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When religious positions on preventing pregnancy are discussed, we usually hear how contraceptives are forbidden. Religious traditions are more pluralistic and varied than that, however, and even within the religions most publicly opposed to birth control we find that there are traditions which would permit the use of contraceptives, even if only in limited circumstances. Both atheist critics of religion and religious adherents need to understand these traditions because not every religion regards contraception as a simplistic issue.
Roman Catholic Christianity & Birth Control
Roman Catholicism is popularly associated with a strict anti-contraception position, but this strictness only dates to Pope Pius XI's 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii. Before this, there was more debate on birth control, but it was generally condemned like abortion. This is because sex was treated as having no value except for reproduction; therefore, hindering reproduction encouraged sinful uses of sex. Nevertheless, bans on contraception are not infallible teaching and could change.
Protestant Christianity & Birth Control
Protestantism is perhaps one of the most diffuse and de-centralized religious traditions in the world. There is almost nothing that isn't true of some denomination somewhere. Opposition to contraception is increasing in conservative evangelical circles who are, curiously, relying heavily on Catholic teachings. The vast majority of Protestant denominations, theologians, and churches at least permit contraception and may even promote family planning as an important moral good.
Judaism & Birth Control
Ancient Judaism was naturally pro-natalist, but without a central authority dictating orthodox beliefs there has been vigorous debate on the question of birth control. Most, for example, prescribed birth control to prevent conception for as long as the mother nursed, which protected the life of the nursing infant. However important fertility may have been to a small religious minority, the well-being of the mother has generally been treated as paramount and as justifying contraception.
Islam & Birth Control
There is nothing in Islam that would condemn contraception; on the contrary, Muslim scholars investigated and developed birth control methods which were taken to Europe. Avicenna, a famous Muslim doctor, lists in one of his books 20 different substances that can be used to prevent pregnancy. Reasons behind the justification of the use of contraceptives include preserving the quality of the family, health, economics, and even helping the woman preserve her good looks.
Hinduism & Birth Control
Many traditional Hindu texts praise large families, which was normal in the ancient world because the precarious nature of life required strong fertility. There are also Hindu scriptures which praise small families, though, and the emphasis on developing a positive social conscience was extended to the idea that family planning is a positive ethical good. Fertility may be important, but producing more children than you or your environment can support is treated as wrong.
Buddhism & Birth Control
Traditional Buddhist teaching favors fertility over birth control. Only after being a human can a soul reach Nirvana, so limiting the numbers of humans necessarily limits the numbers achieving Nirvana. Nevertheless, Buddhist teachings support appropriate family planning when people feel that it would be too much of a burden on themselves or their environment to have more children.
Sikhism & Birth Control
Nothing in Sikh scripture or tradition condemns the prevention of pregnancy; on the contrary, sensible family planning is encouraged and supported by the community. It is left to the couples to decide how many children they want and can support. Use of contraceptives is justified for the sake of economics, the health of the family, and social conditions. All of this is centered on the needs of the family; contraception in order to avoid pregnancy as a consequence of adultery, however, is not permitted.
Taoism, Confucianism, and Birth Control
Evidence of family planning and use of contraceptives goes back thousands of years in China. Chinese religions emphasize the importance of balance and harmony - in the individual, in the family, and in society generally. Having too many children can upset this balance, so sensible planning has been valued part of human sexuality in Taoism and Confucianism. Indeed, at times there has been strong social pressure not to have more children than the wider community could accommodate.
Family Planning, Sexuality, and Sexual License:
There is little to no condemnation of using birth control in most major religions. It's true that most religions promote fertility because they date back to eras when high fertility rates could mean the difference between the survival or death of a community, yet despite this, room is still made for allowing or even promoting wise family planning. Why is it, then, that conservative Christians in modern America have started to oppose the use of contraceptives? If atheists are going to accurately and reasonably respond to these changes, it's necessary to understand what is driving them and where they are coming from.
Part of the cause may be the influence of Catholicism. Catholics and conservative evangelical Protestants have worked closely together to fight abortion and some Catholic reasons for opposing abortion, reasons which are also used against birth control, have been adopted by Protestants. Some Protestants may be following these reasons to an anti-contraception conclusion and it appears that some evangelicals are starting to use Catholic arguments against the permissibility of contraception and against Protestant tradition.
Perhaps more important, however, is the fact that support for use of contraceptives occurs in the context of "family planning." Use of contraceptives to make it easier to engage in extramarital sex (by avoiding the consequences of sex, like pregnancy) is not supported by Protestantism or any other religious tradition. In modern America, though, contraception is legal for everyone, not just married couples, and is frequently used by unmarried sexual partners for precisely that purpose: to avoid pregnancy and/or sexually transmitted diseases. |
FTC Commissioner Julie Brill. (Brian Ach/Invision for Advertising Week/AP Images)
One of the nation's top business regulators will be stepping down later this month to help companies navigate the complex legal issues surrounding privacy and data security.
Julie Brill, a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, will be heading into private practice at the law firm Hogan Lovells after her last day at the FTC, which is expected to be March 31.
Brill's nearly six-year tenure at the FTC has been marked by the independent agency's expanding interest in privacy issues, particularly in the technology industry. As one of five commissioners, Brill took a leading role in calling for greater scrutiny of data brokers — companies that trade in the commercial and behavioral information generated when consumers surf the Web or use their credit cards. She also pressed the FTC to look into how data can be used to marginalize vulnerable Americans, and played a role in hammering out a new U.S.-European agreement governing the flow of data across the Atlantic.
"[My experience] can really do a lot to help companies do the right thing: Understand this landscape and ultimately improve privacy practices and data-security practices," Brill said in an interview, "and continue the work that I'm doing at the FTC, but doing it on the ground, with companies."
Brill's term at the FTC would have expired later this year, in September. Her departure comes months after a fellow commissioner, Joshua Wright, stepped down to rejoin the academic world. The Obama administration has yet to nominate a successor for either position — and analysts say it is unlikely to happen before the election.
Brill is recognized by industry and policy leaders as a deft lawyer and a defender of consumers' rights. Rapid innovation, she said, has not only led to shifts in how consumers interact with their technology, but has also changed many industries' business models, with potentially dramatic if mostly invisible effects for the average consumer.
That lesson, together with an ability to develop strong interpersonal relationships with officials in industry and government, helped her succeed, said Microsoft's chief legal officer, Brad Smith.
"She combined a strong track record for consumers with a pragmatism that, in many ways, won over people in business," said Smith. "She leaves having contributed to a stronger reputation of the FTC."
Brill is leaving government at a time of uncertainty for thousands of businesses that depend on being able to move online data, such as Internet downloads and email, around the world instantly and easily. Last year, a European court struck down a 15-year-old transatlantic agreement that primarily aimed to protect the privacy of European citizens whose data is being handled by U.S. firms, such as Facebook, but which contained few restrictions on U.S. intelligence agencies looking for access to that data.
The end of that agreement, known as Safe Harbor, led to a rush by government officials to draft a replacement. Brill said she was "very involved" in the discussions that led to an agreement in February known as the E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield. But even that compromise is likely to face substantial legal challenges, analysts say.
These and other upcoming court fights over data protection made Brill an attractive hire for a firm such as Hogan Lovells, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the consumer group Center for Digital Democracy.
"Julie Brill has been an extraordinary FTC commissioner who has played an important role supporting the strongest possible consumer protection," Chester said. "Hogan’s clients, and the industry, need someone like Julie who is respected by many powerful E.U. officials."
Brill joins a long line of FTC officials who have left public service to work on behalf of business. Mary Gardiner Jones, the agency's first female commissioner, stepped down in 1973 and two years later became an executive for consumer affairs at Western Union. Deborah Majoras, who chaired the agency from 2004 to 2008, became the general counsel at Procter and Gamble. Former FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz left the agency in 2013 and now advises corporate clients on mergers and acquisitions for the firm Davis Polk & Wardwell.
The so-called "revolving door" that sees government officials going into the private sector and vice versa has occasionally led to heightened scrutiny for the FTC. For example, while at the FTC, Wright recused himself from cases involving Google in order to allay any concerns about a potential conflict of interest stemming from Google's indirect financial support of his research at George Mason University. By helping companies sift through privacy and security law, Brill could become a highly influential adviser to some of the world's biggest technology firms.
Brill began her career clerking for a federal judge in Vermont and working at a law firm in New York. She later served the attorneys general of two states, Vermont and North Carolina. At the FTC, Brill has pushed the agency to hire more technologists who can help bring Washington up to speed on the latest in technology, as well as its potential risks and rewards for consumers.
Her departure, along with Wright's last August, means the FTC will now have only three members: Democratic chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Democratic commissioner Terrell McSweeny and Republican commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen.
It is unusual, but not unprecedented, for the agency to have so many of its senior posts unfilled, according to David Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University and a former director of the FTC's consumer protection bureau. But the agency, which acts as one of the nation's top privacy cops and antitrust enforcers, could be shorthanded for some time if Congress declines to confirm any nominees, as it is currently threatening to do with President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland.
"Obviously the agency functions better at full strength," Vladeck said, "though I think that the agency is functioning quite well now."
Analysts believe the White House is unlikely to nominate a successor to Brill and Wright before the upcoming election, meaning that task may fall to the next president. |
The Austin cinemascope rock band Explosions in the Sky plays densely swelling instrumentals of the variety that goes well with dramatized football games; fans of the movie and TV show Friday Night Lights would recognize its sound instantly. Considering the epic nature of the band's post-rock guitar symphonies, it's no surprise that Explosions in the Sky's music translates well to the live stage.
The group is no stranger to the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival. In 2008, Explosions in the Sky curated a night at the U.K. version of the festival. This performance, recorded Sept. 4, will likely be the band's last of 2010; it's scheduled to write and record material for a new record due in 2011.
Special thanks to WFMU for the recording of these ATP concerts. For more information, visit wfmu.org. |
BOSTON (CBS) – A Christopher Columbus statue in Boston’s North End was vandalized Monday with red paint and the phrase “Black Lives Matter.”
Red paint was poured over the top of the statue on Monday night, while Black Lives Matter was sprayed on the back using black paint.
NorthEndWaterfront.com reported that the paint was power washed off the white marble statue on Tuesday morning.
The Boston Parks and Recreation Department asked visitors to the park to respect city property.
“The Parks Department has hundreds of statues and monuments throughout our 331 properties. As soon as one is damaged or has graffiti, the Parks Department responds immediately to try to clean and/or repair it as we did at Christopher Columbus Park this morning,” officials said. “ We ask that all park users continue to show respect for these important historical markings.” |
Traffic is seen during rush-hour headed westbound on Interstate 66 in Vienna in this August file photo. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
If it feels like you’re sharing the road with a lot more angry people these days, that’s because you probably are. The number of people who admit they feel “uncontrollable anger toward another driver” has doubled since 2005.
Twelve percent of the people surveyed in a Washington Post poll said they often feel such anger. That’s more than 1 in 10 drivers on the road. A less statistically perfect way to view it: If you’re zipping along in four lanes of Capital Beltway traffic, it’s a safe bet you’re in the company of several drivers who are in a volatile mood.
The number of younger drivers who said in the survey that they often feel road rage was roughly 1 in 6, or 18 percent.
It gets worse, according to Leon James, author of “Road Rage and Aggressive Driving: Steering Clear of Highway Warfare.”
That 12 percent of people who admit to frequent spikes of “uncontrollable anger” are being honest with themselves and the people who did the survey. Lots more people get just as angry, but they won’t own up to it, said James, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii. He likens “driving under impaired emotions” to driving drunk. “It’s a real danger, just like alcohol,” he said. “You just don’t make the right judgments, and you overlook reality.”
View Graphic The truth about road rage
About 85 percent of the drivers James tests say they see aggressive driving around them, but only 30 percent admit to being aggressive themselves. “The anger triggers are built in and just about the same for everybody,” James said. “So when people say, ‘Who has road rage?’ I say, ‘Everybody.’ ”
Some people who feel empowered by the gas pedal flash to anger when another driver impinges on that sense of entitlement. Others who are intimidated by driving are upset when misbehavior by other drivers feels threatening. And drivers who aren’t feeling particularly powerful or frightened already are dealing with the stress of interaction at high speed with a group of unpredictable strangers.
It is a volatile combination that leads to angry gestures, blaring horns, crazy retaliatory driving and, sometimes, worse.
The latest local road rage incident to get public attention ended with the arrest of a detective from New Jersey on a charge of second-degree murder and manslaughter. There were conflicting accounts of what transpired, but a bout of anger that covered several miles of Anne Arundel County highway ended with Joseph L. Walker allegedly shooting Joseph D. Harvey Jr. to death.
In March, two drivers faced charges after a moving confrontation over a desired lane change on the Anacostia Freeway caused a female driver to wave a knife at a male driver, who responded by brandishing a handgun. (No one was hurt.)
Three years ago, a dump truck driver purposely rammed a car on Interstate 95 during rush hour, leading to charges in Prince William County. The car driver also faced charges for allegedly firing 13 shots at the truck. State police said that was the culmination of 20 minutes of reckless behavior by the two drivers that covered more than four miles .
And in 2007, a young couple on their way to the beach died after what police called “exchanging obscene gestures” on Interstate 270 with the driver of a green pickup truck. Police said the dispute ended when the truck driver slammed on his brakes with the other driver just behind him, forcing the car to swerve off the road, where it hit an embankment.
“Aggressive means you don’t care if you put others in danger, and that’s a personality flaw,” James said.
James said the capacity for anger behind the wheel is learned from the back seat, where children see grownups venting at traffic or other drivers.
“I call it ‘road rage nursery,’ ” he said. “Children learn that in a car, your personality becomes more violent, more angry, more foul. So by the time we start driving, we are mentally rigged for road rage.”
It’s subconscious, he says. “For example, if your lane is going faster than the lane next to you, you feel good and you relax. If it’s the other way, you tense and grip the wheel and become more stressed,” he said. “You think, ‘Wow, 50 cars just passed me, should I switch?’ ”
And what if you feel a driver cut you off on purpose? That’s what’s most likely to set someone off, said Christine Wickens of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, who authored three studies of aggressive driving. “It’s what we would call a near-miss,” she said. “It’s anxiety-provoking.”
Sometimes it causes more than anxiety. “People feel a need to retaliate,” James said. |
While she painted her costume to make it appear blood-soaked, we half-watched an episode of the Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” on her laptop. Jillian told me she could relate to many of the series’s themes, including cyberbullying. In middle school, she made a profile page on ASKfm, a social-networking site favored at the time by mean girls and their unsuspecting prey. Jillian was quickly targeted. “I’d get 30 mean questions or messages a day,” she said. “Most of them were like, ‘Just kill yourself.’ ”
Nothing like that happened at the small private high school Jillian attended after leaving Mountain Valley. Though the school is known for its flexibility and willingness to work with nontraditional students, Jillian still struggled to feel comfortable there. She didn’t want to open up and be known as “the anxious girl.” There were other students at school who had severe anxiety and depression — “It’s like the flu broke out here with anxious kids this year,” the headmaster told me — but Jillian didn’t feel comfortable hanging out with them, either. Several had yet to go to treatment, and “I don’t want to go backward,” she told me. But the end result, unsurprisingly, was that most students never got to know Jillian.
Her longtime pattern of missing school began again. She had the tools to challenge her anxious thoughts, but using them every day proved exhausting. “There’s feeling a weight on your chest, and there’s the feeling of 16 people sitting on top of each other on your chest,” she said. “As soon as I’d wake up, it was absolute dread.”
Needing to get to her job 40 minutes away each morning, Allison, who had sold her previous house in order to afford Mountain Valley, had little time to coax Jillian out of bed. They argued constantly. Jillian thought her mother — who was severely depressed during a year when Jillian was younger and especially needed support — could be insensitive. Allison struggled with when (and how hard) to push her daughter. She knew Jillian had a serious disorder, but she also knew it wouldn’t get better by letting her hide out in her room. Allison also couldn’t be sure when Jillian was genuinely paralyzed by anxiety and when she was “manipulating me to get out of doing whatever she didn’t feel like doing,” she said.
“The million-dollar question of raising an anxious child is: When is pushing her going to help because she has to face her fears, and when is it going to make the situation worse and she’s going to have a panic attack?” Allison told me. “I feel like I made the wrong decision many times, and it destroyed my confidence as a mother.”
Allison sometimes wondered how her own anxiety issues might have genetically predisposed her daughter to anxiety. Allison had done enough Google searches to know that anxious teenagers tend to come from anxious parents. Research points to hereditary genes that predispose children to an anxiety disorder, and studies have found that an overbearing or anxious parenting style can induce anxiety and risk-aversion in kids. In the parents’ workshop I attended in Oregon, Ashworth, the therapist, spent a lot of time urging family members to work on their own anxiety issues.
He also cautioned parents not to accommodate their children’s avoidance strategies. Families of children with OCD will routinely open doors for them, cook only the two or three specific foods they’ve agreed to eat and avoid saying certain words or sounds. Families of socially anxious kids will let them stay in the car while they go shopping, order for them at restaurants and communicate with a teacher because they’re afraid to. “So many teens have lost the ability to tolerate distress and uncertainty, and a big reason for that is the way we parent them,” Ashworth said. |
Equipped with EOTechs, a fire team with the Marine Corps’ 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company moves outside after clearing a building during a close-quarters tactics training event on a range at Stone Bay, part of Camp Lejeune, N.C., March 6, 2015. (Photo courtesy USMC)
U.S. Special Operations forces are using rifle sights that are supposed to help shooters accurately hit their targets but instead have a defect, acknowledged by the manufacturer, that potentially endangers the lives of service members in combat, according to court records and military officials.
The U.S. government is aware of the problem and sued the sight’s maker in November for fraud, accusing the company, L-3 Communications, of covering up a variety of issues with the sight, which has been used by every branch of the military, the FBI, the State Department and local law enforcement.
The company quickly settled for $25.6 million. “A sight that ‘almost works’ is not acceptable,” said Naval Criminal Investigative Service Director Andrew Traver in a news release the day the settlement was announced.
But more than four months later, the equipment has not been recalled or replaced, say current service members and military officials. Instead, it is still used by some units under Special Operations Command (SOCOM), according to Navy Cmdr. Matthew Allen, a spokesman for SOCOM. Units under SOCOM include Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Marine Corps Special Operation units, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. The Marine Corps is also continuing to use thousands of the sights, said a Marine Corps spokesman, Maj. Tony Semelroth.
The company says it has fixed most of the problems raised in its dispute with the government — except for the one that could be the most serious, based on the government’s allegations.
That problem, known as thermal drift because it is weather-related, can cause the holographic weapon sight, or HWS, to be off target by six to 12 inches when a shooter is 300 feet away from a target, a common distance in a combat zone, according to the government’s lawsuit. Missing a target by as much as a foot can be disastrous for a soldier since it can be the difference between landing a fatal shot and missing the target.
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In the lawsuit, an unnamed employee at the manufacturer was quoted as saying of this particular defect: “This is likely one of the worst types of failure, since most users won’t notice the problem until their life is on the line.”
The defect tends to surface when the sight is exposed to extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, according to the company — a norm in some combat environments such as Afghanistan, where wide changes in temperature are common.
The website of L-3’s EOTech unit, which is responsible for the sight, acknowledges that the thermal-drift problem has not been resolved. “There is no repair currently available to eliminate thermal drift,” EOTech’s website reads. “If your HWS experiences a degree of thermal drift that is unacceptable to you . . . please contact EOTech . . . to obtain a refund of the purchase price.”
“We believe that many of our customers are satisfied with the performance of their holographic weapon sights,” said Jason Maloni, a spokesman for EOTech, in an email. Maloni added that the company stands by its products and that it is pleased with the progress it is making toward remedying the thermal drift issue.
A joint force protection team of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines practices advanced shooting techniques on a range in Kabul, Afghanistan, in this video posted by the Marines. (Marines)
The Pentagon acknowledges that some troops are using this particular sight. “We take this matter very seriously and pledge an unshakable commitment to the safety and well-being of our U.S. forces,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Eric Badger, a Pentagon spokesman.
SOCOM spokesman Allen said the sights are “only used in a role where the limitations of the equipment are not in conflict with the safety or effectiveness of our warfighters.”
But others have moved more swiftly to remove the sights altogether. In December, just weeks after EOTech settled its lawsuit with the U.S. government, the Denver police department issued a department-wide memo to pull the sights off its rifles immediately.
A series of problems
Complaints about the sight and its various models date back to the mid-2000s, soon after the Pentagon began regularly purchasing the equipment, a small rectangular device that sits on top of the rifle and projects holographic crosshairs over the target to help the shooter aim.
In winter 2007, when the company tried to secure a contract with the Norwegian military, the Norwegians found that in temperatures below 20 degrees, the sight began to fail, court documents assert. The crosshairs would expand and distort, causing the sight to be inaccurate.
EOTech tried to fix the cold-weather issue but never told the Pentagon, which had by then purchased large quantities of the sight, according to the U.S. government’s lawsuit.
Around this time, court records allege, a sales and marketing employee wrote an email to EOTech’s co-founder voicing concern that the company was not properly disclosing the cold-weather defect.
“Is it worth risking one person’s life on this? What if there is a guy in the mountains in Afghanistan, and he brings up his sight . . . on the enemy who has the drop on him with an AK[?],” the employee wrote. “He takes aim as quickly as possible and puts a shot that misses wide due to the distortion of the reticle [the crosshairs]. He’s dead a fraction of a second later. . . . This is a dramatic example, but this is the risk that is posed the longer the end-user is unaware of the risk.”
In spring 2008, EOTech presented the problem to the U.S. military and said it had a solution, according to the lawsuit.
In its proposal, the company stated that EOTech “has not received a single report of a problem from the field regarding optical performance of the sight at cold temperature” and failed to mention that the Norwegians had rejected the sights because the issue could put their soldiers’ lives at risk, according to the government’s complaint. The firm claimed that the fix was undertaken on the company’s own initiative, the lawsuit said.
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Meanwhile, another problem was emerging with the sight — this one having to do with its performance in humid climates.
Despite EOTech advertising that some of its sights were waterproof after being submerged 66 feet underwater, the sights — through faulty seals — would accumulate moisture, causing the glass around the crosshairs to fog and the crosshairs themselves to dim, according to the lawsuit. Even though EOTech knew about the issue for years, as alleged in court records, the company did not tell the U.S. military until March 2013 during a contract review and after a video on YouTube appeared that showed the crosshairs fading.
In July 2014, the company told the Pentagon it had fixed this other problem as well. In the run-up to the announcement, however, there were still worries inside the company, according to the lawsuit.
A project manager relayed concerns from an employee to EOTech’s president, according to court records, saying, “[The employee] is concerned that as an operator goes through that door in combat that the device will fail causing the operator to be killed or wounded.”
In both cases — with the cold-weather problem and with the humidity issue — EOTech said the “fixes” were upgrades to a sight it claimed had already met the military’s specifications, according to the lawsuit.
But a year later, the FBI, which was also using the sights, stumbled on yet another issue with the equipment after conducting tests in its ballistic research facility.
Unlike the problem discovered by the Norwegians, the crosshairs did not change shape. Nor did it dim as with the humidity problem. Instead, hot or cold temperatures were causing the reticle to move, unbeknown to the user.
With help from the U.S. Navy’s Crane division, the FBI presented EOTech with evidence of the problem, called thermal drift. In November, the U.S. government sued the company for fraud. The company settled on the same day the lawsuit was filed.
A disclaimer included with the equipment after the settlement acknowledges the thermal-drift issue. A month later, EOTech president Paul Mangano, who was also named in the government’s lawsuit, resigned from the company. Mangano declined to comment for this article.
Marines still use the sights
Marine dog handlers with the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command use the holographic sights during live-fire canine training at Camp Pendleton, Calif. (U.S. Marine Corps Photo by Lance Cpl. Roderick Jacquote)
By this time, the sights were widely in use by the U.S. military. Since 2001, according to publicly available contract data, EOTech has been paid about $24 million in the purchasing of the sights. Every branch of service, including the Coast Guard, has purchased them.
The item is so ubiquitous that the Twitter account of the Navy SEALs, who are still using the sight, features a picture of a person holding a rifle mounted with the EOTech product.
According to Marine Corps spokesman Semelroth, the Marine Corps continues to use 6,000 of the sights purchased between 2007 and 2012 — the years in which some of the most serious issues were found with the sights.
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“At this time, the Marine Corps has not been directed nor does it intend to dispose of these systems unless defects are discovered that jeopardize our Marines’ safety or negatively impacts their abilities to accomplish the mission,” Semelroth said in an email.
Toward the end of last year, SOCOM issued a military-wide “Safety of Use Message” that highlighted the limitations of the sight, noting that the military was “developing a bridging strategy” for the equipment.
According to Allen, SOCOM is evaluating other sights, including a potentially improved version of the EOTech for a long-term replacement for SOCOM’s close-combat sight requirements. Semelroth said the Marine Corps is conducting a similar search and running “a series of tests on its EOTech inventory to confirm performance meets or exceeds the equipment requirement.”
State Department security teams also use the sight at U.S. consulates and embassies around the world, though they do not use the sight exclusively, according to Aaron Testa, a State Department Diplomatic Security spokesman.
According to Testa, the State Department Diplomatic Security Service “is in the process of procuring replacements for those EOTech optics we have deemed necessary to replace.”
Following the lawsuit’s settlement, EOTech has also not issued a recall.
Anthony Tai, an EOTech co-founder who later served as the chief technology officer of the company until 2011, said that the company should have recalled the sight. As one of its original designers, Tai was consulted on a number of the equipment’s issues prior to his departure from the company, according to the lawsuit.
“But you recall it and then what?” said Tai, who still occasionally consults for the company and said the firm has struggled to resolve the problem. “You need to replace it with something that has all the problems fixed. No point in replacing it with the same thing.”
EOTech’s sights are just one of many publicly available products that accomplish the same task. And some other government agencies have already gotten rid of the holographic weapons sights.
During an October visit to the FBI’s armory, agency personnel were seen disposing of the sights in bulk. The FBI, which declined to comment, uses sights manufactured by Aimpoint.
Allen said EOTech is not fulfilling any new contracts with the military’s Special Operations forces. But EOTech has not been prohibited from “submitting for future business.”
Julie Tate and Steven Rich contributed to this report.
This story has been updated to clarify remarks by Cmdr. Matthew Allen, a spokesman for SOCOM.
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If you’re like me, you’ve heard a lot about FPGAs and how useful they can be in a design. Perhaps you’ve read a bit about them, learning what they are and a bit about how they work. If your background (like mine) is in microcontroller-based design, though, getting started in working with FPGAs is not necessarily intuitive. Here are some of my thoughts and experiences as I begin working with FPGA-centric design.
Although FPGAs can often be a viable alternative to a microcontroller or microprocessor in a given embedded project, they are radically different devices. Microcontrollers are CPUs with various built-in peripherals and onboard memory, whereas FPGAs are collections of various logic units that are configured to perform certain (often very complex) functions. Programming a microcontroller involves writing a program to tell it how to behave. Programming (really, configuring) an FPGA involves creating a configuration file (a “bitstream”) that sets up the configuration of the FPGA to do the intended tasks.
In short, you tell a microcontroller what to do; you tell an FPGA what to be.
The traditional “Hello, World!” project for embedded systems is typically a blinking LED. Even as simple a project as this illustrates the difference in approach when using an FPGA as opposed to a microcontroller. When writing a “blinker” program for a microcontroller, the code would generally look something like this (using PIC-like C code):
void main(){
TRISB = 0xFE;
while(1){
PORTB = 0x01;
delay_ms(500);
PORTB = 0x00;
delay_ms(500);
}
}
This code would blink an LED connected to PORTB.0 on and off at a rate of 1Hz. The microcontroller would follow each command in sequence and change the LED state appropriately.
Conversely, when implementing a blinking-LED project with an FPGA, the general approach is to implement a digital circuit (using virtual gates, flip-flops, registers, counters, multiplexers, etc) to perform the same function. One strategy is to decide how you would implement the circuit using discrete (74xx, for example) digital logic, and then implement this design in either schematic form or your HDL design language of choice. (VHDL and Verilog are the two dominant languages; the following example is in VHDL):
entity blinker is
Port (clk : in STD_LOGIC;
led : out STD_LOGIC);
end blinker;
architecture Behavioral of blinker is
signal count : std_logic_vector(23 downto 0);
begin
process (clk) is
begin
if rising_edge(clk) then
count <= count + 1;
end if;
end process;
led <= count(23);
end Behavioral;
This code describes a 24-bit counter which increments on each rising edge of the input clock. The LED is tied to the 24th bit of the counter; this divides the clock by 224 (about 16.7 million). The end result is that the LED blinks once every 224 clock cycles. With a 16MHz input clock, the LED should blink at a rate of not quite once per second.
This is a very simple example, taking up less than 1% of the resources of even small FPGA devices like the Xilinx Spartan3 series. By combining “entity” descriptions like these, though, larger, more complex designs can be implemented. As with C-style programming for CPUs, modularity makes development of larger and more complex designs possible. A top-down approach can be taken, for example, describing the inputs and outputs of the system as a whole, then breaking the internal function down into subsystems, circuits, and finally gates (Boolean expressions, etc.)
Although working with FPGAs can be unintuitive for designers used to working with procedurally-oriented devices like MCUs, there are many benefits. FPGAs can be much faster at certain tasks, since the device configuration can be optimized for specific operations. Efficient pipelines can be set up, for instance, to keep streams of data flowing. Most significantly, FPGAs are inherently massively parallel: rather than relying on a single CPU core processing a sequence of instructions one after the other, FPGAs are essentially a “sea of [logic] gates” that can work together or independently. Extending the above example, for instance, several dozen LEDs could be configured to each blink at a different rate, by duplicating the blinker design at various places in the FPGA, and modifying the count for each.
The largest drawbacks to working with FPGAs I’ve found, so far, is that they tend to be more expensive (tens of dollars for an entry-level FPGA like the Spartan3, as opposed to under $5 for a typical 8-bit MCU; really big FPGAs can be stupendously expensive), and more importantly are trickier to implement into a typical DIY project, since they tend to be available in QFN and similar packaging instead of the more hobbyist-friendly DIP format. Fortunately, modern dev boards like Digilent’s BASYS2 and Gadget Factory’s Papilio make prototyping easier.
Here are a few books that I’ve found to be useful. I’m starting out with an emphasis on VHDL and Xilinx Spartan3 parts, so the books I’m using tend to have those biases:
FPGA Prototyping By VHDL Examples This is the primary book I’ve been using while getting started in FPGA projects in general and VHDL in particular. It is a step-by-step explanation of the important concepts in writing VHDL code, with a particular emphasis on Spartan3 FPGAs. Since both of the dev boards I use (Gadget Factory’s Papilio and Digilent’s BASYS2) use Spartan3 chips, this book has pretty much been a one-stop shop, thus far. If I were creating an undergraduate-level course in FPGA-based design, I would use this as the textbook, with the other two as recommended supplemental texts. HDL Chip Design Part textbook and part “HDL cookbook” containing all kinds of HDL designs in both VHDL and Verilog. It doesn’t strike me as the best book for starting out, but looks very useful as both a reference and a good way to learn more advanced techniques. I picked up a copy on Jeri Ellsworth’s recommendation. It’s not cheap (and can be hard to find), but looks to be well worth the money. A VHDL Primer This is a good introduction and overview of the concepts and syntax of VHDL. It is a bit more theoretical than the other two books, but does a good job of covering the language, and can be used as a language textbook and/or a VHDL desk reference.
I am working on a few FPGA-based projects, which I will post here when complete. My eventual goal is to develop standalone FPGA-based devices. |
Maybe you were shopping for a new tent recently. You clicked around REI's site, did an obligatory Craigslist search. Eventually, you wound up on Amazon, because everyone winds up on Amazon. Perhaps you added a few tents to your Wish List. Then you left that part of the Internet, and surfed somewhere else. Facebook, probably. Tumblr, maybe. WIRED.com, definitely! And suddenly, you noticed one or two or all of these sites trying to sell you a tent you'd just been perusing. Then you went to Facebook and saw another tent right there in the middle of your News Feed.
At this point, you probably know why that happened. Some unknown entity was watching you browse around tent websites, figured out that you're really into tents, then told an advertiser, "Hey, this person is really into tents." This is how the web's media companies make money: Tracing your trail across the consumable web as bots follow you and take notes and report back to the advertiser overlords. It's creepy, sure, but sometimes convenient. You are in the market for a tent, after all.
The web is loaded with weights. Not all of them ads, but all of them weights.
Internet advertising is still evolving, but one constant remains: ads specifically targeted to you make more money for publishers, so it is in their interest to fill their sites with those ads. However, those ads are murder on the speed of a page, turning a lightening-quick load time into an eight-second slog. It's worth noting that ads aren't the only thing to blame for this. The scripts that track you and peep on your tent-shopping load along with the page, and slow it down too. But wait. There's more. Article comments often are hosted by third-party services like Disqus and Facebook, and—yep!—they drag things down too. So do fancy fonts. Turns out the web is loaded with weights.
You're not powerless here. You have many choices for dealing with this. People have long used ad blockers and content blockers on desktops and laptops. That ability arrived on iPhones and iPads this will with the arrival of iOS 9. For the first time, developers can write extensions for Safari that stop ads, scripts, and other page elements from loading. It's obviously something people really want; content-blocking apps skyrocketed to the top of the App Store almost immediately.
Before you start downloading, there is one very important thing to understand: By blocking ads, you are depriving content publishers (like us, hello!) of advertising income and insights into what readers want. To better understand the flow of money and information between readers and publishers, check out WIRED's cover story on the economics of online publishing. Using Buzzfeed as an example, the story breaks down the profit margins of display ads, explains native ads, and explains the many tools, from headline optimizers and social prediction technologies, publishers use to attract your attention. All of these systems rely upon user tracking, the same tech content-blockers fence off. Learning what you like to read helps content providers serve better ads and provide content you'll actually like. But at the bottom line, ads keep the lights on. Content providers like WIRED are businesses, after all, and if you aren't going to pay for the content directly through, say, a subscription, we've gotta pay the bills somehow. It's telling that one prominent app developer has pulled his top-ranked content blocker, Peace, from the App Store because his independent-publisher friends raised concerns about the impact Peace might have on ad revenue.
There are other concerns, too, like the fact that content-blockers block more than ads. Fonts, comments, images, various elements—all might be axed. Removing these things messes with websites' carefully designed layouts, and things may break. So please be judicious!
Here are a handful of content-blocking apps new to iOS 9.
Lets you block ads, and disables tracking scripts. The basics are the same on many of these apps, but Crystal comes packaged in arguably the nicest UI of its competitors. Though that matters very little since it just attaches itself to Safari, allowing you to return to the web, minus common annoyances. Crystal, like other content-blockers, will save you data and battery life. It costs $1.
More of the same! Purify is $4, and gives you the ability to block images, scripts, and fonts from infiltrating your web experience. Everything will also be faster.
Here's another $1 option. Blockr lets you hide almost anything: cookies, cookie warnings, ads—technically, everything. If you have a terrible connection, you can use Blockr to opt only for the bare minimum, stripping a page of any media files that might be dragging things along. It should go without saying, but: still faster.
This is one to watch for because the iOS 9 version is currently still under review at the App Store. Hide & Seek works a little differently in that it blocks the code that tracks your web searches. If you are a Gmail user, you might want this—when you're logged into Gmail, your web searches are associated with your Google ID. Hide & Seek lets you search Google privately without having to log out of any other services. It does the same thing for Bing searches. The FAQ is recommended reading.
Peace
Gone! The most popular of the content blockers, this one built by Overcast creator Marco Arment, has been removed from the App Store by its author. Peace is included here because if you've already bought it, there are two things to know: It will keep working even though it won't be updated, and you can request a refund if you'd like. |
As Israel and the United States condemn Iran for allowing a Holocaust-themed cartoon festival to go on display in Tehran, the Iranian regime says it won't censor what it says is free speech.
"Why does the United States have the Ku Klux Klan? Is the government of the United States responsible for the fact that there are racially hateful organizations in the United States?" Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, asked The New Yorker, when asked why the regime has permitted the contest.
"Don't consider Iran a monolith," he said. "The Iranian government does not support, nor does it organize, any cartoon festival of the nature that you're talking about. When you stop your own organizations from doing things, then you can ask others to do likewise."
Although Zarif said a non-governmental organization was responsible for the event, The Washington Post, in an editorial that criticised Zarif's comments, reported the government is backing it. The Iranian newspaper Hahmshari also helped organize the contest.
Regardless, Israeli and American criticism and Zarif's reply raise what many see as double standards on each side when it comes to minimizing the Holocaust and drawing Muhammad, as the festival's origins trace back to Jyllands-Posten and Charlie Hebdo's Muhammad cartoons.
This year is the second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest to be held in Tehran. The first came in response to the printing in 2005 by Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper, of a series of cartoons that mocked Muslim prophet, igniting protests across the world.
At the time, the US said that while it agreed that the cartoons were offensive to Muslims, it would also uphold freedom of speech. Iran, meanwhile, recalled its ambassador from Denmark, expelled Danish journalists and ordered contracts be canceled with countries in which media published the cartoons.
The newspaper said its intention was to challenge the West's concepts of free speech by "probing one of its taboos and challenging the accounts of the Holocaust," The New York Times reported, as well responding to the rebuke President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received when he said the Holocaust is a myth.
"The idea of the contest is to expose what some here see as Western hypocrisy for condemning Ahmadinejad, while invoking freedom of expression when it comes to cartoons that many Muslims said were deeply offensive," wrote The New York Times.
The winning cartoon depicted a construction crane, with an Israeli Star of David, building a wall around the contested Temple Mount in Jerusalem that resembles the West Bank barrier wall. On the wall in the cartoon is an image of the entrance to the Auschwitz–Birkenau extermination camp. Although Zarif said the organizers of this year's festival are different, their aim is the same – highlight the hypocrisy of Western free speech.
"We do not mean to approve or deny the Holocaust," Masud Shojaei-Tabatabai, the event organizer, told the Tehran Times. "The main question is why is there no permission to talk about the Holocaust," adding their intention is to criticize Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
In the contest are 150 cartoons from 50 countries, many of which portray Israel as using the Holocaust to conceal Palestinian suffering, Palestinian prisoners behind concentration camp-style wire fences, or caricatures of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that resemble Adolf Hilter, according to the Associated Press.
As satirical as the entries may be, they also play into a widespread denial of the Holocaust in Iran and the Middle East, as well as into the belief that Israel is using the genocide as a pretext for its creation and to excuse its treatment of Palestinians, according to the Associated press.
Iran has a long history of promoting groups committed to Israel's destruction, including Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Iranian regime routinely issues calls for Israel's annihilation. Mr. Netanyahu fears Iran's attempts to develop a nuclear weapon are to obliterate the Jewish state.
The prime minister condemned the cartoon festival, and asked other countries to join him.
"It denies the Holocaust, it mocks the Holocaust and it is also preparing another Holocaust," Netanyahu said at his weekly Cabinet meeting, the Associated Press reported. "I think that every country in the world must stand up and fully condemn this."
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Mark Toner, the State Department spokesman, said the United States shared Netanyahu's concern the contest could "be used as a platform for Holocaust denial and revisionism and egregiously anti-Semitic speech, as it has in the past."
"Such offensive speech should be condemned by the authorities and civil society leaders rather than encouraged. We denounce any Holocaust denial and trivialization as inflammatory and abhorrent. It is insulting to the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust," said Mr. Toner. |
I’ve been writing for months about the great big loophole providing access to the phone dragnet database.
Basically, the NSA needs someone to massage the dragnet data before analysts do queries on it, to take out high frequency call numbers (telemarketers and pizza joints), and probably to take out certain protected numbers, like those of Members of Congress. (Note, that the NSA has to do this demonstrates not only that all their haystack claims are false, but also leaves the possibility they’ll remove numbers that actually do have intelligence value.)
The problem of course, is that this means there is routine access to the database of all phone-based relationships in the United States that does not undergo normal oversight. We know this is a problem because we know NSA has found big chunks of this data in places where it doesn’t belong, as it discovered on February 16, 2012 when it found over 3,000 call records that had been stashed and kept longer than the 5 years permitted by the FISA Court.
As of 16 February 2012, NSA determined that approximately 3,032 files containing call detail records potentially collected pursuant to prior BR Orders were retained on a server and been collected more than five years ago in violation of the 5-year retention period established for BR collection. Specifically, these files were retained on a server used by technical personnel working with the Business Records metadata to maintain documentation of provider feed data formats and performed background analysis to document why certain contact chaining rules were created. In addition to the BR work, this server also contains information related to the STELLARWIND program and files which do not appear to be related to either of these programs. NSA bases its determination that these files may be in violation of BR 11-191 because of the type of information contained in the files (i.e., call detail records), the access to the server by technical personnel who worked with the BR metadata, and the listed “creation date” for the files. It is possible that these files contain STELLARWIND data, despite the creation date. The STELLARWIND data could have been copied to this server, and that process could have changed the creation date to a timeframe that appears to indicate that they may contain BR metadata.
The bill the Intelligence Committee passed out of committee yesterday not only codifies this practice, but exempts this practice from the explicit limits placed on other uses of this database.
Here’s how it describes this access.
(D) LIMITED ACCESS TO DATA.—Access to information retained in accordance with the procedures described in subparagraph (C) shall be prohibited, except for access— [snip] (iii) as may be necessary for technical assurance, data management or compliance purposes, or for the purpose of narrowing the results of queries, in which case no information produced pursuant to the order may be accessed, used, or disclosed for any other purpose, unless the information is responsive to a query authorized under paragraph (3).
Note, I’ve never seen this access described in a way that would include “narrowing the results of queries” before. I’m actually very curious why a tech would need to directly access the database, presumably after a query has already been run, to narrow it. Isn’t that contrary to the entire haystack theory?
In any case, the rest of the bill relevant to the phone dragnet effectively exempts this access from almost all of the oversight it codifies.
The requirement for a written record of the Reasonable Articulable Suspicion and identity of the person making the query does not apply (see 2 A and B). Since no record is made, the FISA Court doesn’t review these queries (6A) and these queries don’t get included in the public reporting (b)(3)(C)(i). I don’t see where the bill requires any record-keeping of this access.
The requirement that the data be kept secure specifically doesn’t apply.
SECURITY PROCEDURES FOR ACQUIRED DATA.—Information acquired pursuant to such an order (other than information properly returned in response to a query under subparagraph (D)(iii)) shall be retained by the Government in accordance with security procedures approved by the court in a manner designed to ensure that only authorized personnel will have access to the information in the manner prescribed by this section and the court’s order. [my emphasis]
And the requirement that personnel accessing the database for these purposes (4) be limited and specially trained doesn’t apply.
A court order issued pursuant to an application made under subsection (a), and subject to the requirements of this subsection, shall impose strict, reasonable limits, consistent with operational needs, on the number of Government personnel authorized to make a determination or perform a query pursuant to paragraph (1)(D)(i).
The only limit that appears to apply to the queries from this data management access of the database is the 5 year destruction.
Now, I think the FISA Court made tentative bids to limit some of the activities in 2009. But this language seems to undermine some of the controls the Court has placed on this access (including audits).
In short, in a purported bid to raise confidence about the NSA creating a database of every phone-based relationship in the United States, the Intelligence Committee has actually codified a loosening of access to the database outside the central purpose of it. It permits a range of people to access the database for vaguely defined purposes, it permits them to move that data onto less secure areas of the network, and it doesn’t appear to require record-keeping of the practice.
But what could go wrong with permitting tech personnel — people like Edward Snowden — access to data with less oversight than that imposed on analysts?
Update: Added the language from the 2012 violation to show how clueless the NSA was about finding this data just lying around and its inability to determine where it came from. |
In the category of “gross anime things,” let’s talk a little about an increasingly popular gross anime thing commonly referred to as “Really 700 years old.”
That’s when a 700-year-old demon with the body of a young girl who, somehow, finds herself in a sexually compromising position. Yep.
Historically, the trope has referred to otherworldly spirits like Koenma from Yu Yu Hakusho who, although he’s 700, looks like a toddler (complete with a pacifier). There’s also classics like the badass fighter Lady Kayura, whose hundreds-year-old lifespan isn’t apparent with her 12-year-old looks. It’s not always sexual. And it’s not always young girls. But lately, there’s been a lot of that, and oh man is it gross.
Now, there are, for example, childlike goddesses who are literally referred to as “loli big boobs”—I see you, Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon?. I see what you did there. It still doesn’t fly. Nope.
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Here are some examples, all from 2017:
UQ Holder (2017): There’s a 700-year-old vampire who appears 10. Moments after she’s introduced, the viewer sees up her skirt. Soon after, the viewer learns she’s acquired magic that increases her apparent age, and, of course, her cup size.
Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid (2017): There’s a dragon girl who appears and behaves like an eight-year-old but, in truth, is very old. In one scene, she throws herself onto a classmate’s bed with her legs spread wide open. Then, they play Twister. (“It’s for kids,” the classmate points out.) The two—both in short skirts—tangle themselves together in a series of shots that hint strongly at a sexual connection. Afterward, the classmate is red and her heart is racing.
Grimoire of Zero (2017): A very mature witch appears to be a child. There’s sexual tension between herself and a mercenary tiger-man she travels with.
The Silver Guardian (2017): The female love interest’s online game avatar is a childlike girl with large breasts, but maybe, she’s just drawn in the traditional “chibi” style.
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And some borderline stuff from this year, too:
WorldEnd (2017): There’s a race of childlike leprechauns. At one point, the protagonist, who is surrounded by them, gives a 15-year-old fairy (who has been reincarnated) a pretty sensual back massage.
The Seven Deadly Sins (2017): A 1,000 year-old child develops feelings for an adult man.
Saga of Tanya the Evil (2017): An 11-year-old mage who used to be a Tokyo salaryman leads armies into battle. She isn’t really sexualized, though.
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It’s in games, too. League of Legends recently introduced a flirty child champion named Zoe who is several thousand years old, although she couldn’t be considered sexualized.
With every new anime season, I yell, Please, no, into the void, and the void just winks back and dishes out more of this crap. Among anime fans, it’s become part laughing-matter and part cringe-instigator. And now that we’ve established that this is not just a thing, but a thing that is happening quite often, I’m going to clear my Google search history, heave a big sigh and hold my breath when I wade through next season’s anime. |
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand Kirsten Elizabeth GillibrandWoman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid Hillary Clinton says she 'can't imagine' running for president again Kamala Harris supports decriminalizing sex work MORE (D-N.Y.) is doubling down on her opposition to granting retired Gen. James Mattis a waiver to become Defense secretary after meeting with President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE's nominee to lead the Pentagon.
Gillibrand, who met privately with Mattis on Wednesday, said afterward she is firm in her opposition to waiving a law that requires Defense secretaries to be out of the military for at least seven years.
“He has served our country admirably,” Gillibrand said Wednesday. “He is well-regarded as an extraordinary general, and I am very grateful for that service, and I’m very grateful that he’s willing to continue his service for the president-elect. But I still believe that civilian control of our military is fundamental to the American democracy.”
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Mattis retired from the Marine Corps in 2013. The 1947 law that established the Defense Department stipulated the Pentagon chief must be retired from active duty for at least 10 years, later reduced to seven years.
Congress waived the law once, for Gen. George Marshall in 1950.
The waiver needs to pass both chambers of Congress and will need 60 votes to pass the Senate.
So far, Gillibrand, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the only senator to explicitly say she’ll vote against the waiver.
Gillibrand said Mattis told her that he agreed that civilian control of the military is important. But that wasn’t enough to sway her opinion, she said, because the Defense secretary’s job requires an understanding of the civilian aspects of the Pentagon.
“They are going to manage, now, 3 million people; 700,00 of them are civilians,” she said. “Your job is far greater than deciding how to engage militarily. That is left to generals and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The secretary of Defense has a far greater range of responsibilities that is informed by civilian background and experience.”
Gillibrand said she did not know whether other senators will join her in opposing the waiver.
“You’ll have to ask them,” she said. “I just think it’s fundamental to the Constitution.”
In addition to civilian control of the military, Gillibrand said she and Mattis discussed women in the military, military sexual assault, terrorism, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
“I thought he had some thoughtful ideas on national security,” she said. “I do have concerns about women in the military and how sexual assault in the military is being addressed. I’ll ask those questions specifically in the hearing so he can answer them for the record.” |
Washington: When Trump goes low, the Obamas go high – and Hillary Clinton lies low.
It was a clever rallying call by Michelle Obama as this campaign descended into the gutter – "when they go low, we go high!". But perhaps just as clever is Clinton's interpretation of the "low" bit – she has withdrawn to the shadows, is doing fewer public appearances and is leaving Donald Trump at stage centre, where he consumes himself in his fury, his conspiracy theories and his denials that don't amount to much.
On Friday there was more to deny, as the women of America fleshed out what they know of the GOP candidate. And because Trump can't help himself, his counter-attacks ensure that the story of his hands, his "big" wandering hands, remains at the centre of discourse that nominally is about who should be the most powerful individual in the world.
But the Obamas have become the frontline force of the Clinton campaign – Michelle first, with a Thursday one-punch excoriation of Trump on his treatment of women that went viral; and on Friday, a two-punch hammer blow by Barack that shredded Trump's pretensions to high office. |
In a rare positive ad, Alabama senator Luther Strange packs more conservative iconography into a 30-second spot than one would think possible.
As noted here earlier this week, the GOP special Senate primary in Alabama that concludes a week from today (though a September 26 runoff is virtually certain) has featured a lot of nastiness, particularly between interim appointee to the seat Luther Strange and U.S. Representative Mo Brooks. But I wouldn’t want readers to think there are no positive ads running in this race. Strange unveiled one recently that should probably get some sort of award for the maximum number of conservative ideological signifiers packed into a 30-second ad. It’s just amazing.
In case you couldn’t see the ad or it moved too fast for you, it begins by reassuring Alabamans that Strange is a follower of Jesus Christ. It ends with “Big Luther” shooting a handgun at a firing range (with the NRA emblem displayed) and promising to fight for “President Trump’s agenda every single day.” In between, the ad further testifies to Strange’s devotion to the two men whose approval ratings in Alabama occasionally rival Jesus Christ’s, Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, while mentioning their common project, the wall.
There are some nice subtle touches:
- If you look closely, the target at which Strange is firing near the end of the ad has the legend “Obama’s Attacks on the Second Amendment.” That’s interesting since Obama had left office by the time Strange went to Washington to “help President Trump drain the swamp.”
- There’s also an odd mash-up in the Trumperrific center of the ad wherein Strange’s boast about fighting corruption in Montgomery is amplified by the claim that he “convicted a corrupt House speaker,” an allusion to his office’s prosecution of Mike Hubbard, from which, as it happens, he had to recuse himself because of his business dealings with that same corrupt House speaker.
- … which somehow leads without a pause to his victimization by “those Never Trump insiders,” which may be a veiled reference to wealthy Republicans associated with Mo Brooks, who all, of course, now share Strange’s hagiographical attitude toward the 45th president.
All in all, Strange did everything to identify himself with prevailing Alabama GOP attitudes this side of invoking Alabama football coach Nick Saban, that other local rival to Trump, Sessions, and Jesus Christ. But then again, Auburn fans vote, too. |
Now that WinterBoard has been updated for iOS 7, themers are back on the wagon either updating their themes or coming up with new ones. WinterBoard is a buggy app, and even Saurik, its creator admitted so when it was updated a few weeks ago. In short WinterBoard for iOS 7 is still a work in progress.
One of the bugs that have been affecting themers is related to the Status Bar. The problem comes from a caching issue preventing the Status Bar theming of some themes such as Ayecon or Solstice to propagate correctly to the entire UI. In some cases, you might see the themed Status Bar when running certain applications, while the themed bar might be absent from the Home screen or other apps.
Fortunately, there is one simple fix for this…
If you want to fix the Status Bar not showing properly all across your iPhone, follow these simple steps:
Step 1: Open iFile or SSH into your device and go to /private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.UIStatusbar
Step 2: Delete all of the files located in this directory.
Step 3: Respring your device.
After the respring, the themed Status Bar should be showing properly everywhere on your device. The problem might appear again after changing the theme, in which case, follow these steps again.
Hopefully, this is something that will be fixed in a future WinterBoard update.
Note that this problem is different from another Status Bar bug caused by the jailbreaking process and preventing the stock Status Bar from showing properly in certain stock applications such as Photos, Phone, etc. If you have this problem, make sure to check out our post on how to fix it.
For those wondering, the theme used in the image above is Solstice, one of the best WinterBoard themes for iOS 7. I use the icons and Status Bar from Solstice, a wallpaper from Ayecon, and I removed the icon labels with WinterBoard. |
HEX Update – Sealed Decks and Prep Phase
Hi HEXers. Friday is the best day of the week, as we tell you everything that’s happening with your favorite game.
The art department is working on different UI elements, as well as pack opening. Production is keeping things on schedule, and R&D is tuning the Smoldering Dead dungeon. We continue to collect great Set 2 art, and you can see Grzegorz Pedrycz’s Crackling Vortex below. The engineers are bug squashing, feature implementing machines—and I say that in the most complimentary way possible.
We have a big patch coming up soon with two features, one making its return. First, the new one: Sealed Deck support.
Sealed Deck
In Sealed Deck events, you are given 6 booster packs and unlimited access to basic shards (Blood, Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, Wild). You create a 40-card minimum deck with those cards, mixing shards and strategies as you wish. Players typically play a mix of two shards, choosing their most powerful two that provide a solid mix of troops and troop removal actions (like Murder); however, different sets provide different experiences and there may be times you can effectively play all 5 shards!
After building your deck, you then play matches against people who have done the same. Because decks are built from booster packs, the format inspires some incredible deck building strategies as players adjust to a limited pool of cards and find ways to surprise opponents with cards that may not see much play in Constructed formats. No two pools of cards are the same, so every deck is a brand new experience. Sealed Deck is a great way for players with few cards to challenge those with vast collections on equal footing, as well as a way for players to test their ingenuity, deck building skill.
Prep Phase – It’s Back!
This upcoming patch will feature the re-introduction of the Prep Phase as a priority window. By default, the stop in the Prep Phase will be turned off, but it will be able to be turned on manually.
From our lead PVP designer, Ben Stoll:
Originally we felt strongly that eliminating the prep phase altogether was the best thing for the game—the basic idea being that it would streamline gameplay and make for a more accessible experience for our players. And nearly every time, players would get the exact same effect from playing their cards either a phase before or a phase after the prep phase. However, some of the members of our beloved community (that’s you) felt that we hadn’t made the best decision here. There are a lot of compelling reasons supporting putting the Prep Phase back in, many of which are thoughtfully outlined by various forum posters. Some examples include that it provides a moment for players to breathe before the main part of someone’s turn starts, it provides a reactive window in an intuitive spot, and it allows a clear differentiation for the timing of start of turn effects and events occurring during the main phase.
Changes like this are typically seen in Alpha builds, but gamers typically aren’t part of Alphas so they don’t see these changes– and we don’t get the opportunity to respond to their thoughts as effectively.
Hex has always been built on the foundation of a strong partnership with our players through the Kickstarter experience, and this is another example of the sort of benefit the game can receive from that partnership. I want to extend a huge thanks to you all for trying it out, voicing your opinions, and giving us the opportunity to improve HEX on community feedback!
Twitch.TV
Remember that our own Community Manager Shaggy will be playing Havok, the winner of the second Tournament of Streamers. That’s on January 21st at 5 PM Pacific. Make sure to follow our Twitch channel so you don’t miss out on any streams! And if you didn’t download it already, you can spruce up your own video presentation with the HEX overlay. Just right-mouse-click this link and then click “Save Link As.”
Thanks again for all your help in testing HEX alpha, and we hope you’re having a great time as we get closer to closed beta. Please leave any questions or comments in the forums linked below, and don’t forget to Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitch, register on our forums, and Follow our Twitter accounts: HEXTCG, Dusty, William, and Cory.
-Shaqattaq
Discuss this article in our forums! |
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Renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines are expanding at a rapid rate in the United States, and changing the way that the power grid operates. That opens a major new opportunity for companies like Tesla that build battery systems for electric storage. In fact, Tesla could start profiting off this trend a lot sooner than investors seem to expect, note analysts at Morgan Stanley.
Until recently, there’s been relatively minimal demand for battery storage. Utilities have not relied much on battery storage, and it’s generally been too expensive for homeowners who have installed solar roofs to buy storage units. (People who have installed solar panels on their roofs generally still have to hook into the electric grid, because the panels don’t produce electricity when the sun isn’t shining. But if they could buy cheap storage devices, they could store the electricity the panels produce during sunny days and use it at night, allowing them to unhook from the grid.)
But as more people generate their own energy and utilities add more intermittent power sources like solar farms and wind turbines, battery storage starts to make more sense. California utilities, for instance, are now turning to battery storage to smooth some of the spikes and dips in energy production created by less predictable sources like solar and wind.
The Morgan Stanley analysts expect this trend to continue, with energy storage demand jumping to between $2 billion and $4 billion in 2020 from $300 million now. Eventually, the market could rise to about 85 gigawatts, or $30 billion. Most of the demand will come from utilities looking to smooth out their energy needs and create backup power for outages, the analysts predict. Tesla is on track to create 35 gigawatts of electricity storage per year at its Gigafactory in Nevada, according to the analysts. (A gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes.)
More than half of the 24 gigawatts of new capacity added in the U.S. in 2016 was from renewable sources, notes the Energy Information Administration.
The analysts see energy storage adding about $5 to Tesla’s stock, a bump of just 2% to its current $257 price. But in a bullish scenario it could add $14. Not a bad spark.
Big Picture: Tesla could profit from a growing demand for energy storage, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. |
This video is a couple of years old, but if you’re 17 billion miles from Earth, it will probably be new to you.
On December 31, 2013, guitarist Rich Evans—who by the looks of things works for NASA— took his black Fender Strat and amp to the world’s most powerful reverberant acoustic test facility at the Space Power Facility at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio.
Evans plugged in and proceeded to play the intro to Pink Floyd’s “Coming Back to Life,” from 1994’s The Division Bell. The results demonstrate the powerful ambience within the facility.
“I had my amp on a completely dry gritty distortion setting with absolutely no reverb, or time effects from the amp,” Evans writes. “So the combined chorus, delay, echo, swell effect that you hear is 100 percent the chamber. Wow.”
Evans is accompanied by a synth backing track that also benefits from the chamber’s ambience—though it also made it difficult for him to follow along in time. “My timing isn’t as good as I would have liked for a YouTube solo clip,” he notes, “but a perfect performance isn’t the point of this clip. The point hear is share with you the awesomely cool experience of playing David Gilmour’s haunting guitar solo in a NASA Space Environment Test Facility.”
He also performed the solo from “Another Brick in the Wall,” which is included at bottom. |
EuroPics[CEN] Lou Xiaoying, right, lies in the hospital with one of her daughters, center. Lou, now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, found and raised more than 30 abandoned babies from the streets of Jinhua, in eastern Zhejiang province, China, where she made a living recycling rubbish.
BEIJING – “What?! No, she is alive in the hospital,” exclaimed Zhang Jingjing through the phone lines.
Zhang was responding to concern on Weibo, China’s popular Twitter-like service, claiming that Lou Xiaoying, her adoptive mother, had died.
The worry was understandable, for Lou, 88, has been hailed a hero in China for reportedly saving more than 30 abandoned babies from trash cans and dumps over the past four decades.
Lou is suffering from kidney disease in the hospital, but, according to her daughter, she's still alive.
"My mother has gotten better,” Zhang, 33, reported. “The hospital has spared us much expense. They have also minimized the kinds of medicines that my mom has to use. Money collected from donations has helped us a lot, too."
Helping others
Lou, who was born in 1924 in Fujian Province, collected and recycled garbage to make a living. She and her husband, who died 17 years ago, had two biological children, a daughter and a son.
Over the years of scavenging, Lou found 30 children who had been abandoned, mostly as a result of China’s strict one-child policy. She and her husband adopted three daughters while the remaining children, mostly girls, were passed to other people to start new lives.
According to an article in Britain’s Daily Mail, Lou found her first abandoned child, a girl, when she was out collecting garbage in 1972.
“She was just lying amongst the junk on the street, abandoned. She would have died had we not rescued her and taken her in,” she said, according to the Daily Mail report. “I realized if we had strength enough to collect garbage, how could we not recycle something as important as human lives?”
“These children need love and care. They are all precious human lives,” she added. “I do not understand how people can leave such a vulnerable baby on the streets.”
Zhang told NBC News that "at one point, there were 12 members in the family” living in a deserted temple on the outskirts of the city of Jinhua, about 200 miles south of Shanghai. "It wasn't until 1987 when they were building a railway and wanted to remove our temple, did [authorities] find out about our family,” she added.
The family’s future was complicated by the rigid household registration system designed to control the movement of China’s 1.3 billion people. Known in Chinese as hukou, the central government classifies people as either city dwellers or rural peasants, which determines not only a citizen’s residence but also what kind of social services and schools they are eligible for.
Because they were living “off the grid,” none of Lou’s adopted children had a hukou. But Zhang said that people in the area soon heard about the family and help came along.
"There were some communal donations which helped two of us adopted ones go to school. But my oldest adopted sister, who is now 40, has never gone to school,” said Zhang.
Even in old age, Lou kept going out to collect trash several times a day. In 2007, Lou discovered a boy, Zhang Qilin, in a dumpster. She adopted the boy, who is now 7, as her grandson; his adoptive father is Lou’s biological son.
The youngster encountered the same problem of not having a hukou. But after a series of reports about Lou in the local Jinhua Daily, followed by other reports in the Chinese and international press, Zhang was granted permission to attend a public school called Jindong District Experimental School in Jinhua. In addition, his hukou registration process is now under way.
‘Grandma Lou deserves her dreams to be fulfilled’
Fang Qing, the principal of the public school, spoke with NBC News about Lou’s youngest adoptee.
“I take for granted that every child in China has a right to education, no matter what his background is like,” Fang said, adding that the school would keep a special eye on Zhang Qilin.
“Grandma Lou deserves her dreams to be fulfilled. Good people should be rewarded with good,” Fang said.
Many netizens have chimed in on Weibo about Lou’s heroism.
“What would the world be like if only we have a few more people like Grandma Lou. I respect you, Grandma,” wrote one user.
Lou’s concern for others lives on in her daughter, Zhang, who agreed to be interviewed as long as no foreign donation appeal would be made through NBC.
“We are not in a very positive position financially,” she said, “but neither do we lack money now for my mother’s medical treatments. … We are very grateful, but we are doing fine now.”
Asked if she has ever thought about finding her biological parents, Zhang answered “No” resolutely. “She has always been my mother.”
More world stories from NBC News:
Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook |
Introduction:
Accuracy is cool and all, but everybody misses their shot ever so often, right? A powerful hold is when you manage to combine efficient grenade usage, teamwork, accuracy, and positioning. This cannot be achieved, normally, when you queue with randoms, meaning that you should find a partner in crime with whom you have great synergy and go with him or her as a powerful duo into matches.
In general:
Usually bombsite B is the position that can allow a two person hold so I will consentrate solely on holding B bomb plant on each map, but do not be discouraged by the fact that I am only applying this to the B plant, this can and should be applied in all situations that require holding. (Here is a link to a T bomb plant holding guide). A strong hold can buy your team valuable time to rotate, it can stop enemies from early pushes and ultimately it will allow you to receive the upper hand in a tricky situation (e.g Cross fires, maximum He damage, timed flashes...etc). The colours at the end of some scenario represents the two players locations.
Dust 2
Dust 2 has a rather big bomb plant compared to others and lots of small crates and whatnots you can use as cover. Holding B bomb plant can be relatively easy if you get your shots on. In match making (MM) the most common B tactic for terrorists is the good ol' plain B rush. Positioning is nevertheless the key factor that can and will allow you to hold the site. For instance both watching tunnel from the same spot is a death wish, two correctly timed nades and you are down to red with armour and possibly dead without! BUT neither is sitting right behind the corner the correct option.
Here are three screnarios that can unfold while holding B: Tunnel rush, mid to B, split B push.
Tunnel rushes worst nightmare is a molly, mollies can inflict stupendous amounts of damage when the whole team rush through. One player should sit and hide behind the metallic box while the second sits around window/ doors, this way when they rush in, the teammate by window/door can distract them and the second can "flank" from the metallic box and spray'n'pray. Alternatively you could sit on the edge and once you have contact flash the T's allowing the teammate behind metallic box to have a few seconds to spray the T's down. (Green)
For a mid to B push one should hold doors and the second should hold window, one of those entrances should be smoked off 100%. From there you should take two different angels out of which one angle should be able to take anyone who dares to rush through the smoke. You should try to hold off long enough for your teammates to rotate from A/mid/long. (Orange)
A split push is the trickiest one to hold since you have to cover three entrance points with two players. There are two ways you can hold: A. having one at the back of B holding tunnel and the second holding from the car or right by the boxes. or B. holding window from the back of B while the other crouches under the winodw watching tunnels smoke the door to try and prevent the T's from enterying from the angle you are not covering. This one is the riskier hold since you have a chance of people entering through door despite you smoking it off or not. (Blue)
Cache
Cache has one major entry point and two minor (Mid via CT to B and vents, but vents is generally used as a variation to get into checkers). Smoking of the choke point is crucial! Keep it smoked off as long as possible and DO NOT waste smokes, only smoke off when you have heard footsteps/seen them! One player should always hold from somewhere on the bombsite and the other potentially from checkers/heaven. If you feel playing something unique then have two players on the site and throw a decoy into heaven this could potentially fool the opponents into being careful of heaven and not expecting to CT's to be on the site!
Inferno
Inferno has one main route into it and one secondary, main being banana and the latter being ct spawn. When holding banana you have to be cautious because you can get swarmed by the T's. You can hold banana in three ways, hyper aggressive, aggressive peak and defensive.
A hyper aggressive hold is when you push up banana and smoke right before the T stairs. This is a very good hold especially if the opponents decide to push mid or second mid into A as you are much closer allowing you to get to your teammates quicker. With an aggressive hold you eliminate the possibility that the T's are holding banana, which is valuable informations for the rest of the team, but remember you only have two smokes which means you won't be able to camp out in banana for long unless you play risky and try to suprise them.
Aggressive peaking is a dangerous, but good way to get the first frag of the round. Usually conducted with an awp, you flash banana and the awp takes a shot from behind the car. This is also a good way to get information if they are coming up banana or going elsewhere. Once the awp has taken his shot, you either push up or retriet. The player who flashed the awper in should have a flash in his hand ready to flash again incase the T's rush them. Once you retriet (depending if the T's are rushing you or not) you should smoke off the choke point that leads banana onto B. If your awper feels really risky he can go onto the coils, but in general everyone expects the awpers to retriet to the coils so he is vulnerable at that location. The awper should throw the second smoke down after the first one has ran out to keep the T's from rushing through the choke point.
When playing defensively you should not worry about the CT spawn because your teammates will tell you if they pushed through arch. Once again at your own risk you can sit on the coils, but it is not adviced. You can either play very defensively and smoke off the choke point as explained in the previous point, you can let the T's onto the bombsite and take them out once they've entered giving it a small element of surprise or you can do a proximity hold. A proximity hold is when you don't smoke of the choke point and one of you goes into the small corner that sits after the choke point whilst the other draws fire from the small steps, allowing the T's to move in and potentially not check that corner.
Train
There are three entry points to B bombsite on train, but only 2 are used hallways and back of A through CT. You can either hold B aggressively (Proxy hold) or more passively. An aggressive hold would insue a push into lower hallways try to pick off one or more T's while your teammate flashes you from B ramps and holds right by them. The passive option would be holding from the end of upper B (pref. awp) and holding ramps from the plant (with one person holding connector to quickly rotate to B).
Mirage
Holding B in Mirage generally means preventing the T's from pushing out of apartments because mid should be covered by a teammate so you should not have to worry about short. The easiest way to hold B is with a molly or two and some smokes. Just do not get out peaked by the T's that are in the apartment. As for the second player on B you can jump onto these boxes, a spot a lot of people do not use, but can be very useful if you have decided to let the T's push through aparments.
If mid fails to hold off the push you should smoke off short from B and have one player (assuming there is no one in house) take position in house to watch over short and house at the same time. The other can hold either from bombsite or bench although generally bench is a bad spot to be in as it is wall-bangable. Your teammate from window should rotate into kitchen/store (whatever you want to call it).
Remember you are two teammates, you have to always cover each other. Flash one another in, communicate, decoy and the element of surprise is always on your side and as apply everything everywhere, the tactics ARE NOT bound to ONE map! |
Brazilian glad to have another South American at club
Liverpool midfielder Lucas Leiva has heaped praise on new signing and friend Luis Suarez, believing he is at the club for the long haul.
The Uruguayan international arrived at Anfield for £22 million from Dutch giants Ajax in the January transfer window and is performing as though he has been there for five years.
So far, the former Groningen man has one goal and three assists in the Liverpool shirt, and Lucas is one of his many new fans.
Speaking to Liverpoolfc.tv, Lucas said: “It was a great signing for Liverpool. In the Premier League he has already done a lot of things for the team.
“He's scored one and a half goals - the other half was Dirk [Kuyt]! He's also got three assists, so we are really happy with the way he's settled.
"He's here for a long time and hopefully he'll keep doing well. He is really strong, he can beat players and score goals, and I think he's the perfect striker for the Premier League."
Although the two players are from different countries and more than 600 miles separate their respective places of birth, Lucas is glad to have a fellow South American at the club.
He continued: “To have another South American is always important for me because the culture is more similar to what I know in Brazil.
"As soon as he signed his contract I went out with him for dinner to try to introduce him. Maxi is always helping him too.
“The South American and Spanish guys are trying to help him because the language is the same."
The Uruguayan is currently learning English in an attempt to fully fit in with the lifestyle in England, but Lucas believes that although his English isn’t yet perfect, the atmosphere at the club and stadium has helped him settle quickly nonetheless.
He added: “He is a funny guy, always joking. The atmosphere in the club is very good and that's why he's doing really well.
“When you change clubs and countries it's always difficult to settle - but the atmosphere at Melwood and Anfield has helped him to settle very quickly."
The Brazilian international also went on to speak about current manager Kenny Dalglish, someone he believes is highly important to the club, and someone he respects greatly.
He said: “We know how important he is for the club and for the fans. The players know how good he was.
"Everything he says makes sense and we believe that what he says is to help us improve our game as a team and as players.
“We are really happy and we have the confidence now to go anywhere and try to win. That's what he gives to us.
"He likes to talk about tactics but the message is always to believe in ourselves and to make sure we do everything with commitment and desire.
“He talks about tactics and then he gives us a lot of confidence to go onto the pitch."
The Reds haven’t played a league match since they beat Manchester United 3-1 at Anfield on March 6, and despite being knocked out of the Europa League, Lucas is confident they can replicate the kind of performance they produced against United.
He concluded: “It's an example of how we should play in every game, though it's not easy.
“If we play like we did against Manchester United we can dream and look to be in a better position at the end of the season." |
Written by Mike Hohnen on October 21, 2013
33-year-old Toby Sheldon has failed miserably in an attempt to create a bona fide Justin Bieber doppelganger, spending $100,000 to look…sorta…like the pop sensation but kind of more like a vampire from ’90s TV series Buffy.
Prior to the surgery Sheldon looked like your average dude, though after this development we can confirm that is a slightly crazed look in his eye. The LA-based songwriter has apparently spent the past 5 years slowly chipping away at his bone structure to resemble Bieber’s.
In an interview with Closer Magazine, Sheldon explained that it was The Bieb’s show-stopping smile that originally became the object of his desire. “It’s Justin’s smile that gives him his youthful look,” he said. “My smile surgery took more than a month to recover from.” Which is sad, isn’t it?
Like most people, Bieber’s eyelids were an obvious drawcard for Sheldon – he looks as good with his eyes closed as open, doesn’t he? – but obtaining a replica of Bieber’s much-coveted ocular skin flaps wasn’t as easy as you might think. As Sheldon explains, “After my eyelid surgery, I couldn’t open my eyes for a week.” All the better to not see yourself with, I guess.
And if you were wondering why none of the people closest to him ever said anything about it, they seem to be slightly crazed themselves. “My friends shower me with compliments,” he said. “They even call me Toby Bieber.” We’ll take your word for it, Tobes.
You can check out the transformation gone wrong below, and use the main image above as a reference point for just how wrong. You can also enjoy an even creepier internet news report below, voiced by someone who presumably had vocal cord surgery to sound like Steven Hawking.
Watch: Unbeliebable – 33-year-old Bieber fanatic has $100k of plastic surgery to look like his idol
http://youtu.be/G2Uw7fRwPQY
(Via Pedestrian) |
After a bloody August saw homicides climb to a 20-year high, a deadly Labor Day weekend sent Chicago’s 2016 homicides soaring past 500, surpassing total murders for 2015 with four months still left in the year.
In all, 65 people were shot during the holiday weekend, 31 of them between 6 a.m. Monday and 3 a.m. Tuesday, The Chicago Tribune reported. The 13 killed brought the city’s skyrocketing homicide total to 512 – already well past the 491 logged in 2015.
"It is a complex problem with multidimensional facets to it," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Friday of Chicago's homicide rate. "It's not just about more police, but it will include that. But it's also about more resources for our children, more resources for our neighborhoods and stiffer laws that reflect the values of our city."
The scores of dead and wounded in the early days of September follow 90 homicides in August, tied for Chicago’s deadliest month since June 1996.
Nearly 3,000 people have been shot this year, according to data analyzed by The Tribune. That includes several deadly celebratory periods in 2016: 69 shot (six dead) during Memorial Day weekend and 66 shot (five dead) during the Fourth of July weekend.
Police attribute the spike in gun crime during the tail end of the Labor Day weekend to retaliatory gang acts, the Tribune reported.
In contrast, New York and Los Angeles had 409 homicides combined through late August.
While gang violence is largely responsible for Chicago’s burgeoning body count, it’s not the sole cause.
In one of the more odd examples of the city’s conflicts, an elderly, ex-preacher who uses a wheelchair was accused of shooting and killing a fellow retiree on Monday morning. |
Newcastle midfielder Dan Gosling has admitted a Football Association misconduct charge in relation to betting rules.
The FA says the charge concerns "multiple breaches" and that Gosling has requested a personal hearing to answer his case.
The breaches do not relate to matches involving Newcastle or Blackpool, where he has been on loan this season.
The date of the hearing for the 24-year-old has yet to be set.
Gosling is back with Newcastle after having a loan spell with Blackpool earlier in the season.
He was a regular during his three-month stint at the Championship side but has only made three substitute appearances since returning to the Magpies at the start of January.
Gosling's breach of betting rules relates to Rule E8(b) of the FA's regulations.
The rule states a player: "shall not bet, either directly or indirectly" on matches involving themselves or their team as well as the competition they play in or have played in.
Media playback is not supported on this device Would blanket ban solve betting issues?
In addition, players are prohibited from betting in "any other matter concerning or related to any club participating in any league competition that the participant is participating in or has participated in during that season".
Tottenham midfielder Andros Townsend was fined £18,000 last June and banned for four months, with three of those months suspended, for breaching betting regulations.
Crystal Palace striker Cameron Jerome, then at Stoke, received a £50,000 fine in August for the same offence.
However, it is believed neither player was charged over bets relating to games in which they or their clubs were involved.
Accrington Stanley managing director Robert Heys was suspended from football for 21 months and fined £1,000 after admitting 735 breaches of FA betting rules in August.
Three players for Southern League Division One Central club AFC Hayes were also suspended and fined in December over multiple betting rule breaches.
More recently, Barnet right-back Andy Yiadom was fined £1,000 and warned about his future conduct regarding FA Rule E8(b). |
NIAGARA FALLS -- The first Amtrak train and its load of about 35 passengers arrived at the new $43 million train station here just after 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Most of the travelers, including a large contingent from the United Kingdom, were a bit confused as they were greeted by applause, cameras and curious onlookers.
And while some called the new station beautiful, they were also confused by the lack of amenities. For now, travelers can't even buy a cup of coffee, a bottle of water or a snack in Niagara Falls' new mostly-empty train station at 825 Depot Avenue West.
"Is there anything to do here?" said Angela Honey, of South Wales, during a two-hour layover before the train headed to New York City. "We'll just sit, get back on the train and that's it."
The City of Niagara Falls is still searching for a tenant for 4,000 square feet of retail space there. It also plans to open an Underground Railroad Museum at the train station next year.
Passenger Greg Cugini, who was traveling from Vancouver to Albany, said he'd like to see more amenities and would "absolutely love to see the Underground Railroad Museum."
"People would really love a place to get a coffee. It's a simple thing, but it makes a big difference, especially six months out of the year when I'm sure it is very cold here," said Cugini, of Clearwater, Fla.
Photo gallery: The new Niagara Falls train station
But for Albert McFadyen, of Lockport, who grew up in Niagara Falls, the train was the thing.
McFadyen, 70, an admitted train enthusiast, was wearing a blue Amtrak cap and carrying a sack lunch in the station. He said he told his Facebook friends he wanted to have a ticket on the first train to pass through. So he bought a ticket to ride the Amtrak roughly 25 miles to Depew, and then planned to head back hours later to Niagara Falls on an Amtrak.
"I want to be a part of the good history of Niagara Falls - there's so many detractors," said McFadyen. "I understand the negativism, to some degree, but this is one city that needs a decent Amtrak station."
Unlike some of the other visitors he had a lot of perspective, noting the now closed station at 2701 Willard Avenue, off of Lockport Road, was once a freight warehouse.
"It's night and day. It's like comparing a Model T Ford to a modern day Cadillac Escalade or a Camaro Z-28," said McFadyen of the two stations.
And at least Niagara Falls has a new train station. Buffalo is millions of dollars and perhaps years away from getting a new train station.
The latest impetus for a new modern train station for Buffalo came when the ceiling collapsed in September in the waiting area of the shoebox-sized Amtrak station on Exchange Street. That station, which has reopened, has train service to and from Niagara Falls and Toronto but is not accessible for westbound trains. The Depew Station on Dick Road is the only Buffalo area station where trains head west.
Buffalo leaders are considering several potential sites for a new train station, including the historic Central Terminal, where train service ceased in 1979, at Canalside, or on Seneca Street in Larkinville.
Related: 3 sites for Buffalo train station all pose problems
McFayden said he has ridden the train in Colorado where his daughter lives. He also takes the train to New York City.
"Whenever I travel I try to take the train," said McFadyen. "To go to New York City I wouldn't even consider an airplane. The trains take you downtown to Grand Central, to Penn Station. You are right there."
Cugini is also a train enthusiast who was traveling and taking photographs. He said he is seven months into a journey and plans to travel another month an a half.
"I thought I knew what to expect, but this is kind of intense," said Cugini, of his nearly year-long trek. He praised the U.S. Customs officers in Niagara Falls for letting him hand-check some of his film.
"I think (the station) is great. It is set up logically," said Cugini, who planned to stop in Albany for a few days and then head to Montreal.
"I do love trains. I used to do the New York to Florida run and I am comfortable with Amtrak. There's none of the stress you have flying. You don't get herded on the train and have to deal with TSA - get there two hours early and take your shoes off," said Cugini.
There was also a number of Niagara Falls residents who wandered in on Tuesday to get a glimpse of the new train.
Nancy Glass a lifelong resident of Niagara Falls was one of the onlookers.
"I just came down here to see (the train.)" she said. "It's just wonderful to have our train station up and running. We've waited so long for this. I can't wait to ride it." |
[UPDATE 3:42 p.m.: Long won't sign with Giants yet, per report.]
It does not appear that Jake Long will be signing with the Giants today. He is planning to leave tonight for a visit to the Denver Broncos. — Ralph Vacchiano (@RVacchianoNYDN) July 29, 2015
The door remains open for the Giants to sign Long, I'm told, but he is planning to consider his options and not rush to pick a team. — Ralph Vacchiano (@RVacchianoNYDN) July 29, 2015
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ORIGINAL STORY
When the New York Giants drafted Ereck Flowers out of Miami with the ninth overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft, it was with the expectation that they were putting the finishing touches on their offensive line.
That plan went out the window when franchise left tackle Will Beatty tore his pectoral muscle bench pressing in preparation for the offseason. Since that day the Giants have been exploring all available options for replacing Beatty.
One of those options has been Jake Long, the former 1st overall pick, Probowl, and All-Pro left tackle. Normally players of Long's caliber aren't on the open market as training camps open, however Long is coming off a pair of ACL tears.
The Giants had Long in for a visit earlier in the offseason to check on the status of his knee. Today Rand Getlin of the NFL Network is reporting that the Giants will be hosting Long for a second workout
Former #1 overall pick Jake Long will visit the #Giants after completing his visit with the #Falcons, a source said. — Rand Getlin (@Rand_Getlin) July 29, 2015
Later, Art Stapleton reported that Long is in Giants-land sooner than expected
Jake Long update: I'm told FA OL is already in the building this morning for his 2nd visit with the Giants. #NYG — Art Stapleton (@art_stapleton) July 29, 2015
At this point we still don't know the status of Long's knee, how his workouts have gone, and if there are any offers on the table by the Atlanta Falcons or Giants. Stay tuned for more information as we get it. |
American Affairs is a relatively new political journal, supposedly espousing the tenets of Trump-era conservatism, which many now portray as the future of the movement. However, this is a conservatism much less of the words spoken by Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan, and more of a constellation of historically rooted ideas. In the journal’s more recent issue, for example, the editor, Julius Krein, argues “that the ideological categories of Right and Left are no longer relevant to the essential questions of the present.” Despite this oft-repeated cliché, the journal has been linked to Donald Trump’s presidency (by taking up themes of immigration, nationalism, and global trade).
The journal is apparently seeking a deeper level of discussion than the dry drivel of “policy wonks” aimed at pushing the Republican Congress toward intended policy goals (it’s alarmingly academic in its orientation). Thankfully, the journal also rejects some of the usual platitudes about the glories of free markets. There is even interest in rethinking economic trade policy and support for single payer health insurance. This more communalist (and nationalist) conservatism belies the individualist brashness of the Tea Party. Of course, the journal’s penchant toward economic nationalism keeps it tethered to what some perceive as an intellectual variant of Trumpism, if such a thing were even possible.
This same summer issue features an article, “What is Conservatism?,” by Yoram Hazony and Ofir Haivry. It is, likewise, notable because of its dissention from “conservative” thinkers such as William Kristol who have—in the face of Trump’s authoritarianism—come to the defense of “liberal democracy.” Although the article quickly delves into a long, dense work of intellectual history (in the print version it runs almost thirty pages), it does, in the end, manage to set out an alternative to those conservatives coming to the defense of liberal democracy. As they see it, conservatives shouldn’t backpedal into “liberal democracy,” but should set out a conservative intellectual tradition.
Hazony and Haivry do this by directing readers’ attention to “the Anglo-American political order: nationalism, religious tradition, the Bible as a source of political principles and wisdom, and the family.” The authors reject “Lockean liberalism,” which leaves out these elements. To their credit, there are quite a few intellectual sources for the “Anglo-American conservative tradition,” including Edmund Burke, Jonathan Swift, and Alexander Hamilton, among other lesser-known names. There’s a strong focus, also, on the constitution, including on Fortescue’s (1394-1479) belief that “the English constitution,” at his time of writing, was “the best model of political government known to man.” Yet he also found it important to limit the power of the King or what “later tradition would call the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances” and the “English system of trial by jury.” None of this sounds terribly outside what liberal democracy is based around.
But the problem begins when the writers confront the exceptionalist logic of Fortescue. “Fortescue does not believe that either scripture or human reason can provide a universal law for all nations,” they explain. At this point, it’s hard not to hear nationalist prejudice entering the argument. “Fortescue argues that a nation that is self-disciplined and accustomed to obeying the laws voluntarily rather than by coercion is one that can productively participate in the way it is governed. This, Fortescue proposes, was true of the people of England, while the French, who were of undisciplined character, could be governed only by the harsh and arbitrary rule of absolute royal government.”
This is evidently an argument against universal human rationality—eschewing it for the language of tradition, manners, and customs. But the tradition did find a language of “rights” long before revolutionary Americans charted out the Declaration of Independence. Bringing up John Selden, the authors discuss “the divers rights and liberties of the subjects” of England, which are, notably, also balanced against a sense of order and structure. They are not based in what Selden termed “unrestricted use of pure and simple reason.” Haivry and Hazony explain, “If we were to create government on the basis of pure reason alone, this would not only lead to the eventual dissolution of government but to widespread confusion, dissention, and perpetual instability as one government is changed for another that appears more reasonable at a given moment.” Herein lies the conservative “logic” being espoused: Allowing “the people” to apply their own beliefs about universal (or hoped to be universal) values in order to create political order is a quick step into anarchism and chaos.
Though the authors reject the principles of universal rationality, they celebrate the ethic of historical wisdom. “By consulting the accumulated experience of the past, we overcome,” in this version of British conservatism, “the inherent weakness of individual judgment.” They champion “pragmatism” rather than bold, sweeping reform or revolution—a far cry from so many of today’s brash, “revolutionary,” and intensely ideological conservatives in their tone (see my book Rebels All! on this point).
So who overturned and ruined this supposedly sensible line of reasoning? John Locke, apparently. They dislike the contractual orientation that Locke pioneered in political theory. They dislike the use of “general axioms” rather than “the historical experience of nations” as the basis for political thinking. Though they admit that Locke was an empiricist in terms of his philosophy of knowledge (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding), they see him as an axiomatic thinker when it comes to government (Second Treatise of Government). Locke creates a contractual theory of political governance by rejecting “historical and empirical” thinking for universal, rational thinking.
By this point, readers might start to see some real connections between the ideological and philosophical underpinnings being discussed and real-life American politics. American historians have long debated just how “Lockean”—versus ancient, small “r” republican—the Founding Fathers were in their intellectual orientation. And here’s where the authors turn back to Alexander Hamilton who also claimed that: “the British government forms the best model the world ever produced.” And yet, of course, figures like Hamilton had to contend with the fact that what made the British system so effective was that it could not be easily duplicated by transplanted colonialists.
Finally, we get to the end of the piece, at which point Haivry and Hazony will doubtlessly already have lost many readers—especially any who might be secularists. For not only do they make their call for a return to conservative order and stability more explicit, but they also claim that religion—especially the Bible—should play an important part in helping to codify such order. In their warped view: “The state upholds and honors the biblical God and religious practices common to the nation.” Yet, at the same time, conservatives should have “wide toleration to religious and social views that do not endanger the integrity and well-being of the nation…” This naturally leads one to wonder: Who would make the decision about what religious belief endangers (vague term there) or doesn’t? On this, the authors offer little but sweeping statements. Nor do they account for the radical variant of conservativism espoused by so many evangelical and fundamentalist believers today—something that has lent itself more to fervid activism, such as support for the Tea Party or the cheering crowds at Trump rallies—than order and structure.
Unsurprisingly, the authors conclude with a lament about “the inability of countries such as America and Britain, having been stripped of the nationalist and religious traditions that held them together for centuries, to sustain themselves while a universalist liberalism continues, year after year, to break down these historic foundations of their strength.”
We liberals could find many things to fault with this piece. But first off, I would take issue with the very idea that “liberal rationalism” has “established itself in a monopoly position in the state.” George W. Bush and Donald Trump have not exactly been paragons of liberal rationality. And it’s really hard for me to imagine a bunch of young millennials rushing to justify the social order by reading the Bible and fifteenth century British political thinkers.
The historian and political scientist, Clinton Rossiter, once quipped that Russell Kirk—an American conservative who did much to defend a similar lineage of conservative thinkers in his book, The Conservative Mind (1953)—was not only born in the wrong century, he was also born in the wrong country. Though I was, in some ways, pleasantly surprised by the thinking that Haivry and Hazony have done here, especially because they have challenged some of the “monopolistic” free market ideas of the right by resurrecting pre-capitalist institutions like the family and religious faith, the conservative tradition they hark back to is far too antiquated to be applicable, in any real way, to our secular and individualist culture. Neither do I see any appetite, or at least any consensus, in this country, for a return to the Bible or to British political and judicial thinking. The authors close their piece by stating that “conservative must speak in our own voice again.” After reading this piece, I can’t help but think that what they’ll hear is their own echo.
Part of that echo would emanate from the Trump White House. No doubt, the language of family and nation might reverberate with Trump’s peculiar brand of conservatism. But constitutional thinking—especially that concerning the limits on the king’s power in British political thought—doesn’t pass the test of Trump’s blunderbuss temperament (let alone the “imperial presidency” charted by George W. Bush and Richard Nixon). The conversation Haivry and Hazony want conservatives to return to is an important one, but isn’t one likely to have much of an impact on the contemporary state of American politics. |
Isiah Thomas at an event in New York in February.
Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images for SiriusXM
In 2007, a jury ordered James Dolan, the chairman of the New York Knicks’ and Madison Square Garden’s parent organization, to pay $3 million (with MSG paying the remainder of a $11.6 million settlement) to an executive named Anucha Browne Sanders who said she was sexually harassed by Isiah Thomas, the team’s coach.*
Tuesday, the Knicks’ parent company hired Isiah Thomas as president of the WNBA New York Liberty. That’s W as in women’s basketball.
Thomas, a star player for the NBA’s Detroit Pistons in the 1980s, also served from 2003 until 2008 as the Knicks’ president, a role in which he was phenomenally, perhaps unprecedentedly, unsuccessful. After leaving the Knicks, he took a job coaching at Florida International University from which he was fired in 2012. His record as FIU coach was 26–65.
*Correction, May 6, 2015: This post originally misstated that the Knicks’ parent organization had to pay the entirety of the $11.6 million settlement. |
0 AK-47 found in car of man accused of shooting 6 in Sanford
SANFORD, Fla. - A 31-year-old man shot six people, including one fatally, early Monday in two separate shootings in a Sanford neighborhood, the Sanford Police Department said.
The first shooting was reported shortly before 6:30 a.m. at a home on Hays Drive, Sanford police spokesman Bianca Gillett said.
Allen Cashe fatally shot his ex-girlfriend, LaTina Herring, 35, and critically wounded her father and her two sons, Brendon and Brandon Christian, ages 7 and 8, Gillett said.
MORE: Who is Allen Cashe? A look at his criminal past
Cashe was led away in handcuffs outside the Sanford police station Monday afternoon.
Photos: 6 shot in Sanford neighborhood
Watch Sanford police's news conference on the shooting below:
Herring told police Cashe had the keys to her home and refused to give them back. While speaking to Herring, police received a 911 call from Cashe stating that Herring had the keys to his vehicle. The victim returned the keys to Cashe, and both parties left the gas station separately.
Police said they later received a 911 call about the former couple getting into a second argument over property, this time at the home. The call was reported as an aggravated battery.
The officer went to the home and was able to settle the argument once more, Gillett said.
MORE: Witnesses describe Sanford shooting in which six were shot
Officers arrived at the home, and found the victim and Cashe fighting in the front yard, arguing over Cashe returning the victim’s keys. Cashe and his vehicle were searched for weapons, and no weapons were found.
The keys to the home were also not found on Cashe or in his vehicle, but were located inside the home.
Cashe then collected some of his clothing and was preparing to the leave the home. The victim brought out a bag, saying it was filled with more of Cashe’s belongings. Cashe refused to take the bag and left the residence.
The victim asked if officers would take the bag with Cashe’s belongings and hold it for safekeeping.
Inside the bag, officers found a Glock 22 handgun and ammunition.
Soon after that, police said the received another 911 call from someone reporting that Herring, her father and her children had been shot.
A nearby resident, Althea Wallace, said she saw Herring’s father, Bertis Gerard Herring Jr., come out of the house screaming for help.
“I stood there and called 911. My boyfriend put his cellphone on Bert and we actually saw everything that happened to Bert,” she said. “It looked like (there was) an excessive amount of blood and I can’t even believe Bert made it out of the house as bad as he was.”
Watch footage of the shooting scene below:
Photos: 6 shot in Sanford neighborhood
Police said Cashe drove away from the scene and randomly shot two bystanders at West 24th Street and South Marshall Avenue -- Lazaro Paredesquelite, who was walking, and Rakeya Jackson, 18, who was waiting at a bus stop. Both are in stable condition.
Gillett said Jackson is a student at Winter Springs High School.
"This scene is one of the worst scenes our investigators and officers have ever responded to," Gillett said.
See the shooting scene from Skywitness 9:
A police officer who was in the area heard the gunfire and was able chase Cashe to the nearby Seminole Gardens apartment complex.
An AK-47 rifle was found in Cashe's vehicle.
"What a travesty that happened here today," neighbor Arlene Bush said. "These little boys didn't ask for this."
Detectives interviewed Cashe and booked him into the John E. Polk Correctional Facility on multiple homicide-related charges.
“Understanding senseless and violent incidents such as this, is never easy and will often never make sense,” said Chief Cecil Smith in a press release. “A mother has lost her life, and three others, including two young boys, remain fighting for their lives. Two others were shot as they started their day, including a high school student just waiting for her school bus to come.”
Resident Arlene Bush said her children would often play with Brendon and Brandon.
“It’s just so sad, so shocking that this could happen in our own little neighborhood,” Bush said.
Cashe has a criminal history that dates back 12 years.
He's been arrested for armed robbery, but was never prosecuted.
The drug possession and domestic violence charges either resulted in no contest pleas, or the cases never made it to trial.
“Part of the issues that come into place is that we have so many victims. Especially victims of domestic violence, who will not prosecute,” said Smith.
Most recently, Cashe was out on probation after he pled adjudicated guilty to charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
According to the clerk's website, he violated probation and was set for a hearing on the original charge next month.
INLINE
© 2019 Cox Media Group. |
July 31, 2014
Written By Timothy Nguyen
Thom Browne is known as a showman who showcases a glimpse of what is going on in his mind to the public with his runway shows. The core of the Thom Browne aesthetic is the grey cropped suit but during fashion week that all changes. The cropped suit will always be at the center of every show but it is re-appropriated in wild ways under a single theme.
Before each show Browne gives everyone a sneak peak of whats to come with a sketch. Spring/Summer 15 was accompanied by this: The almost knife-like silhouette paired with the words “Very Sharp” led me to assume that this new runway line was going to be extremely structured with a whole bunch of pointing additions.
On June 29, 2014 at around 11:00AM CST, I sat at my computer, anxiously waiting for the show to start. NowFashion’s countdown was ticking away and each moment felt like an eternity. The countdown hit zero and the show didn’t start. Approximately thirty minutes later, it finally began.
NOTE: Due to the importance of movement in clothing, I’m reviewing the show based off of this video linked below.
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The show started with a group of twenty models in five rows of four. They were all wearing clear plastic masks and blindfolds while sitting completely still under a black light. At first, I was a little surprised seeing what the models were wearing. All of the clothing was in a very traditional Thom Browne style, which is the typical grey worsted wool cropped suits. Nothing resembled the sketch at all which confused me.
Immediately two models walk out wearing identical suits that resembled the sketch with strong exaggerated and elongated shoulders. My first impression was they looked like tin men.
Each holding light sticks, they made their way around the sitting models and stopped behind them. From there they started pacing in between the models almost as if they were slow moving energy currents or patrolmen guarding them. I quickly noticed during the whole show that one by one the guards were taking off the blindfolds of the sitting models.
A few seconds later the lights turn on and some ominous music starts.
During an interview with Browne he mentions that he took his inspiration for this line from the 1982 movie Tron.
The first look’s design must be inspired by the Tron suit worn by all the inhabitants. If you take a closer look, the shoulders are shaped the same in both the look and in the movie and the padded areas are modeled after the circuits.
The second look (as well as the looks worn by the models walking through the sitting models) resembles the Tron Recognizer. The sharp shoulders and trimmings of the suits definitely take their form from the hovering vehicle. As the models walk you can see the knee caps jut out from the trousers as well.
Browne noted that the seated models were robots and enemies of the Puffies and the Sharps.
I would consider the two looks above to be the basic template for the rest of the show. Everything else is a variation of these two silhouettes in different colors and fabrics. Browne used classics fabrics (wool, seersucker, cotton, tweed and linen) to create his line. What he does well is taking what is known and pushing the limits of what you think is possible.
Another thing Browne mentions in the interview is the amount of work that went into creating this line. In order for these garments to hold their their shape, Browne tested out the different fabrics types like mesh and horsehair. Also, one of the jackets had sixty to eighty different pattern pieces to show how meticulous his runway items are.
My favorite look of the show is the black Puffies tuxedo. I found the short sleeves and black grosgrain piping interesting and beautifully done. I don’t care for the butterfly on the model’s crotch I do love the use of flowers made of wool as accents. My least favorite look is the grey and salmon windowpane Puffies suit. I loved the pattern but the overall look was just distasteful. It would have looked better in the Sharp silhouette. In an interview with Hypebeast, Browne says “Every season I try and hope to put ideas in front of people that make them think and, in turn, move things forward.” As the seasons pass the shows are doing exactly what he wants, making people think and moving ideas forward.
Images and video are courtesy of Style.com and NowFashion
For additional photos from the show visit these links below:
Style.com: Thom Browne Spring 2015 Menswear
NowFashion: Thom Browne Menswear Spring Summer 2015 Paris
If you want to hear about updates and upcoming articles first, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook! |
(sorry for the lack of comments)
VanillaGhosties
==============Another piece for such a wonderful artist. Hope you are doing well, it always amazes me with how much you've learned in art. Your skills surpasses in giving pones beautiful eyes like weapons of mass destruction, and your lighting has no match. Seeing your new pieces, I am always speechlessto see such detail. Maybe it's envy, but I'm learning from you--fairly certain the student has become the teacher long ago. Thank for the love and support for little ol' me. Love you! ^w^ <333I hope you enjoy this happy, little marshmallow, she might want a hug in return of the candy cane.Sweetie Belle from that toy company.Sweetie Belle is best CMCIf Sweetie Belle were a marshmallow, she would be a very sweet marshmallow. |
The Masters of Comic Book Art
The Masters of Comic Book Art documentary, which was originally available on VHS in 1987, is now available in it’s entirety on YouTube. The hour long program is narrated by Harlan Ellison. Ellison also provides commentary in between the artist segments. This is a wonderful piece of comic book history as we get to hear the legendary artists talk about their creations.
The Masters of Comic Book Art features interviews with Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, (Jean Giraud) Moebius, Frank Miller, David Sim, and Art Spiegelman.
While this video might be a bit dated, it gives us insight from some of the greats in the comic book medium. If you’re a true fan of comics and you’ve never seen this documentary, do yourself a favor and clear out an hour of your schedule. This is something that you’ll enjoy!
– The Comic Book Critic |
GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado – Colorado residents are exercising their Second Amendment rights in record numbers.
Gun sales surged to a new high before President Barack Obama took office in January 2009. One year later, gun sales surpassed the record set in 2008, despite the recession’s strong grip.
According to data from the Instacheck Unit of CBI, the office that handles statewide background check requests for any firearm transaction, the office approved 196,980 total background checks in 2008. In 2009, CBI approved 202,613, about half of which were handgun sales.
November 2009 saw a drop in background check approvals or transactions when compared to the same month in 2008, down from 29,110 to 16,469. But December 2008 had more than 25,000 transaction approvals alone. While December 2009 didn’t top the same month in 2008, the year ended on a very strong note with more than 20,000 approvals.
When the Post Independent spoke to CBI spokesman Lance Clem in January, before the final numbers for 2009 were released, he expected the 2009 totals to be higher than the previous year’s.
“There was a real surge in gun sales right after the [presidential] election,” Clem said. “I don’t think that it will be quite that many in December, but the total probably will exceed the 2008 total.”
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Clem said that CBI has been very busy this year keeping up with the increase in background check requests. But the office has managed to keep the requests to under 30 minutes. The average time for a background check to process in December was 23 minutes, according to CBI statistics. Instacheck also reported a 3 percent increase of gun dealers using the online Instacheck verification rather than calling in on the phone, with 88 percent of total checks happening over the Internet.
Sure to follow any increase is a decrease. And local dealers say that they are expecting to see a decrease in sales very soon. According to Edward Wilks, owner of the Tradesman in Rifle, 2009 guns sales were through the roof, but the market is beginning to cool down to pre-Obama levels.
“It was just nuts,” Wilks said.
In Wilks’ opinion, there was a huge spike in demand before Obama took office, and supplies diminished, which created the surge. And now the market is equalizing out, he said.
“It’s starting to be normal again,” Wilks said.
Wilks said that sales will eventually drop off. However, it’s not that gun sales will drop from normal levels, but rather just return to normal.
“We don’t like to see a spike [in sales],” Wilks said. “Because now we’ll see a drop. And really, we are just leveling off.”
However, Wilks said that he’s seen a transition from people interested in purchasing firearms leading up to the 2008 elections, to people focusing more on educational and training courses to learn the proper use of the weapon. And, he said, courses like the Concealed Carry Permit course that he offers have become very popular.
And the majority of people buying guns from Wilks, and who are signing up for personal protection courses, are women, he said.
Where before Wilks would have 12 students a month enrolled in the personal protection courses he offers, he is now seeing upwards of 36 students a month. And the big switch is that where the dozen or so were predominantly men, the overwhelming majority are now women, he said.
“A lot of women are buying the firearm, getting the training, and now we see them getting the permit to carry them,” Wilks said.
New Castle resident Sarah Cox, 24, said that shooting firearms was just part of life growing up in Western Colorado.
“I grew up shooting targets, but I did not actually own a gun,” Cox said.
That changed in 2008 when Cox purchased her first handgun – a Walther P22. She, like many others, purchased a gun for safety.
“For the most part I bought it for personal protection,” Cox said.
As Wilks has seen over the past year, Cox, also signed up for his personal protection course.
“Anytime I was around a gun, I was usually with someone who knows what they are doing. I wanted to be more independent of that,” Cox said.
While Cox has yet to get her Concealed Carry Weapons Permit (CCW), it is something that she is interested in. That’s another trend that Wilks says has been on the increase over the past couple of years.
“More and more people are saying, ‘I want that responsibility,'” Wilks said.
More than 92,000 people have been approved for a CCW permit statewide, since June 2003. One-third of those permits were approved in 2009 alone. And nearly half of that total came in the past two years.
According to Instacheck CBI statistics, 18,411 people were approved for a CCW permit in 2008. The number increased by more than one-third last year to 30,258. Instacheck reported also that more than 5,400 applications were denied for various reasons, some including prior felony, or even weapons convictions.
Garfield County saw a significant increase in 2009 as well in CCW permits issued; from 324 in 2008, to 499 issued in 2009, according to the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office.
While Clem was surprised at the increase in CCW permit background checks, he said that there was really no way to determine the reason for the increase.
“I don’t think there is really any way to tell specifically why” the increase was so high, Clem said.
jgardner@postindependent.com |
Some of Campbell’s parks could see changes in the coming months and years.
At a Nov. 21 study session, the City Council mulled over what to do with the dozen parks it maintains and operates. Particular attention was paid to the eight parks that have play or exercise equipment.
“It’s been 12 to 19 years since five of the these parks were constructed or last renovated,” Fletcher Parsons, associate engineer, told the council.
Parsons added that age is not the only determining factor in equipment conditions: The level of use, materials, exposure to the elements and proximity to sand can play a role, he said.
An assessment conducted by a consultant for the city in 2014 suggested replacing the play areas at Jack Fischer, Campbell and Virginia parks. A portion of John D. Morgan Park’s equipment also needs replacing, according to the assessment.
The 2014 assessment also listed the adult exercise area by the Campbell Community Center as being in poor condition, while the bathroom facilities in Campbell Park were rated as “unacceptable.”
In July, Jack Fisher Park received new play structures. Other parks targeted for upgrades are expected to begin renovation next year once designs and costs are finalized.
While the city may not be able to add a new park to its current dozen, the council did suggest looking at ways to expand parks with play areas, such as adding all-inclusive play equipment.
“Given the limitation for acquisitions of new park land, the General Plan puts importance on the modernization of our facilities to ensure they are efficiently utilized and meet the evolving recreation demands of our community,” Parsons said.
The council also suggested carving out space for community gardens at parks.
“I’d love more community gardens,” Councilman Jeffrey Cristina said, adding that the gardens could be placed at smaller plots in the city if park space isn’t available. “This might be a really good opportunity to look at that and really utilize those properties.”
Mayor Liz Gibbons and Councilwoman Susan Landry asked staff for more information about building an all-inclusive play area that would be age-friendly for seniors and accessible to those with limited mobility. Councilmen Paul Resnikoff and Rich Waterman suggested staff look at adding picnicking areas.
Funding for park renovations, repairs and upgrades comes from the Parkland Fund, which collects developer fees in lieu of them dedicating open space in their project plans.
The council directed staff to explore more funding options for park projects. |
The distinction between aspiration and embodiment blurs into blank-horizoned, harmonic symbiosis on the second collaboration by ２８１４, 新しい日の誕生 (Atarashī Ni~Tsu no Tanjō). Comprised of t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 and Dream Catalogue proprietor, Hong Kong Express, the duo’s design is deliberate, a vision of vaporwave as sample-free, shadowed, and sprawling, less screwed muzak than pensive skyscraper ambience, a sea of misted neon glimmering far below. The album is laid out like a slowdive, arcing slowly through sirens, gauze, and bass into dissolved vistas of steam, mirrors, and metronomic mirage. The deeper it sinks the realer the dream. Few documents from today’s marbled metropolis hallucination scene radiate such ultraviolet allure; ２８１４ channel the fantasy as vividly as anyone. Originally released in an edition of 50 CDRs on Dream Catalogue, the NNF reissue is dubbed on tinted purple chrome cassettes and comes with a previously unreleased bonus track. |
Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board – Bloomberg New Energy Finance on the contradictory energy policy of Germany’s Energiewende. Following is a short excerpt from a long VIP comment on the global lack of progress on decarbonization:
While Japan’s nuclear woes result from the Fukushima natural disaster, Germany’s are wholly self-inflicted. In 2011 Angela Merkel reversed her former determination to prolong the life of Germany’s nuclear fleet, quickly shutting eight of the country’s 17 reactors and returning to the previous policy of full nuclear phase-out by 2022. This left fossil generation’s contribution to the German electricity system largely unchanged until at least 2020, and possibly 2025. Combined with the collapse of the EU-ETS carbon price and a flood of cheap coal being squeezed out of the US by the glut of shale gas, and the result is Germany burning more coal and generating higher emissions.
Anyone who promotes the Energiewende as Germany’s solution to climate change needs to understand that it is first being used to retire Germany’s zero-carbon nuclear fleet, and only when that has been completed will it start to squeeze fossil-based power off the grid. Germany has given nuclear retirement a higher priority than climate action, pure and simple.
To anyone not ideologically anti-nuclear power, this is a manifestly wrong-headed policy. The arguments about nuclear waste and proliferation hardly apply to existing nuclear power stations. The problems are real, but they are not worsened by continuing operation. Nor are they mitigated by early shut-down. They may be powerful arguments against building nuclear capacity in new countries, but are poor arguments in the case of Germany or Switzerland.
The fact is, as I showed in the statistics I presented in my BNEF Summit keynote in April 2012, nuclear power is far safer than coal-fired power generation. Deaths per TWh are around 15 times lower for nuclear power than for coal-fired power in the developed world, and 300 times safer than coal-fired power in China. And this is including the impact of Three Mile Island, Sellafield, Chernobyl and Fukushima, but before taking into account the appalling toll inflicted on the wider population by coal-driven air pollution and smog. The tsunami that hit Fukushima killed nearly 16,000 people; however, so far no one has been shown to have lost their life as a result of the nuclear disaster.
So much for those countries that have – illogically and to the detriment of the climate – decided to shut their nuclear fleet prematurely. What about the countries that are pushing ahead and replacing aging nuclear plants? (…snip…) |
Vettel jumped ahead of polesitter and race leader Kimi Raikkonen by staying out five laps longer during the only pitstop phase of the race, prompting suggestions that it was a predetermined strategy to swap the cars around.
When asked if the strategy was a result of team orders, which are not illegal in F1, Vettel said: “Not really, there was no plan on team orders.
“We spoke about the race before and it was clear – the lead normally gets priority, and if I had the choice to go first, that is normally what you want to do.
“This is one of those rare times where the ‘overcut’ [stopping after a rival] is positive.
“The rule of thumb, if you qualify ahead you get priority at the first stop. Today it worked out in my favour and I take it.”
Vettel said he could understand if Raikkonen – who said his result didn’t “count a lot” – wasn’t happy after the race.
“There is no reason to lie, I am very happy,” said Vettel. “But I can understand he is a bit more upset.
“For me [the strategy] meant staying ahead of Valtteri [Bottas] and close to Kimi – I was surprised when I came out ahead.
“It worked well to stay out longer today, but if you were looking at it before the race, you cannot predict. We are racing, we get on well. I can understand Kimi is not entirely happy today.
“He drove well in the first stint but then you get the message to go in, you do the stop and then you push.
“When I heard the lap times of Bottas, I felt I needed to stretch myself and I was surprised I could get so much pace from the car.” |
Before the season has even started there are two storylines surrounding the 2017-18 Boston Celtics:
They are really young.
They are returning only four players from last year’s team.
Not exactly breaking any news there, right? But the question to be asked is: Does it matter?
The NBA is as full of old adages as it is with superstar divas. But two cliches that apply here are:
Young teams don’t win.
Roster continuity matters.
Are either of those statements true? Can a very young team win at a high level and compete for a title? What about a team that turned over a large chunk of its roster?
As it pertains to the Celtics, you can’t really argue that either of these points is true. The Celtics are young, and they turned over a lot of the roster. But does either portend certain doom?
To compare a 15-man roster to another 15-man roster (or 17 to 17 if you want to count the guys on two-way contracts) is kind of an exercise in futility. Rarely do NBA teams play all 15 players. That only happens with teams who are rebuilding (or tanking!) or teams who face a rash of injuries. Therefore, it makes more sense to run a comparison based off a rotation of 10 players, as most NBA rotations settle around 10 players. Even Brad Stevens, whose detractors grouse about him playing 11 to 12 players, sees a discernible drop in minutes played over the course of the year from player 10 to player 11.
For this exercise, to try and understand just how much relying on youth matters, and how impactful a lack of continuity is, we went back and compared the last ten years of data for each of the NBA’s final four teams for a given season. Given that a conference finalist berth generally allows a team to enter the “title contender” conversation, it seemed fair to draw the line at the final four teams.
There are also a couple of Boston-related reasons for using 10 years and the label of contender. The first is that this group is regularly compared to the last Celtics team to raise a banner: the beloved 2007-08 team. The reason for the comps are the large roster turnover and the addition of two superstars over the summer.
The second reason to cut it off at contenders is that this version of the Boston Celtics is supposed to be just that: a contender. Whether or not you believe they can upend LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the East before taking on the mighty Golden State Warriors in the Finals is sort of irrelevant. If you don’t believe it, nothing you read here is likely to change your mind. To be honest, if you do believe it, the same probably holds true. But consider it another data point as you prep for what we all hope will be a long season with an extended playoff run.
Here are the 10 players who project to log the most minutes played this coming season for the Celtics. Also included are their years of experience and if they were with the club last season.
Celtics players expected to log the most minutes in 2017-18 Player Years of experience With the Celtics last season? Player Years of experience With the Celtics last season? Gordon Hayward 7 no Kyrie Irving 6 no Al Horford 10 yes Jaylen Brown 1 yes Marcus Smart 3 yes Marcus Morris 6 no Jayson Tatum Rookie no Terry Rozier 2 yes Aron Baynes 5 no Rookie TBD* Rookie no
*Expected to be one of Semi Ojeleye, Guerschon Yabusele and Daniel Theis
On the youth front, only Al Horford has logged double digits in terms of NBA years of experience, and Horford’s only just there at ten years. Next closest is Gordon Hayward with seven years. Kyrie Irving and Marcus Morris check in with six years of experience apiece. The average years of experience for the full 10-man group is four years. The Celtics also project to rely on two rookies in the 10-man rotation. Both of these numbers are key, as we examine the last 40 teams to make it at least as far as the Conference Finals.
In the last 10 years, only one team has reached a Conference Finals that was younger than this year’s Boston Celtics: the 2010-11 Oklahoma City Thunder. That year the Thunder checked in with an average of just three years of experience. That group fell to the eventual champion Dallas Mavericks in five games. A year later, the Thunder made it to the NBA Finals.
Only one other team checks in even as young as Boston projects to be this year: the 2012-13 Indiana Pacers. That Pacers group matches Boston with an average of four years of experience. Only two other teams had less than five years of average experience: the aforementioned 2011-12 Thunder and, oddly enough, last year’s Boston Celtics.
For reference, the average years of experience for the 40 conference finalists in our dataset was 6.5 years. Examining just the 20 NBA Finals teams, it jumps to 7.2 years. And looking at just the teams that eventually hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy, it nudges up to 7.5 years.
So, what can we glean from this? It seems like old adage number one (“Young teams don’t win.”) is probably true. Most of the last 40 teams to make a Conference Finals contained players in the middle of their careers. The only truly “old” team in the set was the 2010-11 Dallas Mavericks, who averaged 10 years of experience. Those Mavs boasted six players with 10 or more years, topped by Jason Kidd’s 16. The youngest player in the rotation that year for the Mavs was J.J. Barea, who had four years of experience at the time.
What about rookies? We mentioned that the Celtics are likely to have two rookies in the top 10 in minutes played for this year. Only one team of the 40 studied relied on two rookies in their rotation: the 2007-08 Detroit Pistons, who had rookies Rodney Stuckey and Arron Afflalo. As we all know, that team fell to the Celtics, en route to Boston capturing banner 17.
As a matter of fact, only 12 teams out of 40 made the Conference Finals with a rookie in the top 10 of their team’s minutes played. When you look at just the NBA Finals, that number gets halved to just 6 teams relying on a rookie for minutes. For what it’s worth, only one rookie in the last 10 years has had a prominent role (defined here as within the top 5 in minutes played for his team) on a conference finalist: Kawhi Leonard for the 2011-2012 San Antonio Spurs.
So, just like with young rotations, relying on rookies doesn’t seem likely to produce a contender—not that it hasn’t happened, but it hasn’t happened on any sort of regular basis.
Alright, so we know the Celtics are facing an uphill battle because of how young they project to be, but what about roster continuity? As covered above, Boston returns just four players from their top 10 in minutes played last year. As a matter of fact, the Celtics return just four players from last year’s roster in total. But that shouldn’t matter as much as the youth thing, because other teams have similarly blown up the roster and went on to success. Well…as Lee Corso likes to say “Not so fast my friend!”
The average roster turnover from year to year of the last 40 conference finalists is 2.6 players. The difference between NBA Finals squads and champions is fairly negligible, at 2.4 and 2.3 players turned over. Even the beloved 2008 Celtics, who we generally remember as having blown up the roster, only turned over five players from the previous year who were in the top 10 in minutes played.
The teams with the most turnover? The 2010-11 Chicago Bulls, who lost to the Miami Heat and the 2014-15 Cleveland Cavaliers, who lost in the Finals to the Warriors. Both of those teams match Boston’s turnover this year of six players.
Let’s sum it up then. Youth doesn’t win. Relying on rookies doesn’t work. And turning over most of the roster isn’t usually a path to success. But none are a death knell either. A handful of teams in the dataset have overcome youth or have built chemistry quickly enough to disregard the roster turnover. The one scary thing for the Celtics? No team has done both in the last 10 years.
The only thing more fun than winning a championship is making history while doing it. Sports are full of achievements that have never been done before. Maybe this year’s Celtics break the trend and make it to at least the Eastern Conference Finals as a young, new group.
If we’re going to compare this year’s Celtics to the last champion group from 2008, let us also remember what Kevin Garnett taught us after the final buzzer sounded in Game 6 and he was finally a champion:
Enjoy the season everyone! |
We know that Mitzuli is awesome, but that's not only our merit. In fact, what makes Mitzuli so great is that it is build upon other incredible projects that power most of its core functionality. They make this amazing technology accessible for everyone, and we have fit it in a tiny app to bring it to you. Want to learn more? These are the projects that could not be missing in this section:
Apertium is an open source rule-based machine translation platform that uses a shallow-transfer translation approach. It is the machine translation engine for all the language pairs in Mitzuli except for Spanish → Basque and English ↔ Croatian.
Matxin is an open source rule-based machine translation platform that uses a deep-transfer translation approach. Thanks to the collaboration with Elhuyar, it provides the translations for Spanish → Basque as an online service.
Abu-MaTran is a European project that seeks to enhance industry-academia cooperation as a key aspect to tackle one of Europe's biggest challenges: multilinguality. Thanks to the collaboration with CNGL researchers at Dublin City University, it provides the translations for English ↔ Croatian as an online service.
Tesseract is the most accurate open source OCR engine available, and it is also the one used by Mitzuli. It was developed at HP Labs between 1985 and 1995, and it is now being developed at Google.
OpenCV and Leptonica are open source image processing libraries that are used by Mitzuli to implement its custom OCR preprocessing. |
When we last met Ryan Levinson it was 2013 and he had recently co-founded SunFunder. The San Francisco and Tanzania-based social enterprise provides financing to sellers of solar-powered lighting and cell-phone charging systems mostly in African, Indian and other communities in developing countries lacking electricity.
Since then, SunFunder has helped 2.5 million people get access to solar energy, according to Levinson. And it recently introduced a new fund, the “beyond the grid” solar fund, worth $21 million, with plans to grow it to $50 million.
The impact that solar lighting has on communities reaches into many aspects of people’s lives. Children can study for longer, businesses can stay open later, homes are healthier because families aren’t using fire-prone kerosene lamps and communities are safer, since people can travel by foot at night. “It can be life changing,” says Levinson.
Levinson and his colleagues financed their first projects through a crowdfunding platform listing individual initiatives. “It was a great way to start, instead of spending two years forming a big fund,” he says. “We were able to make a few loans quickly and figure out how to do this.” The platform funded 21 loans totaling $437,500 leading to improved energy access for 119,500 people, according to the company’s web site.
But the co-founders quickly realized there was much more fundraising potential in attracting more money from fewer investors, who also were accredited or institutional. With that in mind, in 2013 they introduced debt instruments, called “solar empowerment notes”-- now “solar notes”--giving high net-worth investors a way to put their money in a diversified portfolio of off-grid solar projects, with a focus on basic residential lighting, instead of resorts and other commercial customers
Then, after a year or so, it became clear that the solar companies they were working with were growing quickly and needed ever-bigger loans. So they decided to retire the crowdfunding platform and focus on solar notes. At the end of 2013 and 2014, they raised $250,000 and $1.4 million. In 2015, the amount increased tenfold, according to the web site.
Recently, the company took the next step, announcing the first close of a new, bigger “beyond the grid” fund. That totaled $21 million, with a goal of raising $50 million, with backing from Overseas Private Investment Corporation, MCE Social Capital and The Rockefeller Foundation. The money will finance an existing pipeline of projects, plus a move into commercial financing.
According to Levinson, in part because businesses need asset and project financing that’s not typically done through standard loans, he also developed new products designed for this market. “We work to understand the market and the challenges and design the right financing product,” he says
One, for example, called SAFI (structured asset financial instrument), is a debt product for off-balance receivables financing, aimed at addressing a particular challenge: Residential solar customer generally can’t afford to pay the whole cost of the system upfront. So businesses usually agree to pay as you go financing, with monthly payments. But that means the solar companies get paid over time--“dribs and drabs’” is how Levinson describes it --creating a need for upfront capital they can use while they wait for the money from their customers. "Pay as you go makes these systems affordable for customers," says Levinson. "But it causes some big problems for solar businesses." |
LOS ANGELES – Authorities have recovered $10 million worth of art – including paintings by Chagall and Diego Rivera – that were stolen in one of Los Angeles’ largest art heists.
The FBI and Los Angeles police recovered nine pieces of art at a West L.A. hotel in October, and a man was arrested, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing court documents.
The works, including Chagall’s “Les Paysans” and Diego Rivera’s “Mexican Peasant,” were among a dozen swiped from the Encino home of a wealthy real estate investor on the morning of Aug. 24, 2008, by a crook or crooks who entered through the unlocked kitchen door, police said.
The elderly residents were in their bedrooms and heard nothing, police said.
READ MORE: Canadian galleries target stolen Nazi-era art
The case grew cold until this September, when Detective Donald Hrycyk of the LAPD’s art theft detail received a tip that a man in Europe known as “Darko” was seeking buyers for the stolen art, the Times said.
Darko “indicated that he was merely a middleman for an unknown person in possession of the art in California,” Hrycyk wrote in a search warrant.
During the ensuing undercover operation, Raul Espinoza, 45, was contacted at the hotel, where he tried to sell the estimated $10 million worth of paintings for $700,000 cash, prosecutors contend.
Three stolen paintings remain missing.
Espinoza pleaded not guilty in October to receiving stolen property and remains jailed on $5 million bail.
Messages seeking comment were left for his public defender, Aparna Voleti, on Wednesday.
The Times said Hrycyk sought permission this month to search Espinoza’s cellphone for possible photos or communications that could reveal the identities of the thieves involved in the original burglar. |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has been dethroned by Japan as the top holder of U.S. government debt as the Chinese central bank has dipped into its foreign exchange reserves to support the yuan, while its Japanese counterpart has been content to allow the yen to weaken.
A U.S. one-hundred dollar bill (C) and Japanese 10,000 yen notes are spread in Tokyo, in this February 28, 2013 picture illustration. REUTERS/Shohei Miyano
Investors are paying close attention to declines in China’s holding of U.S. Treasuries as any sharp sell-off could add further upward pressure to U.S. interest rates, which in turn can undermine the Chinese currency.
Figures for foreign ownership of U.S. Treasuries in October released late Thursday in Washington confirmed the shift, with China’s stock of U.S. federal debt plunging to the lowest in more than six years.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates and signaled a faster pace of rate increases in 2017, sending yields on shorter-dated Treasuries to their highest levels in more than five years.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s attacks on Beijing over its trade and currency policies, as well as his questioning of the stance of current and past U.S. administrations concerning Taiwan, has triggered fears that China could decide to sell U.S. Treasuries in response.
However, Chinese government policy advisers, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, say they believe that’s highly unlikely.
An official at the news department of the People’s Bank of China, the nation’s central bank, declined to comment.
In October, China’s holdings of U.S. Treasuries fell by $41.3 billion to $1.115 trillion, according to data from the U.S. Treasury Department. It marked the fifth straight monthly drop and brought the total China has sold off over the previous 12 months to $139.2 billion, the third-largest annual decline ever.
The more important figures will be for November and December, which will not be released until some weeks into next year. They will show what happened after Trump won the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8,, and investors sold off Treasuries in anticipation of rising U.S. economic growth and larger U.S. government budget deficits, as Trump plans to cut taxes and borrow to fund new infrastructure spending.
China’s reduction of its holdings of Treasuries in the autumn may well have helped it avoid some hefty losses.
Treasuries prices have slumped since the election, and investors have faced a negative total return of 3.3 percent in that time, according to the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch U.S. Treasury Index. Losses have been particularly steep in longer-dated paper, with the 10-year note falling 5.7 percent and 30-year bond losing 10.3 percent, both on a total return basis.
Japan’s move into the top spot came as it also cut its U.S. Treasuries stake, although by a far-smaller amount, about $4.5 billion, to $1.132 trillion in October. Its holdings have fallen by about $17.3 billion from the previous October.
Japan’s holdings eclipsed China’s for just one month in February 2015, the first time since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.
“China has been selling dollars to keep the yuan steady while Japan is very happy to let the yen depreciate,” said Chester Liaw, an economist at Forecast Pte Ltd, Singapore.
TIGHTROPE WALK
Economists say they expect China to continue to reduce its holdings of U.S. government debt, considered as the most liquid dollar assets, to help defend the yuan, but a big sell-off looks unlikely.
The yuan <CNY=CF XS> fell to its weakest level against the U.S. dollar in more than eight years on Thursday, after the Federal Reserve’s rate rise and outlook.
“China has been consciously cutting its holdings of U.S. Treasuries, to defend the yuan, and it’s hard to stop this trend,” said Zhou Hao, Singapore-based economist with Commerzbank.
China’s foreign exchange reserves, still the world’s largest, have fallen by $942 billion from a peak hit in June 2014, to a six-year low of $3.052 trillion in November, a drop of 24 percent. Meanwhile, China has reduced its U.S. Treasury holdings by $111 billion between June 2014 and September this year, a drop of 9.0 percent.
The PBOC is likely to spend more of its reserves to support the yuan, although it’s walking on a tightrope, seeking to slow the yuan’s descent while trying to preserve the reserves by reducing capital outflows through tighter controls.
Some traders believe the $3 trillion mark is a key psychological level for the PBOC, but it risks rapidly churning through its remaining stockpile of reserves if the U.S. dollar keeps climbing and Beijing has to fight to steady the yuan.
Some Chinese government economists have put the minimum prudent level of reserves at somewhere between $1.62 trillion to $2 trillion.
MUCH DEPENDS ON TRUMP
One central bank adviser said earlier this month that China should use its foreign reserves to help maintain market confidence in the yuan, as expectations of further depreciation have led the exchange rate to weaken too far against the U.S dollar.
But government policy advisers do not believe that dumping U.S. Treasuries is among policy options to be considered by top leaders, even if China wants to retaliate against the United States. That will, of course, also depend on whether Trump carries through on his threats to declare China a currency manipulator, impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports into the U.S., and whether he abandons the ‘One China’ policy.
Liquidating a big chunk of U.S. debt holdings could roil financial markets and force the United States to scramble for funds, but analysts believe such a move by Beijing would risk starting a fire sale in which the value of its own portfolio would burn.
There are few alternatives to U.S. government bonds, with their negligible risk of default and positive yields.
“This (dumping U.S. debt) is a bad idea. It will not be among retaliatory measures to be considered by the government,” said one Chinese government policy adviser. |
Image caption Amy Winehouse died aged 27 - Michael Jackson, Elvis and Whitney Houston all died prematurely
Successful solo artists are twice as likely to die early compared to those in bands, the journal BMJ Open reports.
The study looked at the careers of 1,400 European and North American rock and pop stars who were famous between 1956 and 2006.
The chances of a European solo artist dying young was one in 10 - but for those from North America it was twice as likely.
Experts suggest that peer support from band mates may be protective.
The cut-off point of the study was 20 February 2012 - at which point 137 performers had died prematurely.
These included solo artists like Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, rapper 2Pac, Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston.
And band members like Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, Sid Vicious from the punk group Sex Pistols and Stuart Cable from Stereophonics.
Band members can stop an individual spiralling into self-destruction Honey Langcaster-James, Celebrity psychologist
The stars' achievements were determined from international polls and top 40 chart successes, while details of their personal lives and childhoods were drawn from a range of music and official websites, published biographies and anthologies.
The average age of death was 39 years for European stars, with those from North America being six years older on average.
Solo performers were about twice as likely to die prematurely compared to those in a band, irrespective of whether they were European or Northern American.
And while the chances of a European solo artist dying young was one in 10 - for American solo artists it was more likely at one in five. The authors speculate this may be due to longer tours in North America plus variations in access to health care and exposure to drugs.
Honey Langcaster-James, a psychologist who specialises in celebrity behaviour, believes the support of a band may be protective.
'All in the same boat'
She said: "Solo artists in general approach life in a solitary manner - deliberately choosing to go it alone.
"They can find themselves in a situation where everyone around them are paid employees - the PR guru, their manager - all interested in them from a financial point of view and not in their personal needs - it's hard for the artist to know who to trust.
"They travel a lot, are away from friends and family for long periods of time and only seen for their public image, not their real self - which can make them feel inferior, isolated and invalidated.
"Even for the general population, psychology research has found that people with support have increased lifespan - and those in a band may benefit even more from this - they are all in the same boat.
"It is easier to know who to trust - other members can stop an individual spiralling into self-destruction and pull them back into the group - both because of concern for the band mate, but also because they are all in it together."
Difficult childhoods
The study also found that while gender and the age at which fame was reached did not influence life expectancy, ethnicity did - with those from non-white backgrounds more likely to die early.
And those that died of drug and alcohol problems were more likely to have had difficult or abusive childhood than those dying of other causes.
The authors of the study, from Liverpool and Manchester, suggest that a music career may be attractive to those escaping an unhappy childhood, but it may also provide the wealth and access to feed a predisposition to unhealthy and risky behaviour.
In the paper they write: "Pop/rock stars are among the most common role models for children, and surveys suggest that growing numbers aspire to pop stardom.
"A proliferation of TV talent shows and new opportunities created by the internet can make this dream appear more achievable than ever.
"It is important they [children] recognise that substance use and risk taking may be rooted in childhood adversity rather than seeing them as symbols of success." |
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Tom Burridge reports from the street in northern Paris where police targeted suspects
Belgian police have raided properties linked to suspected Paris attackers Bilal Hadfi and Salah Abdeslam.
Several raids took place in and around Brussels, and one person has been detained, Belgian prosecutors said.
French PM Manuel Valls has warned that France could face chemical or biological attack from terror groups, as deputies voted to extend the state of emergency after the attacks.
Friday's attacks in the French capital killed 129 and wounded many more.
Image copyright AFP Image caption A sign near the site of Wednesday's Saint Denis raid reads: "Wholeheartedly with the police - thank you"
Most of the raids in the Belgian capital on Thursday targeted properties in Jette and Molenbeek connected to Bilal Hadfi, a Frenchman living in Brussels who was one of the seven attackers killed in Paris.
A further raid, at an address in the Brussels district of Laeken, was linked to Salah Abdeslam - another of the attackers, who is believed to be on the run - Belgian prosecutors told the BBC.
However, the raids had been planned for some time and were not part of the manhunt, the prosecutor's office told Belgian media.
Belgian authorities were already investigating Hadfi as he was thought to have travelled to Syria.
More on the Paris attacks
A doctor's story An emergency department medic describes his Friday night shift
Special report: In-depth coverage of the attacks and their aftermath
Mr Valls addressed France's lower house of parliament before its deputies voted to extend the state of emergency by three months.
He told MPs that "terrorism hit France, not because of what it is doing in Iraq and Syria ... but for what it is".
"What is new are the ways of operating; the ways of attacking and killing are evolving all the time," the prime minister said.
"The macabre imagination of those giving the orders is unlimited. Assault rifles, beheadings, suicide bombers, knives or all of these at once."
Mr Valls also called for Europe to adopt measures on sharing information about airline passengers as a way of protecting collective security.
French police officers will be allowed to carry their weapons while off duty as long as they wear an armband to identify them, under a police directive issued to coincide with the state of emergency.
Paris police have extended their ban on gatherings and demonstrations until midnight on Sunday, although they will be allowed at the various sites attacked last Friday.
It remains unclear whether the suspected ringleader of the attacks was killed in Wednesday's police raid in Paris.
French authorities say the raid on a flat in the northern suburb of Saint Denis foiled another attack, reportedly planned for the La Defense business quarter of western Paris.
Image copyright AFP Image caption At least two bodies were removed from the apartment in Saint Denis on Wednesday
Image copyright EPA Image caption The streets around the flat remained cordoned off on Thursday
Eight people were arrested in the raid, in which police fired over 5,000 rounds of ammunition, but those detained did not include Abdelhamid Abaaoud - suspected of being the man who organised the Paris attacks.
At least two people were killed in the operation, one of them a woman who blew herself up with a suicide vest.
She is widely reported to be a cousin of Abaaoud named Hasna Aitboulachen.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Residents of the Brussels district of Molenbeek attended a vigil for the victims of the Paris attacks on Wednesday evening
Further attacks by IS were likely elsewhere in Europe, according to the head of the EU's law enforcement agency Europol.
Rob Wainwright was addressing MEPs in Brussels ahead of an emergency meeting on Friday of EU interior ministers on the Paris attacks.
Following Friday's attacks on a concert hall, cafes and the Stade de France stadium, President Francois Hollande declared a state of emergency for 12 days.
House arrest
The bill voted through by France's lower house of parliament on Thursday and the senate on Friday includes:
Extending the state of emergency for three months
Placing under house arrest anyone deemed to be a public threat
Barring suspects from communicating with each other
Allowing police to carry out searches at any time, without the prior approval of a judge, if the public is thought to be in danger
Meanwhile the Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has announced an extra €400m (£280m) of funding for anti-terror measures following the Paris attacks.
He told the Belgian parliament that he did not accept criticisms of Belgium's security services ahead of the Paris attacks, which France has said were prepared in Belgium.
IS said it had carried out the attacks in response to France's air campaign against its positions in Syria, and pledged further bloodshed.
France has since stepped up its air strikes against IS targets in Syria.
Both France and Russia - which is also targeting militants in Syria - are putting together draft resolutions at the UN Security Council that would lay out an international approach to defeating IS.
President Hollande has urged the council to approve a resolution on fighting IS quickly. |
I
n an Aug. 6 letter to Lamar Whitmer of Confluence Partners LLC, President Ben Shelly threatened to withdraw his support of a proposed resort in Gap/Bodaway Chapter unless the partners can prove "solid public support" for the massive project by the end of the year.
"Though we would like to see this project move forward, if solid public support cannot be attained before Dec. 31, 2012, the Shelly-Jim Administration will have to withdraw our support for the project and the MOU," the letter reads, referring to a memorandum of understanding established between the tribe and the firm in February.
"It has always been my position; in order for this economic project to succeed it is imperative to have local support," Shelly wrote, noting that the MOU stipulates that Confluence Partners will obtain "approvals from the affected customary land users and home site permittees, as well as presentations to the local Chapters."
Confluence Partners has several times presented its plan for a $120 million resort and tramway at the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers, but Gap/Bodaway twice passed resolutions opposing the "Grand Canyon Escalade," as the firm is calling the project. The most recent resolution, July 22, passed 56-17, according to Shelly's letter.
Confluence Partners spokesman Albert Hale did not return a phone call by press time, but it appeared the Partners were still trying to sway public opinion by taking out full-page ads in the Navajo-Hopi Observer and meeting with various groups of residents.
However, in a letter posted around Western Agency, they disinvited members of five families who live in the area and have been vocal critics of the Escalade.
Callling them the "SWARM" — an acronym for Sanchez, Wilson, Aguirre, Reed and Martin — the letter accuses them of trying to turn away people from the meetings, asking the partners questions but then not letting them answer, and other "disrespectful" behavior.
"Accordingly, your SWARM family members are not welcome to attend our future presentation meetings," the letter reads, instead challenging the opponents to "have your own open houses and tell the people of Bodaway/Gap how the SWARM plan will bring jobs and prosperity to the area."
The partners have stated the development will bring 2,000 new jobs and tens of millions of dollars to the former Bennett Freeze.
Shelly did not return a phone call by press time.
Confluence opponent Willie Longreed said the "SWARM" families are being falsely accused of chasing people away from the meetings, when in fact people are just getting tired of the issue.
"We don't do those things," he said. "They're trying to make excuses for the fact that nobody is going to their meetings. The chapter members have all read about it and heard about it, and they don't need to hear any more from Confluence Partners."
Longreed also suggested the locals have heard some shady things about the partners and don't trust them.
"You have Albert Hale, who was kicked out of the Navajo Nation government," he said. "You have Lamar Whitmer, who was involved with that Skywalk out at Hualapai they're having problems with now. You have Ivan Gamble who is facing drug charges. Then you have Michael Nelson and Deswood Tome, who have problems with their wives or girlfriends."
(Nelson and Tome both have been named in restraining orders pertaining to domestic violence accusations. Tome was the liaison between Shelly's office and the partners.)
"The mostly female land users just don't care to listen to these guys any longer," Longreed concluded.
As for the President's letter, Longreed said Shelly seems to be taking the same tack with this project as he did with the ill-fated Little Colorado River water settlement.
"At first he was pushing it, and now that he's seen how unpopular it is, he's distancing himself from it before he loses political clout," Longreed theorized. "It's all politics."
Meanwhile, Longreed said, Save the Confluence members are considering filing a complaint with the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission because of the way Confluence Partners are "ignoring the established process for getting things done in a Navajo Nation chapter."
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Nina Willis, a Toronto tenant found guilty of defrauding two of her former landlords, has been sent to jail. A visibly emotional Willis hugged two young women and a man who accompanied her to the hearing at College Park Court, and was then handcuffed and removed from the courtroom shortly before 11:30 a.m.
Nightmare Toronto tenant Nina Willis arrives to remove her possessions from her former apartment in east Toronto under the supervision of former landlord Darius Vakili. Willis first rented the house in July 2011 and moved into the property in late August. Vakili said her first cheque cleared but the second one bounced and after that the only way he received money was through court and tribunal orders. ( TARA WALTON / TORONTO STAR ) Nina Willis, seen here in her 2012 mugshot, has been sent to jail for six months. Willis was found guilty of defrauding two of her former landlords, by lying on her rental application and providing false employment information.
Willis, 51, was found guilty of two counts of fraud under $5,000 and two counts of false pretense under $5,000, for misleading two landlords on her rental applications, and in emails she provided when applying to rent their homes. She was handed six months in jail and one year of probation. The sentencing hearing started on April 10, but was adjourned so she could organize her affairs and then surrender to the court. Much of Monday’s short appearance was spent discussing what Willis should be ordered to pay her two former landlords. Assistant crown attorney Craig Power asked for a total of about $7,000, but questioned if the emotional hardship and time needed to recover the funds would be worth it.
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“To put it frankly I am not sure that they can handle being subject to her again,” he said. Willis said media coverage of her story meant she recently lost a job and is on government assistance. She also complained about court costs. “I have been made an example ... I cannot secure a place in my name, so I have been very, very punished,” she said. Justice Alphonse Lacavera said the landlords clearly suffered financial losses, but noted she was unemployed and did not order her to pay. That decision prompted Willis to flash a thumbs-up sign behind her back.
She has already stated that she intends to appeal. Toronto lawyer Mark C. Halfyard, speaking generally, said that a person seeking an appeal could apply for and receive bail pending the outcome.
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The Star sat in on the trial as part of an ongoing investigation into how tenants abuse protections at the provincially funded Landlord and Tenant Board. Willis has been evicted from seven properties since 2005 for failing to pay rent, according to court and tribunal documents and interviews with former landlords and lawyers. At the board, she stalls and alleges abuse and maintenance issues. When ordered out, she appeals, further stalling the process. Privacy legislation means the details of the public hearings are sealed. Justice Lacavera noted, prior to sentencing, that landlord and tenant legislation was designed to protect both renters and property owners. “There was a time, I think, in our society when landlords abused tenants,” he said. The system “may have swung in favour of the tenant for a time,” he said. “There must be a levelling of the playing field between landlords and tenants and the system, which is there for the benefit of each, should not be abused.” |
“The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, 'We must accept this result and then look to the future,'” Trump said. | Getty Trump: Wisconsin recount is a 'scam'
President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday slammed Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s efforts to request a recount in Wisconsin, labeling it a "scam" designed to raise money for her campaign.
“This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn’t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount,” Trump said in a statement released by his transition team. "This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing."
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Trump was largely on mum on Hillary Clinton’s campaign participation in the recount. In a short post Saturday afternoon, Clinton’s top election lawyer announced that the former secretary of state’s campaign would participate in the Wisconsin recount.
In the only mention of his former foe, Trump said that Clinton had already conceded to him — adding it is time for America to move on.
“The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, 'We must accept this result and then look to the future.'”
But Trump called out Stein, who has raised millions to fund her efforts, for trying to call into question a state that he won by just over 22,000 votes. The third-party candidate filed for a recount in Wisconsin just before the deadline on Friday and is mulling whether to file similar requests in Michigan and Pennsylvania. |
Andrew on Malkin and Limbaugh's dishonest white fear-mongering:
These people are going off the deep end entirely: open panic at a black president is morphing into the conscious fanning of racial polarization, via Gates or ACORN or Van Jones or a schoolbus in Saint Louis. What we're seeing is the Jeremiah Wright moment repeated and repeated. The far right is seizing any racial story to fan white fears of black power in order to destroy Obama. And the far right now controls the entire right. Do they understand how irresponsible this is? How recklessly dangerous to a society's cohesion and calm? Or is that what they need and thrive on?
Yes. Yes. And yes.
I got a note from a good friend yesterday expressing shock, and anger, about Drudge and Malkin's usage of that alleged racial beat-down on a school-bus. On some level, I wonder if something's wrong with me. I'm neither shocked, nor angry. This is exactly how I expected these fools to respond to a black president.
If anything, I'm a little giddy. For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us. |
The conservative blogosphere is all-atwitter this afternoon over the revelation that the Internal Revenue Service targeted various Tea Party groups in the days leading up to the presidential election of 2012.
Sadly for the critics of the president, things are not always as they initially appear to be and the effort to paint the improper IRS activity as a White House directed political dirty trick is unlikely to gain the traction opponents would like to see catch fire.
Keep in mind that the kerfuffle does not involve the targeting of groups for audits seeking evidence of a failure to pay taxes. Rather, the problem involved the IRS’s review of applications filed by the various entities seeking tax-exempt status under the law.
At the time in question, many newly formed political organizations were seeking IRS certification that would allow them to avoid paying taxes on funds raised—the overwhelming majority of these organizations being Tea Party related groups. As the IRS believed that many of those filing for exemptions were stretching the limits of qualification, some low-level staffers at the agency’s Cincinnati, Ohio office decided to target for closer review those organizations with “Tea Party” sounding names, such as “patriot” and, of course, “Tea Party”. In the effort to dig deeper to determine if these groups qualified, the agency people involved asked many of the filing organizations to disclose names of those who had made contributions along with other data they deemed necessary to determine if the group qualified for tax free status.
The problem is that the agents involved were not randomly conducting these checks on all the political organizations seeking tax free status and were specifically targeting the Tea Party related groups.
This was, clearly, improper activity which is why the IRS issued today's apology.
What's that you say? You still don't believe that the White House was not involved in this?
That’s what I thought.
Maybe then, it will interest you to know that there are only two officials at the IRS that are political appointments—the commissioner (who is the boss) and the chief legal counsel. And while you may be thinking that it would be a piece of cake for the White House to place a call to the Commissioner and nudge him into putting a little heat on Tea Party groups so that they would be kept busy defending themselves from government annoyance rather than putting their energies into defeating the President, it would not have been quite so simple a task for the White House to accomplish.
Why?
Because the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service during the period in question was Douglas Shulman, a political appointee of President George W. Bush.
In fact, not only was Commissioner Shulman a Bush appointee, he would certainly have had no motivation to do the political bidding of a Democrat president considering that Mr. Shulman had already announced prior to the election that he would be stepping down from his post in November.
If you imagine that the President’s staff had the ability to go around the top political appointee at the IRS and attempt to influence the civil servants who work at the agency, consider how many levels of civil servants the White House staff would have had to persuade to do their bidding given that those who pursued the policy were well down the totem-pole of seniority, working away at the Cincinnati office.
Indeed, to suggest that the White House could get career civil servants to do its political dirty work would truly defy the laws of political reality.
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If you doubt this—and you are someone who believes that the State Department behaved improperly in the Benghazi matter—consider the inability of State to direct the three highly placed State Department civil servants who testified before Congress this week to do as the politicians asked. This should give you some indication as to just how impossible it is for elected or politically appointment officials to get government civil servants to participate in their political schemes—let alone keep it all a secret heading into a presidential election.
Of course, all the obvious and logical explanations in the world for what really happened here will prove insufficient when it comes to persuading some Tea Party groups that this was not the work of the White House.
As proof of what we can expect, check out what Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin had to say when calling for President Obama to personally apologize—
“It is suspicious that the activity of these ‘low-level workers’ was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it occurred. President Obama must also apologize for his administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grassroots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again.”
Clearly, Ms. Martin has very little grasp on how widespread the activities of the IRS are if she imagines that, in the big picture, the relatively small number of reviews of Tea Party related applications in the Cincinnati office was going to somehow capture the attention of the IRS Commissioner…who happens to be a Republican appointee.
One wonders if Ms. Martin’s indignation has anything to do with the fact that she and her husband were indebted to the IRS in the amount of over half a million dollars when they filed bankruptcy in 2008? Maybe it is Ms. Martin who owes the apology?
Still, the opportunity to make some political hay over the error will likely prove irresistible to the GOP.
So, let the Congressional hearings commence! I can't wait to see Darrell Issa's movie-style poster hyping these hearings as he did in this one posted to his Twitter site to get us jazzed about his Benghazi hearings—
Maybe this time he'll spring for full-color art.
Contact Rick at thepolicypage@gmail.com and follow me on Twitter and Facebook. |
There are a lot of known unknowns about the Republican tax reform framework that was rolled out this week, but one thing that seems clear is they want to eliminate the state and local tax deduction (SALT). And rank-and-file party members are already grumbling about it.
Republicans want to do this to help raise revenue that can be poured into important causes like lowering the top tax rate, eliminating the state tax, and exempting multinational corporations’ foreign earnings from all taxation. They’ve talked themselves into this idea largely on the theory that it’s a tax that hits blue states. Blue states, after all, tend to have higher state and local taxes and also tend to have more expensive houses and thus property tax bills.
But the geography of the US House of Representatives is considerably more complicated than that. Bennie Thompson’s district in Mississippi and Vicente Gonzalez’s district in Texas are both Democratic-held majority-minority districts in Southern states with low tax rates, low property values, and correspondingly low levels of SALT usage. Conversely, over in New Jersey, you have Republicans Leonard Lance and Rodney Frelinghuysen sitting in affluent suburban enclaves where more than 50 percent of tax returns take SALT.
And if you look at the overall 2018 House map, you see that the bulk of the promising targets for Democrats are districts in the Lance/Frelinghuysen mold — districts where the white population contains a large share of college graduates and where Trump’s brand of identity politics doesn’t play well. Hiking taxes on the top 1 percent can play well even in these districts, but that’s not the GOP’s plan. By eliminating SALT, they’re planning a fairly broad tax on everyone who has an expensive house.
SALT is heavily used in GOP-held swing districts
The nine GOP-held seats that the Cook Political Report ranks as toss-ups for 2018 features two members from New York and one from California, the classic SALT country. But the list also includes Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), who represents a district where 42 percent of tax units claim SALT, and Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), whose district in the far-flung suburbs of Washington, DC, features a 49 percent usage rate.
You don’t necessarily think of Minnesota as big-time SALT territory, but Republican Rep. Jason Lewis is also on the toss-up list, and 43 percent of the tax units in his district take the SALT deduction.
If you check the Government Finance Officers Association breakdown of SALT usage by congressional district and compare it to the DCCC’s list of red-to-blue target seats, there’s massive overlap. Reps. Mimi Walters, Darrell Issa, Lee Zeldin, Peter King, Dan Donovan, John Faso, Tom MacArthur, Lance, Frelinghuysen, Ryan Costello, Pat Meehan, Brian Fitzpatrick, Lewis, Erik Paulsen, Dave Brat, Comstock, Peter Roskam, Randy Hultgren, and Dave Trott are all defending seats where more than 40 percent of households use the SALT deduction.
Since SALT users are disproportionately affluent relative to non-users, they are likely a majority of the electorate in these places. What’s more, repealing SALT won’t only have an adverse impact on households that take the deduction but could also crimp local government finances in every SALT-heavy district — leading to opposition from mayors, county commissioners, and other local officials, who are often Republicans in these upscale suburbs.
Republicans are already getting cold feet
This, no doubt, is why party leaders already seem to be getting cold feet over the idea.
National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, a big proponent of scrapping SALT, went on television Thursday morning to admit that he “can’t guarantee” middle-class households won’t see a net tax increase under Trump’s proposal. That wasn’t well-received by his Republican colleagues, since the GOP message is supposed to be the reverse. Inconveniently, however, Cohn was telling the truth, and as Jeanne Sahadi reported for CNN Money, scrapping SALT is a key reason “millions in the middle class” could end up with a higher net tax burden even under a plan that envisions adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit.
Aaron Lorenzo and Rachael Bade report for Politico that vulnerable House Republicans are already mobilizing to try to kill this idea, quoting Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) as saying, “I’m going to fight this out and hopefully have success in getting this restored.”
The Tax Policy Center has pointed out that SALT is actually a bigger deal for Utah than is generally realized, which is perhaps one reason Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-UT) went off script Thursday and immediately voiced skepticism of a plan that he, as the head of the Senate tax writing committee, is nominally in charge of. By Friday morning, even Cohn was conceding that killing the deduction is “not a red line” for the White House.
Their problem, of course, is that they called for ending SALT for a reason — it raises a ton of money, which can then be plowed into key priorities like letting multinational corporations avoid all US taxation of their foreign income, letting people with more than $400,000 in annual salary pay a lower tax rate, and letting people with more than $100,000 a year in partnership income pay a much lower tax rate. The GOP will have to decide if it’s willing to make life harder for vulnerable Republicans to make the math work. |
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Much has been made of the switch by the US national team to a diamond midfield in recent games. But to the manager, the tactics aren't really the point.
Jurgen Klinsmann is more concerned with how his players support each other on the field than how they’ll operate within the much-discussed diamond formation during the World Cup.
On Saturday at EverBank Field, the USMNT will likely give the set-up another go against Nigeria in their final send-off match (6 pm ET, ESPN2) before leaving for Brazil. But to Klinsmann, that isn't the be-all and end-all for the team heading into the World Cup.
“I think there are pro and cons, like with every system,” Klinsmann said to reporters on Friday when asked how his players have adapted to the recent change. “But it doesn’t really matter what shape we have or what system we have, it matters how we kind of connect with one another on the field.”
He feels his team is capable of adjusting to any formation and that as long as they’re able to defend as a unit that the system they play in hardly matters.
“All these discussions about different systems are actually not up to speed anymore,” Klinsmann said. “The systems are not the key anymore like it was maybe 10 or 15 years ago. It all changed for the best teams in the world, led by Spain. They made every system look stupid because they came up with a 4-6-0 in the last European Championship and beat everybody.”
The freedom to move midfielders into attacking positions, and back again to help on defense, relies on speed and the extra efforts of multiple individuals throughout the pitch.
Klinsmann even went as far as to indirectly reference a former USMNT player who was recently omitted from this year’s roster to drive home his point.
“I think we need to go away from the system discussion. It doesn’t get you anywhere,” he said. “Years ago it was all down to the No. 10 to make things happen, but now maybe it’s the No. 6 that makes things happen, or the fullbacks make things happen.” |
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AR Drones can be much, much more than awesome toys. Just recently, we've see how the (relatively) inexpensive and versatile flying robots have been used as research tools, but the sky's the limit as to what you can do with them, so to speak. DroneGames, which took place over the weekend in San Francisco, tasked programmers with hacking the UAVs in the most interesting and creative ways possible.
DroneGames was held at the Groupon offices, and was sponsored by the likes of Groupon itself, Windows Azure, and NodeCopter, which recently started this helihacking movement. Nine teams took part in the competition, which was judged by Chris Anderson (of DIYDrones and now 3DRobotics), Dale Dougherty (founder of MAKE), Andreas Raptopoulos (co-founder of Matternet), and a couple other people. From what I can tell, entries were judged mostly on awesomeness, and the results certainly reflect that:
In third place was "TooTall Nate," with a hack that lets you an AR Drone over a cellular networks with a Verizon MiFi card, resulting in unlimited range as long as you've got a decent cell connection.
Second place went to a team of freshmen from Stanford, who figured out a way to control lots of different drones with just one computer. They'll be putting it up on Github, just search for "multidrone."
And in first place was James Halliday, who wrote a virus that will infect an AR Drone, and then use that drone to infect any other AR Drones it comes across, "causing them all to be p0wned and run amok." Or if you want to be less evil about it, it's a handy way to automatically deploy software onto a bunch of AR Drones at once. It's available on Github under "virus-copter."
A crowd favorite seemed to be the project in the picture up top, from engineers at Groupon. They taught a drone to behave itself on the end of a leash, which is neat, but it's also constantly taking pictures and performing facial recognition, posting the resulting images to Twitter in real-time.
The event looks to have been a lot of fun and quite a success, and for more, you can check out the TechCrunch link below, which includes some fairly bad (but not entirely abysmal) videos of a few of the demos.
[ DroneGames ] via [ TechCrunch ] |
Airport retailers have been accused of misleading travellers by claiming millions in VAT refunds without passing on the savings to passengers.
The vast majority of airport shops in the UK request that passengers hand over their boarding passes to be scanned at the checkout – a practice that few realise is used to help stores claim back VAT of 20 per cent on goods sold to passengers flying outside the EU.
And research by the Independent has revealed that – while retailers suggest goods are tax free – these savings are often not passed on to customers.
It found that Boots, one of the worst offenders, charges the same for all products sold in airports as it does on the high street. A bottle of Nivea Sun Spray, for example, costs £8, meaning Boots can reclaim £1.33 from HMRC if it is sold to a passenger travelling outside the EU. But rather than cutting the cost of the product, it is simply pocketing the difference.
Other retailers were found to be offering small reductions in their airport outlets, but still keeping the lion’s share of the savings. Dixons charges £619 for an iPhone 6 on the high street. In airport stores, it’s slightly cheaper, at £593.99 – but that’s nowhere near the £103.17 saving Dixons makes on every iPhone 6 sold to non-EU passengers. One item on sale at World Duty Free (Clarins Double Serum, 30ml) was priced at £45.80, despite being available for less on the high street, and despite the retailer saving £7.63 in VAT to many fliers.
• The airport that launched a thousand conspiracy theories
• Praise for the airport that never loses your luggage
“Handing over your boarding pass at the airport shop, even if you're buying nothing more than a copy of The Telegraph, has become practically second nature – but I bet very few people realised why retailers can be so insistent,” said Nick Trend, Telegraph Travel’s Consumer Editor.
“And no wonder – the biggest retailers must save millions in VAT each year. But surely it’s those passengers flying outside the EU that ought to be making the savings?”
He added that there is a "general lack of transparency" when it comes to airport prices. “I’d like to see a clear breakdown of exactly how much you are saving on duty-free goods, rather than just a final price,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Boots confirmed that its airport staff are requested to scan boarding passes to ensure an “accurate reporting of VAT”, but said it was not compulsory.
“The HMRC and airports accept that this is general practice for all retailers located within airport terminals,” she told The Independent.
A spokesman for HMRC confirmed that passengers are not legally obliged to hand over their boarding pass.
• I've landed where? Misleading airport names
• Quiz: Guess the airport from its code
Retailers do not have to pay VAT on goods sold to passengers travelling outside the EU Photo: AP/FOTOLIA
Dixons said it follows the "standard practice of non-duty free airport retailers in offering one single, great value price across products".
It added: “We are not duty free; instead, we offer customers a simple, single price and give them our price promise to beat key online competitors.”
WHSmith claimed that dual pricing – showing discounts for non-EU passengers – was a “practical impossibility”.
“WHSmith policy states that boarding passes should be requested from customers, and not demanded,” said a spokeswoman. “Any VAT relief associated with the identification of customers travelling outside of the EU is reported in accordance with UK legislation, and any relief obtained is reflected in our single price and extensive promotional offers provided to all of our customers.”
But some stores have clearly found a way. Harrods sells all its products VAT-free in its Heathrow stores.
Editor's note: The VAT calculations used in this story were originally incorrect. They have now been amended. |
The exercise chain, 24-Hour Fitness USA, can’t use mandatory arbitration terms to ban employees from filing job-related class actions or impose nondisclosure restrictions on individual arbitration decisions, a National Labor Relations Judge said last week.
The decision called the company’s ban on class actions unlawful and provisions for employees to opt out of mandatory arbitration “illusory.”
NLRB Administrative Law Judge William L. Schmidt ripped 24-Hour Fitness in a Nov. 6 decision, stemming from a California case. The fitness centers’ “arbitration policy unlawfully requires its employees to surrender core Section 7 [organizing] rights by imposing significant restraints on concerted action regardless of whether the employee opts to be covered by it or not.”
The 24-Hour Fitness policy appeared to be an attempt to push into the employment arena the mandatory arbitration terms and class action bans approved in consumer cases by a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court decision called AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion.
But Schmidt was having none of it.
Concepcion, and a similar case called CompuCredit v. Greenwood, “have little, if anything, to do with arbitration in the context of the employer-employer (sic) relationship.”
Neither case address the fundamental question of whether the Federal Arbitration Act “may be used as a tool to alter, by way of private ‘agreements’ that are in large measure imposed unilaterally by employers, the fundamental substantive rights of workers established by decades old congressional legislation,” Schmidt wrote.
The company has 20,000 employees serving three million club members. The company said in a review of 20,000 personnel files, in a universe of 70,000 files, no more than 70 employees successfully opted-out of the mandatory arbitration policy enacted in 2007.
Even for the employees who did opt-out of arbitration, they were required to maintain confidentiality terms and could not disclose the outcome of their own individual arbitrations. That gave the company, which would know all the arbitration outcomes, an unfair upper hand, according to Schmidt.
The dispute began when Alton Sanders, an exercise instructor in clubs in Marin and Sonoma counties, tried to join in race and sex discrimination class action against the company in Alameda County Superior Court. He was told he have waived that right by failing to opt-out of the mandatory arbitration terms in his employment agreement within 30 days after he was hired.
The terms of the 60-page employee handbook includes a warning that whether or not they sign a receipt form for the handbook, the policies will apply to them, including the class action ban and arbitration requirement.
Schmidt pointed out that 24-hour Fitness faced eight various class actions alleging discrimination and wage and hour violations around the country, including Alameda County, Orange County and Los Angeles County state courts in California, as well as federal court in San Francisco, two in the Southern District of Florida, one in the Southern District of Texas.
It also sought to enforce its class action bans in three California cases, two in Orange County and one in San Bernardino County.
Schmidt rejected the arguments of 24-Hour fitness and amicus arguments by the Chamber of Commerce, saying they wished “to establish an employer’s right to restrict employees, in order to hold a job, from exercising their statutory right to use the full-range of legal remedies generally available to all citizens.”
The company was ordered to remove the ban on class or collection actions from the employee handbook and notify all employees of the change and notify arbitration bodies and judges where it pursued enforcement of the clause that it will withdraw the request.
Case: 24-Hour Fitness USA, Inc. v. Sanders, No. 20-CA-035419 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs paid its top 121 London bankers about 3 million pounds ($4.7 million) on average last year, far exceeding payouts at other leading banks, data released on Tuesday showed.
A Goldman Sachs sign is seen above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in the Manhattan borough of New York January 24, 2014. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
The U.S. investment bank’s data showed that it paid staff in senior or risk-taking positions $193.6 million in 2013 and gave them 2.1 million restricted stock units (RSUs), worth $377 million based on the bank’s share price at the end of that year.
The RSUs are due to be paid out over three years, but they may not be paid in full and can be clawed back at a later date.
The remuneration figures mean that Goldman was easily the highest paying of 13 leading U.S., British, Swiss and Japanese banks in 2013.
Data compiled by Reuters from the 13 banks showed 2,600 employees at British banks or working in London were paid more than 3.4 billion pounds in 2013, or an average of 1.3 million pounds each. That is almost 50 times average annual pay in Britain.
The details are the most comprehensive released on bankers’ pay in Britain, which remains a hot topic after large bonuses were blamed for encouraging risk-taking and contributing to the financial crisis. Many shareholders have also voiced criticism, saying that pay needs to come down to improve profitability.
The 2013 pay disclosures cover British banks globally and overseas banks’ British-based staff. EU banks outside Britain do not need to disclose the details.
Most banks released the details earlier this year, but Goldman, Citigroup and Credit Suisse all reported in the past week, just before the year-end deadline.
The data showed that Goldman and Bank of America face the most work to restructure pay to meet new EU rules that came into effect at the start of 2014 and cap bonuses at 200 percent of fixed pay.
Both banks paid senior staff more than five times more in variable pay than fixed pay in 2013.
The following table shows what the banks paid their senior and risk-taking employees, known as “code staff”, in 2013. Figures are in millions of pounds, with $1 = 0.6436 pounds where banks reported in dollars. |
CHICAGO—West Roosevelt High School student Jeremy Holloran became the first recipient of the Donald Rumsfeld Scholarship for Limited Geopolitical Foresight on Wednesday, a recognition bestowed upon students who demonstrate impressive potential for disregarding the predictable fallout that accompanies the invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation. "Through his academic achievements, volunteer activities, and Chess Club successes, Jeremy has shown he has the same thirst for power and blind hubris that a Rumsfeld scholar must embody," said Patricia Keith, who presides over the board that selected Holloran. "We are excited to watch him flourish in college, where he will no doubt excel at arrogantly and wantonly ignoring the influence native tribes have in the region over which he intends to exert control." Although he has not yet picked a school, Holloran said he plans to take a year off before college to be appointed chairman of Gilead Sciences Inc. and serve in the Nixon administration.
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[+]Enlarge VIRTUAL EXPERIMENT Scientists can now search for materials with targeted band gaps, conductivities, and other properties by using computational methods to vary crystal structures and other parameters in ways that cannot be done experimentally. This sulfur-containing polymer was discovered in such a virtual experiment. Credit: Chiho Kim/U of Connecticut
The path that chemists typically follow to discover new materials is paved with decades of trial-and-error experiments. Guided by chemical intuition, researchers synthesize substances and then tweak experimental conditions, generating new versions until a material arises with the properties they’re looking for. Nowadays, however, some scientists are trying to cut down on the time, effort, and molecular building blocks consumed during materials discovery by taking an alternative route—one that’s guided by computational chemistry.
To help find better solar-cell components, water-splitting catalysts, and other materials with properties that underpin critical applications, scientists are developing high-level theoretical search methods, commonly based on quantum mechanics calculations. In some cases, the materials pinpointed by these techniques don’t yet exist. In other cases, chemists are using these methods to screen enormous databases of known materials in search of candidates endowed with previously unrecognized combinations of critical properties.
Modern technologies for harvesting, transforming, and storing energy increasingly rely on specific materials with specialized functionality, says Alex Zunger of the University of Colorado, Boulder. “We understand the functionality needed for many technologies, but often we do not have the materials that provide those functionalities,” he adds.
One goal that Zunger, a specialist in computational materials science, and other theoreticians have is to find materials with specified sets of properties to enable new technologies. Another one is to improve existing technologies by finding new materials that can boost device performance, extend lifetime, lower cost, or enable rare elements to be replaced with Earth-abundant alternatives.
“Digging” for new materials with a computer and then attempting to synthesize the winners in the lab offers several advantages over traditional lab-only searches. Computation-first searches can be less expensive, safer, and far broader than standard lab searches, even ones based on combinatorial methods.
And as Stanford University’s Jens K. Nørskov explains, searching with a computer enables scientists to explore the way a material’s properties change as a function of parameters that cannot be controlled experimentally. Nørskov, a leading figure in computational surface catalysis, adds that by using a computer to run these “virtual” experiments and by combing through enormous data sets, researchers can uncover predictive and sometimes hidden trends among classes of materials.
But that’s not all computations bring to the table. Northwestern University’s Kenneth R. Poeppelmeier, a veteran of inorganic synthesis, points out that “closely coupling synthesis with theoretical prediction accelerates each step of the experimental discovery process.” Not only does theory guide experimentalists’ choices of chemical or material targets and synthesis conditions, it speeds analysis and confirmation that the target chemical or material was actually made.
In the past, chemists relied on empirical rules and lab experience to identify chemically plausible targets and rule out a large number of seemingly implausible ones. “But chemical intuition may not always hit the mark,” Poeppelmeier says. And when intuition-driven experiments fail, the experiments may not provide indications as to the source of failure.
That’s why when it comes to searching for new materials, Poeppelmeier stresses the need to tie prediction and validation together. Predictions indicate where to focus lab effort, and experiment results, successful or not, provide feedback for theoreticians—a two-part process he refers to as “closing the loop.”
Given the number of elements in the periodic table, the staggering number of proportions in which they can be combined to form molecules and compounds, and the number of structural variations such as those that define isomers and polymorphs, the range of possible materials is astronomical.
“To search effectively for new materials, we have to navigate a multidimensional landscape of bewildering complexity,” says Aron Walsh, a materials theoretician at the University of Bath. But the motivation for doing so is strong, he adds. And as the stories that follow indicate, researchers are making fast progress in applying these search methods to finding a variety of new materials including solar-cell components, solid catalysts, novel inorganic compounds, and polymeric dielectric materials.
“This is an exciting time for materials chemistry,” Walsh says. The challenge now is not simply to make new compounds, he adds, but to enable new functionality.
As Nørskov puts it, “Computations open totally new possibilities for people who are imaginative and let them test ideas on a timescale that, until recently, you couldn’t even dream about.”
Dyes For Harvesting Sunlight
[+]Enlarge LIGHT GRABBER This computationally discovered dye belongs to a class of compounds not previously known to be useful for dye-sensitized solar cells. O is red, N is blue, C is gray, and H is white. Credit: Jacqueline M. Cole/U of Cambridge
Solar cells are “hot” right now—pun intended—because they can transform some of the nearly limitless power of the sun to electricity and potentially help meet rapidly growing global energy needs. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) attract significant R&D interest because they can be made inexpensively and used in devices such as “smart” windows, which admit light to buildings while simultaneously generating power.
The energy-harvesting step in DSSCs begins when sunlight excites electrons in a layer of light-absorbing dye molecules known as sensitizers. The molecules inject the excited electrons into semiconductor particles such as TiO 2 , to which the molecules are anchored. From there, the electrons migrate to an electrode to produce electric current.
Although DSSCs have been around for some 20 years, today’s versions are not substantially better energy converters than the original ones, which used a ruthenium-based dye. According to Jacqueline M. Cole, a research group leader at the University of Cambridge, “A shortage of suitably efficient dyes is stifling progress in this area.”
Seeking to boost DSSC performance and avoid the expense and toxicity of metal-based dyes, Cole and coworkers decided not to follow the standard approach—repeatedly synthesizing and testing molecular variations of some of the best dyes. That approach has no capacity to reveal entirely new classes of suitable dyes, Cole explains.
Instead, the team devised a set of molecular dye design rules based on structure-property relationships that indicate how the arrangement of molecular groups on the dyes affects DSSC performance. One such rule, for example, calls for separating electron donor and acceptor groups with a π-conjugated unit to enhance the electron injection process.
The team incorporated these rules into a computer algorithm and used it to search more than 118,000 organic molecules in the Cambridge Structural Database, a repository for small-molecule crystal structures. Ultimately, the team identified the best dye candidate—a metal-free, N- and O-containing triaryl member of a class of molecules not previously known to be DSSC dyes.
The group synthesized the compound and a closely related one, tested them in DSSCs, and found that the solar conversion efficiencies are roughly one-third those of the best-performing metal-based dyes (Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2014, DOI: 10.1039/c4cp02645d).
Although these compounds aren’t going to dramatically improve progress in DSSC research in their current form, the team’s results validate the novel application-specific data-mining method applied. They’ve also uncovered a new class of metal-free dyes that Cole says researchers can now optimize by applying chemically intuitive substitution strategies.
Transition-Metal Compounds For Catalysis
[+]Enlarge MOLECULE MAKER Discovered computationally, this low-cost Fe 0.5 Co 0.5 P catalyst efficiently combines H+ ions (white spheres, left) to form H 2 (right). Fe is gray, Co is red, and P is purple. Credit: Jakob Kibsgaard/Stanford U.
According to industry estimates, more than 80% of today’s large-scale chemical processes depend on solid catalysts, which are often based on transition metals. Historically discovered through trial and error, these critically important solids facilitate transformations in petroleum refining, pollution abatement, and production of fuels and chemicals.
The traditional approach to finding new catalysts is starting to yield to computational methods for designing them more rationally. At Stanford University, for example, a research group led by Jens K. Nørskov is developing theoretical techniques for identifying essential catalyst “descriptors.” These are fundamental properties, such as the strength with which molecules bind to a catalyst’s surface.
These binding energies and other parameters strongly, and perhaps unexpectedly, affect how efficiently a catalyst transforms reactants to products and how selectively it forms a target product relative to reaction by-products.
By using this strategy, the Stanford team can uncover predictive trends among large classes of materials and use that information to design new high-performance catalysts.
In one study along those lines, Nørskov, Stanford’s Frank Abild-Pedersen, and coworkers found that a group of nickel-gallium alloys shows promise as catalysts for reacting CO 2 and hydrogen under mild conditions to form methanol.
[+]Enlarge JUST RIGHT This plot shows that when it comes to catalyzing the hydrogen evolution reaction, the hydrogen adsorption strength (ΔG H ) of some metal phosphides is too low, for others it’s too high, but for Fe 0.5 Co 0.5 P, it’s just right (error bars removed for simplicity). Credit: Chiho Kim/U of Connecticut
Methanol could serve as a low-cost, sustainable fuel and chemical feedstock, especially if the hydrogen used to make it is supplied via sun-driven water splitting. Currently, methanol is made by using a Cu/ZnO catalyst and a high-pressure mixture of CO, CO 2 , and petroleum-derived hydrogen. Altering the pressure and other reaction conditions reduces the methanol yield and can lead to a high concentration of unwanted CO.
The Stanford team synthesized and tested several Ni-Ga alloys and found that Ni 5 Ga 3 converts CO 2 and hydrogen to methanol at ambient pressure as well as or better than Cu/ZnO and produces lower levels of the by-product CO (Nat. Chem. 2014, DOI: 10.1038/nchem.1873).
In another recent study, the Stanford team, which includes staff scientist Jakob Kibsgaard and chemical engineering professor Thomas F. Jaramillo, searched for new catalysts to facilitate the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). That reaction electrochemically combines hydrogen ions to produce H 2 , a valuable fuel. Platinum-group metals are highly active HER catalysts, but they are costly.
So the team used its computational techniques to find substitutes. The researchers predicted that among a series of promising-looking low-cost transition-metal phosphides, the hydrogen adsorption strength (ΔG H ) of one of them, Fe 0.5 Co 0.5 P, would be optimum for driving HER (Energy Environ. Sci. 2015, DOI: 10.1039/c5ee02179k). Then they confirmed their prediction by synthesizing a series of metal phosphides and conducting catalysis tests.
The Search For Missing And Unusual Inorganics
[+]Enlarge UNDER PRESSURE Computations indicate that this phase of BaGe 3 , which forms at extreme pressures, is stable at atmospheric pressure and is a low-temperature superconductor. Ba is green, and Ge is purple. Credit: Inorg. Chem.
With the entire periodic table of elements at their disposal, inorganic chemists by now ought to have cobbled together gargantuan libraries of compounds. To be sure, they have synthesized quite a large number of inorganic compounds—but it could be even bigger.
For example, in the family of three-element compounds with 1:1:1 stoichiometry and 18 valence electrons, 483 members are possible, but only 83 of them have been created in a lab.
“That’s astonishing,” says Alex Zunger of the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Why are there 400 missing compounds?” Zunger proposes that the compounds may be missing for a good reason—perhaps they are unstable and decompose. “But maybe there’s no good reason. Maybe we simply have not gotten around to making them yet.”
Considering that some of the known members of this three-element family are thermoelectrics, piezoelectrics, and materials endowed with other technologically valuable properties, it behooves materials chemists to search for the missing ones.
For that reason, Zunger, a materials theoretician, embarked on a chemistry scavenger hunt with Northwestern University inorganic chemist Kenneth R. Poeppelmeier. The researchers used first-principles thermodynamics and other computational methods to evaluate an enormous range of chemical compositions and crystal structures. They concluded that 54 of the 400 missing compounds should be stable. Then they synthesized 15 of those compounds and found that for all of them, the experimentally verified structures matched the predicted ones.
In addition to stability, these compounds had other desirable properties. For example, ZrNiPb is a small-band-gap semiconductor suitable for use in thermoelectrics. And ZrIrSb is a rare example of a transparent positive-charge-carrying (p-type) conductor, a material that could be valuable for display technologies (Nat. Chem. 2015, DOI: 10.1038/nchem.2207). A related study led to the prediction and lab verification of another stable transparent p-type conductor—TaIrGe (Nat. Commun. 2015, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8308).
Another approach to finding novel inorganic compounds calls for subjecting familiar molecules to extreme conditions. High pressures, as encountered in planetary chemistry, for instance, can be used to access unusual stoichiometries and crystal structures, as well as novel electronic and magnetic properties. A case in point is table salt. An international team reported that high pressures in a diamond anvil cell convert NaCl to oddball compounds such as Na 3 Cl and NaCl 3 (Science 2013, DOI: 10.1126/science.1244989).
“For extreme conditions, we need computational prediction because chemical intuition goes out the window,” says Eva Zurek, a theoretician at the University at Buffalo, SUNY.
Zurek’s group has developed such methods and used them to evaluate the structure and high-pressure properties of several compounds. Among other findings, the studies predict new superconductors.
For example, the group finds that depending on pressure, BaGe 3 can adopt three phases, one of which has been synthesized. The other two are predicted to be stable at atmospheric pressure and superconducting, but only at very low temperatures (Inorg. Chem. 2015, DOI: 10.1021/ic5030235). On the basis of a related study, the team predicts that under pressure, H 2 I and H 4 I will also be stable and superconducting at low temperature (J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2015, DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.5b01839).
Superconductors are a small group of materials that conduct electricity without losing energy in the form of heat. Compared with ordinary equipment, superconductor-based gear would, in principle, operate at extreme savings—energetically and financially. Like a large fraction of superconductors, however, the ones uncovered in these studies remain superconductors only at impractically low temperatures. Yet they give researchers clues about where to look for other new superconducting materials.
Polymer Dielectrics For Charge Storage
[+]Enlarge ORDERLY The polyurea crystal depicted here is being studied for use as a capacitor dielectric material computationally and experimentally. Credit: Chiho Kim/U of Connecticut
Electrically insulating organic polymers, also known as polymer dielectrics, play a major role in modern electronics, especially in capacitors. These charge storage devices are found in consumer electronics, electric-grid utility equipment, and hybrid electric vehicles.
The dielectric film at the core of a capacitor serves to insulate and maintain charge separation between electrically conducting plates. How well a capacitor stores energy depends on how well the dielectric can stabilize the charge separation, which in turn depends on its intrinsic properties.
To boost the performance of high-energy-density capacitors, researchers generally use intuition, plus a trial-and-error approach, to look for polymers that may outperform the standard polypropylene dielectric. But that kind of search is slow and limited in scope.
So a team led by Ramamurthy Ramprasad, a materials scientist at the University of Connecticut, is developing a multistep computational search technique to identify promising polymer leads. The method begins with a quantum-mechanics-based combinatorial search to identify molecular repeat units that could be inserted into polymers to give them desirable dielectric properties. The repeat units consist of four blocks selected from moieties such as CH 2 , C 6 H 4 , C 4 H 2 S, CO, NH, O, and CS.
Then the method determines stable three-dimensional arrangements of polymers built from the most promising repeat units and evaluates a variety of properties critical to capacitor use, including dielectric constant and band gap.
In a study based on the new computational method, the technique identified a few hundred promising leads, including polyureas, polyimides, polythioureas, and polyamines. Ramprasad notes that one feature common to the most promising candidates is the presence of at least one polar block and one aromatic block.
To validate the method, the team synthesized and characterized three of the top candidates. It found close agreement between the predicted and measured values for structural, electronic, and dielectric properties (Nat. Commun. 2014, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5845). |
Bernie Sanders’s political coalition – a mix of young, liberal, and independent voters – reasserted itself last night, boosting the Vermont senator to an unexpected win in Michigan, contradicting polls that had predicted a double-digit loss.
Sanders made up part of that ground by winning over voters who said they decided within a week of casting ballots, according to CBS exit polls. But his lead among that group – 7 percentage points – is not enough to explain the gulf in support Sanders was able to close.
His victory was likely fueled by strong turnout among voters with whom Sanders performs best. According to the Detroit Free Press, more than 2.2 million voters turned out to cast ballots in the Democratic primary.
Sanders won his typically huge share of voters ages 18 to 29, with 81 percent of people in that age group voting in his favor. But he was able to pull in younger voters more broadly; fully 67 percent of voters under age 45 swung his way, and they made up nearly half the electorate.
An unexpectedly large share of voters in the Michigan primary also identified themselves as liberal, with 56 percent using that moniker. Among those voters – the core of Sanders’s base – he won by more than 8 points.
In addition, voters identifying themselves as independents turned out in huge numbers, comprising 28 percent of the electorate. Nearly seven in 10 independent voters broke for Sanders, while fewer than six in 10 voters identifying themselves as Democrats sided with Clinton.
Finally, it looks as though Sanders may have cut into Clinton’s minority "firewall," giving himself an extra boost. After she won a bevy of primaries in which eight in 10 or even nine in 10 black voters swung in her favor, 65 percent of black voters in Michigan picked Clinton last night; Sanders garnered 31 percent of the black vote. That was no accident; in the days leading up to this primary, Sanders worked hard to court black voters, campaigning hard in places like Detroit and Flint with an economics-based message.
"What tonight means is that the Bernie Sanders campaign … is strong in every part of the country and we firmly believe our strongest areas are yet to happen," Sanders said in a brief election-night speech.
And he is right about at least one thing: The primary calendar next turns to other Midwestern states, including Ohio and Illinois, which could offer Sanders more Michigan-style wins. |
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne said on Thursday that she intends on creating a special committee that will examine the pricey cancellation of two GTA gas plants.
The governing Liberals' decision to cancel two gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga — costing taxpayers at least $230 million — was seen as a bid to save Liberal seats amid strong local opposition to the projects.
Wynne declared her intention to create a committee in a letter that was sent to both opposition leaders.
Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath had both requested further scrutiny of the decision.
Wynne's letter said that she supports a proposal to "strike a select committee to review all issues relating to the Oakville and Mississauga gas plant relocations. Where mistakes were made, they must be addressed and prevented from happening again."
Wynne stated that once the legislature has resumed, the committee will be selected.
The premier has said she will testify if asked, which is something former premier Dalton McGuinty would not do.
Wynne has said she wasn't a part of any meetings on the decision to cancel the Mississauga plant.
"I was part of the campaign team, but I was not in any of those meetings," said Wynne. "And, if I am asked to come forward, I will come and answer the questions that I’m asked."
Progressive Conservative critic Frank Klees said that Wynne should take a lie-detector test if she wants Ontarians to believe that she had no involvement.
"If she insists that, as the campaign co-chair, and as someone who sat at the cabinet table to approve this deal that she has no recollection, she may want to establish her credibility by submitting to one of those lie-detector tests, because I don't believe it," said Klees. |
Can you teach zombies to eat other delights, besides delicious brains? A difficult task perhaps, but one George Romero sinks his teeth into, in a promo video for his film ...Of The Dead.
Romero's next movie takes place on a little island being overrun by the undead. But instead of hacking up each former family member into little zombie bits, the residents are trying to find a cure. Unfortunately we all know what happens when you have one zombie: they reproduce like bunnies. There's a fight over who shall inherit the island — people looking for a zombie-free oasis, or those looking for a cure. But most folks in the little town are content to chain up their loved ones inside their houses and pretend everything is all right. So of course, havoc and mayhem ensue.
There still isn't a release date for this film, as it is in production, and who knows if the ...Of The Dead title will stay. But still, it's good to see Romero back in the undead business, even thought the quality of this clip is questionable. But I keep my mind open for a redeeming and graphic thriller, after that whole Diary nonsense.
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[Voltage Pictures] |
Chamber of Digital Commerce and DCC Partner to Promote Digital Currencies
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The Digital Currency Council (DCC) supports the development of best-in-class professional practices in the digital currency economy through training, certification, as well as connectivity with peers and prospective clients, has entered into a partnership with the Chamber of Digital Commerce (“Chamber”) to strengthen the advocacy and education efforts for the digital asset and digital currency industry.
Also Read: Chamber of Digital Commerce Launches New Site, Announces Advisory Board
The DCC, which has members from leading professionals from fields, including Finance, Attorneys, and Accountants, says that this partnership will provide education and training opportunities to Chamber members as part of its membership benefits. The Chamber of Digital Commerce is the Washington, D.C.-based trade association representing the digital asset and digital currency industry.
The organization held the first ever Bitcoin Education Day the last year on August 29, 2014, at Capitol Hill. More than 32 Bitcoin professionals from 12 states briefed over 70 Congressional legislative aides and introduced themselves to the remaining 365 offices at the occasion. Thus, it appears that the organization has not just been promising its support for digital currencies but acting upon them as well.
The latest partnership according to the Chamber of Digital Commerce will help them establish a pro-growth environment that is appropriate for innovation, jobs, and investment. The pro-growth environment according to them can be achieved through education, advocacy, and working closely with policymakers, regulatory agencies, and industry. Interestingly, as the DCC is the leading education center for professionals in the digital currency economy and provides certificate-level courses, generating an environment that fosters innovation, jobs and investments is going to be easy for the Chamber.
Similarly, as the Digital Currency Council also aims to support the development of best-in-class professional practices through training, certification and networking with peers and clients as well as provides certification that is industry recognized for competence, a lot of members are going to benefit from the new partnership.
Talking about the partnership, Perianne Boring, Founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, says the strategic partnership with the DCC, the leader in digital currency education and training adds an additional level of professionalism, and credibility to their members and help them work with the regulatory and policy community. Similar views were shared by David Berger, CEO of the Digital Currency Council who said that through their membership in the Chamber, these leading firms and individuals have shown a strong commitment to the growth and professionalization of the digital asset industry.
The DCC believes that the growth of the digital currency economy requires its maturation and professional conduct, whether online or offline. The organization enables its members build, measure, learn, and iterate in pursuit of their business goals. David Berger admitted that under the latest partnership with the Chamber, they are aiming to support their commitment for professionalism in the digital asset industry with access to their coursework, certification program, and membership of over 1,500 professionals across the globe.
What do you think about this new partnership? Let us know in the comments below!
Images: DCC, Chamber of Digital Commerce
Disclaimer: The author of the story is not associated with the DCC or the Chamber.
Originally posted on: Chamber of Digital Commerce and DCC Partner to Promote Digital Currencies |
TotalRL understands that Rangi Chase has left Leigh Centurions.
The maverick halfback joined the ambitious Championship club for the start of the 2016 season after leaving the Salford Red Devils.
However, the 30-year-old has managed just five appearances for the Centurions, missing almost two months of the season before returning two weeks ago for Leigh’s narrow victory over Featherstone.
Chase made his most recent, and seemingly last appearance for the club on May 1st as Leigh defeated Batley 37-30.
It is unclear at this point why the former Man of Steel has departed the Centurions, with neither the club or the player making any comments on the matter at this stage.
Chase has reportedly been offered to at least one Super League club recently, but with no potential suitors, it would appear Leigh have managed to reach an agreement of some sort with the former England international.
UPDATE: Leigh Centurions took to social media on Monday night to stress that Chase still was contracted with the club. They tweeted: |
SPOILER WARNING!!!
Sorry I had to draw this again since it bothered me that I did a poor job designing the wings in the last time. Plus I loved Spider-man Homecoming and how they changed Vulture in terms of what he does as a villain. Michael Keaton was a great Vulture, and I love that he scavenges alien technology from the Avengers battle against the Chitauri and selling them to the highest bitter. Plus it makes sense with his title the Vulture( To be honest I’m surprised no one has ever thought of that until now really). Tom Holland was hilarious as Peter and as Spider-man. Plus Ned was really funny too. It’s nice to see a good Spider-man film compared to all the Spider-man shows and movies after Sam Raimi. Especially the new Spider-man series after Ultimate Spider-man TV series(which also sucked). The animation is bad, the setting has been made with little effort, the villains are boring in both design and screen time, too much math for pointless reasons, and Peter too many science jokes(we get he’s smart just stop). And the worst part is they don’t represent what Spider-man often deals with, balancing his double life. It’s shows like this where I miss the 90s Spider-man and the Spectacular Spider-man. It’s really sad. |
And the day’s not over yet.
Somewhere, a Burger King ad man’s toying with the idea of having “The King” declare himself “100% pro-life.”
@dancathy just called me. #ChickFilA has already set a world record today, with 7 more hrs to go in the West. #OutOfChicken — Rick Warren (@RickWarren) August 2, 2012
Not a word about today’s activities has been whispered on Chick-fil-A’s feed even though CFA has been trending on Twitter off and on all day. As noted in the earlier post, the suspicion is that the company’s lying low about what’s happening in order to extricate itself from the front line of the culture war, but I wonder if today’s outpouring will draw some sort of recognition tomorrow. If Dan Cathy’s willing to tout the numbers to Rick Warren, presumably an official acknowledgment and thank you is on the way.
There’s no shortage of local news stories out there about huge lines at the neighborhood CFA; if you’re curious, these two, from Iowa and Kentucky, are fairly representative. Meanwhile, I assume some sort of “Unappreciation Day” is in the works on the left, if only to respond to such an impressive show of strength, but I don’t know. Could be that, between this and the thuggish idiocy of Rahm and Mumbles Menino, they’re ready to cut their losses. Exit question: How big a political victory is this for Huckabee? Per this Fox News clip (via Mediaite), even he sounds surprised. |
Governor John Bel Edwards has declared Louisiana’s ongoing coastal land loss a state of emergency. It’s part of the state’s strategy to speed up coastal restoration projects.
Environmental permits can slow down big restoration projects. The Army Corps of Engineers, for example, says it could take up to five years to get federal permits to open up the Mississippi River and use diversions to create new land.
So state officials are looking for ways to fast-track these projects.
Governor Edwards Declares State of Emergency for Louisiana Coast
At Wednesday’s monthly Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Board meeting, CPRA Board Chairman Johnny Bradberry, said a ‘state of emergency’ allows the feds to issue permits during construction -- effectively fast-tracking them.
“That allows some flexibility in how projects get put on the ground,” he says.
Bradberry says that’s how the levees were rebuilt quickly after Hurricane Katrina, and hopes future restoration projects can be implemented with similar speed.
State officials, including Governor Edwards, now want the support of both President Donald Trump and Congress. That process that could take months, and Bradberry says the governor has written letters to both.
The CPRA board approved the 2017 Coastal Master Plan at Wednesday’s meeting and sent it to the state legislature for approval. They also approved the 2018 Annual Plan -- the plan that outlines the state’s spending priorities for restoration and protection projects for the next fiscal year. |
Shalini Singh is a senior award-winning investigative journalist. While most journalists have a single expose or area of specialization to their credit, Shalini has managed to create a powerful body of rigorously reported work that is impressive in scale, range, depth and impact. Of the many exposes credited to Shalini, the following continue to dominate the political, legal, academic and media discourse: the 2G spectrum scam, Coalgate, Vadragate, the Haryana land scam, the Virbhadra Singh scandal, NABARD scam and the Sahara Ponzi scam. In 2G, her charges of illegality, made in 2007, were independently verified by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court in its Order of February 2012, cancelling all 122 telecom licenses awarded on January 10, 2008.
1. The tribe of investigative journalists is ever decreasing. Why so?
The kind of ‘investigative journalism’ that is tolerated by the system is mostly what politicians or powerful business houses would like placed in the public domain. These ‘exposes’ are carefully calibrated to suit their political/business interests. Journalists who cater to this agenda are rewarded and become heroes and celebrities.
Real investigative journalism is not the replication of ready-to-go handouts but the outcome of independent enquiry backed with rigorous research and undertaken in the public interest. It is information that the politically and financially empowered would never want placed in the public sphere.
This kind of journalism is not tolerated and journalists who continue on this path despite dissuasion, threats and punishment are disrespected, ignored, denied access and eventually permanently edged out of the system.
Media companies fully support such purging, since they are either owned by politicians or businessmen or their survival depends on them.
2. Do you think good journalism is about persistence and patience to stay with the story rather than always taking the route of the 9 PM news channels?
Absolutely. Good journalism is about keeping the public interest and the common good central to the story. Journalists are meant to be change agents and thought leaders. It is their duty to guide the national discourse on issues that will lead to development and nation building. Television is essentially the medium of the routine. They typically select a few top news developments and print/digital exclusives of the day and run with that, rather than dedicating resources to gathering time-consuming exclusives.
The dynamics of any newsroom, whether television, print or the digital medium, have converged and become consumer/market driven. Editors mostly function as gatekeepers to block sensitive news that will damage their advertisers. Sometimes the owners dictate the agenda. Even when they don’t, editors will either be more loyal than the King, will crawl when asked to bend or if they are smart, use the agenda of the owners wherever possible to further their own interests.
It is a no-brainer that it is far more beneficial for an editor or a journalist to cultivate “powerful” government/corporate sources, publish their handouts and push their agenda rather than to question such sources, which would end up in them being denied access and information.
3. After you exposed the Robert Vadra dealings, were they adequately covered in the media or were they only raised after AAP's press conference? Can you also explain the story behind those dealings to our readers who may not be aware of it?
I joined The Hindu in February 2012 and submitted the Vadra story in March, 2012 after emailing detailed questionnaires to both Robert Vadra and DLF. The editorial team felt the story was not good enough to be carried, so it remained in limbo for 7 months. When I lost hope of it being carried, I sought permission to give the material to India Against Corruption. My story http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/behind-robert-vadras-fortune-a-maze-of-questions/article3975214.ece finally went to print the same day as AAP’s press conference - exactly as I had first presented it, so clearly, it was good enough from the very start.
Vadragate, with its direct link to Congress President Sonia Gandhi, helped expose the fact that corruption is entrenched in the system, its scale is mindboggling, the rot starts at the very top and finally, that the reverence and trust placed by India’s citizens in the Gandhi family is entirely misplaced. The contents of all these stories remain uncontested till date.
The Vadra story led to a series of exposes on the Haryana land scam, again spearheaded by its then Chief Minister, B. S. Hooda and supported by Congress President, Sonia Gandhi. In one of these pieces. I have clearly outlined the out-of-turn favors bestowed to Vadra, which involved gross policy violations and complete sacrifice of public interest. Since then, routine developments, which have only strengthened the charges of corruption and out of turn favors to Robert Vadra, have been regularly covered by the media, but no startlingly new material has emerged.
Like in 2G, the CAG independently corroborated my charges of illegality in the Vadra scandal in its Report of Social, General and Economic Sectors (Non-PSUs) for the year ended 31 March 2014. This report further highlighted that in the case of Vadra’s firm Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd, the fraudulently obtained land was sold to its collaborator DLF Universal Ltd at 7.73 times the original cost after the in-principle approval for transfer of license was granted in April 2012. Although net profit beyond 15 per cent of the total cost accrues to the public exchequer, the Department of Town and Country Planning, Haryana did not ensure that this money was deposited, neither at the time of granting in-principle approval nor at the time of formal approval for transfer of licenses. This deprived the state exchequer of sizeable revenue.
Neither Vadra nor Hooda have been prosecuted.
4. Was there any pressure on you to change the tone and tenor of your reporting, while you were doggedly pursuing these scams?
Nobody ever had the courage to directly approach me with such a suggestion. But there were several attempts to bribe, coerce and threaten. My phones were tapped and I was advised by well-wishers in the government to hire a body guard since my life was under threat.
Within the workplace too, rather than being rewarded or honored, I was patronized, even tormented. Subsequent stories were treated with suspicion. This is despite the fact that not a single story attracted any serious rebuttal and I have never been served a legal notice in my entire career.
The easiest way to kill a story is to say it is not good enough or to bury it in the inside pages without adequate visibility. Another innovative method adopted during my coverage of the 2G-spectrum scam was to call every news story that I submitted an “opinion” piece. If I submitted an opinion piece, they would tell me it was best suited for a feature page. This was after the CAG report had independently corroborated my findings and former Telecom Minister, A Raja and several others had been imprisoned. It was obviously an easier option to humiliate a journalist; a fellow colleague rather than admitting that the newsroom doesn’t respond to powerful stories but to important external affiliates. Needless to say, these stories were never published.
Despite such a huge body of investigative work and after being awarded the Prem Bhatia Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Reporting and Analysis, 2013, a second story pointing to the PM’s hand in the coal scandal as well as several other investigative pieces were rubbished and mocked with the comment: “so much for your investigative skills”.
In 2G, my charges of illegality, made in 2007, were independently verified by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court (SC) in its Order of February 2012, cancelling all 122 telecom licenses awarded on January 10, 2008. The 2G expose – undisputedly the biggest and most rigorously documented financial scam in independent India, culminated in a Cabinet Minister, A Raja, his telecom Secretary, along with several officials of privately held firm Swan Telecom being jailed for 18 months or more. Similarly, the Supreme Court cancelled 214 of 218 coal mine permits in its Order of September 24, 2014. A Public Interest Litigation against the Himachal Chief Minister is being heard in Court, while legal action is being prepared against the Haryana Chief Minister. Sahara Chief, Subroto Roy, once untouchable, has also been a resident of Tihar Jail since February 2014, while the Robert Vadra scandal became a major cause for the Congress’ debacle in the 2014 general elections in which corruption emerged as the central theme. NABARD has withdrawn its controversial scheme favoring corporates at the cost of the rural poor. All these stories remain an important part of the present public discourse.
Please evaluate the comment: “so much for your investigative skills” in this context to get a sense of the daily pressures that an investigative journalist has to face.
5. Do you think 'freedom of speech' is under threat as alleged by a certain section of the media or is it a figment of their imagination?
People are saying what they want and are being increasingly abusive, but stories about corruption, which are irrefutable charge sheets, not crazy, abusive, speculative rants are being blocked.
6. It appears that big-ticket corruption has slowly vanished with the new government. Do you agree? And if so, do you think small time corruption will slowly recede in India, or will that not happen anytime soon?
There is no question of corruption having dwindled. Nor will it ever vanish. There are just new collectors.
7. Your stories on 2G alluded to an agreement between the PMO and Raja http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/shalini-singhs-reply/article4523042.ece Can you explain to our readers briefly about that especially since no questions have been raised in the TV channels on this aspect?
It was in 2007 that I inadvertently, through the coverage of routine telecom developments, started uncovering the Rs 1.76 lakh crore 2G spectrum scandal, piece by piece. The script of a scam-in-the-making unfolded, but despite this documentation in The Times of India, India’s largest and most powerful English daily, the scam was perpetrated as per the script on January 10, 2008 with the help of key state actors, including the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.
The shocking part is that I pointed to the PM’s culpability in the 2G scandal in 2008 itself. I did a series of pieces (links below) that revealed that his and P. Chidambaram’s statements were not adding up. Nobody paid the slightest attention, even though these stories were about the Prime Minister himself. Both got away scot-free.
Our former Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh actually stated in Parliament and at a TV Editors Conference that he knew nothing about Raja’s plans. This proved to be a lie. I comprehensively established this in my last story, which showed that the PM was completely apprised of all Raja’s impending plans and that it was at the PM’s behest that these plans were first evaluated and written approval issued.
I moved on to the Rs 1,86 lakh crore Coalgate scam, in which the same pattern of deliberate political complicity was revealed, but this time with the PM additionally doubling up as the Coal Minister. But it’s still being made out that his hands are squeaky clean.
This proves without doubt that some people are above the law in India, no matter what the evidence.
References to some articles:
November 18, 2008
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/SUBVERSE-A-case-worth-losing/articleshow/3725422.cms
May 31, 2010
Govt lost Rs 1 lakh cr by not auctioning 2G
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:LowLevelEntityToPrint_TOINEW&Type=text/html&Locale=english-skin-custom&Path=TOIA/2010/05/31&ID=Ar01701
December 25, 2010
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mindboggling/pm-is-an-honourable-man-but-is-that-enough/
February 18, 2011
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mindboggling/pm-blames-raja-but-will-this-dislodge-charges-of-culpability/
February 27, 2011
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mindboggling/2g-scam-pm-s-claim-that-finance-and-telecom-ministries-agreed-does-not-bear-scrutiny/
October 14, 2011
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mindboggling/sc-s-remarks-on-pm-in-2g-scam-too-close-for-comfort/
March 18, 2013
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/new-papers-show-pmo-analysed-and-agreed-with-rajas-actions-before-2g-scam/article4519617.ece
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/within-2-weeks-of-the-2g-scam-pm-wanted-arms-length-from-raja/article4519616.ece
March 19, 2013
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/shalini-singhs-reply/article4523042.ece
April 22, 2013
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/raja-links-pm-to-all-key-2g-decisions/article4643417.ece |
At its most basic, beer is simply the malt, water, yeast, and hops. Everything else is just extra added on to the base. And while hops get much of the credit for flavor, they’re not necessarily the most important ingredient.
I asked 15 brewers what the most underrated ingredient in beer is. Here are their responses.
“Water.” — Pete Anderson, co-owner of Pareidolia Brewing Company.
“Water is the most important ingredient to beer quality that is routinely ignored by beer drinkers at large. Breweries either require a high-quality water source nearby, or invest heavily in water purification and treatment systems. This should make sense — beer is usually 90 to 95 percent water, so it has a large impact on the final product. Additionally, the salts and ions that are in the water bring out various flavors in the other ingredients. For example, darker beers were developed in Dublin and Munich because the local water was high in chalk, which made hops taste soapy but let roasted flavors shine through. Inversely, the water near Burton-on-Trent was high in gypsum, which made hops bright and crisp, giving rise to the pale ale. By roughly matching the dissolved ion contents of those famous towns, craft brewers have been able to mimic styles that were originally region-specific due to their water. So, next time you’re drinking a fantastic pilsner in Colorado, thank your local brewer’s obsession with water quality.” — Alan Windhausen, head brewer at Pikes Peak Brewing Company.
“Water. I think people underestimate the quality of the water and how it affects the taste of the beer. We are fortunate in Lafayette, Colo., to have some amazing water. But even with that, we still filter and chemically treat our water for each beer style. Grain, yeast, and hops will never make beer made with poor quality water or incorrect water chemistry taste perfect.” — Davin Helden, CEO of Liquid Mechanics.
“Water. We take it pretty darn seriously.” — Chris Riphenburg, co-owner and head brewer of Ale Asylum.
“Water. Outside of the server beer training I do, I never hear anyone talk about it. Yet it can be one of the most complicated ingredients that certainly affects the final flavor of beer.” — Larry Chase, brewer at Standing Stone Brewing Company.
“Water. It’s the offensive lineman of the beer — you only notice it when it screws up. If you’re not thinking about it, it’s doing everything it needs to. And just like the lineman, it’s pretty boring to talk about with 95 percent of people, but that 5 percent gets what it means to have something that reliable and important.” — Jon Mansfield, brewery operations manager at Warhorse Brewing Company.
“Process. I think there is too much emphasis on the ingredients of beer. I often hear a beer is brewed with ‘these hops’ or ‘this yeast,’ so it must be good, but that isn’t always true. There are only four ingredients in beer; the difference is how we use them.” — Patrick Byrnes, head brewer at Islamorada Beer Company.
“Malt.” — Eric Meyer, brewmaster at Cahaba Brewing.
“Malt! I give a lot of brewery tours at Throwback Brewery. When I ask people to tell me what’s in a beer, only about 20 percent of the time does someone say ‘malt’! Malt is the heart of a beer. It drives color, alcohol, flavor, body, and more! If that’s not sexy, I don’t know what is?!” — Nicole Carrier, co-founder and president of Throwback Brewery.
“Malt. It really is the backbone of the beer, but people nowadays seem to care so little about it” — Kevin Blodger, co-founder and director of brewing operations at Union Craft Brewing.
“Malt. The right variety, origin, maltster, etc. are extremely important, and are still not fully appreciated by many brewers in my opinion.” — Chris Davison, head brewer at Wolf’s Ridge Brewing.
“At this point consumers are pretty savvy, so I don’t think any ingredient is woefully underrated, but we are huge malt fans here and love the layers of flavor complexity and the impact on body and balance grains bring to the table.” — Damian Brown, brewmaster at Bronx Brewery.
“Yeast. Yeast is a huge factor in the flavor of the beer. We brew 6-7 different styles of beer and carry 3 different types of yeast. You can change up the malts and hops all you want, but you want to find the right yeast and fermentation temperature that really brings all of the other ingredients together.” — Ian Smith, co-owner of Three Rings Brewery.
“No doubt in my mind: yeast. It’s the only ingredient that can kill a good beer recipe, and the only ingredient that can save a bad one.” — John Falco, head brewer at Lincoln’s Beard Brewing Company.
“Yeast is just now starting to be truly appreciated as a driver in flavor.” — Don Oliver, head brewer at Dust Bowl Brewing. |
There's just one week left in the regular season, and there's still a lot left up in the air when it comes to bowl bids for the ACC. Here's a quick look at some of the bigger questions still pending.
Can North Carolina make the playoff?
That's the biggest question. Obviously the Tar Heels would need to win out, and if so, a conference champion on a 12-game winning streak that just beat the nation's No. 1 team would be a strong case. But this question, more than any other, has a lot of “what ifs” associated with it.
How many ACC teams will make a New Year's Six game?
There's a good shot two will, but it will mean either North Carolina or Florida State needs to win in Week 13. A loss by both would essentially guarantee just one ACC team in the New Year's Six.
How does Notre Dame impact the ACC's bowl bids?
Given that the Irish are a virtual lock for the New Year's Six, there's no impact at all on the ACC. If Notre Dame happens to slip outside the New Year's Six, however, they would likely be the pick for the Russell Athletic Bowl, shifting all ACC teams down one spot.
If Virginia Tech gets to six wins, what bowls can they go to?
After the Russell Athletic, the next tier of bowls include the Belk Bowl, the Pinstripe Bowl and either the TaxSlayer or Music City bowls. The only caveat for any of those bowls when making their selections is that they cannot take a team that is more than one win apart from the best available team. In other words, as long as there are not three eight-win teams available for this tier of bowls, Virginia Tech would be in the mix and likely land in the Belk Bowl.
How is it decided whether an ACC team goes to the TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, or Music City Bowl in Nashville, Tennessee?
This is up to the individual bowls, based on which available teams are a better fit for each game. The ACC went to the Music City last year (Notre Dame) so it might be slightly more likely to head to the TaxSlayer this year, particularly if Florida State is in the mix. But for teams such as Louisville or Pittsburgh, the Music City might make more sense.
Virginia could get to 5-7. Is there any chance that could land the Cavaliers in a bowl?
Possibly. Right now, if FSU or North Carolina makes the New Year's Six, the ACC won't be able to fill its bowl slots. That would leave the Independence Bowl to find another team to play, and if there aren't enough six-win programs, it could lead to waivers for five-win teams. Given that bowl's ties with the ACC, it could look to the Cavaliers. But this remains a long shot. There are 71 teams already bowl eligible, and 14 more that can get there in the final week.
Capital One Orange Bowl (College Football Playoff): Clemson Tigers
Fiesta Bowl (New Year's Six): Notre Dame Fighting Irish
Peach Bowl (New Year's Six): Florida State Seminoles
Russell Athletic Bowl: North Carolina Tar Heels
Music City Bowl: Pitt Panthers
Belk Bowl: Virginia Tech Hokies
New Era Pinstripe Bowl: Miami Hurricanes
Hyundai Sun Bowl: NC State Wolfpack
Military Bowl presented by Northrop Grumman: Duke Blue Devils
Quick Lane Bowl: Louisville Cardinals |
CLOSE More than 500 medical marijuana patients in Kent County will have to wait a few more months after Columbia Care postponed opening its local dispensary until spring 2018. 11/8/17 Scott Goss/The News Journal
Columbia Care won a contract in 2016 to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Kent County. An exact location has not been disclosed, but the company recently said the opening will be pushed back from this fall to next spring. (Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Delaware's next medical marijuana dispensary could be opening in Milford, six months later than initially planned.
New York-based Columbia Care now says it will not open central Delaware's first dispensary until at least next spring – marking the latest delay to roll out a statewide medical marijuana program.
"We're dying out here," said Debra McPherson-Nau, who runs the independent medical marijuana advocacy group The Delaware Patient Network.
"Right now, there is only one company operating dispensaries and it has high prices and low quality," she said. "Every patient is suffering big time while we wait for new ones to open."
RELATED: Delaware marijuana task force to delay final report
RELATED: FDA hints it may look into medical marijuana health claims
The General Assembly approved the Delaware Medical Marijuana Act in 2011, but then-Gov. Jack Markell delayed its implementation for years.
A contract for Delaware's first dispensary near Wilmington was awarded in 2014 to a First State Compassion Center. But legal issues and construction delays pushed back the opening another year.
First State won a second contract in 2016 to open a dispensary in Lewes. That facility opened in May – again after months of delays.
The company remains the state's only source of medical marijuana, which can be used to treat a host of qualifying conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, HIV and ailments that cause severe pain and nausea.
"Because there is only one owner, it's pretty much one dispensary with two locations," said Kim Petters, an Air Force veteran who uses medical marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
"And that still forces patients in central Delaware to drive 45 minutes north or south for their medicine," the Magnolia resident said.
Buy Photo Kim Petters, an Air Force veteran with PTSD who advocates for female veterans at her home in Magnolia. (Photo: Jason Minto, The News Journal)
Columbia Care, which operates dispensaries in several other states, promised to fix that when it won a state contract to serve Kent County in September 2016.
More than 500 people certified by their doctors to purchase medical marijuana live in Kent County, according to the state health department. That's about 14.5 percent of the 3,588 medical marijuana patients statewide as of July 1.
Medical marijuana patients and advocates say they have high hopes the addition of new dispensary owners will foster enough competition to drive down the high prices and limited supply they encounter at First State.
A contract for a second New Castle County dispensary, located in Newark, was awarded this year to Compassionate Care Research Institute, a New Jersey-based company. A spokesman for CCRI said Tuesday that the business is "optimistically hopeful" it will open on Ogletown Road next spring.
Buy Photo Tom Donovan, Kent County advocate speaks at the Adult Use Cannabis Task Force meeting at Legislative Hall in Dover. (Photo: Jason Minto, The News Journal)
"It's a disappointing and a little frustrating," criminal defense lawyer Tom Donovan of Dover said of the Columbia Care's postponed opening. "Maybe it's time the state opened the bidding process again to get companies that can open when they say they will."
Columbia Care declined to say what caused the delay.
But a spokeswoman for the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, which oversees the state's medical marijuana program, attributed the setback to zoning, construction and permitting holdups.
"Many milestones that lead up to construction of the grow facilities are outside the state’s and vendor’s control," Emily Knearl said. "We can understand how delays in the opening can be frustrating but are confident our contractor is working in good faith to open as soon as possible."
Columbia Care has yet to reveal the location of its Kent County dispensary.
However, a copy of its 2016 state contract, obtained by The News Journal, indicates both the company's manufacturing facility and its dispensary will be located in Milford, which straddles the Kent/Sussex County line.
The exact address of the dispensary is blacked out throughout the document, but other clues are not.
The contract states Columbia Care will lease its property from Milford Associates, the owner of the Milford Industrial Park off U.S. Route 113. Columbia Care also states in the document that the location will be accessible by public transportation "using the bus stop at Airpark Plaza," a shopping center about one mile north of the Milford industrial park.
The Commonwealth Group, a Wilmington-based company that manages the industrial park, did not return emails and phone messages seeking comment.
Milford Mayor Bryan Shupe said Columbia Care has been issued a building permit for the industrial park. But, he said, it would be a zoning violation if they opened a dispensary there.
"Our planning commission has not received any requests from them at this point," he said.
Columbia Care's contract with the health department indicates the potential zoning violation may have come as a surprise to the company.
The document states the dispensary will be "co-located" with the manufacturing facility. Officials with Columbia Care on Tuesday would say only that they are "still securing a retail location."
Buy Photo View of medical marijuana. (Photo: Jason Minto, The News Journal)
DHSS officials, meanwhile, say the company has a lease for a location. But they declined to say where it is, citing a strict confidentiality provision in the state's medical marijuana law.
"Columbia Care is renovating an existing building for its growing facility and Office of Medical Marijuana staff have visited the construction site," Knearl said. "Additionally, they have presented evidence of a lease for their retail facility."
The possibility that the dispensary might open near the Sussex County line – about 20 miles from the Lewes dispensary – is not sitting well with patients in Kent County, many who had hoped for a Dover location.
"Milford is still a 20- to 25-minute drive for me and even farther for people who live in Smyrna," Petters said.
"With any other medication, you'd have your choice of picking it up at 10 pharmacies within 5 miles," she said. "And for a lot of vets on a fixed income, the cost of travel can have a real impact."
Contact reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel.
Read or Share this story: https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2017/11/08/medical-marijuana-dispensary-may-opening-milford/840575001/ |
Those of you who don’t know me personally or don’t know me well (and if you’re in that group, thanks for reading a stranger’s ramblings!) might not know that I was born deaf. Well, half deaf, really. I wear hearing aids – I have since I was two – and with them in, I can hear pretty well. Not perfectly, but well enough to function like any “normal” person (I don’t really think I’m all that abnormal, just a little different. Normal is just the easiest way to put it). However, there are a few things that are just part of my life that I realize most people probably never think of. I figured I might as well educate you on this subject. Besides, they say to write about what you know, and even though I didn’t hear them the first couple times, being half deaf is something I know a lot about.
I can’t whisper. I mean, in theory, I could lower my voice enough to whisper, but I would be unable to hear myself, and I would have no idea if the other person could hear me, or if I’m even making any sound at all. So then I’d raise my voice, but if I’m trying to talk to someone right next to me, everyone else in the general area will also be able to hear me, cause you normal people have freaking superpowered ears. Honestly… I have no idea how normal people hear. Not only can I not whisper, I can’t hear whispers. I’ve had people whisper things to me for a few minutes before I even noticed they were talking to me. Apparently most people can hear conversations from a different room. That kind of blows my mind, because I often have trouble hearing things said in the same room as me, much less a different room entirely. And I know there are high and low sounds that most people can hear, but I can’t. Sometimes I’ve even made sounds that I was unable to hear. At least I think so. Either that or my family was just mocking me. Again. Speaking of which, if you move your mouth but don’t say anything, trying to trick me into thinking my hearing aids are off, it’s not going to work. Well, unless you do it immediately after I wake up and I’m still a zombie, but I don’t wear my hearing aids to bed anyways. Also, how did you get into my house? But really, it’s a dumb trick, because all I have to do to prove you wrong is clap or knock on something. I think it would be really hard to get to sleep if I had normal hearing. As it is, I take off my hearing aids and lie with my good ear pressed against the pillow, so I can’t hear anything. Like, at all. Smoke alarms have gone off without me noticing (which probably isn’t safe, really). My alarm clock vibrates my bed just to wake me up. It gives me weird dreams sometimes, like driving on a bumpy road or reeling in a huge marlin. Mostly earthquakes though. People find my deafness hilarious. Honestly, it’s the easiest laugh ever. If I’m confused about something, just go “Oh. Didn’t hear you.” with the right tone and facial expression, and they’ll just laugh and explain again. Or if I make a mistake, blame it on being deaf. Tripped and fell? Deaf. Said something that made no sense? Deaf. Read something wrong? Deaf. I don’t get it. Nobody makes fun at someone with glasses, but everyone laughs at the deaf kid. (I’m kidding. No bitterness. None at all. Seriously, none.)
So, that’s five things that you may or may not have known about me and my bionic ears. If you like this, I’m sure I can come up with plenty more interesting things that deafness has taught me. Leave a comment. Let me know what you think! But make sure you type in all capitals so I can hear.
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The controversy surrounding Gurmehar Kaur, the Delhi University student whose social media posts went viral triggering a massive 'patriot war', refuses to die. Though the Lady Shri Ram College student has distanced herself from the row and left Delhi, some photos of her are being circulated on the social media in an apparent attempt to highlight her links with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Photos of Gurmehar, whose father was martyred fighting terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir in 1999, with filmmaker Ram Subramanian are doing the rounds on social media.
Ram, the founder of Facebook page Voice of Ram on which Gurmehar Kaur's video promoting India-Pakistan peace was posted in 2016, has close links with AAP's national convener Arvind Kejriwal and other top party leaders.
Several pictures of Ram with Kejriwal, Sanjay Yadav and Kumar Vishwas are being circulated on social media. Questions are now being raised over Ram's political affiliations.
Ram Subramanian with Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal Ram Subramanian with Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal
Meanwhile, Ram has posted a video in support of Gurmehar. "Yesterday Gurmehar called me and she was very uncomfortable with the events unfolding here in Delhi," said Ram in the video captioned, "You are not alone Gurmehar Kaur. I got your back."
You are not alone @mehartweets I got your back! Students of delhi are with you. People of delhi are with you! pic.twitter.com/jgkPTtKzVJ Ram Subramanian (@Voice_Of_Ram) February 28, 2017
The Delhi CM has come out in open support of Gurmehar amid the controversy slamming the BJP which he termed as the party of goons and criminals. "Just listen to this. This is BJP. They will destroy our country. Everyone must rise against their goondaism," Kejriwal has tweeted along with a video of Gurmehar.
Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal promised "strict action" against those violating law after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal approached him over the recent North Campus clash and alleged rape threats to Gurmehar.
Kejriwal met Baijal at the Raj Niwas seeking action against the ABVP activists involved in the last week's violence, in which few Delhi University (DU) faculty members had suffered serious injuries.
WATCH: Gurmehar speaking under influence, says wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt
ALSO READ:
How Ramjas College event triggered a social media war and a political slugfest on freedom of expression: A timeline
Leftists celebrate when our jawans die, Gurmehar Kaur father's soul must be weeping: Rijiju
BJP MP compares Gurmehar Kaur to Dawood Ibrahim, Union minister Rijiju asks who's polluting her mind
After Gurmehar Kaur complains of receiving death and rape threats, crime branch to probe case |
Dutch type foundry Typotheque has filed a lawsuit against the people behind Rick Santorum‘s presidential campaign website, claiming that the site allegedly uses the Fedra font without permission.
The website in question was developed for the Santorum campaign by a Virginia-based consulting company. Neither Rick Santorum nor the America’s Foundation PAC are named in the suit being brought by Typotheque, but the dispute could nevertheless prove embarrassing for the candidate.
Font copyright is a growing issue in the online world, with many people unaware that some fonts are copyrighted by their creators. Permission to use certain fonts can cost more than £100 a pop, even up to £1,000 for some fonts. In other words, this is big business.
Just last month, NBC Universal was sued by the P22 Type Foundry company for allegedly using the Cezanne Regular font on Harry Potter theme park merchandise without permission.
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(SAN DIEGO,CA) – Born in a lab and brought to life by 96 yeast strains, White Labs Brewing Co. is unleashing the 2016 version of Frankenstout. The first time since its inception, this monstrous beer is debuting in limited edition 750ml bottles and will be available for purchase at the San Diego Tasting Room beginning March 17. To celebrate, White Labs is throwing a FrankenBash on March 17 (St. Patrick’s Day for those astute, stout loving individuals) from 5 to 9 p.m. benefitting JDRF.
Frankenstout is a dark, complex beer that throws convention out the window to test the limits of science and defy industry standards. White Labs partnered with San Diego-based biotechnology companies Illumina and Synthetic Genomics to sequence and assemble the full genome of 96 of the company’s yeast strains. The collaboration is fueling ongoing scientific research in the area of genomics as well as pleasing the palates of thirsty craft beer enthusiasts throughout San Diego.
Frankenstout answers the burning question, “What would happen if we pitched 96 yeast strains into one beer?” The answer is, well, complex. Each strain struggles for dominance, with twists and turns in every sip. The beer pours black with a thick brown head. Robust coffee and dark chocolate aromas and flavors abound. Belgian yeast strains are evident through spicy and clove like notes. The beer finishes with a strong cherry oak finish.
As with any proud creator, White Labs is showcasing this massive stout by throwing a FrankenBash bottle release party at the San Diego Tasting Room March 17 from 5 to 9 p.m. For $10, individuals will get an 8-ounce pour of Frankenstout and a keepsake Frankenstout mug. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the mug and pour will benefit JDRF, which funds life-changing research for type 1 diabetes. Various interactive games will be hosted throughout the night and White Labs staff will be on hand to answer any science related questions about the beer.
Come unleash the yeast at FrankenBash.
FrankenBash Event Details
March 17 from 5 to 9 p.m.
White Labs Tasting Room
9495 Candida Street
San Diego, CA 92126
Frankenstout Bottle Facts:
Stats: 9.6% ABV, 60 IBUs
Availability: White Labs San Diego Tasting Room only
Hop Varieties: Magnum and East Kent Goldings
URL: whitelabs.com/frankenstout
About White Labs
White Labs, Inc. is an international company headquartered in San Diego that provides pure liquid yeast, fermentation products, services, analysis and education to professionals and enthusiasts alike. Continually raising the bar in the art of fermentation, White Labs stretches the limits of science to set new standards in purity and freshness. From the industry’s first pitchable liquid yeast, to a complete revolution in the way it’s propagated and packaged, the White Labs innovative spirit is tireless. For more information on White Labs and its various products and services, please visit whitelabs.com. |
“I wasn’t the fastest player, so I had to learn a different tactic. That was from day one.”
Cat Whitehill doesn’t hesitate when analyzing players, not even when it comes to her own game. Some things are just facts, and her relative lack of speed is one of them. But the way she admits it upfront, that’s what earns Whitehill her fans, her own defenders. And maybe this is why Whitehill has earned Fox Soccer’s highest ranking for color commentary on USA games; she’s all Southern charm, but underneath, she’s not afraid to embrace the accurate critique, the art of the smart foul.
Before there was Broon, there was Reddick.
Catherine Anne Whitehill, née Reddick, has plenty of respect for the way the current number four of the U.S. Women’s National Team plays the game too. “I’ve always been more of a cerebral player in that aspect. It’s like Becky Sauerbrunn. If you can read the game and you never have to put yourself into a racing situation, like against an Alex Morgan. She’s obviously faster than me, but I put myself into her path or anticipate where she’s going to go before she goes, or where the ball might be played.”
Whitehill had a distinguished college career, which included being awarded the 2003 M.A.C. Hermann Trophy. Defenders usually don’t get much of the glory, but Whitehill was the player to watch, the probable first draft pick in the upcoming WUSA draft. She credits her time at the University of North Carolina with readjusting how she approached the position. It would take more than just brute strength or raw athleticism.
“I’ll never forget, Bill Palladino (the assistant coach) when I was at school, he told me, ‘You utilize your legs and your butt as much as possible because you can intercept the ball, and keep possession of the ball at the same time when you’re tackling, rather than just slide tackling it out of bounds or giving it away. You have the strength, you have the anticipation of the forward, you’re able to slide in between and maintain possession. That’s way better than slide tackles, and ‘save the day!’”
By the time Whitehill graduated from UNC, the WUSA had folded. Apart from a brief stint with a W-League side in 2005, the national team provided her only chance to compete until the formation of the Women’s Professional Soccer league in 2009.
Whitehill debuted for the USA in July 2000 when she was 18 years old. Her last game representing the United States was in March 2010. Ten years of having her name followed with the modifier, “U.S. Women’s National Team player.” Ten years of being in the small, elite club of women who managed to reach the highest level of the game in America. Ten years in red, white, and blue (and sometimes gold), and then the calls stopped coming.
“It’s a really tough transition. You’re used to certain things. In terms of my career, once I got into the national team, I was always with the national team. To be honest, I didn’t really worry that much about being cut. I should have been, probably, but I was young and naive. I didn’t think I would ever really have to worry that much. After the ACL for me, that’s when it really started to hit home. I think mentally, it really did take a toll. I didn’t realize it until years later.”
Whitehill listed the challenges of trying to recover from injury, of being unsure of where she stood with the coaching staff, even of doubting her own recovery and “not being the player that I once was.” She had forged a career from her body, from knowing how to use it, from being stronger and smarter than her opponents. How do you face the fear that you might never be the same, all because of an injury you couldn’t control?
“That was tough. I think that transition is different for everyone. For me, I personally had to seek help. I saw sports counselors, sports psychiatrists, I saw a counselor, just a general type of situation just to talk it through. I have an amazing support system in my husband and my family, but they’re obviously on my side. They’re biased. You have to talk to someone who doesn’t know everything, and that was one of the biggest things for me.”
The chaser to the bitter shot of being dropped from the national team? Enduring one of the most miserable seasons in American women’s professional soccer, the 2011 Atlanta Beat’s 1-13-4 disaster.
But despite the results, a professional league meant that Whitehill was still on the pitch, and still playing against the best. And she was always learning.
“The sophistication of the forwards got better as I got older. I had to adapt to them. As wonderful as players like Mia [Hamm] and Tiffeny Milbrett, you look at someone like Marta coming in. She redefined the game with her skill set. A lot of young players like Alex Morgan got to watch Marta and see her game. So I had to figure out what is the best way to defend against someone like Marta. I’m not going to beat her with speed, I’m not even going to beat her with speed when she’s dribbling the ball. You had to force her to an unnatural position, which is playing with her right foot. If you can force her into a right foot situation, then you can try to force her into a poor decision, a longer touch or she’d be forced into a pass. But I definitely had to adapt.”
The WPS folded, and Whitehill ended up in Boston in 2012. The Breakers were among a handful of teams who had thrown their lot in with the WPSL, a lower level league willing to form an elite division to try and fill the gap left by WPS. Beyond the Breakers, Chicago Red Stars, and Western New York Flash, there weren’t many challenges, except perhaps signing the requested autographs for star-struck college kids who would line up for Whitehill and Heather O’Reilly.
Professional women’s soccer returned the next year, with the NWSL, and Whitehill stayed put. The first season, Whitehill played in all twenty-two of the Breakers’ games for a total of 1,978 minutes. She was called for seven fouls and one yellow card. She also had to serve as player-coach during the playoff push.
Their first NWSL season was also their best. By 2014, the Boston backline was in disarray. Whitehill was the only constant, and the lack of chemistry (mostly self-induced by coaching decisions) showed. Post-game conferences were awkward affairs, in which Tom Durkin would list the faults plaguing his starting eleven, expounding for ten minutes off the first question. As captain, Whitehill was forced to sit next to him and listen, staring at her hands or off into space.
She was home in Boston, though, and decided to play at least one more season.
After the tone and disappointment of the 2014 campaign, Cat’s return was in no way certain. After the Breakers’ final home game, Whitehill seemed honestly surprised when supporters asked if she would be back the next year. Like plenty of elite athletes, Whitehill has an uncanny ability to put too much blame on herself for results. (She also has a healthy, perhaps even raging, competitive streak. It can extend to comparing the number of steps taken in a day with unsuspecting reporters in the Boston Breakers parking lot.)
“I’m very grateful that even though I wasn’t on the national team, I was still able to play and stay in the league for as long as I did. I stopped playing on the national team in what, 2010? And I played for basically five more years. I loved it and fortunately my husband was cool with it.” Whitehill pauses a little here. She’s doing this interview from the car with her husband as they drive up to Maine for a vacation before the season starts, and she’s clearly said it for his benefit. “I was lucky to be able to live with my husband here in Boston. For many years of our marriage, we didn’t get to.”
But the hoped-for return never materialized. The decision to retire was essentially out of her control. There was no injury on the field, or a career’s worth of bumps and bruises finally taking their toll. Instead, it was a set of wet stairs, a fall, and some broken ribs. Adding up the recovery time and her broadcasting commitments, Whitehill felt she was only getting in the way in Boston’s attempts at turning the season around. The lingering doubts from 2014 didn’t help either.
“It wasn’t going to help the team. When I went through preseason with the team, and I saw our first game in Portland, we weren’t good enough. And I wasn’t going to be the difference, I wasn’t going to help this team enough. My heart wasn’t 100% in it, and I knew they could use my salary to bring in help.”
The Breakers didn’t use the money saved from Whitehill’s salary in a way that changed the direction of the season. Instead they limped into last place (with four wins, this was not exactly an Atlanta Beat situation, but Shield-winners Seattle Reign FC had nearly three times the points by the close of the regular season). Meanwhile, Whitehill focused on her broadcasting responsibilities with Fox, covering the Women’s World Cup in Canada.
There’s no real career template for professional women soccer players, post-retirement. There are options in broadcasting, media, coaching, moving on to other careers or falling back on college majors. For every Julie Foudy, there’s also a dozen players (if not more) who retired too young to earn a sustainable wage.
By 2016, the Breakers were in the midst of another overhaul, which included hiring head coach Matt Beard and trading Alyssa Naeher to Chicago. During the offseason, Whitehill was at an event with the general manager of the team, Lee Billiard. She told him, “Hey, I just really want to be involved. However you can get me involved, you know, please, I’d love to be back.
It’s clear Whitehill’s aiming for everything in the next stage of her soccer career. She’s still got the Fox gig, but has added on assistant coaching responsibilities and acts as a brand ambassador for the Boston Breakers. That makes her one of the few women on the coaching/administrative side of the National Women’s Soccer League.
Maybe it’s not the rush of playing in a sold-out stadium, but there are perks to the new job. “I miss certain things about it. But I’m really excited about this new phase of my life. I really like talking to the players, I love seeing the different ins-and-outs of the game. ‘If you tell a player, if you do this, it will work.’ And then they do it, and it works.”
Whitehill’s rewards for her wise tactical adjustments, for her ability to adapt, are still there. And she’s still reaching for more. |
With over 100 audio and video formats, FFmpeg is at the heart of countless multimedia programs, and it is one of the show-piece projects on the open source scene. Originally founded by Fabrice Bellard, Michael Niedermayer started maintaining the project in 2004. However, a team of 18 developers has now ousted him and appointed seven new project maintainers, among them the main x264 developer, Jason Garrett-Glaser ("Dark Shikari"), and Ronald S. Bultje. Some of the most active FFmpeg developers had been dissatisfied with Niedermayer's project management and had accused him of slowing down the development of the codec library, which is licensed under the GPL / LGPL, by focussing on unnecessary details and causing superfluous discussions.
The developers felt compelled to act, created a new GIT source code management repository at ffmpeg.org and copied all sources from videolan.org. Only a few maintainers at ffmpeg.org have now been given write access. In the documentation, Jason Garret-Glaser, one of the renegade developers, subsequently also modified the URL for downloading sources to the new GIT server and removed information which identified Michael Niedermayer as the project maintainer. These changes were also integrated into the original VideoLAN GIT repository – by accident, say the renegades.
The developers' announcement states that FFmpeg development will from now on take a similar approach to that of the Linux kernel. In kernel development, only project maintainers have write access to the source code management system; changes are submitted as patches.
Niedermayer has expressed his complete surprise about recent events. "Of course it's their full right to fork if they see the need for that", he said, but added that the team of 18 developers had taken de facto control of the project, and that he didn't know the reasons behind their actions.
Opinions about the move also differ among the FFmpeg developers. For instance, some developers think that criticisms of Niedermayer were exaggerated, while others have complained that there was no prior public discussion.
(crve) |
Nintendo is promoting Mario Party: Star Rush by pointing out a new survey conducted by Wakefield Research that many parents say they don’t have enough time to spend with their kids. As the big N notes, “parents tell their children they are too busy to play with them an average of eight times a week, with almost half of parents (48 percent) saying they spend more time commuting to work than playing with their kids. But simple things like playing a quick video game as a family, which tops the list of activities that kids enjoy most (33 percent), can be easy and fun.”
Nintendo adds that over half of parents (52 percent) often avoid playing family games due to the stress of picking a single game that everyone wants to play. Kids getting too bored (36 percent) or arguing whose turn it is (31 percent) are roadblocks as well.
In today’s announcement, Nintendo claims that Mario Party: Star Rush can help avoid these pitfalls. The game lets players take turns at once, experience various mini-games and boss battles, and go through seven different modes.
Source: Nintendo PR
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Shocking video of a man being forcefully removed from a United Airlines flight has drawn anger and condemnation from around the world.
It’s also got people wondering what their rights are if they find themselves being removed from a flight, or what amount of force airlines or police are allowed to use in removing you.
For anyone worried about finding themselves in the same situation, don’t fear –Rener Gracie, a renowned martial arts instructor and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, has got you covered.
In the above video, Gracie shows off some “self-defence” techniques you can use if you find yourself being “re-accommodated” by United or any other airline.
“I made the video to have a laugh, yes,” Gracie told Global News from his martial arts academy in Torrance, CA. “But I do think it was also a statement against United’s actions.”
READ MORE: United Airlines passenger David Dao suffered concussion, broken nose and lost teeth, will likely sue, lawyer says
Rener is part of Brazil’s legendary Gracie family, who invented and popularized the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu around the world. The family is also credited with being the driving force behind the creation of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
If it isn’t clear upon watching, Gracie doesn’t intend the video to convey serious self-defence techniques – a “tornado spin inverted heel hook” isn’t exactly a move that can be gleaned from a YouTube video.
In fact, Gracie says he would preach a much different approach should someone find themselves in the same situation as Dr. David Dao, the man in the now-infamous United Airlines video.
“If you’re a passenger [on a flight] and you’re dealing with law enforcement, you should never fight,” Gracie said.
De-escalation is a big theme of Gracie’s approach to self-defence, which emphasizes the use of force only when absolutely necessary.
“The best thing you can do is talk your way out of the situation,” Gracie said. “There’s no street fight that can’t be avoided.”
Gracie has made a name for himself online with his popular “Gracie Breakdown” videos, where he along with his brother Ryron Gracie and wife (and former WWE champion) Eve Torres break down self-defence techniques for a general audience.
WATCH: UFC legend Georges St-Pierre laughs off rival’s barbs ahead of comeback fight
The videos are often in response to UFC or other MMA fights, but not always. In fact, the most popular “Gracie Breakdown” video was a demonstration of self-defence techniques women can employ if they are assaulted by their taxi or Uber driver, as a recent high-profile cases in Halifax brought to light.
Still, Gracie emphasises that one of his goals in making the video – which has accumulated nearly 1,000,000 views on Facebook since it was posted Tuesday night – was to call out United and other airlines for the “crazy practice” of removing passengers from overbooked flights.
“All airlines overbook these flights intentionally,” Gracie said. “My conviction is that the customer is rightfully entitled to his seat.”
Anyone looking to learn Gracie self-defence techniques – plane related or otherwise – can visit the certified academies in North Vancouver, Edmonton, Gibsons, Saul Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Timmins, Winnipeg and Magog. |
The hackers panel is one of the highlights of InfoSecurity Europe High street chains will be the next victims of cyber terrorism, some of the world's elite hackers have warned. They claim it is only a "matter of time" before the likes of Tesco and Marks & Spencer are targeted. Criminals could use the kind of tactics which crippled Estonia's government and some firms last year, they warned. The experts were members of the infamous "Hackers Panel" which convened in London this week at the InfoSecurity Europe conference. The panel includes penetration testers and so-called "white hat" hackers, who help companies tighten up their digital security by searching for flaws in their defences. Previous panellists include Gary McKinnon, known as Solo, alleged by the US government to have hacked into dozens of US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Defense computers. The "hackers" usually remain anonymous, "for security reasons", but this year's panellists agreed to break cover. Common cause First up was Roberto Preatoni, the founder of the cyber crime monitoring site, Zone-H, and WabSabiLabi, a trading site for security researchers. His appearance came just a few months after he was arrested by Italian authorities on charges of hacking and wiretapping, as part of the ongoing investigation into the Telecom Italia scandal. Mr Preatoni told the audience that the attacks in Estonia were a harbinger for a new era of cyber warfare. Notorious hacker Gary McKinnon has previously taken part in the panel "I'm afraid we will have to get used to this," said Mr Preatoni, also known as SyS64738. "We had all been waiting for this kind of attack to happen. "Estonia was just unfortunate to be the first country to experience it. But very soon, our own [western] companies and countries will be getting attacked for political and religious reasons. "This kind of attack can happen at any time. And it will happen." During the two week "cyber war" against Estonia, hackers shut down the websites of banks, governments and political parties using "denial-of-service" (DoS) attacks, which knock websites offline by swamping servers with page requests. As many of the attacks originated from Russia, the Estonian government pointed the finger at the Kremlin. But Mr Preatoni said that, having spoken to contacts in the hacking community, he was clear that "Putin was not involved". "In my opinion, this was a collection of private individuals who spontaneously gathered under the same flag. "Even though Estonia is one of the world's most advanced countries in IT technology, the whole economy was brought to its knees. "That's the beauty of asymmetric warfare. You don't need a lot of money, or an army of people. You can do it from the comfort of your living room, with a beer in your hand. Gate control His warning was echoed by Steve Armstrong, who teaches seminars in hacking techniques, at the SANS Institute for information security training. "If someone wants to have a pop at the UK, they are unlikely to go for the government web servers. They will go for the lower hanging fruit - companies which are seen as good representatives of the country.
Hi-tech crime: A glossary Cracking hi-tech crime "The likes of Tesco, Marks & Spencer and B&Q can be seen as legitimate targets. "We have to get the message across to companies [to invest in information security]. "At the moment Chief Executives are only interested in the bottom line. But remember - if tesco.com goes down, that's a lot of shopping." Mr Preatoni said that the Estonian government's repeated failure to thwart the attacks was proof that we still have "no good solutions" for denial of service attacks. The panellists then argued over whether Internet Service Providers should do more to tighten security, by helping customers' protect their computers from being "zombified" by hackers for use in distributed DoS attacks. "Actually, I don't think the ISPs should have any role in security," said Preatoni. "In my opinion, that's like asking the Royal Mail to be responsible for the quality of your post." But his view was immediately challenged by the third panellist, Jason Creasey, head of research at the independent Information Security Forum. "I believe ISPs can play a phenomenal role in security, with a little bit of legal pressure," he claimed. Net weakness He was backed by an audience member, Angus Pinkerton, of Lynks Security Consulting. "The only way to defend against a distributed attack is with a distributed defence," he argued. "I think it's unacceptable that ISPs are content to let their customers be part of bot-nets." He challenged Steve Armstrong's view that asking ISPs to perform security duties was "fundamentally, censorship." "This is not about free speech," said Mr Pinkerton. "Free speech does not entitle you to shout fire in a crowded theatre." In the meantime, Mr Preatoni warned the audience it is "only going to get easier" to carry out a DoS attack, because he claimed the latest net address system, known as Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6), is actually more amenable to DoS. Later, he told the BBC that the rise in cyber attacks originating in China was a convenient cloak for western countries to disguise their own cyber espionage activities. "It's too easy to blame China," he said. "In fact, legitimate countries are bouncing their attacks through China. It's very easy to do, so why not? "My evil opinion is that some western governments are already doing this."
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Tourists visiting the Airy meridian at the Royal Observatory in England (dotted line) stand on the historic location of the prime meridian, but improving technology reveals its actual location lies to the east (solid line).
Tourists who want to take photographs at the prime meridian often stand at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. But improved technology reveals that the actual site of the imaginary north-south line that cuts the Earth in half at zero degrees longitude lies 334 feet (102 meters) east of the historical marker. The increased accuracy means that many historical coordinates are sometimes off by significant distances.
"Most people stand on the stripe and have their picture taken, with the sundial in the background," said Ken Seidelmann, an astronomer at the University of Virginia. "If they stood there with their GPS receiver, it wasn't zero degrees." [Photos: Amazing Images of Earth from Space]
Seidelmann learned that many people reported that their GPS devices listed the line of zero degrees longitude in a completely different location than at the landmark. He was part of a team of scientists who found that the prime meridian had shifted because of improved measurements rather than changes in the Earth's surface. Seidelmann presented the results at the American Astronomical Society's Division on Dynamical Astronomy in Nashville, Tennessee, in May.
The prime meridian divides the world's hemispheres. (Image: © Public domain)
GPS trumps the stars
In 1675, when England's Royal Observatory was founded, Earth was thought to be perfectly spherical. Later observations revealed that the planet, like most others, has a slight bulge around its center, which affects how gravity tugs at things across the globe. In 1884, the observatory's Airy Transit Circle, an instrument that measures star positions and determines local time, was set at what was then considered the calculated location of the prime meridian, and that's where most photographs are taken today.
To officially set the line of longitude, scientists relied on an instrument known as a photographic zenith tube, a telescope using the reflection of light off of mercury to determine the imaginary vertical line running toward Earth's core. But Earth's crust isn't perfectly flat; mountains and other terrain, along with the central bulge, affect the pull of gravity and distort calculations of the tug from the center of the Earth. The prime meridian, which sets the boundaries for time zones and the baseline for other lines of longitude around the globe, suffered from these variations.
Rather than using a basin of mercury, modern technology relies on precise measurements of the line running from the crust to the center of the Earth. To make those measurements, modern scientists incorporate variations in Earth's rotation, atomic clocks, lasers bounced from Earth to the moon and back, and GPS satellites.
"Better technology came along and phased out the optical methods," Seidelmann said.
In 1984, the International Time Bureau (BIH) redefined the location of the prime meridian based on refined measurements of the Earth's center. Thanks to satellites, the location of Earth's center of mass has been measured with an accuracy of about the size of a dime; in 1984, the accuracy was slightly less precise. Faced with the decision of whether to shift the longitudes of the Earth or its time zones to match modern measurements, the BHI chose to have its newly applied system shift the map rather than the time zones.
"They chose not to have a discontinuity in time and let the longitudes correct themselves," Seidelmann said.
Seidelmann's research was published in the Journal of Geodesy.
The Royal Observatory in Greenwich straddles the historic prime meridian. However, the actual line of zero degrees lies more than 300 feet (90 meters) to the east. (Image: © akasunrise0921 via Wikimedia Commons
Disappearing telescopes
After determining why the prime meridian had shifted, Seidelmann and his colleagues investigated how longitudes around the world were affected by the change. After determining the locations of observatories in a variety of nations, as described in historical references, they sent colleagues around the world out to determine whether the longitudes of the antique instruments were all off by 334 feet.
That task wound up being more challenging than it first appeared. According to Seidelmann, most of the instruments had disappeared, and the people who once used them were either retired or dead.
"You're sending people out to try to find an instrument that doesn't exist," he said.
Finding instruments in eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union was particularly challenging. In many cases, they found that observatories of the now-defunct country reported false locations of their instruments. In another memorable case, one Canadian instrument was reportedly located at its Ottawa, Ontario, observatory when in fact it sat on a local farm; its foundation was all that remained, he said.
In every place, the researchers found that the longitudes provided were off by some degree.
"In a number of places, they were off by one heck of a lot," Seidelmann said.
Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us at @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. |
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A Lake Elsinore man could lose his hand after being bitten by a rattlesnake he was holding and taking pictures with, he and his mother said Thursday.
Alex Gomez found the 4-foot-long snake in a field behind his home on Monday and decided to pick it up.
The 36-year-old could be seen holding the snake and even wrapping it around his neck in photographs provided to KTLA by his mother.
At some point after the photos were taken, the rattlesnake attacked Gomez, biting him in the hand.
"I was going to take it off my neck and do something else with it, but it turned sideways, and it sunk its one tooth into ... my hand," Gomez said.
He threw the snake off and ran to a neighbor's to call 911.
"I was terrified and I said 'What a fool. Stupid. He could die,'" his mother Debra Gomez said.
Alex Gomez was airlifted to Loma Linda University Medical Center for treatment.
He was out of the hospital Thursday night but still faced the possibility he could lose the use of his arm and have his thumb amputated.
"Don't mess with snakes," Gomez said. "Just leave them alone." |
A House Republican said Thursday he will launch an effort to force a vote on his bipartisan legislation shielding young immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children from deportation.
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) announced he will file a discharge petition next week when the chamber returns to session. The move is all the more striking given that discharge petitions are usually a tool used by the House minority party.
Coffman’s announcement came amid multiple reports on Thursday that President Trump is expected to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program as soon as Friday. Nearly 800,000 people who came to the U.S. illegally as children have been granted work permits and deferred deportation under the program created under President Obama in 2012.
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“#DACA participants grew up here, went to school here, and should be allowed to stay here. The time has come to take action,” Coffman wrote on Twitter.
At least 218 members must sign onto a discharge petition to trigger a House floor vote and circumvent the House majority party leadership.
Discharge petitions are rarely successful, except in cases where there’s a wide bipartisan coalition in favor of advancing a piece of legislation. The last time a discharge petition worked was in 2015 when House GOP leaders wouldn’t schedule a vote on a bill reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank.
Before that, a discharge petition hadn’t successfully been used to dislodge a bill since 2002 for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform.
Coffman’s bill, which he introduced in January with Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.), would extend work permits and deportation deferrals issued under DACA. It would only provide the provisional extension for three years, as a way to push Congress to pass longer-term immigration reform.
Sens. Dick Durbin Richard (Dick) Joseph DurbinKids confront Feinstein over Green New Deal Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl Overnight Energy: Trump ends talks with California on car emissions | Dems face tough vote on Green New Deal | Climate PAC backing Inslee in possible 2020 run MORE (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham Lindsey Olin GrahamWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration GOP lawmaker says panel to investigate drug company gaming of patent system Sixteen years later, let's finally heed the call of the 9/11 Commission MORE (R-S.C.) have introduced companion legislation in the Senate.
It’s likely that most, if not all, 194 House Democrats would sign onto Coffman’s discharge petition, meaning he would need at least 23 GOP colleagues to endorse his effort.
So far, only 12 mostly centrist Republicans have cosponsored Coffman’s legislation.
Members of the House majority party rarely sign onto, let alone create, discharge petitions given how they would embarrass leadership.
Democrats have filed multiple discharge petitions this year to force votes on bills to demand Trump’s tax returns and an independent investigation into how Russia influenced the 2016 elections.
Only one Republican, Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), signed onto the Democratic discharge petition that would require the release of Trump’s tax returns. However, neither bill ever had a realistic chance of success given the widespread opposition among Republicans.
Coffman is considered one of the most vulnerable House Republicans heading into the 2018 midterms, given that Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE won his district in last year’s election.
Other House Republicans in support of DACA have moved in recent days to pressure Trump to keep the program intact.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) filed amendments to an upcoming government spending package slated for House floor consideration next week that would prohibit the use of funds to change the Department of Homeland Security memo that created DACA. Another amendment he co-sponsored with Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) would allow DACA recipients to serve as government employees.
The House Rules Committee, which is controlled by GOP leaders, is expected to decide next week whether Curbelo’s amendments can get floor votes. House conservatives like Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) have submitted amendments that would eliminate DACA. |
Not to be confused with London City Airport
East London Airport (IATA: ELS, ICAO: FAEL) is an airport serving East London, a city in the Eastern Cape province on the southeast coast of South Africa.
East London's airport is a small but bustling one that plays an important role in the growing economy of the Eastern Cape. Every day it welcomes between 20 and 30 flights – which bring 346,000 people to East London each year. Of these, about 140,000 are holidaymakers, mostly local, and about 15% are foreign tourists. In 2013, the airport served 658,363 passengers. In 2016, East London Airport was voted the fastest growing airport in South Africa, having accomplished an almost 19% increase in traffic over a 12 month-period.[4] The airport welcomed over 806,000 passengers in 2016, beating the 679,000 that passed through East London in 2015. The second best performing airport for growth in 2014 was Kimberley, with its traffic growing by 11%. Overall the top airports of South Africa witnessed nearly 39.7 million passengers in 2016, up 5.3% on the year before.
History [ edit ]
The airport had an inauspicious beginning in 1927, when Lieut Colonel Alistair Miller asked the East London town council to help establish a municipal aerodrome at Woodbrook, west of the city.
Passenger flights were undertaken by two de Havilland Moth planes on Saturday afternoons and all day on Sundays, weather permitting. Flights could also be booked for weekdays, but only by special arrangement. In 1931 it took 11 hours to fly from Windhoek in Namibia to East London.
In 1944 a new airport was built at Collondale, about 2 km west of the present terminal building.
In 1965 the airport was again moved, this time to its present site, 9 km west of the city centre. Construction of the terminal buildings finished in 1966, and the airport was named after Ben Schoeman, the minister of transport at the time.
The airport was renamed in 1994. Since then, major alterations to the terminal building have been completed and a new first-floor office development for the airport management team has been added.
Facilities [ edit ]
East London Airport resides at an elevation of 435 feet (133 m) above mean sea level. It has two asphalt paved runways: 11/29 is 1,939 by 46 metres (6,362 ft × 151 ft) and 06/24 is 1,585 by 46 metres (5,200 ft × 151 ft).[1]
Airlines and destinations [ edit ]
Passengers [ edit ]
Cargo [ edit ]
Traffic statistics [ edit ]
Annual passenger traffic [7] Year Passengers % Change 2006 664,824 19.2% 2007 744,949 12.1% 2008 715,206 4.0% 2009 675,980 5.5% 2010 671,895 0.6% 2011 681,741 1.5% 2012 663,115 2.7% 2013 658,363 0.7% 2014 642,085 2.5% 2015 678,989 5.7% 2016 806,437 18.8% 2017 804,741 0.2%
Incidents [ edit ]
On 13 March 1967, South African Airways Flight 406 crashed into the Indian Ocean while on approach to East London Airport. All 25 passengers and crew on board were killed.
See also [ edit ] |
Washington 48th LD Caucus — April 17, 2016
Jeff Handley Blocked Unblock Follow Following Apr 17, 2016
I honestly do not know if I was seated as a delegate or not.
Perhaps we should call it the Washington 48th LD Circus instead. I cannot even find the words to describe the level of confusion and hysteria at today’s event — it was horrendous. Instead, I am just going to provide my raw notes that I dumped down as soon as I got home.
Doors opened at 1pm I registered as a Sanders alternate delegate for the 1st congressional district I was told to “sit up front on the left side” and I was not given a credentials slip When about 25% of people were seated, they announced many alternates had mistakenly been given credentials slips They added that Sanders delegates should have blue slips and Clinton delegates should have yellow After lots of uproar it was corrected that alternates should have blue slips and delegates should have yellow After more uproar it was corrected that 9th district delegates should have yellow and 1st district delegates should have blue It was added that 9th district delegates should be up from and 1st district should be in the back I moved to the back to join the other 1st district delegates Around 3:00pm, it was announced that alternate delegates should not be seated in the chairs and instead should be outside (out back) Around 4:00pm, alternate delegates sitting outside were told that delegates had been seated Alternates were told that if they weren’t running to be a delegate, they could go home Shortly thereafter, alternates running to be delegates were told they could reenter the building When I got to a position where I could hear what was going on, it was clear that the caucus chair was explaining the rules and the agenda He put forth a motion that he should be named the permanent chair without a vote He said if there weren’t any objections, we would move forward — but it was likely that no one else in attendance had studied the agenda or knew what to do Then he declared that there had been no objections and asked for a vote of all those in favor Some credentials slips went up and he called it final and moved on After a bit of confusing discussion, it started to become clear that many delegates in the 1st district (sitting in the back) could not hear anything being said (let alone the remaining alternates sitting ouside that had zero idea what was going on) By 4:35pm, motions were being put forth to suspend the rule about adjournment at 5:00pm A motion was put forth to move forward on that vote without discussion about it There were many people expressing confusion and objection to the motion The motions were approved and it was stated that we would not adjourn at 5pm and would instead adjourn automatically when the final credential count was announced Delegates from both sides got up, yelled, and stormed out of the caucus Questions were asked about how long we’d be there Questions were asked about how we’d vote on delegates if we were automatically adjourned when the credential count was announced Questions were asked about how delegate seats would be filled for the delegates leaving It was explained that alternates would be chosen at random to backfill delegates that left, but chosen from the same candidate’s side as the delegate It was explained that precint didn’t matter for the delegate/alternate It was explained that male delegates must be replaced by male alternates and female delegates must be replaced by female alternates There were questions asked about those rules and the chair and others on stage said they didn’t know The speakers explained that they are simply executing with the rules, they don’t set them or understand them A “representative” for Sanders was then introduced and given the opportunity to give a speech His speech was only a couple minutes long and absolutely terrible His speech didn’t represent Sanders accurately and Sanders supporters actually booed him A “representative” for Clinton then gave a 5+ minute speech His speech tried to claim that it won’t matter whether Clinton or Sanders is elected because they both have the same values, but that we should rally behind Clinton At the end of his speech, a motion was put forth to allow for 2nd speeches or for the 1st Sanders speech to be redacted The motion was denied saying “there are no provisions for additional speeches” Instead, we moved to a 5-minute recess After the recess was ended, it was announced that delegates had been seated and alternates not running as delegates could go home After a short while, the credential count was announced and there were only 522 delegates named — it was stated that we needed to get to 599 — therefore we’d need to seat 77 more alternates A motion was put forth to accept the 522-delegate count and proportionally assign delegates instead of seating alternates That motion ended up getting rejected and they called a long list of names to seat alternates After a while, they read a list of names for more alternates that needed to be seated After the names had been read, it was said once again that alternates not running to be delegates could go home A moment later, another list of names was presented to the chair for more alternates that needed to be seated A while later, a new credential count was announced: 562 delegates (still not at 599) Of the 562, it was 369 Sanders and 193 Clinton Someone declared that once we hit 40% of the delegate count it can be declared final and “we can go home” There was confusing discussion and a motion was put forth to make the 562-delegate count final A motion was then put forth to forego discussion around whether or not that motion should be voted on That motion was put to vote and the Clinton side of the room strongly voted for it while the Sanders side of the room strongly (perhaps unanimously) voted against it The vote was called in favor of ending discussion so the credential count could be finalized A motion was called to ask for an accurate count of the votes The motion to end discussion for the motion to finalize the 562-delegate credential count was then voted on again, with an accurate vote count taken The vote was announced and it was clear that the discussion needed to be allowed A question was asked if they were still seating alternates — they weren’t sure A question was asked about what to do if we ran out of alterantes — they didn’t know A question was asked about when we’d vote for delegates for the next stage — they didn’t clearly explain A question was asked about what the breakdown was for the empty seats I had gone out to the registration table a few times and asked if any Sanders delegate seats still needed to be filled I was repeatedly told “no” and that all Sanders delegate seats had been filled; only Clinton seats remained empty They then announced the answer to the question of the breakdown of empty seats The answer indicated that the majority of the empty seats were on the Clinton side But it was stated that there were “about a few” empty seats on the Sanders side I went back to the registration table and asked to be registered I was told that the Sanders side was full I went back into the room and confirmed with a delegate that they had just said there were empty Sanders seats I then went back to the registration table and demanded to be registered While I was going back and forth, the motion to finalize the delegate count was voted on After registering and being handed my blue credential slip, I returned to the room As I reentered, I heard it was passed that the credential count was finalized
I honestly do not know if I was seated as a delegate or not.
I did not capture everything here; there was far more confusion than I was able to absorb. I don’t know that anyone left the 48th LD caucus with a clear understanding of the results. |
DUBLIN, Ohio -- As perhaps the hottest name in golf these days, Bubba Watson is trying to keep his public and private lives separate.
But the two may have intertwined -- no one knows for sure -- in a curious incident earlier this week while the Masters champion and his family were in the Columbus, Ohio, area for the Memorial Tournament.
Watson hosted a Christian music concert at a downtown venue Tuesday night. He was with his wife, Angie, as they headed to their rental home.
"A car chased me," he said after a 74 in Friday's second round at the Memorial. "Angie was driving. She had to pull over. I switched to driving so I could drive through someone's yard if I had to. But we had to drive away from our house, the house we rented. We drove for 37 minutes."
Watson called his caddie, Ted Scott, hoping that Scott could intercept the pursuing car.
"Teddy was trying to find me in his car so he could block him," said Watson, who recently adopted a child with his wife. "When you start dealing with that, when you have the kid with you, it's not a good situation."
The Watsons kept driving and driving, watching the headlights in their rearview mirror, until finally the danger passed.
"We kept driving around and they finally gave up," Watson said. "I was going to keep driving until we felt safe again. That's the first time that's ever happened."
Watson said earlier in the week he and his wife have been trying to buy a house in the exclusive Isleworth community in Orlando, Fla. Among many other advantages, it's a gated community with good security. Among other celebrities who have lived in Isleworth are golfers Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara and 2011 British Open champion Darren Clarke, along with baseball star Ken Griffey Jr., and actor Wesley Snipes.
"Isleworth is a beautiful place. I don't have to leave the gates. Security is a big key there," said Watson, who previously lived in Arizona. "We want to be in a secure area. We wanted to be where we can be a family, I can play golf, ride the cart around." |
Phablets are big and can be hard to use in one hand, but Alcatel thinks it has the solution for this dilemma. Its latest Android phablet, the Pop Mega, a six-inch honker available from Tracfone's prepaid Straight Talk brand next month, actually comes with a secondary, little phone for making calls, sending texts, and getting notifications. The secondary phone is affectionately known as the Buddy and pairs to the Pop Mega via Bluetooth. Alcatel notes that it's easier to use the Buddy when making phone calls, while the Pop Mega is better suited for browsing the web, watching video, and doing all the other things you do with a smartphone.
Alcatel isn't the first company to try this idea — HTC launched the Mini accessory for its big phones in China back in January, 2013. But instead of being a costly accessory, Alcatel is including the Buddy in the box with the Pop Mega, which is expected to cost less than $250 when it goes on sale. Alcatel is also releasing a line of Pop phones with Tracfone, including the $150, 4-inch Pop Star with LTE, and the 5-inch Pop Icon designed for first-time smartphone buyers. All of the Alcatel Pop line will be available starting next month. |
NEW DELHI: Cooking gas (LPG) price was on Saturday hiked by Rs 11.42 per cylinder following the government's decision to raise commission paid to the dealers.Petrol and diesel prices too may go up marginally as the oil ministry considers raising dealers commission by at least 23 paisa and 10 paisa a litre respectively.The ministry on Friday issued orders raising commission paid to LPG dealers from Rs 25.83 per 14.2-kg cylinder to Rs 37.25, government officials said.The 44 per cent or Rs 11.42 per cylinder increase in the commission on the subsidised cooking fuel is being passed on to consumers, they said.For the consumer, subsidised LPG in Delhi will now cost Rs 410.42 per cylinder, up from Rs 399.The hike comes within weeks of the government deciding to restrict supply of subsidised cooking gas to 6 cylinders of 14.2-kg size per household in a year.The remaining supplies would have to be sourced at market rates.Officials said the commission paid on market price or non-subsidised LPG too has been raised by Rs 12.17 to Rs 38 per cylinder. Accordingly, a non-subsidised LPG cylinder price will go up from Rs 883.5 to Rs 921.5.A similar exercise is on to raise commission paid to petrol pump dealers on sale of petrol and diesel.The ministry is proposing to raise commission paid on petrol by 23 paisa to 1.72 and that on diesel by 10 paisa to Rs 1.01 a litre.The hike being considered for petrol and diesel is less than 67 paisa and 42 paisa respectively being demanded by petrol pump dealers in view of their working capital cost going up substantially due to frequent price changes and sharp rise in overheads like electricity charges. |
More than 70 rabbis from different denominations have urged Jews to switch to an animal-free, plant-based diet as “an expression of Jewish values”.
In an open letter, they say: “Millions among us suffer and die from chronic, diet-related diseases each year,” adding: “Billions of animals are subjected to unfathomable cruelty in the meat, dairy and egg industries.”
The list of rabbis 73 rabbis, plus four cantors or rabbinic students, includes Senior Masorti Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg as well as Rabbi Natan Levy, the former interfaith consultant to the Board of Deputies.
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Arguing that animal agriculture is “the number one contributor to global climate change among all economic sectors,” they add: “As we enter the New Year, let’s align our actions with Judaism’s values and solve these problems.”
Writing under the auspices of Jewish Veg, a non-profit organisation aiming to encourage Jews to adopt plant-based diets, they say that doing so would be “an expression of our shared Jewish values of compassion for animals, protection of the environment, and concern for our physical and spiritual well-being”. |
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke launched SEAL PAC when he was elected to the House as a Republican from Montana and stepped away from the group after joining President Donald Trump's Cabinet in March. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images Former Zinke PAC blames software for $200,000 accounting discrepancy
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke's former PAC blamed a technical glitch for a nearly $200,000 discrepancy in its campaign finance reports and said it is working to fix problems identified by the FEC.
SEAL PAC told the FEC on Friday that faulty software led it to report having more cash on hand at the beginning of 2017 than at the beginning of last year. Zinke launched the leadership PAC when he was elected to the House as a Republican from Montana and stepped away from the group after joining President Donald Trump's Cabinet in March.
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Last month, the FEC asked SEAL PAC to explain why its report for the first six months of 2017 showed it had $408,882 in the bank as of Jan. 1, when its final 2016 report showed a balance of $215,633 on Dec. 31. The PAC said the data file accounting for the surge in cash it reported having did not transfer correctly to the FEC.
“The committee is now rebuilding the missing ... data file to compile lost data from the prior uploaded report,” a representative for SEAL PAC wrote in the response. “If needed, FEC technical support will be contacted for further data recovery and amendment assistance.”
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SEAL PAC's former treasurer, Vincent DeVito, left the organization earlier this year to join Zinke at Interior, where he is a senior adviser on energy policy. The group's new treasurer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The PAC reported raising $415,253 in the first six months of this year, much of which came from small donors, and spending more than $1 million over that same period, mostly on direct mail consultants and related expenses. The PAC continues to work with the same handful of political operatives it did when Zinke was in charge, many of whom have drawn criticism from other GOP candidates.
In its response to the FEC on Friday, SEAL PAC explained that the direct mail and other activities on which it spent the vast majority of its money “did not contain expressed advocacy,” or specific suggestions on which candidates or measures to vote for.
SEAL PAC also said it took steps to obtain missing information about some donors and refund donations it received or contributions it made that were above legal limits. |
A constitutional amendment is a modification of the constitution of a polity, organization or other type of entity. Amendments are often interwoven into the relevant sections of an existing constitution, directly altering the text. Conversely, they can be appended to the constitution as supplemental additions (codicils), thus changing the frame of government without altering the existing text of the document.
Most constitutions require that amendments cannot be enacted unless they have passed a special procedure that is more stringent than that required of ordinary legislation. Examples of such special procedures include supermajorities in the legislature, or direct approval by the electorate in a referendum, or even a combination of two or more different special procedures. A referendum to amend the constitution may also be triggered in some jurisdictions by popular initiative.
Australia and Ireland provide examples of constitutions requiring that all amendments are first passed by the legislature before being submitted to the people; in the case of Ireland, a simple majority of those voting at the electorate is all that is required, whereas a more complex set of criteria must be met in Australia (a majority of voters in a majority of states is also necessary). Switzerland has procedure similar to that of Australia.
The special procedures for the amendment of some constitutions have proven to be so exacting, that of proposed amendments either few (8 Amendments out of 44 proposed in Australia), or none (as in Japan) have been passed over a period of several decades. In contrast, the constitution of the U.S. state of Alabama has been amended over 800 times since 1901.
Form of changes to the text [ edit ]
There are a number of formal differences, from one jurisdiction to another, in the manner in which constitutional amendments are both originally drafted and written down once they become law. In some jurisdictions, such as Ireland, Estonia, and Australia, constitutional amendments originate as bills and become laws in the form of acts of parliament. This may be the case notwithstanding the fact that a special procedure is required to bring an amendment into force. Thus, for example, in Ireland and Australia although amendments are drafted in the form of Acts of Parliament they cannot become law until they have been approved in a referendum. By contrast, in the United States a proposed amendment originates as a special joint resolution of Congress that does not require the President to sign and that the President can not veto.
The manner in which constitutional amendments are finally recorded takes two main forms. In most jurisdictions, amendments to a constitution take the form of revisions to the previous text.[citation needed] Thus, once an amendment has become law, portions of the original text may be deleted or new articles may be inserted among existing ones. The second, less common method, is for amendments to be appended to the end of the main text in the form of special articles of amendment, leaving the body of the original text intact. Although the wording of the original text is not altered, the doctrine of implied repeal applies. In other words, in the event of conflict, an article of amendment will usually take precedence over the provisions of the original text, or of an earlier amendment. Nonetheless, there may still be ambiguity whether an amendment is intended to supersede or to supplement an existing article in the text.
An article of amendment may, however, explicitly express itself as having the effect of repealing a specific existing article.[1] The use of appended articles of amendment is most famous as a feature of the United States Constitution, but it is also the method of amendment in a number of other jurisdictions, such as Venezuela.
Under the 1919 German Weimar Constitution, the prevailing legal theory was that any law reaching the necessary supermajorities in both chambers of parliament was free to deviate from the terms of the constitution, without itself becoming part of the constitution. This very wide conception of "amendment" eased the rise of Adolf Hitler to power; it was consequently explicitly ruled out in the postwar 1949 constitution, which allows amendments only by explicitly changing the constitution's text.
Methods of constitutional amendment [ edit ]
Eurasia [ edit ]
European Union [ edit ]
The Treaties of the European Union are a set of international treaties between member states that describe the constitutional basis of the European Union. Prior to the Treaty of Lisbon’s entry into force in 2009, there was only one procedure for the revision of the treaties on which the EU is based: the convening of an intergovernmental conference. Since 2009, Article 48 of the Treaty on European Union has laid down two procedures for the revision of the treaties.[2]
Ordinary revision: this relates to key changes in relation to the competences of the EU and requires the convening of an intergovernmental conference to adopt proposals for amendments by consensus. All EU countries have to ratify the treaty amendments for them to enter into force.
this relates to key changes in relation to the competences of the EU and requires the convening of an intergovernmental conference to adopt proposals for amendments by consensus. All EU countries have to ratify the treaty amendments for them to enter into force. Simplified revision: where the proposed amendments relate to the EU's policies and its internal actions, the European Council unanimously adopts a decision on the amendments having consulted the Commission, the Parliament and the European Central Bank (if the amendment concerns monetary matters). The new treaty provisions only enter into force following their ratification by all EU countries according to their own constitutional procedures.
Albania [ edit ]
The Constitution of Albania states its terms for being amending under Article 177 within "Part 17: Amending The Constitution."
1. An initiative for amending the Constitution may be taken by not less than one-fifth of the members of the Assembly.
2. No amendment to the Constitution may take place when extraordinary measures are in effect.
3. A proposed amendment is approved by not less than two-thirds of all members of the Assembly.
4. The Assembly may decide, by two-thirds of all its members, that the proposed constitutional amendments be voted on in a referendum. The proposed constitutional amendment becomes effective after ratification by referendum, which takes place not later than 60 days after its approval by the Assembly.
5. An approved constitutional amendment is submitted to referendum when one-fifth of the members of the Assembly request it.
6. The President of the Republic cannot return for re-consideration a constitutional amendment approved by the Assembly.
7. An amendment approved by referendum is promulgated by the President of the Republic and becomes effective on the date provided for in it.
8. An amendment of the Constitution cannot be made unless a year has passed since the rejection by the Assembly of a proposed amendment on the same issue or three years have passed from its rejection by referendum.
Article 177 is the only article under this part of the Albanian constitution.
Austria [ edit ]
The Constitution of Austria is unusually liberal in terms of constitutional amendments. Any piece of parliamentary legislation can be designated as "constitutional law", i.e., as a part of the constitution if the required supermajority and other formalities for an amendment are met. An amendment may take the form of a change of the Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz, the centerpiece of the constitution, a change to another constitutional act, a new constitutional act, or of a section of constitutional law in a non-constitutional act. Furthermore, international treaties can be enacted as constitutional law, as happened in the case of the European Convention of Human Rights. Over the decades, frequent amendments and, in some cases, the intention to immunize pieces of legislation from judicial review, have led to much "constitutional garbage" consisting of hundreds of constitutional provisions spread all over the legal system. This has led to calls for reform.[citation needed]
A majority of two-thirds in the National Council (parliament). Only in the case of a fundamental change (Gesamtänderung) of the constitution a confirmation by referendum is required. Since 1945, this has only happened once when Austria's accession to the European Union was approved by popular vote.
If a constitutional amendment limits the powers of the states, a two-thirds majority in the Federal Council of Austria is required as well. Depending on the matter on hand, two-thirds of the Federal Councilors present (attendance of one-half of all Councilors is required), or two-thirds of all Federal Councilors must approve. If the amendment would change articles 34 or 35, the majority of councilors of at least four of the nine states is an additional requirement.
Belgium [ edit ]
The Constitution of Belgium can be amended by the federal legislative power, which consists of the King (in practice, the Federal Government) and the Federal Parliament. In order to amend the Constitution, the federal legislative power must declare the reasons to revise the Constitution in accordance with Article 195. This is done by means of two so-called Declarations of Revision of the Constitution, one adopted by the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate, and one signed by the King and the Federal Government.
Following this declaration, the Federal Parliament is automatically dissolved and a new federal election must take place. This makes it impossible to amend the Constitution unless an election has intervened. Following the election, the new Federal Parliament can amend those articles that have been declared revisable. Neither Chamber can consider amendments to the Constitution unless at least two-thirds of its members are present and the Constitution can only be amended if at least two-thirds of the votes cast are in favour of the amendment.
Bulgaria [ edit ]
Under the current Constitution of Bulgaria (1991), there are two procedures for amendment, depending on the part of the constitution to be amended:[3]
Normal amendment procedure (Articles 153–156): the Parliament can amend the Constitution for minor issues with a two-thirds majority. This shall be done in three successive readings.
Special amendment procedure (Articles 157–163): this procedure is the only way to revise the international borders of Bulgaria; change the form of government in the country; change the form in which the Constitution and international treaties are applied in Bulgaria (Article 5) or suspend citizens' rights. When such amendment is needed, the Constitution envisages an election for Great National Assembly, which consists of 400 deputies, with 200 elected by proportional vote and 200 elected by the first-past-the-post method. Then the amendments to the Constitution are passed by two-thirds majority in three successive readings.
This procedure is viewed by some critics as too slow and ineffective.[4] There are voices in Bulgaria to remove the institution of Great National Assembly, which they view as an anachronism and to adopt a new procedure of constitutional amendment through popular vote.
China [ edit ]
The Constitution of China states how to be amended under Article 64 of "Chapter III: The Structure of the State." It says the following:
Amendments to the Constitution are to be proposed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress or by more than one-fifth of the deputies to the National People's Congress and adopted by a majority vote of more than two-thirds of all the deputies to the Congress.
Czech Republic [ edit ]
Passage of a constitutional act in the Czech Republic can only be accomplished through the agreement of three-fifths of all Deputies and Senators present at the time the proposed act is laid before each house of Parliament.[5] It is the only type of legislation that does not require the signature of the President to become law.[6] Furthermore, it is the only type of legislation the President cannot veto.[7]
Denmark [ edit ]
The Constitution of Denmark provides an example of multiple special procedures that must be followed. After an amendment has been approved by parliament, a general election must be held; the new parliament must then approve the amendment again before it is finally submitted to a referendum. There is also a requirement that at least forty percent of eligible voters must vote at the referendum in order for an amendment to be validly passed.
Estonia [ edit ]
The Constitution of Estonia can only be modified by three-fifths majority in two successive complements of Parliament, and a referendum for certain chapters.[8]
France [ edit ]
Amendments to the Constitution of France must first be passed by both houses with identical terms, and then need approval either by a simple majority in a referendum or by a three-fifths majority of the two houses of the French parliament jointly convened in Congress.
Germany [ edit ]
The Federal Republic of Germany uses a basic law as its constitution. The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany states its terms for amending under Article 79 of the document.
This Basic Law may be amended only by a law expressly amending or supplementing its text. In the case of an international treaty regarding a peace settlement, the preparation of a peace settlement, or the phasing out of an occupation regime, or designed to promote the defense of the Federal Republic, it shall be sufficient, for the purpose of making clear that the provisions of this Basic Law do not preclude the conclusion and entry into force of the treaty, to add language to the Basic Law that merely makes this clarification.
Any such law shall be carried by two thirds of the Members of the Bundestag and two thirds of the votes of the Bundesrat.
Amendments to this Basic Law affecting the division of the Federation into Länder, their participation on principle in the legislative process, or the principles laid down in Articles 1 and 20 shall be inadmissible.
The third paragraph was made by its framers to protect the country against any authoritarian or totalitarian regime such as that of Nazi Germany in the future. This is an example of the eternity clause in constitutional designing.
Greece [ edit ]
The Constitution of Greece is amendable through the terms which mentioned under Article 110 beneath "Section II: Revision of the Constitution" of "Part Four: Special, Final, and Transitional Provisions."
Ireland [ edit ]
The Constitution of Ireland, can only be modified by referendum, following proposal approved by the lower and upper houses of the Oireachtas, amongst citizens entitled to vote for the President. The amendment succeeds by simple majority, and no quorum is required.
Italy [ edit ]
Article 138 of the Constitution provides for the special procedure through which the Parliament can adopt constitutional laws (including laws to amend the Constitution of Italy).[9] Constitutional laws start by following the ordinary legislative procedure, which requires both houses of parliament to approve the law in the same text, with a simple majority (i.e. the majority of votes cast). However, after having been approved for the first time, they need to be voted for by both houses a second time, which can happen no sooner than three months after the first. In this second reading, no new amendments to the bill may be proposed: the bill must be either approved or rejected in its entirety.
The constitutional law needs to be approved by at least a majority of MPs in each house (absolute majority) in its second reading. Depending on the results of this second vote, the constitutional law may then follow two different paths.
If the bill is approved by a qualified majority of two-thirds of members in each house, it can be immediately promulgated by the President of the Republic and become law.
If the bill is approved by a majority of members in each house, but not enough to reach the qualified majority of two-thirds, it does not immediately become law. Instead, it must be first be published in the Official Gazette (the official journal where all Italian laws are published). Within three months after its publication, a constitutional referendum may be requested by either 500,000 voters, five regional councils, or one-fifth of the members of a house of parliament. If no constitutional referendum has been requested after the three months have elapsed, the bill can be promulgated and becomes law. If a constitutional referendum is requested, in order to become law the bill must be approved by a majority of votes cast by the whole electorate. No quorum is required, meaning that the referendum turnout has no effect on its validity (unlike in other forms of referendums in Italy).
Only three constitutional referendums have ever been held in Italy: in 2001 (in which the constitutional law was approved), in 2006, and in 2016 (in which they were rejected).
Japan [ edit ]
The Constitution of Japan states that it can be amended corresponding to Article 96 of "Chapter IX: Amendments" within the document. It says the following:
Amendments to this Constitution shall be initiated by the Diet, through a concurring vote of two-thirds or more of all the members of each House and shall thereupon be submitted to the people for ratification, which shall require the affirmative vote of a majority of all votes cast thereon, at a special referendum or at such election as the Diet shall specify.
Amendments when so ratified shall immediately be promulgated by the Emperor in the name of the people, as an integral part of this Constitution.
Japan has used this Constitution since Saturday, 3 May 1947. It was adopted and implemented as the most quintessential doctrine of Japanese governance following the Second World War. As a result, in order to ensure that Japan would not be a source of future aggression, a special portion was written into the document in the form of "Article 9: Renunciation of War." It describes as follows:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
Even though these two paragraphs are not expressly protected by the eternity clause, many Japanese people argue that it needs to be interpreted as being irrevocable due to the significant and precise nature of the article.
Philippines [ edit ]
Under the common interpretation of the Constitution, amendments can be proposed by one of three methods: a People's Initiative, a Constituent Assembly or a Constitutional Convention.[10][11]
Poland [ edit ]
The Constitution of Poland says the following under Article 235 of "Chapter XII: Amending the Constitution" within it:
1. A bill to amend the Constitution may be submitted by the following: at least one-fifth of the statutory number of Deputies; the Senate; or the President of the Republic.
2. Amendments to the Constitution shall be made by means of a statute adopted by the Sejm and, thereafter, adopted in the same wording by the Senate within a period of 60 days.
3. The first reading of a bill to amend the Constitution may take place no sooner than 30 days after the submission of the bill to the Sejm.
4. A bill to amend the Constitution shall be adopted by the Sejm by a majority of at least two-thirds of votes in the presence of at least half of the statutory number of Deputies, and by the Senate by an absolute majority of votes in the presence of at least half of the statutory number of Senators.
5. The adoption by the Sejm of a bill amending the provisions of Chapters I, II or XII of the Constitution shall take place no sooner than 60 days after the first reading of the bill.
6. If a bill to amend the Constitution relates to the provisions of Chapters I, II or XII, the subjects specified in para. 1 above may require, within 45 days of the adoption of the bill by the Senate, the holding of confirmatory referendum. Such subjects shall make application in the matter to the Marshal of the Sejm, who shall order the holding of a referendum within 60 days of the day of receipt of the application. The amendment to the Constitution shall be deemed accepted if the majority of those voting express support for such amendment.
7. After conclusion of the procedures specified in paras 4 and 6 above, the Marshal of the Sejm shall submit the adopted statute to the President of the Republic for signature. The President of the Republic shall sign the statute within 21 days of its submission and order its promulgation in the Journal of Laws of the Republic of Poland (Dziennik Ustaw).
Portugal [ edit ]
The Constitution is amendable through the terms prescribed under "Title II: Revision of the Constitution" of "Part IX: Guaranteeing and Revision of the Constitution" between Articles 284 and 289.
Romania [ edit ]
The Constitution of Romania mentions and outlines the terms by which it can be amended in "Article 150: Amendment Initiative," "Article 151: Amendment Procedure," and "Article 152: Limits to Constitutional Amendments." All three articles are written under "Title VII: Amendment of the Constitution" of the document.
Russia [ edit ]
The Constitution of Russia was created by the Russian Federation in 1993. It can be amended in correspondence with Articles 134 through 137 of "Chapter 9: Constitutional Amendments and Revision of the Constitution" under the document. In 2008, certain amendments were proposed which extended the terms of the President of the Russian Federation and State Duma members from four to six years and four to five years in duration respectively. These constitutional amendments are the first truly substantial amendments to the country's constitution added into the Russian constitution fifteen years prior to its adoption and implementation fifteen years earlier.
Serbia [ edit ]
The Constitution of Serbia states its terms for being amended between Articles 203 to 205 under "Part 9: Amending The Constitution" within the document. Even though the Serbian constitution can be amended, this has never happened even once ever since the document was adopted and implemented in 2006 when Montenegro declared its independence from Serbia after an independence referendum was won. This brought the state of Serbia-Montenegro to an end.
Spain [ edit ]
The Constitution of Spain can be amended through the procedures detailed between Articles 166 to 169 under "Part X: Constitutional Amendment" of the document. Additional details are provided between Sections 71 to 76 within the document as well.
Sweden [ edit ]
The Swedish Constitution consists of four fundamental laws: the Instrument of Government, the Act of Succession, the Freedom of the Press Act, and the Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression.
The Instrument of Government, under "Chapter 8. Acts of law and other provisions", articles 14 to 17, states that in order to amend the fundamental laws, the Riksdag must take two identical decisions, and that these decisions must be separated by a general election. At least nine months shall elapse between the first submission of the amendment proposal and the date of the election, unless an exception is granted by the Committee on the Constitution with a majority of five sixths of its members.
One third of members of the Riksdag can also call for a binding referendum on a draft constitutional measure which already passed the first vote.
Turkey [ edit ]
The Constitution of Turkey details, through Provisional Article 175 under "I. Amending the Constitution, participation in elections and referenda" of "Part Seven: Final Provisions"
Amendment to the Constitution shall be proposed in writing by at least one-third of the total number of members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. Bills to amend the Constitution shall be debated twice in the Plenary. The adoption of a bill for an amendment shall require a three-fifths majority of the total number of members of the Assembly by secret ballot.
The consideration and adoption of bills for the amendments to the Constitution shall be subject to the provisions governing the consideration and adoption of laws, with the exception of the conditions set forth in this Article.
The President of the Republic may send back the laws on the amendments to the Constitution to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey for reconsideration. If the Assembly readopts, by a two-thirds majority of the total number of members, the law sent back by the President of the Republic without any amendment, the President of the Republic may submit the law to referendum.
If a law on the amendment to the Constitution is adopted by a three-fifths or less than two-thirds majority of the total number of members of the Assembly and is not sent back by the President of the Republic to the Assembly for reconsideration, it shall be published in the Official Gazette and be submitted to referendum.
A law on the Constitutional amendment adopted by a two- thirds majority of the total number of members of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey directly or upon the sending back of the law by the President of the Republic or its articles deemed necessary may be submitted to a referendum by the President of the Republic. A law on the amendment to the Constitution or the related articles that are not submitted to referendum shall be published in the Official Gazette.
Entry into force of the laws on the amendment to the Constitution submitted to referendum shall require the affirmative vote of more than half of the valid votes cast.
The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, in adopting the law on the Constitutional amendment shall also decide on which provisions shall be submitted to referendum together and which shall be submitted individually, in case the law is submitted to referendum.
Every measure including fines shall be taken by law to secure participation in referenda, general elections, by-elections and local elections.
The Turkish constitution was adopted and implemented in 1982. As of July 2018 , it had been amended 21 times. Every amendment which has been approved into the document was passed by the people through a constitutional referendum that occurred in 2017. This means that all twenty-one amendments were added at the same time. Due to the contents that it would exponentially extend presidential tenure as well as controversies about electoral misconduct, the referendum was intensely controversial. Global attention was drawn to it both before and after the results were finalized for the same reasons.
United States of America [ edit ]
Federal constitution [ edit ]
Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process whereby the federal Constitution may be altered. Twenty-seven amendments have been added (appended as codicils) to the Constitution.
Amendment proposals may be adopted and sent to the states for ratification by either:
A two-thirds (supermajority) vote of members present—if a quorum exists—in both the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States Congress; or
A majority vote of state delegations at a national convention called by Congress called at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (at present 34) of the states. (This method has never been used.)
All thirty-three amendment proposals that have been sent to the states for ratification since the establishment of the Constitution have come into being via the Congress. State legislatures have however, at various times, used their power to apply for a national convention in order to pressure Congress into proposing a desired amendment. For example, the movement to amend the Constitution to provide for the direct election of senators began to see such proposals regularly pass the House of Representatives only to die in the Senate from the early 1890s onward. As time went by, more and more state legislatures adopted resolutions demanding that a convention be called, thus pressuring the Senate to finally relent and approve what later became the Seventeenth Amendment for fear that such a convention—if permitted to assemble—might stray to include issues above and beyond just the direct election of senators.
To become an operative part of the Constitution, an amendment, whether proposed by Congress or a national constitutional convention, must be ratified by either:
The legislatures of three-fourths (at present 38) of the states; or
State ratifying conventions in three-fourths (at present 38) of the states.
Congress has specified the state legislature ratification method for all but one amendment. The ratifying convention method was used for the Twenty-first Amendment, which became part of the Constitution in 1933.
Since the turn of the 20th century, amendment proposals sent to the states for ratification have generally contained a seven-year ratification deadline, either in the body of the amendment or in the resolving clause of the joint resolution proposing it. The Constitution does not expressly provide for a deadline on the state legislatures' or state ratifying conventions' consideration of proposed amendments. In Dillon v. Gloss (1921), the Supreme Court affirmed that Congress—if it so desires—could provide a deadline for ratification. An amendment with an attached deadline that is not ratified by the required number of states within the set time period is considered inoperative and rendered moot.
An amendment becomes operative as soon as it reaches the three-fourths of the states threshold. Then, once certified by the Archivist of the United States, it officially takes its place as an article of the Constitution.
State constitutions [ edit ]
State constitutions in the U.S. are amended on a regular basis.[12] In 19 states, the state constitutions have been amended at least 100 times.[12]
Amendments are often necessary because of the length of state constitutions, which are, on average, three times longer than the federal constitution, and because state constitutions typically contain extensive detail.[12] In addition, state constitutions are often easier to amend than the federal constitution.[12]
Individual states differ in the difficulty of constitutional amendments.[13] Some states allow for initiating the amendment process through action of the state legislature or by popular initiative.[13]
California [ edit ]
There are three methods for proposing an amendment to the California State Constitution: by the legislature, by constitutional convention, or by voter initiative. A proposed amendment must be approved by a majority of voters.
With the legislative method, a proposed amendment must be approved by an absolute supermajority of two-thirds of the membership of each house.
With the convention method, the legislature may, by a two-thirds absolute supermajority, submit to the voters at a general election the question whether to call a convention to revise the Constitution. If the majority of the voters vote yes on that question, within six months the Legislature shall provide for the convention. Delegates to a constitutional convention shall be voters elected from districts as nearly equal in population as may be practicable. The constitution does not provide many rules for the operation of the constitutional convention.
With the initiative method, an amendment is proposed by a petition signed by voters equal in number to 8% of the votes for all candidates for governor at the last gubernatorial election. The proposed amendment is then submitted to the voters at a general or special election.
New York [ edit ]
There are two methods of proposing amendments to the New York Constitution. All proposed amendments must be approved by a majority of voters in a referendum.
With the legislative method, an amendment proposal must published for three months, then approved by an absolute majority of the members of each of the two houses, and approved again in a succeeding term of the houses, with an election intervening. Finally, the amendment proposal must be submitted to the people, and for ratification must be approved by a simple majority.
With the convention method, a constitutional convention must be convened by a majority vote of voters in a general election (referendum) on the question.
Tennessee [ edit ]
There are two methods for proposing amendments to the Tennessee State Constitution: through the legislature and by constitutional convention. Proposed amendments must be approved by a majority of voters in a referendum.
With the legislative method, the Tennessee General Assembly passes a resolution calling for an amendment and stating its wording. This must pass in three separate readings on three separate days, with an absolute majority on all readings. It does not require the governor's approval. It must then be published at least six months before the next legislative election in newspapers of wide and general circulation. (This is done by precedent but is not required by law.) After the election, the proposed amendment must go through the same procedure (absolute majority on three separate readings). Then it is put on the ballot as a referendum in the next gubernatorial election. To be ratified it must again achieve an absolute majority of those voting in the gubernatorial election.
With the convention method, the legislature can put on any ballot the question of whether to call a constitutional convention. It must be stated whether the convention is limited or unlimited—that is, whether it can only amend the current constitution or totally abolish it and write a new one. If limited, the call must state which provisions of the current constitution are to be subject to amendment, and the subsequent convention, if approved, is limited to considering only amendments to the provisions specified in the call. The proposed amendments must then be submitted to the electorate and approved by a majority of those voting in the election. A constitutional convention cannot be held more frequently than once every six years.
Texas [ edit ]
The only method for proposing an amendment to the Texas State Constitution is through the legislature, either in regular or special session. The governor may call a special session, and specify the agenda for the session. To become part of the constitution, proposed amendments must be approved by a majority of voters in a referendum. Texas has had six different constitutions and the current constitution, adopted in 1876, has been amended 474 times.
A proposed amendment must be approved by an absolute supermajority of two-thirds of the elected membership of each house of the legislature. It is submitted to the voters in an election specified by the legislature. The wording of an explanatory statement that will appear on the ballot must be approved by the Texas Attorney General and printed in newspapers. The full text of the amendment must be posted by all county clerks for 30 days before the election.
Washington [ edit ]
The only method for proposing an amendment to the Washington State Constitution is through the legislature and can originate in either branch. The proposal must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the legislature. The proposed amendment is placed on the ballot at the next general election, and must be approved by a majority of the electors.
Rest of World [ edit ]
Australia [ edit ]
The procedure for amending the Constitution of Australia is detailed in Section 128 of the Constitution.
It firstly requires that the proposal pass by absolute majority in the House of Representatives. This means that out of the 150 members of the House, at least 76 of them must agree to the proposal.
If this succeeds then the proposal is moved to the Senate where it again must achieve an absolute majority, This means that of the 76 members of the Senate, at least 39 of them must agree to the proposal.
Following this, Australians then vote on the proposal. For a referendum to succeed both of the following must be achieved
A majority of states (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania) must agree to the proposal. A majority of the combined votes of all of Australia must agree to the proposal.
The double majority is a major factor in why since 1906 out of 44 referendums only 8 have been successful.
Brazil [ edit ]
The Constitution of Brazil states various terms on how it can be amended. Article 60 lies within "Section VIII: The Legislative Process, Subsection 2: Amendments to the Constitution." The following is detailed therein:
Constitutional amendments may be proposed by: I. at least one-third of the members of the Chamber of Deputies or the Federal Senate;
II. the President of the Republic;
III. more than one-half of the Legislative Assemblies of units of the Federation, each manifesting its decision by a simple majority of its members. §1°. The Constitution cannot be amended during federal intervention, state of defense or stage of siege.
§2°. A proposed amendment shall be debated and voted on in each Chamber of the National Congress, in two rounds, and shall be considered approved if it obtains three-fifths of the votes of the respective members in both rounds.
§3°. A Constitutional amendment shall be promulgated by the Executive Committees of the Chamber of Deputies and Federal Senate, taking the next sequential number.
§4°. No proposed constitutional amendment shall be considered that is aimed at abolishing the following: I. the federalist form of the National Government;
II. direct, secret, universal and periodic suffrage;
III. separation of powers;
IV. individual rights and guarantees.
§5°. The subject of a defeated or prejudiced proposed Constitutional amendment may not be made the subject of another proposed amendment in the same legislative session.
Article 60 is the only article prescribed under Subsection 2 of Section 8 in the Brazilian constitution.
Ethiopia [ edit ]
The Constitution of the Federal Democratic of Ethiopia can only be modified by a simple majority of the states, two-thirds majority of the house of peoples representatives, and two-thirds majority of the house of federation. Chapters 39 of the constitution of Ethiopia cannot be amended.
South Africa [ edit ]
The Constitution of South Africa can be amended by an Act of Parliament, but special procedures and requirements apply to the passage of constitutional amendments. A bill amending the Constitution must be introduced in the National Assembly, and cannot contain any provisions other than constitutional amendments and directly related matters.[14]
At least 30 days before a constitutional amendment bill is introduced in the National Assembly, the person or committee introducing the amendment must publish it for public comment, submit it to the provincial legislatures, and, if it does not have to be passed by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), submit it to the NCOP for debate. When the bill is introduced, the comments received must be tabled in the National Assembly, and in the NCOP when appropriate.[14]
All amendments must be passed by an absolute two-thirds supermajority in the National Assembly (the lower house); as the Assembly has 400 members this requires 267 members to vote for the amendment. Most amendments do not have to be considered by the NCOP (the upper house). Amendments of the Bill of Rights, and amendments affecting the role of the NCOP, the "boundaries, powers, functions or institutions" of the provinces or provisions "dealing specifically with provincial matters" must also be passed by the NCOP with a supermajority of at least six of the nine provinces. If an amendment affects a specific province, it must also be approved by the legislature of the province concerned. Section 1, which defines South Africa as "one, sovereign, democratic state" and lists its founding values, is a specially entrenched clause and can only be amended by a three-quarters supermajority in the National Assembly and six of the provinces in the NCOP.[14]
Once an Act is passed by the National Assembly, and by the NCOP if necessary, it must be signed and assented to by the President. As with any other Act of Parliament, by default an amendment comes into effect when it is published in the Government Gazette, but the text of the amendment may specify some other date of commencement, or allow the President to specify one by notice in the Gazette.[15]
Inadmissible amendments [ edit ]
Some constitutions use entrenched clauses to restrict the kind of amendment to which they may be subject. This is usually to protect characteristics of the state considered sacrosanct, such as the democratic form of government or the protection of human rights. Amendments are often totally forbidden during a state of emergency or martial law.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
The Virginia Legislature disgraced itself last week, rejecting the nomination of Tracy Thorne-Begland, a widely respected prosecutor, to be the first openly gay judge on the Commonwealth bench. Mr. Thorne-Begland was the only one of 37 nominees denied appointment to district courts in the final minutes of the session.
House Republicans shamefully pandered to election-year politics dictated by the Family Foundation, an anti-gay pressure group. They contended that Mr. Thorne-Begland, who is raising two children with his male partner, could not properly uphold the State Constitution’s ban on same-sex marriage, and would let supposed pro-gay bias drive his judicial decisions.
These Republicans, of course, uttered no concerns about judicial bias in approving the nominations of a lawmaker dedicated to gun rights, or of a lifelong pro-labor nominee and 34 others identified with assorted causes.
During his decade of service as a Richmond prosecutor, Mr. Thorne-Begland has drawn community praise for his fairness and commitment to the law. His courage is undeniable. Twenty years ago when he was serving as a Navy fighter pilot he told a television interviewer that he was a gay man, drawing an honorable discharge.
In the wake of the vote, and with national condemnation mounting, Gov. Robert McDonnell, a Republican being mentioned as a vice presidential candidate, issued a carefully calibrated statement endorsing “the individual’s ability,” and never bias, as the standard for judicial appointments. But he failed to condemn the House Republicans’ anti-gay display. Virginia’s Legislature has denied its courts — and its citizens — the service of a first-rate, responsible legal mind. There is no excuse. |
Stefano Domenicali was doomed to fail to live up to Luca di Montezemolo's expectations © Sutton Images Enlarge Related Links News:
Domenicali resigns as Ferrari boss
"Anyone know where Ross Brawn is?" You imagine that was a regular conversation in the Maranello workshops when news of Stefano Domenicali offering himself (it says here) as a sacrificial lamb became public. The next question (muttered beyond management earshot) should have been: "Anyway, what bloody good is blaming Stefano going to do?"
Ferrari is in the clag, and no mistake. The trouble is, the top man doesn't like walking in it with his posh loafers. Luca di Montezemolo would prefer to pout and pose when a camera comes within range. For the Ferrari chairman, it's all about having the public share his moment of personal anguish when the red cars are being comprehensively stuffed. For Luca, it's about flicking back the hair in the manner of a miffed Marilyn Monroe rather than jutting his chin like Paul Newman when surrounded by baddies. Having Domenicali take the rap for the current mess is not worthy of a B-movie.
The problem for Stefano is that he is a nice guy - too nice, probably - who was on a hiding to nothing if Ferrari did not perform once he had taken over from the imperious Jean Todt.
Domenicali's situation reminds me of the predicament faced by David Moyes as he struggles to carry the massive baton handed down by Sir Alex Ferguson. Manchester United were moulded by the dour Scot to such an extent that Moyes was in a no-win situation: if success continued, it was to be expected; if the team failed, blame would be laid at his method of management.
It's going to be the same for the poor sod who takes over the role of performance director of British Cycling from the brilliant Sir Dave Brailsford. In Domenicali's case, add the unparalleled pressure of national expectation and you have the quicksand of blame culture waiting to drag him under, with his boss standing by preening himself instead of throwing a lifeline.
Montezemolo really ought to take a look in the mirror (I mean that, of course, in the metaphorical sense rather than the practical, with which he is well acquainted). Was it the Ferrari boss who pushed for the 2014 regulations to be changed from the proposed four-cylinder engine to the current V6? I do believe it was. And is it Montezemolo who, having signed up for the new package, is currently rubbishing F1 because his team can't hack it? I do believe it is.
The fact is that Ferrari have failed to produce a decent package in the two-and-a half years since the regulations were published. End of.
The fact is that Ferrari has failed to produce a decent package in the two-and-a half-years since the regulations were published. End of. Being off the pace occasionally is in the nature of F1. Ferrari have been there before - like in 1962, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1992, 1993, 1995 and 2009.
Montezemolo is a charming man and the Latin melodrama surrounding his every move in public has its place in an amusing sense. But this is no time for theatre. It's all about power units not vanity units. The question at Maranello right now ought to be: "Anyone got the phone number for Andy Cowell at Mercedes Benz High Performance Engines?"
Maurice Hamilton writes for ESPN F1.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
Feeds: Maurice Hamilton |
Fading Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina appeared on CNN's "New Day" Friday only to discover that co-host Chris Cuomo remembered he was a journalist and was intent on holding her feet to the pro-life fires she's been stoking since this summer.
Cuomo suggested that the man who shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, Robert Dear, was "influenced by some of the rhetoric that was coming out of you that painted a very ugly, unfair picture of Planned Parenthood."
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"Oh really, Chris?" Fiorina testily replied. "There have been nine videos, it is very clear what Planned Parenthood have been doing. Several weeks ago, Planned Parenthood made a quiet little announcement that they would no longer accept compensation for what they call 'fetal tissue.' That's about as close to an admission [of guilt] as you can get."
"That's not what they say," Cuomo said, only to be shouted down by Fiorina.
"Look," an irate Fiorina replied, "what happened in Colorado was a terrible thing. This guy is a deranged murderer who should be put away for life, but that has nothing to do with the truth of what is going on in Planned Parenthood."
"This is a typical left-wing tactic," she continued, regaining her calm cliché by cliché, "of trying to shut down the truth by silencing people. This has happened over, and over, and over again."
Cuomo, clearly exasperated by Fiorina's theatrics, replied that "the question doesn't go away -- the videos were edited, you know that."
"I don't know that!" Fiorina fired back, secure in her belief that if she repeats the same lie enough times, people will believe it. "There has been forensic evidence of those nine video tapes over and over again, and there have been reports that they were not edited."
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"Of course they were edited," Cuomo said. "Let's be careful about what we're saying."
"Let's be very careful about what we're saying," trainwreck-in-process Fiorina replied. "Let's be very careful about what we're saying."
Cuomo noted that there "were scenes and pictures" in the videos that were manifestly edited into the conversations, even though they weren't "authentic or germane to the conversation within the video. Now you have someone who went out and killed in the name of that."
"Oh really, really, Chris?" Fiorina said, her composure now clearly flagging. "I don't recall -- and careful Chris, you're a journalist -- I don't recall anybody in the pro-life community celebrating this tragedy." Unfortunately for Fiorina, the standard of evidence isn't what she does or doesn't recall, and many conservatives did, in fact, celebrate Dear's attack on the clinic.
Watch the entire interview below via CNN. |
default, Polish for Indo-Europeans: Beginner's Course, The image shows the distribution of Indo-European languages across the globe. If you live where the red is or happen to speak one of these In, indo-european_languages_distribution.png
Ever wondered why some words look similar in different languages? With the majority of European languages, this is most often due to the fact that they all stem from a common ancestral language: Proto-Indo-European.
Provided you speak English ‒ and we will assume you do since you’re reading those lines, but this is also valid for speakers of German, French, Russian, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit or Farsi, among many others ‒ you can use this connection to jumpstart your knowledge of Polish language by starting with words you already know!
After this first lesson you’ll automatically have learned some Polish, or rather you will have discovered that you spoke some Polish already. (And you’ll pick up some Proto-Indo-European on the way.)
Let’s get started!
Numbers
In the history of linguistics, numbers were an early indication that languages apparently far removed from one another, like English and Sanskrit and Polish, were all related.
Here are the numbers from one to ten in Polish:
1. jeden
2. dwa
3. trzy
4. cztery
5. pięć
6. sześć
7. siedem
8. osiem
9. dziewięć
10. dziesięć
Keep track of pronunciation with this useful guide
Don’t feel betrayed if most of these numbers don't look anything like their English equivalent (or to their equivalent in any Indo-European language YOU happen to be speaking). But rest assured that they all go back to one Indo-European word. Only in order to understand the Indo-European connection, amateur linguists must often compare more than two languages, and be willing to look for answers in the past.
Sons of *kwetwer, or the Indo-European 4
The diagram shows the development of the Proto-Indo-European word *kwetwer (four) in different languages.
So what does the Polish cztery have to do with the English four, or the German vier, or the Italian quattro, or the Romanian patru? In order to find out, we need to go back in time. Like all Slavic languages, Polish is descended from an unattested common Proto-Slavic language. The language closest to Proto-Slavic is Old Church Slavonic (abbreviated to OCS). OCS is considered the first literary Slavic language and was based on the Slavic dialects of the Thesalonike area. It was probably intelligible across the entire area populated by Slavs, that is until the 10th century. In Old-Church Slavonic four was četyre. Experts believe that Proto-Slavic used the same word. And četyre itself, as linguists assert, was a development of the earlier *ketur, which is close enough to the Proto-Indo-European original reconstructed as *kwetwer. (Note that the * symbol signifies an unattested, reconstructed lexeme).
Looking at the above-mentioned evolution, it makes perfect sense to ascribe Polish to the Indo-European family. But what about four, vier, quattro and quatre? Well, they evolved differently, which you can see in the image below.
Looking at the image above you may have noticed that the Polish cztery is actually closer to, for example, Sanskrit catvāri, pronounced ‘chut-va-ree’, than the same word in most other, geographically closer, Western European languages, like English or French. Bravo, in a sense you’re right! You've just discovered the satem-centum isogloss. The what, you say?
The satem-centum division is a phonetic law that divides Indo-European languages in two groups. It relies on one simple criterion based on the phonetic shape of the word ‘hundred’ in different Indo-European languages In the course of the linguistic evolution this word which for PIE is reconstructed as *km-tom (or *dkm-tom-) gave either some variants of centum, which is 'hundred' in Latin (with the initial c pronounced as k), or evolved into variants of root word satem (which is hundred in Avestan). As an (imperfect) rule of thumb, everything west of Central Europe (including Germanic languages and Greek) falls in the centum category, and everything east of it (including Slavic and Baltic languages, as well as Iranian and Indic branch) fall into the satem category.
(As a side note, it might seem hard to believe that ‘hundred’ could derive from centum, but it does, trust us. But let us leave English etymology to braver souls. Polish, on the other hand is less cantankerous. The Polish word sto is clearly related to satem.)
Meet the family
Tadeusz Konwicki with his family, Warsaw, 1975, photo by Michał Browarski/Forum
You're bound to be learning these at the start of pretty much any beginner language course. Since we are focusing on recognisable words, the family may seem a bit rather incomplete:
Brat – maybe the most obvious. You’ve guessed it, it's brother, Bruder (German), brawd (Welsh), but also frère (French). Once again, it all comes together looking at ancient languages: Greek phrater, Latin frater, Sanskrit bhrā́tar and Proto-Slavic reconstructed form of *bratrъ all go back to the Proto-Indo-European bhrater.
Siostra – sister, Schwester, svásar, søster, soror, soeur, sesuo. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European is swésor
Syn –son in English, in German Sohn. Sanskrit is also in on the party: sūnú.
Matka – is mother, Mutter, mère - and goes back to PIE mater. The -ka ending in matka is a Slavic diminutive suffix. The Old Church-Slavonic form was mati (compare: mać).
To arrive at a more complete family would actually require learning new words: father is ojciec (dad is tata), babcia is grandma, and dziadek is grandpa. Mąż is husband and żona is wife. Oops, that last one you technically know already – it's a cognate of the English queen, or the Greek gunḗ (compare: gynecology).
At home
Piotr Śmierzewski's home in Koszalin, 2005, courtesy of HS99 Studio
Dom – is an ancient word in Polish that means house or home. It is related to the Latin domus, and the Greek domos. The English word 'domicile' also fits here. The reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word is domos.
Mysz – All good Proto-Indo-European houses must have had mice, because the word had hardly changed across millenia. mouse. Polish mysz (Old Church-Slavonic and Proto-Slavic are both myš) is cognate with the Latin mus, the Greek mys, the Sanskrit mus, and the Persian muš. The Proto-Indo-European word is, unsurprisingly, mus. Etymologists trace the word back all the way to the root verb mus-/meus-, meaning to steal or rob. Those thieving little mice!
Body parts
Ręce, Still from the film Body directed by Małgorzata Szumowska, photo by Jacek Drygała
Nos - no problem here; nos is nose, Nase (German), nasum (Latin), nosis (Lithuanian), nasa (Sanskrit)
Oko - eye; oko will be familiar to Latin speakers (oculus) or to anyone who ever visited an oculist.
I’m afraid that to name more body parts you would need to invest more efforts into learning Polish: uszy, włosy, ręce, nogi, usta, zęby don’t really ring a bell.
Colours
Looking for Polish colours recognizable for the Indo-European ear, or eye for that sake, can be testing. We only found one.
rudy – means red in Polish, but unfortunately only when it comes to hair color (for everything else use the word czerwony). The Proto-Indo-European source is reudh.
Beverages
Milk, photo: Łukasz Falkowski/Forum
Or what to order in the Indo-European Fusion restaurant:
mleko - milk; melko in Proto-Slavic, while the Proto-Indo-European reconstructed form is melg, quite close to the current Polish and English forms.
miód - honey, but closely related to mead. In Polish the word miód pertains to both the alcoholic drink and the sweet food made by bees.
piwo - beer; this is a word you may know for different reasons. Piwo originally denoted any drink, as it literally means something to drink (from verb pić to drink). The English word for beer likely followed a similar pattern as it goes back to the Latin verb ‘to drink’ bibere (vulgar Latin biber), a root also found in beverage.
wódka - vodka; the word for this popular alcohol literally means ‘little water’ in Slavic languages. Therefore the Proto-Indo-European root for both vodka and water is wod-or.
Trees
Brzoza, photo: Jarosław Kubalski/Agencja Gazeta
Common names of trees and animals in Indo-European languages once served to locate the Urheimat of Proto-Indo-Europeans, but they tend to be especially tricky, as you’ll see below.
Brzoza - birch; berza in Proto-Slavic, close enough to the English birch (Old English berc). Cognates can be found in most European languages: Danish birk, Swedish björk, German Birke, Lithuanian beržas; Same goes for the Sanskrit bhurjah.
Buk - beech; however beware, similarities can be misleading! While the two were once thought to be linked (along with the Latin fagus or the Greek phegos) most linguists today seem to single out the Polish word and place it in a different etymological context.
My name is...
We will conclude this first lesson of Polish for Indo-Europeans with a sentence that will allow you to introduce yourself. To say ‘my name is…’, say mam na imię…
And since we’re already deep into the Indo-European topic by now, let’s finish off by looking at the etymology of the Polish word imię:
Imię – name. In its singular form, the name may seem unfamiliar, but its plural, imiona, is helpful in understanding that the word is in fact related with the English name, the French nom, the Latin nomen, the Greek ónoma, the Sanskrit and Avestian nama, and so on. Compare: PIE *nmen -> PS *jmę, *jmene -> OCS imę, imene -> Polish imię, imienia
That’s it with lesson number 1. For more interesting finds in Polish-Indo-European linguistic study, just start learning Polish and compare it closely with your mother tongue. You’re bound to find myriads of Indo-Euro curiosities.
Author: Mikołaj Gliński, 3 September 2015 |
Sen. Lindsey Graham had some pretty harsh words for Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on Thursday. Graham told reporters at the Capitol that choosing between Trump or Cruz is like a choice between being shot or poisoned. According to USA Today, Graham also feels that if either of the two win the GOP presidential nomination, Republicans will lose the 2016 contest.
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“The only way we lose this election is to nominate somebody who cannot grow this party’s vote among minorities, young women, and the coalitions we need to win,” Graham was quoted as saying. “If you nominate Trump and Cruz I think you’d get the same outcome. Whether it’s death by being shot or poisoning, does it really matter? I don’t think the outcome will be substantially different.”
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Graham also lashed out at Hillary Clinton by saying “dishonest, which is Hillary Clinton in the eyes of the American people, beats crazy.”
“I think Donald Trump’s domestic and foreign policy is gibberish,” Graham continued. “I think Ted Cruz has a reputation of being ideological to a fault, and that when it comes to problem solving, he will have a very difficult time proving that he is a problem solver.”
Meanwhile in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are currently engaged in a fierce battle and each are trying to paint each other as close to the party’s establishment, Los Angeles Times wrote.
In Iowa, Cruz and Trump are currently tied, according to several surveys. Cruz’s support among evangelical voters — a key group in the state’s GOP caucuses — has surged in recent weeks, helping him gain on Trump, long the clear front-runner in Iowa polls, the report explained.
Jeb Bush recently received the symbolically important endorsement of Lindsey Graham on Friday, just weeks after the senator’s withdrawal from the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
During a press conference he gave in Charleston, South Carolina, accompanied by Bush, Graham endorsed Jeb Bush and praised his support for America’s troops.
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“I have concluded without any hesitation, without any doubt that Jeb Bush is ready on day one to be a commander in chief worthy of the sacrifices of the one percent fighting this war,” Graham said.
The senator from South Carolina is considered one of the toughest voices in Washington on security and defense, which can help bolster the credentials of Bush in a field where many conservatives put great emphasis.
“Honored to have @GrahamBlog on our team. A proven leader with a clear understanding of the national security threats we face,” Bush tweeted on Friday morning.
null
Having the backing of an influential senator benefits the image of Bush, whose campaign has lost favoritism. But we must keep in mind that Graham had to give up his own aspirations, precisely for failing to convince the Republican electorate.
This support can be interpreted as the beginning of the formation of a front against the traditional Republican candidacy and the seemingly unstoppable rise of the real estate magnate Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images] |
On the same day the Chiefs found out they soon stand to lose a player to free agency, they also managed to ensure the return of a pricy veteran in 2015.
Monday, however, initially began with a thud for the Chiefs, as a league source confirmed to The Star that starting center Rodney Hudson will sign with Oakland for five years and $44.5 million after the NFL’s free-agency period begins at 3 p.m. Tuesday.
Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports first reported the agreement.
Despite losing Hudson, the Chiefs will retain defensive end Mike DeVito on a restructured contract that will create $2.5 million in cap space. Also Monday, The Star learned the terms of outside linebacker Tamba Hali’s restructured deal, which will save the team $7 million in cap room.
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As for Hudson, the Chiefs were believed to be making a hard push to retain him. He was coming off his best professional season and was the most coveted free-agent center on the market.
In 16 games in 2014, his grade of plus-13.0 ranked third in the league among eligible players at his position, behind two Pro Bowlers in the Jets’ Nick Mangold (22.6) and the Cowboys’ Travis Frederick (19.8) and ahead of two more in the Steelers’ Maurkice Pouncey (9.8) and the Eagles’ Jason Kelce (7.5).
Hudson, 25, was better than he was in 2013, his season first back after he broke his left leg in the third game of 2012. His blocks sometimes lacked the efficiency he flashed this season, particularly in space, and Chiefs coach Andy Reid and offensive coordinator Doug Pederson repeatedly touted the mental strides Hudson made.
To replace Hudson, the Chiefs could draft a center — Florida State’s Cameron Erving is the only player at the position expected to go in the first round — or give third-year pro Eric Kush his first opportunity to earn a starting job since he was taken in the sixth round of the 2013 NFL Draft out of California University of Pennsylvania.
Kush has appeared in three games, with one start, in his two years as a Chief. All came in 2013, his rookie season.
“I think Kush is ready to play,” general manager John Dorsey said at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. “He’s champing at the bit.”
One position where the Chiefs won’t be seeking a replacement in 2015 is defensive end, as the team finalized the terms of a restructured contract for DeVito that will lower the veteran run stuffer’s 2015 salary cap hit and keep him in Kansas City for at least another season.
DeVito posted the news of his impending return Monday on Twitter, writing “Contract stuff is done! Thanks for another chance … I won’t let you down!”
DeVito agreed to reduce his $5.4 million cap number in 2015 to $2.9 million. He can make up a significant portion of the reduced salary bonuses. Pro Football Talk first reported the news and multiple sources confirmed the numbers to The Star.
The Chiefs could have saved $4 million by releasing DeVito, who was set to enter the final season of a three-year, $12.6 million contract, but his run-stopping ability was missed up front, as the Chiefs fell from 11th in run defense with DeVito in 2013 to 28th without him in 2014.
DeVito became the latest veteran Chief to agree to a restructured deal, as veteran outside linebacker Tamba Hali did the same. According to cap expert and former agent Joel Corry, who has seen the parameters of the deal, Hali’s 2015 salary will drop from $9 million to $6 million this year, the final season of a five-year, $60 million contract.
Corry said the $6 million salary is comprised of a $5 million signing bonus, a fully guaranteed $870,000 base salary and a $130,000 workout bonus.
The restructuring adds four years to Hali’s current contract that will automatically void five days after the 2016 Super Bowl. This will add $4 million in dead money to the Chiefs’ salary cap in 2016 because of the $5 million signing bonus he will receive this year. Barring an extension, Hali will be a free agent in 2016.
Together, the DeVito and Hali moves helped create $9.5 million in cap room for the Chiefs, some of which will no doubt go toward paying receiver Jeremy Maclin, who is expected to sign a five-year deal that averages $11 million per season on Tuesday, a source told The Star.
Though the Chiefs’ current cap standing is fuzzy — they were approximately $1.1 million over the cap prior to the DeVito and Hali restructures and the Maclin deal — it’s reasonable to assume they will be able to get under the cap, as all teams must, by Tuesday’s 3 p.m. deadline, which is the start of the new league year.
If the Chiefs still need to create room, whether to get under the cap or make another splashy signing like Maclin, they have options. They can create more room by negotiating a lower salary with safety Eric Berry, who is slated for an $8.3 million cap hit but is currently battling lymphoma, and/or converting quarterback Alex Smith’s base salary to a bonus.
Other players whose release would create a sizable amount of cap space include receiver Dwayne Bowe ($14 million cap figure in 2015), inside linebacker Derrick Johnson ($5.2 million) and quarterback Chase Daniel ($3.8 million). |
After months of attempting to obstruct everything President Trump has tried to do, including an ongoing filibuster of the Judge Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer might be ready to make a “deal.”
Schumer: We lost one [Garland] they lost one [Gorsuch] We should now get in a room and come up with a compromise to avoid the nuclear option — Tessa Berenson (@tcberenson) April 4, 2017
Republicans, of course, would be complete idiots to even consider ANY sort of deal with Democrats, especially given the fact that they currently are holding ALL the cards.
Fixed! Watch Jeep owner abandon self-control, fix problem when a BMW is taking up 2 spaces
Thankfully, Republicans don’t seem to be taking the bait, so far at least.
That's not how it works. https://t.co/3oI6rqziB0 — Senator Hatch Office (@senorrinhatch) April 4, 2017
And there was much merriment to be had at the very notion…
@tcberenson Ha ha … Gorsuch will be confirmed on Friday … thanks Harry! — Mike Mann (@msmann12345678) April 4, 2017
@tcberenson The Dems pick the dumbest hills to die on. Gorsuch is a slam dunk nominee. Their opposition to his nomination is what will kill the Senate. — Concerned Citizen (@1oftheforgotten) April 4, 2017
@tcberenson That’s cute Chuck, let me know how that turns out for you😂 — Kristin Faller (@KristinFaller11) April 4, 2017
@tcberenson @allahpundit Schumer : We lost three elections. We stay in power. — psbrown (@psbrown) April 4, 2017
@tcberenson @allahpundit Or McConnell tells Schumer to blow it out his ass and invokes the Reid rule to confirm him. — Scott E. Taylor (@scottetaylor) April 4, 2017
@tcberenson Confirmation Friday. @SenShumer still thinks he is in charge. @SenShumer remember elections have consequences as Obama was fond of saying — OregonDep (@OregonDeplorabl) April 4, 2017
@tcberenson Actually Schumer said “we lost every election but we still get to put our leftist judges on the court.” 😂😂 — Mike Jones (@MikeMegisis) April 4, 2017
@tcberenson I love his fantasy that Democrats share power. Hahaha. — Kelly Cowan (@KellyCowan18) April 4, 2017
And finally, a little much-needed perspective for Chuckie…
@tcberenson Memo to Chuckie: As I see it “we” lost Bork, You lost Garland, so we’re even. #ThanksHarryReid #NuclearOption — Tom Thurman (@Tommm1954) April 5, 2017
Photo of Michelle Obama ‘rocking her natural hair’ shows up in timelines & ‘the gates of heaven opened’
H/T Twitchy
Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BizPac Review.
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Bertrand Guay, AFP | A picture taken on June 21, 2012 at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, in Roissy-en-France, northern Paris, shows the then-new boarding hall of Terminal 2E S4.
Christmas came early for a French homeless man at Paris's main airport when he found an unlocked door at the offices of a cash handling company ... and walked away €300,000 ($350,000) richer.
ADVERTISING Read more
The man was rummaging through bins at Charles de Gaulle airport northeast of Paris last Friday when he checked a door at the Loomis cash management company and found it had been left open.
Authorities have pored over surveillance footage that captured the incident, according to Le Parisien newspaper, which was the first to report the story on Wednesday. “He pushes on the door … and appears surprised when it opens,” the French daily recounted. “Then the homeless man sets his suitcase down and enters the company’s offices.”
The door led to a compartment containing two bags filled with money.
An investigator, confirming Le Parisien's story, called it "the perfect crime" and said police still "don't know why the door was open at the time".
"At first we thought it had to be a setup, but it looks like it was just luck. It's incredible," a police source told Agence France-Presse, asking not to be identified by name.
Investigators are searching for the suspect, who is believed to be in his fifties and has been identified by airport police.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP) |
Test of Iranian Shahab 3 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile
The Associated Press recently revealed the existence of a secret agreement that would allow Iran to restore "its full uranium enrichment capacity," utilizing more advanced, faster centrifuges, on the 10th anniversary of signing the nuclear agreement. The leak, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the organization charged with monitoring Iranian compliance with the nuclear accord, has led a number of intelligence agencies to again issue warnings that it "was highly likely" that Tehran will have a nuclear weapon capability within the next 10 to 15 years. Not surprisingly, the news generated renewed anxiety in the Persian Gulf about Iran's intentions in the region.
The rise of Tehran's power in the Middle East has often been conceptualized as an Iranian "arc of influence," which stretches across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. There is also, potentially, a second such arc based on the large Shiite populations along the southern and eastern rim of the Arabian Peninsula. To date, however, the Sunni governments in the Gulf have, for the most part, been able to keep a lid on Shia dissent, and on Tehran's attempts to mobilize those Shia communities, although they did intervene in Yemen to block Tehran backed proxies from seizing control. The prospect of a nuclear armed Iran and the steady expansion of Tehran's influence, however, has underscored the fact that Middle East politics are increasingly reorienting themselves along a Sunni-Shia axis.
How will the Sunni governments respond to what they see as the renewal of historic "Persian imperialism" in the Middle East and especially in the Gulf? The evolution of the Syrian Civil War may lend an answer.
Iranian Arc of Influence across the Middle East
Jihadism and its use for political purposes is hardly new. It has been an integral aspect of Middle East history since the eighth century. Even in the 20th century, jihadism has been a recurring theme of Arab nationalism. Wahhabi inspired jihadism played a critical role in the formation of Saudi Arabia. Jihadism was also a prominent and recurring feature of the Muslim Brotherhood led nationalist movements in Egypt and Syria. Its prominence declined during the heyday of the "secular socialist," military led governments that dominated the region from the 1950s through the 1980s, only to reappear as those regimes turned increasingly to Islamic history and culture to establish their political legitimacy. In that sense, the rise of jihadism since the 1980s is simply the reemergence of a long-standing feature of Middle East politics.
Jihadism burst onto the international stage when the United States and its Gulf allies funded and organized the Afghan mujahideen prior to and during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Called "Operation Cyclone" by the CIA, the campaign relied on militant Islamic groups organized by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to oppose the Moscow-backed government of Nur Muhammad Taraki, and later the Soviets. Between 1978 and 1992, the ISI armed and trained over 100,000 insurgents. They also recruited volunteers from Arab states to join the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviet invasion. Among the "Afghan Arabs" recruited was a young Saudi national named Osama Bin-Laden.
Leaders of the Afghan mujahideen resistance meeting with President Reagen in the Oval Office, February 1983. Picture courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidental Library
In total, the U.S. supplied some $20 billion to train and arm the Afghan resistance. It also supplied Pakistan with an additional $8.6 billion in economic and military assistance. Additional funds from the Afghan resistance came from Great Britain and China. The Arab governments in the Gulf also contributed heavily. Some of those funds were channeled through the CIA, and others went either to the Pakistani ISI or, on a few occasions, directly to the resistance groups. During this period the orientation of the jihadist groups organized by the ISI were anti-Soviet. While they were not necessarily pro-American, they were not overtly hostile to the United States.
The end of the Afghan war, and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, made the anti-Soviet orientation of the jihadist groups irrelevant. In the meantime, the expansion of the American military presence in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf during and after the First Gulf War, and the increased prominence given to the Palestinian cause by jihadist groups, gradually shifted the focus of those militant organizations to opposing the U.S. role in the Middle East.
This reorientation gave rise to al-Qaeda and a range of other jihadist groups. This transformation was further reinforced by the subsequent U.S. led invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, and the emergence of a deep seated insurgency against the U.S. led military coalition there. Between the early 1990s and today, a little less than a quarter century, Islamic jihadism reoriented itself into a virulent anti-American and anti-Western ideology; one that has sparked numerous terrorist attacks throughout the world.
Al-Qaeda affiliated, al Nusra Front jihadists in Syria.
Middle East politics are increasingly moving toward a de facto proxy war between the Saudi led Sunni governments in the region and Iran and its Shiite allies. The fact that Tehran will eventually develop a nuclear capability as well, threatens to make the Middle East a larger version of the Indo-Pakistani proxy war in Kashmir. It's possible that, like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies will increasingly look to third party jihadist organizations, as they have in Syria, to counter Iranian influence in the region. If that happens, then it may well set the stage for a third reorientation of Sunni jihadism to focus on opposing Iran and its Shiite allies, and possibly move it away from its current focus of opposing U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and Western culture in general.
The Islamic State (IS) has been both anti-Western and anti-Shiite. Indeed, one of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's singular "contributions" to international jihadism was the demonization and targeting of Shiites. As a result, IS has, to varying degrees, radicalized other jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda, to also target Shiites. A post-Islamic State Middle East, however, could be a very different place.
Islamic State is unique in that it has become largely self-financing, even if that funding has been steadily declining. Stripped of its territorial domain, however, it would be, like other jihadist groups, dependent on outside aid and financing to be effective. It is unlikely that IS, as a militant insurgency rather than a would-be nation state, would prove to be any less anti-American or anti-Western. But a weakened IS could well be supplanted by a better-financed jihadist organization that would focus more on an anti-Iranian/anti-Shiite theme than an anti-American/anti-Western theme.
Former General and CIA Director David Petraeus at 2007 press conference.
It's also possible, although probably unlikely, that in a post-Islamic State Middle East, al-Qaeda might seek to fill this role. If that happens then Islamic State will have inadvertently accomplished something that would have been inconceivable a decade ago, the rehabilitation, or at least partial rehabilitation, of Al-Qaeda in Washington's eyes. Interestingly enough, retired Army general and former CIA director, David Petraeus, has already suggested that the U.S. should use "moderate" members of the al-Qaeda backed al-Nusra Front in its fight against the Islamic State.
To date, al-Qaeda has not given any indication that it is prepared to abandon its anti-American/anti-Western orientation. In fact, on July 24, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in an audio interview posted to al-Qaeda's website, urged militants to kidnap Westerners and hold them hostage to exchange for jailed jihadists. He noted that, "kidnapping was a powerful weapon in the fight against the enemy." The interview followed an attempt by two men, believed by police to be Middle Eastern, who tried to kidnap a British serviceman while he was jogging near the RAF Marham base, near Norfolk, East Anglia.
On the other hand, on Thursday July 28, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the recently disclosed head of the al-Nussra Front, announced that it was "disassociating" itelf from al-Qaeda and that it would change its name to the Levant Conquest Front (LCF). He added that the decision had the support of al-Qaeda's leadership and that it was designed to allow al-Nusra Front to expand its cooperation with other Syrian rebel groups. It is also a not so subtle signal to Washington that it need not consider the LCF an enemy.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri
Al-Qaeda's anti-Americanism, while historic, is also, in part, shaped by its competition with Islamic State for the leadership of the jihadist movement. While the U.S. has decimated al-Qaeda's senior leadership and severely constrained its ability to operate and to launch attacks against Western targets, the U.S. does not ultimately pose an existential threat to al-Qaeda. The Islamic State, on the other hand, does pose such a threat.
Post-Islamic State, it's possible that al-Qaeda might moderate its anti-Western rhetoric. It's also possible that after 15 years of continuous warfare with the US, those views are so deeply engrained that they will never be abandoned. In which case, some other jihadist groups, more focused on countering Iran's power and less overtly focused on attacking the West, may, with generous funding from the Gulf States, emerge in the Middle East. Such a development, although unlikely to be publically acknowledged by Washington, would probably not be opposed either. This is after all the cauldron of Middle East politics. Stranger things have happened and, if history is a guide, will continue to happen. |
Unassimilated, alienated, underpaid, or unemployed young Muslim men appear to be most vulnerable to radicalization, and chain migration seems to frequently assist.
At 7:20 a.m. EST on Monday, the suicide vest worn by 27-year-old Akayed Ullah detonated at a Port Authority bus station in Manhattan. This increased the pile of radical Islamist terror attacks that have hit the United States this year.
While Ullah was badly injured and three other commuters sustained non-life-threatening injuries, countless other rush hour commuters around the scene at the time of detonation were thankfully spared. Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton confirmed on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Ullah had acted in the name of ISIS.
Ullah is a Bangladeshi man who has been in the United States for approximately seven years. He joins the ranks of domestic terrorists radicalized within U.S. borders before carrying out attacks inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described Ullah as “disgruntled,” and confirmed that Ullah taught himself how to make the deadly “low-tech device” with wires, a pipe bomb, and a battery pack.
While radical Islamic terrorists continue to set their sights on intimidating the western world, the question remains as to what traits domestic terrorists who are radicalized within our borders share and how—if at all—clearer trends are helping identify potential threats.
Building a Profile of Domestic Terrorists to Predict Threats
Former assistant secretary of state Kim Holmes confirms that these traits exist, and that many terrorists radicalized in the United States are young men born overseas and brought over by chain immigration or through the gravely flawed visa lottery. Many more, he says, are the product of Muslim parents born overseas who emigrate to the United States but refuse to assimilate, fostering feelings of alienation and resentment and making them prime targets for radicalization.
“Many of these guys are being recruited online and by radical clerics. Like we saw with Ullah in New York, they don’t even need elaborate support structures,” Holmes says. “These are alienated, frustrated, and violent young men who are looking to belong to something, and that makes them prime targets.”
Holmes said we can look to Europe for data showing the threat of radical Islamic terrorism increases year by year, with a total of 15 plots or attacks in 2014, 38 in 2015, 59 in 2016, and 30 by May of this year. That number is even more daunting when you look at global statistics: between January 2014 and May 2017, there were a grand total of 142 radical Islamic terrorist plots recorded across 15 different countries in Europe alone.
“These guys are looking for ways to justify their violence and find a sense of belonging,” Holmes said. Twenty-eight-year Army Special Forces veteran and former Pentagon top dog Col. Steve Bucci echoed Holmes’ frustration with chain migration: “Look at the case with this guy in New York – he came to the states because his uncle was already here. Chain migration is something that was defined very broadly under the Obama administration. This [Trump] administration hasn’t tightened it up just yet, but they are talking about how to do that effectively.”
Importing Low-Skill People Can Lead to Trouble
Bucci also noted that most “remotely radicalized people” are unemployed or underemployed. “There’s a reason for that; they’re not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Most have frequented radical websites and have picked up the ideology from there. These are people who are wounded and are looking to be associated with something. Isolation, alienation, low income or no income all play a factor here.”
As global terrorism strategies evolve, so too should our defense, security, and intelligence strategies, says Lisa Daftari, an award-winning investigative foreign affairs journalist and editor-in-chief of The Foreign Desk.
“I’ve always deterred people from using phrases like ‘lone wolf terrorism’ or ‘homegrown terrorism’ because these guys are getting information directly from terrorist organizations online,” she says. “We saw this with Ullah: he had been downloading material and had been an online ISS fanboy since 2014. It’s not ‘homegrown terrorism’ when this information is originating in the caliphate.”
Daftari agrees with Holmes and Bucci about the role of economic factors: “Usually, someone who has a job and a life isn’t thinking about strapping a bomb to themselves and blowing something up.”
It’s clear, according to these experts, that Islamic terrorists radicalized within the U.S. do share a host of commonalities. Unassimilated, alienated, underpaid, or unemployed young Muslim men appear to be most vulnerable to radicalization, and chain migration seems to frequently assist these potential terrorists to come to the United States.
But what do we do in the wake of these attacks? Identifying the common threads that bind these terrorists together is an important first step, but does this make potential threats any easier to spot? To put it another way: how do we do a better job of stopping these guys before they kill more innocent people?
Nobody Has a Crystal Ball
Bucci puts it best: “It’s really tough. Larger events, like 9/11 for instance, require a lot of training and a lot of backside support, but our law enforcement, intelligence, and operational capabilities since then have been doing a great job at keeping those guys at bay and finding them before they’re able to carry out something that big. It’s a bit of a tradeoff: do you use manpower and resources to focus on the bad guys going for a huge homerun, which we catch around 99 percent of the time, or these low-level folks who are able to carry out less devastating events but who are harder to keep an eye on?”
Holmes says there are two predominant approaches to domestic terrorism: Urging action, even if we don’t know for sure what will be effective, or urging people to learn to live with the heightened uncertainty as a fact of life.
“Politically correct liberals want us to live with it, with this constant threat of radical terrorism, but the fact is it’s getting worse, so at what point do you change your mind?” he says. “Is it after 143 global attacks? 243 attacks? 343? Liberals’ underlying argument here is that it’s not yet bad enough to do something to stop this, but that implies that working to stop terrorism somehow makes it worse.”
Holmes and Bucci say part of the solution involves a delicate dance between increasing security measures and avoiding infringing on the civil liberties and rights of civilians.
“We should be asking police and law enforcement officials to discuss every crazy idea they come up with regarding how to spot these guys preemptively, because there may be one or two ideas in the bunch that folks will feel comfortable with constitutionally that could give the good guys the edge they need,” Bucci said. Holmes adds that local courts are exercising too much authority in waiving immigration laws.
“The courts are intervening with president Trump’s travel ban on very shady constitutional grounds. We’re at the point where local judges are making foreign policy calls. Where did they get that authority? We sort of glide over that like it’s any other day in America, but that’s not what the courts are for,” Bucci said.
Daftari says education, awareness, and acknowledgement are the most important factors in fixing America’s domestic terrorism problem: “This isn’t going to change whether we have a Republican or a Democrat in office. Until Left, Right, and center view terrorism, national security, and our relationship with foreign policy as a non-partisan issue, all of us are at risk…Radical Islamic terrorists aren’t looking to bomb and kill the alt-right or the progressive left; they’re looking to bomb and kill Americans. We need to be prioritizing safety and security over political correctness.” |
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