicated the powder inside the package was harmless.
The powder found in earlier packages has been identified as flour but police said they were taking the threats seriously, and security around ministers has been heightened.
The Premier said he was not worried by the threats but he was concerned for his staff and the public.
"They are sinister, they can be very disturbing to people who receive the package," Mr Barnett said.
"My electorate office was basically in lockdown for several hours. It happens, but it seems to be an increasing trend in our society for people to make threats, and there's a huge drain on police resources."
Mr Barnett said police responded quickly and precautions had to be taken.
"I'm annoyed that these sorts of threats are made," he said.
"Often telephone threats are also made; they're disruptive, they're expensive and they can be extremely disturbing or worrying to individuals."
Concerns about copycat offences
Two other packages were found on Wednesday at the mail sorting centre near Perth Airport, forcing an evacuation of the building.
One of them was addressed to the editor of The West Australian newspaper.
Police were stationed outside Premier Colin Barnett's Cottesloe electorate office. ( ABC News )
"The powder has been analysed and turns out to be flour so it's an innocuous substance, but we are taking the threats very seriously and we have a full team of investigators on this," said Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan.
"We need to take it very seriously because obviously there is a threat against senior people in Government.
"We don't believe this is targeted against one particular person or any one particular issue but we do believe it's from the same source."
Acting Commander State Crime Tony Flack said threatening elected members of Parliament constituted a serious criminal offence.
"It's an attack on our system of Government," he said.
"It scared the living daylights out of people going about their normal business so it had its ultimate consequence and I won't accept that 'by the way it didn’t reach the politician so it's not as serious'".
He also confirmed police were extremely concerned about copycat behaviour.
Motive behind packages unknown
The packages had printed threats, but nothing directed at any individuals or any policies.
"It's very difficult to work out a motive from the material we've got at the moment so we just can't predict that," Mr O'Callaghan said.
The state security unit is to increase its monitoring and protective measures.
"Our dignitary protection people have reviewed the level of security around the ministers, and they will be changing some of their procedures as part of this," said Mr O'Callaghan.
"We will be reviewing those procedures and meeting with the agencies that are responsible for this to see if there's some way we can tighten this up so it doesn't occur like this in the future."
Ministers have been told to be on the lookout for similar packages, or other kinds of threats.
A sniffer dog and handler walk outside Parliament House after the discovery of a suspicious package. ( ABC News )
Acting Commander Flack has confirmed there was currently no screening of mail going into electorate offices.
"That's something that our State Security Unit will look at in terms of future screening," he said.
"There will be additional costs and processes on establishing screening processes in those electorate offices."
Mr O'Callaghan said police were doing everything to resolve the investigation.
"We have forensic procedures which we'll apply as part of this investigation and we're also asking the public for assistance, so if anybody knows anything about this, we're asking them to phone police or Crime Stoppers," he said.
Police have warned that anyone who sends packages with threats could face heavy penalties.
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Code Words
A publication about programming from the Recurse Center
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Complaints To FTC About Rightscorp Detail Robocalls, Harassment And Baseless Threats To Sever Internet Connections
from the you-know,-all-those-things-everyone's-suing-about dept
If these FTC complaints are to be believed, Rightscorp is doing pretty much everything Morgan Pietz's class action lawsuit has accused it of.
Among other wrongful conduct: Rightscorp has engaged in telephone harassment and abuse (15 U.S.C. § 1692d); made various false and misleading representations (15 U.S.C. § 1692e); engaged in unfair collections practices (15 U.S.C. § 1692f); failed to provide validation and required notices relating to the debts (15 U.S.C. § 1692g); and furnished emails and letters knowing they would create false beliefs on the parts of consumers that their Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) were participating in the attempt to collect on the purported debts when in fact the ISPs were not participating (15 U.S.C. § 1692f).
Consumer had his internet turned off and he called his service provider and they told him that Digital Rights Corp sent them a warning telling him that they would shut off his internet if he didn’t contact them and he did and they told him that they had 34 counts against him of uploading a children’s song and they told him that it could be $150 thousand dollars per each count and they have admitted that he didn’t do it but he has to pay it because his service was used to do this and he has to pay teh consumer was told if he gave them $500 they would make everything go away. Advised Consumer to call the State Attorney General.
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Consumer is receiving repeated phone calls from a company claiming to be from Rights Corp and the company claims that the consumer has illegally downloaded music and the company is trying to collect money for the illegal downloads. Consumer states that the company states that the consumer must pay immediately and they tried to obtain a cc number. Consumer states that the company claims that if the consumer does not pay over the phone the amount of the money owed would be mulitplied by 100% and that they would terminate the consumer's internet services.
The Digital Rights Corp. has charged us with 216 illegal down loads. They said that 153 sucessfully down loaded. They first wanted us to pay 3,000 dollars. Now everytime we speak to them the amount changes from 3,000, 560.00, 500.00, and the last amount was 390.00.
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Rightscorp, Inc sent us a letter about 6-24-2014 saying we owe $4,060 for copyright infringments. We called to inquire on this accusation. They stated pay $460 by ~6pm (that day ) or pay the full amount. They also pressed for a credit card number. To this day they have been calling about 3x's a week. (They threaten to cut off our internnet service.)
Forwarded by the State of Alabama Office of the Attorney General… Consumer responded to first email and paid $20 for the fee requested. She received 27 more emails each requesting $20… Consumer received another email threatening to shut down her internet service demanding settlement. Consumer states she is now getting phone calls from this company.
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Digital Rights started annoying robot calls after I made a $20 payment on behalf of a third party to settle an alleged copyright issue. They decided I "owed" them a lot more, $280. I demanded no further calls...They insisted they can call me as much as they want by any means even though I was not actually involved directly with the internet account.(gift,not at my home) They sent a threatening letter and emails, too...
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I received notification from my internet provider that a report had been made of illegally download. I contacted Charter who offer no assistance they were "only relaying a message" I then contacted the RIGHTSCORP. I was hesitant to give them information but was coerced into giving them our name and phone number. Initially they said they wanted 20.00 or else they would sue us for 150,000.00 dollars. I told them I had checked with the entire family and they did not believe they had downloaded these songs. She , Cecilee, called back and stated the charges were now 180.00.
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I made a single payment on behalf of my son in law to clear a digital rights claim as I gave him a year internet as a gift. Now they won't stop calling me trying to get more money for more "claims."
Rightscorp sent me a letter for copyright infringement so I called the number on the paper they sent and they said that it carries a fine of $150,000 but if I gave them $20 they would settle it. Now they call me every Monday, Wednesday & Friday and are continuing to send me the same letter.
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Rights Corp is claiming that I owe them money because they served my internet service provider with a subpoena for my information. They call 3 or 4 times per day in addition to text messaging…
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This company has been calling my home 3-4 times a day for months, originally threatening me to pay them thousands of dollars or they would sue us. Since the initial call with them, which I refused to comply with, they have called continually, everyday and on weekends, always with a recorded message that I never pick up...
False claims of copyright infringement from well-known copyright "troll". Company is California based, but call came from Tennessee.
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...They are trying to intimidate me into giving them money for nothing by harassing me over the telephone. Most of the telephone calls are not live people, but an automated message that leaves me a voice mail from several different numbers with several different area codes..
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
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Robocalls, baseless threats, seemingly endless harassment, constantly fluctuating "settlement offers"... it's all included in the FTC complaints. (And turned over with extreme expeditiousness by the FTC -- seven days from the point my FOIA request was received.) [ Spreadsheet link . Scroll all the way to the right to see complaint details. Also note there are two tabs of complaints.]Every settlement offer looks "reasonable" when compared to maximum statutory infringement damages -- something Rightscorp has no intention of pursuing. As for the claim that the alleged infringer's internet connection could be cut off? It's mostly false. Rightscorp has managed to push around a few small ISPs using its untested theory that the DMCA requires service providers to boot repeat infringers. But at this point, any internet disconnection is a purely voluntary action on the part of the ISP. There's no legal basis for its claims and no court decision that backs its assertions up. And, most importantly, Rightscorp can't actually cut offinternet connection -- at least not on its own. But that doesn't stop it from insinuating that it possesses this power.How can you tell Rightscorp has far less power than it pretends to have? By how swiftly it resorts to bargaining.And how can you tell Rightscorp is nothing more than a troll? Because if you feed it, it comes back for more.Rightscorp apparently deploys two tactics with regularity, both unpleasant: threats and harassment.And the company's "collection agents" appear to be disguising the origin of the calls.I've reached out to Rightscorp to see if it has any comment on the FTC complaints. I'm not holding my breath for an answer, considering much of what's alleged in these complaints is the subject of two class action suits . But what's detailed here is nothing more than pure copyright trolling: baseless threats, harassment, and settlement offers. We've seen this deployed by a fair number of supposed rights enforcement entities and most of those are now languishing. Rightscorp isn't looking too healthy itself.And the most amazing part is that -- despite two lawsuits centering on this abusive behavior -- it hasn't reined in its collection efforts. Many of the complaints filed with the FTC appearedMorgan Pietz filed his lawsuit in November of 2014, with the latest listed being March 24, 2015. Apparently, it's just going to keep up its questionable tactics until it's forced to stop, even though there's little indication they've resulted in anything more than a few scattered, small settlements.
Filed Under: copyright, copyright trolling, ftc, harassment, robocalls, shakedown, threats
Companies: rightscorp
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This is a review and measurements of the XDuoo TA-01 tube DAC and headphone amplifier and comparison against Schiit Fulla (V2) solid-state DAC and headphone amplifier. Both are on loan to me from kind members although I had also purchased a Schiit Fulla V2. I may compare the two Schiit units later in light of some of the review outcome.The XDuoo TA-01 retails for USD $160 on Amazon including Prime shipping. The Schiit Fulla is $99 from Schiit direct (not sold elsewhere) and you have to add shipping to it. So prices are not identical but close.The XDuoo as you see in the above picture, resembles an aircraft instrument or something. It definitely has nice design cues. The volume is hefty and feels nice with that big knob. Toggle switch and power indicators are nicely in the front. It comes with an external switching power supply. It can act as both a DAC+headphone amp combo or with analog input, as just a headphone amp.The Schiit Fulla design language is similar to other Schiit products. I find their style too plain and industrial but in this instance, I think there is some cuteness with that large knob. The knob itself feels plasticy and not as weight as XDuoo. But not too bad. What is bad though is all the awful little markings substituting for actual labels. Funny that a Chinese company puts nice labels on their product in English but an American company chooses to use symbols! Everyone in the world understands the few English words used in Audio so please use them Schiit. No reason for scratching one's head wondering what a 3.5 mm socket is output or input. With no less than three of them on the Schiit Fulla, it can and does make my grumpy!On the plus side, the Schiit functionality and robust enclosure seems like good value at $99.Both DACs were plug-and-play under Windows 10 Creators Edition which was nice. I used Roon media player for DAC/USB related tests, and the line in for pre-amp testing.Let's get into measurements and see how they did. As usual, if you are not familiar with what these graphs are, refer to my tutorial on understanding audio measurements: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/understanding-audio-measurements.2351/ Let's start with a simple test of frequency response. This is performed using the analog input. First up is the XDuoo TA-01:Overall frequency response is fine. But oddly channel imbalance is bad at full volume but gets better at lower volumes! Since most of us will listen at lower than max volume anyway, this is a good thing I guess. But better would be full matching regardless of level.This is how the Schiit Fulla V2 does:Matching here is pretty good and only deviates at very low volumes.Let's examine the DAC portion and see how they do on jitter and noise:We see substantially higher noise floor than our reference Topping D30. I kind of expected this from the XDuoo but seeing how the Schiit Fulla V2 lose to it on noise is surprising. OK, maybe not surprising given how Schiit products have done on my bench but still, a solid-state device should do better than a tube on noise.How is linearity? Let's look:They are essentially neck and neck until about 15-16 bits. After that, the Schiit deviates more radically although neither is very good at the extreme.Let's see how they do with a very low amplitude -90 dB sine wave:We see that the XDuoo TA-01 is saddled with tons of noise as compared to Schiit Fulla V2 which does pretty well here.Let's dig into distortion profile using a 1 kHz tone that itself is filtered:We see the classically talked about distortion with tube amps of lots of second harmonic distortion relative to higher order ones. At -45 dB that is quite high though. With other test conditions, it was as high as -30 dB!The Schiit again shows its higher noise floor which hides higher order harmonics.While quite unfair, I have shown the RME ADI-2 DAC at the bottom in yellow. The second order harmonic there is almost 80 dB better than XDuoo TA-01! It is 40 dB better than Schiit Fulla 2 too.Let's dig into the headphone output performance. First up is the output impedance:Schiit Full V2 does well with 1.0 ohm output impedance. The XDuoo TA-01 though falls behind with 5.6 ohm.Let's examine power output in the form of output voltage versus distortion (power = output voltage ^2/load impedance):This remarkably consistent distortion profiles. Unfortunately levels are sky high, rising well into single digit THD+N percentages. Lowest level is around 0.06% which is not far off from published spec (these are both channels driven by the way).Let's look at how Schiit Fulla V2 does:What the heck??? Each channel produces entirely different distortion profile! One is far more distorted than the other as this single measurement shows at 33 ohm:Look at how different red and yellow curves are. They were so different that I thought I test my setup with another yet unreviewed headphone amp: the Fiiio A3. As you see from its graphs, both channels produce identical distortion with the two lines falling on each other completely.Come on Schiit. Can we not review any of your products without something so broken popping out? How can the two channels differ so much? Do they use the wrong parts in one channel? Not enough feedback to counter part variations?Look, I don't get paid enough to sit there and annotate that power graph like I did with XDuoo TA-01. So if you want to know what power it puts out, you need to do the work yourself. I am too unhappy right now...I did fair amount of comparison listening tests with levels matched prior to making measurements. The results were very inconsistent. Depending on headphone in use, volume level and content, I would get different outcomes as to which was better. Not helping is the amount of noise generated by the XDu001 TA-1 which would bleed to Schiit's output once connected via my AB box.Eventually I got one set of consistent results: using HifiMan HE400i with output levels matched around 0.350 volts. There, the Schiit had consistently better bass, and more resolution. Switching to XDuoo TA-1 the detail in between notes would collapse and bass would become weaker.In less consistent tests I noticed that high frequencies were less in XDuoo TA-01 or put inversely, more in Schiit Fulla V2.Further results were the effect of background hiss. This had an interesting effect at times of making one thing there was more sense of space between instruments. Hard to explain this. I hope to capture this and upload at some point for you all to listen.I often hear people talk at length about change in soundstage when evaluating headphone amps. I heard no such thing despite focusing on it across many, many listening tests. There was no expansion or contraction of soundstage. What was there was always a function of content.I struggled to figure out how to compare the XDuoo to other products. I thought by picking a solid-state product like Schiit Fulla V2, the difference would be clear in that the Schiit would produce better measured results across the board. This was not universally the case. A solid-state product lost out to a tube product from China no less in some of the tests.At the end, this turned out to be a mixed results both in measurements and listening tests. If I had to pick one to listen between the two, it would be the Schiit Fulla V2. Otherwise, I would personally avoid both. The XDuoo brought no tube "magic" to the table. So I can't see dealing with a tube just for the sake of it.Anyway, I may do additional comparisons of Schiit Fulla V2 to other products that compete with it.
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The revs are at the limiter before you can blink, but this isn't your typical drag race. This is Honda's Mean Mower V2, and it's the fastest lawnmower in the world.
You may not have been aware, but the battle for the speediest landscaping machine has been ongoing, and fraught with controversy. Honda just set a Guinness World Record for quick acceleration on a lawn tractor—from zero to 100 mph in just 6.29 seconds, and an unofficial 150 mph in testing.
Although Honda offers riding mowers in Europe and both push and robotic mowers in the states, it does not plan to offer a $100,000, 150mph version in your local home improvement store. So when the offer came in to make some high speed passes of our own in the one-off record-setter at the Honda Proving Center in Cantil, California, before it goes back across the pond, well, only a sensible person with a strong sense of self-preservation would turn that down.
Honda had the record previously in 2014 with its original Mean Mower, a less aggressively modified riding tractor that put down a 116 mph average top speed at a test track in Spain, obliterating the previous lawn mower record of 87.8. Then the cheating started.
A Norwegian team backed by Viking-Stihl set a new record in Oslo, a 134 mph run with a lawnmowerish vehicle powered by a 408hp LS engine out of a Corvette. It shouldn’t have counted, feels Team Dynamics manager James Rodgers, whose team built and tested both versions of the Mean Mower for Honda U.K.
“It was basically a fully caged dragster with a mower deck bolted on,” Rodgers told Popular Mechanics.
Forget turtle-to-rabbit speed controls, this monster goes rabbit-to-rocket.
After that, Guinness changed the rules to require any lawnmower records be set by something that can cut grass and looks like it can cut grass. Rodgers then convinced the bosses at Honda to reclaim the title—it was all about bragging rights.
At first glance, the “Mean Mower V2” doesn’t look too different from the Honda HF2622 riding mower on which it is based. Both are stoplight red, with a silver grass catcher, a slotted metal bumper, and a slim, circular cutting deck. But after a closer inspection, you see that these cutting blades are reinforced with carbon fiber, and the grass bag hides an aluminum radiator.
The ground-scalping stance is due to a one-off tubular chassis made of TiG-welded T45 steel, an alloy specifically chosen for its combination of strength and flex because the frame acts as both skeleton and suspension. The low crouch is accentuated by gold-anodized, 10-inch wheels wrapped in Hoosier slick tires.
Then there’s the powerplant. Forget turtle-to-rabbit speed controls, this monster goes rabbit-to-rocket, propelled by a CBR1000 4-cylinder out of Honda’s top sportbike, making close to 200 hp and backed by a wet-clutch six-speed driving a solid rear axle. Who wouldn’t want to go 150 mph on that?
Oh wait a second, there doesn’t seem to be a roll bar. Nor seat belts, for that matter. Just a narrow carbon fiber seat so close to a Sparco steering wheel that you don’t sit down behind it so much as undulate around it into a driving position best described as “hippie birthing squat-recline.”
That's it. It’s just you and a foot or two of plastic tractor bodywork against the wind.
“I don’t want to scare you guys,” said Rodgers, “But this is not like a car. If it goes, you will not catch it. It will dig a hole, put you in that grave, and cover you over before you know it.”
With that pep talk, and a stern reminder that we were to start in 2nd gear only, and shift only once to 3rd, and under no circumstances go past our coned off quarter-mile or attempt to brake hard at speed because, “it will lock up all four tires and pack you into the footwell,” we trooped outside and wiggled into motorcycle leathers.
“Have you ever driven this?” I asked Rodgers. All the demo drives were being done by Team Dynamics engineer Craig Smith.
“I’m never going in it,” Rodgers answered, handing me a helmet. “Ready?”
I folded myself into the seat like an egg into batter. Rodgers and Smith hovered around, checking tire pressures and resetting the data recorder. Rodgers gave me the thumbs up and I eased out the clutch, rolled to the start cone and floored it.
The revs go up like bottle rockets. I miss the shift. I’m at the finish. There’s a lot of sand in my eyes. I clutch to a slow roll and turn around for the return pass. This time it’s perfect. The upshift punches me gently in the stomach. My shaking foot stays on the accelerator. 90, 99, 105, 112, out of room.
I want to go again, but it would be a dumb way to die, riding a landspeed lawnmower. But it’s a hell of a way to live.
Honda
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One of Oregon's oldest licensed pot shops -- ensconced in the heart of Portland's Pearl District -- is in danger of losing its posh retail digs after its landlord received complaints about a telltale smell permeating the area.
The store, Oregon's Finest, is fighting back.
The owners are suing the landlord, claiming they weren’t aware the odor poses an ongoing problem. They also contend their kerfuffle with the landlord over upgrading the ventilation system might have contributed to the marching orders.
In the lawsuit filed last month in Multnomah County Circuit Court, the owners are asking a judge to intervene by declaring that the landlord has no just reason to expel them from the property they've leased since December 2013.
On Friday, an ever-so faint scent of pot was detectable directly in front of the business at 1327 N.W. Kearney St. Oregon’s Finest is within steps of the Title Nine women’s athletic wear company, furniture seller Design Within Reach, outdoor retailer REI and a man-cave-esque barber shop, Throne.
Several employees of neighboring businesses told The Oregonian/OregonLive that they haven’t noticed any smell. One worker said it has most often come from people puffing a joint out in public as they walk by, not from the store. Another worker said he used to detect the marijuana smell blowing through the building’s ventilation system, but the aroma stopped long ago.
Inside the wood-paneled lobby of Oregon's Finest, the smell was slightly stronger. An employee said most of the customers seem to like the aroma and many of them live in nearby high-rises.
The stink over the smell is far from the first example of the odiferous product drawing ire as marijuana has gained a legal foothold in Oregon over the past 20 years. In 1998, voters legalized marijuana for medicinal use. In 2013, the Legislature gave medical marijuana dispensaries the OK to operate with the state's blessing. In 2015, cannabis shops began selling recreational weed to anyone 21 and older.
That same year, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of a Philomath man who was convicted of criminal mischief after his neighbors complained about the constant stench of his pot smoke wafting over to their apartments. The Appeals Court said marijuana isn't a "physically offensive" smell to everyone and creating it didn't constitute a crime.
In 2017, a Yamhill County winery sued to stop the marijuana farm next door from processing weed on site because the vintners believe the skunk-like smell could taint the delicate flavors of their wines. That suit is ongoing.
The lawsuit filed by Oregon's Finest doesn't stay how many alleged complaints the landlords have received about the smell. The suit says only that the landlords didn't disclose who was making the complaints.
In addition for the right to stay put, Oregon’s Finest also is asking a judge to force its landlord to negotiate a rental rate that’s not exorbitant.
Under its original lease, the store has been paying a base rent of about $4,200 per month for its 2,400-square-foot space. The store has since renewed its lease, according to the suit, but hasn’t been able to agree with its landlord on a fair price.
The building’s landlord -- Lovejoy Square LLC, which is managed by Brix Law Service Co. -- declined comment.
Lawyers for Oregon’s Finest didn’t respond to a request for comment and more information about the dispute.
The store is owned by a collaboration of marijuana growers, according to its website. Oregon’s Finest is one of two marijuana retailers in the Pearl District. More than 500 pot shops are licensed statewide.
Read the lawsuit here.
-- Aimee Green
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The Russian Embassy in Washington said in a Facebook post that Butina "is a political prisoner, a victim of provocations by special services and the arbitrary use of repressive US legislation. We insist on the innocence of our compatriot. We demand her immediate release. We will continue to provide her with comprehensive consular and legal assistance."
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Are we seeing a new Donald Trump after Clinto...
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday said he won't support Donald Trump for president until he proves he's not a bigot.
"Donald, guess what, I'm not going to support you until you get your act together. You're acting like a Bush-league loser, you're acting like a racist, you're acting like a bigot," the host of "Morning Joe" said.
Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida, said that Trump should apologize for his "racist" comments and called on Republicans to withhold their Trump endorsements and stand up against him. The two used to have a much friendlier relationship.
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"I have taken the gun away from my head I am putting it on the table and now. It is in your hands on whether you are going to prove to the Republican party and me personally that you're not a bigot," he said.
"Don't use Hillary Clinton as a threat against me, don't use Hillary Clinton as an excuse, as your blank check to say racist things about people born in Indiana," Scarborough added. "No, Donald, you don't get to play it that way, I'm not scared of you, and I'm not scared of the base because they're just as pissed off as me."
Scarborough was referring to Trump saying that the Mexican heritage of U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel would prevent him from acting impartial in the case he's overseeing concerning Trump University.
Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, responded to Scarborough's tirade on Wednesday morning.
Nobody is watching @Morning_Joe anymore. Gone off the deep end - bad ratings. You won't believe what I am watching now! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2016
A day earlier, Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted Trump for his remarks. Ryan called it the "textbook definition of a racist comment" and McConnell called Trump's comments outrageous.
CBS News' Katiana Krawchenko contributed to this report.
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L’accession de Mme Marine Le Pen, la candidate du Front national (FN), au second tour de l’élection présidentielle aura au moins eu pour vertu d’éliminer les prudences et rondeurs déontologiques qui d’ordinaire enrobent le discours journalistique. Et de donner à voir les grands médias pour ce qu’ils sont : une force politique, celle qu’on oublie de décompter dans les temps de parole. Un titre de Libération (6 mai 2017) a résumé la ligne de ce parti non déclaré : « Faites ce que vous voulez mais votez Macron ».
« Votez Macron », sinon quoi ? Comme en avril 2002, lorsque M. Jean-Marie Le Pen avait fait effraction au second tour, les directions éditoriales savaient impossible la victoire du FN. Elles n’en exécutèrent pas moins les figures imposées du chantage moral en jouant sur l’antiracisme sincère qui anime la grande majorité de la population française. « Ni-ni dimanche, Le Pen lundi », prévient la couverture de L’Obs (4 mai). « Ne pas voter Macron, c’est voter Le Pen ! », admoneste Franz-Olivier Giesbert (Le Point, 4 mai). S’abstenir, c’est livrer les réfugiés à « la traque policière, l’expulsion », tempête Laurent Joffrin ; « les abstentionnistes de gauche doivent y penser » (Libération, 6 mai). Votez Macron, donc. Ou devenez complice de l’arrivée d’Adolf Hitler au pouvoir, de la rafle du Vel’d’Hiv’, des noyades de migrants. Chaque matin, les revues de presse répercutaient auprès de millions d’auditeurs ces injonctions infantilisantes à « faire barrage », dont l’écho s’amplifierait après le débat entre les finalistes, au moment précis où la nullité de la candidate FN les rendait plus vaines encore.
Le choc entre les forces coalisées du Bien (ouverture, intelligence, capitalisme libéral) et celles du Mal (fermeture, bêtise, capitalisme d’État) était remis en scène. Ici, Pierre Arditi, Daniel Cohn-Bendit et Nagui pétitionnaient contre « le rejet de l’autre et la haine de soi » (1er mai 2017) ; là, l’historienne Sophie Wahnich théorisait le vote (...)
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Canada's new minister of environment and climate change is Ottawa MP and lawyer Catherine McKenna. She was confirmed at an historic swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall on Wednesday that saw several Trudeau cabinet ministers declared. Minister McKenna has a large number of climate, clean tech and environmental protection promises to fulfill that were made during the election. They include a price on carbon, a pledge to reverse Canada's international reputation as a climate laggard, and a $2-billion "Low Carbon Economy Trust” to help kickstart a clean tech boom. "I'm really thrilled, reacted Sierra Club Canada Foundation's interim executive director Diane Beckett from Ottawa. "She's not only the minister of the environment, she's the minister of climate change."
"Climate change is her most urgent priority, because it is the defining issue of our generation. Whether or not we get it right will determine the survival of the human species. It is also urgent because the negotiations are happening in Paris in just a few weeks, and Canada has been a laggard for almost 20 years." "It's urgent that we recognize that people in the global south are already dying from climate change, and we have to provide them with the resources to deal with that, as well as reduce emissions." Likewise, Clean Energy Canada executive director Merran Smith said McKenna's law background will be invaluable at UN climate treaty talks. She's also hopeful McKenna's appointment is a sign of good things to come in sustainable energy. Clean energy jobs in the country already outpace oil sands jobs, she's often noted. “Canada has vast, untapped clean energy potential and developing these resources is both a key climate solution and important economic opportunity," said Smith in a statement. McKenna is expected to go to Paris, France next week for minister-level international talks about climate change, ahead of the global leaders' summit in Paris, known as COP21 at the end of the month. Expectations are high the process will produce the first comprehensive global climate change treaty in history.
Canada's new environment and climate change minister Catherine McKenna getting a hug from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall on Wednesday. CP photo. She recently led Canadian Lawyers Abroad and taught a course on Global Civil Society to graduate students at the Munk School of Global Affairs. She's also been a board member of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. The mother of three has also worked internationally as a legal adviser for the UN in East Timor and on trade issues in Indonesia, according to her website. Green MP Elizabeth May was likewise pleased with the ministerial selection. "This is more than symbolism. Just as Norway's prime minister, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland did in appointing a cabinet with gender balance in the early 1980s, Prime Minister Trudeau is striking a significant blow for women's equality... I welcome the new government and look forward to working with Mr. Trudeau and the cabinet to start repairing Canada’s international reputation at the upcoming climate negotiations," wrote May in a statement. During the election, Liberals pledged to use "scientific evidence” and “the precautionary principle,” and to "take into account climate change" when making big decisions. “We need to take real action on climate change,” Trudeau said this summer, while announcing his party's green platform in Vancouver. “It’s time Canada put a price on carbon pollution.” McKenna will be part of a cabinet team —including ministers of natural resources, trade, finance, infrastructure, transport and innovation — that will be responsible for many environmental promises. Climate Change Trudeau said his government will restore Canada’s tarnished reputation as a climate laggard by providing national leadership with provincial-level carbon pricing.
Trudeau is expected to go to the Paris COP21 summit with provincial premiers not facing immediate election, including B.C.’s Christy Clark, Alberta’s Rachel Notley, Manitoba’s Greg Selinger, Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne and Quebec’s Philippe Couillard.
Ninety days after the Paris climate conference, Trudeau will "establish a pan-Canadian framework" for tackling global warming. The Liberals have also promised to undo caustic relations with provinces over climate change, where provincial officials have said they have felt left out by the Harper government. Defeated outgoing Conservative environment minister Leona Aglukkaq infamously went boating and electioneering in the Arctic on the opening day of Ontario’s Pan American climate summit in Toronto this summer. Crucially, Liberals have not proclaimed a national greenhouse gas target for Canada yet. They’ve stated they want to consult heavily with the provinces, which are each pursuing different greenhouse-gas-reducing policies — a carbon tax in B.C., for example, and in Quebec and Ontario, a cap and trade scheme with California. The NDP says it will be pushing the new government for a target as soon as possible. "As the Paris summit conference approaches, the new minister of the environment has an opportunity to put Canada back on the right track and will need to set ambitious long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions," wrote NDP MP Fin Donnelly on Wednesday. Former Liberal environment minister Stéphane Dion —who is now the foreign affairs minister —will also chair a cabinet committee on Environment, Climate Change and Energy that will steer thorny issues about oil sands, climate change and pollution, the Ottawa Citizen reported. Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies The Liberals have pledged to create a new $2-billion "Low Carbon Economy Trust" to fund projects that "materially reduce carbon emissions." The party also committed to phasing out many fossil fuel subsidies. “Once we eliminate the Canadian Development Expenses tax deduction and the Canadian Exploration Expenses tax deduction except in cases of unsuccessful exploration, we will have fulfilled Canada’s G-20 commitment to phase out inefficient subsidies for the fossil fuel industry,” a Liberal spokesperson said on the election trail. Justin Trudeau greets supporters in Vancouver during the election, when the Liberals announced their environmental platform. Photo by Mychaylo Prystupa. New environmental assessments Liberal leaders have promised to "immediately" re-do how Canada evaluates major oil pipelines and other industrial projects and introduce "new, fair processes." The platform document says Liberals will: Modernize the National Energy Board, ensuring that "its composition reflects regional views and has sufficient expertise in fields like environmental science, community development, and Indigenous traditional knowledge."
End the practice of having federal ministers interfere in the environmental assessment process.
Ensure that environmental assessments include an "analysis of upstream impacts and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from projects.” Trudeau also promised to review the Harper government’s gutting of the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and "do more to protect Canada’s endangered species,” says its policy book. Water Minister McKenna and the new minister of fisheries and oceans —Arctic MP Hunter Tootoo —are also expected to fulfill commitments to protect freshwater and oceans, and renew commitments to protect the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence River Basin, and the Lake Winnipeg Basin. In B.C., the Liberals says they wil act on the recommendations of the Cohen Commission on restoring sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser River. Other water promises: Restore funding to freshwater research, "a program that was cut by the Conservatives – and make new investments in Canada’s world-leading IISD Experimental Lakes Area.”
Increase protection of Canada’s marine and coastal areas to five percent by 2017, and ten percent by 2020.
Restore $40 million to ocean science programs cut by the Conservatives. Then Prime Minister-designate Justin Trudeau does a selfie with a young girl outside the House of Commons on Oct.20, 2015. Liberal photo. National Parks Trudeau pledged to slash funding for 150th birthday of Canada celebrations in order to finance free admission for national parks in 2017. In 2018, admission for children under 18 will be free. A Liberal government is also expected to create the first urban national park in Toronto area, called the Rouge National Park. Clean Jobs Liberals promised to invest $100 million more each year in clean tech that creates jobs, and have also pledged to: Put $200 million into greening technologies in energy, mining, forestry, fishing and agricultural sectors.
Add electric vehicle charging stations at federal government parking lots, and rapidly expand federal fleet of electric vehicles.
Create a “Canadian Energy Strategy” to protect "Canada’s energy security" and encourage conservation.
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As if there weren't enough scandal and controversy surrounding college sports these days, now we learn of another major university, the University of Miami, that has been cited in a national news story of alleged improprieties within its athletic program conducted over an eight-year period.
The epicenter of the latest alleged wrongdoing in college sports and the heart of the ramifications certain to follow fall far from our area
Still three months before Missouri's first official game under new head basketball coach Frank Haith, their coach was one of several coaches and numerous current and former players cited in wide-ranging allegations of impermissible conduct in violation of NCAA rules between the University of Miami and a former booster of the school, according to in an investigative report published Tuesday by Yahoo Sports.
The report centers around former Miami booster Nevin Shapiro, presently serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for his involvement in a $930 million Ponzi scheme. Shapiro told Yahoo Sports that he provided unauthorized benefits to as many as 72 athletes at the University of Miami between 2002 and 2010, and he cited three football coaches and three basketball coaches in his allegations, including MU's Haith, who was head coach at Miami before accepting the coaching job at Missouri replacing the departed Mike Anderson.
Haith immediately denied the allegations reported in the Yahoo Sports story. "The reports questioning my personal interactions with Mr. Shapiro are not an accurate portrayal of my character," the Missouri coach said in a statement issued by the University of Missouri shortly after the Yahoo Sports story came out.
Presumably, Missouri athletic director Mike Alden has met one-on-one with his new basketball coach and asked Haith directly if any of the allegations made about him in Shapiro's comments to Yahoo Sports are true, and if Haith was involved in any way?
Given Haith's public denial, we can only assume that his answer to Alden was an emphatic "no."
Some are saying that Alden should distance himself (Haith was Alden's hire, after all) and the University of Missouri from this situation and dismiss Haith immediately, or at the least place him on administrative leave pending a thorough investigation of the matter. The case could be made: Look what happened to Indiana when officials at that school chose to overlook the NCAA violations committed by Kelvin Sampson when he was basketball coach at Oklahoma.
You can fault Missouri's athletic director, though, for standing by his man after being told face-to-face by Haith that he is innocent of the allegations against him. Given the fact, also, that Haith has yet to coach his first game as Missouri's head basketball coach, university officials probably don't have ample or any evidence or proof of Haith's alleged involvement in the impermissible behavior that has been brought in question at the University of Miami to dismiss him for cause.
This is not a good situation for Missouri. Not only will it be a constant distraction as the investigation plays out, but it comes ahead of a season in which the Tigers are expected to be a solid contender for the conference basketball crown because of the number of players who logged substantial minutes last season returning the Mizzou roster this year.
According to Yahoo Sports, Shapiro said he paid $10,000 to help recruit DeQuan Jones to Miami and that the payment was acknowledged by Haith. The Yahoo story also included a questionable photograph of Haith standing alongside of Miami president Donna Shalala and Shapiro at what was reported to be a Miami basketball fundraiser, where Shapiro said he gave $50,000 to the basketball program in 2008.
Haith was the head basketball coach at Miami from 2004-2011.
Missouri isn't the only Big 12 school where there will be questions tied to the scandalous charges being made against Miami. Arthur Brown, a linebacker at Miami for two seasons in 2008-09 during the time covered in the investigation, transferred to Kansas State, where he is expected to be a starter this season. Shapiro told Yahoo that he provided dinner and a strip-club visit to Brown and lunch and hotel rooms for him, his brother, Bryce, who also is at Kansas State now after transferring from Tennessee, his parents and a family advisor, all of which is impermissible under NCAA recruiting rules.
Contacted by The Kansas City Star on Tuesday, Brian Butler, the family advisor, said he and the Brown family had no idea that Shapiro was a Miami booster. He told us he was not an agent or a booster, Butler said. "He said he was a guy who loved Miami."
It's difficult to say what, if anything will happen to the Bryce brothers or Kansas State as a result of what Shapiro is saying or any subsequent findings in the NCAA's investigation of the matter, but for now, Kansas State is allowing both brothers to play for the Wildcats this fall.
Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports was the lead writer on the story, but there were other Yahoo staff members actively involved in the research and interviews done for the story, including Dan Wetzel. Yahoo says it conducted approximately 100 hours of interviews with Shapiro, while in prison, over a period of 11 months. The research also included an audit of financial, business and cell phone records examining all aspects of the alleged improprieties in the football and basketball programs at the University of Miami.
This is just one more in a growing list of major college athletic programs that are or will be under investigations for NCAA rules violations, mostly involving recruiting practices. In the past 18 months the football programs at the University of Southern California, California, Ohio State, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Louisiana State, Auburn, Oregon and Michigan have been investigated or sanctioned by the NCAA. A big 12 school, Oklahoma, is currently under investigation by the NCAA for recruiting violations involving a former coach and alleged illegal payments made to former OU player and McDonald's All-American Tiny Gallon when he was being recruited by the Sooners.
It has become a major epidemic that seems to be getting much worse before it gets better. The growing number of schools under investigation is much needed kindling for the firestorm calling for major reforms in the NCAA regulations and the way in which the organization that oversees college athletics not only polices but determines and administers appropriate penalties against programs deemed to be in violation.
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Jeremy Corbyn looks set to win the Labour leadership election, despite initially being pegged as a no-hope also-ran. The conservative right are cheering him on, seeing the Islington North MP as ushering in a period of Conservative Party hegemony. But is he being underestimated? Danny Rye argues that a Corbyn-led party could see a realignment of not just the Labour Party, but British politics, in a way which brings the traditional left back into the mainstream.
The unexpected ascendancy of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership campaign has clearly been a boon for the press, the commentariat and academics. What was looking like a dull and predictable contest has been electrified, and many column inches have been filled with speculation on what it all means for the left, the Labour Party and British politics. With some notable exceptions, much of what has been written suggests bad news for the party: stories about ‘entryism’, warnings of internal strife and electoral catastrophe echo the travails of the 1980s. However, I may be a hopeless optimist, but this is not the 1980s and it is possible to take a more positive view without buying wholesale into the Corbyn phenomenon.
Whether he wins or loses, an opportunity exists to revitalise and reinvigorate the centre-left, by reconnecting the Labour Party with the left more broadly and challenging it to refresh its ideas. There are three aspects to this: the effect of this development on the broader democratic left, the effect on the Labour Party in particular and its impact on the key lines of debate in British politics.
Firstly, it could mean a revitalised left wing voice in mainstream British politics. The Corbyn campaign has clearly galvanised activists both inside and outside the party, and has the potential to reconnect the broader democratic left to the political mainstream. This appears to be made up of two elements: those on the left in the Labour Party and those on the broader democratic left outside it. The former – many of whom are the most active, engaged and loyal members who regularly attend meetings and are out on the doorstep making the party’s case – have become revivified and are less willing to moderate their views in the electoral interests of the party, as they had been during the New Labour era.
This may explain why Corbyn has done so well in terms of constituency nominations. In those nomination meetings, the sound of yearning for a Labour Party more true to itself and its members has been heard quite clearly. The latter, including former members and activists who had given up hope that it would ever provide a home for them again, are increasingly enthused that they might actually have some kind of voice in political debate and have thus rejoined, or signed up as Affiliated or Registered Supporters in order to vote for Corbyn. Added to that are, it appears, some who may never have voted Labour before (perhaps supporting other left-wing parties at previous elections, or who have not voted at all), but who would be willing to engage in a party they felt to be more clearly distinguished from the Conservatives and more robust in its opposition to austerity.
Secondly, the consequences for the Labour Party might be that it finally has the debate that it badly needs to have. During its dark days of electoral failure and internal conflict in the 1980s, Keith Waterhouse pointed out that, however bad things looked, there was too much life left in the party for its decline to be terminal. Indeed, the conflict between left and right, between power and principle has been part of what seems to give the party energy as much as disables it. The catastrophic rift with MacDonald in the 1930s, the battles with Bevanites in the 1950s, and those with Bennites in the 1980s were all desperately damaging to the party and yet presaged significant electoral and political successes. However, in recent years, it appeared that with New Labour, the right’s ascendancy within the party was so complete that there was no longer any serious debate left to be had. Ed Miliband’s defeat only strengthened the argument that any move towards the left, however small, would be electoral suicide.
But the problem for the right was that their very ascendancy has arguably made them complacent and devoid of new ideas. Thus, despite much talk about the party needing to have a ‘debate’, the mainstream candidates singularly failed to engage in one. Rather than addressing the question of what actually had gone wrong for Labour Party in any meaningful way or addressing the question of what the Labour Party is actually for, the response appeared to be simply that the party’s platform was not ‘right wing’ or ‘centrist’ enough, a response at least as simplistic as one which says it was not ‘left wing’ enough. Some MPs lent Corbyn their nominations despite not supporting him in order to promote ‘debate’ and they have perhaps got more than they bargained for. Nevertheless, the party badly needs to have it and, for good or ill, perhaps that debate might finally begin. It is heartening that there does still appear to be life in the party and that there are enough people who still care on both sides of the debate to get involved. Thus, what was consequently looking like a routine and very dull exercise in choosing who might be the least offensive candidate to Conservative swing-voters, now looks like something much more important, or at least more interesting.
If this debate is to be productive, however, it needs to be inclusive of both the left and right of the party. Name calling and making personalised accusations will not produce anything other than bitterness. The left, revitalised by the campaign, can no longer be ignored in the party, whatever the result. But it will need to draw in new ideas, energy and expertise if it is to produce a more broadly appealing vision and maintain momentum beyond its most enthusiastic supporters. Although some of the more closed-minded elements of the left might not welcome it, something that will help this process is the somewhat belated recognition by party centrists of their own failures. Hence, Tristram Hunt and Chuka Umunna’s recent call for the right and the ‘soft left’ in the party to cooperate on ‘Labour for the Common Good’, with the aim of articulating a coherent political vision for a moderate, electorally oriented Labour Party.
Suddenly the future of social democracy and the centre left is up for grabs and there is an opportunity to both produce new ideas and galvanise enthusiasm and engagement amongst activists of all stripes in the Labour movement. The danger is that this energy will be wasted on bitter infighting. The opportunity is that the creative energy this generates could be galvanised and turned into something that can respond in innovative ways to the Conservatives and their ideologically driven ‘austerity’ agenda.
The great risk is that a prolonged period of internal debate means that the Labour Party will be out of power for an extended period of time. The consequences of this could be a repeat of the 1980s and 1990s in which Labour was locked out of government and a long Conservative hegemony ensured that any version of the left’s agenda would not be implemented. This, indeed, is the fear of many mainstream Labour members and leaders. From this point of view, the ascendancy of Corbyn could be seen as a boost for the Conservative Party and its political strategy. However, and this is my third point, the opportunity is that, rather than simply attempting to navigate a landscape fashioned by its political enemies, the Labour Party can seek to reshape the terms of debate. Out of the clash of ideas, perhaps a fresh, distinctive response to austerity can be fashioned, backed up by a new generation of activists which reconnect it with the broader democratic left in British Politics. This might have the additional positive effect of helping to stem at least some of the decline in political engagement and participation.
Thus, an optimistic view might be to see this as an opportunity for all strands of thought in the Labour Party – left, right and centre – to respond to the austerity agenda, not by chasing the tail of Conservative political strategy but by actually developing a coherent critique and appealing alternatives of its own. In other words, challenging orthodoxy rather than simply moderating it, producing distinctive ideas, rooted in centre-left thinking and traditions, rather than moderating right wing thinking with the odd left-ish idea.
It is possible, therefore, that this could represent an important moment for the left in Britain – a realignment of sorts which brings the broader left back into the political and Parliamentary mainstream by providing it with a legitimate voice within a mainstream political party. One which forces the Labour Party to reassess what and who it is for and stimulates ‘moderate’ voices on the left into more imaginative responses that engage with a broader spectrum of left-wing ideas and traditions whilst maintaining the potential for a broad appeal.
Or it may be that I am just a hopeless optimist.
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This post represents the views of the author and not those of Democratic Audit. Please read our comments policy before posting.
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Dr Danny Rye is a Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow at Liverpool Hope University. He can be found on Twitter here.
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by marathemara
Aradia Megido is, in some ways, the most fun of all the trolls. Maybe it comes from her position at the bottom of the hemospectrum. She has nothing, and there’s no way to improve her lot, so she can do what she likes without regard for social pressures. And what she likes is amateur archaeology and FLARPing with Tavros.
But FLARPing goes sour on her when Vriska attacks Tavros. To get revenge, she shows off an impressive psionic ability to summon and control ghosts, sending other trolls killed by Vriska to haunt her. Vriska, of course, retaliates by mind-controlling Sollux, who was Aradia’s matesprit at the time, to fly to her hive and kill her with his eye lasers.
But death, as we have seen many times in Homestuck, is not the end, especially not for a girl who can talk to ghosts. She becomes one herself and returns to her old haunts (pun very much intended) in the impact craters and ancient ruins near her hive.
Aradia is a Time player; her Aspect is associated with death and entropy. So it makes sense for her to be interested in dead things, and kind of apropos that she can pursue her (former) interests while dead. And she never loses her sense of humor about it, from terrible puns about being made/Maid of Time to wild-eyed excitement about watching Lord English destroy dreambubbles.
She’s got a great understanding of life too, and couples this with her experience of death and lack of social inhibitions to become a powerful force in the trolls’ session. Her prototyping of a stone frog provides her fellow players with a big leg up because of the Black Queen’s hatred of frogs. When Aradia speaks, people listen, with the exception of Equius, who continues to pursue concupiscent romance with her after she rips out the robot heart he made for her in an attempt to reject him. Her Time powers and psionics are probably the most useful of all the trolls’ abilities in fighting the Black King: during the battle, she summons an army of her doomed selves which successfully suppresses the Vast Glub which the Black King is able to produce because Feferi prototyped her lusus. She uses powers from the bottom of the hemospectrum to counter powers from the top, and it probably helped that she didn’t care about the hemospectrum to begin with.
Through the Game, Aradia works her way up a hierarchy of living things, from ghost to sprite to robot to God Tier. By this time she’s had experience of both life and death and decided that she very much wants to stay alive. So, after helping her fellow players navigate the Furthest Ring, she removes herself from the action, watching from the top of Meenah’s tower so that she can no longer die heroically by accident.
(See her up in the top corner?)
In the New Alpha, Sollux stays out in the Furthest Ring with her. I think that’s cute, and I’m glad Vriska’s manipulation of both of them didn’t destroy their relationship.
Aradia is a troll who knows what she wants and does what she wants, and unlike some trolls, what Aradia wants to do never hurts anyone sympathetic (depending on how much you sympathize with Equius). I wish I could not give a shit the way she doesn’t give a shit.
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He’s a coffee connoisseur with a taste for adventure when it comes to the popular hot beverage. Whether he’s at home or on the road, Connor Carrick enjoys checking out the newest roaster spots or heading back to visit some of his old favourites.
The Toronto defenceman recently spoke with NHLPA.com and served up his Top 5 coffee roasters in North America.
Connor Carrick's top coffee spots
1. Taking flight
“Pilot Coffee here in Toronto – they’re the best. They do a great job. The trainers with the team introduced it to me. They have this one called the Ana Sora. It’s got a great strawberry flavour. It’s outstanding.
2. Boutique beans
“La Colombe is the first boutique-type coffee shop I ever found myself in. And I thought, ‘This stuff is pretty good.’ I really enjoy what they have there.”
3. Toast of the West Coast roast
“There’s a coffee shop in Gastown (Vancouver) called Revolver. They have all sorts of great selections out there. They carry about 20 high-end roasters all around North America. ”
4. Beantown beauty
“There’s a place in Boston called George Howell that I enjoy. We played there in the playoffs and I was able to go there every day. It was awesome. Those are the brewing parameters I use at home. The ratios for what they use in the shop are online. I just rinse, repeat on those.”
5. Prescription for the perfect cup
“There’s a place called Drug Store in Nashville. They serve a single serving of dark chocolate with your espresso. It’s really good. The cups are really cool and well designed. They also have a fine chocolate selection. They had a camel milk chocolate bar – never heard of that. That was super cool.”
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ROBIN QUIVERS: But how do they work it? Do they sleep in the same bed?
HOWARD STERN: Yeah, are all three of you in the bed together?
CHARLIE SHEEN: No because we are adults and we realize that three in a bed is like, we are all not seven.
HOWARD STERN: So everybody gets their own bed?
CHARLIE SHEEN: We have two beds in the bedroom and it is a 2-1 switch off. 'A 2-1 switch off,' listen to me.
HOWARD STERN: This is unbelievable. The two of them stay in the same bed and you are in the bed next to them?
CHARLIE SHEEN: No they will take a separate bed and then I have to choose.
ROBIN QUIVERS: Oh, so you come in and choose which bed you want to sleep in.
HOWARD STERN: You live like a king, my friend.
CHARLIE SHEEN: Why the hell shouldn't I, Howard?
HOWARD STERN: Why not? You are special, right?
CHARLIE SHEEN: Yes I am, just like you. We are special.
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Altcoin News: Invesco Announced the Launch of the “Largest Blockchain ETF”
March 11, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
While the entire cryptocurrency industry is waiting for the appearance of the first exchange-traded fund for Bitcoin, Invesco announced the launch of the world’s largest ETF blockchain on the London Stock Exchange.
The structure of the newly traded exchange fund, focused on blockchain-related companies, includes 48 companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which produces chips for mining cryptocurrency, and the operator of the Chicago Stock Exchange CME Group.
As the head of Invesco’s European Exchange Products Department, Chris Mellor noted, investment firms often do not take into account companies associated with the blockchain. But they can bring a very good income.
The ETF will initially invest in a portfolio of 48 companies based on a proprietary scoring system developed by Elwood Asset Management, a specialist crypto investment boutique backed by Alan Howard, co-founder of the Brevan Howard hedge fund.
Note that there are already exchange-traded funds specializing in blockchain companies in the market, however, they were able to attract a relatively small amount of funds. For example, the largest of these funds, Amplify Transformation Data Sharing ETF, was able to raise only $110 million.
Recall that on February 20, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began consideration of the VanEck and SolidX application for Bitcoin ETF.
Author: Marko Vidrih
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Home » Deals Handmade Artificial Flower Bouquet Handmade Artificial Flower Bouquet Save Saved Removed 0 Deal Score +1 2.44 12.99 Buy It Now
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One of two Chinese men arrested on suspicion of attempted fraud paid ¥730,000 for 146 cartons of electronic cigarette cartridges at a Tokyo convenience store using stolen IDs for the new smartphone payment service 7pay, police said Friday.
The police believe an international criminal group, possibly based in China, was behind the operation. They believe the group has been involved in mass-scale ID thefts and online fraud crossing national borders.
Zhang Sheng, 22, and Wang Yunfei, 25, are suspected of using the ID of a man in his 40s in an attempt to purchase 40 of the 146 cartons, worth ¥200,000. They were sent to prosecutors on Friday.
The operator of Seven-Eleven convenience stores on Thursday said some 900 customers using the cashless payment service may have lost a total of ¥55 million after their accounts were hacked.
Wang was responsible for driving the vehicle used by the pair, in which 19 more cartons of e-cigarettes were found. Police suspect e-cigarettes had also been fraudulently obtained by the same means at another store.
The incident came to light soon after the operator, Seven & I Holdings Co., launched the smartphone payment service at over 20,000 outlets nationwide on Monday.
At a Seven-Eleven outlet in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward, Zhang used the IDs of seven to eight different people to settle payment for 146 cartons of e-cigarettes, the police said.
The two Chinese men said they had received instructions from a person who had promised them a reward, according to the police.
The police quoted Zhang as saying that he had been participating in a group chat on Chinese messaging app WeChat when someone asked if there was anyone in the group staying in Tokyo’s Ginza district. The person said a reward would be paid to anyone willing to go on a shopping trip.
After Zhang accepted the person’s friend request he received instructions to purchase e-cigarettes, the police said.
Meanwhile, Wang had been told by a relative in China about a part-time job where he could make money quickly, and was put in touch with someone who said it involved “driving a car in Shinjuku.”
The men told investigators that the person who contacted them had the same WeChat alias, the police said.
The police suspect possible involvement of an international group that includes a hacker, a person who gives instructions and others who engage in the purchasing and collection of the merchandise.
The police will also look into how Zhang managed to settle such a large payment at a single outlet.
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Hey there PlayStation pals. It’s been a long while since I’ve had the pleasure of penning a PS Blog post – the last was when we launched TowerFall Ascension on PS Vita. Well, we’re finally back with a brand new game. Celeste is a single-player, narrative-driven platformer about climbing a mountain, and it’s launching on PS4 on January 25th for $19.99!
Madeline is on a mission to climb Celeste Mountain, and it won’t be easy. The mountain spans over 700 levels packed with hardcore platforming challenges and devious secrets.
Along the way Madeline will meet peculiar characters and confront her inner demons as she jumps, climbs, and air-dashes her way to the summit. Dedicated mountaineers can even unlock hidden B-Side chapters that will truly test the limits of their skill.
If you’re not looking for a challenge, try playing in Assist Mode, which lets you toggle some powerful accessibility features to tune the game’s difficulty to whatever suits you. You can give yourself extra air dashes, slow the game speed, and more. We certainly designed Celeste to be a challenge, but we understand that every player is different and we want allow players from a wide range of skill levels to enjoy it.
Celeste is a modern take on the classic action platformer. It’s a genre very close to our hearts, and we wanted to create something that pushes the genre – and our team – in a new direction. The result is a game that’s very personal and unlike anything else we’ve played.
We can’t wait to share it with you, and we hope you’ll enjoy your time on Celeste Mountain. See you at the top!
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The parents of a 4-year-old Palmdale boy are set to be arraigned April 15 on a grand jury indictment charging them with murder and other counts in connection with their son's death last summer.
At the defense's request, arraignment was delayed Wednesday for Jose Maria Cuatro Jr., 28, and Ursula Elaine Juarez, 26, who were indicted on one count each of murder and torture in the death of their son, Noah Cuatro.
The indictment, unsealed Jan. 28, also charges the boy's father with one count each of assault on a child causing death and a newly added count of sexual penetration of a child under 10, with the indictment alleging that the latter crime occurred on the same day the boy was attacked.
The boy's mother is additionally charged with one count of child abuse under circumstances likely to cause death.
Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta this morning that he estimated that the trial would last about two months.
A trial date has not yet been set, and the judge told the defendants that it can typically take a year or longer for such a case to go to trial.
Ohta indicated that it was "more than likely'' that the case would remain at the downtown Los Angeles courthouse instead of Lancaster, where the two were initially charged last year, but said a final decision had not yet been made.
Cuatro -- who could face a maximum of 47 years to life in state prison if convicted as charged -- is jailed in lieu of $4 million bail.
Juarez is behind bars in lieu of $3 million bail and could face up to 32 years to life in prison, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.
The pair, who were arrested last Sept. 26, reported a drowning in their family pool in the 1200 block of East Avenue S around 4 p.m. on July 5, 2019.
The youngster was taken first to Palmdale Regional Medical Center and then to Children's Hospital Los Angeles, where he was pronounced dead the next day.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced the following week that an investigation was underway into the boy's death. The sheriff said Noah lived with his parents and three siblings, who were taken into protective custody.
The boy's death raised questions about the actions of county social
workers who interacted with the family.
Los Angeles County supervisors are asking for a full review of how the county handled the case of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro before he died. Lolita Lopez reports for the NBC4 News at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 16, 2019.
An attorney for Noah's great-grandmother, Eva Hernandez, said he plans
to file a civil lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Department of
Children and Family Services on the family's behalf.
"We loved Noah, our whole family loved him so much,'' Hernandez told
reporters outside court this morning. "We just want justice for him.''
A multimillion-dollar damages claim -- the precursor to a lawsuit -- was filed against the county last year, alleging that the boy died despite countless
countless reports of abuse'' that had been made to the Department of Children and Family Services. That claim was recently denied, according to attorney Brian Claypool.
The parents of 4-year-old Noah Cuatro have been arrested, two months after they told deputies he drowned in their apartment complex pool. Lolita Lopez reports for the NBC4 News at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019.
According to the damages claim filed on behalf of Hernandez, Noah was
repeatedly removed from his mother's care, once after she was arrested and
another time due to neglect, but each time he was returned to the home.
"In February 2019, a DCFS caseworker noted that Cuatro appeared lethargic and withdrawn,'' according to the claim. "There were then three more referrals in March and April, including a report that Cuatro arrived at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center in Sylmar with bruises on his back.''
The claim also contends that in May 2019, a DCFS caseworker filed a 26-
page petition to have Noah removed from his parents' custody. That petition
was granted, "but willfully ignored by DCFS,'' according to the claim.
"Noah Cuatro is not going to be forgotten,'' Claypool said, calling the indictment "the first step in helping Noah carry out his legacy to stop
this from happening again.''
DCFS issued a statement last year saying, "At any given time, the Department of Children and Family Services serves more than 34,000 families and vulnerable children in Los Angeles County with an unwavering commitment to pursue child safety every day in our communities. Our 9,000 employees are committed to this mission, and we look to do everything possible to safeguard the children entrusted to our care. We cannot comment on any pending claim, litigation or lawsuit involving the department at this time.''
The Los Angeles County Office of Child Protection released a report last year that determined DCFS officials acted "appropriately'' in their handling of Noah's case.
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click image Photo via Disney
Bongos Cuban Cafe
click image Image via Beatrix | Facebook
click image Image via Beatrix | Facebook
,
Bongos
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Adding distance to your disc golf drives is something any disc golfer wants. When looking for suggestions, one idea tends to pop up more often than not.
You’ve likely read about starting with lower speed discs and even putters to hone your form before moving to higher speed discs. When told this information one of two excuses tend to appear when approached with this idea: “That isn’t fun,” or “I’m not a beginner.”
While ripping a new high speed driver is pretty enjoyable, your skill level doesn’t mean you are done learning. We’ve put together a simple and effective way of reinventing your disc golf game that revolves around the idea of starting with low speed discs, but taken to the next level.
If done correctly, we wouldn’t be surprised if your average score on certain holes is lowered and your overall round performance is better than it has ever been.
Putter First, Putter Only
Take that giant bag of discs and pull out just your putters. We’d even suggest a few putters if that makes you more comfortable. For example, it might be one just for putting and one for throwing.
Go to your local course and play with just those discs. Yes, even the 500-foot-hole that you love to bomb your Discmania DDx. From off the tee to the final putt, it is just putters.
If done correctly, you will be down to strictly a mental game. You naturally walk up to a 300-350 foot hole and, depending on your skill level, you reach for a midrange or fairway driver. Yet, you might not walk away with the birdie every time.
Take your putter, the one you think you can’t throw 300 feet, and try it anyways. A Discmania P2 or P3x are perfect for this.
You’ll naturally put a little more effort into it. Note where it landed. How far off are you from your typical drives? It is likely closer than you’d expect.
Play one full round this way and look at your scores compared to when you have a loaded bag with many options. How similar are they? Could they be better than before?
Before moving on, do this at least three to five more times. Like we previously talked about, shot selection is everything in disc golf. This technique forces you to learn shots you never thought were possible. It’s training your body on how to actually throw a disc hard and not just lean on discs with more speed to fly further.
Baby Steps: Midranges Next
After you’ve done those putter-only rounds, go back to your bag and add in a midrange or two. Nothing else. The Discmania MD or MD3 are two good choices when reinventing your game.
On those holes where you wish you had a driver, and a putter isn’t cutting it because of the overall distance, reach for that midrange. You are still limiting your shot selection, but you will surprise yourself with how far you can throw a midrange when you really try. Reach back and let it rip the same way you throw your high speed drivers.
One benefit of a midrange over a distance driver is the control you gain. On a 400-foot-hole, you might not have full control on the drive which could easily leave you with a tougher second shot. This could lead to a tough putt. By playing smart and maintaining control, you will avoid those bogey chances and find more opportunities for par on this long holes.
Keep this simplified line up for at least three to five more rounds.
Review the holes where you previously reached for a driver, but a midrange off the teepad brought you a birdie chance instead. If you can convert at least a few of those chances, you’ve already shaved a few strokes off of your average score.
Ease Back Into Drivers
It will be tempting to just put your same selection of discs together on your next round, but really try and keep yourself honest. The more you can play with discs of a slower speed the better your form will become and the more distance you’ll gain.
It’s this type of work on the course that will pay off in the long run.
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New York (CNN Business) A conspiracy theorist, a meme creator and a plagiarist. Those are just some of the eyebrow raising attendees who will descend on the White House on Thursday for an event that will likely become a forum for airing claims of anti-conservative social media bias.
President Trump is calling it a "social media summit," but the White House did not extend invites to representatives from Facebook or Twitter . Instead, the White House has invited its political allies to the event.
In addition to inviting leaders from traditional conservative think tanks, such as the Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute, the White House has requested the presence of far-right internet personalities and trolls, some of whom have pushed conspiracy theories, lies and misinformation.
The White House has repeatedly declined to release a list people it expects to attend, but some of the recipients have turned to social media to boast about being invited.
Among them are Bill Mitchell, a radio host who has promoted the extremist QAnon conspiracy theory on Twitter; Carpe Donktum, an anonymous troll who won a contest put on by the fringe media organization InfoWars for an anti-media meme; and Ali Alexander, an activist who attempted to smear Sen. Kamala Harris by saying she is not an "American black" following the first Democratic presidential debates.
Other eyebrow raising attendees include James O'Keefe, the guerrilla journalist whose group Project Veritas tried to trick reporters at the Washington Post by planting a source who told the paper that she had been impregnated as a teenager by failed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore; Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing student group Turning Point USA who sometimes posts misleading information on social media; and Benny Johnson, the journalist-turned-activist who was fired for plagiarism by BuzzFeed and demoted at the Independent Journal Review for violating company standards.
Asked about the unconventional resumes of the people invited to the summit, the White House declined to comment beyond a statement released Tuesday. That statement, from spokesman Judd Deere, referenced an online tool the White House released in May for people to report instances of perceived social media bias.
"After receiving thousands of responses, the President wants to engage directly with these digital leaders in a discussion on the power of social media," Deere said in the statement.
At least one of the individuals invited proved to be too far off in the fringe even for the White House. An administration official told CNN on Wednesday that the White House had rescinded its invitation to cartoonist Ben Garrison, who had drawn a cartoon widely condemned as anti-Semitic.
Deere did not return a request for comment seeking more information about Garrison's invite being rescinded.
Garrison said in a statement that he had spoken to the White House on Tuesday and they had concluded his "presence at the social media summit would be a media distraction." Garrison said he was "asked to remain silent about the whole thing," but then the White House informed media about his invitation being rescinded, which he said "disappointed" him and prompted him to speak out about the allegations of anti-Semitism.
"It is obvious to anyone with common sense I am not anti-Semitic," Garrison said in the statement. "I have received many emails of support from my Jewish friends. I'm not anti-Semitic merely because the [Anti-Defamation League] says I am."
It's unclear exactly what will take place at Thursday's summit. The White House has declined to release any information about the event, including a general format of how it will be conducted or what is expected of attendees.
One person who plans to attend, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, said, "We're not sure what to expect. We're not sure if it's going to even be about policy."
"All I know is there is going to be a bunch of people in a room talking about social media," the person added. "It could be just more general, it could be vague. You know the president will be there so it could go in a number of different directions."
Claims of anti-conservative social media bias are nothing new . Republican lawmakers and conservative media personalities have for years lobbed claims of anti-conservative bias at Silicon Valley companies, whose employees tend to be largely left-leaning.
But Trump has poured fuel on the fire, attacking large technology companies on a regular basis and suggesting they need to be regulated by the government.
In a meeting earlier this year with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Trump asked about the number of followers he has on Twitter. The president has suggested, without evidence, that Twitter makes it difficult for his supporters to follow him.
Republican lawmakers in Congress have also held hearings over the past year in which they have questioned social media executives about their company practices.
Such hearings have often strayed far from being fact-based conversations. At one hearing last year, Republicans invited the pro-Trump social media duo "Diamond & Silk" to testify. The two women spent the hearing spreading misinformation about social media companies. At other hearings, Republican lawmakers have cited articles from sites such as the right-wing Gateway Pundit to make their points.
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Probe into #Steinhoff scandal set to begin next month
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Parliament - An investigation into the Steinhoff accounting scandal that collapsed the share price of the multinational retailer would start in earnest in February, MPs heard on Wednesday. Briefing parliament's committees on finance, public accounts and public service and administration, Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors (IRBA) chief executive Bernard Agulhas said they opened a case in December last year against Steinhoff and requested information from among others the company's auditors - Deloitte. Agulhas said IRBA had received a response from Deloitte this past Monday. "We can actually start on the investigation we planned for February 2018," he said. IRBA was in talks with its German and Dutch counterparts, Agulhas said. Steinhoff's main listing is in Frankfurt and has its corporate seat in Amsterdam.
Earlier, MPs accused regulators, including the Financial Services Board, of not taking the Steinhoff matter seriously enough. News of the accounting irregularities wiped billions off its market value.
The South African Reserve Bank responded that the matter was being taken seriously but added that it did not think exchange controls were breached.
The Financial Services Board said it was also probing the matter and taking it seriously, but addeed that it too awaited a report from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which Steinhoff had contracted to independently probe what led to the accounting irregularities in the financial statements of Steinhoff from as far back as 2015.
Steinhoff acting chairperson Heather Sonn earlier informed MPs that the company had reported a fraud case against former Steinhoff chief executive Markus Jooste with the Hawks, a unit of the South African Police Service.
Other than this, Sonn, along with former board chairperson and major shareholder Christo Wiese and head of the board's audit committee Steve Booysen said they could not answer any questions on what led to the scandal, saying they too were waiting for the PwC report.
Wiese said he became aware of the accounting irregularities days before it was confirmed in early December. He was at pains to point out that the auditors who pointed out the irregularities in the 2017 financial statements had been the same company "paid handsomely" to do previous audits, the integrity of which are also now been questioned.
Booysen said while initial reports of fraud at Steinhoff being investigated by German authorities surfaced in September last year, irregularities were only confirmed in December.
Jooste was asked to make a presentation to explain certain transactions and "more importantly the cash flow of certain transactions", said Booysen.
"Markus Jooste then did send an sms [text message] to me as audit chairman and the content of the sms really led me to the conclusion that that is confirmation of the accounting irregularities and then he later offered that evening to make his presentation for which he didn't pitch up..."
Booysen said Jooste tendered his resignation at 19:45 that same evening.
The Steinhoff team said it was due to meet with PwC this week to engage on the debacle, which wiped billions of rand of government pension funds invested through asset manager, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC).
The Government Employees Pension Fund, through the PIC, owned about R28 billion in Steinhoff‚ about 10 percent of the shares of the company, but only one percent of the total assets of the Fund. But following the massive decline in Steinhoff's share price‚ the GEPF's investment was worth a little over just R2 billion.
African News Agency/ANA
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The Bureau of Labor Statistics on Wednesday released the 2014 results from the American Time Use Survey. The survey offers the most detailed, up-to-date portrait of how people in the United States spend their time. Here are five of the most striking results, nearly all of which have persisted at near identical rates for the past five years:
Americans still spend more time watching TV than all other leisure activities combined:
Americans average 5.3 hours of leisure time per day (4.8 hours on weekdays and 6.5 hours on weekends and holidays) and over half that is spent in front of the television. Socializing and communicating is the next most popular activity and is the only one to nearly double on weekends (35 minutes on weekdays, 61 minutes on weekends).
Better-educated workers still have more freedom to work from home:
Thirty-nine percent of workers with a bachelor’s degree worked from home on an average day in 2014. They were more than twice as likely as workers who attended college but didn’t earn a bachelor’s to enjoy this flexibility (18 percent of workers who did not graduate from college or graduated with an associate’s degree worked from home). Only 14 percent of high school graduates and 12 percent of workers without a high school diploma worked from home on an average day.
Few Americans volunteer, but the ones who do put in a lot of time:
Only 15 percent of Americans spend any time in an average day on organizational, civic or religious activities, but the people who do participate commit a hefty chunk of their time: 2 hours and fifteen minutes per day. Women are more likely than men to commit part of their day to community activities (17 percent of women engage in organizational, civic or religious activities on a given day compared to 12 percent of men). Religious activities are slightly more common than secular commitments (9 percent of Americans spent some time during an average day on religious or spiritual activities while 7 percent set aside time for organizational or civic volunteering).
Women still do a disproportionate share of parenting:
In 2014, 21 percent of Americans spent part of their day caring for the children in their household, and women spent about 30 percent more time parenting than men did (2 hours, 10 minutes per day for women, one hour, 35 minutes per day for men). Those averages minimize the gap a little — they compare men and women who spend any time taking care of children, and men are much more likely than women to not do any child care at all (84 percent of men spend no time taking care of children, but only 74 percent of women can say the same).
But there’s one part of child care that no group spends much time doing:
From 2010 to 2014, parents had deliberate conversations with their children for, on average, only 3 minutes a day, and they read to their kids for 2.4 minutes per day (about one picture book’s worth). Conversation with children helps spur language development, and several states run programs for low-income families, who may have less time at home, to help them engage their children and close the word gap.
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By pursuing the short-term profit goals of Russian oligarchs out of the conviction that this will promote Russia’s interest rather than considering the possible impact of such an approach on Russian national interests, Moscow is alienating Ukraine and Belarus, two Slavic neighbors it has long viewed as its inevitable allies and possibly more. Consequently, some analysts are now saying Russian may “lose” these two countries just as it did Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the three Baltic states now firmly part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (ng.ru/cis/2013-08-29/3_kartblansh.html).
In his August 29 Nezavisimaya Gazeta article, Kost Bondarenko, the director of the Institute of Ukrainian Policy, notes that many experts are calling Russia’s approach to Ukraine at present “an economic war” and some are even suggesting that what the Kremlin is doing reflects “the imperial essence of official Moscow.” But beyond any doubt, the economic sanctions Moscow has imposed—most notably on Ukraine’s largest confectioner, Roshen (RIA Novosti, July 30)—are having exactly the opposite effect the Russian leadership intended. While they are inflicting real costs on Ukraine, they are not bringing Kyiv to heel but rather causing ever more Ukrainians to conclude that they have no choice but to pursue closer integration with Europe.
Indeed, Bondarenko adds, “by introducing ‘revenge sanctions,’ Russia is losing Ukraine forever, just as it, some time ago, lost the countries of the Baltic region,” not because it had to, but because of its unshakeable belief that it can win its way by using sticks rather than carrots—something that, in reality, almost never works.
Moscow has compounded this trend by the outrageous statements of the always flamboyant Vladimir Zhirinovsky who has charged that Ukraine is committing genocide against ethnic Russians and called for Moscow to annex a third of that country (lb.ua/news/2013/08/30/223196_zhirinovskiy_obvinil_kiev_etnotside.html). Additionally, a purportedly official, recently published ten-page document suggests Moscow has decided to launch a massive campaign to force Kyiv to agree to its wishes (gazeta.zn.ua/internal/o-komplekse-mer-po-vovlecheniyu-ukrainy-v-evraziyskiy-integracionnyy-process-_.html). Even if the document is not authentic, former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohrzhko told RFE/RL that he had “no doubt” that its contents reflect Moscow’s intentions (rferl.org/content/russia-ukraine-leaked-strategy-document/25081053.html).
Meanwhile, the Russian government appears to be doing the same thing in Belarus: promoting the interests of oligarchs at the expense of ties between the two countries. In Svobodnaya Pressa, on August 31, Aleksey Zimin makes that point explicitly (svpressa.ru/politic/article/73481/). While, in a Yezhednevny Zhurnal commentary published on August 30, Aleksandr Ryklin extends that argument, suggesting that by its incautious support of oligarchic interests, Moscow has managed to alienate not only its two Slavic neighbors on whom it thought it could always count, but most of its other neighbors as well. The only exceptions, and they are not particularly exceptional, he suggests, are “the fraternal Central Asian republics, Mongolia and Finland” (ej.ru/?a=note&id=13238).
Finally, writing on the Grani.ru portal (August 30), Vitaly Portnikov suggests just how counterproductive, and thus dangerous, Moscow’s current approach is. Not only is Russia increasingly surrounded by “a ring of enemies,” including many who could have been more friendly, but it has created a situation in which the governments of its neighbors—in the first instance, Ukraine and Belarus—now know that the only way they can protect their interests is to link their fates with the West (grani.ru/opinion/portnikov/m.218371.html).
One can hardly describe President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy as a brilliant success given that thanks to that approach, the Grani.ru analyst says, “Russia does not have a single ally in the contemporary world.” Still worse, he adds, in the Ukrainian and Belarusian case, Moscow is behaving not as a great power but as “a small still unrecognized republic, uncertain of how to act tomorrow and how to purchase with money the love” of those who have good reason not to love it and to insist that they, for some reason, obey Russia “slavishly.”
Unfortunately for Russia, Portnikov concludes, there is little chance that Moscow will change course as long as the Putin regime is in place. It is too invested in this failed policy approach to change. And equally tragically, too many people in the Russian Federation are prepared to support it even though eventually they will be anything but happy with the outcome it is certain to produce.
Moscow’s mistaken approach, first to the Baltic countries and more recently to Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, has been graphically represented in a chart offered at facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=720063364687493&set=a.479661218727710.129417.478655878828244&type=1&theater. It makes clear that over the last two decades and after ensuring by its actions that the Baltic states would do everything they could in order to join NATO and the EU, the Kremlin—like the French House of Bourbon before it—has forgotten nothing and learned nothing. However, the costs of alienating Ukraine and Belarus will be even larger than those associated with “the loss” of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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PAWPAW
Asimina triloba
Annonaceae
Related species: Asimina incarna, A. longifolia, A. obovata, A. parviflora, A. pygmaea, A. reticulata, A. tetramera, A. X nashii. These eight Asimina species grow in the southeastern United States.
Distant Affinity: Cherimoya (Annona cherimola), Soursop (Annona muricata), Custard Apple (Annona reticulata), Sugar Apple, Sweetsop (Annona squamosa), Atemoya (Annona squamosa X A. cherimola).
Origin: The pawpaw is native to the temperate woodlands of the eastern U.S. The American Indian is credited with spreading the pawpaw across the eastern U.S. to eastern Kansas and Texas, and from the Great Lakes almost to the Gulf. Fossils prove the pawpaw is indigenous to the U.S.
Adaptation: The pawpaw is adapted to the humid continental climate of its native habitat. It is seldom found near the Atlantic or Gulf coasts. It requires a minimum of 400 hours of winter chill and at least 160 frost-free days. Pawpaws appear to be sensitive to low humidities, dry winds and cool maritime summers. It has been successfully grown in parts of California and the Pacific Northwest that meet its growing requirements. It has grown well in the San Jose area (USDA Climate Zone 9 or Sunset Climate Zone 15). The climatic conditions of Southern California make growing the pawpaw there more difficult. The deep winter dormancy of the tree makes it highly frost tolerant, withstanding temperatures of -25° F or lower (hardy to USDA Climate Zone 5). Pawpaws can be grown as container specimens, although this is not often practiced. A deep pot is needed to accommodate the root system.
DESCRIPTION
Foliage: The dark green, obovate-oblong, drooping leaves grow up to 12 inches long, giving the pawpaw an interesting tropical appearance. The leaves turn yellow and begin to fall in mid-autumn and leaf out again in late spring after the tree has bloomed.
Flowers: Dormant, velvety, dark brown flower buds develop in the axils of the previous years' leaves. They produce maroon, upside-down flowers up to 2 inches across. The normal bloom period consists of about 6 weeks during March to May depending on variety, latitude and climatic conditions. The blossom consists of 2 whorls of 3 petals each, and the calyx has 3 sepals. Each flower contains several ovaries which explains why a single flower can produce multiple fruits.
Fruit: The pawpaw is the largest edible fruit native to America. Individual fruits weigh 5 to 16 ounces and are 3 to 6 inches in length. The larger sizes will appear plump, similar to the mango. The fruit usually has 10 to 14 seeds in two rows. The brownish to blackish seeds are shaped like lima beans, with a length of 1/2 to 1-1/2 inches. Pawpaw fruits often occur as clusters of up to nine individual fruits. The ripe fruit is soft and thin skinned.
CULTURE
Soil: Pawpaws do best in deep, fertile soil that is moist, but well-drained and slightly acid (pH 5-7). The addition of compost to most western soils makes them more hospitable to the pawpaw. Avoid heavy, wet, alkaline soil.
Irrigation: The pawpaw needs regular watering during the growing season. The soil should be kept moist but avoid waterlogging.
Fertilization: The pawpaw responds to the application of an organic or granular fertilizer high in potassium twice a year. For container growing, 250 - 500 ppm of soluble 20-20-20 NPK plus soluble trace elements during growth phase is optimal.
Pruning: Ordinarily little pruning is required, except to remove dead, damaged or wayward branches. Periodic pruning may be used to stimulate some new growth each year on older trees, since it is new growth that produces fruit the following season.
Propagation: To break dormancy Pawpaw seed must receive a 90 to 120 day stratification, i.e. exposure to cold temperatures. To accomplish this, the seed should be placed in plastic freezer zipper bag containing a handful of moist sphagnum moss and refrigerated at 32° - 40° F. The over wintering of field planted seeds normally accomplishes this stratification requirement.
Germination of pawpaw seed is hypogeal--the shoot emerges without any cotyledons. Under ideal greenhouse culture, germination can be expected in about seven weeks. Seeds field-planted in the fall will emerge the following July or August. But before the shoot emerges, the seed will have sent down a 10 inch long tap root.
Hardwood cuttings are essentially impossible to root, while root cuttings have been variable to disappointing. Some success has been reported using softwood cuttings under intermittent mist with bottom heat (80° F) and supplemental light (14 hours). All grafting and budding techniques can be performed on the pawpaw, but T-budding is not recommended. Chip-budding has been reported to be successful. Scion wood should be gathered while the tree is dormant and kept refrigerated. Grafting can be done in the spring after vegetative growth begins.
Young pawpaw plants have fleshy, brittle roots with few fine root hairs, making them difficult to transplant. It is important to follow these helpful rules:
Use seedlings, not root suckers. Move the tree with roots and soil intact. A container grown specimen is best. Transplant the tree in the spring after bud break. Give the plant good drainage and keep it well watered the first year.
Pests and diseases: Pawpaw trees are relatively disease free, including a resistance to Oak Root Fungus (Armillaria). A number of vertebrates such as foxes, opossums, squirrels and raccoons will eat the fruit, although deer, goats and rabbits will not eat the leaves or twigs. The attraction of pawpaw roots to gophers is a somewhat unknown factor, but it seems likely that they would not be the gopher's first choice. The Zebra Swallowtail butterfly's larvae feed exclusively on young, pawpaw foliage, but never in great numbers. On the West Coast, slugs, snails and earwigs can be easily controlled by the application of Tanglefoot to a band around the pawpaw tree trunk. It is important not to apply Tanglefoot directly to the bark, however.
Pollination: Poor pollination has always plagued the pawpaw in nature, and the problem has followed them into domestication. Pawpaw flowers are perfect, in that they have both male and female reproduction parts, but they are not self-pollinating. The flowers are also protogynaus, i.e., the female stigma matures and is no longer receptive when the male pollen is shed. In addition pawpaws are self-incompatible, requiring cross pollination from another unrelated pawpaw tree.
Bees show no interest in pawpaw flowers. The task of pollenization is left to unenthusiastic species of flies and beetles. A better solution for the home gardener is to hand pollinate, using a small, soft artist's brush to transfer pollen to the stigma. Pollen is ripe for gathering when the ball of anthers is brownish in color, loose and friable. Pollen grains should appear as small beige-colored particles on the brush hairs. The stigma is receptive when the tips of the pistils are green, glossy and sticky, and the anther ball is firm and greenish to light yellow in color.
Harvest: Pawpaw fruit ripens during a four-week period between mid August and into October, depending on various factors. When ripe, it is soft and yields easily to a gentle squeeze, and has a pronounced perfumed fragrance. The skin of the green fruit usually lightens in color as it ripens and often develops blackish splotches which do not affect the flavor or edibility. The yellow flesh is custard like and highly nutritious. The best fruit has a complex, tropical flavor unlike any other temperate zone fruit. At present, the primary use of pawpaws is for fresh eating out of hand. The ripe fruit is very perishable with a shelf life of 2 or 3 days, but will keep up to 3 weeks if it is refrigerated at 40° - 45° F.
Commercial potential: Although pawpaw fruit is not yet a commercially viable commodity, the domestication process is well underway. Several academic institutions are setting up seventeen Regional Variety Trial sites. Kentucky State University is the site of Pawpaw National Clonal Germ-plasm Repository. The pawpaw has also found its way to several overseas countries, and a few of these are actively engaged in research. Pawpaw leaves and twigs contain substances with promising anti-cancer and pesitcidal properties.
Plant selection: A number of mail-order sources of pawpaw plants now offer both grafted cultivars and seedlings. Most seedling plants have been propagated from mixed seeds and will eventually end up producing undesirable fruit. Purchasers are advised to graft such plants to a known cultivar or order grafted plants initially. Container grown plants are much more likely to survive transplanting.
When placing an order for a pawpaw plant, it is helpful to have the Pawpaw Selection Option Chart below handy. Phoning in the order gives the opportunity to ask questions and substantiate it.
PAWPAW PLANT SELECTION OPTIONS Container Grown (1) Bare Root (2) CULTIVAR - on seedling root stock some sources most sources CULTIVAR - from shoot/root on own root stock rarely available rarely available SEEDLING - from seed of mixed seed (risky fruit quality) some sources most sources SEEDLING - from seed of cultivar fruit (usually comes fairly true) rarely available rarely available (1) easier to get established, good survival rate
(2) slower to get established, reduced survival rate
CULTIVARS
Davis Fruit small. Flesh yellow, green skin. Seeds large. Flavor good. Mary Foos Johnson Similar to Sunflower. Mitchell Fruit medium. Flesh golden, slightly yellow skin. Flavor excellent. Overleese Fruit large. Fewer seed but large. Flesh yellow. Flavor excellent. Prolific Fruit large. Flesh yellow. Flavor excellent. Sunflower Fruit medium large. Flesh golden, yellowish skin. Few seeds. Flavor good. Purported to be self-fertile. Sweet Alice Fruit medium large. Prolific bearer. Flesh yellow. Flavor good. Taylor Fruit small. Flesh yellow, green skin. Flavor mild, excellent. Taytoo Fruit medium. Flesh yellow, light green skin. Flavor excellent. Prolific bearer. Wells Fruit quite large. Flesh orange, green skin. Flavor superb.
FURTHER READING
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Baghdad (AFP) - Iraqi security forces Friday opened fire on dozens of protesters gathering in Baghdad for a fourth day of demonstrations against corruption, unemployment and poor public services, an AFP correspondent reported.
The security forces fired directly at the protesters, not in the air, the correspondent said. There was no immediate word on any casualties.
In escalating protests since Tuesday, thousands of demonstrators have clashed with riot police and troops in the capital and cities across the south, leaving more than 30 people dead, two of them police officers.
Tensions have been exacerbated by a near-total internet blackout as the authorities seek to prevent protesters communicating with each other or posting footage of the chaotic demonstrations.
The demonstrations are the biggest challenge yet to Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi, who has imposed curfews in Baghdad and other cities to try to stop the protests gathering steam.
In his first public address since the protests began, the embattled premier made a televised speech early Friday as heavy gunfire rang out across Baghdad.
He said the turmoil could lead to "the destruction of the state, the entire state", but refrained from directly responding to the protesters' demands.
Instead he defended his government's record over its first year in office and pledged a monthly stipend for families in need, while asking for time to implement a reform agenda promised last year.
Other leaders have been more supportive of the protesters, with President Barham Saleh urging the security forces to respect their right to peacefully demonstrate.
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1st & 10 at TEX 20 (0:55 - 4th) Colt McCoy pass complete to Jermichael Finley for 8 yards to the Texas 28.
2nd & 2 at TEX 28 (0:49 - 4th) Jamaal Charles rush for 4 yards to the Texas 32 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at TEX 32 (0:40 - 4th) Colt McCoy sacked by Marque Fountain at the Texas 29 for a loss of 3 yards.
2nd & 13 at TEX 29 (0:40 - 4th) Timeout TEXAS, clock 00:40.
2nd & 13 at TEX 29 (0:31 - 4th) Colt McCoy pass complete to Jermichael Finley for 31 yards to the OKSt 40 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at OKST 40 (0:23 - 4th) Jamaal Charles rush for 4 yards to the OKSt 36.
2nd & 6 at OKST 36 (0:23 - 4th) Timeout TEXAS, clock 00:23.
2nd & 6 at OKST 36 (0:19 - 4th) Colt McCoy pass incomplete to Jordan Shipley.
3rd & 6 at OKST 36 (0:19 - 4th) Texas penalty 5 yard false start on Cedric Dockery accepted.
3rd & 11 at OKST 41 (0:13 - 4th) Colt McCoy rush for 14 yards to the OKSt 27 for a 1ST down.
1st & 10 at OKST 27 (0:02 - 4th) Jamaal Charles rush for 4 yards to the OKSt 23.
2nd & 6 at OKST 23 (0:02 - 4th) Timeout TEXAS, clock 00:02.
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Коррупция за последние полгода стала беспокоить россиян больше, чем война на востоке Украины — такие данные приводит фонд общественного мнения Левада-Центр по итогам опроса, проведенного в конце августа
Участник акции оппозиции, приуроченной к годовщине «Марша миллионов», 2013 год (Фото: ТАСС)
В списке самых насущных проблем россиян первое место занял рост цен: инфляция беспокоит 78% опрошенных. В тройку лидеров также входят бедность — 42% и рост безработицы — 36%.
Кроме того, респондентов в августе тревожили экономический кризис и плохое состояние промышленности (эти проблемы назвали 32% опрошенных), падение курса рубля и расслоение на богатых и бедных (по 27%).
Политические проблемы, такие как война на востоке Украины или санкции Запада, сейчас меньше интересуют россиян, чем в феврале (см. график). Зато коррупция, которая в феврале 2015 года занимала восьмую строчку, снова входит в пятерку самых серьезных проблем — рост с 21 до 29%.
Левада-Центр опросил 1600 респондентов старше 18 лет в 134 населенных пунктах 46 регионов страны. Опрос был проведен 21–24 августа 2015 года, можно было давать несколько вариантов ответа.
Результаты опроса нельзя назвать неожиданными, считает руководитель отдела изучения доходов и потребления Левада-Центра Марина Красильникова. «Все укладывается в ожидаемые тренды: ухудшение оценок как личного положения, так и экономической политики государства», — говорит она. Проблемы уровня жизни в последнее время обострились: реальные доходы населения снижаются после роста в предыдущие годы.
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Long-time Slashdot reader davesag writes:In 2015 the Indian government blocked access to over 800 adult web sites , and earlier this month they reportedly blocked access to Archive.org . "A block on Slashdot is over the top," davesag writes, "and makes me wonder what it is about this news site that the government here finds so terrifying."
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Around the Verse will be streamed live today at 9:00AM PDT. We will be answering questions and running down the news of the week. We will also have some special guest! You can watch live at our Twitch page.
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Love Island's Megan Barton Hanson is said to have kidnapped the hamster she shares with Wes Nelson, in news surfacing before she was seen leaving their flat.
The Dancing On Ice hunk was reportedly alarmed when he returned home and did not hear the sound of the hamster, who was the focal point of the couple's break-up announcement which was released on Saturday afternoon.
A source told The Sun: 'Wes knew something was wrong the moment he came home from a day on the ice and couldn't hear the squeak-squeak of Jon Snow's wheel.
Causing a (ham)ster! Love Island's Megan Barton Hanson is said to have kidnapped the hamster she shares with Wes Nelson, in news surfacing before she was seen leaving their flat
'It turned out Megan had swiped the hamster and the cage and hit the road - days after asking for privacy for the hamster and promising they would be co-parenting the pet. Wes was shocked she'd just taken Jon Snow without saying anything after everything she promised.'
Despite this it seems Wes understands the scenario and that he knows she will 'take good care of the pet as he hasn't got much time to play with him due to his Dancing On Ice training.'
MailOnline has contacted representatives for Wes and Megan for comment.
In light of the news, Megan headed out on Tuesday as she looked typically edgy in a silver Puffa jacket while remaining straight faced.
Shocked and heartbroken: The Dancing On Ice hunk was reportedly alarmed when he returned home and did not hear the sound of the hamster, who was the focal point of the couple's break-up announcement which was released on Saturday afternoon
Got it in the bag? Megan was strutting her stuff while keeping a stoney face
Megan and Wes have been dating for seven months, since they appeared on Love Island together, and had moved in with one another.
Megan struggled with Wes' relationship with his professional skating partner on Dancing On Ice, Vanessa Bauer, but has said she wasn't the cause of their split.
She was mad that Vanessa didn't reach out to her, said she got the best of Wes due to his intense training schedule and said SHE wanted to be on the ice with him.
A source close to Megan Barton Hanson claimed she and Wes split because 'their sex life was suffering' thanks to his grueling Dancing On Ice rehearsal regime.
Meanwhile, Megan said she had the 'worst day' of her life following the split. The Love Island star parted ways with her other half last week and admitted her anxiety has risen as a result.
Meanwhile Wes isn't letting the break-up get to him as he shared a cryptic uplifting Instagram post on Monday about 'being happy'.
Moving on: Megan kept a straight face as she emerged from their flat
Heartache: A source told The Sun: 'Wes knew something was wrong the moment he came home from a day on the ice and couldn't hear the squeak-squeak of Jon Snow's wheel' (stock image)
Sharing a snap of himself smiling at the beach, Wes wrote: 'Being happy is a way of life, not a destination.'
His upbeat outlook comes hot on the heels of Megan cancelling a scheduled radio appearance on Heart FM at the last minute.
Megan also shared several messages of support she has received from members of the public, commending her for being open about her prior battles with anxiety. She later shared another message thanking people again for their words.
Confrontation: A source said: 'The split isn't particularly friendly and he doesn't understand why she would come down to the show tonight'
The star has had a tough past week, with burglars raiding her home stealing thousands of pounds worth of goods before her relationship with Wes broke down.
Megan copied Gywneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's famous 2014 'conscious-uncoupling' announcement to reveal she had parted ways from her DOI beau.
Fans took to Twitter in their droves, labelling the move as 'iconic', after Megan swapped Gwyneth and Chris’ reference to their 'two incredibly wonderful children’ to asking her 1.8 million followers to respect their hamster's privacy.
'Decided to separate' The star, who found herself embroiled in an ongoing feud with his DOI partner Vanessa Bauer, took to her Instagram Stories on Saturday morning to confirm the news
Happy days: Megan copied Gywneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's famous 2014 'conscious-uncoupling' announcement to reveal she had parted ways from her DOI beau
She wrote: 'It is with hearts full of sadness that we decided to separate.
'We have been working hard for well under a year, some of it separated, to see what might have been possible between us and we have come to the conclusion that while we love each other very much we will remain separate.'
'We are, however, and always will be a family and in many ways we are closer than we have ever been. We are parents first and foremost to one incredibly wonderful hamster and we ask for his and our space and privacy to be respected at this difficult time.
Green with envy: Megan has publicly spoken about her intense feelings of jealousy watching Wes perform romantic and sexy routines with Vanessa
'We haven't really conducted our relationship that privately and we hope that as we consciously uncouple and co-parent we will be able to continue in the same manner. Love Megan and Wes,' she continued.
Megan's problems with Vanessa started after Wes' debut performance two weeks ago where she accused the skater of 'tactfully' breaking up with her boyfriend Louis Nathaniel to gain headlines.
The blonde bombshell recently told the Loose Women panel that she stands by her belief that Vanessa's break-up was 'tactical'.
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Kamiyah Mobley, the 18-year-old abducted as a newborn from a Florida hospital and raised by her alleged kidnapper in a South Carolina home, found out she was abducted about two years ago when she went to apply for a job, according to a friend.
“She was upset about it,” Arika Williams, who long believed she was Mobley’s half-sister, tells PEOPLE. “She even stayed home from school the next day.”
Mobley was only hours old on July 10, 1998, when authorities allege Gloria Williams posed as a health care worker and took her from a Jacksonville, Florida, hospital maternity ward. According to local reports, Mobley was briefly handed to Williams because her family believed she was a nurse, while hospital staff believed Williams was a relative.
Williams was arrested Friday at her home in Walterboro, South Carolina, where she was raising Mobley — who was called Alexis Kelli Manigo.
• For more on the case of Kamiyah Mobley, subscribe now to PEOPLE, or pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
Arika says Williams broke down and told Mobley the truth after the teen was hired at a local restaurant and was asked to provide a birth certificate and social security information.
“Lexy didn’t have that so she asked Miss Gloria for it and Miss Gloria kept brushing it off,” says Arika. “Lexy kept being hard on her mother, like ‘Momma, where is my stuff? I want to get this job.’ Then Miss Gloria just broke down and told her this is why right here, you can’t do this. I kidnapped you.”
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams tells PEOPLE investigators are still trying to put the pieces together.
“We don’t know exactly what she knew,” he says about Mobley. “We know that obviously there was conversation about her maybe not being her daughter. Did she confess completely to her, or did she just give her pieces of it? We are not quite sure at this point.”
According to Arika, Gloria Williams allegedly told her daughter she had been pregnant but suffered a miscarriage.
Story continues
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
“Gloria was pregnant at the baby shower and had people there bringing homemade quilts saying Alexis’ name on it,” Arika says. “Alexis Kelli Manigo was going to be spoiled regardless but I guess she said she lost Alexis Kelli Manigo. She was going to find Alexis Kelli Manigo and went and got Kamiyah.”
Sheriff Williams says investigators haven’t yet determined what prompted the alleged kidnapping. “We are still working on that,” he says. “We don’t know the answer to that as to why she did it and we don’t know if she told her. We don’t know how much conversation they had: whether it was over one day or whether it was over multiple days or weeks. We are not sure about that as of yet.”
According to ABC News, Williams allegedly told her ex-boyfriend Charles Manigo that she gave birth to their daughter when he was away. Manigo said he and Williams continued to date until 2003, raising Mobley together and sharing custody after they split.
However, a Facebook post on a page that appears to be that of Mobley says Manigo “did nothing” as a father figure.
“YOU WERE NOTHING TO ME MY WHOLE LIFE,” she allegedly wrote. “I CAN COUNT ON MY FINGERS HOW MANY TIMES I’VE SPENT THE NIGHT AT YOUR HOUSE.”
• Pick up PEOPLE’s special edition True Crime Stories: Cases That Shocked America, on sale now, for the latest on Casey Anthony, JonBenét Ramsey and more.
Arika says that after Mobley learned the truth she started looking up stories about the case and allegedly called her birth mother, Shanara Mobley.
“She said she heard her voice and she hung up,” she says.
Arika says Kamiyah eventually “just let it go.”
“Gloria is all she knows. That is Momma to her,” she adds. “That is who raised her to who she is now. And no matter what that will always be momma to her.”
Sheriff Williams says he is not surprised Mobley has been supportive of Gloria Williams after her arrest.
“For all accounts she was well taken care of,” he says. “She was raised a normal, healthy 18-year-old girl. It is a lot for anybody to process much less a young adult.”
Sheriff Williams says there are still plenty of unanswered questions including why Gloria Williams allegedly chose the hospital for the kidnapping.
“I don’t know why she picked that hospital,” he says. “Think about the timing of the fact that Kamiyah’s mother was a young mother at the time — so how did she know that or did she know that?
“Was she just lucky in finding a young, underage mother that she thought maybe did not have family support or something? You can really go crazy trying to fill in the blanks.”
Adds Sheriff Williams: “It is an incredible story. It leaves you with many more questions than answers. Policeman are notorious for believing they figure something out relatively quickly and reading people but this is one of those that the truth is stranger than fiction. It is incredible. You can’t make it up.”
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Check out our new site Makeup Addiction
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Clean under foreskin for first time after a week of fapping Parmesan Cheese
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The Alberta government is launching an inspection blitz of about 200 convenience stores and gas bars across the province to ensure employers are following workplace safety rules.
Inspectors from Occupational Health and Safety will make sure stores follow standards on working alone, prevention of workplace violence, pay deductions and the employment of young people.
"Health and safety on the job is paramount," Labour Minister Christina Gray said in a news release.
"Employers are responsible to take all precautions to ensure their workers are safe, treated fairly and go home to their families at the end of the day, no matter what industry they work in."
The inspection campaign comes two months after two employees of Mac's Stores in Edmonton were killed on the job while working alone in the early hours of Dec. 18.
The deaths at two separate Mac's locations raised questions about whether Alberta law should prohibit employees from working alone overnight, or at least force employers to offer them more protection.
In B.C., late-night retail operations must protect solo workers behind a locked door or barrier, schedule another worker on shift, or provide a violence protection program that includes putting cash in time-lock safes and having access to a personal emergency transmitter that is monitored by the employer or a security company.
The Alberta inspection campaign will take about three months. If infractions are found, inspectors can take action including issuing stop work orders on the spot.
The results of the blitz will be used by the government as part of its review of workplace safety and employment standards laws.
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I spend a lot of time profiling and optimizing Parrot and Rakudo. Even though we have added several features to Parrot since the 1.0 release in March and the 1.4 release in July, we've improved speed and memory use by measurable amounts. We haven't yet reached the point of powerful, orders-of-magnitude optimizations, but we're preparing for them.
I've written before that I believe the single optimization principle for writing a compiler and runtime for a dynamic language is to replace as many aspects of genericity and flexibility with straight-line code as possible. One optimization from yesterday demonstrates this in a dramatic fashion.
The oofib.pir benchmark exercises method calls and argument passing. It also creates garbage collectable objects. It's a little bit heavy on math operations for a general purpose benchmark, but I like that it performs frequent invocations. Optimizing those helps almost every real program, as does improving the garbage collector.
I normally perform profiling work with Callgrind. I've not found a tool more useful to count raw instruction counts in the processor. Yesterday I tried Cachegrind instead. Both tools are usable with the KCachegrind visualizer, making them more useful. Where Callgrind measures the instructions actually executed, Cachegrind measures the processor cache behavior of the program.
As modern processors are so much faster than memory (even fast processor caches), sometimes it's worth trading a few cycles for fewer cache misses. Similarly, as modern processors can have deep pipelines and perform speculative execution, rewriting code to avoid branch mispredictions can have a positive benefit on performance as well.
Branch prediction is a processor feature which analyzes a branch condition -- an if condition, for example -- and predicts where execution will go. Speculative execution performs the operations of that expected branch even before the processor knows that its prediction is correct. If it's guessed correctly, there's no penalty and a big improvement over having to wait. If it's guessed incorrectly, it has to throw away work. It's a risk, but it usually guesses correctly.
Sometimes it needs help.
Parrot's default garbage collector is an optimized-but-clunky stop-the-world mark and sweep collector. We wanted to replace it with a concurrent collector with better throughput before Parrot 1.0, but the time and expertise necessary to refactor the internals to make it possible to change the GC without breaking the code for everyone else was a larger investment than we could produce in time for the 1.0 release. (We're in much better shape now.)
Our garbage collector tracks two similar-but-different types of objects: STRINGs and PMCs. Think of a STRING as a chunk of binary data with an encoding and a length and a buffer. Think of a PMC as an object. A STRING is a single, self-contained unit. A PMC may contain attributes which refer to other PMCs. There are finer distinctions between them, but that's all you need to understand now.
To simplify our GC, both STRING and PMC have a shared header called PObj. This structure contains the garbage collector flags: what type of PObj is it (STRING or PMC), is it live or free, does it have a custom mark behavior, does it have custom destruction behavior. Note that both STRINGs and PMCs share the first two flags, while only PMCs have the latter two.
A stop-the-world mark and sweep collector starts from a root set of objects that the runtime knows are still alive. It traverses that root set, marking everything as a live and recursing into any PObj reachable from that root set, recursing into any PObj reachable from that set, and so on, until it's marked the entire graph of reachable objects as alive. Then it sweeps through the pools containing all allocated objects, freeing anything not marked as live and clearing all flags.
There was a single "mark this PObj as live" function. Whether we wanted to mark a STRING or a PMC, we called the same function, casting the object into a PObj.
The astute can pause here to say "Yes, of course, you're throwing away information there!"
Parrot r41447 added separate functions to mark PMCs and STRINGs as live to let the C compiler tell us if we made any mistakes about what we marked as live. (We've had a couple of bugs from expecting the wrong thing.)
My Cachegrind profile showed a huge amount of branch prediction misses in the PObj marking function. Specifically, the processor could never predict whether it was marking a STRING or a PMC. As you might expect, marking a STRING as live means only setting a flag, while marking a PMC requires checking if it has custom mark behavior and potentially recursing. There's no way to predict which path through the live object graph the mark phase will take, and there's no way to predict whether the branch predictor will see a run of PMC, PMC, PMC and get on a good train of prediction or whether it'll flip back and forth between PMC, STRING, PMC and continually be wrong. (The mark phase is deterministic for any code without random allocations, but there's too much data to predict any pattern.)
As we now had separate functions to mark each, I pulled the guts of the single mark function into the two helper functions... and reduced the number of branch mispredictions by over 70% in that benchmark.
For a further optimization, I realized that there's no need even to call the marking function for STRINGs, at least for code in the core of Parrot which can flip the flag directly.
The end result is a little bit more code -- not much, maybe a dozen lines -- but a huge increase in clarity, an improvement in simplicity, and better optimization and performance characteristics. The compiler now helps give us warning messages where it matters most (correctness), and we get better performance at a level normal profiling can't even see.
I even have the temptation to call this pattern "Replace Conditional with API."
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Nothing is really wrong with the Mavericks that some wins wouldn't fix.
But until that happens, the buzzards will circle. They always sense when there's a carcass that might be there for the picking.
Because of that, the microscope zooms in on the Mavericks and every little (or not-so-little) event that takes place on the court or within public view.
That's part of the reason why DeAndre Jordan had a chat with coach Rick Carlisle about the rebound that Jordan aggressively went over rookie teammate Luka Doncic to secure against New York in the team's most recent loss.
Jordan never apologizes for hunting down rebounds, even if they come at the expense of teammates.
"I guess I've been poaching for the past 11 years," he said Monday. "I feel like every rebound that comes off is mine. So I am guilty of that. But honestly, when I'm going for the ball, I don't really look for anybody else."
That was the case in the New York game. With Doncic stationed to the left of the basket to collect an errant Knicks 3-pointer, Jordan flew in from near the free-throw line to snatch the rebound. He didn't exactly shove Doncic out of the way. But if Doncic had been a Knick, it would have been a clear over-the-back foul on Jordan.
The play drew criticism on social media platforms. And Doncic's body language on the play suggested he wasn't happy with Jordan's aggressiveness. Remember, Doncic has been dealing with a sore back.
Asked if the play was over the top, so to speak, Carlisle said: "A little bit. We talked about that and addressed it. And moved on. When you're struggling to win games, it's easy to look back and be negative. We've got to address things that are the most pressing things and move forward and be positive if we can. But it was addressed."
Jordan said he wasn't aware that the play appeared to be a stat-padding attempt until later.
"Honestly, I didn't even see how it looked until after the game," he said. "But we saw the play and we talked about what people have said about it. Social media is insane. But we've talked about it.
"I don't think it's anything negative. We were both trying to make a play on the ball and that was really it. I don't get mad when Dennis [Smith Jr.] comes in and swipes a quick rebound. At the end of the day, it's a possession for us."
Jordan is third in the NBA at 14.3 rebounds per game. One of the primary reasons he was signed in July was to help alleviate the rebounding woes that have dogged the Mavericks for the last two seasons.
The 6-11 center will be a free-agent again this coming summer, so averaging 12.7 points and a career-best 2.4 assists per game is adding to his appeal.
Reboundgate comes on the heels of the exchange that happened between president of basketball operations and general manager Donnie Nelson and shooting guard Wesley Matthews after the New York game.
It may or may not have been a heated exchange. Doesn't really matter at this point. What does matter is that scenes like that and the rebound poaching make the Mavericks look like they are fraying at the seams. At 2-7, they have to be careful not to splinter. But it's not easy.
"We've got to be positive, upbeat on the one hand," Carlisle said. "But we've got to be truthful and direct on the other hand."
Internally, the Mavericks know they have far more pressing issues than stealing a rebound or heat-of-the-moment conversations that get emotional.
Asked if the Mavericks are capable of pulling out of their tailspin in which they've lost six consecutive games, Jordan said:
"Hell, yeah, we're capable. We've got a deep team. We've just got to figure out a way to put it together. We've done it for a quarter, two quarters. But those lapses we have ... the first six minutes of the game, that stuff comes back to bite you and you can't have games like that. It's tough to come back from that. We'll figure it out."
Legends staying until 2023: The G League Texas Legends announced that they have agreed to a five-year lease extension to play in Frisco.
They have played at Dr Pepper Arena in Frisco all nine seasons. It remains to be seen if the Dr Pepper name will be kept on the building in the aftermath of a merger with Keurig.
"This has been our home since year one and we look forward to continuing to grow here," said Legends president/general manager Malcolm Farmer.
The extension takes the team through the 2022-23 season with options through 2027-28. The Legends have led the G League in attendance for five years and set an average-attendance record last season.
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Women making mark at craft breweries
When Megan Hill was a student at the College of St. Benedict, she reluctantly agreed to try her future husband's homebrew samples.
"I told him I liked it even though I didn't," Hill admits. "I was not interested in drinking beer when I met him."
Beer is now a favorite drink for Hill. And her bread and butter.
Megan Hill helps run Bemidji Brewing Co. with her husband Tom and co-owners Tina and Justin Kaney.
While the craft brewing industry has a largely male workforce, women like Megan and Tina are becoming increasingly involved.
In St. Cloud, Renee Anderle serves as Lupine Brewing Co.'s director of sales. St. Cloud State University graduate Brittany Krekelberg is president of Shakopee's Badger Hill Brewing Co. She started it with her husband Broc, a fellow alumnus, and other investors. And in St. Paul, The Urban Growler stakes the claim as Minnesota's first all woman-owned and brewed microbrewery.
"From my experiences, there's been no lack of respect being a female," said Krekelberg, whose brewery recently started canning its product. "If you are educated and know your stuff, there's no difference if you are male or female. I think I have a harder time as a woman shopping at (a hardware store) than I do as a woman selling beer."
The sentiment is felt throughout the industry.
"Really, when you look at it, there's a lot of women in the position of bartenders, general managers and bar managers," Anderle said. "There's a lot of women in those positions and they make a lot of the key decisions on what each bar will carry. Women have a big impact on the industry."
As with their male counterparts, there's a plethora of influences getting women into the craft beer scene.
Megan Hill learned about different beer styles through her husband. They opened Bemidji Brewing Co. in 2012 after raising $17,000 through a Kickstarter campaign.
She now enjoys sours and beers with lots of hops, and her favorite from the Bemidji Brewing Co.'s taproom is a seasonal sour red aged on tart raspberries.
"It's probably a good thing we don't have it on tap all the time or I would drink it all," Hill jokes.
Hill's business partner Tina Kaney was Bemidji Brewing Co.'s original assistant brewer. She previously dabbled in homebrewing and was introduced to craft beer as a college student in Madison, Wisconsin.
"I saw what the whole culture of craft beer and small breweries could be," said Tina, whose favorite Bemidji Brewing Co.-made beer comes from the limited release single-hop series. "I fell in love with the spectrum of flavors you could get."
Anderle got into beer by trying her husband's homebrews — he is the Lupine president and a co-founder.
"I was a wine snob before all this," Anderle admits. "I discovered I didn't like beer because the flavors weren't there like they are today. Now I absolutely love it."
Anderle spends her work days traveling throughout the state offering samples of Lupine's product to potential clients. Some of Lupine's unique flavors include an oatmeal cranberry stout, a chocolate cayenne stout and a tea-infused ale.
Krekelberg met her husband while they were both students at St. Cloud State. One of their first dates was to visit the Summit Brewing Co. of St. Paul.
After they graduated, they moved to the Denver area when Colorado breweries New Belgium Brewing Co. and Odell Brewing Co. started earning national recognition.
"It was this new phenomenon there in the '90s and it was exciting to be part of," said Krekelberg, who serves as Badger Hill's president.
Now she's part of the booming Minnesota craft beer scene.
Badger Hill Brewing Co. — named after Celtic words for "Broc" and "Brent," the names of two brewery co-founders — initially started contract brewing out of Minnetonka's Lucid Brewing. They moved into their current facility between Valleyfair amusement park and Canterbury Park at the end of 2014.
They're on pace to double their production in 2015. And they'll be doing it with woman leadership, a growing influence in the booming craft beer scene.
"We're really lucky to be part of this industry," said Krekelberg, whose favorite Badger Hill drink is the white IPA (India pale ale). "The more breweries there are, the more good beers there are — and that's better for us all."
Follow Jake Laxen on Twitter @jacoblaxen.
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youths in Muirhouse before they launched fireworks at residents' wilndows. Picture: contributed
Residents living on West Pilton Park today told of the terrifying moment a gang of youngsters blew up a wheelie bin and threw rockets at front doors and windows, in just one of many shocking attacks.
Families in Pennywell Gardens have also reported similar problems, with many saying they are too scared to leave their homes after dark.
The group of between ten and 15 yobs, believed to also be behind stolen motorbikes plaguing residents in the north of the city, have been gathering in West Pilton Park in recent nights to light the fireworks, before preying on their targets.
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One neighbour, whose property has been hit twice by a rocket, said: “There seems to be an ongoing problem with these uncontrollable teenagers who think it’s acceptable to be throwing fireworks at people, houses and cars.
“The noise of the fireworks has got so bad over the past few nights I’ve actually had to take my dogs to the vet to get sedatives because they just won’t settle.
“It actually sounds like a bomb going off in my front garden.
“These aren’t just little sparklers you can buy from supermarkets, they appear to be in possession of heavy duty fireworks – like the type of things you’d see at a professional display.
“It’s only a matter of time before a person gets hit, and worse, killed.”
A handful of residents have told the News about their experiences, but all wish to remain anonymous, in fear of being targeted by the “untouchable” group.
A mother-of-two, who lives in a flat at West Pilton Park, added: “The other night I had to tell my little girl to move away from our window because I was frightened a firework would come hurling through it – despite the fact we are a few floors up.
“They are leaving us fearing for our lives. I’m too scared to let my kids out.
“Our flat hasn’t been hit yet but the other night the teenagers put a firework inside one of the wheelie bins and it blew up. It sounded like a massive explosion.
“They just think they are untouchable but what they are doing is so dangerous.
“It’s just terrifying for the people who live here.”
Local councillor Cammy Day said he was aware of the ongoing problem.
He said: “This just shouldn’t be happening, someone is going to end up getting seriously injured.
“I am aware police have been speaking to local shopkeepers telling them not to sell fireworks to young people.
“These teenagers don’t understand the potential damage they could do.”
A spokesman for Police Scotland said: “Police in Edinburgh have received reports of youths throwing fireworks and causing disturbance within the Pennywell Gardens area and West Pilton Park.
“Inquiries are continuing to identify those responsible and anyone with information is asked to contact police.”
courtney.cameron@jpress.co.uk
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DURANGO, Colo. (CBS4) – The La Plata County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Saturday that Mark Redwine, the father of Dylan Redwine, was arrested Saturday and charged with his son’s murder.
The arrest comes after a grand jury in Durango issued an indictment for probable cause against Mark Redwine.
According to a news release from sheriff, police in Bellingham, Washington, apprehended Mark Redwine on a warrant. He is being held on a $1 million cash-only bond.
Dylan Redwine disappeared in November 2012 during a court-ordered visitation at his father’s home in Durango. Dylan, 13 years old at the time of his murder, was staying at his father’s residence for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Dylan messaged his mother in Colorado Springs when he arrived at his father’s house on Nov. 18. He also texted a friend in Bayfield and made plans for the next morning. He was not heard from again.
Dylan was reported missing by his mother, Elaine Hallm the next day. That day, the first of several searches was conducted.
Searchers found human remains in June of 2013 near Vallecito, about eight miles away from Mark Redwine’s home. DNA testing confirmed the remains to be Dylan’s.
In a copy of the grand jury’s indictment provided to CBS4, details of the case became public.
“Mark Redwine and Dylan Redwine had argued and fought on their previous visit, they had not been getting along leading up to the court ordered visit, and several witnesses stated that Dylan Redwine did not want to visit Mark Redwine. Text messages indicated Dylan Redwine had asked to stay with a friend rather than his father the same night of his arrival, a request that was denied by Mark Redwine. Dylan Redwine.”
The indictment describes how Dylan’s blood was found in Mark Redwine’s living room furniture and floor. A cadaver dog also detected the scent of a corpse at several locations in the home, on the clothing Mark Redwine reported he was wearing that night, and his pickup truck.
In November of 2015, Dylan’s skull was found a mile and a half away from the first recovery site. A wildlife officer told investigators that no animal known to the area would have transported a body through difficult, uphill terrain for that distance. Forensic anthropologists determined the skull had injuries consistent with blunt force trauma and knife marks.
Mark Redwine’s prosecution will begin once he is extradited back to Colorado.
A press conference including the La Plata County Sheriff and Sixth Judicial District DA is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.
“The La Plata County Sheriff’s Office, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and Federal Bureau of Investigation have invested thousands of hours in investigating this case,” according to the LPCSO’s news release.
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Aleksandar Andjic / EyeEm
The US and UK signed an agreement Thursday that will allow law enforcement officials in both countries to demand tech companies in the other's country to furnish electronic evidence for use in criminal investigations. The agreement is the first approved under the controversial CLOUD Act passed by Congress last year.
The agreement between the two counties "will dramatically speed up investigations by removing legal barriers to timely and effective collection of electronic evidence," the US Justice Department said in a statement. The pact will allow investigators to gain access to data on serious crimes such as terrorism, child sexual abuse and cybercrime without encountering legal obstacles.
"Only by addressing the problem of timely access to electronic evidence of crime committed in one country that is stored in another, can we hope to keep pace with 21st Century threats," US Attorney General William Barr said.
The CLOUD Act, which stands for Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, updated the rules for criminal investigators who want to see emails, documents and other communications stored on the internet. It also lets the US enter into agreements to send information from US servers to criminal investigators in other countries with limited case-by-case review of requests.
The pact replaces current process for sharing internet user information between countries, called MLAT, or a mutual legal assistance treaty, which requires law enforcement officials to get court authorization before going to tech companies. That process often takes years, the Justice Department said.
But privacy advocates at groups like the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the change, saying it lets law enforcement bypass constitutional protections against unreasonable searches. It also could lead the US to send user data to police in countries known for abusing the human rights of their citizens, they argue.
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Slitherine/Matrix Games Update - Gary Grigsby, CMANO Live, Release Dates, Oh My! By Joe Robinson
Just because Matrix Games/Slitherine are now international superstars, doesn't mean they don't have a games company to run as well. We're approaching the pre-Christmas season now, which is always good for game updates and news. Here's what they've been up to this past week!
Gary Grigsby Strikes Again
Just when we thought Gary Grigsby was done terrorising wargamers everywhere with his slick-sounding name, we received word that War in the West has been updated to Version 1.01.37.
The full changelog can be read here, but highlights include a new 'living' manual that includes all of the new features and rule changes added since the release of the game. Please note that because it iss now a living being, you need to feed & water it to prevent premature death.
CMANO Live Episode 4
The fourth episode in CMANO's 'LIVE' series of micro-DLCs will be dropping November 2nd. Titled 'Don of a New Era', it follows the aftermath of the recent Russia/Ukraine tensions and explores more hypothetical 'what-if' scenarios and wargame models.
James recently did a joint-review of Episode's 1 & 2, so we will be doing reviews on 3 & 4 in another joint review. We've been told Episode 4 will be the last one prior to Christmas.
You can read more information on the product page.
Strategic Command Release Date
Matrix has confirmed the release date for Fury Software's Strategic Command WW2: War in Europe. The third title in the series will be releasing on November 17th.
Our very own Jeff Renaud has been writing some AARs for the game over on the Matrix Forums, the first two parts of which are already online:
The Road to Warsaw – Part 1 | Part 2
We hope to bring you some additional in-depth coverage in the coming weeks leading up to launch.
More Order of Battle Screenshots
Matrix are showing off more screenshots of Order of Battle's new expansion – Blitzkrieg – in an effort to spoil so much of the game you won't actually need to buy it yourself.
There's no specific feature being promoted this time around, only some good ol'fashioned Poland stomping.
The expansion will be releasing at a time that's yet to be announced, although we totally know when it's coming out. Do you want to know? Do you? No? Ok then...
Hard-(Panzer)Corps
We told you about the Panzer Corps tournament last week, but it's been underway for three days now. It's already gotten a great response – sources inside Matrix said they could easily have held a tournament with double, even triple, of the modest 32 players they're currently running with.
The first round of pairings, as well as the snazy tournament board mock-up, can be viewed here. Players have until Monday 24th October to complete their match.
That's all for this week's update – see you next time! This article covers games that are published and/or developed by members of the Slitherine Group. Please see the About Us page for more information.
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Natalia Viri
Numa das histórias de destruição de valor mais instantâneas de uma empresa brasileira, a Netshoes desabou 44% hoje após a divulgação dos resultados do primeiro trimestre. O volume negociado foi vinte vezes a média diária.
Desde sua estreia na Bolsa de Nova York há pouco mais de um ano, a empresa já perdeu 84% do valor — listada a US$ 18, a ação agora negocia a US$ 2,87.
Um número bem específico causou pânico no balanço divulgado ontem à noite: a companhia saiu de uma posição de caixa de R$ 396 milhões para R$ 60,7 milhões em apenas três meses.
A sangria tem a ver com uma mudança de estratégia num assunto bem brasileiro: a forma como a Netshoes vinha monetizando as vendas parceladas.
Até o fim do ano passado, a companhia antecipava com os bancos boa parte dos recebíveis de cartão de crédito, transformando em caixa uma receita futura ao custo de uma maior despesa financeira. Nos últimos meses, com a chegada de um novo CFO, a companhia decidiu que não valia a pena ter essa despesa e cortou boa parte da antecipação de recebíveis, com efeito negativo na geração de caixa.
"Essa coisa de antecipação de recebíveis é um troço muito tupiniquim e é difícil de explicar para a base de acionistas, que é muito concentrada em fundos gringos de tech", diz um dos poucos gestores locais que ainda tem alguma posição no papel.
Com a empresa valendo menos de US$ 90 milhões agora, muitos investidores estrangeiros tendem a liquidar suas posições, especialmente num momento em que o real se desvaloriza frente ao dólar.
Para piorar o quadro, a porrada no caixa da Netshoes não veio acompanhada de um aumento proporcional nas vendas. O GMV — o valor total das mercadorias vendidas — subiu 5,2% no primeiro trimestre.
A companhia continua entregando o arroz com feijão, mas está longe de produzir o crescimento que o CEO e fundador Marcio Kumruian vendeu durante o IPO. Aliás, nem o arroz com feijão está lá essas coisas. A receita ficou de lado, com alta de 0,8% para R$ 399 milhões; como parte das vendas é feita via marketplace, onde a empresa só recebe comissões, há uma diferença em relação ao GMV.
O EBITDA também foi do azul para o vermelho, saindo de R$ 3,6 milhões positivos para R$ 29 milhões negativos.
"O desempenho operacional não trouxe nada para comemorar, mas tirando essa confusão com o caixa, não era para cair tanto", diz um gestor.
A Netshoes estreou na Bolsa em abril de 2017 com um valuation de US$ 556 milhões, metade do que pretendia quando começou as conversas com investidores em meados do ano passado.
Mais da metade do book ficou concentrado em cinco grandes investidores, o que ajudou no desmonte do papel quando a história de crescimento e geração de caixa começou a azedar.
Em meio à confusão e a derrocada das ações na Bolsa, a Netshoes trocou a diretoria financeira. Em fevereiro, Alexandre Olivieri — que já foi CFO da Hypermarcas, da Fastshop e estava no Grupo São Francisco — assumiu o cargo no lugar de Leonardo Dib, que estava na companhia desde 2013 e ajudou a fazer o IPO.
Procurada pelo Brazil Journal, a empresa não quis comentar o resultado.
Siga o Brazil Journal no Instagram e no YouTube.
Tags: Netshoes, Tecnologia & Internet, Varejistas e empresas de consumo
Siga o Brazil Journal no Instagram e assine nossa newsletter aqui embaixo.
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Disclaimer: No clear chain of command existed at Abu Ghraib because so many individual members of various companies and brigades were thrown together there; the chaos and lack of accountability that ensued created an environment that was ripe for abuse. According to an internal military investigation, overall responsibility for detainee operations never came together under one person short of Lt. Gen. Sanchez himself, who was the chief commander in Iraq. “It is important to understand that the MI units at Abu Ghraib were far from complete units,” reads the internal report. “They were small elements from those units. Most of the elements that came to Abu Ghraib came without their normal command structure. The unit Commanders and Senior [Noncommissioned Officers] did not go to Abu Ghraib but stayed with the bulk of their respective units. The bringing together of so many parts of so many units, as well as civilians with very wide backgrounds and experience levels in a two month time period, was a huge challenge from a command and control perspective.”
Sources include the Fay Report and the Taguba Report.
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Donald Trump says he loves and respects women. Yet for decades he has uttered boorish comments that undermine that assertion, and in recent weeks his misogynistic remarks have become fodder for journalists (see here and here). Moreover, Trump’s attitude toward women has been a campaign issue—and it could become a major battlefront should he win the Republican presidential nomination. When Fox News host Megyn Kelly at a debate in August pressed Trump about his past derogatory remarks about women, he launched a feud against her and the conservative network. This week, a super-PAC run by a former Mitt Romney operative released a commercial in which a series of women quote ugly comments about women attributed to Trump. In these statements, Trump derided women as “dogs,” said he wouldn’t help raise his own children, and declared his preference for women with large breasts. On Wednesday, Trump posted an attack video showing Hillary Clinton barking like a dog.
As reporters and opposition researchers continue to dig into Trump’s past, they are likely to find more evidence that he harbors a negative or chauvinistic view toward women. Here are other examples—so far unreported or not widely noticed—to add to the list:
“it’s sick, isn’t it?”
In the early 1990s, shock jock Howard Stern hosted an interview show on the E! network, and Trump was the featured guest on one episode. Stern, no surprise, wanted to discuss—and drool over—Trump’s active dating life, and the tycoon obliged him. Trump acknowledged he judged women on their looks: “I tend to like beautiful women more than unattractive women. I don’t know, maybe that makes me bad.” But what was more telling was an exchange in which Trump indicated he believed there was something “sick” about women that caused them to be attracted to men who treat them poorly.
Stern began this part of the discussion by saying to Trump, “You once said that the best way to treat a woman is to treat her like doody.” The conversation continued:
Trump: No, I never said that…It was attributed to me. Stern: But I’ll tell you something: I agree with that statement. Trump: [Laughter] Stern: They don’t listen otherwise. I tell you, women are troublemakers…So you never did say that? Trump: No, I never said that, but it was attributed to me. Stern: So you treat women with respect? Trump: I can’t say that, either.
Trump quickly added, “I treat women with great respect.” Yet the two were not done with this subject. A few moments later, Stern asked Trump whether Marla Maples, his girlfriend at the time, would be upset if he were to see other women. Trump said, “Probably not.” Stern exclaimed, “Unbelievable!” And Trump tried to explain:
Trump: You said that women like being treated badly. Stern: Yes, so the more they think you’re desirable, the more they will go for you. Trump: There’s something to that. It’s sick, isn’t it?
Trump appeared to be saying he thought Stern was on to something with his treat-women-badly theory—even if he had not said the quote attributed to him. Later in the show, at Stern’s request, Trump ranked women he has “had” and women he had been linked to in the gossip press.
“That ass is too…”
In 2003, Trump went on Stern’s radio show, and the discussion was the usual fare. Stern discussed having hot-tub oral sex with Melania, Trump’s wife-to-be. Trump bragged that he could estimate a woman’s weight within half a pound. Stern asked Trump to name the “three hottest chicks you’ve seen.” Stern declared that Jennifer Lopez couldn’t be on the list because “her ass is too fat.” Trump replied, “You know, I really like J. Lo, but that ass is…” Trump then asked,” Do you really want me to do this?” Of course Stern did. “I’m very, very good at it,” Trump said. And he cited Keira Knightley, Paris Hilton, and his daughter Ivanka. He noted that he had watched Hilton’s sex video.
“You never get to the face because the body’s so good.”
A year later on Stern’s radio show, Trump boasted that the National Enquirer recently had published a story saying, as he put it, “that in the history of the world, nobody has gotten more beautiful women than I have.” Moments later, he and Stern were discussing tennis pro Steffi Graf. Trump called her a “great girl,” and Stern replied, “She’s not hot.” Trump responded, “She’s got one of the greatest bodies ever.” Stern shot back: “But what about the face?…[The] body’s a 10. What’s the face?” Trump had an answer: “Well, you never get to the face because the body’s so good.”
“how do the breasts look?”
In 2005, Trump was back on Stern’s radio show. The conversation ranged toward the juvenile, and at one point Stern asked Trump if he would still love Melania if she were disfigured in a horrible car accident. Trump replied, “How do the breasts look?” Stern said that in this scenario the breasts were not injured, and Trump responded, “Okay, well that’s important.” He did say he would “stay with her 100 percent.” (It was during this interview that Trump said he wouldn’t take care of any kids Melania would have; he’d just pay for them.)
“They Want to torment me.”
A video posted on YouTube in 2007 showed Trump entering a large auditorium in Toronto to give a seminar on success. Loud music was blaring. The crowd was applauding. And a squad of enthusiastic, fist-pumping cheerleaders—men and women—greeted his arrival on the stage. Trump’s first words were to tell the guys to leave the stage. The women could stay, he said. But he didn’t call them women. He said, “And the girls—we’re supposed to call them women, but they’re girls to me—the girls, you can stay the entire speech.” He then did request the women to leave, too: “They want to torment me, and they always have beautiful women over here, and I’m sitting up making this speech, and I can’t stand it. Girls, get off this stage right now.”
“i find women to be much more aggressive than men.”
In 1997, Trump appeared on Conan O’Brien’s show, and the host asked about his dating life. Trump didn’t provide many details, but he did expound on his views on women and sex. As he put it:
I find women to be much more aggressive than men. In fact, many of the people that are in my company and that I hire are women. I find women to be far more aggressive—and, sexually, far more aggressive—than men.
Moments later, he showed O’Brien what was in his jacket pocket: a condom.
Objectifying women, judging them based on appearance, suggesting they like being mistreated—all of this has been part of Trump’s long-running playboy schtick. His history of oafish remarks will certainly continue as a campaign controversy, especially if he snags the GOP nomination and ends up facing Clinton in the main event.
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British Touring Car champion Colin Turkington and record race winner Jason Plato will race as team-mates in Team BMR Volkswagens in 2015.
The top two drivers from last year's championship fight join Aron Smith and team boss Warren Scott in the fledgling outfit's quartet of CCs for only its second season in the BTCC.
Both Turkington, whose departure from West Surrey Racing was confirmed last Friday, and ex-MG driver Plato have been signed on multi-year deals, with the team's marquee 2014 signing Alain Menu and Jack Goff making way.
"It's taken a while to get to this point and I am relieved," Turkington told AUTOSPORT.
"I always tried to keep my options open because I knew I was in a potentially very tricky situation.
"I've spent quite a few weeks not knowing if I would even be racing at all. That was not easy to understand, having just won the championship.
"I feel it's the best option outside of WSR. You want to go somewhere you feel you have the chance to win. Given time, there will be the possibility to do that."
PLATO: ENGINEERING EXPERTISE KEY
Scott's team has also signed engineering heavyweights Carl Faux and Kevin Berry to help advance its fleet of CCs.
Plato worked with Faux at MG while Berry, who was at Triple Eight with Plato in 2012, was Turkington's engineer at WSR for the last two years.
Double champion Plato, whose last title came with the RML-run Chevrolet operation in 2010, believes that technical strength will fast-track the team's progression from reverse-grid race winner to championship challenger.
"It's a race-winning car in race three, it's still not there yet," he added. "The main thing for me is the right people are involved in the programme.
"I worked with KB in 2012 and Carlos basically designed and developed the MG into the best car on the grid.
"Those two being involved and running the technical department is a very clear sign of how the team's going to move forward."
BMR CONFIDENT OF BIG GAINS
Team boss Scott said he had no worries about managing two of the championship's best drivers, and played down the suggestion that the inexperience of the team would be a limitation.
"I think the team has coped extremely well with the steps we've taken so far," he told AUTOSPORT. "Although we're only a two-year-old team, if you look at our years of experience we've got a wealth of it.
"If I was going to play, I'd have one car. With four, I'm going to do it properly. When the opportunities come, you've got to take them."
* Analysis of Team BMR's superteam and what Turkington and Plato think is achievable in 2015 is available in this week's issue of AUTOSPORT, available online and in stores on Thursday
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It’s different so I should probably write some of it down.
I have fallen in love 4 of the 6 times I can in a lifetime. This is the fourth and I think I have finally learned my first two lessons in love.
Love has no room change.
He’s not perfect, in fact, the first 6 months of our relationship I was a glorified booty call, and I only use the word glorified to make myself feel like we knew each other at all. I didn’t have his phone number, he never managed to make me feel beautiful, or smart, or much of anything really other than tears every month the few days before my period came. To me, he was perfect, he was making me feel, something again. I was ok with telling everyone around me how I was in love and he was amazing and that he didn’t even like me. We had sex every other day. For six months. Once he went away to Montreal, got drunk and texted me a couple nice things. I was more sure it was worth it than ever before. I didn’t care that he’d get tired of me after a few more months. That’s what boys did to me now, my cross to bear because that’s what I did to their brethren for so long.
I never thought he liked me, ever. I’m still only 90% sure, about 10% of the time. I was physically accessible, being conveniently located in my bed each night a few blocks down from his house. I smoked weed with him every time I saw him, cutting his recreation budget in half. I didn’t mind that the visits were always quick. “I’m busy too.” I’d say, “You can only come by for a quick visit.”. Mean while, I’m sitting there terrified that he will see the thick clouds of “sleepover” dreams that surround my torso. I carried those dreams around with me until one day, he slept over. In the morning, he goes home to get some Shreddies. This is a theme that continues for our sleepovers, always, until now, this is a thing that happens, Every, Time.
Let’s pop back to sex for a second here. I’ve happily given this man more sex than any other man ever in a single year. At least every other day. Twice in a row only once. He couldn’t get it up only once. I couldn’t come only Every. Time. It’s because for no reason at all, I think he’s better than me. It’s because of that picture of a strange girl with an eyebrow ring resting on my pillows as my boyfriend’s dick goes in her. It’s because shorty Jones made me feel like shit about my sex face. It’s because of that one text Marcus sent me ripping up my entire body. That one text that I read and re read and that I puked and re puked until I was a disgusting pin of saggy ass skin and hollow wet cheeks.
Before him, I tried to heal by having sex and getting drunk and being free. I had never really been free. I drank all the alcohol, all of it, always. I went dancing alone, literally, to my iPod in the middle of downtown. I asked bars full of men to rate me out of 10 (I’m a 7). I tell the same stories of this time over and over because I remember none of it. It’s a patchwork of days recalled because someone scolded me or because I cried, intense emotion links memory. This patchwork of months, not one square is there because of joy. People thought I was weird, I told them I was going crazy. I told my parents and my best friends in serious confidence that I thought I was going crazy, all the while, every other day, I’m not saying much, fucking him, projecting the parts of myself that I remember on to my bedsheets for him to get to know. A crazy person showing off a paint by number personality in an attempt to bring back her real one. I feel better after a while, I don’t want to have sex with anyone but him. I realize I would have never had sex with him if I hadn’t been in such a dark place, well, I would have made him work for it more, something he wouldn’t have done, and we would have never been. It’s my meet cute, me being all kinds of fucked up. So, here I am, in love with him. My next move? I make out with my first black guy, I fuck the young one who holds a special place in my heart, and I cuddle with my best friend’s hyper sexualized roommate. All this in three days, then I pick him. I ask him if I am his girlfriend, he looks at me with soft eyes. I missed soft eyes so much I had made myself forget about them. I have sex with no one but him for our second 6 months, our real first 6 months. Turns out, I doubled my sex partner number in 1 year from 10 to 20. “I’m cool with it.”, “I love him.”, “I’m happy.”, I say. He likes me too now. I’m on cloud 9, in the land of sleep over dreams and flowers on a Tuesday. I’m still not sure who knows me though, and I still can’t come.
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CEO gives employees 'life-changing' bonus
Elizabeth Armstrong Moore | Newser staff
(NEWSER) – The founder of one of Turkey's most successful brands, the food delivery company Yemeksepeti, in May sold his 15-year-old company to Germany's Delivery Hero for $589 million. He's quite literally sharing the wealth: $27 million is going to 114 of the company's 370 employees. "Yemeksepeti's success story did not happen overnight and many people participated in this journey with their hard work and talent," CEO Nevzat Aydin tellsCNNMoney, specifying that the amount each person received was based on how long they'd been with the company, how well they'd performed, and their "future potential in the company." Yemeksepeti, which means "food cart" in Turkish, is the country's first, not to mention biggest, online delivery site, reports Business Insider. Its reach has spread to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and Jordan, and it delivers more than 3 million meals every month.
With the typical employee earning between $1,000 and $2,000 a month, the average $237,000 bonus works out to roughly 150 months of wages, per CNNMoney. "This bonus package is life-changing to many of us," one employee says. Aydin tells Hurriyet that while the company had no "liabilities or promises," they decided to give the employees "out of our own share and by also paying the taxes."NineMSN reports that there were "many crying" at the news. As for why all 370 workers didn't get something, CNNMoney notes that those who had been with Yemeksepeti for fewer than two years were excluded. Adds Aydin, who will remain CEO, "I wish we could have given them more." (Check out another classy move in the world of bonuses.)
This article originally appeared on Newser:
More from Newser:
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Former EastEnders star lay at the foot of a Thai waterfall for three days before being found. The actor shattered his kneecap and was suffering from hypothermia when he was found in a rock pool in Koh Samui
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Or, for some people, the first. Newt Gingrich explains why he dumped wife #1 while she was in the hospital after cancer surgery, and wife #2 soon after she was diagnosed with MS. It was because of his love of country:
There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.
How did people like this end up running America?
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Knesset member Yousef Jabareen of the Hadash-Taal Party publicly called to boycott Israel in a speech he gave over the weekend at a pro-BDS conference in London, reported Israel’s Kan news.
“The international community has all the tools to deal with war crimes—to boycott settlers, to boycott settlement products, to boycott international companies,” said Jabareen at the Palestine Expo conference.
Organized by the pro-BDS NGO “Friends of Al Aqsa,” the Palestine Expo boasts of being the “biggest Palestine event in Europe.”
According to the conference schedule, Knesset member Ahmad Tibi (Hadash-Ta’al), professor Neve Gordon and Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy also spoke at the Expo.
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In his speech, Jabareen also accused Israel of being an apartheid state, and urged more “mobilization” against it.
“There needs to be a more mass mobilization of our people on the ground, in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” said Jabareen. Israel is “exactly like the South African Bantustan. And it’s a combination of apartheid and occupation.”
Ahead of the conference, Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) tried but was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing Jabareen from participating.
In a letter sent by Erdan to the Knesset’s legal adviser, he argued that Jabareen’s trip should be blocked because the group funding his ticket, Middle East Monitor, is an extremist organization with ties to BDS.
Similarly, the legal division of the Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu sent a letter to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) demanding that Jabareen and Tibi be sanctioned for their participation in the conference.
“This is a black day for the Knesset,” said Im Tirtzu’s director of policy, Alon Schvartzer. “Arab MKs are exploiting their positions to participate in pro-BDS conferences and spew lies and hatred against Israel.”
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It may be another happy ending for Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
Florida prosecutors are offering to drop their charges against Kraft and 24 other men who allegedly paid for sex acts at a South Florida massage parlor.
To take advantage of the deal, Kraft and the other johns must agree that they would have been found guilty at trial.
The defendants must also do 100 hours of community service, submit to an STD test, take a class on the dangers of prostitution and pay $5,000 per criminal charge they face.
It is a standard offer for first-time offenders, reps for the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s office said. None of the accused have taken the deal so far, according to office spokesman Mike Edmondson.
Prosecutors say Kraft traded cash for sexual favors at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa on Jan. 18 and Jan. 22 — shortly before his team won its sixth Super Bowl.
Former federal prosecutors, however, have raised issues with the case. The two women Kraft allegedly engaged with were both licensed masseuses and Florida residents — calling into question the extent to which they were the victims of human trafficking, as prosecutors have suggested.
Kraft faces 60 days in jail and a $500 fine if his case goes to trial and he’s found guilty.
He pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution in February.
Kraft’s reps and lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment Tuesday.
The Patriots declined to comment, according to franchise spokesman Stacey James.
With Post wires
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18+ ONLY PLEASE
AskBox is Open
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TRENTON
—The state’s largest teacher’s union has formed a new political advocacy group that can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors during the upcoming campaign season, according to federal and state filings.
The move by the New Jersey Education Association underscores a growing trend in the state as donors and interest groups turn to the federal tax code to avoid the state limits on campaign contributions.
The New Jersey Education Association formed Garden State Forward in March of this year, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service. The NJEA already has a state political action committee, but a spokesman said the new group will allow the union to focus more on issues, less on specific elections.
“We established it so, if we wish, we can express issue advocacy with our members,” NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said.
The 527-organization is tax exempt and — unlike the union's state PAC — it can accept donations from contributors without limits. The group must disclose its donors to the IRS, not the state.
The group does not have to disclose any spending in the state unless they advocate for a specific candidate. Election Law Enforcement Commission records show Garden State Forward has already spent about $270,000 in the governor's race.
The NJEA has already endorsed Gov. Chris Christie’s likely challenger, state Sen, Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex).
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The NJEA and Christie have clashed repeatedly in recent years, and the union has spent millions trying to convince the public that the governor’s policies are wrong for New Jersey.
In 2011, the union spent $10.8 million on an ad campaign called "Millionaires for Christie" -- in the middle of a raucous year of political battles between Christie and the public-sector workers' unions, whose pensions and health benefits he ultimately slashed with the help of Democrats. The amount was nearly twice what the NJEA had spent in 2010, when Christie took office.
At the time, Christie railed against the union for its huge ad buy. "Is this really what teachers want their money being spent on, this kind of garbage?" he said at a news conference. Wollmer countered that the spending was necessary because otherwise the union's voice would be drowned out by Christie, who usually gets press coverage when he attacks them. "Unfortunately, he doesn't have to pay to get his message out," Wollmer said then.
Last year, the NJEA's spending on lobbying dropped dramatically -- from $11.3 million to $409,000.
Outside advocacy groups have already spent nearly $10 million in the gubernatorial campaign, despite the lack of a competitive primary.
That number is just $4 million off the estimated $14 million spent in the entire 2009 gubernatorial contest, according to a report from ELEC.
“We have predicted that outside groups will spend as much as $25 million in the current campaign. Given that an estimated $10 million already has been spent to influence this year’s election, our estimate could end up on the low side,’’ ELEC Executive Director Jeff Brindle said.
MORE POLITICS
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Os políticos decidiram meter a colher no prato dos portugueses. Para ajudar a população a escolher alimentos menos nocivos para a saúde, o Bloco de Esquerda e o PAN (Pessoas-Animais-Natureza) propõem que os produtos embalados passem a exibir um "semáforo nutricional", enquanto o PEV (Partido Ecologista Os Verdes) reclama um esquema complementar à informação nutricional para facilitar a escolha dos consumidores, que pode passar ou não pelo sistema com um código de três cores.
Já o PCP quer que o Governo desenvolva uma campanha nacional de promoção e valorização da dieta mediterrânica, sobretudo junto dos refeitórios escolares. Os projectos de resolução dos quatro partidos vão ser discutidos na próxima sexta-feira na Assembleia da República.
Mas o PAN é o que apresenta a proposta mais ambiciosa: além do semáforo nutricional, recomenda também a adopção de um "semáforo carcinogénico", para ajudar a identificar os alimentos que representem um risco acrescido de provocar doença oncológica. Para isso, recorre à classificação da International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), que define vários alimentos como carcinogénico, provavelmente carcinogénico ou possivelmente carcinogénico.
Em Portugal, apesar de ser obrigatória a informação nutricional nas embalagens dos alimentos, os produtores e distribuidores têm sistemas de rotulagem diversos, dificultando assim leituras e comparações. Um estudo divulgado no final do ano passado permitiu perceber que mais de 40% dos inquiridos não compreendiam a informação nutricional básica dos rótulos dos alimentos embalados.
Quantidades de gordura, gordura saturada, açúcares e sal
A proposta de um semáforo nutricional, que assenta num código de cores sobre as quantidades de gordura, gordura saturada, açúcares e sal dos produtos, assenta na ideia de que os consumidores veriam facilitada a leitura dos rótulos, podendo optar por produtos com menor quantidade de nutrientes nocivos para a saúde (verde), evitar os que têm mais (vermelho), e consumir moderamente os sinalizados com amarelo.
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Para o PAN, esta informação que consta “do descodificador [de rótulos] da Direcção-Geral da Saúde [Programa Nacional para a Promoção da Alimentação Saudável] deveria estar presente em todos os alimentos embalados”. Quanto ao semáforo que ajudaria a descodificar os alimentos com potencial cancerígeno, aqui a proposta passa por levar em conta criação e a inclusão, nos alimentos embalados, de informação sobre o potencial carcinogénico que determinados alimentos possuem, de acordo com a classificação elaborada pelo IARC.
Acreditando na mais-valia do semáforo nutricional, o BE quer que o Governo "desencadeie, junto da indústria e das cadeias de distribuição, as acções necessárias para que a declaração nutricional obrigatória nos alimentos embalados" inclua este sistema. Propõe ainda que as grandes superfícies e as cadeias de distribuição disponibilizem aos seus clientes gratuitamente "cartões exemplificativos do sistema de semáforo nutricional".
Sem certezas quanto ao modelo final a adoptar, até porque existem outros sistemas além do semáforo nutricional que ajudam os consumidores a interpretar os rótulos, o PEV sugere que o Governo avalie e defina um esquema complementar à actual declaração nutricional, envolvendo representantes de nutricionistas, consumidores, produtores, indústrias e distribuidores. Defende igualmente que se garanta a aprendizagem, nas escolas, da leitura e interpretação da declaração nutricional.
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The head of Speed Skating Canada tells CBC News the organization is investigating "substantive" complaints against its head coach, Michael Crowe.
CEO Susan Auch says the organization forced Crowe to leave his position on Jan. 9, just a month before the Winter Olympics, after a number of athletes and coaches came forward.
"The decision to put him on leave was based on recent feedback by Canadian athletes and coaches," Auch said. "It was substantive enough to call for an investigation. It wasn't one person."
Auch declined to comment on the exact nature of the complaints. She, however, acknowledged a report by CBC News on Friday detailing allegations by former U.S. athletes claiming Crowe had sexual relationships with some skaters during his time coaching in the United States prior to coming to Canada in 2007.
Crowe is seen with Canadian speed skater Cindy Klassen during a practice session in Richmond, B.C., in February 2010. (Adrian Wyld/ The Canadian Press)
Crowe had two stints as a coach for the U.S. team, from 1983 to 1991, and 1999 to 2006. He was hired by Speed Skating Canada the following year, and was promoted to head coach in 2015.
Auch stressed to CBC News that Speed Skating Canada has strong values and a code of conduct that governs relationships between coaches and athletes.
CBC News has repeatedly sought comment from Crowe, who has not returned emails or telephone messages.
An Olympic-level coach has been accused of having affairs with his athletes. A former U.S. speed skater tells CBC News that she has come forward to Speed Skating Canada to report allegations that Canada's head coach, Michael Crowe, had sexual relationships with athletes during his time as a coach in the United States. Crowe coached American speed skaters until 2006; he was hired by Canada the next year. Crowe abruptly took a leave of absence earlier this month, pending an internal investigation by Speed Skating Canada and will remain on leave until after the Olympics. Speed Skating Canada has not confirmed what's behind the investigation 3:03
Auch said she started getting feedback from members of the Canadian team as soon as she took on her new role last February.
"This is not a personal thing, it's entirely professional. And as my role of CEO, we have our values. I have to make sure every member follows those values. As far as that's concerned, I hope I'm doing a service to members of this organization and those who follow.
"This is a pretty serious thing," Auch said. "We needed to gather enough information."
Message for Canadian athletes
Auch admits the timing of the decision to place Crowe on leave, less than a month from the Olympics, was not ideal.
"I spoke to the athletes when we told them about Mike being put on leave and I reiterated my confidence in them and their ability to focus. They are really well prepared," Auch said.
She said Crowe had more of an overarching program role, and that the skaters have their individual coaches to help in the lead-up to and during the Olympics.
Speed Skating Canada CEO Susan Auch says the organization forced Crowe to leave his position on Jan. 9, just a month before the Winter Olympics after a number of athletes and coaches came forward. (The Canadian Press)
"There is no team that relies on one person for success. We have fantastic leadership within our organization," Auch said. "Our athletes are amazing. They have their coaches there."
Canada's 19-member long-track speed skating team is made up of 10 men and nine women. The program has won more medals than any other Canadian program at the Olympics.
Former U.S. athletes speak out
On Friday, a former U.S. speed skater told CBC News that she too reported allegations to Speed Skating Canada in November using the organization's 1-800 "Respect In Sport" hotline. Eva Rodansky alleges Crowe had sexual relationships with several of his athletes when he coached elite skaters south of the border in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Eva Rodansky alleges Crowe had sexual relationships with several of his athletes when he coached elite skaters south of the border in the 1990s and early 2000s. (Getty Images)
A second U.S. speed skater also has come forward to CBC News alleging she was in a relationship with Crowe when he coached her at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Chantal Cermak told CBC News she had a two-year consensual relationship with Crowe when he was her coach.
CBC News could not independently verify their claims.
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The rebuild started in late October when the Dynamo announced Wilmer Cabrera as head coach. Cabrera had been the coach of the Dynamo’s USL affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Toros, since their inception at the beginning of the year. You might remember him as Chivas USA’s coach in their last season, in which Cubo Torres bagged 15 goals in 29 games.
On the backline, the Dynamo lost Raul Rodriguez and David Horst, and sold Sheannon Williams, players who combined for over 6,000 minutes last season. To replace them, they acquired LA Galaxy stalwarts Leonardo and AJ DeLaGarza, and Panama veteran Adolfo Machado from Saprissa.
In the midfield they shipped out Cristian Maidana and Collen Warner was taken in the Expansion Draft, but they picked up Juan David Cabezas, a 25-year old central midfielder on loan from Deportivo Cali.
The most exciting changes were made on the offensive front. The Dynamo sold their second-leading scorer of all-time, Will Bruin, to the Sounders for GAM and TAM. It’s unfortunate that the deal was made before Don Garber changed his policy on revealing transaction amounts. They brought in Alberth Elis, an explosive forward/winger, on loan from Monterrey. Honduran international Romell Quioto arrives from Olimpia.
Positional Expectations
Has Joe Willis won the job or does Tyler Deric get another chance? With a new coach, the goalkeeper battle is wide open again. Tyler Deric conceded 4.75 goals fewer than would be expected based upon the shots he faced last season, but that was in only 818 minutes and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt. In 2015, he was just about even on Goals minus Expected Goals in nearly 3,000 minutes, similar to what Joe Willis was in 2016. It’s a tight race.
DaMarcus Beasley is the only returning starter on the backline. He turns 35 this May, but was still able to complete 37 passes a game last year along with 2.8 clearances and 2.6 tackles over 2,000 minutes. That’s very active for a fullback. At the other fullback position is A.J. DeLaGarza who similarly completed 40 passes a game over 2,000 minutes last year.
Adolfo Machado is 31 years old and has played 67 times for Panama. He will be partnered by Leonardo, who played 72 games for the Galaxy over four years. In 2015 when he was a full-time starter, he averaged a massive 5.3 interceptions and 5.3 clearances per game. He does have a reputation for being notoriously mistake-prone. The backline has capability and experience, although age is a double-edged sword in a long MLS season.
Ricardo Clark is ready to pass the mantle. Last season he played over 2,500 minutes at age 33. Now Juan David Cabezas is ready to take over the midfield patrol. He made his professional debut at 19 and has over 170 professional appearances in Colombia on his résumé. Alex will be the glue at the number eight, doing a little of everything.
Boniek Garcia will be the most advanced player in the midfield and be the main free kick taker. He takes less than a shot a game but provides 2 key passes each game on average. The lack of a true playmaker means that chance creation will still be a question mark.
The excitement for the Dynamo is on the forward line. Mauro Manotas broke through at the end of last season with six goals in only 1,000 minutes. Cabrera revealed that, “Right now, we don’t have a natural number 10 so that tells us that we have to change the formation to a 4-3-3.” Manotas played as a lone forward, but will now have speedy wingers to run alongside him.
One of those wingers is 21-year-old Alberth Elis. Elis played only 211 minutes for Monterrey last season but scored two goals on Honduras’ fourth-place Olympic team in the summer. He scored 25 goals for Olimpia over three years, including a goal in each leg versus the Sounders in CCL in 2015. Elis was signed as a Young Designated Player like Manotas.
On the other side of the 4-3-3 will be Elis’ teammate from Olimpia, Romell Quioto. Quioto is 25 years old and scored 38 goals for Olimpia in 96 appearances. They’ve already combined for a preseason goal against RGVFC. Quioto has four goals and 27 caps with the Honduras national team where he played alongside Boniek Garcia.
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For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.
Last week, US defense secretary Chuck Hagel announced something superficially alarming: Due to the recent tough talk coming out of Pyongyang, the Pentagon has announced a nearly $1 billion project to improve America’s defenses against a potential nuclear attack launched by North Korea. The boost in mainland missile defense will increase the number of ground-based interceptors in California and Alaska to 44 from 30 over the next four years. Part of this plan will involve resurrecting a missile field at Fort Greely, Alaska. “We will be able to add protection against missiles from Iran sooner while also proving protection against the threat from North Korea,” Hagel said during Friday’s Pentagon briefing.
The move comes on the heels of the North Korean government amping up its threats against the US: Along with conducting a third (suspected) nuclear test in seven years and declaring an end to the armistice with South Korea, the regime threatened to nuke American soil amid new UN sanctions. “The White House has been captured in the view of our long-range missile, and the capital of war is within the range of our atomic bomb,” or so goes the narration in a propaganda video post to the North Korean government’s YouTube page on Monday. The video includes a poorly produced animated sequence of the White House and Capitol dome exploding.
Here’s what’s crazy about all this: The Pentagon is spending $1 billion on a gesture. Virtually no one in the US government actually believes that North Korea (or Iran, for that matter) is close to having the ability to hit any part of the United States with nuclear missiles. It is also unclear how close North Korea is to being able to convert their tested nuclear devices to function as warheads. (Click here to get an idea of the state of the supposed North Korean missile threat just last year.)
The beefed-up missile defense of the West Coast is essentially meant to show South Korea and Japan (countries that actually might have to worry about a missile launched by the North Koreans) that the US is ready to commit resources to deter the Hermit Kingdom, and to send a message to Beijing, North Korea’s most important ally. (Message = Restrain your smaller, belligerent friend.)
These kinds of extreme threats from North Korea and Iran aren’t anything new, or even that rare. North Korean leadership has warned of “necessary retaliatory measures” almost too many times to count. Iranian military and government officials have said things about attacking the East Coast of the United States with their missiles and naval fleets. Officials in North Korea and Iran say a lot of things, often with the same attachment to reality you’d get from a Kardashian wedding.
But in the event that the Red Dawn remake or Olympus Has Fallen suddenly become America’s dark reality, members of Congress have been pushing hard to expand our national missile defense systems. Last May, House Republicans pushed a provision in a defense authorization bill that would develop an East Coast missile shield, in case North Korea or Iran decided to somehow rain down rockets on Manhattan’s Theater District. The plan was estimated to cost $2-4 billion.
There is close to zero evidence that national missile-shield technology works, and testing has at best yielded a 50 percent success rate of interception. “Every scientific study done says it doesn’t work—so, even if there were a threat from Iran or North Korea, [a shield] wouldn’t be able to stop it,” Lawrence Korb, a former US assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, told Mother Jones last year.
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The motorhome heist caused at least six traffic collisions and three people were sent to hospital for minor injuries. But the driver wasn't the only passenger - two dogs were also seen in the front seat - and one made a daring leap in traffic.
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When the great battles have been won, the past leaves its scars. Littlepip knows it only too well. She also knows that your loved one can help you deal with any issue. And her lover, Homage, has a... peculiar way of dealing with issues, sometimes.
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At times like these, it helps to look to our past for perspective. And the truth is that we’ve been here before, many times, throughout the 19th century and in living memory.
In 1968 and 1980, the same liberal, educated and urban swaths of the country voiced similar fear and despair about the outcome — a sense that the nation as they knew it could not survive. And yet here we are, decades later, still enamored with the republic they were sure was doomed.
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When Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, he had been in public life for more than 20 years, and he cultivated a reputation as a staunch, unyielding ideological Cold Warrior who had little but contempt for liberals and elites. He advocated for the “silent majority” and had little interest in minorities. As a congressman in the 1940s, he led the House Un-American Activities Committee to root out suspected communists. He became Eisenhower’s vice president almost entirely because of his rigid conservative credentials. Nixon was at times respected but rarely liked by the public, his adversaries or even by his allies.
On the eve of his election in 1968, the United States was bitterly divided and teetering on the edge of violence. There were riots outside the Democratic National Convention, and nationalist proto-Trump third-party candidate George Wallace was ascendant.
When Nixon squeaked into office with a tiny margin, liberals and the left despaired. As the late liberal senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) recounted in his memoirs, the reaction in his household was simple: “Nixon is a fascist pig.” When Nixon won reelection in 1972, Hunter S. Thompson recalled bewildered Democrats quoting from the book of Jeremiah after the debacle, saying that “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” They looked bleakly at long years in the wilderness, not realizing that Watergate and the eviction of Nixon were but a season away.
The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was greeted on the left with no less pain and fear. Like Nixon, Reagan ran as a Cold Warrior, which also meant running against the elites who were seen as too soft — on dangers abroad and on crime, lawlessness and moral decay at home. One Cornell activist and supporter of incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter spoke for millions when he said Nov. 5, 1980: “The election of Ronald Reagan is a disaster for the country because he’s a fascist. He’s a dangerous person.” I can vividly remember my high school history teacher walking dazed through the corridors convinced that the end of the republic was at hand, a phrase he muttered throughout the coming days in dead seriousness.
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Coretta Scott King confessed that she was “scared” of Reagan as president, worried that it would mean tailwinds for the Ku Klux Klan. As historian Gil Troy observed, opinion polls showed that the electorate liked neither Reagan nor Carter, but liberal vehemence toward Reagan was particularly acute. Sound familiar?
Reagan attributed his victory to his promise “to put Americans back to work” and to make the country stand tall and proud on the global stage after the humiliations of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis. When asked why he won, he said simply that when people looked at him, “they saw themselves and saw that I’m one of them.” Much the same could be said of Trump. And, in many ways, the American picture improved under Reagan, as it might have regardless of who was in the Oval Office but that redounded to his credit. Economic growth accelerated; the Soviet Union began to stumble and then crumble; and the public mood brightened considerably, even as Reagan filled his cabinet with cronies of questionably aptitude such as Edwin Meese in the Justice Department and the deservedly forgotten James Watt at the Interior Department, who proceeded to rail against women and minorities filling his department.
You can argue about how destructive or constructive Nixon and Reagan proved to be. You cannot credible argue that the nation’s foundations were acutely tested by their presidencies, which was precisely what liberals firmly believed after the election wins. Watergate indeed strained the country, but the system bent and didn’t break. The fears then and the fears now sound the same and, if memory serves, felt the same. And similar forces were in play: Angry men from the heartland were the core of both electoral waves, the core of Nixon’s base in 1968 and in 1972 and of Reagan’s in 1980. They bore, as well, a similar animus to the liberals and elites and wealthy of the coasts and cities.
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Every story is different, but we have been here before. Maybe not with the expansive powers of the post-Cold War imperial presidency, maybe not with the same echo chamber of social media, but even so. We have been bitterly, ragefully divided between them and us, and had Hillary Clinton won, 59 million voters would have felt just about what 59 million voters feel today: that truly churning combination of disgust and dread at who will be the next president.
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Most folks know Samhain as Halloween, but for many modern Pagans, Samhain is considered a Sabbat to honor the ancestors who came before us, marking the dark time of the year. It's an excellent time to contact the spirit world with a seance because it's the time when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest.
According to Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary:
"The timing of contemporary Samhain celebrations varies according to spiritual tradition and geography. Many of us celebrate Samhain over the course of several days and nights, and these extended observances usually include a series of solo rites as well as ceremonies, feasts, and gatherings with family, friends, and spiritual community. In the northern hemisphere, many Pagans celebrate Samhain from sundown on October 31 through November 1. Others hold Samhain celebrations on the nearest weekend or on the Full or New Moon closest to this time. Some Pagans observe Samhain a bit later, or near November 6, to coincide more closely with the astronomical midpoint between Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice."
Myths and Misconceptions
Contrary to a popular Internet-based (and Chick Tract-encouraged) rumor, Samhain was not the name of some ancient Celtic god of death, or of anything else, for that matter. Religious scholars agree that the word Samhain (pronounced "sow-en") comes from the Gaelic “Samhuin,” but they’re divided on whether it means the end or beginning of summer. After all, when summer is ending here on earth, it’s just beginning in the Underworld. Samhain refers to the daylight portion of the holiday, on November 1st.
All Hallow Mass
Around the eighth century or so, the Catholic Church decided to use November 1st as All Saints Day. This was a pretty smart move on their part. The local pagans were already celebrating that day anyway, so it made sense to use it as a church holiday. All Saints’ became the festival to honor any saint who didn’t already have a day of his or her own. The mass which was said on All Saints’ was called Allhallowmas, the mass of all those who are hallowed. The night before naturally became known as All Hallows Eve, and eventually morphed into what we call Halloween.
The Witches' New Year
Sunset on Samhain is the beginning of the Celtic New Year. The old year has passed, the harvest has been gathered, cattle and sheep have been brought in from the fields, and the leaves have fallen from the trees. The earth slowly begins to die around us.
This is a good time for us to look at wrapping up the old and preparing for the new in our lives. Think about the things you did in the last twelve months. Have you left anything unresolved? If so, now is the time to wrap things up. Once you’ve gotten all that unfinished stuff cleared away, and out of your life, then you can begin looking towards the next year.
Honoring the Ancestors
For some Pagans, Samhain is when we honor our ancestors who came before us. If you’ve ever done genealogy research, or if you’ve had a loved one die in the past year, this is the perfect night to celebrate their memory. If we’re fortunate, they will return to communicate with us from beyond the veil and offer advice, protection, and guidance for the upcoming year.
If you want to celebrate Samhain in the Celtic tradition, spread the festivities out over three consecutive days. You can hold a ritual and feast each night. Be flexible, though, so you can work around trick-or-treating schedules!
Samhain Rituals
Try one, or all, of these rituals to celebrate Samhain and welcome the new year.
Halloween Traditions
Even if you're celebrating Samhain as a Pagan holiday, you may want to read up on some of the traditions of the secular celebration of Halloween. After all, this is the season of black cats, jack o'lanterns, and trick or treating!
And if you're worried that somehow you shouldn't celebrate Halloween because it's somehow disrespectful to your Pagan belief system, don't worry, it's entirely up to you, and you can observe if you like, or not! Go ahead and decorate to your heart's content; you're even allowed to have silly green-skinned witch decorations.
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One of the Teen Jeopardy contestants is named Leonard And I can't stop telling him to shut up
2,401 shares
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Prescription Opioids: new perspectives and research on their role in chronic pain management and addiction - Providing Answers: Treatment and Prevention in the Opioid Prescription EpidemicLocation: Baltimore, Maryland
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Nordjyllands Politi sigter Frederikshavn-spilleren Kristian Jensen for vold efter en episode, der skæmmede fredagens kamp i Metal Ligaen mellem Frederikshavn og Odense.
Det skriver Nordjyllands Politi i en pressemeddelelse.
Kristian Jensen havnede i infight med Odenses Lucas Bjerre Rasmussen. Da Bjerre Rasmussen faldt til isen og tabte hjelmen, blev han slået med en knytnæve i ansigtet og mistede bevidstheden.
- Vi har i dag meddelt den 23-årige ishockeyspiller fra Frederikshavn, at han sigtes i sagen, og at han skal afhøres om det skete. Det er normal procedure i en sag som denne, siger den ansvarlige for politiets efterforskning, politikommissær Peter Skovbak.
Nordjyllands Politi oplyser også, at man modtog flere henvendelser fra offentligheden om episoden, hvorfor der blev indledt en nærmere undersøgelse, der nu er udmundet i en sigtelse.
Der iværksættes en række efterforskningsskridt, som skal afdække forløbet før, under og efter det skete, hvilket altså blandt andet betyder, at sagens parter afhøres.
Af hensyn til efterforskningen har politiet ikke yderligere kommentarer i sagen.
Knockoutede Lucas Bjerre Rasmussen måtte tilbringe natten på sygehuset. Han pådrog sig en hjernerystelse og et brud på en mindre knogle i ansigtet.
Kristian Jensen blev idømt karantæne frem til 1. december af disciplinærudvalget. Dermed går han glip af 17 ligakampe. Den straf har både Frederikshavn og Kristian Jensen accepteret.
/ritzau/
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In this Course you learn how to design a login page and registration page connect database to the project and insert data into database authenticate the data stored into database with the data given by the user on the login page or interface page, all this we are going to learn in this course .
Student will also learn
Let new users sign up and log in
Store passwords securely in the database
Restrict content to logged-in users only
Use sessions for handling logins
Use cookies to optionally remember the user's login
Allow users to securely reset their own password
Extract Data From Database
Students should have basic knowledge of
PHP
HTML
CSS
In this course we will also learn some codes about java script , for invalid username or password it will show a pop message all this we are going to learn in this course .
"Very nice course, covers all the stuff you need, good voice and good explanation makes it perfect for people that are new to HTML. Also there's some best practices recommendations which are useful even for advanced developers."
"Excellence in giving the optimal set of tools for web development beginners seeking a well-rounded start for professional web development."
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and we hope to see you in the course!
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Github Repo: https://github.com/ChrisTruncer/Just-Metadata For some time now, I’ve been working on a tool which aggregates data about IP addresses from publicly available sources. Three separate events prompted this project. First, I began noticing a large number of IP addresses attempting to brute force their way into my mail server. Second, a large number of systems/IPs scanned my web server for vulnerable web applications (Tomcat, phpMyAdmin, etc). Finally, ATD sometimes will receive spam email that contains malware. Justin Warner (@sixdub), ATD’s resident reverse engineer, investigated one of the malware sample in a spam message we received and was able to extract the IP addresses of the callback domain.
I wanted to see if there was anything I could learn about the systems/IPs targeting my server and the malware callback domains we were seeing. Specifically, I wanted to collect the following: IP Whois Information
Geographical Information
Shodan information (Ports, keys, certificates, etc.)
VirusTotal
Various Threat Feeds
etc… After a couple conversations with Justin, I decided to write a tool to do just that. Justin and I brainstormed functionality that would be useful, and the type of information we would want to gather. However, just simply gathering the information isn’t necessarily enough to provide any sort of value. It’s the analysis of the available data where I can get something useful. Are the systems that are scanning me owned by the same person/company/etc.? Are they located in the same country? To answer these questions, I wrote Just-Metadata, which I am happy to release today. Let’s walk through some of the features, and how Just-Metadata works.
To start off using Just-Metadata, create a text file containing a list of IP addresses (each on a new line). To get the IPs into the Just-Metadata, you’ll use the load command, and provide the path to the file containing the IP addresses, similar to either of the following:
load ips.txt – If ips.txt is in the same directory as Just-Metadata
load /home/SonofFlynn/iplist.txt – Full path to file is also accepted
You should soon see a message indicating that X number of IPs have been loaded.
Now that the IPs we want to investigate have been loaded into the framework, we can begin the information gathering process. Just-Metadata can connect to and gather information from a variety of different sources. To see the different sources that Just-Metadata grabs from, simply run the command “list gather”, and you should see something similar to the following:
The information left of the “=>” is the module name, and the information to the right gives a description of what it gathers. To actually collect information from each source, you would use the “gather” command. As an example, to grab information from Shodan about the loaded IPs, I would run “gather shodan”. I would then see Just-Metadata querying Shodan (or the selected source) for information. NOTE: Shodan is the only source within Just-Metadata that requires an API key. Be sure to place your API key into the shodan module. To do this, open the shodan module (located at Just-Metadata/module/intelgathering/get_shodan.py and add your API key in line 16, for the self.api_key variable. All other modules work without any requirement other than an internet connection.
I will typically follow this process for all available intelligence gathering sources within Just-Metadata. One item to note is that some sources are rate-limited, so certain intelgathering modules can take time to complete depending upon the number of IPs that need to be investigated. Once all of the different intelgathering sources have completed gathering information, the meat of the tool can be put to use, the analysis modules.
Just-Metadata can be used to perform automated analysis against the gathered data. The goal of these modules should be to analyze patterns across all of the gathered data, and attempt to find, and display, meaningful data for consumption by the user. This is what I consider to be the most valuable part of the tool. Collecting data is important, but extrapolating meaning from it is where the actual good stuff lies. Analysis modules have full access to all data collected by the framework, and should be used to identify patterns in data, or anything that can be used to find useful data in an otherwise large dataset. To start off, you can list all of the different analysis modules by using the “list analysis” command. When running this, you should see something similar to the following:
To use any of the available analysis modules, just use the “analyze” command. For example, if we want to view the top X cities, countries, timezones, ISPs, etc. that are included within the loaded IP addresses, you can use the “Geo” module. To run this module, just type “analyze geoinfo”. You will be prompted for the number of results you want back per category, I usually choose 10, but feel free to adjust as you see fit. Once you provide the total number of results per category, you should see something similar to the following (amongst additional data):
Another module that I find useful is the “keys” module. This module works by parsing the data from Shodan, and looks for shared SSH keys, or HTTPS certificates across all IPs loaded into Just-Metadata. The keys module will then ask the number of keys you want displayed, and will show any SSH keys, HTTPS certificates, etc. that is shared across any of the loaded IP addresses. When running “analyze keys” you might see something similar to the following:
In this limited number of IPs, there weren’t any systems that shared the same SSH keys, however there are three different IPs that have a shared https certificate.
Another analysis option is the “feedhits” module. This will compare all of the IPs loaded into the framework with a variety of different threat intel feeds that are available on the internet. If an IP is in any of the threat intel feeds, it will highlight and call them out. When comparing the loaded IPs to different threat intel feeds, these were some of my results:
If at any point you would like to see all the information gathered about a single IP address, you can do that by using the “ip_info” command along with the IP address. So the command may look like “ip_info 180.253.10.125” and your output might be similar to the following:
Another feature that I wanted in this tool is the ability to save the current state, and then reload it for analysis later. Just-Metadata can do this with the “save” and “import” functions. To save your current state (after you’ve gathered any data you wish to have saved along with the state), simply type “save” at the command prompt. You should see something similar to:
You can now safely exit Just-Metadata without losing any of the data you’ve gathered.
To import any state that’s been saved to disk, just use the import command, along with the path to a Just-Metadata state file. Your command could be something like “import metadata06082015_172032.state” and once run, should look similar to:
I believe that this covers most of the functionality in Just-Metadata. If there’s anything that’s missing that would be helpful to have explained, let me know and I’ll be sure to add to this post. I’m available at @christruncer on Twitter or in #veil on Freenode!
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Editor's note: Injured in a college football game his freshman year, Chris Norton was given a three percent chance of moving anything below the neck again. He trained relentlessly, singularly focused on walking across the graduation stage with his then-fiancé Emily. His triumphant 10 steps were seen around the world on video by more than 300 million people – but little did they know, that was the beginning, not the end, of Chris and Emily’s incredible journey. Together they have fostered 17 children and have adopted 5 daughters. The following essay is adapted from their new book, "The Seven Longest Yards."
When we moved into our new house, I wondered how long we’d have to wait before we got our first foster placement. We didn’t have to wait long to find out. Almost immediately we did respite care for a two-and-a-half-year-old little girl for a week while her foster family went on vacation. I thought it would be a good way to dip our toes into the water and get used to having a kid in the house.
On July 5, while the little girl was still at our house, my phone rang.
“We’ve got a sibling group placement coming in,” our licensing agent said. “Two kids — a 3-year-old boy and a two-month-old girl.”
SPAIN 'STOLEN BABY' DISCOVERS SHE WAS WILLINGLY GIVEN UP FOR ADOPTION AFTER DNA TEST FINDS BIOLOGICAL FAMILY
"Yes!" I cried. “That sounds great!” Then I caught myself. It wasn’t just my decision to make. "Hold on. Let me talk to Chris, and I’ll call you back."
"Emily, that’s too much," Chris said when I filled him in. "We were only planning on taking in one child under the age of two."
Chris held out his arms. "Give him to me." The boy curled up on Chris’s lap as if he was meant to be there and buried his face in Chris’s shoulder. Within minutes, he fell asleep.
“I know,” I said, my voice trailing off. “But it’s only one more than we planned, and the baby will just sleep all the time.”
"Didn’t you say 3-year-old boys had the worst behavior in your group home?"
I sighed. "Yes. Okay. Well, what if we just took them until they can find someone else? I don’t want to just tell her we can’t do it right off the bat."
"I can do that. As long as it’s only temporary."
Our caseworker found another family who was on vacation but could take the kids when they returned in ten days. I hung up the phone and looked at the clock. It was 9:30 p.m., and two small children would be here in a matter of hours. We needed car seats, a bassinet, a bed rail, diapers, formula, clothes ]— basically everything.
Meanwhile, the little girl already in our care was asleep in her room, and it was her last night with us. I couldn’t leave her alone with Chris while I ran to the store because he couldn’t pick her up if she needed him. And he couldn’t exactly run to the store by himself. So I did what I had to do. I loaded the sleeping girl into my car, bare feet and all, and drove to Walmart. It wasn’t ideal, but when we signed up to be foster parents, I fully expected that late night car seat runs might be part of the gig.
At 1 a.m. we heard a knock on our door. I had prepared myself to find devastated children on our porch, and I had steeled myself for a rough night. But when the little boy, Trevor, walked into our living room, he was silent and looked scared. He was the tallest 3-year-old I had ever seen.
He then immediately spotted the toys I had bought for him and darted toward them. He was smiling and happy, as if he hadn’t just been yanked from his home. I made him a snack and played with the toy trucks with him. I wanted him to get a little more comfortable with his surroundings before immediately putting him to bed. I laid Ella, the two-month-old, in her crib, which we had put next to our bed. I had to pinch myself as they went down to bed like it was nothing. Was this real life?
Both kids kept up their good behavior the next day. Our only problem was their clothes — they came with nothing, and none of the clothes I had bought Trevor fit, since he was the size of a 5-year-old and I had bought him 3T clothes.
Trevor held it together until the moment we brought him into his room for bedtime the second night. His little lips quivered, and his eyes welled before he burst into tears. My heart broke for him. This poor guy was trying to be so strong after he was ripped from his mom and taken to live with strangers. Now he lay on the floor, sobbing the saddest cry I had ever heard, completely devastated.
I was holding back tears as I brought the boy to Chris in the living room. His two-month-old sister was crying and hungry. I had to get her a bottle.
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Chris held out his arms. "Give him to me." The boy curled up on Chris’s lap as if he was meant to be there and buried his face in Chris’s shoulder. Within minutes, he fell asleep.
Chris stayed with him the entire night. As I watched the two of them together, I knew we could not let these kids go somewhere else. These poor children had gone through so much already. Putting them through another transition and confusing them seemed cruel. I couldn’t do that to them, not when I felt this instant connection to them.
Excerpted from "The Seven Longest Yards" by Chris & Emily Norton. Copyright © 2019 by Chris and Emily Norton. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.
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Justamente, uno de ellos es la cobertura especial que está haciendo Emol Deportes. A través del "Gol a gol", los hinchas podrán ir conociendo los resultados en vivo de los encuentros. Además, habrá relato minuto a minuto de los partidos en que juegue la selección chilena. A esto se suma un enviado especial que aportará con más detalles sobre lo que esté sucediendo en terreno.
Por el momento, el único espacio en donde se puede acceder a los encuentros de la "Rojita" y el torneo es la polémica plataforma web especializada RojaDirecta. El sitio español —que ha tenido problemas legales por los derechos que poseen canales pagados sobre el contenido— permite seguir online cualquier evento deportivo que se esté transmitiendo.
También se suman a la cobertura las radios Cooperativa, ADN y Bío-Bío, quienes de igual manera estarán al tanto de los partidos y los resultados de Chile en el torneo.
La empresa a cargo de licenciar los derechos de emisión de Canal 13 y CDF era Full Play. Sin embargo, la Conmebol (Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol) anunció que pretenden terminar la relación comercial luego de los escándalos de corrupción en los que estuvieron involucrados miembros de la directiva de la compañía argentina. Por esto, la señal del grupo Luksic no pudo concretar el trato (ni CDF, que iba a "subarrendar" la señal).
Como el problema de los derechos también afectó la transmisión del Campeonato Sudamericano Sub 17 —que se extenderá desde el 23 de febrero al 19 de marzo—, se mantendrán las coberturas en los distintos medios y plataformas.
La selección chilena Sub 20, a cargo de Héctor Robles, se enfrentará a Brasil este viernes a las 19:00 horas.
SANTIAGO.- Hace días Canal 13 y CDF venían anunciando la emisión del Torneo Sudamericano de fútbol Sub 20, el que comenzó ayer en Ecuador . Sin embargo, las estaciones no pudieron cumplir con lo prometido, ya que los partidos no serán televisados. Esto, luego de que ambas señales tuvieran problemas con los derechos de transmisiones, las que también afectaron al sudamericano Sub 17, que se realizará en Chile durante febrero.
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After months of partisan deadlock and weeks of brinksmanship as a government shutdown loomed, Washington legislative budget negotiators have reached an “agreement in principle” on a two-year budget designed to fully fund schools, as required by the state Supreme Court.
The deal came together early Wednesday morning following an all-night, marathon negotiating session at the Capitol.
No details on the deal were immediately released, but Senate Majority Leader Mark Schoesler, a Republican, said he believes the budget will help equalize school funding statewide.
“No longer will a student in Washington be funded on their zip code,” Schoesler told reporters gathered in the Senate wings.
House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, a Democrat, also predicted it will pass constitutional muster.
“It will get my vote, I can tell you that,” Sullivan said. “And I wouldn’t be voting for it if I didn’t believe it satisfied the McCleary case.”
McCleary is the name of Washington Supreme Court case that says the state is not amply funding public schools. The 2017-19 operating budget is viewed as the third and final down payment on that 2012 ruling.
Lawmakers left the costliest and most difficult piece for last—shifting the responsibility for funding teacher and staff salaries from local districts back onto the state. The cost to fully fund the McCleary obligation over the next four years has been pegged at more than $7 billion.
Last spring, Senate Republicans proposed to solve McCleary with a new state property tax levy for schools of $1.55 per $1,000 of assessed value, along with the elimination of local maintenance and operation school levies. Republicans pitched the levy swap as a tax break for most Washington property owners.
Democrats panned the idea saying it would harm school districts and unfairly jack up property taxes in central Puget Sound.
By contrast, House Democrats proposed a multi-billion dollar tax package that included a new capital gains tax, changes to the real estate excise tax and a plan to capture sales tax from more online sales. But they never voted on the tax package, leading Senate Republicans to say they wouldn’t negotiate with “ghost dollars.”
Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, later took the capital gains tax off the table, even though he supports the idea as a way to make Washington’s tax system less regressive.
The final budget and tax deal is likely to include elements from both plans.
Lawmakers now have less than 72 hours to pass the budget and send it to Inslee for his signature before midnight on Friday, June 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would avert a partial government shutdown on Saturday, July 1, including the temporary layoff of more than 30,000 state employees and the shuttering of state parks just before the Fourth of July holiday.
“We could have some unforeseen disaster, but we are all committed,” said Senate Majority Leader Mark Schoesler. “I will continue to believe we will not shut government down.”
“Yes, it will avoid a government shutdown,” added House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan, a Democrat.
Despite the clock running out on the session, legislative leaders said they wouldn’t release details of the budget until noon on Thursday, after they brief their respective caucuses. Voting on the budget could happen as early as Thursday afternoon or evening. That would leave very little time for lobbyists or the public to scrutinize the budget.
After the budget is signed into law, lawmakers will have 30 days to report back to the Supreme Court, which has retained jurisdiction in the McCleary case. The state is currently in contempt of court and paying a $100,000-a-day fine for not complying with a previous court order. If the justices aren’t satisfied, they could increase the current fine or impose a more dramatic sanction, like invalidating all tax exemptions.
Besides education funding, the budget is expected to put more money into mental health and into addressing homelessness. The budget may also create a new Department of Children, Youth and Families.
This is the third time since 2013 that Washington lawmakers have taken budget negotiations right up to the end of the fiscal year before forging a bipartisan agreement.
The legislature has been in session continuously since January and is currently meeting in a third, 30-day special session.
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Remember Kenny vs. Spenny? You know, the reality show famous for stunts like convincing your best friend he has AIDS or seeing who can go longest without using the washroom? Well, it was hilarious. And if this week is any indication, we might just get a seventh season.
Best frenemies Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice have been lobbying Netflix Canada to pick up the show. Inspired by the Trailer Park Boys, which recently got picked up for an eighth season on Netflix, Hotz and Rice have been waging an intense social media campaign to revive the show, which went off the air in 2010.
And they've been having some serious success, as a quick search for the hashtag #BringBackKVS reveals. B
What might we expect from a new season? There are already plenty of ideas floating around, but these are our favourites so far.
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A blind gamer has defeated evil and saved Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. He explains how in the video below.
Almost five years after starting his adventure on May 8, 2011, Terry Garrett (who goes by MegaTgarrett on YouTube) recently closed the book on Ocarina of Time (via Eurogamer). Garrett has also shown that he's quite good at Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Bit.Trip Runner, and Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty in videos posted to his channel.
Since Garrett can't see, he uses sounds to get through the game's worlds and to complete its challenges. He places two speakers right in front of him, one on his left and one on his right, which let him know what's happening around him in the virtual world. It also lets him use in-game items, like Link's sword, to find his way around the world--for example, he'll hit it against a wall to lead him along passageways.
Garrett isn't free of making mistakes, however, which is why he utilizes save states that allow him to trial-and-error his way through some of the more difficult situations. He used them in his successful attempt to complete the infamously difficult Water Temple.
Garrett posted the final video of his Ocarina of Time playthrough on January 2, saying, "It has been long in the making, but I have finally accomplished my goal."
Garrett thanked his fans for all the help and support they provided him, even after it seemed like he was going to give up.
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Diamondback’s News:
Rockies 6, Diamondbacks 4 - D-backs downed by Rockies.
D-backs offense struck early, but Greinke’s implosion in the 7th inning coupled with the offense leaving a ton of runners on base, resulted in another loss at home and now 3 L’s in a row. Last night also marked the 7th straight loss against the Rockies. Also Angel Hernadez’s balls and strikes were all over the place last night. It was an American tragedy.
Diamondbacks sign draftees Carroll and Walston.
The Diamondbacks have signed 10 of the 15 selections they made within the Top 10 rounds.
Diamondbacks make The Athletic’s All Star Defensive Team.
The Diamondbacks overall have been a good defensive team this season, as they rank third in DRS with a total of 48 on the season. Another defensive metric, UZR, has them ranked third as well. It’s simple math really, I don’t understand any of it.
Derrick Hall Foundations raised cancer awareness in Minor League Baseball.
“This is the fourth year that Minor League Baseball and MiLB Charities have partnered with the Derrick Hall Pro-State Foundation and we’re proud to continue to join the fight against prostate cancer and help raise awareness among men who are at the greatest risk,” Courtney Nehls, assistant director of community engagement for Minor League Baseball, said in a prepared statement.
Around Baseball:
Curt Schilling explains why he is not bothered by MLB HOF snub.
After reading the article I would say that he is in fact bothered by the snub...
OPINION: MLB umpire’s union statement was childish and unacceptable.
Strange, childish and unacceptable is exactly how I would describe Manny Machado.
Off Topic Snake News:
Canadian town comes alive once a year, as thousands of snakes mate.
One problem: There are 100 or more male snakes for every female. But the balls, which spontaneously form and break up, are not snake orgies, Mason said.
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Danmark er endnu engang det land i Europa, hvor det er nemmest at starte en virksomhed, viser en ny rapport med titlen "Doing Business" fra Verdensbanken.
Det skyldes blandt andet effektiviteten af den offentlige sagsbehandling. På erhvervsindekset overgås Danmark kun af New Zealand og Singapore.
Dermed har Danmark i en længere årrække ligget i toppen, og det glæder udenrigsminister Anders Samuelsen (LA).
Den liberale minister hylder det offentlige systems effektivitet.
- Det er flot, at Danmark endnu en gang fastholder sin position på Verdensbankens toneangivende erhvervsindeks. Men det er vigtigt ikke at tro, at det er tilstrækkeligt at have en effektiv offentlig sagsbehandling.
- Hvis Danmark skal sikre sin position på den lange bane, må vi også sikre, at det bliver billigere at drive virksomhed i Danmark, siger Anders Samuelsen i en skriftlig kommentar.
Det er 15. gang, Verdensbanken udgiver rapporten, der måler ti parametre med størst betydning for virksomheder.
Det gælder blandt andet, hvor det er nemt at starte virksomhed, hvor hurtigt byggetilladelser håndteres, registrering af ejendom, adgang til kredit, skatteopkrævning og andet.
Der er dog masser af rum for forbedringer i forhold til at sikre gode vilkår for virksomhederne, mener udenrigsministeren.
- Danmark er i benhård konkurrence med udlandet om at tiltrække virksomheder, investeringer og kvalificeret arbejdskraft.
- Derfor skal vi hele tiden arbejde for at sænke omkostningerne og fjerne bureaukrati, så fremtidens store virksomheder lægger deres investeringer i Danmark og ikke vore nabolande, siger Anders Samuelsen.
På henholdsvis fjerde- og femtepladsen ligger Sydkorea og det delvist autonome Hong Kong i Kina.
Dansk Industris erhvervsøkonomiske chef, Morten Grantzau Nielsen, er glad, men påpeger, at der er udeladt vigtige kriterier i undersøgelsen.
- Faktorer som omkostninger, hvor dyrt det er at drive sin virksomhed og det at investere er ikke med i undersøgelsen.
- Det er enormt vigtigt at have fokus på, at det skal være mere attraktivt at investere i nye maskiner. Og så skal virksomheder have nemmere ved at have adgang til den rette arbejdskraft, siger han.
/ritzau/
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European Parliament committees have backed Romania’s Laura Codruta Kovesi to be the EU’s first chief prosecutor, putting them at odds with member states that voted for a rival candidate after strong lobbying by Bucharest.
Romania’s ruling Socialists fiercely oppose Ms Codruta Kovesi’s bid to lead the new European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), having seen her successfully pursue some of its leading members as head of the country’s anti-corruption agency.
The government forced her out of that post last year, while pushing through major judicial reforms that have alarmed the EU and United States and sparked street protests by Romanians who fear anti-graft efforts are being blunted. The controversy has dominated Romania’s current presidency of the EU.
The European Parliament’s civil liberties committee gave Ms Codruta Kovesi 26 votes in Wednesday’s ballot, ahead of France’s Jean-Francois Bohnert on 22 votes and Andres Ritter of Germany with one vote.
A vote by the parliament’s committee for budgetary control delivered the same outcome on Tuesday.
The results reinvigorated Ms Codruta Kovesi’s hopes following a galling defeat last week, when ambassadors of member states voted for Mr Bohnert amid intense efforts by the Bucharest government to undermine her candidacy.
‘Secret pacts’
Romania’s justice minister Tudorel Toader told EU colleagues that Ms Codruta Kovesi made “secret and anti-democratic pacts” with the security services, and a new investigative unit run by government loyalists recently launched a case against her for alleged abuse of office and bribery – allegations she flatly denies.
“This vote is for all Romanian citizens who have supported the fight against corruption and for the rule of law, and for all prosecutors in Romania and in Europe who are working under pressure,” Ms Codruta Kovesi said after Wednesday’s victory.
“I am honoured by today’s vote, but we must wait for the decision of the (European) Council, which is a political decision,” she added, while also expressing support for Romanian prosecutors, judges and magistrates who stopped work this week in protest at the government’s reforms.
Finalise decision
The European Parliament is expected to finalise its decision on a candidate early next month, and an appointment will be made after agreement is reached with the European Council of member-state governments.
“It’s going to be a very challenging discussion,” Claude Moraes, the chair of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee, told Bloomberg.
“National sovereignty has always been very protected. This is a really sensitive and important position.”
The EPPO will investigate the annual theft of hundreds of millions of euro in EU funds and major cross-border tax fraud, which could lead to clashes with governments and ruling parties – like Romania’s own – which have poor records on fighting corruption.
Ireland is one of six EU states that have not signed up to the EPPO, which is due to start work by 2021.
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I currently use Angular to build developer platform Jexia. Questions? Feedback? Please let me kno
Angular Weekly Weekly curated blogs and tools for Angular pros.
I currently use Angular to build developer platform Jexia. Questions? Feedback? Please let me know.
Fundamentals
A plan for version 8.0 and Ivy blog.angular.io An update on how things go with version 8.0 and our plans to release and finalize Ivy. We plan on having Ivy as opt-in preview in the version 8.0 release in Q2 of this year.
Insights into Angular’s EventManagerPlugin netbasal.com In this article, I will walk you through the steps of extending the Angular events system and providing your own custom events. But first we need to understand how Angular manages events. Angular calls the Renderer listen() method. Let’s see what this method does:
Tree-shakable components & optional NgModules blog.angularindepth.com NgModule is arguably one of the most confusing Angular concepts. Fortunately, Angular is moving towards a future in which we need Angular modules (NgModules) less often or not at all.
Best-practices
Tooltip with Angular CDK blog.angularindepth.com During the development, we’ve faced a bunch of interesting puzzles that Angular CDK has helped us to overcome. To start with, let’s build a tooltip directive.
Type-safe frontend development levelup.gitconnected.com My daily job involves working with the language which has not one, but two places of possible null refs — null and undefined. I’m talking about JavaScript.
State management with NGRX and NGXS medium.com This article — and the following ones — provides you with insights on how we build our front-end applications at Criteo.
State management with only services and RxJS dev.to What if you want to manage state by only using tools you already know well as an Angular developer.
Tutorials
How to architect a complex web table www.smashingmagazine.com This illustrated guide explains the table anatomy and how to build a table, keeping in mind its future elaboration.
Managing image breakpoints with Angular www.smashingmagazine.com A built-in Angular feature BreakPoint Observer gives us a powerful interface to deal with responsive images. It allows us to serve, transform and manage cloud images.
Replace a hot path in your JavaScript with WebAssembly developers.google.com One app that makes extensive use of C/C++ libraries is squoosh, our web app that allows you compress images with a variety of codecs that have been compiled from C++ to WebAssembly.
Starting with Webpack - Part 4: write modern JavaScript pusher.com In the previous parts, we learned what loaders are and how we can use loaders to handle other file types in webpack. We also applied what we learned in our project.
Tools
Release Bootstrap 4.3 blog.getbootstrap.com This release brings improvements to our utilities, some prep work for moving on to v5’s development, and the standard bug fixes and documentation updates.
State operators in NGXS 3 medium.com Previously proposed as Patch Operators, I’m pleased to announce that State Operators will be arriving in NGXS 3.
Angular @angular
https://t.co/wNq8HpXZC8
There's an extended survey at the end too if you aren't a fan of short surveys. :) Help the Angular team better understand your needs by taking this 1 minute survey!There's an extended survey at the end too if you aren't a fan of short surveys. :) 11:38 PM - 11 Feb 2019
RxJS: what’s changed with shareReplay? medium.com In RxJS version 6.4.0, a change was made to the shareReplay operator. Let’s look at what was changed and how you can use it to avoid surprises — and bugs.
Perspectives
How ads are loaded so fast: the command queue pattern michelenasti.com Prior to work in an ads company I had no idea of how ads are actually rendered on a page. Sometimes ads are loaded even before you actually see any content.
Remote jobs
Presentations
What about a HoloLens or MagicLeap straight from the browser?
Bring JavaScript to the Internet of Things - From Embedded Device to Smart Gateway
BinAST: Let's make the JavaScript startup bottleneck a thing of the past!
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A student from the Innovation Academy Charter School recently reached his goal of donating 12 inches of hair to Locks of Love, a nonprofit that provides hairpieces to underprivileged children who have long-term medical hair loss. During the school year, Jeffrey Smith, 11, and his teacher, Katy Lianos, created a presentation about the organization to educate Smith's classmates, many of whom were teasing him over his increasingly long hair. Following the presentation, the bullying stopped and he received more support. Smith said he took on the cause after seeing a documentary on chemotherapy, and decided to help in honor of his grandfathers, who both died of cancer, and his uncle, who is fighting the disease.
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Le verdict est tombé. Ce jeudi 18 juillet à la Chambre criminelle de la Cour d’appel de Rabat (annexe de Salé) a rendu son jugement contre les 24 accusés impliqués dans le double meurtre d’Imlil. La Cour s’est alignée sur le réquisitoire du ministère public, en condamnant à la peine de mort les trois principaux accusés, à savoir Abdessamad El Joud, l’émir présumé de la cellule, Younes Ouziad et Rachid Afati. Le juge Abdellatif Amrani a condamné Abderrahmane Khayali, celui qui a pris part à la vidéo d’allégeance à Daech, à la réclusion à perpétuité.
L’épouse du ressortissant hispano-suisse Kevin Zoller n’a pas retenu ses larmes lorsqu’une peine de 20 ans de prison a été prononcée à l’encontre de son mari, accusé, entre autres, d’avoir appris aux principaux suspects à utiliser une messagerie cryptée et de les avoir “entraînés au tir“. Les autres accusés ont écopé de peine allant 5 à 20 ans de réclusion.
Concernant le volet civil, la Cour a déclaré l’irrecevabilité de la demande de la partie civile sur la condamnation de l’État à dédommager les proches de la victime danoise. Toutefois, le président de la Cour Abdellatif Amrani a condamné les 4 principaux accusés, à savoir Abdessamad El Joud, Younes Ouziad, Rachid Afati et Abderrahmane Khayali à verser deux millions de dirhams aux proches de la victime norvégienne.
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The National Security Agency (NSA) and America’s other intelligence agencies suddenly lost control of their biggest open secret: The U.S. government is monitoring the Internet and telephone communications. A series of revelations spurred by leaker Edward Snowden forced the NSA to admit to a secret surveillance regime that includes the mass collection of phone and web metadata. In the latest disclosure, the European Union found substantial evidence that the NSA was spying on them.
So why did The Guardian release the interview more than a month after it was recorded? Pageviews. Releasing the news in controlled bursts guarantees site traffic, and maximizes the site’s gains from the ongoing NSA scandal.
A new Ed Snowden interview came out this afternoon–Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras spoke with Snowden in Hong Kong… on June 6. Snowden discusses the U.S. government’s monitoring of domestic and foreign internet traffic in the video.
While everyone in the United States was celebrating the July 4 weekend, the Washington Post‘s Craig Timberg and Ellen Nakashimi wrote a must-see story detailing how the U.S. government spies on global communications . The article, which builds on the NSA revelations, gives previously unreleased details of America’s surveillance regime:
The Guardian also has additional interview footage with Snowden that has not yet been released.
The government will follow a simple playbook. I think they will try to destroy my credibility, they’ll attack me personally and they will try to make an example out of me in any way they can to discourage others from coming forward when they find other things they think the government is improperly classifying information. My primary fear is that the government is going to come after my family, they are going to exercise warrants against any location I’ve ever used an electronic device, every friend I’ve ever visited at home, my partner who’s travelled with me throughout the world. My mother, my father — anyone I have (inaudible) with they’ll attack them in lieu of me because they can’t reach me and I think that’s incredibly wrong. But I think they’ll do what they can do send a message that people shouldn’t do this unless they want repercussions.
However, Buzzfeed’s Jacob Fischler found that The Guardian cut key parts of the interview from the original tape:
The Guardian has the details on Snowden’s improved prospects , but does not describe the diplomatic negotiations surrounding his transfer in depth. Despite the fact that Snowden began as an independent whistleblower of NSA surveillance programs, he has become a pawn (and a liability) for security services in the United States, China, and Russia. While many regimes around the world are happy to offer Snowden lip service because he exposed the perceived hypocrisy of the United States government, his presence also draws attention to the unseemly fact that those regimes also engage in illicit monitoring and surveillance of their citizens.
Once Edward Snowden leaves the dubious charms of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, he has multiple options for his next destination. Following an announcement by Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro on Friday that his country would grant asylum to Snowden if requested, Nicaragua and Bolivia quickly filed suit. Of course, Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane was searched for Snowden last week by Austrian authorities–but the Where’s Waldo-like whistleblower wasn’t there.
The agreements, whose main purpose is to secure the U.S. telecommunications networks against foreign spying and other actions that could harm national security, do not authorize surveillance. But they ensure that when U.S. government agencies seek access to the massive amounts of data flowing through their networks, the companies have systems in place to provide it securely, say people familiar with the deals. Negotiating leverage has come from a seemingly mundane government power: the authority of the Federal Communications Commission to approve cable licenses.
The NSA, notes Tikkun’s David Harris-Gershon , “is classifying every single bit of data it receives from ordinary American citizens based on the premise that it has been gathered covertly .”
Any positive or negative response on a request-by-request basis would allow our adversaries to accumulate information and draw conclusions about NSA’s technical capabilities, sources and methods. Our adversaries are likely to evaluate all public responses related to these programs. […] Your request is denied because of the fact of the existence or non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter in accordance with Executive Order 13526 as set forth in Subparagraph (c) of Section 1.4.
A response sent by the NSA to a man who requested information on what data had been gathered on him, implies that the agency is routinely refusing all Freedom Of Information Act requests. The Tikkun Daily Blog published excerpts from the letter that Clayton Seymour of Ohio received, telling him his request had been turned down:
The decision to send the messages via Twitter is highly unusual for Cryptome, which has a long history of surveillance by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Posting the encrypted messages via Twitter, on a public feed followed by intelligence agencies, journalists, and a cypherpunk community that largely discusses things in open forums is puzzling to say the least.
Granddaddy of all leak sites Cryptome tweeted a long series of PGP messages to Edward Snowden and several other parties last night in a highly unusual move. Hours after the PGP messages were tweeted, along with a link to a Pastebin page , Cryptome’s 4,000 follower-strong Twitter feed was wiped clean . Metadata posted to Twitter clearly identified some recipients–according to Cryptocat’s Nadim Kobeissi, they were sent to Edward Snowden, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Bradley Manning, and three unknown parties. Jonsdottir is an Icelandic parliamentarian with close ties to WikiLeaks.
France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal were all earlier said to have forbidden the aircraft overflight permission–presumably on the grounds that Edward Snowden is suspected of being aboard.
According to live flight tracking data from website Flightradar24 .com the diplomatic aircraft FAB-001 that’s carrying the Bolivian president Evo Morales is now transiting Spanish airspace. If the website’s data is accurate the plane also overflew a corner of Italy and France, and is seemingly set to travel through Portuguese airspace before it sets off on its trans-Atlantic journey.
Austrian officials have said that Snowden is not on the plane.
Considering Austria’s land-locked position in Europe, a flight ban over several EU nations would severely complicate the president’s travel plans. Any flight ban of a diplomatic plane will also stir controversy, and Ecuador’s president Rafael Correa has tweeted his assertion that the moves are an affront to “our America” and called on all South American nations to respond.
But the exact flight plan situation is unclear, because although president Morales is said to have talked about the Spanish overflight ban, along with other national bans, the AP is reporting that French officials have not denied the vehicle the right to fly in French airspace and that Spain has also permitted a flight.
An official diplomatic aircraft carrying president Evo Morales is now confirmed as having left the airport in Vienna. But an international diplomatic scandal seems to have quickly blown up after Spain reportedly denied the aircraft the right to fly through its airspace. The ban seems to have arisen after Bolivian officials refused to allow Spanish authorities to inspect the plane–presumably to search for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who it was thought may have been aboard to seek asylum in Bolivia.
Bolivia’s government confirms that a jet carrying President Evo Morales from Moscow was forced to land in Austria over fears that Edward Snowden was aboard. Both France and Portugal forbid Morales’ crew from entering their airspace in an unprecedented move. Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca told Russia Today that “we don’t know who invited this lie, but we want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President Evo Morales.”
The real Edward Snowden has at least one Hollywood fan. Oliver Stone has gone on record to offer the NSA whistleblower his support.
“I learned a lot about makeup,” says Mr. Tse, whose girlfriend gave him a crash course in styling. “All you have to remember is concealer and foundation.”
After that, Mr. Cromeek donned eyeglasses, trimmed his beard, lightened his hair color, and had a mole applied to his neck.
“The lady said ‘I can’t guarantee you will look like him,’ ” he says, but she worked quickly. “It took 10, 15 minutes max.”
Enter Mr. Tse, who took him to a local hair salon for a dirt-cheap 50-Hong Kong-dollar (US$6.41) haircut. Armed with a photo of Mr. Snowden, Mr. Cromeek plopped down in the barber’s chair and faced a skeptical hair stylist.
Mr. Cromeek, whose only previous acting experience was in a student film and a commercial, agreed to play the role. But with his mop of unruly hair, he needed a complete makeover.
God bless the Internet and its rapid empowerment of do-it-yourself filmmakers. In an inevitable development, a low-budget Hong Kong studio made the first movie about Edward Snowden , a five minute short film called Verax. The Wall Street Journal spoke with the star, Hong Kong-based English teacher and part-time actor Andrew Cromeek–a mop-haired American who initially bore no resemblance to Snowden:
Our question, and it’s painfully naive–and we know that–is this: What is a contractor doing conducting crucial offensive cyberwarfare work for the NSA? Contractors have completely different chains of accountability and separate hiring processes. When did their role change from lending support work for intelligence/military cyberwarfare to actually conducting the dirty work?
That assignment helps explain how Mr. Snowden got hold of documents laying bare the top-secret capabilities of the nation’s largest intelligence agency, setting off a far-reaching political and diplomatic crisis for the Obama administration.
It is a title that officials have carefully avoided mentioning, perhaps for fear of inviting questions about the agency’s aggressive tactics: an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world.
His last job before leaking classified documents about N.S.A. surveillance, he told the news organization The Guardian, was actually “infrastructure analyst.”
An article in the Sunday New York Times quietly buried the revelation that Edward Snowden’s work for Booz Allen Hamilton wasn’t a simple IT position for the NSA. Instead, Scott Shane and David Sanger revealed that Snowden helped find network vulnerabilities in foreign systems for the agency :
The former President also defended Obama, saying that his successor was right to say there was a balance between privacy rights and national security. “I think there needs to be a balance, and as the president explained, there is a proper balance,” he said, adding that the PRISM monitoring program was started under his watch.
The previous incumbent of the Oval Office has revealed that he was behind the decision to start the PRISM program. Interviewed by CNN in Zambia, where he is helping to build a health clinic, the 43rd President of the United States talked about how Snowden’s deeds had undermined the security of the country.
According to Reuters, Brazil has said, “ No, thanks ,” to Edward Snowden’s plea for asylum. A foreign ministry spokesman said that it would leave the request unanswered.
That faintly audible squeaking we can hear must be the sound of pressure being brought to bear on other countries by the U.S. State department and its various diplomatic missions worldwide.
In a twist, Ecuador, one of the original countries that said it would welcome Snowden with open arms, has done a volte-face, saying that its original comments were “a mistake.” President of the South American country, Rafael Correa, said that the mole’s travel pass was granted “without authorisation” and that it was up to Russia to give him travel documentation.
Russia was actually just one of 21 countries considered by Snowden as his next destination, and they included Cuba, Ireland, Spain, China, Switzerland, Brazil, Germany, Poland and Venezuela.
“If he wants to go somewhere and someone will take him, go ahead. If he wants to stay here, there is one condition – he must stop his work aimed at bringing harm to our American partners, as strange as that sounds coming from my mouth.”
Edward Snowden’s world just shrank in size. The NSA whistleblower has this morning pulled his visa application for Russia, following Vladimir Putin’s comments that the American programmer needs to put a stop to the leaks.
“I put that program in place to protect the country. One of the certainties was that civil liberties were guaranteed.”
7:10 pm, 07/01/13
If a foreign newspaper has a potentially morale-sapping story, ban it. Well, that’s the U.S. military’s take on things at least. Or, well, they can say the newspapers are publishing classified information and use that as a rationale.
The Guardian‘s Spencer Ackerman reports that his paper has been blocked on military Internet networks in huge swaths of the world. Troops in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and “South Asia” (Pakistan? India? Sri Lanka?) are no longer able to access the British newspaper through military networks:
“US central command is among other DOD organizations that routinely take preventative measures to safeguard the chance of spillage of classified information on to unclassified computer networks, even if the source of the information is itself unclassified,” said US army Lt Col Steve Wollman, a spokesman for central command. “One of the purposes for preventing this spillage is to protect Centcom personnel from inadvertently amplifying disclosed but classified information. “Additionally, classified information is not automatically declassified simply because of unauthorized disclosure,” Wollman continued. “Classified information is prohibited from specific unclassified networks, even if the information has already been published in unclassified media that are available to the general public, such as online news organizations.” Wollman confirmed that the block applies not only to troops in Afghanistan, but for those deployed anywhere in central command’s area of operations, which includes the Middle East, south Asia, and the command’s headquarters in Florida.
—Neal Ungerleider
6:20 pm, 07/01/13
Edward Snowden has made a public statement through WikiLeaks; the statement is the first one from him since he left Hong Kong. The statement appears to make his alliance with WikiLeaks complete, and Snowden explicitly compared himself to Bradley Manning for the first time:
One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful. On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions. This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me. For decades the United States of America have been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum. In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be. I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many. Edward Joseph Snowden Monday 1st July 2013
Snowden’s next move depends on the Russian government’s inclinations as his whistleblowing case slowly turns into an international espionage scandal.
—Neal Ungerleider
2:00 pm, 07/01/13
In a move that could backfire in unforeseen ways, Edward Snowden has requested asylum in Russia. Snowden’s representative, Briton Sarah Harrison, handed over the request to a Russian Foreign Ministry official late Sunday night. The application was filed inside an office at Sheremetevo Airport’s Terminal F.
[Image: Wikimedia user Victorgrigas]
—Neal Ungerleider
1:35 pm, 07/01/13
So… here’s a fun blind item. Der Spiegel reports that the NSA had a crucial corporate partner in their surveillance of Internet and telephone traffic. Any guesses on who played footsie with Fort Meade?
According to the documents, a particularly valuable partner is a company active in the U.S. and has access to information that crisscrosses America. At the same time, this company, by virtue of its contacts, offers “unique access to other telecoms and (Internet service providers).” The company is “aggressively involved in shaping traffic to run signals of interest past our monitors,” according to a secret NSA document. The cooperation has existed since 1985, the documents say. Apparently, it’s not an isolated case, either. A further document clearly demonstrates the compliance of a number of different companies. There are “alliances with over 80 major global corporations supporting both missions,” according to a paper that is marked top secret. In NSA jargon, “both missions” refers to defending networks in the U.S., on the one hand, and monitoring networks abroad, on the other. The companies involved include telecommunications firms, producers of network infrastructure, software companies and security firms. Such cooperation is an extremely delicate issue for the companies involved. Many have promised their customers data confidentiality in their terms and conditions. Furthermore, they are obliged to follow the laws of the countries in which they do business. As such, their cooperation deals with the NSA are top secret. Even in internal NSA documents, they are only referred to using code names.
[Image: Wikimedia user Fleshas]
11:30 am, 07/01/13
After President Obama made an official statement today saying the United States “has gone through regular law enforcement channels to get Edward Snowden extradited from Russia,” Russian President Vladimir Putin made an ambiguous statement. He said Snowden “must stop his work aimed at harming our American partners.” Furthermore, Putin stated that Snowden isn’t a Russian agent, and should choose his final destination and travel there.
As things remain unsure for Snowden, one thing is certain: When you need to take sanctuary from Uncle Sam, Uncle Vlad might not be your best option.
—Neal Ungerleider
10:50 am, 07/01/13
Amid diplomatic fallout from the fact that the NSA, unsurprisingly, is engaged in surveillance of foreign powers, certain parties are trying to minimize the goings on. Secretary of State Kerry is currently doing damage control interference rounds on the news that NSA hackers monitored European Union bureaucratic computer systems.
“I will say that every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs and national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security and all kinds of information contributes to that. All I know is that it is not unusual for lots of nations,” Kerry said at a news conference. Japan and South Korea were also allegedly targeted for computer system infiltration by the U.S. government.
—Neal Ungerleider
6:25 am, 07/01/13
The Guardian is busily getting on with the business of publishing some of the documents obtained by Edward Snowden, and they make uncomfortable reading for American diplomats in Europe–not to mention the State Department in Washington. Berlin has accused the U.S. of treating it “like a cold war enemy,” after Der Spiegel reported seeing evidence indicating that American security agencies bugged the offices of the E.U. in Washington, and the U.N. in New York.
France, Greece, and Italy were all “targets” of the NSA, says The Guardian, which lists other allies of the U.S., including Mexico, Japan, India, South Korea, and Turkey.
The news report mentions a document that lists 38 embassies and missions as “targets,” detailing espionage methods used against each one. Bugs in encrypted faxes, cable taps, transmissions with specialized antennae, all of these were used to gather information.
—Addy Dugdale
1:25 pm, 06/28/13
Edward Snowden’s father, Lonnie Snowden, just appeared on the Today show. The elder Snowden, who has not spoken with his son since April, hinted Edward might return to the United States if several conditions are met–and that his son is not a traitor. Via NBC:
“At this point I don’t feel that he’s committed treason. He has in fact broken U.S. law, in a sense that he has released classified information,” Lonnie Snowden told NBC’s Michael Isikoff in an exclusive interview that aired on TODAY. “And if folks want to classify him as a traitor, in fact he has betrayed his government. But I don’t believe that he’s betrayed the people of the United States. “ Snowden said he has told Attorney General Eric Holder through his lawyer that his son will probably return home if the Justice Department promises not to detain him before a trial nor subject him to a gag order. He also wants his son to choose where a trial would take place.
—Neal Ungerleider
1:10 pm, 06/28/13
One of the documents The Guardian leaked yesterday strongly infers that both Verizon and AT&T have secret relationships with the NSA dating back to at least 2009. According to convincing evidence collected by CNET’s Declan McCullagh, both providers allow the intelligence agency to tap into their fiberoptic cables, gateway switches, and data networks.
—Neal Ungerleider
7:15 am, 06/28/13
The Monterey County Herald is reporting that the U.S. Army is filtering access to The Guardian across the whole of the force. A spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, or NETCOM, told the paper in an email that “some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks” was being denied.
The Department of Defense refers to this as “network hygiene”, and it is a regular occurence, the spokesman, Gordon Van Vleet, wrote.
—Addy Dugdale
12:15 pm, 06/27/13
One more interesting Guardian disclosure…
You know that one friend who threatens to move to Canada if (insert favorite hated political candidate here) got elected? The government equivalent of them is James Comey, the incoming FBI chief. According to The Guardian, the 6’8″ Comey threatened to quit his old post as acting attorney general in 2004 if the NSA continued warrantless surveillance of American citizens’ internet records.
But, The Guardian continues, Comey never did. He stayed on board as the NSA continued their preexisting internet surveillance routine, which continued to operate–albeit under a different legal theory.
—Neal Ungerleider
11:30 am, 06/27/13
Well, the conspiracy theorists and paranoid civil liberties fringe types have won. A new scoop by Glenn Greenwald and Spencer Ackerman at The Guardian reveals a document dump with details on how the NSA harvests massive amounts of email metadata from American citizens. A series of top-secret programs with names such as EvilOlive and ShellTrumpet began under the Bush administration and were continued–and expanded–under the Obama administration. The two programs collect massive amount of Internet traffic metadata in bulk; the bulk metadata is then handled for unknown purposes (storage? pattern analysis?) by the Special Source Operations (SSO) directorate within the NSA.
In this case, it’s appropriate to just let The Guardian article speak for itself:
This new system, SSO stated in December, enables vastly increased collection by the NSA of internet traffic. “The 1EF solution is allowing more than 75% of the traffic to pass through the filter,” the SSO December document reads. “This milestone not only opened the aperture of the access but allowed the possibility for more traffic to be identified, selected and forwarded to NSA repositories.” It continued: “After the EvilOlive deployment, traffic has literally doubled.” The scale of the NSA’s metadata collection is highlighted by references in the documents to another NSA program, codenamed ShellTrumpet. On December 31, 2012, an SSO official wrote that ShellTrumpet had just “processed its One Trillionth metadata record”. It is not clear how much of this collection concerns foreigners’ online records and how much concerns those of Americans. Also unclear is the claimed legal authority for this collection. Explaining that the five-year old program “began as a near-real-time metadata analyzer … for a classic collection system”, the SSO official noted: “In its five year history, numerous other systems from across the Agency have come to use ShellTrumpet’s processing capabilities for performance monitoring” and other tasks, such as “direct email tip alerting.”
—Neal Ungerleider
7:15 am, 06/27/13
In the balls, to be more specific. Ars Technica has unearthed records of the NSA whistleblower’s chat history on the site’s public Internet Relay Chat server. His conversations with others, under the username TheTrueHOOHA, reveal Snowden as a typical I.T. geek, young, fresh out of college, idealistic and cynical at the same time. But it also reveals some fascinating little snippets about the 30-year-old, currently “in transit” in a Moscow airport.
The 23-year-old Snowden began posting in 2007, when he was posted to Switzerland by the CIA. At first, he was not a fan of the country–but soon got to like the life in Europe, citing the girls and Switzerland’s picture postcard looks, although he was, as Ars says, “critical of the Swiss… Snowden saw a country of overpaid racists.”
He was a fan of shorting stocks and the gold standard, and thought that both the U.S. dollar and British Pound Sterling were about to go kaput in 2009. What Snowden didn’t like, however, was Social Security, and the Muslims in East London, although he thought it was “nice they set up their own community.”
During the 2009 elections, Snowden said that he could only support Presidential candidate Barack Obama if he joined forces with his then rival, John McCain. Hillary Clinton would be “a pox on the country.”
The three-page post points out that, although Snowden showed strong Libertarian views on some things, he was a staunch supporter of the work and structure of the security agencies in the U.S. When the New York Times published a story on U.S. action in Iran that was based on leaked information, he wondered if the newspaper was trying to start a war. “You don’t put that shit in the newspaper,” he raged, before railing against the anonymous sources. “These people should be shot in the balls.”
Snowden’s last post on the Ars network was in 2010. He went public with his devastating knowledge of the NSA’s Prism project just three years later.
—Addy Dugale
6:05 pm, 06/26/13
Journalist and commentator Glenn Greenwald, who played a major role in making the NSA surveillance leaks public, took to The Guardian‘s pages to self-disclose details from his past in response to inquiries he claims to have received from the New York Daily News and New York Times. In the newspaper, Greenwald admitted to participation in a company that was involved with adult film distribution, and issues with past tax debt. Greenwald said:
When I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably be the target of all sorts of personal attacks and smears. You don’t challenge the most powerful state on earth and expect to do so without being attacked. As a superb Guardian editorial noted today: “Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. The more serious the leak, the fiercer the pursuit and the greater the punishment.”
—Neal Ungerleider
5:40 pm, 06/26/13
The NSA removed a fact sheet on the secretive FISA program from their website today after two senators accused the agency of misrepresenting key aspects of FISA. Due to the classified nature of the FISA program, which sends secret warrants to individuals which they are then forbidden from disclosing to loved ones or the general public, Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Tom Udall (D-Co) did not disclose what exactly they believed the agency was misrepresenting.
In the letter, the senators said that it “portrays protections for Americans’ privacy as being significantly stronger than they actually are.”
Wyden and Udall also warned that knowing the full scope of the NSA’s surveillance efforts within the United States would significantly erode citizen faith in the federal government:
When the NSA makes inaccurate statements about government surveillance and fails to correct the public record, it can decrease public confidence in the NSA’s openness and its commitment to protecting Americans’ constitutional rights.
Why was the fact sheet taken off the NSA’s website? Here is what NSA spokesperson Judith Emell told the Huffington Post:
Given the intense interest from the media, the public, and Congress, we believe the precision of the source document (the statute) is the best possible representation of applicable authorities.
In other words, the NSA will not touch the basics of how they implement a complicated and bizarre spying program other than by making the complicated and bizarre source document available to the public. Both Senators Wyden and Udall have significant doubts about how FISA is actually used in real life which they are unable to share with the American public due to secrets laws.
The original NSA fact sheet which was taken offline is still available through Scribd.
—Neal Ungerleider
5:30 pm, 06/26/13
Writing over at op-ed site Bloomberg View, Russian author Leonid Bershidsky has an interesting take on recent disclosures of the NSA’s massive, semi-secret phone and Internet spying regime. According to Bershidsky, the NSA’s program isn’t effective at stopping terrorism. In fact, it’s not even good for monitoring terrorists. What is it good for? Well… he doesn’t say directly, but reading between the lines it seems like something that rhymes with packing the trublic. One interesting excerpt:
Even complete access to these servers brings U.S. authorities no closer to the core forums. These must be infiltrated by more traditional intelligence means, such as using agents posing as jihadists or by informants within terrorist organizations. Similarly, monitoring phone calls is hardly the way to catch terrorists. They’re generally not dumb enough to use Verizon. Granted, Russia’s special services managed to kill Chechen separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev with a missile that homed in on his satellite-phone signal. That was in 1996. Modern-day terrorists are generally more aware of the available technology. At best, the recent revelations concerning Prism and telephone surveillance might deter potential recruits to terrorist causes from using the most visible parts of the Internet. Beyond that, the government’s efforts are much more dangerous to civil liberties than they are to al-Qaeda and other organizations like it.
—Neal Ungerleider
12:30 pm, 06/26/13
Over at Co.Design, our Mark Wilson spoke with Sang Mun, a Korean-American artist who worked with U.S. troops and the NSA during his mandatory South Korean Army service at an unknown technology position. Mun is the creator of ZXX, a typeface designed to defeat optical character recognition technologies used by the NSA:
In its sans and bold forms, ZXX is completely legible (by humans and machines). But the free downloadable font comes with four illegible styles–Camo, False, Noise, and Xed–that Mun created with the eye of a designer and the acuity of an ex-NSA agent. Camo, for instance, looks like letters wearing camouflage–but there’s a good reason beyond the military overtones. That pattern also confuses the logic driving optical character recognition devices. In other words, something typed in Camo can’t be scanned and algorithmically converted to computer-comprehended text.
Of course, the NSA and other agencies can read ZXX even after it’s been rendered illegible; it just requires a bit more work. It’s important to note that the typeface has nothing to do with PRISM at all–metadata attached to messages and viewing emails in plain text gives access to content nonetheless. ZXX’s value is primarily in use for scanned and printed documents. But as a piece of typography deliberately designed to raise awareness of surveilllance, it’s well done.
—Neal Ungerleider
8:00 am, 06/26/13
Germany has criticized the U.K.’s mass monitoring of phone and Internet traffic, calling it not conducive to free and democratic societies. Justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger has sent letters to her British counterpart, Chris Grayling, and the U.K.’s home secretary, Theresa May.
As well as stressing just how much discomfort the revelations that GCHQ’s Project Tempora have caused in Germany, Ms. Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger asks how much German citizens have been targeted.
Germany has very strong views on personal privacy–as Google has found out in the past. In 2012, it signed up to the Verein Selbstregulierung Informationswirtschaft, along with Nokia and Microsoft and, under privacy proposals in 2010, it outlined plans to prevent bosses from checking out the Facebook profiles of potential employees.
Britain’s Foreign Minister, William Hague, defended the surveillance programs in both the U.S. and the U.K. in a speech in California last night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. He called the intelligence-sharing between the two countries “unique and indispensable,” adding that it was done within a strong legal framework.
“We operate under the rule of law and are accountable for it. In some countries secret intelligence is used to control their people–in ours it only exists to protect their freedoms. “We should always remember that terrorists plan to harm us in secret, criminal networks plan to steal from us in secret, foreign intelligence agencies plot to spy on us in secret and new weapons systems are devised in secret. We cannot protect the people of our countries without devising some of the response to those threats in secret.”
7:15 am, 06/26/13
Here’s a not-so-subtle message from Washington: You don’t like the U.S. surveillance programs? Well, other countries–including Ecuador–are just as bad. That is the parse of a BuzzFeed post outlining all the monitoring and surveillance practices that President Rafael Correa’s government has at its disposal for Ecuador’s citizens.
The country spent $500,000 on an Israeli-built GSM interceptor, and was the first nation to implement a facial- and voice-recognition ID system. And SENAIN, the Ecuadorian intelligence agency, seems to want to get its hands on some drones, too. (Well, don’t we all?)
7:05 am, 06/26/13
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been musing on whether Edward Snowden may have edited Wikipedia pages before turning to his current career of uber-mole and secret-service cracker. Examiner.com is reporting that Wales wrote a post on his “Talk” page asking if there is any evidence of Snowden’s hand on Wikipedia’s edit buttons.
I’m sure this has been discussed somewhere. In the media there have been reports of user accounts used on various tech discussion sites by Edward Snowden. He was apparently quite an active person online, particularly a few years back when he was younger. It seems highly likely to me that he would have edited Wikipedia–most people who fit his profile (tech savvy, Internet activist types) will have done so. Do we have any evidence of that, or suspicions about that?
As Examiner.com points out, however, Wikipedians can’t find identities of other contributors in the secretive community. One editor, Fram, mentioned this to Wales, who gave him short shrift, accusing him of “harrassment.”
6:05 am, 06/26/13
British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, the daddy of the World Wide Web, has spoken about the importance of keeping “total control” of the Internet away from governments and large corporations.
The scientist was at a reception at Buckingham Palace yesterday to receive the inaugural Queen Elizabeth prize for engineering, where he was asked for his thoughts on the NSA scandal. This is what he said:
“The original design of the web of 24 years ago was for a universal space, we didn’t have a particular computer in mind or browser, or language. “When you make something universal … it can be used for good things or nasty things … we just have to make sure it’s not undercut by any large companies or governments trying to use it and get total control.”
—Addy Dugdale
4:05 pm, 06/25/13
Well, it’s official: Edward Snowden is crazy like a fox. In a long exclusive piece, The Daily Beast’s Eli Lake details Snowden’s Plan B if something happens to him: A massive cache of encrypted files, hidden on the Internet by his friends and allies in multiple locations, will be decrypted. These files contain a huge dump of NSA secrets of all sorts that apparently shed a great deal of information on the technical specifications of America’s spy apparatus. Having access to them would be a field day for the intelligence service of any country in the world, and create significant hindrances for the NSA’s legitimate foreign operations.
From the article:
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who Snowden first contacted in February, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published.” Greenwald added that the people in possession of these files “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords.” But, Greenwald said, “if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.”
[Image: Defense Department]
—Neal Ungerleider
4:00 pm, 06/25/13
Those endless email and phone archives that the NSA has been accumulating so they can monitor the communications of non-citizens? Well, they also use them to keep tabs on citizens of interest too. The Emptywheel blog just uncovered some interesting NSA regulatory jujitsu:
The procedures make it clear that, with authorization from the NSA Director, even communications entirely between US persons may be retained (see section 5) if they are of significant intelligence value. Communications showing a communications security vulnerability may also be retained (this permission, related to cybersecurity, was not made public in the NSA handout).
—Neal Ungerleider
11:00 am, 06/25/13
In the latest installment of the John le Carre/Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego? mash-up that is Edward Snowden’s path for sanctuary and asylum, the NSA whistleblower has been confirmed as being at the airport in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin says Snowden is in the transit zone at Sheremetyevo Airport, which technically means he did not enter Russian soil yet.
However, the airport was flooded with journalists upon rumors that Snowden was transiting through Moscow on a flight to Havana–a flight, of course, that he never flew on. Snowden was not seen at the airport by any of these journalists.
Unfortunately for Snowden, Sheremetyevo’s hotels are all on the outside of passport control. According to Russia Today, Putin said that any accusations of Russian involvement with Snowden are “ridiculous.”
—Neal Ungerleider
5:30 am, 06/25/13
At a press conference in Moscow, a Russian minister said Edward Snowden never entered the country. Foreign secretary Sergei Lavrov also told journalists that U.S. attempts to play the blame game with Russia were “groundless and unacceptable.”
“We are in no way involved with either Mr. Snowden, his relations with U.S. justice, nor to his movements around the world.” There is, of course, a possibility that, despite landing on Russian soil, Snowden remained airside–never entering the terminal building, never handing over his passport to be stamped by Russian Immigration, maybe never even leaving the aircraft he flew in on.
Yesterday, the White House criticized both China and Russia for their part in letting Snowden slip away. The decision by Hong Kong (or China, depending on how independent you feel the former British territory is from its mainland masters) to reject the U.S. extradition warrant on a technicality was, according White House spokesman Jay Carney, “A deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the U.S.-China relationship.”
China has denied the accusations, saying the U.S. claims are “groundless and unacceptable.”
Carney said Russia was asked to consider the extradition papers in order to expel the NSA whistleblower. But with Moscow’s claims that Mr. Snowden never entered Russia, there is no potential extradition to speak of–despite the fact that the White House strongly believes that the mole is still in the country.
—Addy Dugdale
1:15 pm, 06/24/13
Well, for everyone wondering why Edward Snowden took a relatively low-paying job at Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii, we now know. In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden said that he took the job so he could gather evidence of NSA surveillance:
For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the U.S. National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programmes ahead of planned leaks to the media. “My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.” During a global online chat last week, Snowden also stated he took pay cuts “in the course of pursuing specific work.”
Freelance spying on the NSA or taking a job specifically to do some whistleblowing? Interestingly, the Post‘s interview was conducted way back on June 12. We’re now taking suggestions about why the Hong Kong-based newspaper sat on a scoop that big for so long.
—Neal Ungerleider
7:15 am, 06/24/13
Snowden is reportedly a no-show for his flight from Moscow to Havana, which is packed to the brim with reporters chomping at the bit to speak with him. Gawker editor Max Reed tweeted: “A dozen journalists stuck on dry flight to Cuba watching the James Franco Oz movie.” Now the question on every conspiracy theorist’s lips is this: Did Snowden actually make it to Moscow, or is this one of the best post-Soviet intelligence ops we’ve seen in a long time? Stay tuned.
6:00 am, 06/24/13
The NSA whistleblower is on the move. Edward Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow on Sunday after the Chinese territory’s authorities blocked an extradition effort by the U.S. Apparently the paperwork was fluffed–or, as a spokesman for the Hong Kong government said, “the documents provided by the U.S. government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.”
The U.S., which has revoked its citizen mole’s U.S. passport, called the decision “particularly troubling.”
Now, Snowden is en route to Ecuador via Cuba and Venezuela for possible asylum. He was accompanied on his trip by Wikileaks’ “own diplomats and legal advisors,” said a spokesperson for the website. Moscow’s airport last night was crawling with Russian secret agents and Ecuadorian diplomats who tried to talk with the whistleblower.
The Guardian, which has one of its journalists booked on the same Havana flight as Snowden, reports Russian airline Aeroflot is threatening to take passengers’ phones away from them for the duration of the flight. And Russia’s secret agents are changing terminals, says Reuters, who has also just spotted a VIP van drawing up next to the Cuba-bound plane–or could this be a massive decoy operation?
—Addy Dugdale
1:50 pm, 06/21/13
And The Guardian just published a massive scoop… The British government has a highly secret program which taps into transatlantic fiber cables and copies data equivalent to the entire British Library onto intelligence servers every eight minutes. This information was then shared with the NSA. From the newspaper:
One document described how there were 2 billion users of the Internet worldwide, how Facebook had more than 400 million regular users and how there had been a 600% growth in mobile Internet traffic the year before. “But we are starting to ‘master’ the Internet,” the author claimed. “And our current capability is quite impressive.” The report said the UK now had the “biggest Internet access in Five Eyes” – the group of intelligence organisations from the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. “We are in the golden age,” the report added. There were caveats. The paper warned that American Internet service providers were moving to Malaysia and India, and the NSA was “buying up real estate in these places”. “We won’t see this traffic crossing the UK. Oh dear,” the author said. He suggested Britain should do the same and play the “US at [their] own game … and buy facilities overseas”.
The Guardian also published a snippet from a training manual for UK intelligence’s Internet monitors. Employees were told that “You are in an enviable position–Have fun and make the most of it.”
1:45 pm, 06/21/13
Buried in the newly leaked regulations for NSA monitoring of email and phone communications is the fact that the NSA stores all encrypted communications they encounter until a future time when computers powerful enough to decrypt them will be produced:
In the context of a cryptoanalytic effort, maintenance of technical data bases requires retention of all communications that are enciphered or reasonably believed to contain secret meaning, and sufficient duration may consist of any period of time during which encrypted material is subject to, or of use in, cryptanalysis.
In other words, no matter why you’re encrypting your communications, the government is interested.
—Neal Ungerleider
7:00 am, 06/21/13
The Guardian last night released two documents from the Prism project. One details the procedure process for “targeting” non-U.S. citizens. The Guardian claims this document shows no warrant is needed for U.S. data. The other minimizes data collection from U.S. persons. This, says The Guardian, allows government agencies to use data that has been inadvertently collected from individuals, as sanctioned by FISA court officials.
This means the NSA can:
Keep data containing details of U.S. citizens for up to five years.
Retain and use “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if containing useable evidence.
Preserve “foreign intelligence information” from attorney-client communications.
Access the content of U.S.-based devices or phone numbers to determine if targets are in the country, and whether further surveillance is needed.
The South China Morning Post is reporting that a businessman with links to WikiLeaks has readied a private jet to fly Edward Snowden from Hong Kong to Iceland. Olafur Sigurvinsson, who is the head of a partner firm of the whistleblower website, DataCell, said everything was ready to go, bar a nod from the Icelandic government.
WikiLeaks spokesperson, Julian Assange, currently sheltering in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, said he and Snowden’s people had been in touch to discuss the possibility of asylum in the Scandinavian country.
—Addy Dugdale
9:25 am, 06/20/13
In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller asked lawmakers to give the FBI additional power to spy on the Internet:
The rapid pace of advances in mobile and other communication technologies continues to present a significant challenge for conducting court-approved electronic surveillance of criminals and terrorists […] Because of this gap, law enforcement is increasingly unable to gain timely access to the information to which it is lawfully authorized and that it needs to protect public safety, bring criminals to justice and keep America safe.
Part of the problem with both mission creep on the FBI’s part and unclear supervision of the NSA surveillance regimes is an inability to reconcile 20th century wiretap models with the 21st century. The Internet and digital communications are very different from landline telephones, but the law does not necessarily reflect that.
—Neal Ungerleider
9:15 am, 06/20/13
The New York Times quietly dropped a major scoop today: Skype, which is used by dissidents around the world, has a secret program for collaboration with intelligence agencies and law enforcement called Project Chess:
Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies. Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011. A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A.
Microsoft officials declined to affirm previous comments made that Skype calls are not wiretapped. The use of Skype is commonplace among rebels in the Syrian Civil War and by anti-government protesters in Central Asia, just to name a few.
—Neal Ungerleider
9:05 am, 06/20/13
The House and Senate Committees on Intelligence are where the legislative branch are briefed on classified surveillance programs by the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Much of this surveillance work is carried out on the NSA and CIA’s behalf by outside contractors, which has been a growing trend since the PATRIOT Act passed way back in 2001. Blogger Troy Jurimas just wrote an interesting post compiling contractor donations to the Inteligence Committees’ members. Unsurprisingly, members are knee deep in contractor donations. Here is a small sample:
Peter King-New York (R) $13,500 Northrop Grumman/$13,000 General Dynamics/$11,000 Raytheon Co/$10,00 Boeing Co/$10,000 Honeywell International/$10,000 Lockheed Martin/$6,000 BAE Systems Frank A. LoBiondo- New Jersey (R) $12,000 Northrop Grumman/$10,000 Boeing Co/$10,000 Honeywell International/$10,000 Raytheon Co/$9,000 General Dynamics/$8,000 BAE Systems/$8,000 Lockheed Martin Devin Nunes- California (R) $8,000 Honeywell International/$7,500 Lockheed Martin/$7,000 Northrop Grumman
It is important to note that many representatives and senators received donations which had to do with contractors having officers or facilities in their jurisdiction or state.
—Neal Ungerleider
12:30 pm, 06/19/13
George Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer, had a live Q&A on The Guardian yesterday afternoon. In it, he vociferously denied that his firm was “in cahoots” with the NSA, as well as calling for the world’s governments to get together and come up with some basic rules on gathering information in secret.
Remember that this is not just about the US government, but European and other governments too. It’s really important that all of us give close scrutiny to any laws that give governments increased power to sift through user data.
The Prism scandal has had one unlikely winner: the DuckDuckGo search engine. The Philly-based website, which doesn’t keep users’ search information, has had a surge in traffic since the scandal broke earlier this month. It announced the news on Twitter.
—Addy Dugdale
12:30 pm, 06/19/13
Blogger and developer Jeff Lyon parsed on-the-record statements by members of Congress. Lyon found compelling evidence that the NSA is monitoring and recording the content of Americans’ phone calls without a warrant… and not just the metadata:
So they’re storing the actual content of phone calls and emails in some NSA database somewhere. No big deal, and rest assured, they won’t look at it unless they really don’t like you. I guess that’s what Representative Loretta Sanchez meant when she said that Snowden’s leaks were just the “tip of the iceberg.” This shouldn’t come as a shock, but look at it for what it is: to date, the government has only acknowledged that they receive (not “collect”) telephone records on millions of American citizens. They have not acknowledged that they also get the content from those phone calls. They’ve noted that the specific FISC order that Snowden leaked does not apply to content, but they’ve stopped short of denying that similar court orders exist that would apply to content. And really, they wish we’d stop asking them about it because it’s classified.
Meanwhile, security researcher Bruce Schneier gave speculation that is actually useful–and far from the usual conspiracy-mongering that crowds so much of this space.
I believe that, to the extent that the NSA is analyzing and storing conversations, they’re doing speech-to-text as close to the source as possible and working with that. Even if you have to store the audio for conversations in foreign languages, or for snippets of conversations the conversion software is unsure of, it’s a lot fewer bits to move around and deal with.
—Neal Ungerleider
11:30 am, 06/19/13
Via Glenn Greenwald, here is the best explanation of the FISA surveillance regime that we’ve ever seen. According to Harvard Law School professor Jeff Balkin:
The Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, effectively gives the President – now President Obama – the authority to run surveillance programs similar in effect to the warrantless surveillance program [secretly implemented by George Bush in late 2001]. That is because New Fisa no longer requires individualized targets in all surveillance programs. Some programs may be ‘vacuum cleaner’ programs that listen to a great many different calls (and read a great many e-mails) with any requirement of a warrant directed at a particular person as long as no US person is directly targeted as the object of the program… New Fisa authorizes the creation of surveillance programs directed against foreign persons (or rather, against persons believed to be outside the United States)–which require no individualized suspicion of anyone being a terrorist, or engaging in any criminal activity. These programs may inevitably include many phone calls involving Americans, who may have absolutely no connection to terrorism or to Al Qaeda.
—Neal Ungerleider
7:30 am, 06/19/13
Google has cited the First Amendment in an attempt to get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, or FISA, to relax its gag orders on data requests. The search giant argues it has a constitutional right to speak about any data that it is forced to hand over to the government, in an attempt to “protect its reputation,” reports the Washington Post.
General Keith Alexander, the NSA’s director, was in front of Congress’s Intelligence Committee yesterday, where he said the agency was contemplating a change to the way it handles sensitive information. Sensitive documents could only be saved on an external device using a “two-person” system–meaning that all those contracted operators like Edward Snowden, who was a Booz Allen employee, would need a second person, most likely from the Department of Defense, to make sure no unauthorized data was being collected.
This is the same system implemented in part by the U.S. military following Bradley Manning’s passing of secret files to Wikileaks.
—Addy Dugdale
5:30 pm, 06/18/13
Did Ed Snowden have a mole feeding him information from the secret FISA court, whose investigation targets could not even tell their loved ones they were under federal investigation? Reading between the lines, Eli Lake over at the Daily Beast really, really hinted in that direction:
U.S. intelligence officials were careful to say investigators have not yet concluded there is a mole inside the FISA Court or that the secure databases that store the court warrants have been compromised, only that both prospects were under active investigation. If the secret court has been breached, it would be one of the most significant intelligence failures in U.S. history, potentially giving America’s adversaries a road map to every suspected agent inside the United States currently being watched by the FBI, according to the officials. Unlike the Verizon order and other such sweeping collection demands that have been received by Internet and telecom companies, many FISA warrants identify a specific individual or entity being monitored by the U.S. government. “If we have a human or electronic breach in this system it could be a counter-intelligence disaster. It would allow our adversaries to see what we are targeting and how,” said Joel Brenner, a former inspector general and senior counsel for the NSA who left the agency in 2010. “If they got access into the database or mainframe that the warrants are housed in, this compromises our country’s most closely guarded ongoing investigations,” Hoekstra said. “This would be like Aldrich Ames,” referring to the CIA officer who told the Soviet Union about moles inside the USSR working for the United States for nearly a decade, with several of the operatives he outed arrested and executed by the Soviets. “This would be breathtaking.” Stewart Baker, a former general counsel to the NSA, just said such a breach would be “very bad.”
Alternately, Lake hints that the leak could have come from compromised servers at the secret court. If either option is true it will constitute a major news story of its own.
—Neal Ungerleider
[Image: Mick E. Talbot/Wikimedia
5:10 pm, 06/18/13
I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government […] I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category.
–New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said this to the New York Post in today’s paper. However, Kelly also has a vested political interest in attacking the federal goverment today. The Police Commissioner is in a very public quarrel with Attorney General Eric Holder over the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.
—Neal Ungerleider
5:00 pm, 06/18/13
As expected, Ed Snowden is attempting to apply for asylum in Iceland. The NSA whistleblower is using an intermediary since international travel is slightly difficult for him at the moment. Wikileaks spokesperson and investigative journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson approached Iceland’s government on behalf of Snowden; Hrafnsson was approached by an unnamed middleperson.
The Icelandic government confirmed they received Snowden’s asylum request but did not provide any additional information.
[Image: Flickr user Poptech]
—Neal Ungerleider
1:45 pm, 06/18/13
Well, civil libertarians and people concerned about reckless NSA oversight of Internet/phone surveillance programs just got one sweet, sweet metric. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing today, NSA head Keith Alexander said that the secret FISA court has never turned down a NSA surveillance request of a potential target. In the last two years, out of the approximately 4,000 requests the NSA made, not one has been turned down by a judge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which live-tweeted the hearing, had this to say:
“Is the FISA court a rubber stamp?” NSA chief says no, but in the last two years, they’ve approved ~4,000 orders, with zero rejections.
Shockingly, there is no court review of individual FISA queries by the NSA. All oversight is done within the Justice Department, by judges who are not accountable to the NSA and who do not report to Congress. These judges were chosen post-2001, primarily by the Bush administration, and are thought to be extremely friendly to increased government surveillance.
NSA chief Keith Alexander then told the FBI deputy director Sean Joyce “I owe (your boss) another beer,” which was picked up by a nearby hot mike. Ben Doernberg of human rights organization Witness caught the exchange.
—Neal Ungerleider
7:00 am, 06/18/13
The President gave an interview to Charlie Rose on PBS, talking in detail about the Prism program. Obama explained that, in order for American citizens to enjoy extra security at home and abroad, there had to be a trade-off. (This point is equally relevant the other way around: Extra privacy could come at a cost to national security.) This does not mean that having one meant none of the other, just that compromises needed to be made, Obama said. The job of the president is to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life.
What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not. They cannot and have not, by law and by rule, and unless they — and usually it wouldn’t be “they,” it’d be the FBI — go to a court, and obtain a warrant, and seek probable cause, the same way it’s always been, the same way when we were growing up and we were watching movies, you want to go set up a wiretap, you got to go to a judge, show probable cause…. So point number one, if you’re a U.S. person, then NSA is not listening to your phone calls and it’s not targeting your emails unless it’s getting an individualized court order. That’s the existing rule. There are two programs that were revealed by Mr. Snowden, allegedly, since there’s a criminal investigation taking place, and they caused all the ruckus.
No content is available to the U.S. agencies without a court order from FISA, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Its dealings are “transparent,” Obama said.
At the end of the interview, Charlie Rose asked the President whether a whistle-blower who had caused a national security issue should be prosecuted. Obama deftly passed the buck onto the Justice Department. “I’m not going to comment on prosecution… The case has been referred to the DOJ for criminal investigation… and possible extradition. I will leave it up to them to answer those questions.”
—Addy Dugdale
7:20 pm, 06/17/13
Two interesting commentaries on the NSA leak case from today. The Atlantic‘s Garance Franke-Ruta wrote about the difference between Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg:
Ellsberg’s actions came at a time when there was a robust social movement demanding change in the exact direction his revelations suggested U.S. policy go — out of Vietnam. Without the anti-Vietnam War movement, it’s arguable he would not have been as important a historical figure, or as daring. There is no comparable movement to support Snowden, no major anti-surveillance marches on Washington or roiling college campuses, no public burning of Facebook logins and passwords. While there is a robust online libertarian movement concerned with surveillance and privacy issues, there is no force in American life at the present time arguing for change on this front with anything near the power and reach of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Then, in left-leaning mag Mother Jones, Dana Liebelson wrote about Snowden’s chat with The Guardian:
Snowden insists that he has not had any contact with the Chinese government. He adds, “I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous.” He also says that “the US media has a knee-jerk ‘RED CHINA!’ reaction…If I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.” Snowden did not address the close relationship between the Chinese government and its military, business, and civilian institutions.
—Neal Ungerleider
12:15 pm, 06/17/13
One more Snowden quote from today’s Guardian web chat. This quote is in response to being accused of being a traitor by Dick Cheney:
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we’ve been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it. Further, it’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.
11:35 am, 06/17/13
When asked by Circa’s Anthony De Rosa on the Guardian web chat about what intelligence agency “direct access” to metadata and communications records meant, Snowden answered:
More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on–it’s all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.
11:10 am, 06/17/13
In Ed Snowden’s Guardian webchat, the whistleblower claims he did not hand over any military secrets to the Chinese, but did give information of American cyberwar hacks against Chinese universities and public facilities:
Let’s be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn’t declared war on the countries – the majority of them are our allies – but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we’re not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the “consent of the governed” is meaningless.
Snowden then declined to answer a question from Glenn Greenwald about how many copies of secret U.S. government documents Snowden made, and if he gave copies to anyone.
9:20 am, 06/17/13
Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian just announced that Edward Snowden is conducting a web Q&A at 11 am Eastern on Monday, Reddit AMA-style. The decision, which is simultaneously gutsy, self-promoting, and a way of placating The Guardian after giving scoops to several Hong Kong publications, comes with the following caveat:
The live chat is subject to Snowden’s security concerns and also his access to a secure Internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient.
Users can also follow the live chat on Twitter via the #asksnowden hashtag. In other news, Beijing issued a denial that Snowden is a Chinese spy.
—Neal Ungerleider
4:10 pm, 06/14/13
As the workweek winds down to a close, here are some interesting thoughts on the whole big data and government surveillance issue.
NSFWCorp/Pando Daily’s Paul Carr and Salon’s Andrew Leonard both make the same point: The NSA’s reported surveillance of citizens is pretty similar to what Silicon Valley has been doing for a long time in terms of Big Data. In Salon, Leonard notes about the popular Hadoop platform:
“Revolution” is probably the most overused word in the chronicle of Internet history, but if anything, the Wall Street Journal undersold the real story. Hadoop’s importance to how we live our lives today is hard to overstate. By making it economically feasible to extract meaning from the massive streams of data that increasingly define our online existence, Hadoop effectively enabled the surveillance state. And not just in the narrowest, Big Brother, government-is-watching-everyone-all-the-time sense of that term. Hadoop is equally critical to private sector corporate surveillance. Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Amazon, Netflix–just about every big player that gathers the trillions of data “events” generated by our everyday online actions employs Hadoop as a part of their arsenal of Big Data-crunching tools. Hadoop is everywhere–as one programmer told me, “it’s taken over the world.”
Meanwhile, here’s Carr on why Silicon Valley and the CIA both love data to death:
Big data is a nerd’s dream: turning human behavior into measurable, understandable graphs, in the same way the big data experts at Netflix claim they can tell viewers who enjoyed “Sneakers” whether they’ll also enjoy “Enemy of the State.” And who has access to more big data than the federal government? Can you really blame the folks at Palantir or Cloudera or Prism Skylabs from getting wet around the lips at the idea of getting into America’s phone records or every instant message we’ve ever sent. Think of all the patterns! Imagine the possibilities! And also: ka-ching! And therein lies the truth, and the hypocrisy, of Silicon Valley’s outrage over government snooping: The only people who love big data more, and who care about our privacy less, than the NSA are the outraged Libertarians of Silicon Valley.
1:10 pm, 06/14/13
So here’s an interesting tidbit: A Dell publicist apparently lost their temper when an ABC News team asked if Edward Snowden worked for the tech giant, which has a history of subcontractor work for intelligence agencies.
Snowden’s professional career also included a stint in Japan, with the Texas-based computer giant Dell. A Dell spokesman has angrily refused to verify Snowden’s employment there, at first saying the company had been advised by the Department of Justice not to respond to questions. When a Justice Department official refuted that, the Dell official revised his reasons for remaining silent. “That request came from our customer,” the company spokesman said, without identifying that customer.
—Neal Ungerleider
11:15 am, 06/14/13
The omnipresence of CCTV cameras in the United Kingdom is a pretty good indication that the British take on surveillance is a little different from that of the United States. Let’s face it… American law enforcement has to be jealous of London’s endless security cameras. Now, senior politicians from the U.K.’s three major political parties have united to demand intelligence services be given further Internet monitoring powers. You know… for counterterrorism. The BBC’s Allegra Stratton reports:
But in the letter the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat grandees say: “Far from being a ‘snoopers’ charter’, as critics allege, the draft bill, seeks to match our crime fighting capabilities to the advances in technologies. “The proposed Communications Data Bill does not want access to the content of our communications but does want to ensure that enough data is available in the aftermath of an attack to help investigators establish ‘who, where and when’ were involved in planning or supporting it.”
Its important to note that the request for increased monitoring powers is as much a C.Y.A. effort resulting from the recent London soldier beheading than a impassioned plea for an emboldened security state.
[Image: Flickr user Kai Hendry]
—Neal Ungerleider
11:00 am, 06/14/13
Can slacktivism change things? The Mozilla-backed Stop Watching Us campaign, which demands the U.S. Congress reveal the “full extent of the NSA’s spying programs,” announced yesterday that over 100,000 Internet users signed their disclosure petition.
Stop Watching Us is backed by a who’s who of civil libertarian activists and left-skewing tech firms. But while plenty of Redditors may be happy to sign a petition, it’s going to take a lot of cash to hire lobbyists on Capitol Hill and lawyers to take on America’s intelligence establishment. Petitions, of course, can only go so far.
—Neal Ungerleider
10:50 am, 06/14/13
James Bamford, the Wired national security writer whose stories on the NSA data collection center in Utah and NSA Chief Keith Alexander are things you should read right now, did a Reddit AMA yesterday. Our favorite exchange:
JimBamford 379 points 1 day ago
I think it’s mysterious, this cooperation between the NSA and ISPs, and the only thing I can compare it to is the deal with AT&T – where all data flows into their computers filled with software that does deep-pocket inspection, looking for target information and target names and so forth. Whether the NSA created some sort of lock box or portal in cyber space where they can do this, I don’t know. But what you have is the NSA saying they have direct access to their servers. And what the tech giants are saying is that they don’t give them direct access to their services. What we have then is something in between – is it semantics or truth or both? But eventually it will come out through investigative reporting or congressional hearings or something. I think Snowden is very courageous. He’s doing something other people wouldn’t do. He’s not making any money on it, and he’s facing serious repercussions. Last year, in my WIRED cover story on the NSA data-center in Utah, I interviewed a number of former senior officials, including Bill Binney, and they told me very similar things about getting data records from everyone at Verizon and so forth. But the NSA was able to largely brush off those accusations, and the mainstream media just believed them because General Alexander said it. This might have been one of the reasons why Snowden felt this information could only be taken seriously if the public actually got to see the documents. This way, there is no way to brush it under the rug, say these people are lying or exaggerating. A number of whistleblowers have said very similar things. The media and the public only believe it’s real, despite the denials, when confronted with actual documents.
—Neal Ungerleider
10:30 am, 06/14/13
When Yahoo received a secret FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) letter requiring them to hand over data to the federal government on foreign users–they had to comply. Because the FISA letters are secret, the Yahoo executives who received them couldn’t tell anyone else beyond their lawyers… not even other Yahoo executives could be notified in anything but coded language that didn’t include express confirmations or denials. Fighting the FISA letters or asking for a modification would be impossible in real-life terms, putting Yahoo in an awkward Catch-22.
Over at the New York Times, Claire Cain Miller examines what happens when the secret court contacts tech firms:
Like almost all the actions of the secret court, which operates under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the details of its disagreement with Yahoo were never made public beyond a heavily redacted court order, one of the few public documents ever to emerge from the court. The name of the company had not been revealed until now. Yahoo’s involvement was confirmed by two people with knowledge of the proceedings. Yahoo declined to comment. But the decision has had lasting repercussions for the dozens of companies that store troves of their users’ personal information and receive these national security requests–it puts them on notice that they need not even try to test their legality.
[Image: Openclipart user j4p4n]
—Neal Ungerleider
10:15 am, 06/14/13
In the post below, we detailed Bloomberg’s findings that Microsoft collaborates with the federal government by giving them advance notice of security flaws in MSFT software. In the short period of time before Microsoft patches the security flaws, the FBI, military, and intelligence agencies can presumably use them for all sorts of purposes. These purposes are generally believed to include surveillance on organized crime and terrorist groups in the United States, and espionage actions against America’s enemies and rivals abroad.
Fast Company wrote about this before. Back in May, we wrote about the booming zero-day exploit market, where (reportedly) intelligence agencies, corporate rivals, and organized crime buy “exploits” in new software releases discovered by security researchers. This has been an open secret for quite some time–one commonly gossiped about at industry conferences, Hacker News, Slashdot, Twitter, and elsewhere–but it’s slowly becoming better known as an aftereffect of the NSA surveillance scandal.
A few quick thoughts:
1) How will civil libertarians in the United States react to the news that huge tech corporations let intelligence agencies use their software for presumed foreign espionage purposes?
2) In more immediate and quantifiable concerns, how will this damage sales by Microsoft and others to foreign customers? In China, Russia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other markets, this is sure to encourage purchases of software by homegrown vendors with less chance of giving backdoors to U.S. intelligence. And how can open source operating systems capitalize on this?
3) Microsoft isn’t the only firm giving information to the federal government regarding cybersecurity. What about the other ones–what are they sharing?
—Neal Ungerleider
6:00 am, 06/14/13
Bloomberg is reporting that U.S. agencies regularly swap data with other firms, known as trusted partners.
“Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence,” it says, citing four anonymous sources.
The information is not just used to protect the United States but also to “help infiltrate computers of its adversaries,” something that Edward Snowden alluded to in an interview with the South China Morning Post earlier this week. For example, Microsoft provides the intelligence sector with information about software bugs before it issues a fix to the public.
Wired carries a long profile of Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, in which it says that the four-star general has beefed up NSA operations and equipped a secret cyber army with the ability to infiltrate, sabotage, and cause mayhem. “Now,” says the intro, “it’s ready to unleash hell.”
—Addy Dugdale
7:10 pm, 06/13/13
Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the NSA (left), told Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that the NSA would release details of terrorist attacks thwarted by bulk surveillance of Americans’ communication metadata and the use of secretive Internet dropboxes as early as Monday. According to The Guardian‘s Spencer Ackerman, the upcoming NSA disclosures were announced to Feinstein following an afternoon briefing.
[Image: Defense Department/Glenn Fawcett]
—Neal Ungerleider
6:45 pm, 06/13/13
Even the mighty NSA can be taken down by a modest USB stick. When Edward Snowden stole proprietary documents from his IT job at Booz Allen Hamilton, he did it with an ordinary USB stick. Officials speaking anonymously with the Los Angeles Times confirmed that Snowden stole those infamous NSA phone- and Internet-monitoring documents the (relatively) old-fashioned way.
While thumb drive use is banned for most NSA employees and contractors working with them, the source said, IT employees are frequently granted exceptions. “There are people who need to use a thumb drive and they have special permission. But when you use one, people always look at you funny,” the source said.
But what we’re curious about is what kind of poor secrets keeping the NSA was using that would give Snowden–a relatively low-level employee–access to top government secrets. It has shades of the Bradley Manning case; Manning, who also had relatively low rank in the Army, also had access to secrets far beyond his rank.
[Image: Wikimedia user TEL0000]
—Neal Ungerleider
1:30 pm, 06/13/13
Using the username “TheTrueHooHA,” Edward Snowden appears to have prolifically posted on tech news site Ars Technica for nearly 10 years. Snowden’s prolific Ars Technica postings were part of a larger (and somewhat endearing) habit of posting on Internet message boards, giving us a more unfiltered look at the NSA whistleblower. Circa’s Anthony DeRosa has the scoop, including one revealing comment Snowden made about Cisco wiretap surveillance:
It really concerns me how little this sort of corporate behavior bothers those outside of technology circles. Society really seems to have developed an unquestioning obedience towards spooky types. I wonder, how well would envelopes that became transparent under magical federal candlelight have sold in 1750? 1800? 1850? 1900? 1950? Did we get to where we are today via a slippery slope that was entirely within our control to stop, or was it an relatively instantaneous sea change that sneaked in undetected because of pervasive government secrecy?
And then the rest, as they say, was history.
—Neal Ungerleider
12:30 pm, 06/13/13
At yesterday’s contentious U.S. Senate hearing, NSA head Keith Alexander dropped a hint that the intelligence agency may be acquiring IP address visitation and email metadata logs from Internet service providers.
Says CNet’s Declan McCullagh:
During a U.S. Senate hearing, NSA director Keith Alexander was asked specifically about whether “e-mail contacts” are ingested under the Obama administration’s secret interpretation of the Patriot Act’s surveillance powers. “I don’t want to make a mistake” and reveal too much, Alexander said, adding that disclosing details about such surveillance would cause “our country to lose some sort of protection.” It would be appropriate, he said, to discuss e-mail and other metadata surveillance in a “classified session” that senators are scheduled to attend Thursday. Among the small circle of outsiders who closely follow the NSA, the agency’s close, long-standing relationship with AT&T, Verizon, and other telecommunications providers is an open secret — so it would come as little surprise to find they’re serving up exabytes of daily e-mail and Web-browsing logs as well.
—Neal Ungerleider
5:00 am, 06/13/13
The South China Morning Post has published more details from Snowden about the NSA’s surveillance tactics. Snowden claims the U.S. has been hacking China for years. He believes that the NSA has undertaken over 61,000 hacking operations globally, hundreds of those being aimed at Chinese interests.
“We hack network backbones–like huge Internet routers, basically–that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he said, adding that his revelations were to demonstrate “the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries.”
The NSA has also been doing some media firefighting of its own. Its head man, General Keith Alexander, appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to defend the agency’s actions.
“The perspective is that we’re trying to hide something because we did something wrong. We’re not,” Alexander said. “We want to tell you what we’re doing, and tell you that it’s right and let the American people see this.”
The programs operate under the aegis of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and Congress and have helped stop “dozens of terrorist events.”
—Addy Dugdale
1:45 pm, 06/12/13
Over at Co.Design, our own Sammy Medina examines how French graphic designer Emiland De Cubber recreated the infamous leaked PowerPoint with details of NSA surveillance of Facebook, Google, Skype, and more. In De Cubber’s remake, omnipresent state surveillance gains some aesthetics:
—Neal Ungerleider
11:50 am, 06/12/13
As of 11:45 am, the National Security Agency’s website, nsa.gov, has been offline for more than two hours. Various Anonymous-affiliated Twitter feeds including @wikicrew and @youranonnews claim members of the activist collective took the NSA’s public web presence offline.
—Neal Ungerleider
10:50 am, 06/12/13
OpenStack, Rackspace’s open-source cloud computing platform, is used alongside Hadoop by huge enterprise clients around the world. One of those clients is the NSA.
The NSA’s penchant for secrecy lies alongside a serious problem… America’s intelligence agencies need top notch tech minds, but the salaries Fort Meade and Langley offer pale in comparison to those in the private sector. So, for recruitment purposes, the NSA has been pretty open about their non-classified and unclassified big data platforms in an attempt to help recruitment.
Check out the video above, where the NSA’s Nathanael Burton explains how the NSA uses cloud computing and OpenStack… and don’t deny that it is pretty cool. From the Rackspace blog:
Much of the specifics of Burton’s presentation such as computational use cases, installation size, number of users and other juicy details had to be redacted, Burton explained. But he did describe the need for OpenStack, the path to implementation and the benefits the NSA gleaned from the project. Burton explained that computer scientists within the NSA had to go through a rigorous and time-consuming process of planning projects, specifying their hardware needs and getting requisite approvals. Developers were frustrated. “The problem we were trying to solve was that it took too much time from idea to capability to develop and deploy in our development,” Burton said.
Also, Burton’s purple hair and handlebar mustache are the best dress code-stretching things we’ve ever seen out of any government agency. Well done.
—Neal Ungerleider
10:40 am, 06/12/13
Well, Glenn Greenwald can’t be happy about this. The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s main English-language newspaper, just announced they obtained an exclusive interview with Edward Snowden. The newspaper just ran a teaser and promised to reveal additional American surveillance state secrets later today. Here’s an excerpt:
“People who think I made a mistake in picking HK as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden told the Post earlier today. He vowed to fight any extradition attempt by the US government, saying: “My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate. I have been given no reason to doubt your system.’’
—Neal Ungerleider
10:30 am, 06/12/13
The Oriental Daily News, a Chinese-language Hong Kong newspaper, is reporting Edward Snowden reached out to several Hong Kong lawyers (Chinese) in past days, seeking legal assistance in his whistleblowing case.
According to a Google translation of the newspaper article, Snowden and his girlfriend visited Hong Kong in 2012 as well. Unidentified sources who spoke with the Oriental Daily claim Snowden has been in contact with Hong Kong-based human rights lawyers.
—Neal Ungerleider
10:00 am, 06/12/2013
Members of Congress cannot talk about their interactions with the NSA and other intelligence agencies about possible surveillance of American citizens… but they do hear from intelligence agencies officials from time to time. Some politicians are angered and scared by what they find out, but others take it in stride.
The Ed Snowden disclosures are also creating fissures in the Republican Party. Over at the American Conservative, W. James Antle III has a must-read on the war between the Republican Party’s libertarian and security state factions over tech and citizen surveillance, as embodied in Lindsey Graham:
Give Graham credit for consistency: unlike other Republican opportunists, he wants Barack Obama to exercise the same untrammeled executive powers he believes belonged to George W. Bush. No matter who the commander-in-chief is, he says America is a battlefield. That’s why the ascendancy of Rand Paul–who would be as quick to criticize warrantless surveillance under President Romney, Ryan or Rubio–tears open a real debate within the Republican Party.
[Image: United States Congress]
—Neal Ungerleider
7:30 pm, 06/11/2013
Kim Zetter of Wired just spoke with Google spokesperson Chris Gaither, who said something very interesting… when handing over information relating to top-secret FISA orders, Google hands over information via secure FTP… or by hand:
“When required to comply with these requests, we deliver that information to the US government–generally through secure FTP transfers and in person,” Google spokesman Chris Gaither told Wired. “The US government does not have the ability to pull that data directly from our servers or network.” Secure FTP, or SFTP, is a standard utility on Unix and Linux system for transferring files over an encrypted channel.
6:30 pm, 06/11/2013
Here are a few takes from today’s commentary on the ongoing NSA disclosures that Fast Company believes are of interest:
Nabeel Qureshi of GoCardless has some thoughts on smearing of Edward Snowden and compares it to the Daniel Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers case.
The sad thing is, this stuff works. A lot of my friends are incredibly smart people, but when you ask most of them about Julian Assange, I hear comments like “oh, he’s a bit creepy” or “he seems really narcissistic”. People largely stopped talking about what Wikileaks revealed years ago, & now discussion of Assange is dominated by the usual cliches about him being arrogant, a rapist, etc. That’s when you know the character assassination has worked: when even smart people have forgotten about the real point. As Assange himself said to CNN: “Do you want to talk about deaths of 104,000 people or my personal life?”
Wired‘s Quinn Norton wrote in ProPublica about practicing safer communications in very down-to-Earth language.
A warning: Computer scientists are terrible at naming things, and trying to get them to explain how things they make work is a world of Lovecraftian horrors. Nowhere is this worse than in crypto, which is full of unintuitive names and nonsensical metaphors. Fortunately you don’t really need to know how cryptography works to use it, though if you want to, there’s a video series that explains the concepts in some detail for a general audience.
And finally, friend of Fast Company danah boyd wrote a blog post trying to cut holes in the argument that NSA surveillance is okay if you have “nothing to hide”:
It’s not just one’s own actions that can be used against one’s likeness. Guilt-through-association is a popular American pastime. Remember how the media used Billy Carter to embarrass Jimmy Carter? Of course, it doesn’t take the media or require an election cycle for these connections to be made. Throughout school, my little brother had to bear the brunt of teachers who despised me because I was a rather rebellious students. So when the Boston marathon bombing occurred, it didn’t surprise me that the media went hogwild looking for any connection to the suspects. Over and over again, I watched as the media took friendships and song lyrics out of context to try to cast the suspects as devils. By all accounts, it looks as though the brothers are guilty of what they are accused of, but that doesn’t make their friends and other siblings evil or justify the media’s decision to portray the whole lot in such a negative light.
6:15 pm, 06/11/2013
On the heels of Google’s open letter to the federal government about super-secret FISA requests (see below), Microsoft issued a statement via email throwing their hat in with Google:
Permitting greater transparency on the aggregate volume and scope of national security requests, including FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) orders, would help the community understand and debate these important issues.
Following Microsoft’s email, Google snarkily tweeted “Breaking news. For the first time ever. @Microsoft agrees with Google.”
4:50 pm, 06/11/2013
David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer, published an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller today in Google’s official blog. In the letter, Drummond requests that Google be allowed to post more information about national security requests which give intelligence agencies access to proprietary Google user information, including emails and web surfing history:
Assertions in the press that our compliance with these requests gives the U.S. government unfettered access to our users’ data are simply untrue. However, government nondisclosure obligations regarding the number of FISA national security requests that Google receives, as well as the number of accounts covered by those requests, fuel that speculation. We therefore ask you to help make it possible for Google to publish in our Transparency Report aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures—in terms of both the number we receive and their scope. Google’s numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.
Google cannot legally discuss even receiving FISA letters. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, they come with strict gag orders.
4:35 pm, 06/11/2013
This morning, Facebook held their annual shareholder meeting in California. At the meeting, shareholders have the opportunity to ask Mark Zuckerberg questions. One of the questions, unsurprisingly, involved NSA surveillance of Facebook.
Los Angeles Times reporter Jessica Guynn, who live-tweeted the investor meeting, reports that Zuckerberg said the NSA can’t gain direct access to Facebook. As for indirect access, Zuckerberg said, “Anyone can go to facebook.com.”
Zuckerberg went on to hedge bets about NSA monitoring of Facebook, saying that Facebook doesn’t work directly with the NSA and doesn’t “proactively” give info. The wording leaves the possibility that the NSA obtains information from Facebook through either private data brokers or intelligence contractors with informal backdoor access to Facebook.
3:15 pm, 06/11/2013
Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower/leaker currently at the center of an international government surveillance scandal, didn’t have a conventional academic background. Government intelligence agencies and Booz Allen Hamilton hired him despite the fact that he left community college and only had a GED. Fast Company‘s own Anya Kamenetz explained how, despite the shock by people like the New York Times‘ David Brooks that he didn’t have formal academic training, more and more companies are hiring technical employees from non-traditional backgrounds:
One of the biggest and fastest-growing non-college STEM jobs, which comes pretty darn close to describing Snowden’s former position, is computer systems analyst, a position that earns an average of over $82,000 a year and is growing 22% over this decade. The Department of Labor notes that a bachelor’s degree is “not always a requirement” for this job, as long as you “know how to write computer programs.”
11:00 am, 06/11/2013
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp, a government consulting firm and employer of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, confirmed today that it had fired Snowden yesterday for violating its ethics and policies. Snowden had been paid at a rate of $122,000.
Snowden is now said to have left his Hong Kong hotel and his whereabouts are unknown as of the time of writing.
7:00 am, 06/11/2013
Russia said this morning that it would consider offering asylum to Edward Snowden. One of its politicians, Alexey Pushkov, a critic of the U.S. and the head of the Duma’s international affairs committee, said on Twitter that the move would cause “hysterics” in Washington. “Listening to telephones and tracking the Internet, the US special services broke the laws of their country,” he continued. “In this case, Snowden, like [Wikileaks founder Julian] Assange, is a human rights activist.”
The Obama administration is coming under pressure over the affair. Opinion is split over whether Snowden is a traitor to the U.S. or whether the government’s surveillance tactics have gone too far. All the White House would say so far is that the whistleblower’s actions have sparked an “appropriate debate” and that perhaps the Patriot Act of 2001 needs to be revised.
Meanwhile Peter Boukaert, emergency director of Human Rights Watch, has warned Snowden of the dangers of staying in Hong Kong. The Chinese territory, he tweeted, helped the CIA and MI6 render a Gaddafi opponent back to Libya.
7:00 pm, 06/10/2013
Activist filmmaker Laura Poitras gave an e
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said 87 people are ill from 35 states including 27 hospitalisations.
CDC is recommending against consuming any kratom because no common brands or suppliers have been identified.
Forty of 55 people interviewed reported consuming kratom in pills, powder or tea. Most people had the powder form. The majority report having used Maeng da red vein kratom.
Dave Herman, American Kratom Association chairman of the board, previously said the FDA is ‘going against sound science’ when it comes to kratom.
Three strains added to investigation
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Salmonella Javiana, Salmonella Okatie and Salmonella Thompson are now part of the investigation as well as the original strain, Salmonella I 4,[5],12:b:-.
FDA said 25 product samples have tested positive for Salmonella. Three revealed isolates genetically related to an outbreak strain, while 22 were positive for a non-matching Salmonella or Salmonella and further testing is pending.
Salmonella I 4,[5],12:b:- has caused 50 illnesses, S. Javiana (five), S. Okatie (16) and S. Thompson (16).
CDC said the same strains of S. Okatie and S. Thompson were found in samples of kratom and those from ill people.
Illness dates range from 21 January 2017 to 24 February 2018. Sick people are aged six to 67 and 55% are male.
Products positive for Salmonella and associated companies. Source: FDA
States find contaminated kratom
PDX Aromatics, doing business as Kraken Kratom, Phytoextractum and Soul Speciosa, recalled kratom-containing powder products after testing by the California Department of Public Health identified Salmonella in an open product sample.
FDA testing confirmed presence of the pathogen in products from the company.
Investigators in Oregon and Utah collected kratom powder from retail and online retailers where ill people purchased the supplement. Outbreak strains of S. Okatie and S. Thompson were found.
The ill person in Utah bought kratom powder from online retailer Kratoma.
Testing by North Dakota Department of Health identified Salmonella I 4,[5],12:b:- in opened, leftover kratom powder collected from ill people.
The infected person purchased S.K. Herbalist brand kratom powder from online retailer Soap Korner.
“Additional testing by states has revealed Salmonella in other brands of kratom, meaning it is likely that multiple kratom and kratom-containing brands and retailers are supplying contaminated product to the public,” said FDA.
“The positive results also indicate possible concerns with the manufacturing practices used in production and/or handling of these products.”
The agency added there is no FDA-approved use for kratom.
Meanwhile, CDC has launched an online tool with access to nearly 20 years of data on foodborne, waterborne and other enteric (intestinal) disease outbreaks.
Information in the NORS Dashboard comes from the National Outbreak Reporting System (NORS).
It replaces the Foodborne Outbreak Online Database (FOOD Tool) which provided data only on foodborne outbreaks in NORS.
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The poll released this past weekend by a conservative Wisconsin think tank did more than indicate a preference for compromise among Wisconsin adults. It also includes evidence that the enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans in Wisconsin in 2010 has vanished.
The survey of 603 adults, conducted by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI) between Feb. 27 and March 1, included a question asking respondents whether they are likely to vote in the 2012 elections. Poll respondents typically overstate their true voting intentions on these sorts of questions, and the WPRI survey is no exception: Nearly four out of five respondents (79 percent) said they are "almost certain to vote," while another 8 percent said they will "probably vote," even though the actual turnout among eligible adults in 2008 was 72.1 percent. Nevertheless, these responses provide a crude indicator of intentions, as those who say they intend to vote are more likely to turn out.
Thus, when WPRI asked a similar question on a survey conducted in June of last year, they found fewer Wisconsin adults (57 percent) who said they were "almost certain" to vote in the 2010 general elections. Again, actual turnout among eligible adults was even smaller (51.7 percent), but the responses are a guide that help pollsters sort out the most likely and least likely voters.
In June of last year, for example, WPRI found a considerable gap in vote certainty between Republicans (67 percent) and Democrats (58 percent). But the just completed survey shows roughly the same number of Republicans (85 percent) and Democrats (86 percent) who say they are "almost certain" to vote next year.
Those differences may seem small, but they make a big difference in the composition of the likely electorate. Consider the same questions tabulated a different way, by comparing the party leanings of those who said they were "almost certain" to vote in 2010 with those who now say the same about their intentions regarding the 2012 general election.
When WPRI asked the classic party identification question -- including the follow-up that asks independents how they lean -- they found Republicans had a 5 percentage point advantage with leaners included (47 percent to 42 percent) in June 2010. But on the survey conducted last week, Democrats had a 9-point advantage (48 percent to 39 percent) among the most certain voters.
So while last year's survey of Wisconsin showed the same enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans that pollsters found nationwide, that gap had vanished in the survey conducted last week. In Wisconsin, where Democrats outnumber Republicans among all adults, that shift translates into roughly the same Democratic advantage that the party enjoyed in 2008.
What is unclear from these data is how much of the renewed Democratic enthusiasm is a reaction to Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin's public unions and how much reflects the typically higher turnout among key Democratic constituencies -- particularly younger and nonwhite voters -- in presidential elections. As such, these results may not reflect voter intentions regarding any special recall elections that may occur this year, especially since the key question asked about whether respondents plan to vote in the 2012 presidential election.
Surveys geared more specifically to any potential recall election, such as the reportedly soon-to-be-released surveys sponsored by MoveOn.org, will help answer those questions.
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More than 50 people, most of them police officers, were injured in Toulouse during protests against fuel price hikes. Yellow Vest demonstrations turned into riots, making the southern French city and Paris look like battlefields.
As France struggles to come to grips with the intensity of widespread protests against increasing fuel prices, which have grown violent over the past weeks, authorities in Toulouse said on Sunday that 57 people, including 48 police officers, had been injured in clashes during Saturday’s riots. Five police officers were hospitalized.
Balance de los enfrentamientos en Toulouse entre los gilets jaunes y los antidisturbios:-57 heridos-48 de ellos policías-5 policías hospitalizados pic.twitter.com/Nm8hipu4Xd — Descifrando la Guerra (@descifraguerra) 2 декабря 2018 г.
Sixteen people were arrested following the disturbances, four of them for “looting two shops in the city center” during the demonstration, a statement said. France’s southwestern city was the scene of unabated violence for hours on Saturday as angry Yellow Vest protesters, who are opposing the French government’s plans to impose new fuel taxes, scuffled with police forces deployed to the area.
Les policiers peinent à intervenir pour débloquer les barricades Des citoyens tentent en vain de ramener le calme#Toulouse#GiletsJaunespic.twitter.com/ymbNYozGpf — Hugo Murail (@HMurail) 1 декабря 2018 г.
Photos published on social media showed protesters erecting barricades and burning fires on the streets of Toulouse. Hooded and masked demonstrators were also seen throwing projectiles at police officers, who responded with heavy use of tear gas.
Les barricades sont démantelées une à une. La situation n est pas revenue au calme mais les forces de l ordre gagnent du terrain de minutes en minutes pic.twitter.com/kFsr6Z8UwA — Hugo Murail (@HMurail) 1 декабря 2018 г.
Dubbed the Yellow Vest movement, the protests have been occurring weekly since November 17 and get their name from the fluorescent ‘hi-viz’ jackets French motorists are required to keep in their car in case of emergencies.
Also on rt.com ‘Most cops support Yellow Vest protesters over Macron’ – France police union chief to RT
Starting the previous weekend, the rallies evolved and peaked into major clashes between police and protesters, reaching levels of violence unseen for decades in France. Clashes in Paris resulted in more than 130 people being injured –one critically– and in 412 arrests.
READ MORE: France mulls state of emergency after 3rd weekend of Yellow Vest protest mayhem
The French government is mulling the imposition of a state of emergency and has vowed to continue with the reforms, though it said it is ready to talk with the demonstrators.
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Cubs' Jake Arrieta hates Cincinnati
Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta isn't a fan of our fair city. In an article from ESPNChicago.com, the 29-year-old right-hander said Cincinnati is his least-favorite city to visit.
From Jesse Rogers of ESPNChicago.com:
3. What's the worst road city?
JA: Gotta be Cincinnati. There's just nothing to do there. Not much going on.
It probably doesn't help that in his only start at Great American Ball Park, Arrieta gave up six runs over four innings in a loss to the Reds last Aug. 28.
He'll have three trips to Cincinnati this year — the Cubs come to Great American Ball Park from April 24-26, July 20-22 and Sept. 29 through Oct. 1.
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Donald Trump first uttered the rallying cry “drain the swamp!” just three weeks before the 2016 election. Promising to “make our government honest once again,” Candidate Trump unveiled a five-point proposal aimed at reining in the influence of lobbyists.
“Drain the swamp!” quickly became one of Mr. Trump's central campaign promises – and one of the most popular chants at his rallies.
Today, experts on government ethics say, President Trump is presiding over one of the most ethically challenged administrations in modern history, especially this early on. Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is only the latest example of a cabinet member operating under a storm cloud. Most recently, Mr. Pruitt has been accused of an improper housing set-up connected to an energy lobbyist, unconventional pay raises to favored political appointees , and reassignment or demotion of senior staff who questioned his spending. His job reportedly hangs in the balance, amid mixed signals from Trump and his spokespeople.
Other Trump cabinet members have already gotten the heave-ho, after questionable spending came to light. Former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, fired last week, had faced criticism over travel expenses for a trip to Europe, including airfare for his wife, which he says he repaid. Mr. Shulkin, who had also served as an under secretary in the Obama administration, maintains he was let go because he resisted pressure from the Trump White House to privatize veterans’ health care.
All presidents deal to some extent with alleged wrongdoing by senior appointees, but “I have never seen anything like this,” says Scott Amey, general counsel for the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan government watchdog group.
Why is this happening, especially under an outsider president who swooped into Washington promising to change the way the capital operates?
One answer may center on what, exactly, Trump meant by “drain the swamp.”
Focus on deregulation
“We thought he was saying, ‘Hey, there’s going to be a new sheriff in town,’ and that he would do things differently with the revolving door [between government service and lobbying] and cleaning up ethics laws and regulations,” says Mr. Amey.
But so far, draining the swamp has been more about deregulation and shrinking the federal workforce, and less about strengthening or even adhering to the norms and rules of ethical behavior for government officials. Trump’s attacks on the media and on entrenched members of Congress – of both parties – have also tended to label them as members of the “swamp.”
Of the proposals in Trump’s original five-point plan, only one is fully in place: an executive order barring executive branch officials from lobbying for foreign governments or parties after they leave the administration.
The president’s own behavior has been important in setting the tone for his team, political analysts say.
Trump has yet to release his tax returns, defying the customary practice of modern presidents. He faces multiple lawsuits over his businesses and whether the income he derives from them violates the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which forbids the receipt of gifts from foreign countries. A federal judge ruled last week that one of the lawsuits can proceed. Trump’s business dealings are also under scrutiny as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether the president colluded with the Russians or engaged in obstruction of justice.
Besides Pruitt and Shulkin, multiple Trump cabinet secretaries have found themselves in hot water: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have all faced questions about their use of taxpayer money. In addition, Trump’s first secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, was fired after just seven months on the job, following reports that he had spent $1 million in federal funds on private jet travel.
Not that members of the federal bureaucracy are above reproach. Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe was fired last month after the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility found he had leaked to the media and “lacked candor” under oath, charges he denies.
Question of experience
But the swarm of ethics allegations facing Trump’s team is unusual. It may well reflect the fact that Trump is new to public service and came into office under his own ethical cloud, says Mickey Edwards, a Republican from Oklahoma who served in Congress from 1977 to 1993, including a stint in the leadership.
“I think some of [Trump’s appointees] came in with a sense of, ‘We’re now the bosses, and we can get away with whatever,’ ” says Mr. Edwards, now a vice president at the Aspen Institute and author of the book “The Parties Versus the People: How to Turn Republicans and Democrats into Americans.”
Like Trump, some appointees entered the cabinet with no prior experience in public office. Secretary Carson, at HUD, was a renowned surgeon, and ran briefly for president in 2016, before becoming a prominent defender of Trump and then a cabinet secretary. The purchase of a $31,000 dining set for Carson’s HUD office set off an uproar last month; he has testified that he was not involved in the purchase, and canceled it.
Secretary Mnuchin, a former investment banker and film producer, faced criticism last fall when the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General found that seven flights he had taken on military aircraft had cost the federal government more than $800,000. The report stated that no laws were broken, but criticized the use of federal funds all the same.
But other Trump appointees came to the administration with extensive experience in government, either as members of Congress or in state government. All have previous experience working under governmental ethics rules. Before coming to Washington, Pruitt was attorney general of Oklahoma and before that, a state senator.
Kind words for Pruitt, but ...
Both Carson and Mnuchin seem to have weathered their storms. But Pruitt may not. Trump still praises him publicly – he’s doing a “great job,” the president tweeted on Friday – but such kind words are no guarantee of job security. According to news reports, chief of staff John Kelly advised Trump last week to fire Pruitt, though Trump wasn't ready to let him go at that point. Friday morning, Trump and Pruitt met.
The dilemma for Trump is that, as head of the EPA, Pruitt is doing exactly what the president wants – rolling back environmental regulations that he says have been holding back economic growth. Three Republican members of the House have called for Pruitt’s resignation. But prominent conservatives have defended him, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Senator Paul tweeted Thursday that Pruitt is “likely the bravest and most conservative member of Trump’s cabinet” and is needed to help Trump “drain the regulatory swamp.” Senator Cruz, in a tweet , blamed “Obama and his media cronies” for wanting to drive Pruitt out.
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh opened his show Thursday with a full-throated defense of Pruitt, blaming the liberal “deep state” for attacking the embattled EPA administrator. Mr. Limbaugh, with millions of listeners, has broad power to influence public discourse among Trump supporters.
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Other conservatives speak of a “witch hunt” against Pruitt – the same language Trump uses when speaking of the Mueller investigation.
“The ‘witch hunt’ meme comes from the top, and is applied to anyone who disagrees with the president,” says James Pfiffner, professor of public policy at George Mason University. “Instead of confronting the issue, or arguing against the allegations, they resort to name calling. It is very sad.”
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Kölns Oberbürgermeisterin Henriette Reker hat die eskalierten Abi-Streiche in ihrer Stadt als unreif kritisiert. "Was da geschieht, ist einfach unfassbar", sagte die parteilose Politikerin dem Express. "Früher sprach man von einem "Reifezeugnis", hier aber ist die Unreife offenkundig. Es handelt sich hier um Wohlstandsverwahrlosung."
Mehrere Hundert rivalisierende Schülergruppen hatten sich in den vergangenen Tagen gegenseitig angegriffen und die Schulen ihrer "Gegner" beschädigt. In der Nacht zum Dienstag erlitten zwei 18-Jährige schwere Kopfverletzungen. Sie hatten sich nach Polizeiangaben mit Gegenständen beworfen; auch ein "speerähnlicher" Stock sei sichergestellt worden. Die Polizei musste 15 Mal anrücken, an sieben Gymnasien kam es zu Sachbeschädigungen. In sozialen Netzwerken war von einem "Abikrieg" die Rede gewesen.
Am vergangenen Wochenende löste die Polizei eine Party von Kölner Abiturienten mit Schlagstöcken und Pfefferspray auf. Mehr als 30 Streifenwagen und 70 Beamte waren im Einsatz, ein Polizist wurde verletzt.
Soziales Jahr als Disziplinierungsmaßnahme
Nach den jüngsten Vorfällen machten Eltern der Polizei Vorwürfe. Reker sieht die Verantwortung für die Vorfälle dem Bericht zufolge aber auch bei den Eltern: "Ich kann mir diese Randale nur so erklären, dass die betreffenden Schüler zu Hause nicht oder nicht immer die nötige Zuwendung erfahren." Zuwendung sei auch das Aufstellen von Regeln.
Als Konsequenz für die Ausschreitungen empfahl die Oberbürgermeisterin ein soziales Jahr. "Diese randalierenden Schüler" sollten das wahre Leben kennenlernen, sagte sie.
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After Target's breach, its stock was fine. Home Depot's stock prices showed no noticeable impact of its big hack attack. JPMorgan Chase's investors didn't even blink when the company was revealed to be the target of the largest-ever theft of customer data from a US financial institution (and one of the biggest breaches to date).
But when UK telecom giant TalkTalk joined the breach victim club in October 2015, its stock took a jaw-dropping beating, and it hasn't recovered. The burning question of "why" has a lot of people wondering if there was something different about TalkTalk's break-in that we should all be paying attention to, or if we're now entering the era where cyberattacks can damage more than a company's reputation.
When news of TalkTalk's breach made headlines on October 22, its stock went into a spiral. In just the first few days after the attack, the publicly trade company's stock fell a stunning 22% -- and rode an average 20% drop through November, with no recovery in sight.
It was the target of a fairly standard attack routine; on or around October 21, the company's website was pummeled with a denial of service attack (DDoS), during which a SQL injection attack was made, and databases were snatched. Like other companies, this was not the first attack affecting TalkTalk; as far as we know, the company had been popped twice before within the past year because of issues at its third-party suppliers. Both times, its stock was unaffected.
TalkTalk admitted the hack to media on October 22, and its share price promptly went into free-fall. TalkTalk made an urgent statement to press, where the company mumbled that "not all of the data was encrypted" -- it was soon revealed in a Pastebin dump that this included customers' sensitive data, which suggested that passwords and other critical information may have been sitting on the databases in plaintext. In fact, TalkTalk's FAQ about the hack answers the question "Was the data encrypted?" evasively saying, "Credit and debit card details were tokenised, which is a standard higher than encryption. In all other respects we complied with any obligations to encrypt data."
Sidestepping questions about securing data under fire isn't ethical but it also isn't unique to TalkTalk; companies are wont to soften the blow of security disasters. Also not unique to TalkTalk was the size of the customer base affected. The breach that was first estimated to affect 4 million customers, but the company quickly ratcheted then umber of those directly affected back to 157,000. It was revealed that 16,000 customers saw bank account details stolen. TalkTalk admitted to press the information "accessed" by attackers were customers' names, email and mail addresses, dates of birth, account information, along with credit card and bank account details. In comparison, Target's breach affected the sensitive credit and debit card information of 40 million customers.
TalkTalk's breach also followed the modern blame-game playbook, with an "evildoer" attacker that later proved to be both a temporary distraction from accountability, and to be utterly false. One day after the news hit, on October 23 former Scotland Yard's cybercrime unit detective Adrian Culley told BBC Radio 4's Today program "It appears at face value to be Islamic cyberterrorism," and that the hack was the work of Islamist militants from "Soviet Russia". By November 15, all five arrests for the hack were UK-based teenagers.
Within the same time frame, the US recently charged three Israeli men for hacking and robbing JPMorgan Chase & Co, in what is the largest-ever theft of customer data from a U.S. financial institution (and one of the biggest breaches to date). When news of the breach first hit, it was reported that "some members of the bank's security team to tell outside consultants that they believed the hackers had been aided by the hidden hand of the Russian government" -- and attribution was firmly assigned to Russia. (A fourth culprit, an American citizen, is still at large and wanted by the FBI.) JPMorgan's stock prices never knew the difference.
It's kind of amazing that so many companies have been dragged through the headlines over breaches and used as examples of what not to do when protecting customers and clients in the digital era, and yet none of them have had what we'd expect to be the result of a reputational crisis: Virtually none have taken a hit in the stock market.
But there have been a few. Summit Route's Scott Piper reminds us that there have been instances of stocks taking a hit as the result of a company being hacked. Notably, two.
"Heartland Payment Systems (HPY) suffered the largest credit card breach in history, with an estimated 130M customers affected. In the middle of the day on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, Heartland Payment Systems announced they had been breached ... That morning the stock had opened at $15.06, and by close it was at $14.18 (-5.8%). The next day it didn't move much (closed at $14.11), but on Thursday, Jan 22, it closed at $8.18, which is a 45.7% drop from it's open just a few days prior. It seems that on the initial news of the breach on January 20, it wasn't known how bad it really was and the news was drowned out due to that day being Inauguration Day for President Obama, but on Thursday people figured out what exactly was compromised. Global Payment Systems (GPN) suffered a breach ... on March 30, 2012, and by the end of the day the stock had dropped 9.5% from it's open."
Both companies were slammed by Visa, which may explain their stock death-spirals. Piper notes, "were ultimately delisted by VISA as being non-compliant with the PCI standard, which meant their customers (merchants) could be fined if they continued using them, which meant merchants would either stop using these payment solutions or pass the fines onto them."
Sony might have been on Piper's list of exceptions, having fallen 6.6 percent on the New York Stock Exchange after its very public breach disaster came to light last November, but Deadline reported it was "tough to find a Wall Street analyst who would attribute the fall to the computer hack." Marketwatch said that afterward, Sony's stock price rose "41% from a post-breach low of $19.73 on Dec. 16, setting fresh four-year highs."
Then again, Marketwatch also reported in April that "cyberattacks don't hurt stock prices" -- and in Talktalk's situation, this is clearly not the case.
Harvard Business Review's April article, the now-questionably titled "Why Data Breaches Don't Hurt Stock Prices," hinted at why the awareness among investors might be changing. They suggested in April that stock prices weren't getting dinged in the aftermath of all these egregious breaches because, "Shareholders still don't have good metrics, tools, and approaches to measure the impact of cyber attacks on businesses and translate that into a dollar value."
While wondering the same things about TalkTalk's conspicuous stock drop as we are, Scott Piper didn't find anything he felt to be a smoking gun. Except, he conceded, the reputation hit. With its bad infosec track record, and utter failure to handle the mess in the press, Piper suggested that "investors must have assumed the worst."
All things considered, after three hacks and "thousands of cases in which customers say they have either had their bank accounts raided directly, or have lost money after being persuaded to hand over access to their home computers," TalkTalk's investors wouldn't have been wrong to do so. The competition certainly didn't appreciate TalkTalk's infosec and customer trust bungling.
Perhaps if TalkTalk's stock slam starts a trend of cyber-awareness among investors, that bucket of cold water might just be what the doctor ordered.
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PARRAMATTA coach Brad Arthur has lost the dressing room.
It’s a strong claim but one talkback radio broadcaster and rugby league caller Ray Hadley believes to be true.
It’s no secret the Eels are battling.
After six rounds they are yet to register a win and sit alone at the bottom of the table.
Round 20
From finals contenders last season to an ill-disciplined and disinterested side.
LIVE stream every 2018 NRL Telstra Premiership game on FOX SPORTS. Get your free 2-week Foxtel Now trial & start watching in minutes. SIGN UP NOW >
With poor performances comes speculation of disharmony.
Reports of a rift between the coach and his star half Corey Norman surfaced before a ball had even been kicked and now Hadley believes he’s lost his presence.
Corey Norman and coach Brad Arthur during Eels training. Source: News Corp Australia
Speaking with John Stanley and Beau Ryan on Macquarie Sports Radio Breakfast on Monday, Hadley claimed the Eels coach no longer had control of the team.
“If there was a normal administration in charge of the club, Brad Arthur would almost be out the door but you’ve got Max Donnelly who was the administrator, now the de facto chairman of the leagues club,” Hadley said.
“All the money comes from the leagues club so at the end of the day, the Parramatta fans won’t put up with this.
“He’s lost the room. That’s an often used expression. For the uninitiated it means he doesn’t control the team anymore. The team runs itself. Therefore when you lose the team as a coach, you lose the job.
“They can’t make the eight now, they’re finished for the year and it’s a very expensive team to put on the paddock.”
While pre-season reports of issues between the coach and his half were shot down, last week fresh claims of disharmony among the players found oxygen.
Eels coach Brad Arthur during a game. Source: News Corp Australia
Norman has denied him and halves partner Mitchell Moses have fallen out but Hadley has heard the whispers.
He also took aim at Hayne who has been sidelined with a hip injury he picked up in Round 3.
“There apparently is drama between the five-eighth Norman and Moses and that’s evident from everyone I talk to that they either don’t like each other or don’t relate to each other when they play,” Hadley continued.
“Jarryd Hayne, I just read a piece about Mick Cronin saying when he was going to Parramatta, saying ‘I don’t think he’s got much to offer’.
“That was back in December. A truer word has never been spoken.
“You talk about JT (Johnathan Thurston) might’ve gone one year too long, Jarryd’s gone two years too long.”
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Marvel has made a small but important change to its film schedule: it's still planning to release Avengers films in 2018 and 2019, but they'll no longer be two parts of the same story. The first film will keep the title Avengers: Infinity War, but the second picture is now untitled, dropping its previous Infinity War — Part II moniker.
The studio didn't elaborate on what this means for either film's story. More than likely, the change means they'll be a bit more disconnected than they were originally planned; but, these being Marvel movies, they'll of course have a central through line, so it's not like they'll be entirely disconnected either.
Everyone hates two-parters
Overall, it's probably a good decision. People have been tired of the Part I / Part II thing basically since the day it started in the Harry Potter film series, and at no point has it really worked out well — Hunger Games' final films, for instance, weren't received as well as prior entries. And the first part of Mockingjay was criticized for feeling, well, like only half of a story.
This is apparently something the films' directors, the Russo brothers, have been discussing for a little while now. Entertainment Weekly points out that, back in May, one of the brothers said the two pictures are "very different movies" and that a name change was in the works. "We just haven’t come up with the titles yet," he said.
Apparently, the Russos still don't have a new title, but for whatever reason, Disney and Marvel have decided to make it clear that their plans are changing. Release dates, however, are staying the same as when the films were first announced, with Infinity War coming May 4th, 2018 and the fourth Avengers film coming on May 3rd, 2019.
The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe explained
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The company Aurora was created after the signing of the Treaty of Varsailles in 1919 and is one of the oldest and most distinguished pen companies in the world. Based in Torino, Italy, Aurora’s pens hold such great heritage that a service has been created to identify and value the state of conservation of any of its pens. In fact, the pens are considered such cult objects that, due to demand, the company created the Museum of Signs and Pens for its famous writing instruments.
New for this year, Aurora is releasing the Optima 365 Abissi pen in a limited number of 366; one for each day of this year. The pen is a followup to the widely popular 365 in brown and designed in a classic early 20th century style traditional to the Aurora brand. We are lucky to have received the very first 000/366 completed pen to photograph for your pleasure.
Luxury Advisor is proud to receive the 000 / 366 Abissi to photograph
The Aurora Optima 365 Abissi characterizes the romantic elegance of the early 20th century. Each pen is individually inscribed with gold script and has a body decorated with marbled deep azure-blue and aquamarine green Auroloid with deep black in the section and flat end caps. The design is a conservatively modern cylinder that gently tapers at the ends and is decorated with classically curved gold trim reminiscent of a period of celebration and artistic growth.
The Abissi translates to Abyss and among its features is a view into the well of ink inside. The fountain pen is a partial demonstrator with a transparent window just above the section that displays the ink you are using. It uses a piston filler system that feeds ink through a solid gold 18kt nib which offers smoothness and balance famous in Aurora craftsmanship. On the barrel is an imprint that authenticates the pen is made in Italy and the gold band is inscribed with the Aurora logo as well as the classic Greek key pattern.
The Abissi is limited to 366 and the one in the photos is going back to find its home in someone’s collection. It arrives in a leather case with a limited edition bottle of ink sealed with wax and gold twine.
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Una de las atracciones del Festival de Brasilia del Cine Brasileño de 2018 fue la clase abierta presentada por DJ Dolores (Hélder Aragão), músico, compositor, diseñador, histórica figura del escenario cultural brasileño como integrante del movimiento Manguebeat (o Manguebit) de Recife, género musical e innovador colectivo que mezcla sonidos de forma única y los adereza con música y ritmos tradicionales de la cultura de Pernambuco, en el nordeste de Brasil, como el maracatú.
DJ Dolores es integrante del movimiento, y actuó como diseñador de portadas de discos y dirigió videoclips de artistas como Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, Mundo Livre S/A y Eddie.
La clase abierta de Dolores era sobre la banda sonora de Lama dos dias (“Lodo de los días”), serie de la que es codirector. Es una ficción sobre la banda Psicopasso, conjunto cuya sonoridad mezcla la agresividad del rock con los golpes del maracatú, y un grupo de amigos universitarios insatisfechos con el sistema que frecuentan la escena musical de Recife, la capital pernambucana. Al contar esa historia, la serie también retrata la ebullición cultural que invadió la ciudad a finales del siglo XX.
En esta entrevista, Dolores habla sobre “Lama” (como le gusta llamar a la serie), la música en Brasil de la década de 1990 y las emociones que el medio digital ya no brinda. Una curiosidad: Dolores participó en la recopilación de la revista Wired llamada “Rip. Sample. Mash. Share”.
Global Voices: Una de las cosas que me llamaron la atención en el primer episodio de la serie fue la escena en que la novedad musical llega por medio de un casete. ¿Cómo era el acceso a los sonidos que retumbaban en la cabeza en la década de 1990?
DJ Dolores: Solo había discos y casetes en esos tiempos. Si a alguien le gustaba la misma música que a ti, automáticamente surgía una amistad. La música era rara y el acto de compartirla era una de las cosas buenas que recuerdo. Copiábamos cintas, recorríamos grandes distancias detrás de los discos, de un VHS con conciertos o videoclips, etc. Creo que esas personas se sentían parte de una especie de cofradía secreta alrededor de las canciones.
GV: Mencionaste que viajabas solo para arreglar discos nuevos. ¿Cómo ves el intercambio de música hoy?
DD: Es fácil, todo el mundo tiene acceso y el consumo es más bien superficial. Me acuerdo de que entraba en estado febril cuando encontraba un disco que quería mucho. Hoy, uno tiene todo al alcance de la mano. Es perfecto, pero no genera esa participación emocional tan fuerte.
GV: Remezclaste una canción de Gilberto Gil para la ya clásica edición de la revista Wired sobre las licencias Creative Commons (2004). ¿Cómo eran los debates sobre licencias en esa época?
DD: Había mucha resistencia entre los más viejos. A su manera de entender, los iban a golpear en el bolsillo. En realidad, CC es solo una forma de licencia que hace quien quiere. En “Lama”, por ejemplo, usé una melodía que estaba con CC. Como hicimos un uso comercial, pagamos por el uso. Es una forma alternativa de comercializar/distribuir/promover trabajo. Solo eso.
GV: Regresando a Lama dos dias, ¿podrías comentar algo acerca de la banda sonora y también sobre lo que elegiste para el diseño de sonido de la serie?
DD: Hay varias capas de pistas: la primera es la música de Psicopasso, que debería sonar simplona al comienzo y volverse sofisticada La segunda es la pista que se toca en las radios, en los discos, fiestas, etc… Esa parte es una especie de parodia de lo que oíamos, es una capa llena de referencias y fue muy divertido hacerla. Finalmente, la tercera capa es la música hecha para realzar ambientes, climas, acciones… Es la parte que más me gusta y la que más desapercibida pasa para el espectador.
GV: Durante la clase abierta, mencionaste el personaje de Negrita MC: rapera, negra y líder de una banda punk. ¿Ese personaje existió o es una mezcla de los recuerdos de los autores?
DD: Los personajes son fruto de la mezcla de varias personas que sí existieron. Negrita es un punto inventado: sería imposible que una mujer negra y periférica hubiera liderado una banda de rap en la década de 1990. Era una época mucho más machista que esta…
GV: El telón de fondo de la vida de esos jóvenes involucraba el comienzo del Manguebeat y también una especie de desencuentro con el Brasil en crisis. ¿Cómo entiendes el papel de las artes, en especial la música, en ese momento?
DD: Amigo, éramos jóvenes, entonces no habíamos tenido épocas malas. El país podría hundirse que nosotros seguiríamos concentrados en lo que estábamos haciendo. Tal vez sea exactamente la alegría que incomoda tanto al conservadurismo. En ese sentido, la música es algo realmente revolucionario por crear mundos alternativos al sentido común.
GV: ¿Y hoy? ¿Cuál es la novedad que viene de Recife? ¿Qué te llamó la atención por allá?
DD: Recife está en proceso de redescubrirse. Es un momento en que hay buenas figuras pero no algo colectivo y poderoso.
GV: Para terminar, estás difundiendo Lama dos dias hace algún tiempo. En ese proceso, ¿cuál es la pregunta que nunca te hicieron pero que te gustaría haber respondido?
DD: Nunca me preguntaron quién soy yo en la serie. Ni serviría de nada porque no respondería (risas).
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Here's a glimpse around the NFC West. If you're a hardcore fan, you'll know the ins and outs of your opponents as well - or you should strive to anyway. Not only that, but there's a good nucleus of writers in the SBN NFC West that put together some good research and analysis. Take a look.
St Louis Rams
Will the Rams regress in 2011? - Turf Show Times: "I glanced at the fan confidence poll the other day (that zig zag line on your left) and notice that despite the lockout, the offseason and a draft that still has some scratching their heads, fans are feeling pretty good about the St. Louis Rams right now. And how could you not? They have a talented young QB united with an offensive coordinator known for getting production out of his teams. On the other side of the ball, a strong pass rush added a premier defensive end in the first round of the draft. A group of tireless, humble, dedicated group of football minds lead the team both on the field and in the front office. Springtime for the Rams!"
Why the Rams Drafted a Million Pass Catchers - Turf Show Times: "We all thought it as the draft continued. Most of us were happy with Quinn as a first round pick (I disagreed, but more on that later). I wasn't upset, but saw an opportunity to trade down. Another article, another day. Anyways, here's the deal after the jump. The recent talks that vanram reported concerning Clayton and the Rams got me to thinking. Why the hell are we so interested in this guy?"
Free agent notes: Barry Cofield fully recovered from shoulder surgery - Turf Show Times: "Giants DT and likely unrestricted free agent Barry Cofield told the NY Post that his shoulder is fully recovered from January surgery. More importantly, Cofield again acknowledges that his days with the Giants are over, significant only because he has a preference to return to New York. He may get a small does of the Giants, if the St. Louis Rams make a run at him in free agency and reunite with with Steve Spagnuolo."
2010 St. Louis Rams recap: Week 1 v. Arizona (1st half) - Turf Show Times: "So I'm going to try to run through these as quickly as possible to get through the season before The Great Flood of Free Agents hits, and all other efforts die a swift death. It won't happen, but hopefully we'll get all 16 games in at some point."
4 UDFAs the Rams should target - Turf Show Times: "Today I wanted to look at four guys I want the St. Louis Rams to target in UDFA. This will be the most important thing for the Rams to do, along with every other team, as soon as the lockout is over. I'm hoping these guys have continued to keep working out, both mentally and physically. This will be the toughest year for UDFAs."
San Francisco 49ers
49ers Minicamp: Colin Kaepernick Heading Into Training Camp - Niners Nation: "One of the stories to come out of yesterday's first day of the "Camp Alex" 49ers minicamp was word that a Colin Kaepernick pass knocked wide receiver Lance Long backwards as he was not expecting that kind of power behind the throw. It's an amusing tale and if Kaepernick develops into the 49ers long-term starter, I bet this will be part of the tale of Colin told to future generations. However, for the purposes of the here and now, it's simply good to see him get out on the practice field and run a few plays out of the new playbook."
The NFL Salary Cap: My, How Far We've Come - Niners Nation: "We take a look at the 49ers current situation with regards to Aubrayo Franklin and how it compares to the Ricky Watters contract situation in 1995."
2011 Free Agency Primer: The Fullback Position And Our San Francisco 49ers - Niners Nation: "It is one of the most unheralded positions in all of professional sports. Players put their health and future on the line going neck and neck against opposing defenders. It is a position that requires a lot of humility and sense of team; it is the fullback position."
49ers Blitzing Defense: Questions In The Scheme Or Talent? - Niners Nation: "ESPN's Mike Sando has returned from his recent vacation and he put together a rundown of how each NFC West team performed when they sent different numbers of blitzers. Specifically, he looked at four or fewer rushers and five or more rushers. The rundown of stats provided some interesting numbers that raise a variety of questions."
NN NFL Tournament of Badness: Seahawks Alternates and New Referee Rule - Niners Nation: "(5) Seahawks Alternates Wearing these uniforms should be considered a war crime. They are just awful, and most Seahawks fans will neglect to defend them. They are an abomination and an affront to VISION everywhere. I spit on these uniforms. I bite my thumb at them. I have nothing more to say."
2011 NFC West Schedules: And Down The Stretch They Come! - Niners Nation: "While we sit twiddling our thumbs waiting for the NFL Lockout to come to an end, I thought it would be at least mildly entertaining to take a look at 2011 schedules around the NFC West. More importantly, I wanted to pull up the final four games for each member of the NFC West. While it's possible somebody might run away with the division, odds would seem to be fairly high that the division will come down to the wire. Throw in the fact that the NFL will have all divisional matchups during the final week of the season and it could prove to be a wildly entertaining final Sunday."
Arizona Cardinals
NFL Lockout: Arizona Cardinals Players Planning Minicamp - Revenge of the Birds: "News has come out from Kent Somers that our beloved Arizona Cardinals players are trying to put together a player "minicamp" that would be something similar to the OTA's (Organized Team Activities) that were skipped this year due to the lockout. Where it would be held is up in the air, but hit the jump to find out who is working on putting this together and what player would be more than likely opposed to attending."
NFL Top 100 Players Of 2011: Larry Fitzgerald, No. 14 - Revenge of the Birds: "In the offseason of nothing, NFL Network has presented the player-voted list of the top 100 players in the NFL. Previously, one Arizona Cardinals player was featured -- Adrian Wilson, who was ranked 89th by his player peers. In the penultimate episode of the series, receiver Larry Fitzgerald was featured as they presented players 20-11 in the countdown. Larry was ranked 14th and his video feature was presented by former coach Todd Haley, now the head coach for the Kansas City Chiefs."
NFL Rumors: So Marc Bulger Wants To Start Now? - Revenge of the Birds: "In the offseason of quarterback speculation, name after name has been connected to the Arizona Cardinals. In fact, the same names keep coming up and disappearing. Marc Bulger is one of these names and has been on-again, off-again in rumors. Now, it appears that he is perhaps on-again with the possibility of being Arizona's 2011 starting quarterback."
NFL Rumors: Kevin Kolb For Daryl Washington? - Revenge of the Birds: "As if there weren't enough speculation going around about Kevin Kolb and potentially being the next starting quarterback for the Arizona Cardinals, now there another that just seemed to come out of nowhere. First the rumors involved draft picks. Then it was a pick and a player. Now it is a player. Recently it was Kolb for Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Now, the latest name thrown out there as a possibility to go to the Philadelphia Eagles to acquire the oft-mentioned quarterback is second-year linebacker Daryl Washington."
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