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's initiative to reduce greenhouseefficiency new vehicles will reduce costs for consumers and prod automakers to roll out, some analysts say. Orabama ordered Transportation Department to promote fuel-efficiency standards for 2011 model cars. He has also told EPA to reconsider whether California is granted a waiver to be the first state to impose greenhouse gas limits on new cars, turning maneuvers Bush administration policies. The government wants to reduce emissions of new cars and light trucks average 30% in 2016. At least a dozen other states joined the petition.but it should.
The automotive industry says it would be hard-pressed to meet the stringent mandates and argues the move would limit the car purchase options. Last year, Bush administration EPA denied a waiver request, and said it would create a confusing patchwork of state rules. I lost his staff recommendation, then-EPA chief Stephen Johnson noted in the 2007 energy law already mandated average fuel economy of 35 miles a gallon in 2020. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers said it would cut CO (-2) emissions by 30%. The tougher standards would raise car prices by up to $ 1000, but consumers will save $ 42 to $ 230 a year on gasoline, the NRDC said.
But Gloria Berg Quist, Vice President of auto alliance says the typical car prices would jump $ 3,000, she says automakers can not increase fuel efficiency quick dollars to meet stricter mandate. Doniger disagreed. He says that the industry can transfer existing technology to more cars. Berg Quist also for a "national approach," said automakers have to restrict sales of Pickup in some states, if the new technology is not ready.
Obama signs exec order on energy and fuel efficiency.
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U Talkin’ Talking Heads 2 My Talking Head #7
Adam Scott Aukerman are back this week to talk all about U2’s eight studio album Zooropa. They’ll discuss the worldwide Zoo TV Tour, Bono’s many alter egos, and U2’s experimental side project Original Soundtracks 1. Plus, they’ll give their impressions on the new U2 single “Invisible” and talk about the films of Judd Apatow in the triumphant return of the “I Love Films” podcast.
This episode is sponsored by:
Bonobos. Use offer code EDGE to get 20% off
Stamps.com. Click here for a special $110 Bonus Offer!
Naturebox: Go to naturebox.com/u2 to save 50% on your first box of delicious snacks.
GoDaddy.com: Use offer code U295 for 85%off for $2.95 own your own dot COM
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I’m sick and tired of people claiming that hollow point rounds are “armor piercing assault bullets.” Even my own mother believes this, drinking the standard gun grabber Kool Aid as she is wont to do. The truth is that they are, in fact, less likely to penetrate a bulletproof vest than their standard round nosed brothers. So, while we were testing out a bullet proof vest from the fine folks at SafeGuard Armor, I decided to grab a couple Federal Hydra-Shok 9mm hollow point rounds and demonstrate exactly how full of fragrant BS that line really is. This is Level II armor, meaning that 9mm is the largest round it’s rated to stop. And it does so very, very well.
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Anyone who’s ever learned music probably remembers reaching a point when they just played without “thinking” about the notes.
It turns out that a little bit of disconnect goes a long way in learning motor tasks, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The findings could lend insight into why children learn some tasks faster than adults, and could point toward ways to help adults learn faster and to make classrooms more conducive to learning, according to the authors.
Brain researchers at UC Santa Barbara repeatedly scanned the brains of volunteers as they spent several weeks practicing and learning six 10-note sequences. Then they looked at the evolution of how certain “modules” appeared to work together or became disengaged from each other.
Not surprisingly, motor and visual modules did a lot of talking to each other, as slow sight-reading eventually became speed-playing. Subjects recruited other regions of the brain to work out the problem too. That was true for fast learners and slow learners, according to the study.
But what appeared to set the fast learners apart from the slow learners was how soon they let go of those other parts of the brain, particularly areas that have to do with strategies and problem solving.
“Any athlete will tell you this: If you’re competent at something and you start thinking about it, especially at a detailed level, you’re just dead in the water,” said UC Santa Barbara systems neuroscientist Scott Grafton, who has puzzled over motor learning for two decades. “Golfers talk about this all the time. It’s OK for practice, but not for performance conditions.”
This time, Grafton collaborated with a physicist - and now a MacArthur Fellow - who specializes in complex systems theory. Danielle Bassett, now at the University of Pennsylvania’s bioengineering department, broke up the brain images into 112 nodes and reorganized them into complicated matrices to reveal the equivalent of social networks. Then she analyzed how these evolved over time, and how that predicted differences in learning.
That reshuffling revealed a more dynamic map of the brain, characterized by recruitment, integration and shifting allegiances over time.
“If people are learning and changing their behavior, then there must be something that’s changing in their brain,” Bassett said. “The brain can’t be constant. It has to be changing in some way.”
Motor and visual modules, they found, were well integrated across all subjects and for much of the early practice sessions. But soon, they became more autonomous.
“That actually makes a lot of sense,” Bassett said. “The task required motor-visual integration at the beginning, because you see a set of musical notes and then you have to play them with your fingers.... But then, as people learned the sequences over and over again, they seemed to not necessarily need that coupling anymore.”
Still, that change in integration didn’t explain differences in learning among the volunteers. “It’s just consistently seen across everybody,” said Bassett. “But this disconnection of the rest of the brain is very strong in good learners and very weak in poor learners. That seems to be really important.”
The disconnection that appeared to be driving the difference in learning came mainly from the frontal and anterior cingulate cortex. Those are associated with cognitive control -- such as identifying strategies.
“These are important probably early on in learning, but you actually need to get them offline and disconnected if you want to complete learning,” Bassett said.
That result might offer an explanation for why children consistently learn certain tasks faster -- music among them. Areas of the brain involved in executive function are not fully developed and integrated in children, research has shown.
Bassett said she would like to extend the research to younger subjects -- the UC Santa Barbara volunteers were college-aged -- and to other types of learning that are more complex. And among adults, it could be possible to force these areas to disengage, through such tools as magnetic stimulation, Bassett said.
Eventually, the study’s techniques could help figure out what kind of classroom environment encourages children to learn faster, she added.
Even more fundamentally, the mathematical modeling used in the study could transform the way neuroscientists map the brain.
“What complex systems theory does is it allows you to look at the entire data set, the entire system -- all of its parts and all of its connections -- at once, and look for a salient feature,” Bassett said.
Follow me on Twitter: @LATsciguy
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STOCKHOLM Nu vänder sig svenska staten till uppfinnare för att hitta lösningar på migrationsproblem genom den statliga myndigheten Vinnova. ”Innovation för säkrare migration och etablering av nyanlända”, lyder rubriken på det utlysta projektet.
Flera medier rapporterar att invandringen till Sverige slår alla rekord med uppemot tusen nya migranter per dygn. Samtidigt haglar nyheter om brist på bostäder och generella problem med att få invandrare att etablera sig i samhället. Nu försöker staten hitta lösningar genom innovationsmyndigheten Vinnova.
Nu kan den som är sugen på att uppfinna nya lösningar försöka klura ut det som ingen regering det senaste decenniet lyckats få ordning på. Ett projekt med titel ”Innovation för säkrare migration och etablering av nyanlända” är utlyst med ansökningsdatum senast den 21 oktober. Minst två aktörer från ideell, offentlig eller privat sektor kan söka, gärna sektoröverskridande, står att läsa på Vinnovas hemsida.
Ett av syftena med projektet är att ”sammanföra viktiga aktörer och samhällsfunktioner för att uppnå långsiktiga lösningar som bidrar till ett välfungerande migrations- och mottagandesystem”. På myndighetens hemsida står även att mellan 10 och 30 projekt är tänk att finansieras med en budget om totalt 10 miljoner kronor.
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A fly in your soup on a cruise ship? This is not taken lightly by the Centers for Disease Control.
The CDC inspects the hundreds of cruise ships that enter U.S. ports as part of its Vessel Sanitation Program, checking the ventilation and drinking water systems, looking for proper food preparation and storage, and inspecting the sanitation of common areas, dining rooms, swimming pools and medical facilities.
Based on their reports, the inspectors seem fastidious. They count flies. Examples of infractions in reports include a housefly noted on a bowl of pears, six flies in a pastry preparation area, a mosquito on the bulkhead behind an outdoor grill, and a fruit fly in an oatmeal station.
They note when they find coffee grounds under the coffee machine, mold on an ice bin, a broken salad washer, a pan of lasagna with no discard date, under-chilled yogurt, a clogged drain, a leaky pipe.
The cruise ships are scored on a 100-point scale; points are deducted from the score when there is a pattern of similar violations or when there is a single, significant violation. A score of 85 or below is considered not satisfactory.
These are the cleanest cruise ships -- those that scored 99-100 in the most recent inspections. Read on to see the ships that failed.
Photo: Yevgen Belich / Shutterstock
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The stock market's recent meltdown could "reverse" if this week's meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping goes well, CNBC's Jim Cramer said Tuesday.
If Trump were to say he had a really good talk and he wants to put January's planned tariff increase to 25 percent on hold, "then I come in on Monday morning with a change in posture," Cramer said on "Squawk Box."
"But I don't know if we're going to get that," the "Mad Money" host said.
Stocks opened lower Tuesday after Trump told The Wall Street Journal it's "highly unlikely" that he would delay the tariffs hike on $200 billion of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent.
The president's comments, published late Monday, came just days before his meeting with Xi in Buenos Aires at the G-20 summit being held on Friday and Saturday.
Wall Street had rallied Monday, lifting the out of correction territory. The Nasdaq remained in correction territory as of Monday's close.
Before the open on Monday, Cramer argued the market was displaying "classic bear market behavior" by shooting up on nothing except being oversold. He later said that U.S. stocks are in a "bear market" not a correction.
Cramer said he was not using the traditional definitions of a bear market and a correction to make his case. "Who cares about the S&P? It's individual stocks that are down 40 or 50 percent."
A bear market is generally defined as an S&P 500 decline of 20 percent or more from recent highs. The threshold for a correction is measured as a drop of 10 percent or more from recent highs. The index, as of Monday's rally, was only about 9 percent away from its all-time intraday record in late September.
Cramer has said repeatedly in recent weeks that only the Federal Reserve changing course on hiking interest rates or Trump ending his tariffs would halt the market plunge.
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Looking to compete with the likes of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, the SEC and Big East announced Thursday that their challenge event will be expanded and set over three days this season.
The SEC/Big East Challenge will consist of 12 games this season, highlighted by several intriguing matchups.
Here's the full slate:
Thursday, Dec. 1
St. John's at Kentucky
Georgetown at Alabama
Providence at South Carolina
Mississippi at DePaul
Friday, Dec. 2
Vanderbilt at Louisville
Florida at Syracuse
Cincinnati at Georgia
Auburn at Seton Hall
Saturday, Dec. 3
Arkansas at Connecticut
Pittsburgh at Tennessee
West Virginia at Mississippi State
LSU at Rutgers
This is the challenge's fifth year, with each conference having won eight games in the previous four challenges, which used to be known as the SEC/Big East Invitational.
This year's games will be televised on varioius ESPN networks.
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She starts teasing him with her naked body and because of that he has a big erection now.
Ornella Morgan is bored to watch her boyfriend reading on couch.
Ornella Morgan is bored to watch her boyfriend reading on couch.
She starts teasing him with her naked body and because of that he has a big erection now.
He unloads his cum into her opened mouth.
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If you never want to be late always round the current time up to the closest 10
226 shares
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FAQ
Is a protective face shield as effective as a face mask?
Keeping safety guidelines in mind, many are opting for medical masks and dental face shields to keep themselves safe from infection. Face shield visors are widely accepted as personal protective equipment (PPE) by the medical and scientific community. They serve as an effective tool to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. Plastic face shield visors cover the whole face instead of just the nose and mouth and therefore minimize the risk of transmission from confirmed cases and asymptomatic carriers alike. They are most effective when used as a supplement to medical masks.
What is a face shield and how is it different from a face mask?
The main component of a face shield visor is the transparent plastic visor that covers the whole face. This is a vital feature as face masks only cover the nose and mouth although transmission is also possible through the eyes. The safety face shield comes in various designs and can be worn like a helmet that fits your head with adjustable straps. Due to its transparency, people wearing face shields can carry on conversations with more comfort and ease. It’s also an ideal option for the hearing impaired.
What are the pros of face shields compared to face masks?
A reasonable comparison cannot be made as protective face shields and medical masks are designed for different purposes. They are most effective when used in combination. For logistical purposes, we have offered a descriptive answer below.
Safety face shields double your defense when used with face masks. They block direct respiratory particles, reducing exposure by 96% within 18 inches of somebody at the onset of coughing or sneezing.
Dental face shields are reusable unlike face masks. By washing with soap and water or disinfecting, the face shields can be used indefinitely. They also reduce the surface contamination of medical masks, making them last longer and thus more sustainable and economically viable.
Face shields are also cost-effective. In comparison to medical masks, face shields are a worthy investment due to their longer shelf life. They also increase the usage period of face masks so you can cut back on waste and purchases.
Safety face shields are comfortable.Face masks come with rubber band straps or strings which can be quite uncomfortable at times. Face shields don’t have such issues as they are worn around the forehead with padded and adjustable bands.
Most importantly, face shields cover the eyes. COVID-19 is a respiratory disease and enters directly via airways or mucous membranes. Mucous membranes include the eyes. By covering your eyes, you accomplish two things: 1) prevent the habitual rubbing and touching of the eyes and 2) block virus particles from making direct contact with them.
Neither shields nor masks are substitutes for one another — they each have their own applications and are best used as supplementary pieces.
Would it increase a person's safety if a face shield were worn? Absolutely! The PET plastic of the face shield visor fully blocks fluid particles from reaching the face. This is a powerful means of reducing the risk of contamination. Would it increase a person's safety if a face shield were worn? Absolutely! The PET plastic of the face shield visor fully blocks fluid particles from reaching the face. This is a powerful means of reducing the risk of contamination.
Would it increase a person's safety if a face shield were worn?
Absolutely! The PET plastic of the face shield visor fully blocks fluid particles from reaching the face. This is a powerful means of reducing the risk of contamination.
Do safety face shields reduce the need for face masks?
No, protective face shields are not intended to replace face masks. Face shields serve a different purpose from medical masks.
Plastic face shield visors do offer a number of advantages. These face visors keep particulates from getting in your eyes and also keep masks from getting contaminated as quickly. On the other hand, a medical mask filters the air you are breathing and covers the lower part of your face with a tighter fit.
These plastic protective shields are a good COVID-19 preventative measure alongside face masks, hand washing and social distancing. Face shield visors are not commonplace in public just yet. However, as the pandemic continues, more and more people are starting to consider protective gear like dental face shields.
Why don't they just replace masks with shields?
Safety face shields protect your eyes but are open at the base so contaminated aerosols that float around in poorly ventilated spaces can pose a risk.
What works best is a properly fitted medical mask with a dental face shield over it. That way, the mask isn't contaminated as quickly and you are less likely to get respiratory droplets or virus particles in your eyes, mouth and nose.
Do social distancing measures mean that neither masks nor face shields are necessary?
The short answer is no. Studies show that a cough or sneeze can travel further than 2 meters. Other studies show that breathing and talking are also ways that a virus can spread beyond the recommended social distance which is why group meetings are banned in many places. The best way to reduce your risk of infection is by following the combination of safety measures recommended by health experts.
Is hand washing more important than wearing personal protective equipment (PPE)?
Both are important. There are ongoing studies that suggest viruses can remain on different surfaces for a few hours to days. Washing hands when returning home and disinfecting door handles, bags and anything used outdoors can be helpful in eliminating viruses from these surfaces, thus lowering your chances of contamination.
How to clean safety face shields?
After wearing a face shield, it’s very important to sanitize it frequently. To do so, after taking it off, sterilize it with soap and water, a disinfectant or other household cleaner. This will eliminate viruses and bacteria so you’ll be good to go!
To clean foam-padded safety face shields, first make sure you wash your hands. Use disinfectant wipes to clean the front side of the shield first and dry it with a clean paper towel. Then turn the shield over to wipe the inside the visor and continue until the entire product has been wiped down. Allow it to dry off in a clean, ventilated space or with a paper towel.
Can retail workers be protected by wearing face shields?
Even after following all safety precautions, no one is guaranteed certainty. However, if retail workers or any other personnel wear a safety face shield along with a medical mask and maintain social distancing guidelines, they can exponentially reduce the risk of infection.
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The next time you log into China’s most popular microblogging platform, you might want to think twice about the comments you leave on the site’s most widely followed accounts.
Beginning Thursday, Weibo accounts with more than 100,000 followers will have the ability to silence their critics: If you leave a comment on a post from one of these accounts, and that account blocks you, you’ll be banned from commenting for three days.
The Weibo Administrator account announced the trial function on Wednesday. “If a user’s comment is deleted by a blogger, and their account is also blocked by the blogger, their comment function will be suspended throughout the site for three days,” reads the company’s statement, which also clarifies that affected users will still be able to retweet and write their own posts.
Weibo says the temporary commenting ban function will first be available to bloggers with over 100,000 followers for a trial phase, and then, depending on feedback and results, it will gradually expand to verified users, paying members, and finally all users. According to Weibo’s most recently announced figure in August, the site has over 430 million monthly active users — more than the combined population of the U.S. and the U.K.
In an FAQ accompanying the announcement, Weibo explains that the function is intended to curb the boorish behavior of online trolls. “Those haters aren’t your real fans,” says Weibo Administrator, adding that the function will create a more harmonious interactive environment for both bloggers and their fans.
In the past, actors have been panned for poor performances, beauty bloggers ridiculed for getting cosmetic surgery, and celebrities jeered for suspected romantic liaisons. In fact, whenever there’s a hot-button issue at hand, there always seems to be an army of keyboard crusaders ready to exact their own brand of vigilante justice.
Earlier this month, a minor internet celebrity with over 3 million followers disabled comments on her page after she allegedly attacked a pregnant woman who had complained about her dog being unleashed. Also this month, a lawyer was mocked continuously for two weeks after he ranted on Weibo about two young rail passengers who had refused to trade their lower berths for his children’s cheaper upper berths. Indeed, many controversy-courting users have disabled comments on their pages, and some have left the site entirely.
Contrary to Weibo’s assurances, many users aren’t persuaded that the new function will create a better online environment — so much so that the announcement itself has attracted some of the posts it intends to prevent. “If we’re just leaving normal comments but the bloggers aren’t happy about it and decide to delete and block us anyway, how will our rights be protected?” reads one upvoted comment under the announcement.
Other users have expressed broader concerns centering around freedom of speech and abuse of authority. “This is seemingly [trying to solve] the problem of personal attacks, but actually it means that the power of bloggers with over 100,000 followers will be vastly amplified,” commented another user worried about the voices and views of normal people being drowned out.
Since its launch nearly a decade ago, Weibo has gradually introduced new functions and rules for stricter oversight. In 2012, it began requiring real-name registration before granting certain posting privileges. Since 2015, the site has given users access to customizable filters allowing them to restrict comments to certain groups or block comments containing specific words or phrases. In February of this year, the official accounts of media outlets and government agencies were granted the ability to preview and approve the user comments that become viewable to the public. And in April, Weibo announced that in order to cultivate a more wholesome online environment, it would ban homosexual content — a decision it quickly backtracked on following a loud public outcry.
Editor: David Paulk.
(Header image: A woman uses her smartphone while walking past a Weibo advertisement in Shanghai, April 8, 2014. IC)
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China’s official state-owned media has endorsed “orderly” blockchain innovation but cautioned the public to “keep it rational” and avoid the hype around “aircoins.”
On Oct. 4, Dovey Wan — founding partner of blockchain-based investment company Primitive Ventures — tweeted two screenshots showing a rough translation of the new report from the CPC-owned English-language news portal China Daily.
China needs “inclusive and prudent” regulation
The People’s Daily article opens with the bullish statement that with blockchain “the future is here” — yet swiftly goes on to draw a sharp distinction between bonafide innovation in the sector and what it deems to be undesirable virtual currency speculation:
“Innovation in blockchain is not equivalent to speculation in virtual currency. The use of blockchain to hype up aircoins [...] should be prevented.”
The report continues to caution that blockchain remains in its early stages of development and still demands improvements in terms of security, standardization and regulatory oversight:
“The use of blockchain to store and spread illegal information, to enable illegal transactions, money laundering and similar activities should be severely punished.”
To conclude, the report advocates for “inclusive and prudent regulation” that allows for experimentation but prohibits transgressions.
Only by avoiding a frenzied rush can China foster the development of the blockchain sector with “orderly competition, it states.
As the People’s Daily notes, China already has a solid foundation for implementing blockchain development with the participation of major internet firms in the sector as well as with over 20 of the country’s provinces already introducing policies to promote the industry.
Blockchain-based ID system launching in China’s smart cities
Earlier today, the Global Times reported that a new, independently-developed blockchain-based smart city identification system has been jointly launched by three institutes based in the city of Shijiazhuang in North China's Hebei Province. The system has been made available for cities nationwide as of Nov. 3.
This week, over 10 million blockchain-based invoices were successfully issued in China’s tech capital Shenzhen, according to the city’s tax authorities.
Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping has recently called on the country to accelerate blockchain adoption, endorsing the technology “an important breakthrough.”
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While I may have jumped the gun some on bumping Jake Diekman up into the top 30 last week (shame on me for trusting any Royals reliever), I do think Oliver Perez makes for a safer option going forward, especially considering the season he is coming off. If you don’t believe me, our own Michael Ajeto wrote a great piece on Perez this winter discussing how yes, Oliver Perez is good now. Things got off to a rocky start for him this season, but he has been lights out since May 1 with a 20:1 K/BB ratio and just six hits and two earned runs allowed over 12.1 innings.
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The Egretia platform brings something unique & enchanting in the market. Egretia has joined their hands with the with Egret technology, who is the global leader in the HTML5 industry, to build up the world's first HTML5 blockchain engine and platform, combining blockchain technology using some great tools, finest communities & the content from the partners.
The main aim is to bring around 200,000 developer & 1 billion mobile devices into the world of blockchain Industry.
Why HTML5?
Earlier due to the problems like performance, traffic & compatibility limited the operation of HTML5 games. But, now all the limitations are overcome and due to fresh & better version of HTML5 as well as its unique feature of being cross-platform, it is suitable for games, marketing, videos, media etc.
Due to the capability of social media, the HTML5 got a huge elevation in mobile app which led them to set up a new business model. The HTML5 technology is recognized as the cross-platform. As it covers all covers not only the Internet but also the mobile game, video, advertising and other industries, with a global market opportunity of 100 billion dollars.
The HTML5 has some great features which attracted ample of big brands such as:-
1.Google
2.Facebook
3.WeChat
4.Baidu
& many more.
But, everything doesn't always revolve around the good things. The HTML5 too have the drawback such as,
1.Due to lack of the mechanism to ensure the fairness of the game, it's quite difficult to trust on it.
2.It lacks in the global, unified security payment.
3.It lacks in the security when it comes to storage of virtual assets.
4.Must need of the diversified approaches to monetize the traffic on the platform.
What to expect?
1.As the content powered by the ERETIGA has been distributed to 100 of million users, therefore every new user the platform itself creates a passport with the digital encryption.
2.A fixed digital token/ Coin is used which is validate all over the world; the coin is called "EGRETENS."
3.The users will be secured by the low threshold, high-security digital wallet to keep their transaction safe & secure.
As the platform is powered up by the egret engine, around 75% of the marketing content is penetrated through the HTML5 industry, which includes the major share of mobile phone & users.
They are the combination of ERETIGA blockchain with egret HTML5 workflow, with the usage of the token mechanism. Every player has its own unique id which will be powered up by the egret engine, that will build a solid foundation.
1.Every player worldwide would be having a unique token in any game or any application which is developed by the Egretia blockchain.
2.Getting a unique id will guarantee the anonymity of the user.
3.The anonymity is not limited to 1 or 2 apps, the virtual world last forever in egretia world.
4.Due to the blockchain's transparency and irreversibility, as well as each user's unique passport, available throughout the content system built by Egretia, they can accurately portray users and construct a credit system. Users can also safely communicate with other users around the world in Egretia, making friends, exchanging virtual assets, etc.
TOKEN SYSTEM:
Egretia has created its own unique token called, EGRETEN. That can be us anywhere on the platform powered by the egret engine.
1.The developer can build up those products which accept the Egreten token using the SDK with the well-established tools.
2.The users are free to buy any product or pay for any content for Egretia using the tokens provided them
3.The user has access to use their token throughout the egretia whether the token accepting place can lotteries, discount or any other promotion present.
4.If the user is thinking to earn the card, they do have that option present. If a user needs token, they can get it in the form of reward by participating in various crowdfunding opportunities present on the site.
5.Distributor too can get the cards but content distribution, advertising, etc.
Core Members
Advisors
Partners
Conclusion:-
Egretia is a platform which offers so many things in one place. For gaming, they have a variety of opportunities which are made with the partnership of Egret technology, who is the most demanded HTML5. As being HTML5, it has great features. Blockchain Egreten offers pretty good opportunity on the platform.
For More Details Visit :
Author details
Bitcointalk profile url : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1574899
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On Tuesday, a Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) F-35A fighter disappeared from radars suddenly only 20 minutes after takeoff in reportedly clear weather, with no distress calls from the pilot. Today, after a search-and-rescue effort involving Japanese military and US Navy ships and aircraft, the wreckage of the aircraft was located. But the search continues for the pilot.
According to a JASDF spokesperson, the F-35A was lost from radar approximately 135 kilometers (about 84 miles) east of Misawa Air Base, a joint US-Japanese air base in Aomo prefecture—about 690 kilometers (430 miles) north of Tokyo.
This is only the second F-35 crash since the aircraft completed flight testing—a Marine Corps F-35B crashed in South Carolina in September of 2018. But there have been other safety incidents with the aircraft. In June of 2014, an Air Force F-35A caught fire before take-off because of an engine failure. And in June of 2017, the Air Force briefly grounded F-35As after five incidents in which pilots experienced the symptoms of hypoxia (oxygen deprivation).
The cause of the crash, which occurred at 7:27pm local time on Tuesday (6:27 am EDT), remains unknown. The JASDF has grounded its remaining F-35 aircraft pending results of an investigation. But as the flight data recorder for the aircraft is in waters with a depth of about 4,900 feet (1,500 meters), recovering it will be difficult at best.
Made in Japan
The F-35 that went down was one of the first five aircraft delivered to the JASDF—and the first to be assembled by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which partnered with Lockheed Martin in the company's sale to Japan. (The first four F-35As were built in the US and initially used for training Japan's F-35 pilots at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona.) Mitsubishi previously licensed the design of the General Dynamics F-16 to build Japan's F-2 multirole fighter, the aircraft the F-35A is intended to replace. The JASDF plans to buy a total of 87 F-35A aircraft, 83 of which will be assembled by Mitsubishi.
Given the cumulative number of hours on the F-35A at this point, it would seem unlikely that the crash was caused by a previously unknown design flaw. The aircraft lost had a total of 280 flight hours prior to the crash. The pilot was fairly experienced, with more than 3,200 hours of flying time. But like all of the JASDF's pilots, he had limited experience thus far with the F-35A—only 60 hours of flight time in the type.
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In many ways, Payday: The Heist is very similar to Left 4 Dead. You team up with three friends, you fend off hordes of enemies and try to stay alive. But, in a few important ways, they're very different. In Left 4 Dead, a throng of zombies are trying to keep you out of a safe room, in Payday, you rob banks, take hostages and mow down legions of cops. According to a post on the Overkill blog , spotted by VG247 , the Payday devs are working with Valve on a collaboration that will bring both concepts together.
"We are excited to be able to confirm that an in-depth collaboration between OVERKILL and Valve is currently in production." says Overkill director Ulf Andersson. "We are working on a very cool blend of PAYDAY and Left 4 Dead."
A "cool blend," eh. Time to indiscriminately mash Left 4 Dead and Payday's premises together until something works. Zombies robbing a bank? Survivors robbing a zombie bank? Tanks robbing a bank? Crims robbing a bank staffed by Tanks? This isn't working. What do you think it'll be?
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There are 17 states with tax-free weekends this year, mostly intended for back-to-school shopping, but anyone looking for tech, supplies, or clothing can take advantage of the savings.
This post originally appeared on DealNews.
Kids still have a chunk of summer vacation left, but it’s not too soon to start planning your back-to-school shopping if your state has a tax-free weekend coming up. That’s because during those weekends, participating stores will refrain from charging sales tax on select items, many of which cater to back-to-school needs (although you don’t need to have a matriculating child to take advantage of the savings).
To find out if your state has a tax-free weekend this summer, check out the chart below. Some of these weekends will start popping up in July, so it’s worth planning your shopping list soon!
Tax-Free Back-to-School Shopping
Tax-free holidays first started in 1997 in New York, and since then they’ve grown into a popular event throughout the country. Some states even have multiple ones, for residents to purchase things like Energy Star or WaterSense items, hurricane preparedness items, or even hunting supplies.
However, the most commonly celebrated tax-free weekends are the ones that usually serve as key back-to-school shopping events. They naturally go together, and not just because of the late summer timing either; very often the items that qualify for tax-free weekends are items that students of all ages need. Parents can save on clothing and shoes, school supplies of all kinds, computers, and other tech. Plus, if you’re savvy, you can find back-to-school sales that are active during your state’s tax free weekend, multiplying your potential savings.
Tax-Free Weekends Aren’t Just for Students
Obviously, you don’t have to be a parent or a student in order to benefit from back-to-school sales and tax-free holidays. Anybody who wants to add to their wardrobe, upgrade their tech, or score some office supplies can take advantage of a tax free weekend.
If you remember only one thing while you hit the tax-free weekend sales this year, it’s this: many states impose purchase limits on eligible items. Often, it’s only items under a certain amount that will qualify for tax-free perks.
You Won’t Find Louisiana on the List this Year
While not technically tax-free, Louisiana will have at least a discounted tax rate over August 5 and 6 on tangible personal property purchases less than $2,500. Unfortunately, it’s not a short-term change. This lower rate of 3% is valid for all tax holidays from July 1, 2016 through June 30, 2018. After that, a 0% sales tax holiday will resume for July 1, 2018 through March 31, 2019.
When and Where You Can Find Tax-Free Weekends and Which Items Qualify
State Dates Eligible Items / Max Cost Alabama August 5 - 7 Clothing: $100
Computers: $750
School supplies: $50
Books: $30 Arkansas August 6 - 7 School supplies: No limit
Clothing: $100
Clothing accessories and equipment: $50 **Connecticut August 21 - 27 Clothing and footwear: $100 *Florida August 5 - 7 School supplies: $15
Clothing: $60
Georgia July 30 - 31 Clothing: $100
School supplies: $20
Computers: $1,000 Iowa August 5 - 6 Clothing and footwear: $100 Maryland August 14 - 20 Clothing and footwear: $100 *Massachusetts August 5 - 6 Clothing and footwear: $100 Mississippi July 29 - 30 Clothing and footwear: $100 Missouri August 5 - 7 Clothing: $100
School supplies: $50
Computer software: $350
Computers: $1,500
Computer peripherals: $1,500
Graphing calculators: $150 New Mexico August 5 - 7 School supplies: $30
Clothing: $100
Computers: $1,000
Computer equipment: $500 Ohio August 5 - 7 Clothing: $75
School supplies: $20
School instructional material: $20 *Oklahoma August 5 - 7 Clothing: $100 **South Carolina August 5 - 7 Clothing and accessories: No limit
School supplies: No limit
Computers and accessories: No limit
Bed and bath items: No limit Tennessee July 29 - 31 Clothing: $100
School supplies: $100
Computers: $1,500 Texas August 5 - 7 Clothing and footwear: $100
Backpacks: $100
School supplies: $100 Virginia August 5 - 7 Clothing and footwear: $100
School supplies: $20
*Indicates states containing links to legal documents with details on Sales Tax holidays.
**Indicates states that still have to confirm tax holidays for this year.
Readers, do you shop the tax free weekends? If so, what’s the most you’ve ever saved while shopping? Do you prefer to shop at office supply stores like Staples or Office Max, or do you go for big box retailers, clothing stores, or elsewhere?
When Is Your State’s Tax Free Weekend in 2016? | DealNews
As a college student, Julie Ramhold wrote for the college newspaper and freelanced for the website College Candy. Since then she has worked as freelancer through Textbroker and has written press releases, feature pages, and other miscellaneous pieces for a software company. She enjoys writing both as a hobby and a career, and is always working on some kind of story. Top image by Seamartini Graphics ( Shutterstock ).
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The upcoming online shooter Dirty Bomb from developer Splash Damage is still in beta, but a few big additions are coming later this week: a new Merc design, a new mode, and a new map.
If you're unfamiliar with the game, you can read our impressions from last month. But in short, Dirty Bomb is a multiplayer-only game set in a near-future London. The city has been ravaged by a radioactive weapon, and you take on the role of a mercenary to loot the city for money, meds, and information.
We recently talked with the developer about the additions coming to the current beta as well as how monetization is going to work in Dirty Bomb.
GameSpot: We've seen Nader before, but this Merc's been changed up considerably it seems. Can you tell us more about her?
Splash Damage: Nader's still German and fond of her grenade launcher. We had a few improvements we wanted to make to how her grenade launcher works, which both makes it feel better to use and less likely to cause unexpected explosions!
Where does Nader fit in compared to the other characters in the game? What's she great at compared to the others, and where are her weaknesses? Who is she best paired up with in a three-character loadout?
In many ways, Nader is a more mobile version of Fragger; her grenades aren't quite as powerful, but she has more of them and can use them in mid-range combat more easily. Normally either Nader or Fragger are picked to give solid front line hitting power and the capability to quickly clear out enemy deployables like mines and health stations, letting Proxy and Bushwhacker get to the objective for a quick C4 plant or defuse. Nader's Martyrdom ability is the other reason that she tends to end up a bit closer to objectives than Fragger, as her last resort detonation can sometimes be the thing that prevents a last-second enemy defuse.
You're also unveiling a new mode--Execution. What's this mode all about?
Execution is Dirty Bomb's take on the classic "bombing run" game mode, with a series of attacking and defending rounds and one life per player. It's a fairly familiar ruleset for shooter players, but when you add in our Merc synergy and energetic action, it really feels like something different… suddenly a single Merc ability use can change an entire round, be it a timely revive on Proxy or Bushwhacker, a Heartbeat Sensor that reveals an enemy rush to a particular bombsite, or an Airstrike that wipes out an entire enemy team. Add the ability to swap Mercs in between rounds to counter the enemy's strategy, and it really makes for an interesting tactical battle outside of the moment-to-moment gameplay.
It is a prototype game mode, which means we plan to see what players think of it and evolve it rapidly before adding final polish.
The game's primarily built on pace. What sort of strategic concerns will people have to take into consideration when playing Execution?
In a phrase, "balanced aggression." No respawns means that attacking players will often back off quickly after the first engagement, and the defenders are left with the choice of pushing forward to finish off the enemy or keep to the objective defense locations.
The various Merc support specialties of healing, ammo supply, and quick C4 plant/defuse are what give the gameplay its most interesting facets. It's to a degree true in Objective and Stopwatch modes, but no respawns ends up making Defibs and PDAs real game changers!
Let's talk about this new map. What details can you share? How will the action flow through this new location?
Many players from earlier in the Closed Beta will have played iterations of this map, which we feel has taken many of the best aspects of the other maps to make a really well-playing Dirty Bomb level. It's set in the Greenwich area of London and called Dome, as the distinctive Millennium Dome lurks in the background. The map has been designed with our movement system foremost in mind, and also features numerous secondary objectives for each primary objective stage, which gives a great ebb and flow to the carnage.
The most striking thing about the map visually is that it's most definitely far from finished! Just like Execution Mode, we want to get player feedback and collect metrics before we start layering on the polish, as mentioned we've already been doing this with Dome, and have made adjustments to the blockout geometry each time we've made it available for play.
Dirty Bomb's a free-to-play game. Can you talk a little about how monetization will work?
The current monetization centers around Mercs and their Loadout Cards. Players can spend gameplay-earned Credits or real money to permanently unlock the various Mercs. We're also working on various other elements such as Credit Boosters, Elite Cases (which contain higher rarity Loadout Cards), and various bundles containing Merc unlocks and Loadout Cards or Cases. Loadout Cards let players pursue different playstyles for a particular Merc by swapping out weapons and Augments, which are bonuses that apply to in-game action. The majority of these configurations are available at low rarity so they can be acquired easily, whereas the rarer Loadout Cards have visual improvements over their lower rarity counterparts. We're already working to address some player feedback on the overall balance of the Augments, as it's a paramount concern of ours that they be on an equal playing field.
Again our approach to our content is similar to how we're developing Execution Mode and new maps like Dome: We want to have different items ready to go, but ultimately we'll be prioritising according to what players want. We hope to grow the catalog organically, just as the community of Dirty Bomb players grows.
Dirty Bomb is still in closed beta, but sign-ups are available on the developer's official website here.
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A sizable number of voters plan to follow President Obama’s State of the Union speech next Tuesday night but acknowledge that presidents generally don’t accomplish most of what they promise in their annual addresses to the nation.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 79% of Likely U.S. Voters say they are at least somewhat likely to watch or follow news reports about the president’s speech next week, with 53% who say they are Very Likely to do so. Only 18% say they are not very or not at all likely to watch or follow news reports about it. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Last year at this time, right before the president’s State of the Union speech, 82% of voters said they were following news reports about the speech at least somewhat closely, with 40% who were following Very Closely.
Female voters are more likely to follow Obama’s speech than male voters. Far more Democrats and voters not affiliated with either party say they are Very Likely to follow the speech than Republicans are. Seventy-five percent (75%) of the Political Class are Very Likely to watch the speech or follow news reports about it, compared to 46% of Mainstream voters.
Voters overall are narrowly divided when it comes to the significance of annual State of the Union addresses. Forty-four percent (44%) say they are important in terms of setting the nation’s political agenda for the coming year, but slightly more (47%) believe the speeches are mostly just for show.
Only 15% say presidents generally accomplish most of what they promise in their State of the Union speeches. Sixty-three percent (63%) say they do not. Another 23% are not sure.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on January 19-20, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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Late last year, scientists created a buzz when they announced there is a link between higher intelligence and mental illness.
This doesn’t surprise me at all.
I’m not saying I have the IQ of Einstein.
But school was always very easy, almost too easy.
And in my case, I think a lot. Too much.
I analyze, I’m a quick thinker, and usually, it drives me nuts.
A quick, introspective brain has been great for college research and writing, but it has also added to my anxiety and depression.
It has caused me to be impatient with others from the time I was in elementary school.
Interestingly enough, many of my friends with bipolar disorder say the same thing.
And there is science behind this.
According to European researchers, 500 million years ago, genes of a sea-living invertebrate animal evolved and eventually enabled humans to think and reason.
These genes allow us to learn complex skills, analyze situations, and have flexibility in the way we think.
They have improved our mental capacity, which is also responsible for a number of brain disorders—hence the link.
Professor Seth Grant of the University of Edinburgh said, “The price of higher intelligence and more complex behaviors is more mental illness”.
And for me, the more I think, and the deeper I think, the more I drive myself crazy.
In other related news, a 2013 study among over 16,000 participants in 21 European countries revealed people who are over-educated have an increased risk for depression.
What does over-education mean in this study?
It is defined, for these purposes, as having more education than is required for your career.
This study was presented this past weekend at the American Sociological Association meeting.
Professors from the University of Ghent in Belgium say over-educated people who are not challenged by their jobs, and who do not use all of the skills they gained in their education, are at an increased risk of mental distress.
Jobs with less status, prestige, stimulation, and unbalanced support networks all contribute to this.
Previous studies in Europe have shown an increased risk of depression in people with lower education levels.
This study, though, shows another angle not previously considered.
The professors want to make it clear, however, that they do not believe expansion of education is a bad thing.
Some of the outcomes of this study may have to do with labor markets that are slow to catch up to the increased number of people who have received college degrees.
If university education continues to rise, and the labor market can’t keep up, it might have an effect on the Western world’s mental health.
So, what do you think about these studies? Do you think there is indeed a link between higher intelligence and mental disorders? Have you ever seen any practical evidence of this in your life? How about the second study? Do you think the “over-educated” are at an increased risk of mental health issues?
Photo Credit: Tristan Martin via Compfight
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Many users are clearly eager to get their hands on Grand Theft Auto V, even more so when it comes to the PC. So much so that thousands of players are willing to download a huge 18GB file that promised to be the game, then install it and then wonder why their computers are pillaged by viruses.
Are these people idiots? No doubt about it! Downloading a torrent of a game that hasn’t even been announced for PC, let alone released is madness. Yet for all their foolishness, these fools were fooled by the best as the torrent in question not only looked like a legit file, but also acted like one. It was verified, has a high SEO ranking (comes out near the top on Google search) and the installer looked legit right up until the last moment when it asks you to fill out your private details on a website in return for a serial key.
Of course when you complete your 18GB download, hand over your private data and allow what I can only assume to be 18GB of spyware to run loose on your system, you still don’t get to play GTA V PC… why am I not surprised. I also suspect Rockstar might not be in such a rush to pull this one from download sites, it’s the ultimate honey pot and I’m amazed people fell for it.
Lesson of the day: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Thank you Wccftech for providing us with this information.
Images courtesy of eTeknix and Wccftech.
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As Washington continues to seem more and more partisan, it’s important to remember that things have been much more hostile in the past.
For instance, on Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa. The cemetery was established to bury the fallen Union soldiers who had died in July that year during the Battle of Gettysburg.
This 272-word address, which Lincoln delivered in just a few minutes, almost instantly became one of the greatest and most influential speeches in American history. Even now, 156 years later, we still study the Gettysburg Address as an example of how words can change the direction of a nation.
READ THE TEXT OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
This is the topic of this week’s episode of the "Newt’s World" podcast.
In November 1863, Lincoln was not just using the occasion to dedicate the cemetery. He wanted to – needed to – remind the country that was torn apart by Civil War “that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER
It marked an important political turning point in the war, and it helped cement Lincoln’s victory.
On this week's episode, I talk with two of our country’s leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln.
Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is the senior research scholar in the Council of the Humanities and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. I have worked with Guelzo through many different projects. Even as a historian, I have met very few people who have the depth of knowledge and insight that Guelzo has on the Civil War era -- and what it meant for Americans at the time.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
I also was able to speak with Harold Holzer, the winner of the 2015 Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize, who serves as The Jonathan F. Fanton Director of Hunter College’s Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute. We had an incredibly interesting conversation, and he shared many insights about Lincoln and his presidency, which most Americans have never heard.
I hope you will join us this week on “Newt’s World” as we recognize the Gettysburg Address, one of the most important pieces of American oratory ever delivered.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM NEWT GINGRICH
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Netizens are in deep anger over the release of a caricature that includesOn the 25th,revealed his new penthouse at '' that costs over 9 billion won (~$7.3 million) on his IG account and the interior of the house attracted attention. One caricature inside the home became a controversial topic as it depicts Big Bang as five even though Seungri left the group last year.Foreign fans that saw the caricature in question showed their support for Seungri to return to the group leaving messages on his Instagram such asand more.Korean fans, however, reacted coldly to the caricature and messages left by foreign fans.G Dragon has been criticized previously for posting photos of Big Bang as 5 and leaving messages that alluded to Seungri like "and more.Seungri left the group after being embroiled in '' controversy and is currently completing his military service. All members of Big Bang includingandrenewed their contracts withand are currently preparing comeback activities.Attention is focused whether Seungri will make a return to entertainment and Big Bang.
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(Reuters) - The attackers who stole $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank probably hacked into software from the SWIFT financial platform that is at the heart of the global financial system, said security researchers at British defense contractor BAE Systems.
Swift code bank logo is displayed on an iPhone 6s on top of Euro banknotes in this picture illustration made in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
SWIFT, a cooperative owned by 3,000 financial institutions, confirmed to Reuters that it was aware of malware targeting its client software. Its spokeswoman Natasha Deteran said SWIFT on Monday released a software update to thwart the malware, along with a special warning for financial institutions to scrutinize their security procedures.
The developments coming to light the unprecedented cyber-heist suggest that a lynchpin of the global financial system could be more vulnerable than previously understood because of weaknesses that enabled attackers to modify a SWIFT software program installed on bank servers.
The new evidence suggests that hackers manipulated the Alliance Access server software, which banks use to interface with SWIFT’s messaging platform, in a bid to cover up fraudulent transfers that had been previously ordered.
The findings from BAE and SWIFT do not explain how the fraudulent orders were created and pushed through the system. That remains a key mystery in ongoing probes into the heist.
Deteran told Reuters on Sunday that SWIFT was issuing the software update “to assist customers in enhancing their security and to spot inconsistencies in their local database records.” She said “the malware has no impact on SWIFT’s network or core messaging services.”
The software update and warning from Brussels-based SWIFT,or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, come after researchers at BAE BAES.L, which has a large cyber-security business, told Reuters they believe they discovered malware that the Bangladesh Bank attackers used to manipulate SWIFT client software known as Alliance Access.
BAE published its findings on Monday in a blog post on malware that it said thieves used to cover their tracks and delay discovery of the heist.
The cyber criminals tried to make fraudulent transfers totaling $951 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February.
Most of the payments were blocked, but $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines and diverted to casinos there. Most of those funds remain missing.
Investigators probing the heist had previously said the still-unidentified hackers had broken into Bangladesh Bank computers and taken control of credentials that were used to log into the SWIFT system. But the BAE research shows that the SWIFT software on the bank computers was probably compromised in order to erase records of illicit transfers.
The SWIFT messaging platform is used by 11,000 banks and other institutions around the world, though only some use the Alliance Access software, Deteran said.
SWIFT may release additional updates as it learns more about the attack in Bangladesh and other potential threats, Deteran said. It is also reiterating a warning to banks that they should review internal security.
“Whilst we keep all our interface products under continual review and recommend that other vendors do the same, the key defense against such attack scenarios is that users implement appropriate security measures in their local environments to safeguard their systems,” Deteran said. Adrian Nish, BAE’s head of threat intelligence, said he had never seen such an elaborate scheme from criminal hackers.
“I can’t think of a case where we have seen a criminal go to the level of effort to customize it for the environment they were operating in,” he said. “I guess it was the realization that the potential payoff made that effort worthwhile.”
A Bangladesh Bank spokesman declined comment on BAE’s findings.
A senior official with the Bangladesh Police’s Criminal Investigation Department said that investigators had not found the specific malware described by BAE, but that forensics experts had not finished their probe.
Bangladesh police investigators said last week that the bank’s computer security measures were seriously deficient, lacking even basic precautions like firewalls and relying on used, $10 switches in its local networks.
Still, police investigators told Reuters in an interview that both the bank and SWIFT should take the blame for the problems.
“It was their responsibility to point it out but we haven’t found any evidence that they advised before the heist,” said Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police’s criminal investigation department, referring to SWIFT. [L2N16S0OR]
THWARTING FUTURE ATTACKS
Monday’s alert from BAE includes some technical indicators that the firm said it hopes banks could use to thwart similar attacks. Those indicators include the IP address of a server in Egypt the attackers used to monitor use of the SWIFT system by Bangladesh Bank staff.
The malware, named evtdiag.exe, was designed to hide the hacker’s tracks by changing information on a SWIFT database at Bangladesh Bank that tracks information about transfer requests, according to BAE.
BAE said that evtdiag.exe was likely part of a broader attack toolkit that was installed after the attackers obtained administrator credentials. It is still not clear exactly how the hackers ordered the money transfers.
Nish said that BAE found evtdiag.exe on a malware repository and had not directly analyzed the infected servers. Such repositories collect millions of new samples a day from researchers, businesses, government agencies and members of the public who upload files to see if they are recognized as malicious and help thwart future attacks.
Nish said he was highly confident the malware was used in the attack because it was compiled close to the date of the heist, contained detailed information about the bank’s operations and was uploaded from Bangladesh.
While that malware was specifically written to attack Bangladesh Bank, “the general tools, techniques and procedures used in the attack may allow the gang to strike again, “according to a draft of the warning that BAE shared with Reuters.
The malware was designed to make a slight change to code of the Access Alliance software installed at Bangladesh Bank, giving attackers the ability to modify a database that logged the bank’s activity over the SWIFT network, Nish said.
Once it had established a foothold, the malware could delete records of outgoing transfer requests altogether from the database and also intercept incoming messages confirming transfers ordered by the hackers, Nish said.
It was able to then manipulate account balances on logs to prevent the heist from being discovered until after the funds had been laundered. It also manipulated a printer that produced hard copies of transfer requests so that the bank would not identify the attack through those printouts, he said.
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PARA LER EM PORTUGUÊS, CLIQUE AQUI
Messi came walking up towards me. It was last June, and we were playing Argentina in a friendly in Australia. We had just won a free kick, and I was standing over the ball with Willian and another player. I wasn’t going to take it. I was just the decoy.
All of a sudden, Messi walks straight up to me, looks me in the eye, and says, “So … are we going to Barcelona or not?”
That was it. No explanation, nothing. He turned around and walked away.
I didn’t even have time to think. I just said, “If you want to take me, I’ll go!”
It takes a lot for me to lose my focus in a football match, but from the time Messi said those words to the time Willian kicked the ball, all I could think about was, Is he serious? Why did he say that? Oh God, what is going on?
I was playing in the Chinese Super League for Guangzhou Evergrande at the time, and nobody would believe that Barcelona were interested in me. I thought maybe he was joking, like he was trying to mess with my head or something. But we were just playing a friendly … so maybe not?
After the match, I gave the security guard my shirt and asked him to give it to Messi. He came back from the Argentina dressing room with Messi’s shirt for me.
So then I thought, Wait, is this real?
But after our tour of Australia, I went back to China and didn’t hear anything about a transfer. A whole month passed, and I forgot all about it. I was just enjoying my football in the Super League. Then, in July, we started hearing all these rumors that Barcelona were interested in me.
I called my agent and said, “Boss, for God’s sake, I’m going crazy! Just tell me if this is real or not!”
He said, “Well, it’s complicated. Maybe, maybe not.”
I was texting with Neymar, asking him, “Man, is this serious? Do you know anything? I’m going crazy, for real.”
But he was going through his own transfer situation, so he wasn’t really sure.
You know how it is with transfers these days. You can’t really trust anything. There’s a lot of things that go into it, and honestly, I was really enjoying my time in China. My wife and I had an amazing life there, and I was playing really good football. Before the Barça rumors, I was totally at peace there.
By August, the transfer window was about to close, and it seemed like it was over. We were playing for the Chinese championship that weekend, and we had friends from Brazil staying at our apartment and everything.
That night, my agent called me and said, “The deal is done. You have to come to Barcelona to sign the papers.”
And, seriously, I didn’t believe it. I said to him, “Is this real? Did Barcelona pay? Are you fooling me?”
He said, “No, no, no. It’s real. You have to be there tomorrow.”
Did I mention that it was four in the morning?
Well, it was four in the morning.
I said, “I can’t! My friends are here from Brazil. It’s four in the morning!”
He said, “It’s Barça! Bring them with you! Just get on the next plane, man!”
So I packed a bag and went to the airport, and in the back of the car, as I was staring out the window at the highway, I thought to myself … Messi!
But seriously, if you think my transfer from Guangzhou to Barcelona is crazy, then you don’t know my whole story. That was just Chapter 10. My whole story is way more unreal.
When I was 19 years old, I quit football completely.
For about a month, I stayed at home in a depression. This was in the summer of 2008. Messi was on his way to winning the treble with Barcelona, and I was on my couch, thinking about what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I had just come home to São Paulo from playing overseas in Lithuania and Poland, and it was a really traumatic experience.
When I arrived in Lithuania, it was enjoyable at first. I played in Vilnius, which is an old medieval town like the kind you see in the movies. It was very different from Brazil, and I didn’t speak the language, but it was really peaceful. Then one day, I was walking in town with one of my Brazilian teammates, Rodney, and this group of guys walked over to us very aggressively, and …
Well, it still angers me to talk about it to this day … but they started imitating monkeys and harassing us.
I mean, we were not bothering anybody. We were just going to the bakery.
It was the first time in my life that I experienced racism like that. And unfortunately, it was not the only time. In the streets, people would bump into us to try to provoke us. They would call us names. At matches, the opposing fans would make monkey noises and throw coins at us. It was a sickening feeling.
We knew that it was not our country, so we had to accept it and try to move on. But nobody deserves to be treated like that. After a season there, I left to play in Poland, but I was wounded by the experience. It was just a very lonely time. I left Brazil at 17 years old in order to give my family a better life, but when I returned home two years later, I was completely disillusioned with football.
I told my parents, my ex-wife, my agent, “I’m done.”
And you know what my ex-wife said to me? She probably saved my career. She said, “Quit football? But you don’t know how to do anything else. You don’t even know how to change a lamp!”
I said, “I’ll learn! It can’t be that hard!”
She said, “But think about your parents. It would be disrespectful to them, and everything they’ve given you.”
Vanessa Montero/The Players' Tribune
She was right. Ever since I was five years old, running around the streets of Zona Norte with a football, my mother has been by my side in every situation. When I was a kid, I used to love playing football so much that I genuinely wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at night. I would just stare at the wall, thinking, Damn, I can’t wait for it to be morning so I can have the ball at my feet again!
After my experience in Europe, I fell out of love with football. But I knew that it would really hurt my parents if I quit, so I decided to play another season. I restarted my career from the very bottom, with Pão de Açúcar in the Brazilian Fourth Division. Let’s just say it was not exactly the Champions League. We would travel eight hours by bus to play matches, and it would be 40℃ at kickoff. In the beginning, I said to myself, “You’re not going to make it. You should learn how to build houses or something, because this is not going to work out.”
But slowly, slowly, slowly … just by training and playing every day, I erased the negativity, and I was happy again. I climbed from the Fourth Division to the Second Division and then to the First Division with Corinthians.
It was there that I met a man who changed my life and became like a second father to me — Professor Tite. I get emotional when I speak about Tite, because we are connected in a way that is about more than football. He would look me in the eye, and he would know when I was fine, and when I was not doing good. We didn’t even have to say any words.
There’s a funny story that not a lot of people know about that explains our relationship. Of course, we had a fantastic season at Corinthians in 2011. We won the Campeonato Brasileiro, so there were offers coming in for a lot of our players, and Inter Milan wanted to sign me.
However, it was some crazy situation where my agent called me and said that Inter needed an answer in 15 minutes. This was right before training, so I ran to Tite’s office and I told him what was happening, and I said, “Boss, I don’t know … It’s Inter. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the world.”
And Tite said, “Look, the decision is yours. Of course I want you to stay, but it’s your life. You go to the locker room and think about it. And when you decide, come out to the field. If you’re going to stay, you make this gesture (thumbs up) And if you’re going to leave, you make this gesture (thumbs down). That’s how I’ll know.”
I called my agent and I told him my decision, and he said, “Are you sure?!”
I said, “I’m sure.”
Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
I walked out onto the field, and Tite sees me, and I waited two seconds just to add some drama, and then I gave him the thumbs up that I was going to stay.
And he sighed and said, “God, I thought you were going to leave!”
I worked with Tite for four years at Corinthians, and it was a golden period in my life and in my work. When I eventually left to go play for Tottenham in the Premier League, I went through a difficult time in my second season, and a lot of people lost faith in me. But one person who always believed in me was Tite.
Actually, I would like to clear up something about my time at Spurs. I really cannot say a bad word about the club or the staff or the president. It is true that it was a very difficult period for me as a player, and there were times when I did not want to leave my apartment in London because I was so stressed about not playing. For a footballer, not playing is like a fish not being in the water. I felt as though I were suffocating. For whatever reason, I was not in Mauricio Pochettino’s plans. I didn’t fit his philosophy, I guess. But we never even had a disagreement. One day, I went to the club president and told him that if they got an offer close to what they paid for me, that I would like to move on. They were very professional about it.
In the summer, Spurs got a permanent offer from Guangzhou Evergrande, and I thought, “Why not?”
My friends all thought I was insane.
They were texting me, “China? What are you gonna do in China?”
I texted back, “China, man! Let’s see!”
I live by something that Dani Alves once told me, when I was going through a difficult time in my life.
He said, “We are just kids playing in the rain, man. If it goes wrong, so what? Is it the end of the world? No, man. We’ll just go find somewhere else to play.”
I’ve played football my entire life, all over the world, and the one thing I’ve learned is that the important thing is to enjoy your work. You have to go to sleep at night staring at the wall, thinking, Damn, I can’t wait for it to be morning so I can have the ball at my feet again!
You can only play your best football in these conditions. If you’re playing in the best league in the world and you’re miserable, what is the point? People said that my career was over when I went to Guangzhou Evergrande but … well, when I was riding the bus in the Fourth Division in Brazil, nobody even knew who I was! I was in the grave, man. I was dead to the world.
So I was going to play in China for Felipe Scolari? Does that sound so bad? I was happy about it, for real.
Alex Livesey/FIFA/Getty Images
Of course, at the time, I was not dreaming about playing in another World Cup. I definitely was not dreaming of playing for Barcelona. My goal was simply to play good football, every day. When Tite was named manager of Brazil in 2016, I was extremely happy for him, because he deserved it. I used to tell him back when we were at Corinthians, “Professor, you always talk about players who are deserving. Well, I know you’re deserving of coaching the national team one day.”
But, to be honest, I did not expect him to call on me.
Then one day he sent his son, Matheus, to China to watch me play, because we were doing very well as a club, winning a lot of trophies, and I think he was just curious, like “What’s going on with Paulinho in China?” And it turned out to be a comedy because when Matheus arrived, I told my wife, “Barbara, please, please, please make sure that Matheus gets to the match O.K. Because the traffic is crazy sometimes and it’s very confused to get to the stadium and I need him to see me play.”
But for some reason, there were no taxis available, so they arrived to the match in a tuk-tuk. It was crazy. That day, I didn’t try to do anything special. I just played how I always play, because I thought, “They know me.”
After that match, I waited … and I waited … not expecting anything. And then a few weeks later, there was a convocation for the national team for World Cup qualifying, and my name was called.
Everyone in the media said, “How can Tite call Paulinho? He’s in China!”
Tite gave me the chance to show the world that I was not dead. And I think I showed my value many times in qualifying. In football, things happen in a fraction of a second. I’m not the most technical player, but that fraction of a second is where I have always excelled. Something happens, and bang … you can’t even think. You have to be there. You have to seize it.
There was a joke that Tite liked to say in training. He’s looking at all these incredible players — Neymar, Coutinho, Jesus, Marcelo — and he says, “You always have to be ready when we’re attacking, even though we all know that the rebound is always going to find its way to Paulinho.”
They joke that the ball follows me around like magic.
And I said, “No, Professor! You always talk about deserving. You gotta be there to score!”
When I was named to the squad for the World Cup, it was not just a moment of joy for me, but also for my entire family.
Quality Sport Images/Getty Images
But I want to share something that many people don’t know. A lot of people look from the outside and they say, “Oh, wow, you went from China to Barcelona. What an incredible story. What a miracle.”
But, in fact, after I signed for Barcelona, it was one of the most dramatic moments of my life. At the time, Barbara was pregnant with twins. They were due to be born in December, right before Christmas. One day in October, she told me that she was in a lot of pain and that she needed me to drive her to the doctor right away. She always refused to go to the hospital for anything, so I knew that something was wrong.
When we arrived at the hospital, they did some tests and took her straight into the ICU. Our twins were trying to come into the world, but it had only been 28 weeks. It was extremely dangerous. The doctors wanted her to hold on for two more weeks before giving birth in order to give their lungs a chance to develop.
I remember calling my parents back in Brazil and saying, “What will happen? Will they live?”
It was terrifying.
But my wife was a warrior. She held on for seven days … 14 days … 20 days …
A lot of nights, I slept in the armchair in the room. But during the day, I had to keep playing football. On October 30, I had to go play a Champions League match against Olympiakos in Greece. There was nothing I could do. I had to get on the plane.
That night, I got a call from Barbara to say that our daughter, Sofia, and our son, Zé Pedro, were born.
My wife had held on for 21 days. I cried and cried. I wanted to be there to see them come into the world. But they were here. That’s what mattered.
They both needed to stay in an incubator at the hospital for two months. They were not strong enough to come home. In those times, football seems very unimportant. People were talking about how well I was doing on the pitch for Barcelona, but privately, it was an extremely difficult time. There were days when I would be getting ready for training, and I would think of my children hooked up to tubes at the hospital.
I have to give all the credit to my wife. She was the hero. Me, I just had to play football. She had to fight for the lives of our children. It is unimaginable the strength that a mother can find when her children are in danger.
On December 23, Sofia and Zé Pedro came home.
That was the greatest Christmas gift I ever received.
People hear about my story, and they say, “Man, you went from China to Barcelona. You’re going to the World Cup. How can you explain it?”
I don’t know. Football is full of ups and downs. It’s unpredictable. In many ways, I feel like I am the same player I was when I went to the Super League. Going from China to Barcelona is incredible, but it’s not a miracle. It’s not life or death. It’s just football.
A miracle is when you come home from football, and no matter what the result was that day, your children look up at you, and their eyes say, Olá, Papai.
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Tons of Game of Thrones news circulating lately, and in case you haven’t yet got your fill, I have some more for you. As is common these days, big budget television shows and films do everything they can to keep spoilers from getting out. Studios such as Marvel don’t always give their actors the full script for films such as Avengers: Infinity War, they only receive what is necessary for the character.
Game of Thrones is surely one show HBO doesn’t want to be spoiled, and most of the fans feel the same way. For the eighth and final season of the hit series, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss received help from some of the folks over at Lucasfilm, who happen to know a thing or two about keeping secrets. As part of Entertainment Weekly‘s big spread on the show set in Westeros, Weiss spoke about how Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson showed them
“They’ve given us a lot of hints about how to lock things down, things we never would have thought of or didn’t know were possible.”
How about that, Johnson and Kennedy did something I approve of. While I am still bitter at them for The Last Jedi, I am thankful they assisted in keeping my absolute favorite show from being spoiled. It would be nice to know what some of those secret keeping practices are, but if we were privy to that kind of information, it would sort of defeat the purpose.
Only six episodes left folks, the board board is set and all the pieces are in position for what should prove to be an epic finale for what is arguably the greatest television show of all time.
Alright, so, who gets the Iron Throne? Let us know in the comments down below!
Don’t forget to share this post on your Facebook wall and with your Twitter followers! Just hit the buttons on the top of this page.
Source: EW
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This incredible video course is targeted at YouTube Video Marketing
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To help you out I’ve prepared a list of video ideas for YouTube that you can use on the road to creating your first viral video. Just don’t forget: it takes time! Some people do succeed immediately when they begin creating their channel on YouTube and without even trying that hard.
But those people usually have no idea what to do next – whether they can continue making good YouTube videos or collaborate with other YouTube experts etc. This is why it’s better to have plenty of ideas before you start – and that’s what this amazing YouTube course “Viralnomics” is here for! Think of this course as your YouTube video idea generator! What’s more? Think of it as your next revenue-generation idea stream for your YouTube channel. I will also provide you with a bonus method of generating tags for your YouTube videos on your channel.
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Welcome to the next generation of video ideation and secret techniques with ViralNomics. YouTube Video Marketing
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Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
A futures trader was arrested in the United Kingdom on U.S. wire fraud, commodities fraud and manipulation charges in the May 2010 "Flash Crash," the Department of Justice said on Tuesday.
Navinder Singh Sarao, 37, of Hounslow, United Kingdom, was arrested on Tuesday in the United Kingdom and the United States is requesting his extradition, the department said. The charges were filed in a federal complaint in Illinois in February, but were unsealed today following the arrest.
IN-DEPTH
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At least 36,898 people were killed, and 8,753 were wounded in Iraq during 2017. These figures should be considered lowball estimates, especially considering that the number of casualties being reported publicly was reduced. During 2016, 52,369 people were killed 21,795 were wounded. The Iraqi government chose to censor information about security casualties and perhaps even civilian ones. Consequently, at the end of 2016, the United Nations was hectored into limiting the number of casualties it was allowed to compile on the ground.
The Antiwar.com breakdown is as follows: at least 9,036 civilians killed, and another 6,607 wounded. However, Kurdish intelligence reported, in July, a belief that at least 40,000 civilians were killed in Mosul alone. Certainly, many bodies remain uncounted under the rubble left by the battle for Mosul, or in unmarked mass graves. The number of civilian wounded dropped considerably despite security campaigns across Iraq. This is unlikely to be true.
At least 1,696 security personnel were killed and 1,827 were wounded. In September, Coalition forces revealed that over 1,200 Iraqi soldiers were killed during the Mosul campaign alone, nearly doubling the number of dead.
Among the militants, at least 24,276 were killed, and 309 were wounded. Unlike the civilian and security casualties, the number of militant dead could be an exaggeration, or it could also be a low number.
Among foreign military forces, 33 were killed or died while in Iraq. The U.S. lost 17 personnel (four in hostile events). The Turks lost 14, while another 10 were wounded. France lost one member in a hostile attack. A British servicemember was also killed. Iran lost at least one soldier. In March, officials admitted that 2,100 Iranian servicemembers were killed in Iraq or Syria, so the number of dead personnel must be higher, but is not being included in this compilation.
Iraq also executed at least 111 prisoners. Some analysts believe the number is higher.
At least 546 members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.) were also killed.
At least four people were killed, and five more were wounded in recent violence:
Four militiamen were wounded in a highway bombing near Riyadh.
A bomb in Radwaniya wounded a tribal fighter.
An airstrike killed three militants in Sansal.
An ISIS mufti was killed Houd al-Zour, along with a number of companions.
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Shortly after the shooting of Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise and three others in Alexandria Wednesday morning, Capitol Hill came together in a rare show of solidarity. “We are united in our anguish,” Speaker Paul Ryan said on the House floor. “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.”
“You're going to hear me say something you've never heard me say before: I identify myself with the remarks of the speaker,” his rival Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi added after Ryan’s speech. “They are beautiful remarks, Mr. Speaker, thank you so much.”
But it didn’t take long for an angrier narrative to take hold on right-wing news outlets. Upon learning that the shooter was reportedly a Bernie Sanders supporter, conservative pundits immediately pointed fingers at liberals for promoting a “culture of violence.”
The Daily Caller described the attack as “just the latest in an escalating pattern of violence and intimidation against Republicans,” complaining that politicians on the right were victims of “an increasingly hostile political climate where left-wingers portrayed them as ‘fascists.’”
According to LifeZette, the website of conservative provocateur Laura Ingraham, Wednesday’s shooting “quickly drew attention to the American Left’s escalating anti-Republican rhetoric, which demonizes and dehumanizes conservatives and their beliefs.”
Predictably, the shrillest denunciations came from the right-wing conspiracy website Infowars. “We have been warning for months that the mainstream media’s hysterical anti-Trump narrative … will radicalize demented social justice warriors and prompt them to lash out with violence,” alt-right pundit Paul Joseph Watson wrote. “It looks like that’s exactly what happened today. The blood is on their hands.”
Kathy Griffin, the comedian who recently came under fire for a picture of her holding a bloodied model of Donald Trump’s head, was frequently brought up as an example of intolerable liberal rhetoric. So was the New York Public Theater’s controversial production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which portrays the murdered Caesar as a Trump-like figure with a red tie and golden hair.
“Events like today are EXACTLY why we took issue with NY elites glorifying the assassination of our President,” conservative pundit Harlan Hill said in a tweet that was highlighted by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.
LifeZette complained that Democrats and the mainstream media had taken it too far with their claims that Republicans’ Obamacare replacement would kill people (it probably would). “Trump's most controversial comments pale in comparison to the sort of hyperbole that liberals regularly employ to describe Republicans and their policies,” LifeZette’s Edmund Kozak scolded.
The shooter, whom police have identified as 66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson of Illinois, had criticized President Donald Trump and the GOP on social media. But there was no evidence that he was incited to violence by the left’s rhetoric.
And that was what cooler heads on the right emphasized on Wednesday afternoon. “I don't want to blame people on the left for what this person did today,” said Republican Rep. Pete King of New York to Fox News. “He was acting on his own. I’ve been around long enough to know we have these types on both sides.”
When Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot in the head by anti-government conspiracy theorist Jared Loughner in 2011, people on the left were making mirror-opposite complaints about the right’s “climate of hate.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman blasted conservative pundits such as Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly for making violent jokes — sometimes referencing gun violence — about the left:
Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.
Since the election, there have been plenty of examples of apparent hate crimes, including the murder of two men in Portland who had stood up to a white supremacist, and the shooting of two Indian-American engineers in Kansas.
But there is a simmering belief among parts of the right that the mainstream media unfairly highlights violence perpetrated by Trump supporters. On Wednesday, for instance, some politicians took the shooting as an opportunity to complain about the increasingly rowdy participants at their town halls.
"I can only hope that the Democrats do tone down the rhetoric," said New York Rep. Chris Collins to local radio station WBEN. “The rhetoric has been outrageous. The finger pointing, just the tone and the angst and the anger directed at Donald Trump, his supporters. ... Some people react to things like that. They get angry as well. And then you fuel the fires."
Collins told WBEN that he would start carrying a pistol “in my pocket from this day forward.”
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A bitter war of words between hacker collective Anonymous and the Ku Klux Klan risks spilling over into real violence, with the right-wing hate group allegedly threatening to shoot dead activists wearing the Guy Fawkes mask in southern Missouri.
Earlier this week, Anonymous sent out a tweet relating an alleged interaction between Frank Ancona, the self-described “Imperial Wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights,” and a fellow KKK member.
In the missive, Ancona allegedly said those wandering around rural Missouri in a Guy Fawkes mask could “accidentally” find themselves in a hunter’s crosshairs.
“Its deer hunting season here in southern Missouri, it’s really easy to see how a hunter could mistake someone wearing one of those gay anonymous masks for the hind-end of a whitetail deer. Boom!!! Oops sorry it was an accident,” the message reads.
Frank Ancona has now threatened to shoot anyone wearing Guy Fawkes mask in response to #HoodsOff#OpKKKpic.twitter.com/w1ikSgAmmW — Anon Cop Watch (@AnonCopWatch) November 19, 2014
The masks really come off in the next message attributed to Ancona, with unveiled threats of violence and racist invective directed at the hacker collective.
The message claims the names of several Anonymous members have already been obtained, including that of “Commander X,” described as ”The Grand Wizard Of Anonymous,” and another member operating under the handle @TrezSec.
“You pathetic n***** lovers are going down, we’re NOT HIDING. WE’RE NOT ASHAMED OF WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE REPRESENT. THE INVISIBLE EMPIRE CANNOT AND WILL NOT BE OVERTHROWN, [sic]” the message signed with Anacona’s name read. “We will hunt you down and tear those masks from your face. You’ll be strung up next to the chimps. On display for the whole world to see. The Klan is to be feared, not threatened.”
On Wednesday, individuals claiming to be affiliated with Anonymous sent a video to News2Share saying they took the the statement as "a direct threat on our lives" that they would not stand for.
The video continued that hacktivists would employ every means necessary to defend themselves.
"If you attempt to aid the police [in the event of further civil unrest in Ferguson], just know that there are more of us out there than there are of you. But you will not know who we are. We are everywhere. We are among the protesters and we are even among you. Your violent ideology will not prevail in this fight."
If the KKK thinks we hide behind keyboards, they haven't been paying attention. pic.twitter.com/V3twwzYQgv — Anon Cop Watch (@AnonCopWatch) November 21, 2014
They further told the police of Ferguson that if they responded to protesters in the city with violent tactics, they should know that they are “being watched very closely.”
“You man have the guns and badges, but when you are on the side of the KKK, history will not look back on you kindly.
Take our warning. To the KKK and police, be peaceful, or you will face the consequences.”
The two groups with a penchant for face-covering apparel began engaging in a perhaps unequal “cyber war” after the KKK threatened to use“lethal force” against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.
On Sunday night, Anonymous listed the KKK websites it had taken offline on its Twitter feed, with reports of the attacks accompanied by the hashtag #OpKKK.
For those just tuning in: The KKK has threated #Ferguson protesters with deadly force. So we launched #HoodsOffpic.twitter.com/wYDkjj0OKG — Anon Cop Watch (@AnonCopWatch) November 16, 2014
The group also said that information garnered from the seized Klan websites and Twitter accounts could help them unmask several KKK members, likely sparking the “we’re NOT HIDING” triad.
On Thursday, Anonymous released a video claiming they had information from a whistleblower which they say would link the KKK to the Ferguson Police Department. The group will not release the information, however, saying its specificity would ultimately reveal the source. Instead, they vow to “hold this information until we can connect the dots ourselves.”
The hacktivists earlier claimed to have identified KKK members at a support rally for police officer Darren Wilson, who shot and killed a black teenager named Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9.
This photo showing 3 Klansman at the #DarrenWilson rally has been removed from their FaceBook page #HoodsOff#OpKKKpic.twitter.com/oSa4T5tPx2 — Anon Cop Watch (@AnonCopWatch) November 17, 2014
There are fears further protests could erupt in Ferguson, with a federal grand jury set to announce its decision on whether or not to charge Wilson for the death of the unarmed teen.
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A Florida man felt that the most opportune time to engage in a sexual act was in the middle of a burglary.
Surveillance footage shows the man backing his truck into a parking lot at Twin Lakes Pool and BBQ in Cooper City on July 27, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
» Alleged drunk driver can’t remember where he came from
The man briefly exits his vehicle and looks around before engaging in a sexual act with a passenger in his two-door silver pickup.
When he’s done, the man, who is wearing a baseball cap, walks to a trailer chained to a fence, unhooks it and attaches the trailer to his pickup. He then drives off with the $1,200 trailer.
» VIDEO: Motorcyclist performs daring, illegal stunt on Florida’s Turnpike
The sheriff’s office is asking anyone with information about the burglary to contact them at 954-432-9000 or call Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS (8477).
Read more at the Broward Sheriff’s Office website.
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88 Miles Purple Hour: Get your question submitted BEFORE the ticket storm! THE CATCH: Instead of submitting it to Google Cloud support, it gets submitted to Yahoo! Answers.
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Three men, including one linked to a neo-fascist political party, were arrested with a bevy of weapons in northern Italy.
Police in Turin uncovered a stash of automatic weapons, Nazi paraphernalia, and an air-to-air missile.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
ROME (AP) — Police in northern Italy have detained three men, including one linked to a neo-fascist Italian political party, after uncovering a huge stash of automatic weapons, a missile and material featuring Nazi symbols.
Police said the discoveries stemmed from a previous investigation into Italians who took part in the Russian-backed insurgency in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
Automatic weapons and Nazi paraphernalia seized by police in Turin, Italy. Turin police
In a statement Monday, Turin police said one of the men arrested had in 2001 run unsuccessfully as a Senate candidate for the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party.
At his home in Gallarate, police found nine assault weapons, nearly 30 hunting rifles, pistols and bayonets as well as ammunition and antique Nazi plaques featuring swastikas.
Two other men were detained after police found a French-made air-to-air missile at an airport hangar that they apparently were seeking to sell.
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The Angels have added a pair of players out of the break, acquiring lefty Adam McCreery and catcher Josh Thole from the Dodgers in exchange for cash considerations.
The move will help bolster the Halos’ depth. It’ll also clear needed 40-man roster space for their cross-town rivals. The Dodgers activated outfielder A.J. Pollock today from the 60-day injured list. He’ll be joined by Corey Seager and David Freese in returning to the active roster.
Acquired last November, McCreery had yet to appear at the MLB level with the Dodgers but did hold a 40-man spot. In 35 2/3 upper-minors innings this season, he carries a 4.04 ERA with 9.8 K/9 and 5.8 BB/9. The southpaw briefly cracked the majors last year with Atlanta but has yet to receive a full opportunity — due in no small part to the fact that he has not yet conquered persistent walk problems.
The 30-year-old Thole was once a consistent presence in the majors, functioning mostly as a reserve backstop with the Mets and Blue Jays from 2009 through 2016. He hasn’t cracked the bigs since, however, and has mostly carried marginal offensive numbers at Triple-A that befit his lifetime .242/.313/.306 slash through 1,499 plate appearances at the game’s highest level.
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(CNN Business) Sephora will close all locations Wednesday to hold diversity training for its staff after R&B singer SZA accused the store of racial profiling in April.
In April, SZA tweeted about her experience in a Sephora in Calabasas, California, saying security was called because a staff member thought she was stealing from the store.
"Lmao Sandy Sephora location 614 Calabasas called security to make sure I wasn't stealing. We had a long talk. U have a blessed day Sandy," SZA tweeted.
Rapper SZA performs on the Coachella stage during week 1, day 1 of the Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival on April 13, 2018 in Indio, California.
Sephora responded to the tweet on May 1 saying, "You are a part of the Sephora family, and we are committed to ensuring every member of our community feels welcome and included at our stores."
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From Team Fortress Wiki
Some Sniper weapons may be banned in your league. For a list of banned weapons, please see the Weapon Ban List
The Sniper specializes in long range area denial. He is frequently used to get a pick on a Medic in case of a stalemate. He deals decent damage at close range, but not enough to match other classes.
Primary Weapon
The Sniper's primary weapons are his main source of damage, and constitutes his only long-range damage. All Sniper Rifles can be charged up to deal increased damage, and all but the Sydney Sleeper can deal headshots for guaranteed critical hits. All but the Huntsman provide a visible Sniper dot while scoped. The stock Sniper Rifle, Sydney Sleeper, Hitman's Heatmaker, and Bazaar Bargain can shoot without being scoped, dealing accurate but low damage.
Sniper Rifle
The stock Sniper Rifle provides the simplest source of damage. It can kill any enemy on a fully charged headshot, and can deal significant damage on a bodyshot. The AWPer Hand has the same stats as the stock Sniper Rifle.
Weapon Damage Critical damage Function Time Special Sniper Rifle
Uncharged: 50
50 Charge: 150 Critical, Uncharged: 150
150 Criticak, Charge: 450
450 Mini-Crit, Uncharged: 68
68 Mini-Crit, Charge: 203 Attack: 1.5s
1.5s Scope Delay: 0.2s
0.2s Charge Delay: 1.0s
1.0s Full Charge Time: 4s Has no damage fall-off or ramp-up.
Charge to 100% takes 3.3 seconds.
No Random Critical Hits.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Sniper Rifle in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Huntsman
The Huntsman is designed for medium range combat. It is affected by gravity, but fires faster than the stock Sniper Rifle. It has a limit on the time it can maintain full charge, and has less ammunition than the stock Sniper Rifle. The Fortified Compound has the same stats as the Huntsman.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Huntsman
Uncharged: 50
50 Charged: 120 Critical, Uncharged: 150
150 Critical, Charged: 360
360 Mini-Crit, Uncharged: 68
68 Mini-Crit, Charged: 162 Attack: 1.94s
1.94s Inaccuracy Delay: 5.0s
5.0s Full Charge Time: 1.0s Has no damage fall-off or ramp-up.
Projectiles are affected by gravity.
Arrows can be uncharged with alt-fire.
Arrows can be ignited to deal fire damage to the target.
Provides the Skewer taunt.
Enemies which are killed with an arrow near a wall may be pinned to it.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Huntsman in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Sydney Sleeper
The Sydney Sleeper provides a stronger support basis for the team. It sacrifices the ability to deal headshots at the benefit of applying Jarate to the target on scoped hits. It also has a 25% faster charge rate than the stock Sniper Rifle.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Sydney Sleeper
Uncharged: 50
50 Charged: 150 Critical, Uncharged: 150
150 Critical, Charged: 450
450 Mini-Crit, Uncharged: 68
68 Mini-Crit, Charged: 203 Attack: 1.5s
1.5s Charge: 2.8s
2.8s Jarate Delay: 1.06s
1.06s Jarate Effect Duration: 8s Has no damage fall-off or ramp-up.
On a scoped hit, the target is coated with Jarate for 2 to 5 seconds, depending on the charge level.
Scoped headshots always mini-crit and reduce the remaining cooldown of Jarate by 1 second.
+25% charge rate.
No headshots.
No random critical hits.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Sydney Sleeper in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Bazaar Bargain
The Bazaar Bargain has an initially slowed charge time, which increases with each headshot kill. It counts "heads obtained", up to a maximum of 7.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Bazaar Bargain
Uncharged: 50
50 Charged: 150 Critical, Uncharged: 150
150 Critical, Charged: 450
450 Mini-Crit, Uncharged: 68
68 Mini-Crit, Charged: 203 Attack: 1.5s
1.5s Afterscope Delay: 0.2s
0.2s Charge Delay: 1.0s
1.0s Full Charge Time: 4.95s (0 Heads) 1.65s (7 Heads) Has no damage fall-off or ramp-up.
Initially charges at 150% time of the stock Sniper Rifle. Decreases by 25% for each additional head, up to a maximum of 6 heads.
Head count is only affected by scoped shots. Each headshot kill adds one head.
No random critical hits.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Bazaar Bargain in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Machina
The Machina adds damage and piercing on full charge, but reveals the Sniper's location and prevents no-scopes. The Shooting Star has the same stats as the Machina.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Machina
Uncharged: 50
50 Charged: 173 Critical, Uncharged: 150
150 Critical, Charged: 518
518 Mini-Crit, Uncharged: 68
68 Mini-Crit, Charged: 233 Attack: 1.5s
1.5s Afterscope Delay: 0.2s
0.2s Charge Delay: 1.0s
1.0s Full Charge Time: 4s Has no damage fall-off or ramp-up.
Fires tracer rounds which leave visual trails.
Piercing damage is dealt to all targets in line, regardless if it kills any of them.
Deals 15% extra damage on full charge.
Cannot fire unless zoomed.
No random critical hits.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Machina in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Hitman's Heatmaker
The Hitman's Heatmaker provides a combo system on kills and assists which grants a speedier charge time and no need to reload while active. This comes at the cost of a 20% damage penalty on bodyshots.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Hitman's Heatmaker
Uncharged: 40
40 Charged: 120 Critical, Uncharged: 150
150 Critical, Charged: 450
450 Mini-Crit, Uncharged: 54
54 Mini-Crit, Charged: 162 Attack: 1.5s
1.5s Afterscope Delay: 0.2s
0.2s Charge Delay: 1.0s
1.0s Full Charge Time: 3.3s
3.3s Charge Time while in focus: 2.8s Has no damage fall-off or ramp-up.
Gain Focus on kills and assists. Each kill grants 1/3 the focus meter, and each assist grants 1/9. Focus activates on fire when the focus meter is full. In focus: +25% faster charge rate and no need to unscope. Focus can still be added while Focus is active.
-20% damage penalty on body shot.
No random critical hits.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Hitman's Heatmaker in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Primary Weapon Usage
The Sydney Sleeper and the Huntsman are uncommon choices, due to an overall reduced damage output, but can be useful to assist the team. The stock Sniper Rifle deals consistent long-range damage, and can kill most classes with a quick headshot. The Bazaar Bargain is good for a Sniper who can hit headshots consistently, thus ramping up the charge rate. The Machina is useful for dealing increased damage, or for getting multiple kills with a single shot. The Hitman's Heatmaker is good for extremely accurate Snipers, since consistent headshots can eliminate unscoping completely (at the cost of revealing your location). Snipers, due to their situational use, tend to go for the stock Sniper Rifle for quick and consistent damage without having to reveal their position.
Secondary Weapon
The Sniper deals the majority of his damage with his primary, but his secondary weapon can provide some key medium range combat damage.
SMG
The stock Submachine Gun deals strong damage at medium and close range, and can help the Sniper survive an encounter with a Scout.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special SMG
Point-Blank: 12
12 512 units: 8
8 Over 1024 units: 4 Critical: 24
24 Point-Blank Mini-crit: 16
16 Over 512 units: Mini-crit: 11 Attack: 0.1s
0.1s Reload: 1.1s If unfired in the past 1.25 seconds, the next shot has perfect accuracy.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the SMG in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
The Cleaner's Carbine
The Cleaner's Carbine functions similiarly to the stock Submachine Gun. It sacrifices 20% of it's clip size and 25% of it's firing speed for the ability to activate mini-crits for 8 seconds when needed.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Cleaner's Carbine
Point-Blank: 12
12 512 units: 8
8 Over 1024 units: 4 Critical: 24
24 Point-Blank Mini-crit: 16
16 Over 512 units: Mini-crit: 11 Attack: 0.13s
0.13s Reload: 1.1s If unfired in the past 1.25 seconds, the next shot has perfect accuracy.
Dealing damage fills the charge bar, completely filling it requires doing 100 damage with the weapon. When charged, secondary fire grants mini-crits for 8 seconds.
-20% clip size.
-25% slower firing speed.
No random critical hits.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Cleaner's Carbine in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Jarate
Jarate does not deal any immediate damage, but makes any normal damage dealt to coated players become Mini-crits.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Jarate
N/A N/A Effect Duration: 10s
10s Refill Time: 20s Normal damage against coated players is upgraded to mini-crit damage.
Extinguishes fire.
Removable in water.
Visible on cloaked or disguised Spies.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Jarate in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Razorback
The Razorback saves the Sniper from one backstab attempt from a Spy. It temporarily disables the Spy's knife after the stab.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Razorback
N/A N/A Time Restriction on Spy Knife: 2s Can be replaced at a resupply cabinet.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Razorback in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Darwin's Danger Shield
The Darwin's Danger Shield provides the Sniper with 50% fire damage resistance, and makes him immune to the effects of afterburn.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Darwin's Danger Shield
N/A N/A N/A Sniper gains 50% fire damage resistance.
Sniper gains immunity to the effects of afterburn.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Darwin's Danger Shield in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Cozy Camper
The Cozy Camper prevents the player's scoped view from jumping when they take damage, however only with full charge. It regenerates the wearer's health by +1 per second, slowly increasing to +4 health per second when no damage is taken.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Cozy Camper
N/A N/A N/A Knockback is reduced by 20% while scoped. No flinching when aiming and fully charged.
Huntsman is affected similarly by charging an arrow.
+1 health regenerated per second, increasing to +4 over the course of 8 seconds.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Cozy Camper in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Secondary Weapon Usage
The stock Submachine Gun provides high damage output at close range, making it a strong option to deal with enemies. Jarate can help a push if it hits multiple enemies, and the Razorback and Darwin's Danger Shield provide more passive effects which are rarely useful in competitive play (but can save your life in some situations). The Cozy Camper is useful for increasing survivability, making for a more aggressive Sniper play style. The stock Submachine Gun provides the Sniper with better deathmatch capabilities, and is thus a popular choice in competitive play.
Melee Weapon
The Sniper's melee weapon is rarely used, but deals damage in a pinch.
Kukri
The stock Kukri deals standard damage, and can have use if out of ammo.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Kukri
Melee: 65 Critical: 195
195 Mini-crit: 88 Attack: 0.8s Stock melee weapon.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Kukri in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Tribalman's Shiv
The Tribalman's Shiv deals reduced initial damage, but comes with a bleeding effect. With the initial damage and bleeding combined, it deals more damage in a single hit than the Kukri, unless the victim finds a source of healing fast enough.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Tribalman's Shiv
Melee: 33
33 Bleed: 8 per second (48 total) Critical: 98
98 Mini-crit: 44
44 Mini-crit Bleeding: 10.8 per second (64.8 total) Attack: 0.8s On Hit: Bleed for 6 seconds.
-50% damage penalty.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Tribalman's Shiv in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Bushwacka
The Bushwacka deals critical damage where it would normally deal mini-crit damage. The Sniper takes an additional 20% damage while the Bushwacka is active.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Bushwacka
Melee: 65 Critical: 195 Attack: 0.8s Crits whenever it would normally mini-crit. Cannot deal mini-crit damage.
+20% vulnerability to damage when active
No random critical hits.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Bushwacka in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Shahanshah
The Shahanshah deals increased damage when the Sniper is below 50% health, and reduced damage when he is above 50% health.
Weapon Damage Critical Damage Function Times Special Shahanshah
Melee when below 50%: 49
49 Melee when above 50%: 81 Critical when below 50%: 146
146 Critical when above 50%: 244
244 Minicrit when below 50%: 66
66 Minicrit when above 50%: 110 Attack: 0.8s Deals 25% additional damage when below 50% health.
Deals 25% less damage when above 50% health. Affects melee only.
Below is a table displaying the availability of the Shahanshah in the Global 6v6 Whitelist.
Melee Weapon Usage
Sniper melee usage is rare, but often effective. The stock Kukri deals little damage compared to others, and is rarely useful. The Tribalman's Shiv can deal great damage to a Scout or Soldier who cannot get back to their Medic in time, whereas the Bushwacka deals immense damage in combination with Jarate, but means the Sniper dies very fast to a Pyro. The Shahanshah can deal immense damage to an unsuspecting player if the Sniper is at low health, but if confronted when at high health is a detriment. Most Snipers use the Shiv for increased overall damage, or use the Bushwacka, counting on the rarity of Pyros.
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It’s that time of year again. Minimal explanation needed – eleven starts and eleven substitutes.
Joe Hart, Manchester City
An extremely consistent campaign. There’s only so much you can say about a good goalkeeper – Hart made some very good saves, and mistakes were few and far between. He’s a good shot-stopper, he’s comfortable at dealing with crosses, he’s a vocal leader at the back – and his distribution has improved, although it’s probably still weaker than Europe’s other top goalkeepers. 17 goals conceded in 38 games is an extremely impressive record – the defence clearly plays a large part, but Hart’s role is unquestionable.
Stephan Lichtsteiner, Juventus
Perhaps the revelation of the season. Lichtsteiner was a fine player at Lazio, but more steady than spectacular, and most accustomed to playing as a wing-back. His move to Juventus has resulted in the best season of his career, capable of playing either in a back four or further forward in conjunction with a back three. Tireless running has been the main feature of his play, although he’s also very good with the ball at his feet. His relationship with Andrea Pirlo – where Lichtsteiner constantly arrived late around the back of the defence to meet crossfield passes, was particularly enjoyable. His best performance, in a tactical sense, was in the away win at Inter, when his driving runs dragged the entire Inter side out of shape.
Vincent Kompany, Manchester City
The best centre-back in Europe settled the key game in European football this year. Always fearsome in the air and excellent positionally, Kompany’s become a better all-round defender this season, more capable of tracking his man into deep zones. He also scored arguably the key goal of the European domestic season – heading home in Manchester City’s 1-0 win over Manchester United that meant the title race was in City’s hands.
Mats Hummels, Dortmund
A second consecutive appearance for a player who has now confirmed himself as one of the continent’s best defenders. Hummels has the lot – he’s technically impressive but also capable of doing scrappy defensive things in the penalty box. He’s essentially the complete modern centre-back, and his partnership with Neven Subotic has probably been the best in Europe over the past two seasons.
Jordi Alba, Valencia
Left-back might currently be the weakest position in European football – and there wasn’t a great deal of competition for places here. Jordi Alba has enjoyed another fine campaign, however, resulting in constant speculation that he’ll join Barcelona this summer, the position Pep Guardiola never quite solved during his four years in charge. Alba is at his best when used in conjunction with Jeremy Mathieu – another left-back pushed forward to the left of midfield. Mathieu provides the powerful, direct running, while Alba is slighter and trickier on the ball. He still needs to improve on his defending – he gets booked far too frequently – but technically he’s probably the best left-back around.
Andrea Pirlo, Juventus
The Serie A season came to be defined by Pirlo’s switch from Milan to Juventus last summer. Even those who believed it was a fantastic signing wouldn’t have expected Pirlo to perform so consistently throughout the campaign. Fielded very deep in midfield with Claudio Marchisio and Arturo Vidal powerfully closing down higher up the pitch, Pirlo was given time and space on the ball by too many opponents and dictated the play in almost every match he played.
Yaya Toure, Manchester City
Consistently turns in excellent performances in big games – his two goals over Newcastle were crucial in Manchester City’s title victory, having been moved forward from a deep-lying midfield role to a position where he could influence the game in the final third. He’s an all-round force: physically impressive but also a reliable passer of the ball, and his sudden bursts forward from midfield, when combined with neat interplay from higher up the pitch, were almost unstoppable.
Santi Cazorla, Malaga
Possibly the signing of the season, despite the significant transfer fee. Cazorla swapped Villarreal for Malaga – and as Villarreal went from 4th to 18th, Malaga went from 11th to 4th. He’s not the only reason, of course, as Malaga have shelled out other star names, but his consistency over the course of the season has been highly commendable. He’s not particularly fast and doesn’t score many goals from open play, but his positioning and movement marks him out as one of the most intelligent players around – he’s selfless and precise with his passing, and also one of the best free-kick takers in Europe.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid
46 goals wasn’t enough to win him the Pichichi, but with his first league title at Real Madrid in the bag, he probably won’t mind. Of the 46, Ronaldo’s goal away at Barcelona in the Nou Camp was the most decisive and one of the most telling: it was not only a cool finish, but it was assisted by Mesut Ozil, who has provided Ronaldo with more of his goals at Real than anyone else. Like the next man on the list, he might not play as an out-and-out striker, but his position on the left flank is probably where he’s at his most prolific – he’s able to cut inside onto his right foot and thump the ball from distance. He had 62 more shots than any other player in Europe this season, and that constant threat is his main feature.
Lionel Messi, Barcelona
Having ended the season without the league title for the first time since 2008, Messi will probably consider 2011/12 something of a disappointment. Yet 73 goals in 60 games is ridiculous total – it is, put simply, the highest number of goals any player has ever scored in a European campaign. It’s more incredible when you consider that he’s not simply an out-and-out goalscorer: his role this season has varied: sometimes a poacher, sometimes a false nine, sometimes more of a number ten. He’s Europe’s best goalscorer and also one of Europe’s best providers: in the major five leagues, only Mesut Ozil assisted more goals than Messi. The consistency he’s shown in the past four years is startling, and possibly unprecedented.
Falcao, Atletico Madrid
It was difficult to choose between various strikers this year – Falcao, Robin van Persie, Olivier Giroud, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Mario Gomez were all contenders. But Falcao’s performance in the Europa League final sealed his place – he won that final almost single-handedly for the second successive year, with two brilliant and varied goals: the first a curler from the edge of the box, the second a thumped finish after an audacious Puskas-style dragback on the edge of the six-yard box. He scored 24 league goals too, a higher percentage of his team’s goals than any of the aforementioned players. He is a pure number nine and yet also brilliant to watch.
Substitutes:
Gianluigi Buffon, Juventus
Lukasz Piszczek, Dortmund
Thiago Silva, Milan
Sergio Ramos, Real Madrid
Giorgio Chiellini, Juventus
Xavi Hernandez, Barcelona
Arturo Vidal, Juventus
Marco Reus, Borussia Mönchengladbach
David Silva, Manchester City
Robin van Persie, Arsenal
Olivier Giroud, Montpellier
Related articles on Zonal Marking:
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Looking for the best scary games? Whether you're into jump scares, interactive fiction, thematically interesting stories or just large men running after you with a chainsaw, we've filled this list with a wide variety of games that'll hopefully freak you the hell out.
Like our lists of best strategy games, best FPS games, and best free PC games, we tried to focus on a variety of horror experiences that still hold up well today, though we've expanded the remit slightly to include a few retro curios as well. For more, also check out our overall list of the best games to play today.
Resident Evil 2
(Image credit: Capcom)
Capcom's Resident Evil 2 remake does something that almost doesn't seem possible after decades of horror games: it makes zombies seem scary again. The shambling horde feels properly menacing—seemingly unstoppable lumps of slow, shambling flesh that beat down doors, spill through windows and just keep coming. This is a return to the survival horror style that made Resident Evil famous, and a clever reimagining of one of its most iconic locations. It's a treat for those of us who played the original, but also an accomplished and clever horror game in its own right.
If you prefer your scares in first-person, Resident Evil 7 also remains a grisly treat—especially the creepy first half.
Control
(Image credit: Remedy Entertainment)
It's not horror in the traditional sense—undeads, gore, teens making terrible decisions—but Remedy's latest excels at surreal bureaucratic dread. As the new director of the Bureau of Control, you explore a strange, shifting office full of possessed workers, mysterious objects of power and The Board—an ominous inverted pyramid that speaks almost exclusively in synonyms. And hey, if you do need some honest-to-god terror, just watch an episode of the game's in-universe puppet show, Threshold Kids.
System Shock 2
Before BioShock was BioShock, it was System Shock: an altogether freakier combination of RPG and FPS, and one that in its second (and best) iteration told the story of a rogue AI on a haunted spaceship—that rogue AI being the incomparably uppercase SHODAN. The murderous artificial consciousness paved the way for GlaDOS of course, but its the combination of meaningful character advancement, rewarding exploration, horrifying enemies and (at the time) the novel use of audio diaries that make System Shock 2 such a memorable horror game. It was essentially Deus Ex on a spaceship—if you've ever played Deus Ex, or been on a spaceship, you can imagine how delectable that sounds.
Alien Isolation
The best Alien game ever, by a long way, Alien: Isolation stars the smartest, scariest enemy in any game. The Xenomorph's killer instinct is matched only by its curiosity. It learns more about the Sevastopol's nooks and crannies as it hunts you over the course of 12 hours, ripping doors off closets and peering under tables in search of prey. The motion tracker can help you to avoid its grasp, but it can sense the sound, and even the gentle green light of its screen, making every glance a risk. When the game forces you into the vents and you can hear the creature in there with you, Isolation becomes one of the scariest games ever made.
Oxenfree
(Image credit: Night School Studio)
An eerie indie treat, Oxenfree stars a group of teens who become trapped on an island full of strange and mysterious happenings. The real joy is the banter between your friends (and grudging acquaintances), which mimics the fast-paced witty dialogue of a good teen horror flick. As you progress, the island becomes increasingly strange and unnerving, and Oxenfree deploys some clever tricks to hold your attention and keep you second guessing throughout this ghostly yarn.
Man of Medan
(Image credit: Supermassive Games)
Man of Medan, like most horror movies, is best experienced with mates. You control a group of friends stuck on a ghost ship, exploring and making split-second decisions that may very well end in death. It's a tricky ship where you can't trust your eyes, or your co-op partner, who might be seeing something entirely different. It's B-movie fare, but the jump scares are top quality and you'll be a paranoid wreck by the end.
Darkest Dungeon
(Image credit: Red Hook Studios)
Darkest Dungeon is cruel roguelike where stress is a lot more trouble than the armies of monsters your squad will have to slay. There are plenty of external horrors, but it's the impact they have on your adventurers that will unravel your journeys under the haunted mansion and beyond. They'll develop vices and fears and personality traits that make subsequent adventures harder, forcing you to find more and more victims to toss into the meat grinder.
Outlast 2
As a trial-and-error stealth game, Outlast 2 might not be for everyone, but thematically it's among the more interesting games on this list. Playing as a journalist searching for a missing woman in Arizona, your wife is then kidnapped early on by a deranged cult, the origins of which are told through snippets of letters during the game. You navigate dark environments using the night vision mode of your camera, and it's just scary as heck, with a whole village wanting you dead and some of the most gruelling imagery ever put into a game.
Inside
An unrelentingly bleak platformer that puts you through a gauntlet of hellish imagery: creepy mermaids, security robots, people hunting you down, nasty weather and more that we won't spoil here. Inside's vision of a cruel dystopian world that's out to kill you at all times is extraordinary, even if the moment-to-moment platforming is pretty familiar and can be frustrating. You're mainly playing it to experience the setting, really.
See also Little Nightmares, a similar type of horror platformer that isn't as scary but is arguably just as inventive.
IMSCARED
Don't be put off by IMSCARED's rather tedious "A Pixelated Nightmare" tagline—it is easily one of the most unsettling games available today. But it's also a tough one to pitch, because much of its terror lies in the surprises that shouldn't be ruined by a meagre 150 word-long recommendation. Know that it borrows from 90's horror games via its aesthetic and fourth wall-breaking, file-bothering makeup; and that it consistently strives to surprise and keep players guessing. Understand that it'll play with your emotions, and drop you into a confused and confusing world while incessantly goading you till its final breath.
Don't expect jump scares, but do expect to be scared enough to jump from your chair. The 2012 GameJolt version of IMSCARED is free, while the full, extended version is cheap as chips over on Steam . If you think we're at all grandstanding here, please be our guest and give it a try. We'll be hiding behind the couch.
Thumper
A rhythm action nightmare in which you play a silver beetle speeding down a track into the mouth of a huge demented boss head. Death comes quickly. Miss a couple of turns and you're dashed into a million glittering pieces against the courses metal banks. Miss a beat in the gaze of the ring-shaped guard robots and they'll hurtle towards you, lasers blazing. All the while the ambient soundtrack pulses uneasily and the the rhythms become faster, and more erratic. The effect is one of tense, compressed dread. Probably best to play Thumper in short bursts only.
Silent Hill 2
We can all agree that Silent Hill 2 is the best in the series, and although Konami have never made much of an effort with the PC versions, if you factor in mods and texture/resolution tweaks this is probably the best way to play it these days—even if prices for the (extremely rare) retail copies can be pretty extortionate. It was the first game to really push the idea of horror narratives as subjective, fluid and untrustworthy things, with a story that invites interpretation and a semi-sentient city that warps and shifts itself to fit the damaged psyches of its inhabitants. The confusing cult nonsense of the first and third games was pushed to the backburner for the more personal story of a psychologically damaged widower battling his way through a foggy purgatory populated by zombie-things, dog-things, and whatever the hell Pyramid Head was.
Sylvio
Whereas the likes of Silent Hill and Fatal Frame rely on radios to alert players to otherworldly adversaries, Sylvio uses sound, EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) and audio manipulation as its central ideas. Not only that, the game builds its entire gorgeously creepy world around this principle theme as players strive to uncover its backstories, bizarre plot twists, and insights into its unsettling unknown—all of which is backed up by some stellar voice acting. Generic first-person horror this ain't, and while it does occasionally force tedious combat set pieces upon players, it thrives in its quirky, idiosyncratic moments that are filled with atmosphere and character and dread. Sylvio is a thinking game and is unique within the horror genre.
Anchorhead
Horror games owe a significant debt to HP Lovecraft, and not just because he's long dead and his work is out of copyright. Plenty of games (too many, really) have included references to his brand of cosmic horror, but Anchorhead is more inspired than most, drawing from several of his novels and stories to tell the tale of the a married couple who have inherited an old mansion in a creepy New England town. The sedate exploration of the game's opening segments eventually give way to tense, turn-limited puzzles as you struggle to stop an ancient, possibly world-ending ritual from being completed. No pressure then. It's free, and you can play it in your browser .
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Amnesia: The Dark Descent casts you as Daniel, an amnesiac who wakes up in a mostly deserted castle that must be explored in search of escape. Frictional draw on all of their experience creating atmospheric, exploratory horror in the Penumbra series to fill Amnesia's fortress with an oppressive and lingering sense of foreboding. Expect distant echoing noises, strange rumbles behind the walls, and to start seeing half-formed dark figures in the ambiguous candlelight. There's a monster, too, stalking you through the corridors. The perennial rule of horror creatures—that they're less scary once you've seen and understood them—certainly applies here, but Dark Descent is still a must-play horror game.
Pathologic 2
(Image credit: TinyBuild Games)
Pathologic 2 is nasty. It will sit on your hard-drive like a gangrenous limb, in need of amputation. If this sounds like a criticism, it isn't. Beyond the dirty, putrefied atmosphere, Pathologic 2 is weird and theatrical, frequently breaking the fourth wall and questioning your role as the player. You have 12 days to save a town afflicted by disease, paranoia, mob justice, and paranormal happenings. That ticking clock isn't just for show—events unfold in real-time and you have to make difficult decisions about what you want to do and who you want to save. It's exhausting, yes. It's gruelling, yes. But it's also unique and unforgettable.
The Evil Within 2
(Image credit: Bethesda)
Not content with resting on Shinji Mikami's reputation—he's the man responsible for the best Resident Evil games, as well as God Hand and Vanquish—The Evil Within 2 swaps the purer survival horror of the first game with a more open world full of grotesque and at times stomach-churning sights. This is a psychological horror that aims to find terror away from pure jump scares. It's intense, often thrilling and definitely ambitious.
Of course, if you want the more traditional approach, the first The Evil Within is also worth checking out.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos should be a ripe playground for gaming scares. It rarely works out like that; the fiction often put to use in ways that fail to convey the sheer magnitude of its ancient and maddening horror. Despite the bugs and the clunkiness, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is a first-person survival horror that both stays true to its source, and provides a multitude of ideas through its many and varied levels. You'll go from escaping an assassination, to being hunted by cultists, to fighting off Shoggoths and Deep Ones.
Cry of Fear
(Image credit: Team Psykskallar)
Every minute, roughly fifty billion jump-scare-laden horror games are added to itch.io and Game Jolt, but very few take you on a journey (or at least one that doesn't begin and end in the same dim corridor). Built on the shambling bones of the Half-Life 1 engine, Cry of Fear is at times an FPS, at other times a survival horror and puzzle game, and at all times a cinematically minded experience clearly inspired by the game it's built upon. Many of the best horrors combine genres like this, from Dead Space to FEAR, so it's great to have another horror game that understands the value of variety.
FEAR
FEAR is a better shooter than a horror game, but is worthy of note for referencing Asian cinema with its creepy villain, Alma, a little girl who can rip people apart with her thoughts. FEAR also exploited the first person perspective to create jump-scares, using ladders and narrow corridors to funnel the player's view through a rollercoaster of linear frights. You catch glimpses of Alma in the corner of a room as lightbulbs shatter, you'll suddenly see her feet at the top of a ladder as you descend, and there's a gratuitous corridor of blood, because The Shining deserves a nod every now and then. First person horror techniques have been honed into a more concentrated horror experience by games like Outlast, but FEAR does let you pin clone soldiers to walls with a stake gun, and kick them in the face in slow motion as they scream “FUUUUUUU” in a low-pitched, slurry expression of terror. The psychological horror themes persisted in FEAR's sequels—FEAR 2: Project Origin and FEAR 3.
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Horrified mother finds a Xanax pill hidden inside plastic egg her four-year-old daughter got on a school Easter hunt
Students at Huron Park Elementary School in Roseville, Michigan, were each told to bring in seven plastic eggs on Wednesday
They were to be filled with candy and taped close
Amber Pruchniewski said her four-year-old daughter came home with several and that she found a white pill in one of them among jellybeans
The pill was a single dose of Alprazolam, a generic form of Xanax
Police are now involved and said the incident appears 'intentional and criminal'
Police in Michigan believe a Xanax pill found inside a plastic egg during a pre-school Easter hunt on Wednesday was placed there on purpose as a prank.
Authorities say the children at Huron Park Elementary School in Roseville were told to each bring in seven of the plastic eggs, which were to be filled with candy and taped shut.
With 30 to 40 students involved, hundreds of the eggs were hidden in the garden by teachers for the hunt.
Shocked: Michigan mom Amber Pruchniewski found a generic Xanax pill inside an easter egg her daughter was given at school Pruchniewski said her daughter (pictured) said her daughter brought several plastic eggs following an Easter hunt at school, and that the prescription-only pill was found inside one of them Amber Pruchniewski explains in a TV interview how she wants to find out who put the pill in her daughter's Easter egg
Mother Amber Pruchniewski said her four-year-old daughter came home with several that day.
When her little girl was going through the findings on the floor, Pruchniewski noticed a white pill among jellybeans in one of the casings.
The pill turned out to be single dose of Alprazolam, a generic form of Xanax.
'I just want to know who did it - it's careless,' Pruchniewski told Fox News.
She took the pill into the school the next day and tshowed the principal.
The police were then brought in.
Police Chief Donald Glandon told WWJ-TV he thinks the incident was 'intentional and criminal', but that it's still too early to identify a possible suspect.
Dangerous: The egg was one of hundreds used in the Easter hunt. Each child at the school were told to bring in seven filled with candy and taped shut
Superintendent of Roseville Community Schools, John Kment, said no other parents had reported anything strange resulting from the egg hunt.
He said a letter was sent home to all parents advising them of the incident.
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ROME — As Italy begins to ease some lockdown measures Tuesday in an effort to kick-start its languishing economy, some shop owners and workers tell NBC News they’re anxious that the restrictions are being lifted too soon.
Sergio Ricci, who works at a bookstore in central Rome, said news of the government decision came suddenly and had not given him and others enough time to prepare.
"The first reaction I had when I understood we were going to reopen the store was uncertainty,” Ricci, 46, said. "Economically it is a relief, but honestly I am worried because the main risk is that the managing costs of reopening will exceed the earnings.”
On Monday, Italy reached the grim milestone of 20,000 coronavirus deaths — the second highest in the world after the United States. Nearly 160,000 coronavirus cases have so far been confirmed, but health officials have been optimistic about the epidemic flattening out in recent days.
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The few businesses greenlighted to reopen — mainly shops selling books, stationery and children's clothes — are still required to follow strict safety protocols, according to the government. Social distancing inside the stores is compulsory, with customers having to wear protective masks and gloves. Shops will also have to be sanitized twice a day and ensure proper ventilation.
Even with these precautions, Ricci said the health risks are “too high.”
The wider containment measures will still be in place until at least May 3, the Italian government announced last week.
Government officials have not explained how they made the decision on what businesses to reopen first. The country’s culture minister said last week that reopening of bookstores was not a symbolic gesture, but recognition that books can be “an essential good” for people stuck in their homes.
Despite the nationwide decree to open certain stores, some regions of Italy are exercising their powers of partial autonomy and keeping those businesses shut.
Four regions, including the hard-hit northern regions of Piedmont, Lombardy and Trentino-Alto Adige, as well as Campania in the southwest, said they will not reopen any stores until May 3. Meanwhile, the central region of Lazio, where Rome is located, will not reopen bookstores and stationery shops until April 20, the regional council ruled, to allow business owners more time to prepare.
A man walks past a closed store on Tuesday, as the Italian government allows the reopening of some shops while a nationwide lockdown continues. Antonio Parrinello / Reuters
Rocco Pinto, a bookstore owner in Turin in the Piedmont region, which has the third-highest death toll in the country, said that regardless of his local government’s decision, he decided that to reopen his business right now was too much of a risk.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak
Pinto, 61, said his cousin is hospitalized with COVID-19 and his brother is busy fighting the disease on the front lines at a local hospital, so he feels like the threat of the pandemic is very much still a danger.
“It seems to me it is inappropriate to reopen, even if I have all the will to see my clients again,” he said. “Bookstores are places where people meet, talk and spend time. It’s definitely too risky to reopen now.”
Malou Visco Comandini and Lidia Sirna reported from Rome, Michele Novaga from Milan, Yuliya Talmazan from London.
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Hair is too long It covers my North Face logo
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The BJP stands to gain by not rushing in to fill the space vacated by a fractious coalition
The fall of the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka, at the culmination of weeks of political skulduggery, hardly marks the end of uncertainty and the beginning of stability for the State. The crisis in the ruling coalition had crippled governance, even as allegations of bribing and kidnapping of legislators by the Opposition BJP emerged. The coalition tried every trick to hold its flock together, but to no avail. Howsoever delayed, the inevitable happened on Tuesday as the government led by H. D. Kumaraswamy lost a trust vote in the Assembly. In a House shrunken by the resignation of several coalition MLAs, the BJP, which had won 105 seats in the 2018 election, had a majority. Its protestations notwithstanding, the BJP has been instrumental in engineering the rebellion. Regardless of the claims of both sides, it would be difficult to concede that their slugfest had to do with any principles. The legislators who resigned from the Assembly have demonstrated a remarkable disregard for the people’s mandate, and their excuses for doing so are shallow and dishonest. This drama must end, at least now.
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Photo : Getty
On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled in a five-to-four decision that law enforcement generally must obtain a warrant to gather cellphone location data from network providers. In an age where virtually everyone is carrying a location-tracking device, the decision is a huge win for privacy advocates.
The case of Carpenter v. United States was expected to set new standards for the application of the Third Party Doctrine, a precedent set in the ‘70s and ‘80s that maintains a suspect gives up their expectation of privacy if they share information with a third party. When it comes to the location data an individual shares with a telecom, the ACLU argued that police should have to go through the usual standards of demonstrating probable cause when getting a warrant to collect location data. Nathaniel Wessler, a staff attorney for the ACLU, told Gizmodo last November, “The court four decades ago could not possibly have imagined the world we live in today, where it’s really impossible to go through our daily lives without records of our most private activities being saved on the servers of companies we have relationships with.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion in which he insisted today’s decision is narrow. “We hold only that a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” he wrote. Roberts specifically said the ruling does not weigh-in on the legality of real-time cell site location information (CSLI) or “a download of information on all the devices that connected to a particular cell site during a particular.”
All the court is saying today is that in the case of obtaining location records from a cellphone company, police will need to demonstrate probable cause. Previously, the Stored Communications Act set the precedent that law enforcement need only go to court and demonstrate “specific and articulable facts showing that there are reasonable grounds to believe” what could be found in the records might be relevant and material to a criminal investigation. Probable cause carries more strict and codified standards in its application. The court did give the exception that a warrant does not necessarily have to be obtained in cases in which there could be an immediate threat or danger to life.
The case began with a man named Timothy Ivory Carpenter who was sentenced to 116 years in prison for his role in a string of robberies at various RadioShack stores in Michigan and Ohio. Police had witnesses and surveillance footage placing Carpenter at the locations at which the robberies took place, but they also used 186 pages of documents obtained from cell carrier that outlined his call history and location data. The records comprised data over the course of 127 days and included unrelated information about Carpenter’s movements including where he slept at night and how often he attended church.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “because location information is continually logged for all of the 400 million devices in the United States—not just those belonging to persons who might happen to come under investigation— this newfound tracking capacity runs against everyone.” The Justice worried that “police need not even know in advance whether they want to follow a particular individual, or when,” and argued this violated the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections. “Only the few without cell phones could escape this tireless and absolute surveillance,” the Justice said.
There’s still reason to believe that further debate on the issue will be hashed out in the courts. Roberts’ pronouncement that the court holds only that “a warrant is required in the rare case where the suspect has a legitimate privacy interest in records held by a third party,” is vague enough that it could be contentious.
The ACLU appears to be more than pleased with the ruling. In a press release it quoted Harold Gurewitz, an attorney who worked alongside the civil liberties organization on the Carpenter case, as saying, “The court’s decision is a vindication of the arguments we have persistently made on behalf of Timothy Carpenter throughout this litigation — that the Constitution’s privacy protections fully apply to the digital location data created by using cell phones.”
[Supreme Court of the United States]
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Skokie, IL — There’s a new suitor for Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau.
The Hawks, a team that plays in a local youth league in Skokie, a northern suburb of Chicago, is currently looking for a new coach to take over the team this summer. The team is coming off a season in which it finished in sixth place in a six-team league and feels Thibodeau is the perfect candidate to turn the team’s fortunes around.
“I coached the team last year,” said Ed Reynolds, whose 11-year old son Jack plays point guard on the team. “But between my full-time job and just being a father to three other children, I don’t have the time I need to truly turn this rag-tag group of kids around. The talent is there, they just need someone to mold it, and I believe Tom Thibodeau could do just that.”
Thibodeau currently has three years remaining on a recently signed contract with the NBA’s Chicago Bulls, but there has been a lot of speculation about his future with the team over the last year due to a perceived rift between him and the Bulls front office. At various times over the last 12 months Thibodeau has been linked to jobs with the New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies.
It’s an unusual situation for a coach to be traded to another team, but last summer the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers pulled off a swap that saw Doc Rivers leave Boston to take over in Los Angeles. Now other teams seem interested in pulling off a similar deal.
“If Doc Rivers could give up a Boston Celtics team where he won an NBA title to take over a franchise as historically bad as the Clippers, surely Tom Thibodeau would be willing to leave a Bulls team where he hasn’t won for a chance to in the Skokie Youth League championship,” said Reynolds.
“Plus, wouldn’t he want to leave behind all the giant egos of NBA superstars to mold the young impressionable minds of tomorrow’s giant egos?”
The problem, Reynolds admits, is that he’s not sure what he could offer the Bulls in a trade.
“We do have the first pick in the draft this summer after coming in sixth last season, so we could trade the Bulls that draft pick. If they’ve been willing to wait on European players like Toni Kukoc and Nikola Mirotic, they should be willing to wait for a 10-year old with unlimited potential.”
Reynolds says he has called Bulls general manager Gar Forman and left several messages, but is still waiting for his calls to be returned.
Keep up to date with everything in Chicago sports by following The Chicago Homer on Twitter.
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REGINA -- An organization that bills itself as the voice of rural Saskatchewan is calling for consideration, patience and understanding following the acquittal of a farmer in the shooting death of a young Indigenous man.
The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities says in a statement that it believes people in the province are better united than divided and that it takes community to build a healthy, strong rural Saskatchewan.
A jury on Friday acquitted Gerald Stanley of second-degree murder in the death of Colten Boushie.
The 22-year-old member of the Red Pheasant First Nation died on Stanley's farm near Biggar in August 2016.
The association says it will continue to cultivate relationships with the Federation of Sovereign Indian Nations and the Office of the Treaty Commissioner to find areas of common ground to advance all communities.
SARM says it has a rural Indigenous working group to help guide it.
"SARM recognizes that all municipalities need to work together," president Ray Orb said in the statement. "We are committed to working with our membership in promoting co-operation with our First Nation neighbours."
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Days before an Oregon state senator was due to leave his post over sexual misconduct allegations, the Republican from rural downstate published a newsletter on Facebook casting himself as a victim of politics.
Oregon state Sen. Jeff Kruse of Roseburg had previously announced he was resigning March 15 after an investigation determined he had harassed women with unwelcome physical contact.
But on Friday, he said he resigned without the extent of his due process so as not to distract from the legislative session's business.
He also made a plea for his legacy to be remembered aside from his swift downfall, which he called a scripted "soap opera" designed for political gain.
The independent investigator in response urged the public to read the report detailing years of inappropriate behavior.
Here's the entire statement published Friday by Kruse.
MY FINAL NEWSLETTER
(MAYBE)
I did miss sending these during the February Session that just ended, but I also missed doing my job. For those who don't know, I was accused of sexual harassment by two female Senators. Basically, this was all part of the 'me too' movement that has swept the country. Interestingly I was not actually accused of things of a sexual nature, just inappropriate things like hugs, which have gone on in the Legislature for the whole twenty plus years I have served. The whole thing was scripted and designed to a specific end, in my opinion for the potential political gain of a few. When it became apparent that those in power were not interested in the truth I had a hard decision to make. I really wanted to have a chance for my side of this to be heard, but I wasn't sure that would happen based on the bias the media had already demonstrated.
I have always put the Legislature and all that it means ahead of personal needs or wishes. When it became apparent that the majority party had already decided what the outcome was going to be even before all the information was available, it left me with two choices. The first would have been to go through the whole process, which would have been a major distraction especially during the short session, knowing what the outcome would be. The second was to resign so the Legislature could focus on the real business. Even though I truly wanted my due process rights I chose to resign, in the best interest of the Senate. Having said that, I would suggest those making the allegations might actually have been putting other priorities first.
I have a lot more I could say on this subject, for example the incredible bias demonstrated by the 'independent investigator,' but maybe I should stop here. There was nothing fair or honest about any of this. Prime example, two members of the House were accused of worse things than I was, but because they are Democrats nothing happened. The benefits of one party rule.
It has been my honor to serve in the Legislature for the last 22 years and I have always tried to do what I thought was the right thing. I hope that some of you will remember me for my work and not this soap opera I have been going through. I appreciate all of the communications over the years as they have been very helpful. With that I will say good bye for now.
Sincerely,
Senator Jeff Kruse
-- The Associated Press
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Web truths: CSS is not real programming Tuesday, September 19th, 2017 at 11:14 am
This is part of the web truths series of posts.
Every few months there is an article claiming that CSS is not real programming. That CSS is too hard and broken. The language used in these can get creative:
People have some ... um ... intense feelings about CSS. pic.twitter.com/dDspAM8i2F — Dave Rupert (@davatron5000) September 18, 2017
There is truth to the fact that working with CSS is not traditional programming. There is also truth that CSS has its language faults and that some things are much harder than they should be. That is the case with any standardised language, though. CSS is a way to describe what an interface should be like. It is not the implementation of said interface in a programmatic fashion, like, for example, the Canvas API. That CSS is not like a traditional programming language is by design.
CSS is a great idea when it comes to creating an interface for something as complex and unknown as a user on the web. I talked about the difference of CSS and JavaScript in detail at GOTO Amsterdam where I called it a decision between trust and control.
As a CSS developer, you trust the user agent (in most cases a browser) to do the right thing. You can’t control that it happens, but you also don’t need to sweat the details like performance, paint time and responsiveness. This ball is in the court of the user agent creators and the OS it runs on. And that is a great thing as it allows to fix those important things in one place – where they get applied. If you create interfaces or animations using JavaScript, you have much more granular control. But you also need to ensure everything works. Using CSS means giving up control for the sake of having more time to build a responsive interface catering to the users’ needs. Users need and can mess with your interface settings. CSS is OK with that. Pixel-perfect, defined interfaces are not.
CSS development isn’t programming in the traditional sense where you have loops, conditions and variables. CSS is going that direction to a degree and Sass paved the way. But the most needed skill in CSS is not syntax. It is to understand what interfaces you describe with it. And how to ensure that they are flexible enough that users can’t do things wrong and get locked out. You can avoid a lot of code when you understand HTML and use CSS to style it.
If you don’t consider an interface as an agreement with your users with various levels of fidelity depending on their technical platform, CSS isn’t for you. It is by design a forgiving language, that doesn’t throw any errors when something can’t get applied. Thus it is amazing for progressive enhancement. You don’t even need to worry about adding a line of unsupported code as the parser skips what it can’t apply. What causes a JavaScript parser to throw in the towel and give you an error message, the CSS parser shrugs off and moves on. That can feel odd for a developer – I for one like to know when something went wrong. But it frees you from needing to test on all possible user agents and put “if” statements around everything. Want to use a gradient on button? Define a background color, then override it with a gradient in the next line. If the user agent can’t render gradients, you get a simpler, but still working button. And you didn’t need to worry about gradient support at all.
A lot of “CSS is not real programming” arguments are a basic misunderstanding what CSS is there to achieve. If you want full control over and interface and strive for pixel perfection – don’t use it. If you want to build an interface for an inclusive and diverse web, CSS is a great tool. Writing CSS is describing interfaces and needs empathy with the users. It is not about turning a Photoshop file into a web interface. It requires a different skillset and attitude of the maintainer and initial programmer than a backend language would.
In any case, belittling people who write CSS and considering them not real developers is arrogant nonsense. Especially when you don’t even spend the time to understand what CSS tries to achieve and how amazing it has become.
On the other hand, CSS is not and should not be the solution for everything. Yes, you can create pixels with drop shadows, but you also punish the browser rendering engine with this.
CSS is an integral part of the web to me and whilst the syntax is weird for someone coming from a different programming language, it proved its worth over the years. It should and will not go away for quite some time. So if you don’t like it, pair with someone who does. If your managers demand you to do it, we don’t have a technical issue at our hands, but a project/staffing one.
Instead of having discussions if CSS is broken and needs to be replaced, it is healthier to have different discussions about CSS:
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A day after missing out on Zack Greinke, the Giants quickly turned to their secondary plan.
Even coming off a miserable season, Samardzija was still able to land a deal for $18 million per year, $3 million more per season than I predicted, and well north of the $64 million the crowd projected. The Giants, like the other suitors, chose to look beyond his 2015 performance, and are paying for the expected future value that lies in a right-arm that still owns premium stuff.
Even with the lousy 2015 season on his track record, Steamer still sees roughly a +3 WAR pitcher going forward, so this deal isn’t nearly as crazy as one might think by just looking at most recent season.
Jeff Samardzija ’s Contract Estimate — 5 yr / $77.4 M Year Age WAR $/WAR Est. Value 2016 31 2.8 $8.0 M $22.4 M 2017 32 2.3 $8.4 M $19.3 M 2018 33 1.8 $8.8 M $15.9 M 2019 34 1.3 $9.3 M $12.0 M 2020 35 0.8 $9.7 M $7.8 M Totals 9.0 $77.4 M Assumptions
Value: $8M/WAR with 5.0% inflation
Aging Curve: +0.25 WAR/yr (18-27), 0 WAR/yr (28-30),-0.5 WAR/yr (31-37),-0.75 WAR/yr (> 37)
Dan Szymborski put up the ZIPS forecast for Samardzija on Twitter, and it’s even more optimistic.
While $90 million isn’t cheap, Samardzija doesn’t project dramatically worse than Jordan Zimmermann going forward, and this is the price range the market is establishing for above average pitchers. And by signing Samardzija for $90 million, the Giants likely have room to add a second starter as well while still coming in under the total amount they would have had to pay Greinke over the next five or six years.
While there will likely be lots of criticism of this deal from those who simply look at Samardzija’s disaster season in Chicago, the stuff and the longer track record suggest that he’s still a quality arm who just had a bad year. $90 million isn’t a bargain, especially when you factor in the cost of the draft pick surrendered to sign him, but Samardzija’s a good pitcher who will help the team win, and this isn’t a dramatic overpay for a team looking to win in the short-term.
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Google will offer 100,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots and will donate 4,000 Chromebooks to students across the state of California, governor Gavin Newsom said during a news conference Wednesday.
The internet access points are supposed to help improve broadband internet in rural households across the state where internet access is either limited or very slow. Students will get access to the free Wi-Fi for a minimum of three months.There are still many parts of the state that do not have access to high-speed internet, however.
"This was a substantial enhancement that came just at the right time," Newsom said. "We need more Googles," he added.
"Proud to work with @GavinNewsom & partners to help bridge the digital divide in our home state," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on Twitter.
The latest move comes as Newsom announced that California schools will remain closed for the remainder of the school year, with many classes switching to online learning.
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Where we're going, We don't need roads.
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It’s the holiday season! Time to celebrate and enjoy our loved ones with lots of food and fun. If you’re pregnant, you’re likely to enjoy the food much more than the loved ones. Being pregnant during the holidays lets you overindulge without all the guilt. You are eating for two, aren’t you? First, let me dispel that myth…. no, you are NOT eating for two! Let’s not blame this sweet innocent developing fetus for your lack of willpower to push away from the table. Is it this little one’s fault that you had to have a third piece of pumpkin pie? Let’s put the blame where it belongs…. on you! Your fetus does not LOVE Aunt Mary’s turkey and dressing so much that you have to keep going back getting seconds, thirds, and so on… As the holiday season fast approaches, there is a look of glee and gluttony in the eyes of most moms to be. It doesn’t help that pregnancy enhances the taste buds and turns eating into a hobby in and of itself. Throwing in Thanksgiving and Christmas really creates a perfect storm of turkey, dressing, giblet gravy, pumpkin pie, and spice cake.
So let’s talk about the aftereffects of such a grand meal. If you’re pregnant, it won’t be pleasant. Because the pregnant uterus tends to compress the stomach and bowels upward, it is highly likely you will experience discomfort. Sharp, shooting pains throughout the abdomen is bound to occur. You may even experience some nausea and vomiting if you have really overindulged. You will know it’s not labor, because the uterus will remain soft. Contractions* on the other hand, will be painful. Many times, the pain will start in the lower back and radiate around the abdomen. The whole uterus will be firm. You may feel pressure in the vaginal area at the same time this is occurring. True contractions are going to be regular, lasting approximately 30 seconds and then subsiding. You will be able to set your watch by them. Gas pain will be sporadic. Is it just gas or are you having contractions? Think long and hard before you call 911 or have your loved ones bring you to the ER. You may want to consider taking some Gas-X first to see if the symptoms will subside.
While we are on the subject of overeating, let me mention other negative effects of yielding to the temptations of the holidays. Swelling, indigestion, bloating, and constipation will all happen to some degree. Remember the saying you learned in elementary school? You are what you eat. If you eat bad foods expect to feel bad. If the foods you’re eating have a high salt content, you’ll see an increase in swelling in the face, hands, legs, and feet. There may even be an increase in your blood pressure.
Let's continue to play this out, shall we? You overeat because you’re pregnant and you’re eating for two (yada, yada, yada….). After a gluttonousness meal, you began feeling uneasy, and your stomach doesn’t feel so great. In your mind, the obvious answer is that you’re in labor. Forget the fact that you ate half the turkey, all the green bean casserole, and a whole sweet potato pie, because that’s irrelevant right now. You suddenly began having sharp shooting pains all over your tummy and yet your uterus remains soft. Ahhh, but you have an explanation for this! All the women in your family always had back labor; they never hurt in their uterus. You think to yourself this is perfect timing. The whole family is here from out of town. Everyone can celebrate this joyous occasion.
Your pain is getting more severe. Someone thinks it’s best to just call the ambulance. The ambulance comes and takes you to the hospital and you are rapidly taken to labor and delivery. (Side note: the whole family, who drives their own vehicles, beats the ambulance to the hospital and makes it up to labor and delivery before you…go figure!) You come up on the stretcher, writhing in pain. The baby will be here any minute! You’re sure of it! The nurse puts you on the monitors and lo, what is it that she sees? No contractions…. She checks your cervix and it hasn’t changed from you last office visit. She says, “It's not contractions.” You explain to her the whole back labor thing that happens with the women in your family. She gives you the side eye and tells you she’ll call the doctor. Your OB comes in, looks at the monitor and rechecks your cervix. The doctor confirms what the nurse has said, “It's not contractions. It’s just gas!” You are given medication for gas and taught what real contractions feel like and how to time them. After your discharge, you walk out looking sheepishly and now your family is giving you the side eye as they think about the football game they could have been at home enjoying.
How can you avoid such a conundrum, you ask? Let me explain! First, start with small meals. Instead of one huge meal where you sit down and eat more than Uncle Joe, eat a small meal, let that digest, and then eat a little more. This will also help prevent indigestion, nausea, and vomiting. Next, drink plenty of water. Being pregnant, especially in the third trimester, which is 28 weeks and beyond, the stomach has a limited capacity. The perks of water are you will be less likely to drink other high calorie drinks such as fruit juice, soda, and tea. These can cause fluctuations in your sugar level, which will make you feel lightheaded and dizzy. Last, allow yourself one serving of dessert. That’s right, I said ONE! Overindulging on those high calorie sweets will have you feeling awful. So as you longingly stare at the desert table, ask yourself will it be worth all the misery that you will potentially endure later. Will it be worth the trip to labor and delivery to hear, “It's not contractions? IT’S JUST GAS?” Will it be worth your family making fun of you for years to come? Think about it. You are so much stronger than you think!
*Consult your obstetrician for any signs or symptoms of labor!
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(-> You can find all Top-videos for VR porn categories here!)
Asian VR porn videos – what could be better to look for? It’s 2020, and VR porn got further than ever. Slowly but surely every porn niche gets “transferred” to the VR porn industry too and the Asian girls are always among the first to get attention. And for good reason, many of the sexiest porn stars in this industry are Asians, and VR Porn is no exception. There are some very well known beauties who perform for various studios, and the quality of every video they’re starred in never disappoints.
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Hoping you’ll find your next favorite Asian VR Porn video or maybe your next go-to porn star, we present you our Top 10 Asian VR Porn Videos.
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The Mormon Tabernacle Choir will once again sing at a U.S. presidential inauguration come January.
The Deseret News reports that the choir announced Thursday that it will be performing at President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. The choir will perform with the Marine Corps Band as Trump is sworn in.
This will be the choir’s sixth appearance at a presidential inauguration in the last 50 years.
The choir is composed of 360 volunteers who serve as ambassadors for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its name comes from the historic Mormon Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City.
The Tabernacle Choir will be joined at the inauguration by 16-year-old singer Jackie Evancho, a winner of “America’s Got Talent,” who will perform the national anthem.
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BOSTON (AP) - Boston is literally digging its Chinatown.
City archaeologist Joe Bagley on Monday launched the first excavations in Boston’s Chinatown, and he expects the dig to turn up artifacts that will shed new light on immigrants - not only those from China but also Syria, Ireland and England who sought new lives in Boston from 1840 to 1980.
Work began at a vacant lot near the ornate gate to the colorful neighborhood. It’s expected to continue until early autumn.
“We’re excited to conduct the first archaeological dig in Boston’s historic Chinatown,” said Mayor Marty Walsh. “Boston is a city of immigrants, and this is an important piece of Boston’s history.”
Over the years, Boston has unearthed hundreds of archaeological sites.
“Digging into Boston’s past is an exciting experience,” said Bagley, who has led recent excavations of an outhouse next to Paul Revere’s home and the boyhood home of civil rights activist Malcolm X.
Carole Mooney, a volunteer, sifted through topsoil at the site and found pieces of porcelain, other pottery and brick. “It all helps tell the story,” she said.
Organizers say the property owner, residents of Chinatown, the Chinese Historical Society of New England and residents of Boston’s Syrian community are involved in the dig.
In the late 1800s, the neighborhood - now popular with tourists for its restaurants and groceries - drew thousands of newcomers attracted by cheap housing and plentiful warehouse jobs in the adjacent Leather District.
Because the area was underwater until around 1830, researchers don’t expect to find much of interest prior to then, Mooney said.
But this is Boston, so you never know.
“At the Malcolm X dig, we found a cannonball,” she said. “It shouldn’t have been there - we still aren’t sure how it got there - but there it was.”
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Correction appended
This post was written by Hatchet staff writer Chris Hebdon.
Junior Julia Susuni was elected the fourth-ever female Student Association president Thursday with a whopping 59 percent of the vote.
Students waited for nearly two hours in a packed Columbian Square to hear election results, wearing campaign buttons and t-shirts supporting their candidate. Susuni, who pledged to put Trader Joe’s on GWorld, move Student Health Service closer to campus and improve career services, defeated three challengers to become the first female president since 2009.
“It feels really great. I am so proud of all the work my team has put in and really grateful for all the time and energy and all of their support,” Susuni said.
This year’s SA elections saw a record 4,855 ballots cast, Joint Elections Committee chair Jordan Thomas said. Sophomore Mike Morgan, senior Hugo Scheckter and freshman Tywan Wade earned second, third and fourth place respectively.
Junior Kostas Skordalos won executive vice president, beating sophomore Mike Adam by nearly 1,000 votes to become the second-highest student lobbyist.
“It doesn’t even feel real yet. It feels like tomorrow I’m going to be waking up and handing out palm cards,” Skordalos said. “I am excited to get to work tomorrow.”
The third candidate for executive vice president dropped out last week.
Here is a full list of candidates and the breakdowns:
Winners in italics
SA President
Julia Susuni (2795)
Mike Morgan (976)
Hugo Scheckter (775)
Tywan Wade (152)
SA Executive Vice President
Kostas Skordalos (2604)
Mike Adam (1796)
CCAS Undergraduate Senator
Nick Gumas (951)
Mollie Bowman (849)
Ben Pryde (809)
Marshall Cohen (725)
Justin Hyde (708)
Shreya Chaturvedi (658)
Casey Syron (640)
John Weiss (593)
Justyna Felusiak (527)
Brandon Kumar (425)
Taylor Cole (372)
Jevin Hodge (344)
Patrick Furbush (340)
John Menges (319)
Ahrim Nam (301)
ESIA Undergraduate Senator
Varsha Sundararaman (439)
Chris Stillwell (377)
Paul Asercion (363)
Simarmeet Singh (342)
Johnny Kelley (294)
Spencer Newland (320)
SEAS Undergraduate Senator
Neil Forquer (129)
Edwin Musibira (77)
Karan Singh (57)
SMHS Graduate Senator
Jordan Werner (101)
Kusha Davar (70)
Abhimanyu Aggarwal (43)
MCGB Undergraduate
Elizabeth Kennedy (1893)
Shelby Goodfriend (1530)
Ian Ceccarelli (1416)
Glenn Richardson (1153)
Usama Khan (1144)
Paul Organ (1082)
Grahm Rabinowitsch (905)
Alberto Zayas Montilla (830)
CCAS Graduate Senator
Cameron Smither (2)
Allison Rohde (2)
Allison Friedan (2)
*will face a runoff, where the Senate will vote
ESIA Graduate Senator
Paul Maesser (26)
CPS Graduate Senator
Tom Hayden (1)
Amee Pecot (1)
Julia Brown (1)
MCGB Graduate
Kuanysh Taishibekov (17)
Law School Senator
Peter Glaser (n/a)
Paul Waters (n/a)
Alex Berman (2)
Andrew Beyda (2)
Jeff Conrad (2)
Undergraduate-at-Large Senator
Daniel Egel-Weiss (n/a)
Omeed Firouzzi (n/a)
Graduate-at-Large Senator
Andrew Hickman (n/a)
Cengiz Kara (n/a)
GWSB Undergraduate Senator
Ryan Counihan (n/a)
Fatma El-Taguri (n/a)
GWSB Graduate Senator
Tapan Bhargava (n/a)
Harimandir Garcha (n/a)
SEAS Graduate Senator
Hatem Elbidweihy (n/a)
William Rone (n/a)
SPHHS Undergraduate Senator
Kimberly Levitt (n/a)
SPHHS Graduate Senator
Nora Albert (n/a)
Program Board Chair
Jon Carfagno (n/a)
Program Board Vice Chair
Kolton Gustafson (n/a)
This post was updated March 22, 2013 to reflect the following:
The Hatchet incorrectly reported that Julia Susuni won 57 percent of the votes. That figure was actually 59 percent. While 4,855 ballots were cast, Susuni won 2,795 of the 4,698 votes for the Student Association presidency.
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By Sam Collings-Wells
On July 16, 1970, McGeorge Bundy circulated a letter to various US Senators informing them of the Ford Foundation’s “major new program to help strengthen and modernize the exercise of police function in urban areas.”[i] He was referring to the establishment of the Police Foundation, an independent organization which was allocated an enormous $30 million for action-orientated research into new policing strategies and technologies.[ii] Internal program documents repeatedly stressed that the principal purpose of this new entity was to stimulate “change in police function,” not by funding the purchase of additional hardware but instead by “bringing the police closer to the community” and fostering “mutual cooperation between police officers and community residents.”[iii]
The Ford Foundation’s leap into the realm of community policing during the early 1970s has largely been neglected by historians. This is surprising, particularly given that the organization’s role in pioneering the community-based antipoverty strategies of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty has been well documented. Scholars from Alice O’Connor to Joshua Zeitz have demonstrated how the urban community action experiments pioneered by Ford during the early 1960s formed the basis of the “maximum feasible participation” clause of the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act.[iv] Yet in these works the Ford Foundation appears only briefly, surfacing as the progenitor of the controversial Community Action Agencies before largely disappearing from view.
This lack of attention to the Ford Foundation’s later efforts in the realm of law enforcement has obscured its role in fraught city politics of the 1960s. Keeping our focus on the organization throughout the decade allows us to track the evolution of its urban policies, which shifted from an antipoverty strategy of “community action” to a law-and-order based program of “community policing.” Despite their obvious differences, these two projects shared a core belief in the efficacy of operating at the level of the “community.” In fact, the Police Foundation’s attempts to better integrate law enforcement into the fabric of local neighborhoods drew on the antipoverty strategies Ford had pioneered earlier in the decade. And crucially, uncovering these connective tissues serves to buttress Elizabeth Hinton’s recent thesis that the transition from War on Poverty to the War on Crime was less a decisive rupture than an organic evolution.[v]
Tackling the urban crisis at the level of the community was central to the Ford Foundation’s antipoverty efforts early in the decade. Beginning in 1960, the Foundation’s “Gray Areas” program initiated a series of grants to community corporations in five cities—Boston, Philadelphia, Oakland, New Haven and Washington D.C—which were tasked with formulating an integrated response to inner-city deprivation.[vi] What distinguished this approach from previous antipoverty efforts was its emphasis on engaging poor residents in the formulation of solutions. While in practice the program achieved differing levels of participation, leveraging community associations to democratize the planning and provision of social services remained its core innovation. Local schools often served as the locus of this activity, keeping open their doors after-hours and on weekends for adult education, remedial reading, and various “community building” exercises.[vii]
Other Ford Foundation grants also sought to mobilize the community in the service of urban renewal. The most notable of these was that made to Mobilization for Youth (MFY), an agency located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side which had begun as a traditional anti-delinquency program carried out by a local settlement house tackling gang violence. After receiving Foundation funding in 1960—and under the influence of sociologists such as Leonard Cottrell, Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin—MFY was gradually nudged in the direction of greater local participation; by 1963 it had stopped working with existing neighborhood organizations and begun recruiting unaffiliated poor individuals from the Lower East Side.[viii] It was this aspect of the program which would be imported into Lyndon Johnson’s Economic Opportunity Act the following year, Title II of which mandated the “maximum feasible participation” of the poor.
Yet as both the MFY experiment and LBJ’s War on Poverty demonstrated, mobilising the poor in this way could hardly occur without generating controversy—particularly when the fraught issues of housing, jobs, and poverty interacted with the cresting civil rights movement in the North. By the middle of the decade MFY’s organizers were coordinating a series of rent strikes, boycotts, and protests, none of which endeared the organisation to established local power structures. Soon MFY found itself fighting off charges of communist infiltration and inciting riots.[ix] Similar tensions arose within the Gray Areas program, with communities of color utilizing the new structures it had put in place to press their complaints against city hall. This mirrored the arc of Johnson’s War on Poverty, where local Community Action Agencies (CAAs) clashed with mayors and local police departments. As maximum feasible participation soured into “maximum feasible misunderstanding,” many at the Ford Foundation became embarrassed by their trail-blazing role in the most contentious aspect of Johnson’s War on Poverty.[x]
This backlash to Johnson’s Community Action Agencies ensured that by the time McGeorge Bundy arrived at the Ford Foundation as president in 1966, the organization was already quietly abandoning the more radical aspects of the “community action” approach. As signaled by its pioneering use of Community Development Corporations (CDCs) in Robert Kennedy’s Bedford-Stuyvesant regeneration project, the Foundation began to focus less on the process of community participation and more on the end-goal of attracting business, capital and middle-class residents back to deprived neighborhoods—a precursor to the neoliberalization of urban governance during the late-1970s and 80s.[xi] Despite this shift, however, the Foundation did not banish the participatory impulse of the earlier community action approach altogether. Instead, by the late 1960s it had migrated into the Ford Foundation’s new emphasis on law enforcement—an emphasis which by this time was dovetailing with broader national political shifts.
With Richard Nixon elected in 1968 by capitalizing on widespread concerns over “law and order,” policing appeared to offer the Foundation a powerful, non-controversial avenue for involvement in the urban crisis.[xii] Instead of tackling the root of unrest through community-based antipoverty programs, the Foundation would now focus on controlling the symptom of urban malaise through improved policing strategies. Yet in making this transition the Ford Foundation hardly acted as the President’s cheerleader. Rather, it sought to inject what they saw as a much-needed grassroots emphasis into Nixon’s “top-down” war on crime. This was reflected in the stated ambition of the Police Foundation, which hoped to “[c]ontribute significantly to the movement away from the centralized and quasi-military models of patrol operations to more flexible neighbourhood based patrol operations which are more responsive to varying community needs and values.”[xiii]
The main function of the Police Foundation was to provide financial assistance for a number of (primarily urban) police departments to initiate local experiments and demonstration projects. These were aimed at redefining law enforcement functions, altering the way in which effective policing was assessed by focusing more closely on police-community relations.[xiv] In Cincinnati, for instance, a major impact grant funded an experiment that placed small police teams permanently in specific neighborhoods. Known as community sector team policing (or ComSec), this approach sought to encourage “mutual cooperation between police officers and residents,” with the ultimate aim of “controlling crime by increasing community cooperation.” Similar experiments were undertaken in New York City, Dallas, Kansas City and Sacramento.[xv]
Community action had thus evolved into a form of community policing, which sought to control urban unrest by stitching structures of surveillance into the social life of the neighborhood itself. The ComSec program not only encouraged private citizens to involve themselves in crime prevention by reporting it to trusted officers, but actually sought to blur the distinction between police and community by instructing officers to work in plain clothes and interact regularly with the neighborhood. And as a report on the Dallas Police Department’s program noted, this would help identify the “basic needs of the community” through “restructuring police services to respond to those needs.”[xvi] This reached its apotheosis in Dayton, Ohio, where the Foundation funded the establishment of a Joint Task Force which paired both citizens and police officers together to work towards to tackling civil disorders, prostitution, and drug abuse. Its explicit purpose was “to involve citizens in police policymaking.”[xvii]
The Ford Foundation was still seeking to develop communities, then, but the focus of this effort shifted. Rather than building a community around the school-house—as had occurred during the Gray Areas program—the Foundation now sought to construct one around the police station. The rhetoric and practices of “community self-help” and “grassroots empowerment” were co-opted to accommodate shifting political currents, inflecting these shifts in turn with its own peculiar emphasis on local participation. By the 1970s, one strand of this had led to the market-orientated emphasis of Community Development Corporations; the other to the law-enforcement community work of the Police Foundation.
Together, these two strands worked reciprocally to pave the way for the neoliberalization of urban governance during the 1980s. They did so by helping to replace a liberal strategy of federal spending linked to community mobilisation with one focused on attracting business investment–and more effectively policing disordered urban spaces that remained. A constant throughout these shifts was the analytical base-unit of the urban “community.” The difference was that these communities were not only starved of external assistance by the retrenchment of the welfare state, but also found themselves subject to efforts to direct their own internal resources towards surveillance and coercion rather than empowerment and mobilization.
Sam Collings-Wells is a first year PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge. His research examines the historical intersections between community development, modernization, and policing in cities around the world. Twitter: @Sam_cw_
Featured image (at top): Woolworth store on 14th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., an area affected by the 1968 riots, November 6, 1972, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
[i] Letter from McGeorge Bundy to Mike Mansfield, (July 16, 1970), Ford Foundation Archives (FF), Office Files of McGeorge Bundy [OFMB], Series II: Subject Files, FA617, Box 17, Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC), Sleepy Hollow, New York, p. 1.
[ii] Ford Foundation, Annual Report 1970, (New York: Ford Foundation, 1970), pp. 8-9.
[iii] National Affairs, “Police Foundation: Progress Report,” (1973), Catalogued Reports, Reports 1-3254 (FA739A), Box 105, Report no. 002445, p. 6.
[iv] Robert Halpern, Rebuilding the Inner City: A History of Neighborhood Initiatives to Address Poverty in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Joshua Zeitz, Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson’s White House (New York: Viking, 2018). See also Alyosha Goldstein, Poverty in Common: The Politics of Community Action during the American Century (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012).
[v] Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).
[vi] Ananya Roy, Emma Shaw Crane, and Stuart Schrader, “Gray Areas: The War on Poverty at Home and Abroad,” in Roy and Crane, eds., Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015).
[vii] Alice O’Connor, “Community Action, Urban Reform, and the Fight against Poverty: The Ford Foundation’s Gray Areas Program,” Journal of Urban History, Vol. 22, No. 5 (July 1996), pp. 586-625.
[viii] Goldstein, Poverty in Common, pp. 123-124.
[ix] Tamar W. Carroll, Mobilizing New York: AIDS, Antipoverty, and Feminist Activism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
[x] Daniel P. Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding: Community Action in the War on Poverty (New York: The Free Press, 1969).
[xi] Ferguson, Top-Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); Tom Adam Davies, “Black Power in Action: The Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Politics of the Urban Crisis,” Journal of American History, Vol. 100, No. 3, (December 2013), pp. 736-760.
[xii] Lawrence O’Donnell, Playing With Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Penguin Press, 2017).
[xiii] “Police Foundation: Progress Report,” p.16.
[xiv] The Ford Foundation, A More Effective Arm: A Report on a Police Development Fund, Newly Established by the Ford Foundation (New York: The Ford Foundation, 1970).
[xv] “Police Foundation: Progress Report,” pp. 6-8.
[xvi] The Ford Foundation Information Paper, Appendix B: “Summary of Grants, Foundation-Administered Projects and Publications,” (1973), Catalogued Reports, Reports 1-3254 (FA739A), Box 105, Report no. 002445, p. 1.
[xvii] The Ford Foundation Information Paper, Appendix B, p. 3.
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‘Sandman’ Movie Update: Tom Hiddleston To Play Morpheus
Posted by Staff Reporter media@realtytoday.com ) on Aug 18, 2015 06:20 AM EDT
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The movie adaptation of "Sandman" has been on the works for a while now. The development has been on the go since Warner Bros.' announcement in 2013; dropping the names of David S. Goyer as producer and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the lead role. Though the silver screen adaptation has been through several bumps, recent updates, including the actor to play Morpheus, suggest that the film is pushing through, movienewsguide.com reports.
In an article by Crossmap, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has assured fans that Neil Gaiman's "'Sandman" will have its movie adaptation. Personalities on-board are JGL, creator Neil Gaiman, screenwriter and director David S. Goyer, and writer Jack Thorne. In a recent interview, JGL talked how a full-fledged feature film would be better for Gaiman's "Sandman" comics instead of a television series; explaining that a movie adaptation will allow the comic's characters to explore themselves and take on any shape they want. A television series on the other hand puts the brilliant comics at risk of getting messed up.
There is also a new and exciting update on the actor being eyed to play the role of Lord of Dreams, Morpheus. Sources reveal that Tom Hiddleston is on the forefront, the actor who is best known for his role as Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
And since they can't adapt the original material just the way it is, JGL confesses that there would be some reworking on the original creation but promises to stay true to the overall sentiment of "Sandman". He also believes that the comic deserves to look visually grand and that it is only achievable by adapting it on the silver screen - justifying that television shows are improving on that aspect but still fall short in comparison to a feature movie.
So far, there are little "Sandman" movie udpates except for Neil Gailman dangling Tom Hiddleston's name to play the role of Morpheus.
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The 2016 Blast The latest POLITICO scoops and coverage of the 2016 elections. Email Sign Up
Tweets from https://twitter.com/politico/lists/team-politico
Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would "have to get used to a lot of" Hillary Clinton shouting as the campaign moves towards the general election. | AP Photo Trump: I guess I'll have to get used to Clinton's 'shouting'
Turning his attention toward the general election on Wednesday, Donald Trump defended his line that the only thing Hillary Clinton has going for her is "playing the woman card," remarking that the former secretary of state would be doing worse if she were not a woman.
"She's playing the woman card left and right," Trump said on CNN's "New Day," adding, "She didn't play it last time with Obama but she's playing it much harder this time, and she will be called on it. Absolutely."
Asked by CNN's Chris Cuomo how one calls someone on being a woman, Trump responded, "You just tell them they're playing the woman's card."
"What does that mean?" Cuomo followed up.
Trump said that if she were not playing that card, "frankly ... she would be doing poorly."
Asked how he knew that, Trump replied simply, "I know it. If she was a man and she was the way she is she would get virtually no votes."
Appearing minutes later on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Trump responded to a clip of Clinton addressing her supporters in Philadelphia on Tuesday night in which she said, "if fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in.”
Trump said that he was still "recovering" from Clinton's "shouting."
"I know a lot of people would say you can't say that about a woman, because of course a woman doesn't shout," Trump said. "The way she shouted that message was not -- that's the way she said it, and I guess I'll have to get used to a lot of that over the next four or five months."
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Well, if you still remember the November Event that happened 2,5 months ago, then you probably know that this is the group collab we promised. Terribly delayed, in a small resolution, and not exactly amazing. Feel free to feel terribly disappointed. I know I would.There is a couple of reasons for such delay. First being the fact that our founder did not have the time to administrate the group, and since it was up to him to create the collab, we were basically waiting for nothing. Only recently I FINALLY decided to do it myself, and even then I procrastinated the thing all over. Which is also partially the reason for why it's in such a small resolution. My computer didn't exactly like it when I tried to make the thing in a huge resolution, and after multiple crashes of Inkscape, I felt discouraged to work on it and kept distracting myself with other things. Then I tried to do it again with PNGs in decreased size; however, a pixelization shows up when I try to export the thing in higher resolutions, so we are basically stuck at this one.If in any case you feel that your ponysona was mistreated or something, feel free to express your opinion, and we will try to possibly find some consensus. Note that a few ponysonas didn't make it for various reasons. If that ponysona happens to be yours, feel free to express your disappointment either in a polite discussion, or by making a vector of your OC putting my OC on fire. (It's this one , in case you wonder.) [link] by * Trotsworth - Background [link] by * MisterLolrus - Airship yacht [link] by ~ HSLDoperator - Tank [link] by ~ Chromadancer - Pie [link] by * MisterAibo - Sun [link] by * Qsteel - Cloud
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フランス料理では定番の前菜「エスカルゴ」。フランスでは年間30億匹以上が消費されているそうです。そのエスカルゴの養殖キット「GROW YOUR OWN ESCARGOT」が英国で販売されています。
エスカルゴの養殖キット「GROW YOUR OWN ESCARGOT」
赤ちゃんかたつむり
かわいい？
調理しちゃうと、おいしそう！
でも半年も一緒に暮らしたかたつむり
食べられる？
♪
フランス料理では定番の前菜「エスカルゴ」。日本ではあまりなじみのない食材ですが、フランスでは年間30億匹以上が消費されているのだとか。かなり以前のことですが、日本でエスカルゴの養殖に成功したことがニュースになったこともありましたね。そのエスカルゴの養殖キット「GROW YOUR OWN ESCARGOT」が英国で販売されています。「GROW YOUR OWN ESCARGOT」は、フランス料理としてエスカルゴを食べるのが好きな人だけでなく、かたつむりをペットとして飼いたい人にも向けて開発されたキット。カタツムリがゆっくりと移動するのを思う存分眺めて楽しむ“インテリア”としても使えるよう、透明なドーム状になっているのが特徴です。キットには6匹のかたつむりの赤ちゃんと餌、そして飼育説明書が付属。説明書に従って世話を続ければ、4～6か月で食べられるサイズにまで成長するそうです。案外、時間がかかるものですね。ちなみに、エスカルゴの味は餌によって若干変わるのだそう。家庭で養殖することで、自分好みの味に仕上げることもできるそうです。ただし、半年近くも大事に育てたかたつむりに対しては、多くの人が愛着を感じてしまい、食べることができなくなってしまうのだとか。気持ちはわからなくもないですが、キットにはエスカルゴ料理のレシピもついています。かたつむりの移動速度は時速6メートル程度なのだそう。人間とはまったく違う時間の流れの中で生きているかたつむりを見ていると、癒されるという人もいるそうです。英国のオンラインショップFIREBOXが販売していますが、残念ながら、キットは英国以外には輸出できないということでした。
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So, it’s come to this. Rather like The Neverending Story’s terrible Nothing – a wave of blackness moving across the land and consuming everything in its path – student flats are currently hoovering up some of the most treasured bits of Liverpool.
This time it’s Le Bateau – erstwhile home of Liquidation, Voodoo and many more club nights – that looks set to succumb to the march of undergrad housing.
Liquidation, of course, has since moved to The Cabin and DJ Jules Bennett has joined forces with a couple of other alumni and opened the excellent Sound Food and Drink down the road.
“It’s just enough off of the beaten track, it’s never attracted trouble, and a friendly door and happy barstaff add to the energy of the nights in there,” said Jules, when we asked him to sum up why the venue was so good.
But the venue appears doomed. Although the plan is set to go before council planners it’s hard to see on which grounds the application – for four-bedroomed flats and a restaurant in the basement – would be rejected.
Appointed design outfit 44th Hill have a track record of creating smart, industrial-themed eateries and – with interest in Ropewalks growing as a leisure quarter and in Duke Street particularly as a classy residential area – a sympathetic development is likely to be favoured over leaving the building largely empty.
Since Le Bateau closed 18 months ago it has rarely been open, with intermittent Liquidations and Dance Yrself Cleans popping up from time to time as the new owners pondered their next move.
So, another old favourite bites the dust and the subtle repositioning of Ropewalks continues. But, while the building is gone the spirit lives on. And, surely, that’s what’s important.
• Sad? Well yes obviously. But you can relive the good times with our top seven Le Bateau tunes and reminisce with readers on your favourite Le Bateau memories.
Posted November 4, 2013 – 7 comments
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The number of suspects who are right-wing extremists rose in 2018. It is claimed that they “are very willing to use violence, weapons and explosives.” This emerges from a report by the body in charge of protecting the constitution, which is officially presented on Thursday.
The German and district federal defense offices registered 11,554 ultra-right individuals suspected of committing crimes in the last year. This represents an increase of approximately 5 percent compared with 2017. According to information from the newspaper Die Welt, an internal paper of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which was produced for a special meeting of the Bundestag Interior Committee on the murder of politician Walter Lubeck, a member of the Christian-Democratic Union from Kassel.
Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (Christian-Democratic Union) and President of the Federal Constitutional Protection Bureau, Thomas Haldenwang, wish to present on Thursday in Berlin the report of the body in charge of the protection of the Constitution.
A large proportion of the criminal offenses that are imputed to individuals suspected of commiting offenses – are body injuries and constitute propaganda-related offenses. The latter occupy a prominent place in statistics, perhaps because the hallmarks of anti-constitutional organizations are often used by extreme right-wingers. These include the symbols of the German National Socialist Party (NSDAP), the swastika, or symbols of organizations banned in the Federal Republic of Germany, such as Blood and Honor.
The profile of the far-right offender is male
According to the document in question, the profile of the far-right offender is, in the vast majority of cases, male. 10,547 of all those suspected of committing offenses are men, and only 1,007 are women. Therefore, the suspects display “a high propensity to the use of violence, weapons and explosives.” This was demonstrated by thr weapons and explosives that had been seized and confiscated in search operations.
Altogether, the body in charge of protecting the constitution considers 24,100 people as far-right individuals. In 2017 their number was 24,100. Their enemy figures include foreigners, especially asylum seekers and Muslims, but also politicians. Almost every other far right individual, around 12,700 people, is considered according to the report “an individual with violent orientation.” This number remains constant, compared to 2017.
The criminal offenses perpetrated due to right-wing political orientation dropped slightly to 20,431. The number of cases fell, therefore, for the 4th time in a row since 2015. On the other hand, there have been an increase in the number of violent criminal offenses and offenses related to propaganda, compared to 2017.
Thus, the number of violent offenses committed for right-wing political motives increased by 2.3 percent to 1,156.
This increase is evident in the case of bodily injuries (an increase of 4 percent to 1,000), as well as resistance offenses against representatives of the authorities (an increase of 45 percent to 77 percent). In addition, there were more murder crimes – with one actual murder and six attempted murder. By 2017 there were still four muder attempts.
The number of antisemitic acts is clearly increasing
In the case of offenses related to propaganda, the number of cases (12,582) climbed by 4.6 percent. The number of acts of violence against foreigners (7,064) increased by 14.6 percent, while the number of antisemitic criminal offenses (1,603) increased by 13.5 percent. And there were 49 antisemitic acts of violence – an increase of 69 percent.
The obvious increase in the incidence of racism is evident at a rate of 30.3 percent, totalling 1,664 cases. In most cases, this involved popular incitement (660) and bodily injury (236).
According to the body in charge of protecting the constitution, the range of issues relating to political asylum remains a prominent area of activity of the right-wing scene. The number of violent offenses, particularly bodily injuries, is Allegedly high. It is claimed that racist and hostile attitudes toward foreigners – nowadays as in the past – are firmly anchored in the right-wing scene, and are relevant in the criminal justice arena.
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A man was arrested at 1:40 p.m. on Monday at an Edgewater apartment complex at 5650 N. Sheridan and charged with a string of high-end bike thefts in Chicago. Two possible accomplices are also being sought by police.
Police identified 30-year-old Justin Milos, as the man in surveillance footage which showed three people stealing bikes in the South Loop area from garages.
The incidents, which resulted in police issuing a community alert in the South Loop, resulted in at least seven bikes being stolen between June 22 and July 1.
A Chicago police press release wrote,”With community assistance coupled with surveillance video, Police were able to identify Milos and charge him with the above felony crimes.”
According to police, the two other suspects were described as black men between 35 and 45 and wore yellow safety vests.
Milos is charged with three felony counts of burglary and will appear in bond court Tuesday.
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White House Correspondents' Association President Jonathan Karl rebuked his colleague Jim Acosta of CNN for his conduct on the job.
Karl, chief Washington correspondent at ABC News, provided the criticism of his fellow White House reporter both in his new book Front Row at the Trump Show, released Tuesday, and during recent interviews.
In the book, he argued Acosta, who has had a multitude of verbal dust-ups with President Trump during press briefings, was "playing into the explicit Trump strategy of portraying the press as the opposition party" and encouraged him not to "give speeches from the White House briefing room."
Karl later told The Daily Beast, “Regarding Jim Acosta, to paraphrase Voltaire, I will defend to the death his right to report from the White House, but I have some issues with the style in which he has done so … We can be tough, we can call out things that are not true, we can be aggressive in our questioning, but I don’t think we should act like we are part of the resistance.”
Acosta has been one of the most frequent reporters to get into a disagreement with the president during briefings. The two notably argued the day after the 2018 midterm elections after the CNN reporter refused to hand over his microphone to a White House intern after the president declined to answer his question. The White House then suspended his press credential, which was later reinstated after the outlet filed a lawsuit.
More recently, Trump called a question from Acosta "nasty" and "snarky" after it implied the president initially downplayed the coronavirus.
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An open petition asking the Government of Canada to take actions to potentially curb foreign ownership of property has been tabled by a Burnaby resident concerned about runaway real estate prices in Metro Vancouver
NDP MP Kennedy Stewart has sponsored Raymond Wong’s petition calling on the federal government to collect reliable data on offshore investment in Canada’s real estate market.
article continues below
As part of a five-point demand, Wong is also asking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to investigate suspicious transactions flagged by the Financial Transactions and Report Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) that are related to real estate, demand that non-residents register with the government in order to buy a home, and consider restricting such ownership arrangements.
Wong also wants the Canadian government to follow in the footsteps of countries such as Australia, USA, Hong Kong, England, Singapore and New Zealand, which have — to differing levels — placed restrictions on foreign home ownership.
Wong states that as prices continue to soar, families are unable to afford to live in Metro Vancouver, thus many schools in the area are in danger of being shut down.
“Rental units have also become unaffordable for families even with a household median income in Greater Vancouver of $70,000,” noted Wong.
The petition runs until August 6 and can be found online as Petition e-281 at Petitions.parl.gc.ca.
The month-old petition has garnered about 1,500 signatures, well below many other sponsored petitions.
It comes as local academic experts on the subject have gained more attention in the media. This week, a non-peer reviewed study from assistant professor Josh Gordon at Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy, outlined how the “dominant explanation” for the affordable housing crisis in Metro Vancouver “is a large and continuous flow of foreign money into the region, especially from China, which has reached unprecedented levels in the past year. This factor accounts for most of the crisis, on its own.”
Gordon acknowledged the limitations of concrete home ownership data, although he places blame for this gap on “intentionally inept government oversight.”
Gordon notes the debate about foreign money needn’t be one clouded by calls of racism, as has been the case from some members of the real estate industry.
He contends that low interest rates, geographical constraints and a desire to live here are mere “distractions” to the root cause of runaway housing prices: foreign money.
He puts in doubt claims by the provincial government that the B.C. economy is strong. Instead, the economy is highly dependent on industry-related activity and property transfer taxes from a housing market bubble, which comes at the expense of non-homeowners.
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A Manitoba politician left paralyzed from the neck down by a highway collision is pushing for a law that would make all people in the province an organ donor unless they opted out.
Steven Fletcher, who has used a wheelchair since hitting a moose with his vehicle in 1996, said in an interview he remembers being close to death in hospital, unable to talk, and not having registered as an organ donor.
"Organ donation would have been consistent with my wishes, and to think that my organs, if I had passed on, would have been wasted is not a very good thought," he said.
Fletcher is to introduce a private member's bill in the legislature Thursday that would change the way the province registers organ donors. Currently, people opt in as donors by signing up on a provincial website or on certain provincial identity cards.
Fletcher's plan, known as presumed consent, would create an opt-out system. People would be presumed to be organ donors unless they registered their desire not to donate. Donations would only be for surgeries and other therapeutic purposes — not research, Fletcher added.
Fletcher is a backbencher in the Progressive Conservative government elected last year, so there are no guarantees that his bill will become law. Few such bills get passed in the legislature, where they compete with the government's official legislative agenda.
Fletcher has been here before. In 2014, when he was a member of Parliament, he introduced a private member's bill on doctor-assisted death. The bill didn't pass, but it helped spark debate.
The following year, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the law against assisted suicide in cases where a person is competent, enduring endless suffering and in "grievous and irremediable" condition.
"What I learned from that is, you don't need to win to win. You don't need to pass a bill to be successful with that bill," Fletcher told The Canadian Press.
"With things as fundamental as life and death or right and wrong ... bills tend to gain public support before the (politicians) catch up."
Support in Sask.
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said last year he would like to see presumed consent for organ donation. The government was looking at what steps could be taken to protect such legislation from being legally challenged.
A group called Manitobans for Presumed Consent has been pushing for the change. It points to a presumed-consent law in Wales in 2015 that increased the number of transplants by 24 per cent.
"That means people are living as opposed to dying, because there are literally people that are dying on the organ-transplant waiting list," said spokesman Bryan Dyck.
The organ-donation bill is not the only topic on Fletcher's agenda. He has a number of private bills ready to be introduced this spring, including one that would toughen the conflict-of-interest law that governs legislature members.
Currently, members only have to disclose property they own in the province. His bill would cover all of Canada, including northwestern Ontario where many Manitobans have cottages.
It would not cover international properties such as the home owned by Premier Brian Pallister in Costa Rica.
The reason, Fletcher said, is that properties in other countries cannot benefit by Manitoba government decisions, whereas cottages across the Ontario boundary can.
"From mining claims to environmental plans to corridors for roads or energy, that all can be important to said assets."
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Nearly all the remaining question marks in TVLine’s 2015 Renewal Scorecard have just been answered, courtesy of CBS.
The Eye network on Monday renewed 15 series for the 2015-16 season, including established bubble dramas Person of Interest, Hawaii Five-0 and Elementary, as well as freshman entries CSI: Cyber and The Odd Couple.
Also scoring pickups were NCIS, Blue Bloods, NCIS: Los Angeles, Criminal Minds, The Good Wife, Survivor, Undercover Boss, The Amazing Race, 60 Minutes and 48 Hours.
They join previously renewed Eye programs Madam Secretary, NCIS: New Orleans, Scorpion, The Big Bang Theory, Mike & Molly, Mom and 2 Broke Girls.
With the recent cancellations of Battle Creek, Stalker and The McCarthys, that leaves CSI as the only remaining CBS series in limbo. According to reports, the network is finalizing plans to bring the long-running procedural back for an abbreviated final season.
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House gone; bank wants flood insurance anyway
Bank of America demanded that Lakewood resident James McKinley buy flood insurance for his house on Barnegat Bay in Brick.
That's not unusual, right? But McKinley's house is long gone, demolished more than two years ago after taking serious damage from superstorm Sandy. The lot is vacant and now for sale.
"They are insisting that I have insurance on a house that doesn't exist," said McKinley, understandably frustrated. Bank of America didn't budge on its requirement until Press on Your Side got involved.
McKinley and his wife Jane purchased the house, which they called Four Winds and was at the very end of Drum Point Road, in 1992. They moved there full time around 2000.
Rescued during Sandy
The McKinleys, and other members of their family, rode out superstorm Sandy in the house's second floor. The ground floor was inundated by the bay. "It was four feet of water with waves on top coming through the house," McKinley said. "Every time it would hit, the whole house would sort of shudder."
A building at the marina across Drum Point Road was lifted off its foundation and slammed into McKinley's garage. His cars were destroyed too. "It was a pretty disastrous day," McKinley remembered.
The family was later rescued by emergency workers who brought them to safety by boat. (Even after Sandy subsided, the area was several feet under water.)
The McKinleys' house was done. After an inspection in July 2013, a Brick inspector issued a "notice of imminent hazard."
"The structure is unsafe to enter. Do not enter," the notice read in capital letters. It ordered the house demolished by Sept. 1, 2013.
The house was knocked down in early September 2013 at a cost of $15,076.
"It was a beautiful place to live," McKinley said. They moved to Lakewood after the storm.
Still paying the insurance
Afterward, McKinley kept paying for his mortgage in Brick, including homeowners and flood insurance. He later read his insurance documents, which said that only the house and contents are insured. "There is no house and there is no contents."
He canceled his homeowners and flood insurance earlier this year. His flood insurer returned two years worth of premiums and his homeowner's insurance company gave back one year's premium.
The cancellation attracted the attention of Bank of America, which told him that he needed flood insurance for his house.
McKinley said he informed the bank three times that Brick ordered him to demolish the house. He sent a copy of the township's violation notice, the invoice for the demolition and a copy of the check he wrote to pay for it. (Those documents were the same that he sent to the insurance carriers.)
But it wasn't good enough, McKinley said. The bank wanted another township document, possibly a permit. However, for a period of time after Sandy, Brick waived the permitting process for tasks such as rebuilding or demolition. So the paperwork was not available.
"They have not responded except to request, now for the third time, that either I buy insurance or they will at my expense," McKinley said.
In an Oct. 8 letter, the bank said the cost of the coverage was $2,520. "We previously sent you notice that our records show the flood insurance on your property expired or was canceled," the letter states. "To date, we haven't received acceptable evidence that you have coverage that meets our minimum requirements."
Press steps in
McKinley contacted Press on Your Side for help.
A Bank of America spokeswoman said the bank would look into the situation. Later, the bank sent an inspector to examine the property. "The visual inspection has confirmed that there is no structure currently on the property, and we have processed a request for a cancellation of the policy," spokeswoman LaToya S. Evans said in a statement.
According to the bank, the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires the mortgage company to notify a customer of the need for flood insurance if a property is designated as being all or partially within a flood zone. Generally, it is up to the customer to submit any necessary documentation to support the removal of the flood insurance requirement, the bank said.
After 45 days, if the customer hasn't "successfully disputed" the need for insurance or signed a flood policy, federal regulation requires the lender or mortgage servicer to secure flood insurance coverage, the bank said.
"We have been working with the customer for several months and as recently as three weeks ago had requested conclusive documentation that the structure had been demolished," Evans said. "This documentation would allow us to process the customer’s appeal to the federal flood plain designation.
"In the absence of this documentation, we have taken the extra step to send an inspector to the property," Evans said.
McKinley said he didn't have what the bank wanted so he had sent the paperwork he believed proved the house was demolished.
Sending an inspector was the right decision. A simple glance at the property would prove there is no house there.
McKinley thanked Press on Your Side for the help. "Obviously, they sent someone here and they looked," McKinley said.
Not over
But it seems it's not over. On Friday, McKinley said he received a letter from the bank. It said the bank has canceled the flood insurance policy taken out by the bank because "proof of coverage for your property or coverage is no longer required."
However the bank has charged him $461.42 to cover the duration that the policy, purchased by the bank, was active. A refund of $2,058.58 was credited to his account.
"They want to keep back almost $500 between the time I canceled my insurance and the time that they went out and viewed the fact that there was no house there," McKinley said. "I am just struggling to get the full refund at this point."
Press on Your Side has contacted Bank of America for some answers. Meanwhile, the letter seems to send some mixed messages. It states he was charged for the policy only during the period when he didn't have coverage that "meeting our minimum requirements." (But the house was demolished in 2013, Press on Your Side would say.)
"If you believe you are entitled to a full refund, you need to provide us with a copy of your new and previous flood insurance policy declaration pages, which include the policy start and expiration dates with no lapse in coverage," the letter states. "If the proof of coverage provided does not meet our minimum coverage requirements, we will mail you a separate notice that you'll need to obtain additional coverage."
Hopefully, the bank will credit McKinley for the full cost of a policy. We'll update the situation when Bank of America gets back to us.
Do you have a consumer problem that needs solving? Contact David P. Willis at 732-643-4042, pressonyourside@gannettnj.com or facebook.com/dpwillis732.
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Earlier this week, Pilatus Bank’s chairman Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, 38, was accused in an indictment filed in a federal court in Manhattan of involvement in a scheme to evade U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, prosecutors have said.
Hasheminejad initially sought asylum in the United States in 2003, telling immigration authorities that he was “applying for asylum now because I am certain that if I return to Iran my life would be in danger.” The financial jihadi had regularly traveled to Iran.
Hasheminejad was arrested in Virginia as he returned to his Washington home, charged with bank fraud and breaching US sanctions against Iran. He is accused of having funneled some $115 million through the United States on behalf of Iranian entities, including his family’s company Stratus, from a Venezuelan construction project to companies in Switzerland and Turkey.
His assets in Pilatus Bank in Malta have now been frozen. In the reply to the New York southern district court, Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman revealed that the young Hasheminejad arrived in the US applying for asylum, but later became a St Kitts and Nevis citizen, and today carried with him at least four passports. “Sadr [Hasheminejad] has repeatedly represented… that he could not flee to Iran because that would endanger [his] life. In actuality Sadr has travelled on over 20 occasions to Iran between 2010 and 2015,” the prosecutors said, displaying air ticket itineraries as proof of travel to Tehran, “voluminous and unimpeachable email communications”, business records and financial evidence. (Malta Today)
A liar and a funder of the most brutal state sponsor of terror.
A magistrate who investigated the Egrant case has established, after evaluating CCTV footage, that the owner of Pilatus Bank had been inside the bank, with his suitcases, since the early afternoon and was not carrying out large amounts of evidence as was implied in the Net News report. (25/07/18)
blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia claimed that payments were made through Pilatus Bank between the Azeri President’s daughter and the Maltese Prime Minister’s wife Michelle Muscat, who she claimed was the owner of Egrant Inc. The Prime Minister has denied the allegations but the Opposition leader is calling for an independent inquiry, as well as a police investigation.
On 16 October 2017, Caruana Galizia died in a car bomb attack close to her home.
Malta freezes Pilatus bank’s operations after chairman’s arrest Malta’s regulators have imposed a freeze on the business of Pilatus Bank after its chairman’s arrest on charges of breaking U.S. sanctions prompted a fresh wave of criticism of the island’s authorities. John O’Donnell, Reuters, Frankfurt, August 8, 2018: Earlier this week, the bank’s chairman Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, 38, was accused in an indictment filed in a federal court in Manhattan of involvement in a scheme to evade U.S. economic sanctions against Iran, prosecutors have said. Sadr was arrested on Monday, according to court papers. A lawyer for Sadr has declined to comment. That prompted criticism of the Maltese authorities for inaction, including from the children of a journalist murdered in Malta last year. Daphne Caruana Galizia had reported on corruption and accused Pilatus of money laundering. Some lawmakers had also questioned whether Pilatus Bank, which is registered in Malta, should keep its license. The developments prompted new protests by anti-corruption activists outside the bank’s headquarters near the capital of Valletta, who placed a washing machine on a plaque marking the opening of Pilatus Bank by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat. Malta’s police said the alleged sanctions busting did not involve Maltese citizens or institutions and that no transactions passed through Malta. Malta’s financial supervisors nonetheless responded by imposing controls on Pilatus that effectively freezes the bank’s business. “The bank has been directed not to transact any business whatsoever,” the Malta Financial Service Authority said in a statement, adding this applied to “all deposits and withdrawals and any disposal of the bank’s assets.” It was not clear how long the controls would stay in place. The bank has not responded to requests for comment. The events unfolded after a former employee of Pilatus, who ignited a political scandal in Malta after she became a source for the murdered journalist, surrendered herself to Greek police. Maltese prosecutors have filed a European warrant for the arrest of Maria Efimova, a Russian who left Malta for Greece last year with her family, on suspicion of fraud. A Greek police official said she had been arrested at Malta’s request. Efimova was employed for three months in 2016 by Pilatus. Caruana Galizia named her as the source of internal bank documents which she said indicated that Michelle Muscat, wife of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, owned a secret company in Panama.
Immigration fraud (Malta Today)
The prosecutors accused Hasheminejad of making false statements to US immigration authorities over the years in an effort to gain asylum in the country, and that while claiming that his life would be in danger if he returned to Iran, he regularly travelled to Iran. Hasheminejad initially sought asylum in the United States in 2003, telling immigration authorities that he was “applying for asylum now because I am certain that if I return to Iran my life would be in danger.” He described how his family had problems with the ruling regime in Iran and how he was once tortured by Iranian authorities because of his political beliefs. In 2004, immigration authorities granted him application for asylum. But in 2010, immigration authorities revoked the asylum because they determined that Hasheminejad’s attorney had submitted a fraudulent affidavit on his behalf. Specifically, Hasheminejad had submitted an affidavit in Farsi to his attorney that described his fear of persecution in Iran, but its translation contained significant omissions and embellishments when compared with the original Farsi affidavit. Hasheminejad was ordered to appear at the immigration court in November 2010, but left the country voluntarily prior to that appearance. In 2012, he submitted another affidavit to immigration authorities explaining why he had not appeared in immigration court as directed, and claimed that he left the country in 2010 because he was in “dire” financial circumstances and his financial situation in the United States and Europe had “deteriorated”. Hasheminejad also reiterated that “the only reason I filed the asylum case was because I possessed a genuine fear of return to Iran.” But the US prosecutors said these statements were demonstrably false as emails obtained through a series of search warrants showed. Between 2010 and 2015, Hasheminejad travelled to Iran on well over 20 occasions to conduct business and visit his family. In one email, dated 21 November 2011, Hasheminejad discussed travel with his father and stated: “Ok baba, I’ve changed the tickets, and changed your appointments, and I’ll see you in Tehran tomorrow morning.” Or on 21 December 2011, he told another individual that he was currently in Venezuela but would bring materials with him “to Tehran”. Additionally, Hasheminejad’s statements in his 2012 immigration affidavit regarding his financial circumstances were said to be “grossly exaggerated”: despite reporting that he was in dire economic circumstances as of 2010, by 2012 Hasheminejad reported to the United States Department of the Treasury that he had approximately $37 million in assets. This was right about the time he was starting the licensing process in Malta to start Pilatus Bank.
Have a tip we should know? Your anonymity is NEVER compromised. Email Email tips@thegellerreport.com
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The Secret For Making Your Own BBQ Sauce
You can develop your own signature BBQ sauce
Saturday, June 02, 2018
BBQ sauce is one thing every grill chef is particular about. The perfect BBQ sauce adds flavor and moisture to meat, but every area has its own varieties. It's simple to make, so you can easily develop your own custom BBQ sauce.
Types of BBQ Sauce
There are several types of BBQ sauce. Most traditional BBQ sauces either use tomato sauce, mustard, or vinegar as a base, and they come in all thicknesses. For instance, North Carolina barbecue sauce is thin and runny, while Kansas City barbecue sauces are thick and sticky.
There are also variations of sauces known as mopping sauces, which is regularly slopped all over the meat while it is cooking. Finishing sauce is used as a condiment when eating barbecue and is not used during the cooking process.
Using BBQ Sauce
BBQ sauce can be used before, during, and after cooking the meat. The only warning is to avoid using barbecue sauce that contains tomatoes or a lot of sugar during the cooking process. These ingredients burn too easily and can affect the taste of your meat.
BBQ Sauce Recipes
I have included three basic BBQ sauce recipes - one for each type of main ingredient. Make the basic barbecue sauce by following the recipe, then start experimenting to develop your own signature sauce.
Basic Tomato BBQ Sauce
1 regular can of tomato sauce
1 can of tomato paste
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3 cloves garlic, crushed
4 tablespoons onion, minced
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon cayenne
fresh ground pepper to taste
Cook the garlic and onion until it's soft, and then add all the rest of the ingredients. Simmer on low for 20-30 minutes. Keep stirring it often so it doesn't burn, then refrigerate for a few days before you use it. This allows the flavors to blend and mellow.
Basic Vinegar BBQ Sauce
1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup hot water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
Stir the brown sugar into the hot water. Continue stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add the remaining ingredients and heat on low for a few minutes. This perfect to coat pulled pork, but don't add so much that it gets soupy.
Basic Mustard BBQ Sauce
1 cup prepared yellow mustard
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon cayenne
Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan and simmer on low for at least thirty minutes. This is great for southern pork style barbecue.
Once you've tried each of these BBQ sauce recipes, you can choose which is closest to what you want and begin modifying. Add or subtract ingredients, or change the amounts of different spices.
Finding the perfect barbecue sauce just takes time! Then you just have to decide whether to share your personal BBQ sauce recipe, or keep them begging!
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Decided to let a guy on Craigslist blow me just to see what it was like. It's not for me.
6,047 shares
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Hotachy
Offline
Activity: 490
Merit: 135
Hire us on telegram => @TacticBtc
Full MemberActivity: 490Merit: 135Hire us on telegram => @TacticBtc [CLOSED] 🚀 I AM HERO.IO 🚀 UP to $2 Mio. Create your hero profile 🚀 February 01, 2018, 07:22:51 PM
Last edit: April 20, 2018, 11:28:31 AM by Hotachy #1 Hello dear iamhero community, we are very sorry to inform you that we have to close the current ico, we have not been able to collect the needed money. The project will be further developed and as soon as we make the ico new, we will notify all. Thank you for your support - MESSAGE FROM CEO
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Facebook Campaign 15% Twitter Campaign 15% Telegram Campaign 2% Signature Campaign 30% Reddit Campaign 5% Steemit Campaign 5% YouTube Campaign 5% Translation Campaign 8% Blogging Campaign 5% I am Hero Resume Campaign 10%
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The Justice Department is siding with Joe Arpaio in asking a federal judge to toss the criminal contempt case that spurred President Trump’s pardon of the former Arizona sheriff, who had been found in contempt of court for violating a court order.
“The President’s decision to grant Defendant a ‘[f]ull and [u]nconditional [p]ardon [f]or [h]is [c]onviction’—and Defendant’s decision to accept it—ends this prosecution,” the DOJ said in a court filing Monday. “The presidential pardon removes any punitive consequences that would otherwise flow from Defendant’s non-final conviction and therefore renders the case moot.”
Prior to Trump’s pardon, Arpaio had been slated to receive his sentence for the criminal contempt conviction next month. A federal judge in July found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt of court for violating court orders dating back to 2011 that barred discriminatory policing practices under his watch.
The court orders were the result of a civil lawsuit against Arpaio, brought initially by a motorist detained by his office who was later joined by the ACLU and other plaintiffs . The federal government had previously argued in favor of holding Arpaio in criminal contempt for violating a court’s order that he end his office’s practice of racially discriminatory traffic stops.
Trump last month pardoned Arpaio for the contempt conviction and for “any other offenses” that may arise from that case. Arpaio was an early Trump-booster during the presidential campaign and made appearances at Trump rallies.
The judge has since called off the sentencing hearing in light of Trump’s pardon, and instead plans to hear arguments next month on Arpaio’s request to toss the case entirely. Arpaio’s attorneys said in a court filing late last month that if the court did not toss the case, Arpaio “will certainly pursue his appeals to achieve that, which would be—to put it bluntly—a waste of everyone’s time and money.”
President Trump did not go through the DOJ process, which typically takes many months and usually begins at least five years after a pardon applicant has completed his or her sentence, in his pardoning of Arpaio. However, Trump is by no means required to go through that process, and Presidents can pardon Americans for any federal offense.
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Dennis Schroeder / NREL
HPE announced Tuesday that it's building a supercomputer to accelerate the federal government's basic R&D into energy efficiency. The supercomputer, dubbed "Eagle," will facilitate research within the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) -- the only federal lab dedicated to researching energy efficiency and renewable energies. NREL is funded through the US Department of Energy but run by private contractors.
NREL expects to install Eagle in one of its data centers this summer and put into production in January. The machine should be more energy efficient and 3.5 times more powerful than its existing system, HPE says.
It will run detailed models to simulate complex systems and processes across a range of research areas, including wind energy and vehicle technologies. For wind energy, for instance, the NREL will use Eagle to analyze wind technology subsystem challenges, as well as systems-level interactions influenced by atmospheric conditions or variable terrain. In the area of vehicle technologies, Eagle will facilitate research in advanced battery technologies and other early-stage innovations in electrification.
Eagle will be powered by the HPE SGI 8600, a system designed to run complex HPC workloads at petaflop speeds. Eagle will also come with a warm liquid cooling system that should capture 97 percent of wasted heat to reuse.
The new supercomputer is part of a longstanding collaboration between HPE and the DOE, which includes work on improving the energy efficiency of high-performance computing technologies.
"We are strongly committed to architecting technologies to power the next wave of supercomputing and are creating advanced HPC systems while scaling energy efficiency in data centers, to get us there," Bill Mannel, GM of the HPC and AI Group for HPE, said in a statement.
Prior and related coverage:
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Other additions are mostly just quality-of-life improvements for the Clubs and Looking For Group system (player stats on a per-game basis, along with copying and pasting previous LFG posts are chief among them). What's more, custom profile pictures are making a comeback. "We're excited to bring this top fan-requested feature to Xbox Live and expect it to be in preview longer than other features to ensure it's great for everyone when released," Xbox Wire says.
So, it sounds like once the Xbox crew has a way to ensure that no one is adding anything obscene to their profiles, the greater Xbox Live community will have access to the feature. For the rest of the update notes, hit the source link below.
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A YouTube video of a flying drone with a handgun attached is making the rounds of the Internet and opinions range from impressed to irritated.
The video, uploaded by YouTube user Hogwit, has reportedly been linked to 18-year-old Austin Haughwout of Clinton, Conn., according to the Daily Mail. The description on the video notes the drone is a "homemade multirotor with a semiautomatic handgun mounted on it."
The Federal Aviation Administration released a Friday, July 17, statement on the drone-handgun device. "The FAA will investigate the operation of an unmanned aircraft system in a Connecticut park to determine if any Federal Aviation Regulations were violated," Jim Peters of the FAA told Patch via email. "The FAA will also work with its law enforcement partners to determine if there were any violations of criminal statutes."
What do you think about the drone in the above video? Weigh in via the comments section at the end of the article. This isn't the first time Haughwout and drones have created a stir on the Internet.
In May 2014, a woman thought Haughwout was using his drone to take pictures of women on a public beach. She called the police before approaching the teenager and allegedly attacking him at Hammonassett State Park.
The exchange was caught on video, which contains strong language. The username linked to both videos is Hogwit.
What People Are Saying About the Flying Gun YouTube Video
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Elizabeth Warren is a Democrat from Massachusetts who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012 and ran for her party's presidential nomination in 2020.
Who Is Elizabeth Warren? Politician Elizabeth Warren was the first member of her family to graduate from college, eventually earning her law degree from Rutgers University. After teaching law at several universities, Warren was selected to lead the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. In 2008, she headed the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. In November 2012, Warren won election to the U.S. Senate, defeating incumbent Republican Scott Brown. She formally announced her 2020 presidential campaign on February 9, 2019, but dropped out of the race in March 2020.
Early Life Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on June 22, 1949, Elizabeth Warren was the last of four children—and the only daughter—of Donald and Pauline Herring. Warren spent most of her early life on what she referred to as "the ragged edge of the middle class." Her father worked mostly as a maintenance man, and when he suffered a heart attack that created massive medical bills, Warren's mother brought in extra money by working in the catalog-order department at Sears. Warren also began helping out at the age of 13, by waiting tables at her aunt's Mexican restaurant. But despite efforts to relieve the financial strain on the family, money remained tight; Warren recalled her mother's hesitation to take her to the doctor when she was a child because of a lack of finances. A brilliant student, Warren became a state debate champion and graduated high school at the age of 16. That same year, she entered George Washington University on a full debate scholarship. After two years at the university, Warren left school to marry her high school sweetheart, NASA mathematician Jim Warren. She and Warren moved to Texas, and Elizabeth finished her degree in speech pathology at the University of Houston, becoming the first member of her immediate family to graduate from college. Elizabeth and her husband moved to New Jersey, where Warren worked in public schools, helping children with disabilities. During this time, Warren gave birth to two children, daughter Amelia and son Alex. The day her first child turned 2, she headed to graduate school to study law at Rutgers University. She earned her J.D. in 1976, and practiced law from her home, becoming known for her scholarly expertise in bankruptcy law.
Political Career By 1978, Warren had divorced her first husband. In the year after the split, she began exploring the economic pressures facing the American middle class, looking specifically at a 1978 law passed by Congress that made it easier for companies and individuals to declare bankruptcy. Warren decided to investigate the reasons why Americans were ending up in bankruptcy court, and discovered that most of the financial victims were from middle-class families who had lost jobs, experienced financial hardship from a divorce or suffered illnesses that decimated their savings. From then on, Warren would focus her research on bankruptcy and commercial law—specifically on how it affected financially distressed companies, women, the elderly and the working poor. In the decade that followed, Warren moved around the country with her second husband—Harvard law professor, Bruce Mann, whom she married in 1980—teaching law at the University of Houston, the University of Texas, the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania. The couple finally settled at Harvard in 1995. That same year, Warren was asked to advise the new National Bankruptcy Review Commission. During Warren's time as chief adviser, she testified against Congressional efforts to limit consumers' ability to file for bankruptcy. Despite her best efforts, the related bill passed in 2005. It was considered a victory for the business lobby and a defeat for Warren. In November 2008, Warren was tapped by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the Congressional Oversight Panel, which was created to monitor the $700 billion bank bailout effort known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Warren headed investigations, conducted televised public hearings, led interviews of government officials and submitted monthly reports demanding accountability from banks. For her efforts, the Boston Globe named Warren "Bostonian of the Year" in 2009. On September 17, 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Elizabeth Warren Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In her roles, she helped design the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. The main goal of the CFPB was to police credit lenders and prevent consumers from unwittingly signing up for risky loans. However, due largely to Republican opposition, Warren was not chosen to head the agency, and she stepped down from the post in August 2011.
Elected to U.S. Senate On September 14, 2011, Warren officially announced her candidacy for Massachusetts Senate, pitting herself against Republican incumbent Scott Brown. Around this time, a speech Warren delivered went viral on YouTube, endearing Warren to populist supporters. In the clip, filmed in an informal living room meet-and-greet, the Harvard law professor explained how everyone benefits from roads, public safety and the public education system in the United States, which are paid for by taxes. "You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless!" she said. "Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." The viral video was credited with giving Warren a bump up in the polls. But Warren's campaign ran into some trouble in early 2012, when she found herself in a media maelstrom over her Native American ancestry claims. Reporters for the Boston Herald could not find any proof of her Cherokee heritage, and a Cherokee genealogist also challenged Warren's assertion. To try to quell the controversy, Warren released a statement to Boston's WBZ-TV. "Growing up, my mother and grandparents often talked about our family's Native American heritage. As a kid, I never thought to ask them for documentation—what kid would?" Warren further explained that "I never sought nor gained personal benefit in school or job applications based on my heritage." Despite this controversy, in June 2012, Warren clinched the Democratic nomination in the Senate race, facing incumbent Republican opponent, Senator Scott Brown. The candidates were involved in a tight race. A poll released in September 2012 by the Public Policy Polling showed that Brown had a five-point lead over Warren. However, later that month, Warren earned national exposure as one of the speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, gaining the favor of many critics as well as a slight lead in the polls. At the convention, she heavily discussed the need for economic and government reforms. "America's middle class is getting hammered, and Washington is rigged to work for the big guy," Warren told ABC News. Warren won the election in November 2012, defeating Brown by 5 percent to 6 percent and earning her first term in the U.S. Senate, making her the first woman ever elected to the post for Massachusetts. On her website, Warren told her constituents: "I won't just be your senator, I will also be your champion." First Term The month after her election, Warren was selected for a seat on the Senate Banking Committee, which was charged with implementing the Dodd-Frank legislation that she had helped design. After being sworn in to her Senate post in January 2013, Warren set straight to work with the committee, leading its inquiries into banking regulations, and in May she introduced her first bill, the Bank on Student Loans Fairness Act, which proposed that students should receive the same interest rates on their federal loans as banks do on theirs. Warren also earned seats on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the Special Committee on Aging. In 2014, Warren was chosen to fill the newly created position of Strategic Advisor of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, tasked with reshaping the party's direction and priorities. The appointment, along with the encouragement of various Democratic groups, led to speculation that she was being groomed for a presidential bid in the 2016 elections, but Warren ultimately announced that she would not run. Choosing her work in the Senate over a bid for the White House, Warren sponsored many pieces of legislation. She championed financial transparency in government legal cases in the Truth in Settlements Act of 2015, which passed the Senate. In 2016, Warren made headlines for her candid financial advice. She recommended that everyone have an emergency savings fund. Warren told Elle magazine that "I got married when I was 19, and my mother-in-law took me aside and said, 'You always need walking-out-the-door money.'" She took that suggestion to heart, and it was the funds that she had put aside that helped her when she and her husband divorced roughly a decade later. Warren was also outspoken about the need to fill the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court created by the death of Antonin Scalia in February 2016. Some Republicans opposed President Obama naming a replacement, claiming the spot shouldn't be filled until after the 2016 elections. Warren took to Twitter to point out how flawed she thought their thinking was on the issue, tweeting "I can’t find a clause in the Constitution that says '…except when there’s a year left in the term of a Democratic President.'" In June 2016, Warren endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Later that month, Warren hit the campaign trail with Clinton, making their first joint appearance at an event in Cincinnati, Ohio. "I'm here today, because I'm with her, yes her," Warren told the crowd, referring to Clinton's campaign slogan. Warren also went on the attack in her critiques of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. "When Donald says he'll make America great, he means greater for rich guys just like Donald Trump," she said. "That's who Donald Trump is. ... And you have to watch out for him, because he'll crush you into the dirt." On July 25, 2016, Warren delivered the keynote address on the first night of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the third woman in history along with Texas Representative Barbara Jordan and Texas Governor Ann Richards to be given the prestigious speaking position. Warren took the opportunity to draw clear distinctions between Clinton and her opponent Trump. "On one side is a man who inherited a fortune from his father and kept it going by cheating people and skipping out on debts," she said of Trump. "On the other side is one of the smartest, toughest, most tenacious people on the planet — a woman who fights for children, for women, for health care, for human rights, a woman who fights for all of us, and who is strong enough to win those fights." Voice of Opposition
On November 8, 2016, Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton by almost 3 million votes, but in a historic victory won the electoral college and was elected the 45th president of the United States.
A year and one day after President Trump's inauguration on January 22, 2016, Warren joined the Boston Women's March for America, a sister march of the historic Women's March on Washington. "This gathering is a chance for us to come together to make clear that we believe in basic dignity, respect, and equal rights for every person in this country, and that we are committed to fighting back against bigotry in all its forms," Warren said in a statement.
Senator Warren also immediately voiced opposition to President Trump's executive order to implement a travel ban on immigrants from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen for at least 90 days, temporarily suspend the entry of refugees for 120 days and bar Syrian refugees indefinitely. Thousands of demonstrators protested at airports around the country, and Warren joined those gathered at Boston's Logan International Airport.
She also was a vocal opponent of many of the president's cabinet nominees, including Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama for attorney general. In a speech opposing Senator Sessions's nomination, Warren quoted former Senator Edward Kennedy, who had been a member of the Senate Judiciary committee in 1986 when Sessions was nominated by President Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship. Warren read Kennedy’s words about Sessions: “He is, I believe, a disgrace to the Justice Department and he should withdraw his nomination and resign his position.”
Warren then began to read a letter from late civil rights activist Coretta Scott King, the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which she wrote in 1986 to urge the Senate to reject Sessions's nomination as a federal judge. As Warren read Coretta Scott King's letter to the Senate, she was interrupted by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and was told she had breached provisions of the Senate's Rule 19 because she had "impugned the motives and conduct of our colleague from Alabama."
After being silenced by her Senate colleagues, Warren read the letter aloud on Facebook live in a video that went viral and was viewed more than 7.2 million times.
In November 2017, following a stunning claim by former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile that the Clinton campaign had control over the DNC and that the "system" was rigged "to throw the primary to Hillary" in 2016, Warren publicly agreed with that analysis during a CNN interview.
"This is a real problem," Warren conceded. "But what we've got to do as Democrats now, is we've got to hold this party accountable."
In another interview on Meet the Press, she brushed off one newspaper's suggestion that she take a DNA test to verify her claims of Native American bloodlines, again noting that she never sought any special treatment for that aspect of her heritage. (She later released the DNA results that showed "strong evidence" of Native American ancestry going back six to 10 generations.)
That August, Warren introduced the Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, legislation she said was designed to "eliminate the influence of money in federal government." Among its provisions, the bill would prohibit federal lawmakers, judges, Cabinet secretaries and other senior congressional staff from owning individual stocks while holding office, and establish a series of measures to curb lobbying efforts.
The bill would also require the IRS to release tax returns for congressional candidates from the previous two years and during each year in office, and for presidential candidates to also share their tax returns. In conjunction with that proposal, Warren released her tax returns from the past 10 years online.
2020 Presidential Race
On December 31, 2018, Warren became one of the first prominent Democrats to announce the formation of an exploratory committee to run for U.S. president in 2020. The announcement came by way of a video message to supporters, in which she decried the practices of big corporations and cited her work on financial protections for consumers.
From the start, Warren's campaign carried the baggage of her missteps with claims of Native American heritage, but she drew favorable attention for a CNN-sponsored town hall in March 2019, during which she emotionally revealed her family's struggles with finances when she was a child. Prior to another town hall in April, she revealed details of a proposal to cover tuition at public colleges and eliminate student-loan debt for millions of Americans.
By late July, Warren had made steady gains in the national polls, rendering her a target of fellow candidates during the second round of Democratic debates. She parried some of the attacks as "Republican talking points" and drew applause for her rebuttal of John Delaney's calls for pragmatism, noting, "I don't understand why anybody goes to the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for."
Pressured to describe how she intended to pay for a "Medicare for all" program to provide free health care for Americans, Warren revealed a $20.5 trillion health care proposal in early November. Under her plan, employers would continue contributing toward overall coverage expenses (though employees would trade in their company insurance for the government one), with additional funds to be raised through an altered income tax policy and the taxing of financial transactions like stock trades.
Toward the end of the year, the Massachusetts senator faced a new threat when the fast-rising Pete Buttigieg jumped ahead of her in the polls. Warren regained some momentum with her pointed attacks of Michael Bloomberg in a pair of February 2020 debates, though she still trailed fellow progressive Bernie Sanders in the polling and delegate count.
Following a disappointing showing in the Super Tuesday primaries, including a third-place finish on her home turf of Massachusetts, Warren announced that she was ending her presidential campaign on March 5, 2020.
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Diagnoses associated with self-injury
Since self-cutters were first reported on in 1960, they have continued to be a prevalent mental health problem. (emphasis added)
However, self-injurious behavior is seen in patients with many more diagnoses than the DSM suggests. In interviews, people who engage in repetitive self-injury have reported being diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, anorexia, bulimia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, many of the dissociative disorders (including depersonalization disorder, dissociative disorder not otherwise specified, and MPD/DID), anxiety and panic disorders, and impulse-control disorder not otherwise specified. In addition, the call for a separate diagnosis for self-injurers is being taken up by many practitioners.
It is beyond the scope of this page to provide definitive information about all of these conditions. I will try, instead, to give a basic description of the disorder, explain when I can how self-injury might fit into the pattern of the disease, and give references to pages where much more information is available. In the case of borderline personality disorder (BPD), I devote considerable space to discussion simply because the label BPD is sometimes automatically applied in cases where self-injury is present, and the negative effects of a BPD misdiagnosis can be extreme.
Conditions in which self-injurious behavior is seen
Borderline Personality Disorder
"Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear."
--Ani DiFranco
This is not to say that BPD is a fictional illness; I have encountered people who meet the DSM criteria for BPD. They tend to be people in great pain who are struggling to survive however they can, and they often unintentionally cause great pain for those who love them. But I have met many more people who don't meet the criteria but have been given the label because of their self-injury.
Consider, however, the DSM-IV Handbook of Differential Diagnosis (First et al. 1995). In its decision tree for the symptom "self-mutilation," the first decision point is "Motivation is to decrease dysphoria, vent angry feelings, or to reduce feelings of numbness... in association with a pattern of impulsivity and identity disturbance." If this is true, then a practitioner following this manual would have to diagnose someone as BPD purely because they cope with overwhelming feelings by self-injuring.
This is particularly disturbing in light of recent findings (Herpertz, et al., 1997) that only 48% of their sample of self-injurers met the DSM criteria for BPD. When self-injury was excluded as a factor, only 28% of the sample met the criteria.
Similar results were seen in a 1992 study by Rusch, Guastello, and Mason. They examined 89 psychiatric inpatients who had been diagnosed as BPD, and summarized their results statistically.
Different raters examined the patients and the hospital records and indicated the degree to which each of the eight defining BPD symptoms were present. One fascinating note: only 36 of the 89 patients actually met the DSM-IIIR criteria (five of eight symptoms present) for being diagnosed with the disorder. Rusch and colleagues ran a statistical procedure called factor analysis in an effort to discover which symptoms tend to co-occur.
The results are interesting. They found three symptom complexes: the "volatility" factor, which consisted of inappropriate anger, unstable relationships, and impulsive behavior; the "self-destructive/unpredictable" factor, which consisted of self-harm and emotional instability; and the "identity disturbance" factor.
The SDU (self-destructive) factor was present in 82 of the patients, while the volatility was seen in only 25 and the identity disturbance in 21. The authors suggest that either self-mutilation is at the core of BPD or clinicians tend to use self-harm as a sufficient criterion to label a patient BPD. The latter seems more likely, given that fewer than half of the patients studied met the DSM criteria for BPD.
One of the foremost researchers into Borderline Personality Disorder, Marsha Linehan, does believe that it is a valid diagnosis, but in a 1995 article notes: "No diagnosis should be made unless the DSM-IV criteria are strictly applied. . . . the diagnosis of a personality disorder requires the understanding of a person's long-term pattern of functioning." (Linehan, et al. 1995, emphasis added.) That this does not happen is evident in the increasing numbers of teenagers being diagnosed as borderline. Given that the DSM-IV refers to personality disorders as longstanding patterns of behavior usually beginning in early adulthood, one wonders what justification is used for giving a 14-year-old a negative psychiatric label that will stay with her all of her life? Reading Linehan's work has caused some therapists to wonder if perhaps the label "BPD" is too stigmatized and too over-used, and if it might be better to call it what it really is: a disorder of emotional regulation.
If a care giver diagnoses you as BPD and you're fairly certain the label is inaccurate and counterproductive, find another doctor. Wakefield and Underwager (1994) point out that mental health professionals are no less likely to err and no less prone to the cognitive shortcuts we all take than anyone else is:
When many psychotherapists reach a conclusion about a person, not only do they ignore anything that questions or contradicts their conclusions, they actively fabricate and conjure up false statements or erroneous observations to support their conclusion [note that this process can be unconscious] (Arkes and Harkness 1980). When given information by a patient, therapists attend only to that which supports the conclusion they have already reached (Strohmer et al. 1990). . . . The frightening fact about conclusions reached by therapists with respect to patients is that they are made within 30 seconds to two or three minutes of the first contact (Ganton and Dickinson 1969; Meehl 1959; Weber et al. 1993). Once the conclusion is reached, mental health professionals are often impervious to any new information and persist in the label assigned very early in the process on the basis of minimal information, usually an idiosyncratic single cue (Rosenhan 1973) (emphasis added).
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MakeUseOf：もう耳にタコができるほど聞いたとは思いますが、、アンチウィルスソフトでパソコンを守ることは必要です。Macでも、Windowsでも、Linuxでも必要です。最近のアンチウィルスソフトは、ダウンロードしてインストールすれば簡単に稼働させられるので、ほとんど何もする必要がありません。それに無料のものもあります。
まだアンチウィルスソフトを入れていないという人は、これから紹介する10のソフトのうちどれかを手に入れて、今すぐパソコンを守りましょう。
無料のアンチウィルスソフトに関する注意
これから紹介するアンチウィルスソフトの会社はどれもお金を稼ごうとしています。アンチウィルスソフトの無料配布ではお金は稼げません。したがって、知っておいた方がいいことがいくつかあります。例えば、このような会社は有料のソフトにアップグレードさせようとすることが多いです。アップグレードを勧める、ポップアップ画面やメールを目にすることになるでしょう。これが無料ソフトの対価の1つです。
さらに狡猾なことに、無料のツールバーやブラウザの拡張機能をインストールさせようとするものもあります。これはやらない方がいいです。ブラウザのツールバーは最悪で、普通はあなたの情報を集めて売るだけで、ブラウジングが遅くなります。
これから紹介するアプリをダウンロードしてインストールする時は目を光らせて、時々アップグレードを勧めてこないか注意はしておきましょう。
常に安定したパフォーマンスで使いやすいツールだと評判の｢Avira｣はかなりおすすめです。｢AV-Comparatives｣によるアンチウィルステストでは、プロ版が99.9%の保護率でした。無料版にも同様のパワーがあります。
スケジューリングのオプションがとても直感的で、1週間にスキャンさせる回数を決められます。毎日のクイックスキャンや、毎週のフルスキャンを設定することもできます。リアルタイムの保護と組み合わせれば、あらゆるものからパソコンを守ることができます。
【ダウンロード】Avira（Windows版）
【ダウンロード】Avira（Mac版）
プロ版が99.9%の保護率だったもう1つのアンチウィルスソフト｢Bitdefender｣の無料版は、出回っているほぼすべてのマルウェアから守ることができます。フィッシング対策や詐欺対策の機能もあるので、さらにセキュリティを保つことができます。
シンプルなインターフェイスはオプションで迷うこともなく、自動化されているので積極的に管理する必要もありません。また、リソースを食うアンチウィルスソフトもある中で、システムへの負荷が軽くなるように設計されているのもうれしいところです。
【ダウンロード】Bitdefender（Windows版）
『Avast』は他のソフトに比べると少し保護率は落ちますが、99.6%と非常に高い値です。また、比較的リソースも使わないので、パソコンが著しく遅くなるうようなことはないでしょう。
シンプルで使いやすいインターフェイスなので、設定をするのに説明書などは必要ありません。保護率が少し低いですが、無料のアンチウィルスソフトを探している人にはAvastは手堅い選択です。最も人気のあるソフトの1つなのも納得です。
【ダウンロード】Avast（Windows版）
【ダウンロード】Avast（Mac版）
長い間ずっと人気がある無料アンチウィルスソフトの｢AVG｣は、保護率（99.6%）もシステムリソースの使用率（ソフトの重さ）もどちらも上位です。今では、システムのクリーンアップや、携帯電話のアンチウィルスなど、不要なものも提供していますが、主力製品はいまでもベストアプリの1つです。
AVGは、画面にしつこく出る表示が嫌がられていますが、時々出てくるアップグレードの金額は、堅実なアンチウィルスのパフォーマンスに対して支払うなら、安いものだとわかっている人も多いです。
【ダウンロード】AVG（Windows版）
【ダウンロード】AVG（Mac版）
Ad-Awareの｢Lavasoft｣のプロ版は、最近のテストで保護率が99.3%で、堅実な選択肢の1つになっています。このプロ版は、他のアンチウイルスソフトよりもリソースを多く使う傾向にありましたが、それでもWindowsユーザーにはとてもおすすめです。アドウェア対策やスパイウェア対策の機能に力を入れているのが特に良いです。
無料のアンチウイルスソフトを使うのは誰にでもできますが、Ad-Awareの有料版の価格はさまざまで、かなりお手頃なものもあるので、十分に機能が揃ったものにアップグレードしたい人は、Lavasoftを使っていると楽です。
【ダウンロード】Ad-Aware Free（Windows版）
このツールは、インストールする必要がないという点で、他のソフトとは違います。ただダウンロードして起動するだけでいいのです。つまり、USBドライブから起動させたり、他のアンチウイルスソフトを起動させていても使うことができます。
インストールをしないので、リアルタイムやスケジュールを決めて稼働させることはできません。ですから、これをメインのアンチウイルスソフトとして使うのはやめた方がいいでしょう。しかし、メインのアンチウイルスソフトが機能していないような気がしたり、ダブルチェックをしたい場合は、これを使うといいです。
【ダウンロード】eScan Anti-Virus Toolkit（Windows版）
もう1つのオンデマンドのアンチウイルスソフト｢HouseCall｣は、素早くダウンロードと起動ができます。スケジュール機能もリアルタイム保護もありませんが、パソコンがウィルスに感染したと思ったら、これでチェックするといいです。
Trend Microは、アンチランサムウェア（押し売りウィルス）、ブラウザガード、ルートキットバスターなど、無料のアンチウイルスソフトをたくさん出しているので、それも気になっている人がいるかもしれません。
【ダウンロード】HouseCall（Windows版）
【ダウンロード】HouseCall（Mac版）
Malwarebytesは、ここ数年でかなり優秀だという評価を得てきました。この｢Anti-Malware｣も例外ではありません。アドウェアを排除することに特化しており、ファイルサイズが小さく、軽くて速いのが特徴です。
アップグレードをしないと手動のスキャン機能しか使えないので、リアルタイム保護はできません。しかし、それでも素晴らしいソフトです。
【ダウンロード】Malwarebytes（Windows版）
（注：無料のトライアル版は、14日間のトライアル期間が終わると基本機能しか使えなくなります）
【ダウンロード】Malwarebytes（Mac版）
有料版へのアップグレードを促す画面が何度か出るとは思いますが、それでも｢Panda｣には強みがあります。例えば、ほとんどの作業をクラウドから実行するので、システムリソースの問題がありません。
クラウドから作業する以外には、Pandaと他のアンチウイルスソフトの違いはほとんどありません。AV-Testでは、十分にウィルスから保護していることが証明されましたが、特に目を見張るような結果ではありません。しかし、ユーザビリティの成績はかなり良いので、面倒なインターフェイスや構造の心配をする必要もありません。
【ダウンロード】Panda（Windows版）
これは、無料なのに完全に機能が揃っているアンチウイルスソフトです。アンチウイルスソフトに求めるすべての標準的な機能に加えて、基本的なファイアーウォールも入っています。すでにアンチウイルスソフトを持っていても、これをダウンロードしても間違いなく損はしません。また、基本的な個人情報保護機能もあるので、クレジットファイルに正式な認証のない変更がされたら教えてくれます。
個人情報盗難防止サービス（もしくはクレジットの監視）を使った方が、実際により効果的ですが、別のセキュリティレイヤーを持っておくのは常に良いことです。
【ダウンロード】ZoneAlarm Free（Windows版）
The 10 Best Free Anti-Virus Programs ｜MakeUseOf
Dann Albright（訳：的野裕子）
Photo by Christoph Scholz/Flickr.
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Wendy Uruchi Contreras hid her undocumented status from co-workers until she was detained. (Courtesy of CASA/Para El Tiempo Latino)
An immigration rights activist whose own undocumented status was exposed by a drunken-driving arrest has lost her six-month legal battle to remain in the country.
Wendy Uruchi Contreras, a Virginia organizer for the immigrant rights group CASA, was deported to Spain Tuesday after last-ditch appeals were denied by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
“We are devastated,” said her husband, Giovani Jimenez, who lives in Fredericksburg, Va., with their American-born children, Alex, 13, and Lucia, 7. “My children are crying, but we know there’s nothing more we can do.”
[She fought to keep immigrants from being deported. Now she faces the same fate]
Jimenez said he learned of the decision last week, days before the inauguration of President Trump.
Uruchi, a 33-year-old Spanish citizen born in Bolivia, had been held in federal custody since July, when she pleaded guilty to drunken driving.
In her appeal, Uruchi asked prosecutors to show discretion in her case, essentially weighing her community activism and otherwise clean record against the danger of her committing another offense.
Under Obama administration guidelines, however, immigrants convicted of DUIs are a priority for deportation. Her appeal was denied.
In a statement Wednesday, ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez said the agency was following its procedures when it deported Uruchi: “Under current enforcement priorities, ICE focuses its enforcement resources on individuals who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security. Individuals convicted of significant misdemeanors like driving under the influence” are among those who pose a threat.
“They focused on one thing, that she got that DUI, and it was like they forgot about everything on the other side of the scale,” said Enid Gonzalez, Uruchi’s immigration attorney.
Now that Trump is president, the outlook for successful deportation appeals is even bleaker, Gonzalez said.
[‘I don’t feel safe’: Undocumented immigrants fear a Trump’ presidency]
As a candidate, Trump promised to build a wall along the border with Mexico and deport far more of the country’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, especially those with criminal records.
“Since 2013 alone, the Obama administration has allowed 300,000 criminal aliens to return back into United States communities,” he said during an immigration speech in Phoenix. “These are individuals encountered or identified by ICE, but who were not detained or processed for deportation because it wouldn’t have been politically correct.”
But Kim Propeack, communications director for CASA, saw it differently.
“Wendy’s situation illustrates our failure as a country in not creating an immigration system based on family unity and the best interests of children,” said Propeack, who helped Uruchi with her appeal.
“Wendy will contribute to society wherever she is,” Propeack added. “Her deportation is a loss to us.”
Uruchi came to the United States from Spain in 2002 under the United States’ visa waiver program, which allows visitors from 38 countries to stay for up to 90 days without a visa.
She and Jimenez had chatted online, but only saw each other for the first time when he picked her up at Dulles International Airport. At the end of her three months, Uruchi decided to stay illegally in America with Jimenez rather than return to Madrid, where she feared an abusive stepfather.
Giovani Jimenez, right, brushes his daughter Lucia's hair, center, as son Alex waits for them to leave to visit Uruchi at Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail in September. She is being deported this week. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
She and Jimenez, who is also undocumented, got married, had two kids and settled in Virginia. He worked as a trucker; she cleaned hotel rooms. She began volunteering with Casa in 2013 and was hired full time as a Virginia community organizer the following year.
Even as she helped undocumented immigrants fight deportation, Uruchi managed to hide her own status.
Friends and co-workers were stunned when, after pleading guilty to a May 28 DUI charge in Stafford County, Uruchi was transferred to ICE custody and told she would be deported.
Because she had entered under the visa waiver program, Uruchi was not entitled to a hearing with an immigration judge. Instead, her fate lay in the hands of ICE officials.
Gonzalez prepared a motion for stay of deportation, arguing that sending Uruchi to Spain would be a blow to her two children. Alex needed his mother’s help to deal with Asperger’s syndrome. Lucia woke up in the middle of the night crying for her mom.
On Halloween, a month after The Washington Post reported on Uruchi’s case, ICE officials rejected her motion for a stay of deportation.
[‘I beg them to release her’: A plea for mercy for an undocumented immigrant]
Uruchi’s appeal was denied on Nov. 14. A week later, CASA held a protest outside of ICE headquarters in the District, and Jimenez publicly begged immigration officials to reunite his family in time for Christmas.
Giovani Jimenez, top center, wipes a tear while surrounded by his son, Alex, 13, left, and daughter, Lucia, 7, at a CASA rally outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
“My wife is not a criminal,” said Jimenez, calling his wife’s arrest “something that can happen to anybody.”
Last week, officials told Jimenez that his wife would be imminently deported, he said. On Sunday, he and the kids went to see her one last time at Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail in Williamsburg.
Uruchi, usually the defiant activist, broke down.
“She began to cry,” Jimenez said. “She said she was very sorry, but that soon we would all be together.”
Jimenez said he and the kids would stay in the United States until at least the end of the school year. He held out hope that his wife somehow would be allowed to return quickly. If not, he said, then he, Alex and Lucia would move to Madrid this summer.
“We would have no jobs, no place to live. My kids would have to learn Spanish,” he said. “We would have to start from zero.”
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wakes up on time for 9:25 class Just to tell roommate to sign him in
363 shares
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Following the massive protests against ACTA yesterday, EU Parliament President Martin Schulz criticized the treaty on national television.
“I don’t find it good in its current form,” he told ARD.
The president added that the balance between copyright protection and the rights of Internet users is “not adequately anchored in this agreement.”
Together with the individual EU members states, the European Parliament has yet to ratify the controversial anti-piracy agreement.
Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States, already signed ACTA last October.
The comments from the EU Parliament President are shared by many experts, including professors Douwe Korff and Ian Brown who examined ACTA’s compatibility with human rights.
“Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others,” they concluded.
“It equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights . This makes the entire agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and -standards.”
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A serviceman carries a air-to-ground missile next to Sukhoi Su-25 jet fighters during a drill at the Russian southern Stavropol region, March 12, 2015. Russia has started military exercises in the country's south, as well as in Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and in Crimea, annexed from Ukraine last year, news agency RIA reported on Thursday, citing Russia's Defence Ministry. REUTERS/Eduard Korniyenko (RUSSIA - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST MILITARY)
By Thomas Grove
MOSCOW (Reuters) - More than 45,000 Russian troops as well as war planes and submarines started military exercises across much of the country on Monday in one of the Kremlin's biggest shows of force since its ties with the West plunged to Cold War-lows.
President Vladimir Putin called the Navy's Northern Fleet to full combat readiness in exercises in Russia's Arctic North apparently aimed at dwarfing military drills in neighboring Norway, a NATO member.
"New challenges and threats to military security require the armed forces to further boost their military capabilities. Special attention must be paid to newly created strategic formations in the north," Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said, quoted by RIA news agency.
Shoigu said the order came from Putin, who has promised to spend more than 21 trillion rubles ($340 billion) by the end of the decade to overhaul Russia's fighting forces.
Putin made his first public appearance since March 5 on Monday, an absence from view that had fueled feverish speculation over his health as well as his grip on power. He was meeting Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambayev at the Constantine Palace outside Russia's second city of St. Petersburg.
Norway is currently holding its "Joint Viking" drills involving 5,000 troops in Finnmark county, which borders Russia in the resource-rich Arctic circle where both countries are vying for influence.
Russia's drills would include nearly 40,000 servicemen, 41 warships and 15 submarines, RIA reported.
Tensions between Russia and Europe worsened last year, leading eight northern European nations to promise to boost cooperation to counter an increase in Moscow's military activity.
NATO made new allegations last week that Russia was arming separatists in east Ukraine, where more than 6,000 people have been killed in nearly a year of fighting.
The West and Kiev accuse Russia of supplying arms and soldiers to support the pro-Russian separatists. Moscow denies the claims.
NATO says it counted more than 100 intercepts of Russian planes into members' airspace last year, three times more than in 2013. The intercepts have forced civilian planes to change their courses and Britain scrambled Typhoon interceptor planes after two long-range bombers flew over the English Channel.
Norway said its military drills had been planned before the Ukraine crisis.
"However, the current security situation in Europe shows that the exercise is more relevant than ever," Lieutenant General Haga Lunde said in a statement.
The Russian exercises are due to last for much of the week during which Russia will celebrate its annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, carried out with the help of special forces.
Other drills involved 5,000 troops in Russia's eastern military district, while another exercise included another 500 troops from Russia's troubled North Caucasus region of Chechnya, the site of two separatist wars, wires reported.
The exercises were meant to focus on fighting Islamist insurgents, whose movement to create a Muslim state has spread across the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus, fueled by religion and anger at local abuse of power.
(Reporting by Thomas Grove, Editing by Elizabeth Piper and Angus MacSwan)
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BATON ROUGE, La. — Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie on Tuesday said officers have arrested three people they believe were planning to kill police in the Louisiana city.
The threat emerged after the shooting death of Alton Sterling last week by Baton Rouge police, which has prompted weeklong protests by people concerned about police use of deadly force.
The “credible threat” was why law officers were quick to take aggressive action when they believed protesters were becoming unruly, Debadie and other top law enforcement officers told reporters Tuesday.
“We can’t take anything for granted any more,” said East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux. “What you saw in the (law enforcement) response is because of the very real and viable threats against law enforcement. Look what happened in Dallas. A very peaceful protest and then some crazy madman.”
Police said they learned of the plot when an officer responded to a burglary at Cash America Pawn early Saturday morning and arrested Antonio Thomas in the store, Debadie said.
Police said Thomas, 17, had one handgun and one airsoft BB gun, and told investigators he and three others stole firearms and were also seeking bullets to shoot police officers, the chief said.
Surveillance video showed the suspects using a ladder to climb to the roof to break into the building, police said.
Thomas was accused of burglary and theft of a firearm and booked into parish prison.
Since Saturday, detectives have arrested two other suspects in the case, including a 13-year-old boy. One suspect remains at large, the chief said.
Malik Bridgewater, 20, was arrested on Sunday at his home and was charged with burglary and theft of a firearm. Detectives recovered three of the stolen handguns with Bridgewater.
The 13-year-old boy was arrested Monday and charged with burglary and firearm theft, police said.
During the investigation, another man, Trashone Coats, 23, was charged with Illegal possession of a stolen firearm after detectives recovered two handguns that he allegedly bought illegally on the street.
Eight handguns were stolen from the pawnshop, six of which have been recovered, Debadie said.
“Our officers have been working around the clock to get these firearms off the streets of Baton Rouge,” he said.
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The London cinema that hosted the first moving-image film in the UK is to be restored and reopened in a £6m project. The Regent Street cinema, now part of Westminster University, will be given state of the art projection and sound, while its auditorium will evoke its original late-Victorian grandeur.
Sarah Carthew, the university's director of development who has led fundraising, said the cinema will be a world away from the multiplexes of the West End with competitively-priced seats and a programme that would tap into the venue's historic significance.
The building, which fell into disuse as a cinema in the 1980s, is scheduled to open in November next year, with the official launch of the restoration programme taking place on Thursday night.
Carthew said the cinema would provide an educational resource for local schools and film students at the university would be able to show their work. "We'll be the only university in the world to be able to offer that to our students," said Carthew.
Situated just north of Oxford Circus, the building has been the site of many historical events, including early experiments with magic lantern shows, diving bells and electrification.
It was because of this reputation for innovation that in 1896 cinema pioneers the Lumière brothers decided to showed 10 50-second films there. The audience apparently ducked in amazement when they saw an image of a train coming towards them.
It was also the site of first photographic studio in Europe, which was built in 1841 and situated in the roof. Charles Dickens had his portrait taken there.
Less cerebrally, in 1951, it hosted the first X certificate film, Life Begins Tomorrow, which included allegedly racy scenes of hospitals and nightclubs.
"It's one of the most important sites in cinema," said cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, who studied at Westminster when it was the Polytechnic of Central London and is working on Joe Wright's adaptation of Anna Karenina starring Keira Knightley in the title role.
"I love the idea that in the centre of town there will be a place that people can enjoy movies within this incredible historical context."
The auditorium is being used as a lecture hall: McGarvey remembers it as "a dusty old storage space and exam hall with a mixture of multifarious uses".
Over half the money for its restoration has been raised; the university has also approached the Heritage Lottery fund, corporate donors and members of the public.
Generous donors will have the opportunity to have their handprints in cement on the steps of the building, in the style of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
"If we lose a building like this we lose part of who we are," said film producer Paul Trijbits, who sits on the cinema's advisory board.
"It's a very good use of public money because it will be accessible to groups outside the university . If we let go it's a crime."
• Correction 22/3/12: This piece originally claimed that Westminster University was formerly known as Regent Street Polytechnic. In fact it was called the Polytechnic of Central London. This has been corrected.
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There are many more revelations to come from the leaks about US spying from Edward Snowden, with journalist Glenn Greenwald testifying that he had received around 20,000 files from the American whistleblower and fugitive.
Greenwald has been the journalist working with Snowden to release information about the US spying programmes both domestic and international that have caused such controversy around the globe. He has worked with The Guardian the UK to reveal secrets about NSA spying within US borders and on Western Europe, as well as with Brazillian newspaper O Globo, where he has focused his revelations on those affecting Brazil and South America.
Greenwald was speaking before a Brazilian Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday when he said:
“I did not do an exact count, but he gave me 15,000, 20,000 documents. Very, very complete and very long,” Greenwald told Brazilian lawmakers…The stories we have published are a small portion. There will certainly be more revelations on the espionage activities of the US government and allied governments…on how they have penetrated the communications systems of Brazil and Latin America”
It is believed that Snowden handed over the files to Greenwald whilst he was hiding in a hotel room in Hong Kong before fleeing to Moscow, where he has recently been provided with a temporary visa.
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While the Government of India played down the double frisking of the former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, at a New York airport over a month ago, the United States embassy here has “regret[ted] the inconvenience” to the 80-year old scientist.
The incident occurred on September 29, when Mr. Kalam boarded an Air India flight at New York's JFK Airport. He was already subjected to “private screening,” as he does not come under the category of dignitaries exempt from security screening procedures under stringent American guidelines.
However, after he entered the aircraft, U.S. security officials came and asked for his jacket and shoes, claiming that these items were not checked according to prescribed procedure during the “private screening.” With Mr. Kalam's consent, Air India staff then gave his jacket and shoes to the American officials. It is unclear whether these items were checked by any Indian security personnel before being returned to him.
External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna asked Ambassador in Washington Nirupama Rao to take up the issue with the U.S. administration, which then apologised to Mr. Kalam and the Government of India “that appropriate procedures for expedited screening of dignitaries had not been followed.”
Frisking in 2009
This is not the first time the U.S. aviation security has tangled with Mr. Kalam. In 2009, he was frisked by staff of the Continental Airlines at the New Delhi airport despite the fact that he is on the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security's list of people exempted from security screening in India.
American dignitaries visiting India are informally extended courtesies that exempt them from security checks.
However, India has not objected to the U.S. decision to screen Mr. Kalam in the first place, but only the second request for his jacket and shoes after he boarded the aircraft.
“The MEA had immediately lodged a protest over this incident with the U.S. side,” said a statement by the Ministry, which made it clear that Mr. Kalam had been extended usual courtesies such as “escort and private screening” before he boarded the aircraft.
“The U.S. government has promptly written to former President Kalam expressing its deep regret over the incident and has assured us that it is taking corrective steps to prevent recurrence of such incidents in the future,” said the statement.
“The two governments are also planning to hold discussions to explore appropriate mechanisms for facilitating airport procedures for dignitaries, in accordance with national regulations.”
In a statement issued on Sunday after the incident came to public attention, the U.S. embassy said an apology was hand-delivered to Mr. Kalam by Charge d'Affaires Ambassador Peter Burleigh.
“The United States Government has the utmost respect for former Indian President Abdul Kalam. We deeply regret the inconvenience that resulted for him…” said the statement.
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In a lengthy interview with English newspaper The Telegraph, former Juventus and Lazio legend, and current Juve staff member, Pavel Nedved spoke about a number of topics, including the Champions League and his career."Winning the Champions League would surely make me extremely happy, I wanted to win as a player but I could not, if I could win while I'm at the club it would be absolutely wonderful, it would be a remarkable result, and then, when it happens, I could rest in peace."I always feel the responsibility of not letting anyone down. There is no difference with the past, I have always felt this way. I always thought I was privileged, I did what I love, I've always been treated and paid well. That's why I think I have to give something back, I feel this responsibility. I can say that as a player it was less heavy, because I could concentrate only on my performance, on myself. But even now I do not want to disappoint anyone."Manchester United? I have always enjoyed English football and the Premier League, my agent had received some offers. In particular, I have always been a great admirer of Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson. He was one of Juve's greatest opponents and at the same time a great source of inspiration. He has done great things, without precedents."Ronaldo? With his arrival, the mentality has improved.There has always been a strong and winning mentality, but he brought something extra, influenced the rest of the team and made him more confident. No, it's even more than that, we knew him well as a player, but now we know him as a man and we're impressed by his personality, he's much more than just a player. When I describe Juventus, it is exactly like him: Ronaldo he is a Juventus player, he has the perfect mentality."
For more news, views and features, visit our homepage.
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Dear radical modern feminists: please stop. Stop wearing costumes and hats of genitalia. Stop being so hateful towards men. Stop complaining about rights you already have. Stop excluding any woman who does not fit into your narrative or hold the same views as you. Stop using repulsive words to get your message across. Stop brainwashing very young girls to behave like that as well. You have all the same rights men do. We did it! Take a peek of our accomplishments as women in America:
May of 1869: Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Women Suffrage Association. Their primary goal was to achieve voting rights for women.
June 4, 1919: Congress passed the 19th Amendment, and ratified it on August 18, 1920, which granted women the right to vote.
1960: the Food and Drug administration approved birth control pills.
June 10th, 1963: the Equal Pay Act was signed into law by John F Kennedy, which gave women the right to vote, like men.
1964: discrimination is barred in the work force on the base of race and sex.
1976: The first marital rape law is enacted in Nebraska, making it illegal for a husband to rape his wife.
1978: The Pregnancy Discrimination Act bans employment discrimination against pregnant women
1994: The Violence Against Women Act tightens federal penalties for sex offenders, funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence, and provides for special training of police officers.
2003: companies can be sued if they violate the Family Leave Medical Act
Jan. 2, 2016: women will be allowed to serve in any job in the armed services
We obtained equality and are very fortunate to be treated this way in America. So what are modern day feminists causing such a fuss about? You have your rights. You are equal to men. Go out and be successful! Yikes, in 1973 you even got Roe V Wade passed which gave women the right to an abortion.
Modern day feminists do not stand for all women, and they certainly do not stand for me as a conservative.
Modern feminists do not stand for all women and it’s a shame that the media pretends they do. Disallowing a pro-life group of woman from joining the Woman’s March in D.C. certainly isn’t ‘standing for all women’. Marching for abortion rights, that you already have, certainly isn’t for all women. Using obscene profanity to get your message across isn’t a way to speak for all women. What about the unborn females you want to abort? What about conservative women? What about pro-life women? Pathetic.
How do you expect respect when you don’t give it out? You don’t respect men. You don’t respect women who do not have the same opinions as you. You wear costumes of genitalia. You make signs that say, ‘this pussy grabs back’. Some of you chose to opt out of wearing clothes by just wearing fishnets with no top, and you defaced property by sticking pads all over the city. You act like animals, yet demand respect? Nice try.
Try acting like that while wearing those costumes in other countries. The rights that you’re too ignorant to realize you have, are the same rights that protect your right to act like fools. If you dressed like that in other countries, you’d be beat. If you tried standing up to men in other countries to be equal, you’d be killed.
You live in the greatest country in the world. You have rights. You are protected under our constitution. You are equal to men. If you want to be treated with more respect and taken seriously, then be thankful for all the rights you have. First wave feminists worked really hard to get us where we are today.
The women’s march should be used as a day to celebrate all of the things we’ve accomplished in America!
We’ve achieved so much, so lets not back track. Women need to be united and empower one another.
So please, stop your man-hating club and start standing with and for all women.
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One of those foreigners, Patrick Henri Devillers, a French architect who had worked for Mr. Bo during his tenure as the mayor of Dalian, arrived in China last week from Cambodia, where he had been arrested at the behest of Beijing. Mr. Devillers, who claims he returned here on his own volition, has told French officials that he is helping in the investigation of Ms. Gu.
The relationship between Mr. Heywood and one of China’s most fabled political families remains murky, the subject of considerable gossip and innuendo. But friends say he met Mr. Bo and Ms. Gu in Dalian in the 1990s and later helped arrange schooling in Britain for the couple’s son. Those with knowledge of the party’s investigation say he was also involved in helping the family transfer illicit funds overseas.
Like her husband, Ms. Gu is the offspring of a revolutionary hero, and like many “princelings” she experienced her share of hardship during the Cultural Revolution. Forced to fend for herself after her family was imprisoned, she worked for a time as a butcher and a bricklayer, according to accounts in the state news media. In the late 1970s, though, she was among the first batch of students to be admitted to college after the death of Mao.
“Courage is more important than wisdom,” she once wrote in a book that detailed her successful pursuit of a case in an American court that yielded a $1 million settlement. The book was something of a sensation and led to the creation of a popular television show whose protagonist — a comely, quick-witted legal crusader — was based on Ms. Gu.
Her legal practice flourished, thanks in part to the connections of her husband, who later became commerce minister.
“They were like royalty in Dalian,” said Edward O. Byrne, an American lawyer who helped Ms. Gu file her 1997 lawsuit in the United States and later spent time with the couple in China. “The people who worked for them would refer to them as the Kennedys of China.”
By most accounts, Ms. Gu was fiercely devoted to Bo Guagua, her only child. In 1998, she accompanied him to Britain, where he attended a private preparatory school, and later, the elite Harrow School, which was Mr. Heywood’s alma mater. According to Mr. Heywood’s friends, he was instrumental in helping the boy gain admission to Harrow, which charges annual tuition equivalent to $55,000. Ms. Gu spent at least two years in Britain, where she went by the name Horus, the Egyptian god of war.
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Chaz Davies says it was essential to salvage some much-need World Superbike championship points at Laguna Seca with third place in race two after conceding ground to his title rivals.
The Aruba.it Racing Ducati rider suffered a frustrating off in race one while leading at the iconic US circuit which hampered his race two chances without a race distance of data to call upon.
Despite this, Davies battled impressively in the lead pack but having used the majority of tyre life by the closing laps the Welsh rider settled for third and a first rostrum in four races.
"After what happened in race one, I concentrated on finishing the race first of all, initially focusing just on my rhythm," Davies said. "I wanted to avoid being particularly aggressive early on, but I was stuck in the group at the start and had to ask a lot to the rear tyre to recover on Davide Giugliano and Tom Sykes.
"I think we could have won today, but I went wide at the Corkscrew, possibly because of the wind, and in the last laps I didn't have enough grip to try more overtakes. It was important to go into the break with a podium, and we'll use this time to understand where to improve."
After the Laguna Seca round Davies has slipped to 108 points behind World Superbike championship leader Jonathan Rea and 62 points off second place rider Sykes going into the extended summer break. Action resumes for round 10 at the Lausitzring on the 16-18 September.
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It didn't take off for many reasons, including: its complexity, the fact that people were pretty set in their social media ways and Google's somewhat ham-handed attempts to require people to use it to comment on YouTube. Google eventually detangled many of its services, including YouTube and Google Accounts, from Google+, and it faded from the minds of most people who don't work at Google.
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But Google+ did find footing with groups looking to make community pages, and now has an estimated 111 million users, according to Forbes — about one-third of Twitter, or 1/6 of Facebook. It's continued to work on the product for those customers. And that, at least in terms of customer satisfaction, seems to have paid off.
“Following the launch of new features and a redesign in January, Google+ posts a large gain, up 7% to 81,” the ACSI's report said.
Google+ is immediately followed in the rankings by Pinterest, Wikipedia, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and LinkedIn. (“All Others” collectively rank sixth, in case you're wondering where your favorite network is.)
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It's safe to say that's not how many analysts, or even users, would rank those social networks in terms of their success.
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But it could indicate that, the smaller or more specialized an audience, the more you can do to focus your network to fit. The survey credits Pinterest's high ranking, for example, to “increasing site efficiency and search technology” as well as moves to make it easier to shop directly from the site. Those all address major user criticisms the firm has faced in the past but that apply very specifically to its core users, of about 150 million.
For Facebook, the right path may not be as clear when looking for direction from 2 billion users.
The upshot of the report seems to be that if you want people to be happy on the Internet, you should go niche and really listen to your community. But that's not necessarily the road to broader success.
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Note: This blog post is related to the legacy Containership Platform and the content is no longer relevant.
We’re happy to announce that we have added support for private Docker registry providers in ContainerShip Cloud!
At launch we have support for two registry providers, Docker Hub and Quay.io.
Connecting Your Private Registry
Getting your registry provider connected is very simple. We’ll walk through the process and show you how easy it is.
The Providers section of the navigation menu contains a new section for Registries. Click on it to go to the Registry configuration view.
You’ll see an empty list in the Registries overview, click on Add Registry to get started adding one.
A modal will pop up asking you to select your provider, and provide authentication details.
Fill in your information and click Add Registry.
Your registry information will now be visible in the list, and you can begin utilizing it when launching your applications!
Using Connected Registries
Now that you have connected one or more registries, you can use them when launching your applications in ContainerShip Cloud.
You simply need to specify the registry provider in the image field when launching an application. ContainerShip Cloud will use your configured credentials to access your private registry provider and pull down the image.
More Registries Coming Soon
We plan to add support for more registries in the future, such as Google Container Registry. Are there other registries we don’t know about that would be useful? Let us know in the comments.
Find our more about ContainerShip and ContainerShip Cloud at https://containership.io and our official documentation site https://docs.containership.io.
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VANCOUVER- A five-year battle by Canada's self-styled “Prince of Pot” to avoid extradition to the United States on drug charges appeared to be over Monday.
The federal justice minister has ordered Marc Emery surrendered to American authorities, the final step in the legal process.
Emery, who was charged in the U.S. in 2005 in connection with his Vancouver-based seed-selling business, had turned himself in to sheriffs earlier in the morning to await the federal justice minister's decision.
Within an hour, his lawyer received an answer.
“The justice minister has surrendered Mr. Emery for extradition,” lawyer Kirk Tousaw said in an interview.
“I imagine there's some paperwork that needs to be shuffled and arrangements that need to be made. My anticipation would be (Emery would be sent to the U.S.) relatively soon, within the week possibly.”
A spokesperson for the minister's office said he does not comment on extradition decisions.
Emery has been out on bail since last fall, when he was released from custody while the federal justice minister made his decision.
He made a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors last year, agreeing to plead guilty in return for a five-year prison sentence.
Earlier in the day, Emery called himself a “great Canadian” and told reporters he's spent his life advocating for the legalization of marijuana. Then he walked into the B.C. Supreme Court building and presented himself to sheriffs.
“I think of myself as a great Canadian — I've worked my whole life for individual freedom in this country, I've never asked for anything in return,” Emery told reporters outside B.C. Supreme Court in downtown Vancouver, with his wife by his side and a throng of supporters carrying “Free Marc” signs.
“And now I will be possibly handed over to the United States for a five-year sentence for the so-called crime of selling seeds from my desk. I'm proud of what I've done, and I have no regrets.”
American prosecutors allege he has sold about four million marijuana seeds through his magazine and website, and that 75 per cent of those went to customers in the U.S.
Documents obtained by Emery's lawyer reveal that a U.S. undercover agent posing as a marijuana seed buyer worked in Canada to secure the criminal charges filed against Emery in Washington state.
The undercover operation is described in a briefing memo to Justice Minister Rob Nicholson dated Feb. 10, 2010, outlining the case against Emery.
The memo said numerous mail order purchases were made by U.S. undercover agents between March 2004 and March 2005 and an undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement agent was then sent to Vancouver.
The memo said the agent was under the supervision of and working with the approval of Vancouver's police department.
Allegations against Emery include that staff at his Cannabis Culture store in Vancouver counselled the agent on how to smuggle seeds across the border and how to grow the marijuana.
“It is alleged that (the store employee) told (the agent) that border inspectors do not conduct strip searches of females, so she should hide the seeds somewhere on her body,” the memo stated.
The documents say the DEA agent made several deals to purchase marijuana seeds in exchange for cash and that Emery knew she was going to smuggle the seeds over the border.
The information was obtained under the federal Access to Information Act by Kirk Tousaw, a lawyer and former Marijuana Party campaign manager.
In addition to his seed-selling business and marijuana paraphernalia store, Emery is the president of the B.C. Marijuana Party.
He was originally charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana and money laundering. Two of his Cannabis Culture employees were also accused, but charges were dropped as part of the plea agreement.
The minister's memo states the federal government has received more than 2,700 letters about Emery and virtually all of them ask that Nicholson refuse to extradite him.
Emery said he has public support on his side.
“I feel it will be very politically unpopular if (the minister) proceeds with the extradition because, let's say five to seven million Canadian's use marijuana ... I have the support of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of Canadians.”
If he is extradited to the United States, Emery hopes he'll be allowed to return to Canada to serve out his jail sentence.
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We’re celebrating! 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the beloved Wonder Boy series, which started with a simple but solid Arcade game developed by Escape (later known as Westone). The last game in the series was Monster World IV (1994) and it went silent for more than 20 years. Have you heard of it?
The Return of a Legend
We’re so excited to say that we’ve been able to team up with the series creator Ryuichi Nishizawa (former Westone) and revive it with our new game Monster Boy, which launches on PS4 this year. As a fan of the classic games and the Metroidvania genre, it felt unreal to be able to work on a new game that brings back the spirit of the series in every way possible.
We loved Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap for its transformation feature, so we took it as the biggest inspiration. Monster Boy continues the colorful, side-scrolling adventure tradition with a character who can transform into different animal forms to solve puzzles and proceed in a connected (open) game world.
More Than a Spiritual Successor
With the help of Ryuichi Nishizawa and LAT corporation licensing, we’ve gained access to the whole library of characters, graphics assets, sounds, and music from the entire Wonder Boy series.
While we’re creating a new experience targeting 1080p at 60 frames per second with hi-res 2D visuals, we’re happily bringing back our favorite monsters, music tracks, and features of the classic games. We’re working hard to deliver a game that you will be able to fully enjoy as a fan of the series but also if you never heard of it.
OMG! Yuzo Koshiro, Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane
When we started the game production two years ago, we would’ve never believed we would be able to work with many personal childhood music heroes from Japan — we contacted them anyway and to our surprise they joined the team!
The music production is led by Yuzo Koshiro himself, who is most famous for his music in Streets of Rage, Actraiser, Shinobi, and Ys. Furthermore, we worked with Motoi Sakuraba, Michiru Yamane, Keiki Kobayashi, Takeshi Yanagawa, and singer Haruka Shimotsuki. We believe music is so important for a great experience.
There are a lot of original tracks in Monster Boy, but we also re-arranged the most famous music tracks of the classic series. Last but not least, music tracks get their finishing touches by a real instrument recording session. It’s so cool.
We Can’t Wait to Share Monster Boy With You
We’re planning to finish the game production in Q2 this year — please stay tuned for an exact release date in 2016. Will you celebrate with us?
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Apple today posted a new support document outlining troubleshooting steps for users experiencing problems with unexpected shutdowns on the entry-level 2019 13-inch MacBook Pro with two Thunderbolt 3 ports, which was introduced back in July.
Apple's troubleshooting steps involve making sure the MacBook Pro has its battery level run down to below 90 percent, connecting it to a charger, quitting all open applications, and letting it sleep and charge for at least eight hours.
Once the MacBook Pro has been charged for at least eight hours, users should make sure they are running the latest version of macOS, and if the shutdown issue persists after following these steps, users should contact Apple for service.
There is a fairly lengthy thread in our forums where some users experiencing the issue have gathered to try to diagnose and troubleshoot their machines, and there are scattered reports of the issue in other discussion forums, including Apple's support forums.
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Homeless campers who have been calling Victoria’s tiny Kings Park home for months — much to the chagrin of many neighbours — hosted “a private neighbourhood barbecue” Saturday in an effort to put a friendlier face on the fact they are living there.
The barbecue was the brainchild of Ken Prowse, a formerly homeless man who used to live in Kings Park and still regularly returns on weekends to pitch a tent.
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“It’s for the neighbours to see that we’re all not that bad and to give back a little,” Prowse said of the barbecue as he sat on a lawnchair in the Caledonia Avenue park, nursing a bad back.
Devin Landis and other volunteers from the Table Church covered the cost of the burgers and pop, and helped Prowse organize the event.
Landis said about 40 people stopped by. “It’s been a happy time. Everyone is smiling and a lot of people have met each other. So that was the goal.”
Harold Stanley, who lives in a townhouse complex at the corner of Cook Street and Caledonia Avenue, said he appreciated members of the homeless community reaching out. “The more we see each other as part of the same community, the more understanding and accommodation we’ll have for each other,” said Stanley, adding that he’s had no problems with the campers.
In 2008, the B.C. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny a person the right to erect shelter in a city park if there were no shelter beds available.
City staff estimate that about 130 people sleep in parks, costing the city about $600,000 a year in associated expenses.
At Kings Park, upward of a dozen tents are pitched each night.
Neighbours of the pocket park, which has no washroom facilities, have long complained about the homeless campers. They don’t want their children or dogs to run free for fear of discarded needles and human excrement.
Mike Aucoin, who has lived across from the park for five years, said he felt “conflicted” about whether to attend the barbecue.
“I want to be sensitive to the homeless population and their plight, but, at the same time, I have to be conscious of how it affects my life and my living situation,” Aucoin said.
“When I purchased the property, I purchased it partly because of the greenspace, which is not there any more because they are there all the time.”
His water has been tapped into, a neighbour has had electricity stolen and needles are regularly found in the street, he said.
Aucoin said the wording on the handbill, which says the barbecue is hosted by Kings Park residents, rubbed him the wrong way.
“They’ve pitched it like they’re members of this neighbourhood which, to me, they are not. They are not paying taxes. They are not using the land responsibly. They are not being good neighbours,” he said.
“So, they’ve sort of seconded my park, and for me that’s a bit of a problem. Like I said, I want to be sensitive to their needs and I want to make sure they are looked after and that there’s a solution for them, but I don’t know what it is.
“It’s a complex problem that I don’t think you can solve easily.”
bcleverley@timescolonist.com
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A discussion of all things New York science.
Blog Archive
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