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'Neknomination' online drinking game: Second death in Ireland linked to 'neck nomination' BelfastTelegraph.co.uk A second death in the Republic has been linked to the online drinking game 'Neknomination' - with social media users in Northern Ireland also getting involved in the growing trend. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/neknomination-online-drinking-game-second-death-in-ireland-linked-to-neck-nomination-29972386.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/incoming/article29972387.ece/4d802/AUTOCROP/h342/drinking.jpg Email A second death in the Republic has been linked to the online drinking game 'Neknomination' - with social media users in Northern Ireland also getting involved in the growing trend. Police in the Republic are investigating whether Jonny Byrne (19) from Leighlinbridge was playing the game before plunging into the river near Milford Bridge, Co Carlow. ‘Neknomination’ has also been linked to the death of Dublin DJ Ross Cummins (22) whose body was found by shocked housemates on Saturday morning. The game is a social media craze that involves people being nominated to down alcoholic drinks and posting a video online. They then nominate another person via the internet to do the same thing. It has spread from Australia and can involve people on different sides of the globe interacting with each other. Facebook users from Northern Ireland have also been playing the game - with dozens of video 'dares' appearing across the site in the last few days. Jonny’s brother Patrick put up a message on his Facebook page saying ‘Stop Neknomination Before It’s Too Late’ One friend posted on Facebook: “Everyone involved in gaa circles were shocked and in despair when news broke of the passing of our friend Jonny Byrne, Leighlinbridge at just 19 years of age. Last night, the Carlow U21 hurlers that beat Dublin last year were collecting an award at the Beat 102-103 sports awards but this couldn't be celebrated as they were missing one vital member, Jonny. “Jonny was a member of the Naomh Bríd Hurling Club, Leighlinbridge GFC and Michael Davitts Juvenile Football Club. He hurled with Carlow from U13 to U21 and of course was there on that famous night in Parnell Park. He was a warrior on the pitch, a rock in defence and gave 100pc on the pitch every time. A kind soul well liked throughout Carlow especially in hurling, he was a great hurler and footballer, a gentleman and an even greater friend and we are heartbroken. “We would like to send our deepest condolences to his family and friends at this difficult time.” Alcohol Action has warned about the online craze, saying: “drinking large volumes of alcohol in a short period of time can have very real consequences”. Jonny’s death happened hours after Dubliner Ross Cummins lost his life after apparently downing a whiskey drink in a ‘NekNomination’ challenge. It is understood the young man drank the pint at a party in Dublin on Friday night before going to bed, but was found dead the next morning. Gardai from Pearse Street are investigating the tragedy. Belfast Telegraph Digital
2 weeks ago, some friends & I went on what is becoming a pilgrimage to the Holy Land of the Heavy Music community in Europe : Freak Valley Festival in Netphen, Germany ! This was my 2nd year there, and if you still haven’t trodden upon this fabulous festival, I can only recommend you to save up some money, as it’s magical experience for every fuzz lovers 🙂 This year (like the last one) was superb. I met some cool & passionate dudes, chatted with some good friends, even if I missed a lot of you guys who were there… Maybe next year we should do a “More Fuzz Meetup @ Freak Valley Festival” haha 😀 The fest “crew” was very kind and always helpful. And most of all we saw so many great bands, with a fuckin’ great sound, and every musician seemed to be so happy to be part of it, that really shows how people perceive this great festival. In the end, it really feels like you’re at home, with your brothaz & sistaz, all forming a huge and passionate family of Heavy sounds lovers 😉 My Favorite Concerts I decided to split my favorite concerts by Atmosphere Levels and also some cool discoveries that didn’t fit in there… I’d like to say a huge thanks to Jens from Radicaleye Photography (website – facebook) and Django from Django Foto (website – facebook) who kindly allowed me to use their gorgeous photos in this report. Also thanks to the people who uploaded their videos on YouTube, and my iPhone for some of the short videos you’ll also see below… By Fat Level 1. Goatsnake A mighty concert for a mighty (old) band ! Goatsnake just released “Black Age Blues“, 11 years after their last EP “Trampled Under Hoof” (recorded with Scott Reeder from Kyuss), and it’s a majestic comeback ! Low-tuned strings, a fat fuzzy sound, it was certainly the heaviest concert of the Festival ! Goatsnake is considered as Doom, but as Pete (vocals) said, they play a fantastic kind of “Bluesy/Classic Doom” : Groovy as hell riffs, often faster than all the other Doom bands, and of course Pete strong vocals play a huge role in defining their sound. On stage this guy put all his heart into singing his songs, yeah, a strong presence melted with so much emotions, WOAH ! Just watch by yourself with this video captured during the concert : 2. Eyehategod If Goatsnake was not the heaviest concert of the weekend, then it was Eyehategod. Serious headbanging & mosh sessions happened during this one ! In fact these pioneers of the NOLA scene were a bit like a UFO in this sweet festival, where most of the bands this year were clearly more playing Retro/Heavy Rock than a fuckin’ nasty dripping Sludge ! I’m not too much in this genre as you guys know, particularly because of the harsh vocals… But F*** ! It was so MASSIVE live ! In the end I really enjoyed this show and I think I was not the only one 🙂 3. Egypt And we end this selection of the greasiest live performance of the FVF 2015 with a 3rd American band, the greasiest live performance of the FVF 2015 with a 3rd American band, Egypt ! I think when it comes to heaviness the country of Uncle Sam is really the king, don’t you agree ? I didn’t know much about Egypt (even if I really enjoyed their split with Wo Fat when I listened to it in 2013) butI knew I had to see them. Like Goatsnake, they have that very enjoyable bluesy touch in addition to the doomy side of their sound. But with them, it’s way more pronounced into their riffs, melodies, solo parts, and overall grooviness. So as you would have guessed, I also headbanged a lot during this one. I particularly enjoyed Neal’s killer guitar solos, and Aaron funny way of singing, being so low and huddled up 😉 By Purple Haze Level 1. Monkey3 Oooooooooh my god Monkey3. I think it was the band I was waiting the most for this 4th edition of the FVF. I remember seeing them in my hometown, and it blew my mind. So I wanted to see and hear how those beasts would do on a bigger stage and in front of a bigger audience. They fuckin’ did not disappoint. They played at the perfect time, just when the sun went down, for us Freaks to be hooked by their unique cosmic atmosphere… By the way, I have to tell the lights on stage were very nice, each time capturing very well the band’s identity. A good combination of sweet & trippy parts thanks to enchanting keyboard & guitar melodies and on the other hand some kickass heavier parts where the rhythmic members of the band literally crush your head ; this is also the moment when Boris, the guitarist, unleashes all his demons ! This guy has the talent to create very memorable melodies, and when you hear them, it simply gives you a huge thrill in the spine… And what’s even more awesome is the whole band plays just so perfectly their songs. No fluff, no failure, just a pure blast of Heavy Psych magic in your face. Too bad the show didn’t last longer, I would have loved to stay starring at the planets colliding and asteroids brushing past my ears… 2. Earthless The most famous Heavy Psych jam band of the planet closed this festival the Saturday night with a beautiful show ! Even if we saw them in my hometown 1 week before, I enjoyed way much this one at Freak Valley Festival 🙂 How could you resist to be transported by Earthless songs ? It was just so EPIC ! Isaiah guitar skills are so impressive, this dude is a real god to me… But of course Earthless wouldn’t be as good without Mario & Mike supporting wonderfully the frenzy of Isaiah ! I especially loved the last 4 covers done by the San Diego trio : Jimi Hendrix’s Foxey Lady, Groundhogs’s Cherry Red, Earl King’s Come On, and my favorite, they didn’t perform in Nantes, Led Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown ! WHAT AN ENDING 😀 3. Electric Moon I knew this show was going to be the trippier one, and guess what ? I was right. 1 hour of crazy, repetitive psychedelic sounds making all of us fly through several space-times, eyes closed the head up to the sky or down to the ground, each of us having his own way of feeling this majestic trip… I guess it was the best concert of the Festival to blow up one in the crowd 😉 4. Tuber I was impatiently waiting for the performance of these Greeks, seeing how I enjoyed so much their last album “Desert Overcrowded“. They found the great formula melting simple but effective heavy chords progressions, and sweet, repetitive melodies full of delay ! So yeah another nice & pleasant show under the hot sun of this Saturday afternoon… Too bad I didn’t buy their vinyl at the merch table ! By Temperature Level 1. The Vintage Caravan WOW ! These 3 Icelandic really had a lot of energy to deliver ! Blasting catchy as hell Heavy Rock songs, it’s an awesome live band for sure 🙂 Between Oskar (vocals, guitar) mimicking and funny faces, Alexander (bass) headbanging and moving everywhere on the stage, and Stefan (drums) hitting hard on his drums, this concert was very hot & captivating, and I think all the crowd would agree with me ! As I’m a bit older than them, I really support young bands like The Vintage Caravan who are taking the reins of Heavy Rock and perpetuate so well this rockin’ groove we all enjoy 😉 2. The Muggs This trio from Detroit was my favorite discovery this weekend. I saw their last album “Straight Up Boogaloo” passing when they released it in March, but didn’t really had a listen. I was wrong, because The Muggs are so groovy & lively ! Fronted by the talented Danny Methric at the vocals & guitar, backed by Tony DeNardo playing the bass lines on a piano and Todd Glass on drums, these dudes play a stunning mix of Heavy & Bluesy Rock, always with a smile on the face ! They even played a cool Black Sabbath cover, Tomorrow’s Dream, I featured on the TOP 51 Black Sabbath covers. Really one of the highlights of this festival ! 3. Orchid The Black Sabbath worshippers named Orchid were the headline act of the 2nd day. And even if you can reproach them to copy a lot the sound signatures of the first metal band ever created, they do it so well ! Indeed, the devilish riffs, the doomy sound, the killer bass lines, the solid drumming, and the powerful high-pitched vocals, make them a must-see band for every Black Sabbath fans, this means all of us 😛 So yeah the temperature level was quite high during Orchid performance, I mean all of their songs are so effective, they just work and stay into your head for several days, can’t stop the headbang ! 4. Valley of The Sun Too badplayed so early and not on the main stage because I really love what these guys do… So yeah I missed the majority of the show and maybe saw 2-3 songs, including one which was cut in the middle because Ryan had a problem with his guitar… But from what I heard live and already heard on studio, they’re one of my favorite Stoner Rock band of the moment. Catchy fuzzy riffs backed by awesome strong vocals, I hope I’ll catch them on tour someday 🙂 Watch a new song they played at Freak Valley Festival : Other Fuzzy Discoveries… Siena Root Again another killer band from Sweden perpetuating a Classic Rock tone we love so much ! I mean of course we can only love Siena Root because a lot of us grew with those mighty bands from the 70’s like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath ! So when a band like Siena Root plays so well this groovy & rockin’ music that reminds us our childhood, we can only approve and move our (stoned) heads 😉 I really liked the complicity between the musicians and the whole “jammy atmosphere” that I felt during this concert. Special mention for the keyboard giving a killer Deep Purple touch to their sound ! I also bought their last album “Pioneers” on vinyl and talked a bit with the guys. One of my question was why Swedish are so damn good at music ? And one of them told me it’s because 90% of the Swedish population plays an instrument ! 😮 Now I understand ! Dead Man What ? Swedish again ?! Told you fuzzers ! 😀 Dead Man was certaintly the “less heavy” band of the weekend and felt like a cool refreshing moment of Psychedelic/Folk Rock. Sweet bass lines & sweet melodies, skillful solos & vocals, fans of the calmer songs from Witchcraft and/or Graveyard, I warmly recommend you to have a listen to them. Their last album is from 2008, so I hope they’re onto something that’ll be released sooner than later 😉 Hope to see you next year..! So here are all my favorite concerts of this fabulous 4th edition of the Freak Valley Festival. Sorry for the ones I didn’t mention, I was maybe too stoned, not really paying attention to it, or just didn’t like enough what I heard, even if I must admit the slogan “No Fillers – Just Killers” perfectly sums up the quality of the bands that played during the weekend ! For those who were there don’t hesitate to comment just below and share your experience, or simply your favorite concerts like I did 🙂 Thanks again to Jens and all the crew for making this festival better every year ! I’d have just one suggestion for the next year : I’d love to see more “pure” Desert Rock bands, or at least putting them on the main stage would be cool 😛 Long Live The Freak Valley Festival & Long Live The Fuzz !
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That is a photo of a working mother, literally tied up by her children, with the text "Part Time Agent" over her picture, while the smiling and suited up Chase and Jeffrey Costello stand opposite her under the text "Full Time Professionals." At the bottom of the flier, the question is posed: "Who would you rather represent you?" I know, right? Because moms are so annoying, always trying to take care of their children. There is definitely no way that parents who spend time with their kids could possibly be focused on their work, too. "This ad is so offensive to woman and men everywhere. I would hope that you are taking a long hard look at your marketing firm over this ad placement as well as who approved it in your own firm. Extremely unfortunate choice of advertising." "I am sorry that you feel the need to belittle the working mother to make yourselves look like professionals!" Although the Costello Group has since deleted their company Facebook page CBS Seattle reported a sampling of the comments that had been left by irate locals: "The Costello Team would like to apologize for our last marketing piece and we take full responsibility for it. We have received a flood of emotionally charged messages and phones calls, and we thank you for your responses. As sons of a single working mother and agents trying to build a family business, these reactions were difficult and important for us to hear. "There are thousands of professional agents working in our area who are also dedicated mothers, including several members of our team. Our original hope with this message was to show the value of having a full-time agent in a competitive market, but we completely failed. We have the upmost (sic) respect for moms and working mothers, and we know that the job of a mother is far more demanding than what we do as real estate professionals. Again, we are truly sorry." - Costello and Costello Real Estate, via Facebook
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has already riled up the country's big ISPs in so many ways—network neutrality for wired and wireless networks, inquiries into wireless billing and competition—that he might want to have a staffer start tasting his coffee first. But a new report (PDF) commissioned by the FCC threatens to make all those other issues look petty by pointing out that mandating "open access" to broadband networks works really, really well as a way to boost speeds and lower costs. If you thought ISPs hated the idea of network neutrality, imagine if Genachowski actually starts talking about forced line-sharing or "functional separation." "Incumbent recalcitrance" According to the 200+ page report, the idea of open access may be unpopular in the US, but a careful look at the data shows just how well it worked. "Contrary to perceptions in the United States, there is extensive evidence to support the position, adopted almost universally by other advanced economies, that open access policies, where undertaken with serious regulatory engagement, contributed to broadband penetration, capacity, and affordability in the first generation of broadband," it says. In fact, "The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost all offered by firms in markets where, in addition to an incumbent telephone company and a cable company, there are also competitors who entered the market, and built their presence, though use of open access facilities." If that's tough to digest, consider the following chart which graphs the costs and speeds of the fastest broadband offerings of providers from all over the world. The high-priced, low-speed options are in the lower-left, while the low-priced, high-speed options are in the upper right. We have highlighted the US ISPs on the chart with red boxes just to drive the point home. (Canadians, you can stop laughing now; as the report notes, Canadian ISPs have a reputation for quality that is largely unearned; note the locations of Shaw, Rogers, and Bell Canada above.) The report was commissioned months ago by the FCC, but it was done by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society (cofounded years ago by none other than Joel Tenenbaum defender law professor Charlie Nesson). The money to fund the report didn't come from the FCC, but largely from the Ford and MacArthur foundations "so as to allow us to respond to this highly time-sensitive request to support the FCC’s efforts, while maintaining complete independence from the agency." The lead author was Yochai Benkler, author of The Wealth of Network (the curious can download the book as a PDF). Julius Genachowski's FCC has been promising a "data-driven" approach to contentious issues since he arrived, and the new report is one of the fruits of that effort. But did Genachowski think he was going to get this? "We find that in countries where an engaged regulator enforced open access obligations, competitors that entered using these open access facilities provided an important catalyst for the development of robust competition which, in most cases, contributed to strong broadband performance across a range of metrics. Today these competitors continue to play, directly or through successor companies, a central role in the competitiveness of the markets they inhabit. Incumbents almost always resist this regulation, and the degree to which a regulator is professional, engaged, and effective appears to play a role in the extent to which open access is successfully implemented with positive effects." And if incumbents show "recalcitrance," government can always force them to "functionally separate" their ISP business from the underlying last mile network—as the UK has already done to BT. Open access turns out to be so crucial that the report actually spends much of its time discussing the issue with case studies and lots of number-crunching. "Open access" to broadband networks used to be the law of the land. From 1996 to 2001, telcos like AT&T were required to lease their last-mile copper networks to competitors (cable was never included in the scheme), and companies like Earthlink sprang up to compete with the telcos' own Internet offerings. Most other countries with developed Internet infrastructures have adopted open access schemes of various stripes—Canada forces telcos to share lines, while countries like the UK and Australia are working on massive fiber networks that will have to be leased to anyone (Japan already uses this scheme). Even countries that initially opposed such open access rules, like Switzerland and New Zealand, changed course and adopted them in 2006. The report doesn't tell Genachowski to push for open access in the US, but it comes pretty close. After analyzing all the data on US broadband and sifting through the controversies about each data source, the Berkman researchers synthesized the various rankings into a single score for penetration, speed, and price. The US was 17th in broadband penetration, 11th in speed, and 12th in price. Better in Busan One other list really brings the point home. When one looks at the actual download speeds in various cities around the world, no US city even makes the top 20. Instead, honors go to: Busan Seoul G�teborg Stockholm Yokohama Amsterdam Paris Tokyo Aarhus Helsinki Rotterdam Hamburg Kosice Bern Berlin Copenhagen Espoo Lyon Lisbon Oslo So congratulations, residents of Busan and Aarhus. Of course, we all know that the only reason you're winning the broadband race is because we live among the amber waves of grain while you scuttle about in concrete high rises. Actually, the Berkman report debunks the population density argument, too. "The surprise here is that despite its high density, South Korea actually outperforms even what its high urban density would predict, and that highly dense countries like the Netherlands and Denmark also outperform what their urban concentration would predict," it says. "In general, most of the countries that appear to be positive observation models, as identified by their levels of penetration, are above their predicted penetration levels given urban concentration, suggesting that their presence in the higher quintiles of penetration indeed marks them as potential models for policy observation, rather than simply as the beneficiaries of propitious geography." "Models for policy observation" they may be, but does open access in the US really stand a chance of returning? And would Genachowski even consider picking such a fight in the near future? We wouldn't be surprised.
NORTE DEL CAUCA, Colombia — The design for the local Baha'i House of Worship in the Norte del Cauca region of Colombia was unveiled Sunday at a meeting held at the site designated for its construction. A small team from the Colombian architectural firm, CUNA, presented the approved plans before an audience of 500 people from the region and further afield. Speaking on behalf of the firm, Eduard Lopez, one of the architects working on the project, expressed the team's gratitude for having been given the opportunity to participate in this initiative. Describing the process by which the team developed the design for the Temple, Mr. Lopez explained that its members spent many hours, over the course of months, visiting different communities and groups in Norte del Cauca, listening to their ideas and thoughts about the House of Worship, coming to understand their aspirations, and participating in their community-building activities. "We understand that this is a deeply emotional process for you," he said. "It is also deeply emotional for us." "People tell us that we are designing this House of Worship. But it is actually all of you who have designed it, and we are channeling your ideas." Mr. Lopez went on to explain how the team studied the natural surroundings and the architecture of the homes in the region in order to prepare a design that would not only be in harmony with the culture of the people, but also with the physical environment. "We chose the materials for the buildings with a number of variables in mind," Mr. Lopez explained. "We wanted materials that were from this region; materials that would not harm the natural surroundings." "The central concepts behind the design were simplicity and unity. This is how we find that God has made nature," he further elaborated. In a letter to the Baha'is of the world on 1 August, the Universal House of Justice articulated the nature of the task before the architects working on designs for the local Baha'i Houses of Worship which are to be constructed in seven localities around the world in the near future: "Architects are presented with the singular challenge of designing Temples 'as perfect as is possible in the world of being' that harmonize naturally with the local culture and the daily lives of those who will gather to pray and meditate therein. The task calls for creativity and skill to combine beauty, grace, and dignity with modesty, functionality, and economy." Norte del Cauca comprises a number of towns with long stretches of sugar cane fields between them. It is a largely rural region. The land for the House of Worship is situated in the small community of Agua Azul. In the backdrop stand the Andes mountains. In this setting, at approximately 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday, the architectural team unveiled the Temple design. The presentation was preceded by a traditional Colombian dance and a number of songs performed by the community. There was a palpable air of excitement as people gathered under tents that had been erected on the Temple land, over the area where the central edifice will be built. "It was a moment we have been waiting for for months," explained Nilma Aguilar Vilas, who was born on the outskirts of Puerto Tejada, a town just a few kilometers away from the Temple land. Mrs. Vilas was one of a number of people in Puerto Tejada who joined the Baha’i Faith as youth in the early 1980s and began to participate in educational programs inspired by its teachings. "All my friends eventually studied in these programs," she said. "So many of the young women were educated through their programs, and they have been the ones who have made a profound difference in this area." Monica Campos was also born in Norte del Cauca, in the small town of Santander de Quilichao. Reflecting on the historical context that had brought the House of Worship to her people, she explained that "the House of Worship is the materialization of forty years of development in Norte del Cauca. Not only has the Baha’i Faith developed in the region over these decades, but the region has developed together with the Baha’i Faith." "Understanding this historical context," she continued, "helps us see that the House of Worship belongs to all the people of the region."
DES MOINES — Women seeking abortions would have to wait three days before getting one and most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy would be banned under legislation passed Tuesday in the Senate and sent to the governor. Ocheyedan independent Sen. David Johnson joined 29 majority Republicans in passing Senate File 471. All 20 Democrats voted no. The 72-hour wait for women seeking an abortion was not eligible for debate when the Senate previously approved SF 471 on a 32-17 vote. But the GOP-led House used a procedural move to suspend its rules so the change could be approved and returned to the Senate. “This waiting period may save a few lives,” said Sen. Mark Costello, R-Imogene, the bill’s floor manager, in urging his colleagues to accept the changes and send them to GOP Gov. Terry Branstad for his expected signature. However, Sen. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, said the House changes take a balanced set of Iowa laws on legal abortion and “unravels” them with “something drastic.” Only a handful of states have a waiting period as long as the one Iowa lawmakers have approved, according to Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health care policy and research organization. The amended bill would allow an abortion after 20 weeks only if doctors determine it’s necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother. But it does not include exceptions for pregnancies involving fetal anomalies or resulting from rape or incest. The House also changed the original bill by removing criminal penalties. It does allow women to seek civil damages against providers who perform illegal abortions or parents whose daughter was a minor at the time of an abortion done without parental consent. Another provision allows physicians to be disciplined by the Iowa Board of Medicine if they’re found to be in violation of the law. Jochum said she trusts Iowa women to make their own medical decisions rather than have “Big Brother” government interfering. “These are women who wanted to be pregnant, they wanted this baby and something went terribly wrong,” she said. “This is not a decision that women willy-nilly make or on an impulse. These are heart-wrenching situations.” Sen. Rick Bertrand, R-Sioux City, tried to amend the bill to be even more restrictive to all but ban abortions — a move ruled non-germane by Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny. After the ruling, Bertrand admonished fellow Republicans for having “a Chet Culver moment” by not taking advantage of having GOP control of the Legislature and governorship to “go to the mat.” He compared it with the time the former Democratic governor vetoed a collective bargaining expansion when Democrats controlled state government after the 2006 election. “I guess this is the life bill that we’re going to get. This is it. This is the vote,” Bertrand said in an impassioned speech. “If not now, when?” Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, said Iowa has a good system of family planning services that are working, and the new 72-hour waiting period would cause added expenses and delays. “It’s time for politicians to stop interfering in the health care decisions of women and her trusted advisers and her family. Enough is enough,” Bolkcom said. Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa, called the waiting period the “time share clause” in the bill. “No one would buy a time share if they were able to go home and talk to their friends, talk to the neighbors, pray about it and sleep on it and talk to people they trusted,” Chelgren said. “Anyone who wants to get an abortion and has made that decision can do so under this bill. ... All they have to do is wait 72 hours to make sure that that decision was right, because it’s an irreversible decision.”
President Donald Trump is prepared to deprive the State of California of federal funding if it votes to become a sanctuary state, he said in a Fox News interview. "If we have to, we'll defund," he said. "We give tremendous amounts of money to California." California Democrats in the Senate stepped up their fight against the president last week, advancing legislation that would provide statewide sanctuary for immigrants and keep local law enforcement from cooperating with federal authorities. The president told Fox he is very much opposed to sanctuary cities, which he called "ridiculous." "They breed crime, there's a lot of problems," he said. In a 2016 analysis by WalletHub that ranked most and least federally dependent states, the Golden State came in at number 46 on the list. However, the University of California receives at least $9 billion in an assortment of grants, financial aid and research—all of which could be imperiled if Trump made good on a threat he made last week to deprive the university of funds in response to protests that roiled the school. California is "out of control" in many ways, and voters agree "otherwise they wouldnt have voted for me," he added. Trump lost California, which leans left politically, by a wide margin to former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. "I don't want to defund the state or city, I don't want to defund anybody, I want to give them the money they need to properly operate a city or a state," Trump said. That said, "if they're going to have sanctuary cities we may have to do that - certainly that would be a weapon."
Having grown up in an evangelical Christian family that sent me to religious schools, I know first-hand what being denied access to books, and the knowledge within them, looks and feels like. More importantly, I know what it smells like too — because I was forced to participate in a book burning when I was just 10 years old. I was living in the small Texas coastal town of Port Lavaca at the time, and our tiny church was hosting an outdoor, old-school tent revival series to which my parents dragged me every single night for a week. This wasn’t an unusual experience for me, having been raised around evangelicals who swore that they could speak the language of angels, but little did I know that one of the traveling preachers was about to upend what seemed like my whole childhood. Sitting under that big, white tent, I did what I had become quite practiced at: zoning out to pass the time. Thankfully, I had smuggled a Discman in to this particular service. So I cranked up my favorite CD at the time — an album by the Latino-Christian rapper T-Bone. His music sounds like Cypress Hill-esque gangsta rap, but his lyrics mostly center on committing graphic acts of violence against The Devil. Being a media-starved adolescent desperate to rebel, I was all about that. I was made to pay dearly for that small rebellion. On the penultimate night of the revival series, the traveling preacher told the crowd that they could purge The Devil from their lives by bringing all their “worldly” materials — like secular music, copies of PG-13 and R-rated movies, and especially books that aren’t the Bible — to be burned the following night. Everyone was encouraged to participate, and my parents were not of the mind to let me be the exception. Of course, as the more rebellious of two kids, my things were the first to be subjected to my parents’ scrutiny. I was adamant that there was nothing in my possession that needed to burn, but they were not going to budge. I cried and pleaded while they loudly insisted that I participate in the search to uproot Satan from my soul. That’s when my mother saw my Discman, with the T-Bone CD inside. She grabbed the CD case off my desk and began rifling through the lyrics, her mouth ajar. “Breaking demons’ necks?” she asked incredulously. “Machine-gunning the devil?” “Stephen, this is not acceptable for Christians,” was her verdict. I heard that verdict a lot that night. The last night of the revival, I wasn’t allowed to bring my Discman. Instead, my parents forced me to carry a shopping bag full of what felt like the sum of my meager exposure to the outside world, wrapped and ready to be flung into the fire. The bag contained an art book that had several paintings of nude models, my CD, three X-Men action figures that my mom thought looked like demons, a VHS copy of the G.I. Joe movie (because Cobra = snakes = The Devil), and my favorite things to read at the time — a stack of comic books and video game magazines that, sadly, had already been censored by my mother, who took a pair of scissors to every page she found objectionable. The choir sang as the preacher lit a fire inside a metal barrel off to the side of the big, white tent, already stinking with the smell of sweat and gasoline. I watched the licks of flame growing higher as each person walked past and dropped items in. The preached goaded his flock to burn more: “Evolutionists! Secularists! Abortionists! Home-o-sessuals! All of those who would stand against God, let ye pass through the fires of hell and be cleansed by the blood of the lamb!” At my parents’ prompting, I got in line and waited in silence, tears steaming down my face. Finally in front of the barrel, I threw my possessions in, staring longingly as my limited worldly knowledge went up in smoke. I never got over it. Those flames were in the back of my mind several years later when, as a 13-year-old preparing to graduate from a Christian middle school and move on to a public high school, the school’s administrator called a student assembly. The man who took the stage that day claimed he would help us fight The Devil when we go to the evil secular public school the next year. He then proceeded to explain that the Second Law of Thermodynamics — which states that all energy tends to dissipate over time and objects tend toward a state of disorder unless acted upon by an outside force — somehow disproves evolution. To this day, that logical fallacy is a centerpiece argument for intelligent design advocates, who honestly believe that the laws of nature undermine the overwhelming body of evidence underpinning evolution. Even “Conservapedia” agrees: “The Second Law of Thermodynamics disproves the atheistic Theory of Evolution and Theory of Relativity,” they claim. The obvious problem with that argument is that it neglects a very important outside force that’s been acting upon the Earth for billions of years: the Sun. In other words, the sum total of my scientific education before the 9th grade was a lecture intended to convince me that the Sun does not exist. Sadly, many of my classmates believed this to be true. It was years before I finally found myself with enough privacy and independence to acquire that knowledge and so much more, but I will never forget being forced to destroy even pop culture ephemera in the name of religious purification. I didn’t understand what scared my church members then, and I still don’t fully understand it now, but the experience helped me recognize that censorship and the willful denial of knowledge is less about saving your soul than saving your mind from anything that might make you question authority.
The performance that Mitch Seavey has delivered in this year's Iditarod will go down as one of the greatest performances — if not the best — in the history of the race. His son Dallas' victory last year is the only other contender. Seavey has shown everyone, his son included, that the Iditarod can be won going 10 mph at the finish — and doing it while finishing in less than nine days, a phenomenon that mushers would have scoffed at just a few years ago. What looked unrealistic a few days ago is now bordering on inevitable — Mitch is on the brink of shattering the race record his son set just last year. Even if Mitch takes a luxurious break in Elim, the final checkpoint before a mandatory rest in White Mountain, all he will have to do is maintain a pace of 8 mph (2 mph slower than he's currently going) for the final 170 miles into Nome to break the race record. It's even possible he could slip under 8 days, 5 hours, which would demolish the current record by more than six hours. Seavey is not without competition, and the finish of the 2014 Iditarod has not been forgotten. That's when a storm shut down both Jeff King and Aliy Zirkle in the final 70-mile stretch from White Mountain while Dallas surged, overcoming nearly a three-hour disadvantage to claim his second Iditarod victory. Mitch Seavey's chase pack, led by Dallas, is well aware that the race is never over until the lead dog reaches the burled arch in Nome. So what has happened in the last 24 hours, allowing Seavey to dictate the pace with the poise that only former champions possess? While most race leaders would be concerned letting other teams catch sight of them, Mitch has even let competitors pass him, as Wade Marrs and Nicolas Petit did en route to Unalakleet or as Dallas Seavey did in the wee hours of the morning out of Shaktoolik. Mitch has elected to stay confident in his team and his ultimate trump card — his speed. So he rested an extravagant five hours in Shaktoolik before pulling over once again for more than two hours of rest in Koyuk, allowing Nicolas Petit to catch sight of him. Mitch has yet to make a mistake and although the chase pack is doing everything possible to push him into doing something he'd rather not do, he is staying steadfast and in control. A look at his pursuers: Nicolas Petit is going for it, putting himself in a position to challenge if Mitch stumbles. Petit has been pulling off long runs with speed — not Seavey speed, but speed that any other year would have put him in the winner's circle. Petit seems to be the only musher within striking distance who could reach White Mountain without more rest. When arriving in Koyuk, Petit told race watchers he would stay four to six hours. But in a tactic to throw off the competition, or a gut decision, Petit headed for Elim after less than three hours of rest. Petit will now attempt to run straight to White Mountain in the hope of picking away at Seavey's lead. Dallas Seavey can never be counted out, but the defending champion is in uncharted territory and is clearly not in control of the race. Iditarod Insider caught up to Dallas Seavey at a shelter cabin outside of Shaktoolik, where Seavey explained his thoughts about chasing down his dad: "I'm running my team. Everyone keeps expecting me to do something to go catch up to him. You know, we saw what happened last year, (when) a team that's outclassed tries to keep up with better teams (musher Brent Sass' team refused to leave White Mountain for several hours). It's not good dogmanship to push a team beyond of where they are capable of. It would not be wise of me to try and make this team keep up. … It's going to end badly for us if we try that." Dallas has positioned himself for a strong second-place finish with his main competition being Petit. He blew through Koyuk and will most certainly need to pull over for a rest once more before hitting White Mountain — unlike his father and Petit, who both can make one big push to reach their eight-hour rest in White Mountain. Joar Ulsom has run an interesting last 175 miles after pulling over within yards of Mitch Seavey's camping spot 20 miles from Unalakleet. Ulsom chose to go through Unalakleet and Shaktoolik to chase down Dallas Seavey and pull over for a slumber party in the shelter cabin, joining him for a few hours of shut-eye. Wade Marrs, once bubbly and energetic, was anything but when Iditarod Insider caught up with him Monday in Shaktoolik. His once-contagious energy had been replaced by resignation as his goal of beating the Seaveys slips out of his grasp. His focus has shifted to what was coming from behind, specifically Jessie Royer, and could struggle to get a top-five finish. Jessie Royer has put in some impressive work and is within miles of breaking into the top five for the second time in her career. Royer is known for her strong finishes, and she still has her entire 16-dog team on the line (the next largest teams in the top 20 are Petit, Marrs and Michelle Phillips, all with 13 dogs). Royer is a true wild card and could push all the way up to third place if she plays her cards right and gets lucky. With tomorrow night's Iditarod finish looming and with two new Iditarod records on the horizon (fastest finish and the oldest musher to win) the energy in Nome is growing. If Mitch pulls off this amazing feat, he will have bested his last win in 2013 by 24 hours, leaving the question that every musher will contemplate for the next 12 months: "Will the 2018 Iditarod be won in under eight days?"
Rage Against the Machine takes on Ryan Guitarist Tom Morello responds to Paul Ryan's fandom with a derisive Op-Ed for Rolling Stone Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Paul Ryan was a big fan of Rage Against the Machine, “which sings about the greed of oil companies and whose Web site praises the anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street movement.” Now, guitarist Tom Morello has responded with an Op-Ed in Rolling Stone: “Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades,” Morello begins, before asserting that Romney's V.P. pick is actually “clueless” about the band. While the guitarist concedes that fans respond to his music in “different ways,” he has a hard time coming to terms with Ryan being a fan while also being a conservative Republican. In one striking passage, Morello discusses what Ryan truly rages about: Advertisement: Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions. Spin reported that Ryan’s Facebook page lists several other bands as favorites, including Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. Since Ryan “is the first Gen Xer to run in a presidential campaign … his place in an evil empire won’t prevent him from enjoying songs on (Rage album) Evil Empire," Spin suggests. But this isn't the Romney campaign's first run-in with a band. In February, the Huffington Post reported that Rap artist K'Naan was not pleased when his song "Wavin' Flag" was played during Romney's Florida primary win speech.
Beware: Bacterial gunk walks on surfaces, scientists find UH engineer says discovery of movement sheds light on biofilms The non-technical word for a biofilm is gunk. Biofilms — communities of bacteria that band together for protection — gum up pipes, accumulate on ship's hulls and slime the ice machine. And if you listen to your dentist, you try to brush them off your teeth at night, too. Because some biofilms cause real problems by blocking the flow of water or oil through pipes and force ships to use more fuel, scientists are interested in understanding how bacteria form in and on them. What they found surprised them. When most bacteria encounter a hard surface upon which they might form a biofilm, the bacteria stand up. And "walk" across the surface. "It was totally shocking," said Jacinta Conrad, a chemical and biomolecular engineer at the University of Houston. Conrad and colleagues describe the phenomenon in a paper published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Using advanced microscopes they essentially captured movies of more than 1,000 bacteria as they went from water to encountering a hard surface, and then tracked the individual motions of each bacteria over time. Bacteria are tiny organisms that live in every habitat on Earth, from the Arctic to extremely hot subsea vents. By cell count, the human body is about 90 percent bacteria. The bacteria studied in Conrad's experiment were about 1 micron wide and 3 or 4 microns long. A human hair is about 100 microns across. To find nutrients bacteria must be able to move efficiently. Scientists have long understood how the microorganisms do this in water. And on surfaces scientists believed the bacteria would lay, lengthwise, and pull themselves along with grappling-hook-like tentacles called pili. And indeed some of the bacteria did this as it was an efficient way of moving in a straight direction. But that's not a good way of covering a lot of ground, or searching a wide area for food, Conrad said. What is an efficient way, apparently, is the standing up and walking observed by the scientists. This walking on a few pili allowed the bacteria to randomly cover much more space. The scientists also found differences in how biofilms form depending on the ability of a species of bacteria to walk upright, or not. This kind of information, ultimately, should help scientists prevent unwanted biofilms from forming. "I'm really interested in trying to design surfaces that shed bacteria," Conrad said. The type of surfaces, one supposes, that bacteria would turn around and walk away from. eric.berger@chron.com
While you may be familiar with the gloppy yet delicious Shabbat afternoon stew that is cholent, you may not know about the word’s French etymology, nor the fact that we have a Jewish inventor to thank for the appliance that allows us to slowly cook our meat-and-bean-potato stew. Though you probably aren’t surprised. That inventor is Irving Naxon, whose 200 patents include none other than the forerunner of the Crock-Pot. Naxon’s daughter, Lenore, has said that her father “constantly had ideas. He had the gene of figuring out how to do something.” Why figure out how to slowly heat stew? Because after learning of his shtetl-born mother’s Herculean efforts to make cholent, Naxon was inspired to create a self-contained slow-heating element for home cooks. Naxon created what he called the Naxon Beanery, a cooker named both after himself and the food he intended it for—beans. He sold it primarily to coffee shops and luncheonettes. In 1970, a rival company appropriately called Rival bought the rights to the appliance and reintroduced it to the world as the one and only Crock-Pot. Shabbos would never smell the same.
We are shocked, shocked, to read in Gotham Gazette: Unlocking the Apartment 'Warehouse' [a homeless advocacy group] found that 24,000 apartments could come out of the vacant buildings and lots they canvassed. The report noted that while the count only covered Manhattan, "highly visible clusters of boarded-up buildings in neighborhoods exist throughout the five boroughs." Picture the Homeless said that the vacant property could house the entire homeless population of New York City. The report then goes on to ask why there are so many vacant apartments? According to a pro-landlord group: "the property is tied up in an estate" "the landlord might think that using the property would not be profitable" "structural problems with buildings" "property owners who tired of managing" Throw in a couple more reasons from the "Housing Not Warehousing Coalition" "Warehousing today is all about gentrification. That's all it's about," he said. "If you're holding on to a building, paying and maintaining the cost of taxes, sitting on an investment you're not profiting from, it's for a reason, and it's because you plan on making more money in the future." Making more money in the future: that sounds pretty evil, huh?. But wait, government to the rescue: Councilmember Tony Avella, a Queens Democrat running for mayor, is working on a bill aimed at stopping landlords from keeping vacant property off the market. How anyone can write an entire article about vacant housing in New York City and not mention rent control, or really any rational explanation for this phenomenon, boggles the mind. In one of the most crowded and expensive cities in the world why are there empty apartments? Are landlords stupid? Do they not want to make money? That rent controls produce a shortage at the controlled price with reservation demand above the controlled prices is one of the most basic conclusions of economics. All of the other problems mentioned in the article could be caused by rent control as well. Property tied up in an estate? Most business firms do not shut down when they pass into an estate, they continue to operate. The executors of the estate could still manage the property for income, like any other business, were there an incentive to do so. The property is not profitable? This might change if it could be rented at a higher price. Structural problems? Capital consumption common in rent-controlled areas because landlords try to cut costs rather than raise prices. Owners tired of managing? Why not hire someone to manage? Anecdotally, I know of several instances of off-the-market property in San Francisco where I live and which has rent control. Owners have told me the reason is that, once you lease a property, you cannot terminate the rental very easily. This means that you cannot get the property back for your own use if you wish to use it for yourself or family members. (There are some exceptions to this, it's complicated...). I'm not familiar in detail with the ins and outs of New York rent control. At one point in time, the rent control was associated with the unit, not the tenant, which provided a incentive for a property owner to with hold units to avoid establishing a controlled rent. I know that there has been some liberalization over the years, however, Wikipedia links to this New York Times article which states that the state legislature has made the rent control law even more strict.
This story originally appeared here and is published on Carolina Public Press through a content-sharing agreement with the Charlotte Observer. Duke presents Asheville with funds for educational kiosks By Bruce Henderson bhenderson@charlotteobserver.com In a counter to its February coal ash spill into the Dan River, Duke Energy announced a $10 million fund Wednesday for Carolinas waterways. The money will be used to improve water quality, enhance fish and wildlife habitat, and expand public access. It may also buff a corporate image battered by the “profound event,” as CEO Lynn Good called the nation’s third-largest ash spill. “We earn trust and respect from our customers and communities every day,” Good said after a Charlotte event announcing the Water Resources Fund. “I think Dan River has put us in a position to work a little bit harder.” The fund reserves $1.5 million for projects in the Dan River basin. Duke will separately grant $500,000 to improve a park in Danville, Va., which bore the brunt of the spill. Projects in the Carolinas and three states downstream of Duke power plants – in Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee – will be eligible for grants. Duke announced eight initial grants totaling $765,000. Among them was $50,000 to the Charlotte-based Catawba Lands Conservancy to help protect habitat for an endangered mussel found in Waxhaw Creek in Union County. Duke’s foundation donated $25,000 to the conservancy last year to help preserve 152 acres along the creek. Executive Director Tom Okel said the conservancy’s work is preservation, not advocacy. Duke, he added, has been a longtime supporter. “The fact that Duke is having issues with some of their business units is not a reason to end that relationship,” he said. Last October, Asheville’s City Council passed a resolution urging Duke to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, including the coal-fired power plant there. On Wednesday, Vice Mayor Marc Hunt accepted $45,000 from Duke to install educational kiosks along a city greenway. “I think the responsible civic and political leadership sort of understands when we can agree and disagree,” Hunt said later. “We’re just too small a community to stay mad at anybody forever.” The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has sued Duke over ash contamination claims, said the company could make a larger impression by moving its ash away from waterways. “Avoiding the Danville spill would have done more for philanthropy than writing a check,” said attorney Frank Holleman. Duke has agreed, or been ordered by legislators, to excavate ash and place it in lined disposal sites at five Carolinas power plants. North Carolina legislation requires Duke to close ponds at 10 other plants within 15 years, but some ash could stay in place covered by protective caps. The North Carolina Community Foundation, a Raleigh agency that works with individual donors, businesses and nonprofit groups, will administer the new water fund. A seven-member committee, including two members from Duke and five from outside the company, will decide which grants to approve. Committee members include Barry Gullet, director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities. Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/09/24/4179343_duke-energy-creates-10-million.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy
“It’s Time:” Effort to Legalize Recreational Marijuana in ND Underway They think it has a good chance after seeing the success a 2016 medicinal marijuana bill had at the ballot box FARGO, ND — An effort to legalize recreational marijuana in North Dakota is underway. The campaign manager for the bill said they have at least 30 sponsors. Voters in 2018 could decide if North Dakota becomes the first state in the Midwest to legalize recreational marijuana. “Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol, it doesn’t work for this,” said Josh Dryer, campaign manager for the Recreational Marijuana/Expungement Bill. Dryer, along with at least 30 other sponsors, are getting ready to start collecting signatures. Since the medicinal marijuana bill passed in North Dakota in 2016 with a nearly two thirds vote, he thinks recreational use has a good chance. “In the Midwest, we’re probably the ‘reddest’ state,” Dryer said. “If we get it passed here, it’s only a matter of time before the other states around us follow suit. If North Dakota legalizes it, everyone else is going to in my opinion.” When medicinal marijuana passed, it was expected to be available in 30 days. The state health department doesn’t expect it to be available for another year: that’s two years from when voters passed the bill. Rilie Ray Morgan, Co-Chairman of the medicinal bill, expects recreational to run into similar obstacles. “There’s going to be some issues that will have to be worked out with the state,” Morgan said. “Who’s gonna be able to sell it, licensing, taxing, that kind of thing. Is it going to speed up things for medicinal? I don’t know. That’s hard to say.” One of the goals of the legalization is to help those who are charged over the use of marijuana. “We don’t release anyone from jail, we expunge the charges,” Dryer added. State’s Attorney Birch Burdick told us penalties for recreational use are relatively small, but he believes a new law could impact ongoing court cases. “When a law has changed and a prosecution is ongoing, we will try and conform the ongoing case to the new law,” Burdick said. “If they’re looking to expunge and the legislature passes that, then we’ll just follow whatever the law is.” Dryer said they saw what happened with the medicinal marijuana bill and took steps to avoid long delays if the bill passes in 2018. “This is a non-partisan issue,” he said. “There are people on both sides of the aisle that want this, there’s people on both sides of the aisle that don’t. From national polling, our polling, it looks like people want it. It’s time.” For now, they’re just focused on getting this measure on the ballot. Secretary of State officials tell us they’re expecting a finalized draft of the bill by early next week.
makes lots of big news -- for instance, it's about to resume construction on its massive new plant in North Carolina; it just introduced a new winter seasonal called Accumulation White IPA; it will begin distributing beer in Ohio, its 35th state -- but the Fort Collins brewery is pushing the limits behind the scenes as well. This winter, the nation's third largest craft brewer will double its collection of foeders -- massive wooden barrels that are typically used to age wine in Europe and California -- from 32 to 64. Continue Reading See also: Epic Brewing will kick-start a new sour beer program with foeders from New Belgium Which might not sound like a lot, until you consider that most of these foeders holds 130 hectoliters, or roughly 104 barrels (208 kegs), of beer. (You can see them at this Imgur site.) They'll be so heavy, in fact, that New Belgium is currently redoing the floors in its "foeder forest" to support the weight. "The goal is two-fold," says New Belgium spokesman Bryan Simpson. The first is to keep La Folie -- the popular sour brown ale that New Belgium first brewed in 2004 and which can take up to three years to make -- in the market year-round. The second "is to be able to do more experimental blends as part of the Lips of Faith series." New Belgium, which helped pioneer the sour and wild ale movement in the United States, began buying foeders from overseas wine makers several years ago. It uses them to age beers like La Folie and Le Terroir. The brewery also makes several beers, like Tart Lychee and Eric's Ale, that blend in some of the wood-aged beers. Brettanomyces, the yeast strain that is used to make many wild and sour beers, "likes an oxygen-rich environment, and that is what the oak brings you," Simpson says. The foeders also allow New Belgium to make these beers in a larger quantity without the same level of effort required by using regular-sized wine barrels. A few breweries across the country, including Russian River, Goose Island and Crooked Stave, also use them, but not to the extent that New Belgium does. New Belgium recently sold three of its smaller foeders to the Denver outpost of Utah-based Epic Brewing, which plans to use them to kickstart its own sour and wild ale aging program. Simpson says that once all of the new foeders are up and running -- which may not be until next year sometime -- that New Belgium will be maxed out on space. There are no plans for a foeder forest in the first phase of the North Carolina plant. Follow Westword 's Beer Man on Twitter at @ColoBeerMan and on Facebook at Colo BeerMan
It’s been 17 long years since Boss Hog last had an album to tour, so Friday’s show at Hackney’s Oslo was an event not to be missed. After a subtly beguiling support slot from Aussie songsmith Suzie Stapleton, the tiny above bar venue began filling rapidly in anticipation of one of New York city’s most carnal and provocative cult acts. Noise-core aficionados of all ages were in attendance, reflecting the extraordinary longevity of a band that’s been bursting eardrums and ripping up stages since 1989. Sirens heralding their presence, the band tear into the excellent Wichita Grey from last year’s comeback EP Brood Star and it’s raw power all the way from then on. Songs rip by at breakneck speed, the band stretched to the limit, yet just about managing to keep it all together. A whirl of energy, frontwoman Cristina Martinez dominates proceedings, constantly criss-crossing the stage as she belts out her vocals. Menacingly seductive on record, live she’s a bubbly, joyous presence, all smiles as she takes time out to introduce the rest of the band. Guitarist Jon Spencer, leader of Blues Explosion and Pussy Galore. is happy here to play second fiddle to his wife, skilfully creating space in his machine gun blues breaks for her voice to shine through. There’s a genuine crackle of electricity between them, particularly when he steps up to the mic to back her on vocals. Drummer Hollis Queens, partially hidden at the back of the small stage, still leaves her mark, joining in the call and response vocal interplay while pounding away at her kit. Between song repartee is kept to a minimum, though Martinez leaves the crowd in no doubt about her views on the new incumbent of the White House. “I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote this, but it quickly became about our new dictator,” she says, before launching into Disgrace. New songs from the upcoming Brood X album (full EP review coming soon), merge seamlessly with older material like the funky I Dig U and the ferocious “suicide” screaming of Ski Bunny. Minor technical difficulties ensue during the encore, during which a fan’s request gets a merciless rebuffing. “That’s not happening tonight honey,” Martinez purrs, before adding: “Do you hear that a lot from females?” A brief nature lesson on cicadas follows, as a prelude to an airing of new track 17. A slow (for them) and reflective song with a staccato almost polka rhythm – it may just be the best thing they’ve done to date. Then all too soon it’s all over and ears ringing, we scuttle back out into the freezing February night. Here’s hoping we won’t have to wait another 17 years before they’re back this way again. Boss Hog’s new album Brood X is due for release via Bronze Rat Records on March 24 (Visited 14 times, 1 visits today)
It all started when CNN aired a piece about Haredi Jews in Israel. Rabbi Avi Shafran, Agudath Israel of America’s director of Public Affairs wrote to defend that community against what he felt to be an errant smear. In this defense, Rabbi Shafran made a number of inaccurate and false claims about the situation in Israel and the Haredi community’s part in it. He depicted the Haredi community and politicians here as being simply ‘live and let live.’ As a resident of Beit Shemesh on the front lines of religious extremism, I felt that Rabbi Shafran’s claims cried out for a response, so I wrote, trying to depict the reality here, since his description was so very off the mark. Rabbi Shafran then wrote again. In this new piece, he attempted to dismiss and discredit me, and once again insisted that the extremism I decry isn’t really there, and if it is, it is a minority within a minority. Instead of dealing with a real problem and issue, he chose instead to deflect and deny. (This all went down in The Forward, where Rabbi Shafran responded to the CNN piece.) It was at this point that other residents of Beit Shemesh had had enough. Rabbi Natan Slifkin wrote an excellent rebuttal of Rabbi Shafran’s piece and Amanda Bradley did as well. Each cover different points and I suggest reading them if you want an even more robust understanding of Haredi extremism here. Left to my own devices, I would not have responded to Rabbi Shafran again. Being branded a liar and anti-Haredi by those who don’t like my writing against extremism is not new to me. But too many people who live in Beit Shemesh and see what goes on here felt that I could not let his dismissal of the situation stand. And so, here I am. Rabbi Shafran, misquotes and mischaracterizes me regarding censorship of women’s images.” I did not “bemoan how ‘images of women are disappearing’ from Haredi publications and brochures.” What I wrote was: “increasingly, images of women are disappearing from publications, billboards, bank and health clinic brochures in Israel.” Public billboards, bank walls and health clinics are not under the auspices of the Haredim. I speak of public institutions and their printed materials, which are increasingly being swept up in the unholy tide of vanishing women. The phenomenon is growing and getting far worse. Rabbi Shafran’s claim that: “Many haredi publications, in the interest of the Jewish idea of modesty, have always refrained from including photos of women,” is wrong. Only the most extreme publications had that practice. A program by Hadrei Hadarim (a Haredi media outlet) investigates this exact question. Even if your Hebrew is minimal, watch from 1:12 where the interviewer asks: Was this always the case? (that women were absent from Haredi media?) “The answer is an absolute No.” and shows images to prove it. Rabbi Shafran calls me intolerant for not tolerating censorship of women. But I’ve written extensively about the damage it does to Jewish communities. Even if he is okay with the chaos created when men cannot interact normally with women and when girls are left with no positive images to relate to, Rabbi Shafran is ignoring the violence that comes when Haredi leadership enforces the illegal “no women” ban. Here, in Ramat Beit Shemesh, when a local businessman attempted to create an ad booklet with modest images of families and men and women, he was boycotted, the deliverers harassed and physically assaulted. The booklet’s producer was pressured intensely to remove all images of women and girls. Threats both open and veiled were made. Those who joined and justified the boycott were American Haredim, those you would call “moderate.” They called the advertisers and pressured them to pull out telling them they would not patronize them if they advertised there. They justified their actions as “daas Torah.” About the Orot Banot girls school outbreak in 2011, when extremists harassed girls at their school on a regular basis, Rabbi Shafran claims that: “Many are the respected yeshiva heads and scholars who have made clear that violence of the sort Ramat Beit Shemesh experienced six years ago is indefensible.” Really? We here in Beit Shemesh must have somehow missed those vociferous and varied condemnations. Here, we were treated to many private and one very public refusal by rabbis to condemn the violence. The below quote is just part of a long and painful letter the rabbi wrote explaining his refusal to help. After being refused assistance by the community and politicians, there was no choice but to go to the media. And of course, we were widely condemned by the haredi community for doing so. So, which is it, Rabbi? Shall we go to the media to prove that what we are saying is true or should we continue the pointless exercise of begging the leaders and politicians to help us? As I told Rabbi Shafran when he asked me, the current incidents of the harassment of teenage girls occur on Shabbat, so I have no video. Moreover, the residents of Beit Shemesh are trying very hard to solve the issue outside of the media, via police and politicians — thus, I suggested that he contact the police for the police report to verify the story as well. When one of the local women saw Rabbi Shafran’s questioning of the incidents, she offered to speak to him directly about what she and her daughter have experienced. The offer stands. But most shocking of all that Rabbi Shafran writes is the question he asks rhetorically. “Are religious Zionists to be expected to condemn every outrage committed by a “hilltop youth?” YES, Rabbi Shafran. YES they are! That is what it means to be a moral and responsible person. I wrote these words on Yom Hashoah and this is the number one lesson that I have taken from the Holocaust. Not that people hate us, not that we must circle the wagons, not that we should make excuses for extremism and say it’s only a few crazies, but that when people do bad things, it is our moral and religious obligation to stand against them — every time. I honestly cannot believe this is something I need to explain to a rabbi. I invite Rabbi Shafran to come and spend some time in Beit Shemesh since he appears not to believe its residents. He will see children tearing Israeli flags off cars, soldiers being physically attacked and called Nazis, and young boys with payot calling Jewish mothers ‘shiksas’. Come ride the Number 11 bus and you can hear Jewish men telling Jewish women and girls to go to the back of the bus. This is the next generation of Haredi Jews here, Rabbi. Our town is the canary in the coal mine of Jewish extremism. That you care more about the reputation of your community than its actual health and future says more about its decay than any additional evidence I might bring.
Bexley Boys Home child abuse victim urges people not to donate to Salvation Army Updated A former resident of the Bexley Boys' Home in Sydney has urged the public not to give money to the Salvation Army because children have been damaged by child abuse under its care. The Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse has been examining the response of the Salvation Army to claims by abuse victims. Allan Anderson and his brother, who resided at the Bexley Boys' Home from 1966 to 1971, were physically and emotionally abused during this time. Mr Anderson was recently offered a $70,000 ex-gratia payment by the Salvation Army but rejected it because he did not believe there was a proper process in deciding on that figure. Mr Anderson told the commission on Tuesday he was unhappy with how his claim was processed and urged the public not to give money to the organisation. "Boys' and girls' lives have been damaged and any compensation should come from the organisation's pockets, not the public's," he said. Mr Anderson said questions about his time at Bexley were not answered. "I am confused by the process the organisation puts you through," he said. "Why is it you cannot sit down and give us what we require? Why [do] you say you don't have the information when you get us to painstakingly take days, months, weeks and years to continually write an impact statement for you?" An advocate for Salvation Army abuse victims, John Lucas, told the hearing the claims process should be more transparent and specific to individual victims. Mr Lucas represented around 40 claimants in Queensland through a not-for-profit organisation Micah Projects. He told the commission that ex-gratia payments would be offered out of the blue without explanation as to how the amount was determined. "Sometimes people would say that they felt very hurt by the process," he said. He told the commission that some victims felt resigned to accepting offers made to them, while others who rejected the amount were offered more money with no reason given. Mr Lucas told Counsel Assisting the Commission Simeon Beckett that it appeared the Salvation Army was more interested in fixing issues rather than properly investigating the claim. John Lucas: "Each time there was a kind of question raised, the offer went up." Simeon Beckett: "Is that because you were not told of the basis upon which the amount had been increased?" John Lucas: "Yes." Topics: child-abuse, royal-commissions, salvation-army, bexley-2207 First posted
Yang Young Hwa, left, mother of Kwon Woo Sung, right, leave the District Court of Guam on Nov. 29, 2016, after Kwon was sentenced to almost three years in prison. (Photo: Jasmine Stole/PDN) HAGATNA, Guam — The Korean Air passenger who got into a fight with a flight attendant on board a plane bound for Guam from Seoul, South Korea was sentenced to 28 months and nine days in federal prison on Tuesday. Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood’s punishment for passenger Kwon Woo Sung is a total of 36 months, including the past seven months he served under house arrest and in federal detainment. This leaves 28 months and nine days left on his sentence. Kwon, a dentist in South Korea, pleaded guilty to interfering with flight crew members and attendants. He was headed to Guam in April for vacation and ordered five beers in a 35-minute span before the crew decided not to serve him any more alcohol, according to court documents. After he smoked a cigarette in the plane's restroom and admitted to it, he asked for another beer but was denied. Kwon then became angry and fought with the flight attendant, documents state. About five passengers had to help restrain him for about an hour until they landed in Guam. Kwon's attorney, Peter C. Perez, asked if Kwon could serve all or part of the sentence in home detention instead of prison. Tydingco-Gatewood gave the attorneys another day to look into home confinement as an alternative and the hearing will continue Wednesday. Before the Tuesday's hearing ended, the judge said that this was the longest sentencing of her life. Kwon was initially sentenced to three years on Nov. 8, but his attorneys, Perez and Edward Han, asked the judge for more time to discuss whether Kwon would accept the sentence or withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial. The defense presented more testimony from Kwon, his 70-year-old mother Yang Young Hwa and Kwon’s psychiatrist on Monday. The defense also filed another 212 pages for the judge to consider in sentencing Kwon. After Monday’s hearing, Tydingco-Gatewood returned Tuesday with the same punishment she pronounced three weeks ago. Kwon’s crime is serious enough to sentence him that way, she said. Kwon must also pay a $10,500 fine, $1,000 of which is for smoking in the plane’s restroom. The money will be taken out of Kwon’s $100,000 cash bail. Kwon still has the option of withdrawing his guilty plea if he does not accept the court’s sentence. Kwon and his mother fell to their knees at one point at Monday’s hearing, both in tears and pleading for leniency, bowing to Tydingco-Gatewood. Hwa’s tearful statements in court were heart-wrenching, the chief judge said, adding that this was one of the more emotional sentencing hearings in her 22 years as a judge. During a lunch break after Tydingco-Gatewood sentenced him, Kwon and his mother embraced and cried loudly in the courtroom. Kwon’s psychiatrist testified to treating Kwon for the past three years for mental and emotional issues, including anxiety, depression, anger issues and others. Kwon expressed his remorse in testimony before the judge and in his apology letters to passengers, flight crew and Korean Air CEO. The letters were part of the 212 documents filed last week. An attorney in South Korea also penned a letter that said Kwon may be charged with a crime when he returns home. But there is no certainty that Kwon will be prosecuted in South Korea, Tydingco-Gatewood said. The chief judge said she learned a lot about the Korean culture in this case. She praised the local Korean community for supporting Kwon. As an example, two people who never even met him stepped in to be his third-party custodians. Many Koreans in Guam and in his hometown wrote letters asking the judge for leniency. You don’t see much of that, Tydingco-Gatewood said of the Korean community's response to Kwon's case. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2ghsvJo
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Bidzina Ivanishvili: Georgia's "first European-style election" There might be 23 candidates in Sunday's presidential election in Georgia but in recent months two men already in power have been dominating the country's politics. And both are about to step down. They face each other from their palaces on opposite sides of the River Kura, which flows through the capital Tbilisi. One is the glass-domed structure of the country's President Mikheil Saakashvili, the second is an ultra-modern steel and glass mansion - the residence of the country's billionaire Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili. Mr Ivanishvili took office last year after his Georgian Dream coalition defeated President Saakashvili's allies in a parliamentary election. But there is very little face-to-face interaction between the two leaders, and their public statements are full of bitterness towards each other. Rights 'abuses' In the West, President Saakashvili is known as a man who brought democracy to Georgia, which has been plagued by political violence since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991. But Mr Ivanishvili refers to the outgoing president as a "liar" and a "dictator". Image copyright AP Image caption The election campaign has been dominated by rivalry between the outgoing president and outgoing prime minister "He said one thing to the outside world, and did totally different things inside the country," Mr Ivanishvilli told the BBC from his residence. "Under Saakashvili, abuses of people's rights inside Georgia were widespread. Anyone could have been targeted and sent to jail. Prisons were overcrowded. Properties were illegally confiscated," he said. Addressing a group of students on Thursday, Mr Saakashvili said he and the prime minister had nothing in common. "I and Prime Minister Ivanishvili are from different planets, or to put it more correctly I am from this planet, from this country… We represent two different Georgias." Since coming to power in the bloodless 2003 "Rose Revolution" Mr Saakashvili has implemented reforms which helped root out corruption. He cut bureaucracy and improved public services in the Caucasus republic, where poverty remains widespread. The World Bank in a report in 2012 suggested Georgia's experience in fighting corruption could be exemplary for other nations facing similar problems. At a recent UN General Assembly meeting, Mr Saakashvili said he was proud of Georgia's accomplishments during his 10 years in office. 'Elite' corruption But the country's prime minister has dismissed these achievements. Image copyright AP Image caption President Saakashvili sees himself as the man who eliminated corruption "Corruption was eradicated among the police, his government was proud of this for years. But later, they used the police force to commit violence against people. So we can't say it was an achievement," says Mr Ivanishvili. "The biggest achievement, I would say, was the improvement of tax collection. Money started flowing into the state budget. But the budget was then abused - so this also cannot be counted as an achievement." His allegations of "elite" corruption have led to a number of arrests and investigations of former officials from Mr Saakashvili's administration. Mr Ivanishvili, who credits his own government with establishing a transparent judicial system, does not exclude the possibility that Mr Saakashvili could also find himself under investigation once his presidential immunity is lifted. "The process of restoration of justice is continuing, therefore such a probability cannot be ruled out," he said. Behind the scenes In August, he announced that he would step down before the end of the year. Image copyright AFP Image caption Prime Minister Ivanishvili says he has brought money flowing into the budget "When I entered politics I said that I would stay for two or three years, accomplish my set goals and leave. Well, it took me less than three years. I put the country on the right path and no-one can reverse this process." Following Sunday's vote, constitutional amendments introduced in 2010 will come into effect that significantly reduce presidential powers. Georgia in effect will become a parliamentary democracy. But even after Mr Ivanishvili steps down there are concerns he could still run the country from behind the scenes, especially if his chosen presidential candidate Giorgi Margvelashvili - ahead in the opinion polls - wins. Mr Ivanishvili has not yet named a successor as prime minister. The presidential candidate of Mr Saakashvili's United National Movement (UNM), Davit Bakradze, is a former parliament speaker who accuses the ruling coalition of failing to deliver on its promises.
Oh my. That was what I said when I took off the wrapping paper of one very heavy gift. Anyone who is remotely interested in cooking will know the famed pattern that adorns some of the most famous cook books in the world. Although these are so much more than cook books. They're stories, they're lessons, they're adventures, and they're sharing a glass of wine with Ms Child herself. I may or may not have teared up a little. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I promise keep my knife sharp and try do you proud by learning all I can from the beautiful gifts you have sent me. To tell you a secret I've always coveted these books, I wanted to read them back to front but they were always too expensive for someone on minimum wage. You went so above and beyond what you had to, and I am so, so, so, so grateful. If you're ever in New Zealand please let me know, give me page numbers from these gorgeous books and I'll cook you the feast you deserve. Or at least please message me your address so I can send you a proper thank you card! This is one of the best gifts I have ever received (right up there with the gift of life haha), so thoughtful, generous, and wonderful. I'm surprised I've written so much because I was completely speechless when I got your gift. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
This article is over 6 years old Germany's second biggest news agency, DAPD, has filed for insolvency protection. The agency has been struggling ever since it was founded three years ago. All six subsidiaries of the DAPD holding company announced they were going into bankruptcy, putting 299 jobs at risk. Chief executive Martin Vorderwuelbecke said the move might lead to "a sustainable solution for the companies and the employees." DAPD was formed in 2010 after a merger of the DDP agency and the German service of the US news agency, Associated Press (AP). Its main competitor on the German market is the national news agency, Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA). Competition between news agencies in Germany is extremely high, with Reuters and AFP also vying for a share of the market with German-language services. Sources: AFP/Deutsche Welle
Is it possible to remove politics from chronicling robotic evolution? We asked and meditated on this question at RC HQ yesterday. While there was not a neat and compact resolution, what came out of the discussion was the realization that it might not be possible to completely remove politics, but it was possible to keep the reportage from being bogged down in the kind of political/ideological warfare American readers are so used to — which makes things, frankly, boring and unfun. It seems to me that you can tackle the issue a few different ways. The easiest is to take a page from our current pundit class, engage in hyperbolic argument and resolve nothing. Another way is to stay completely technical — reporting strictly on the new advances in robotics, in effect creating a kind of robotic gaze, where the human element is almost completely left out, except for a tangential mention of who made the advance. The third way, and the way I think we’re going to do it here at RC, is recognizing the human element in all its social, political and economic glory but striving for a balance and a consideration of all points. Going with option three doesn’t necessarily rule out judgement calls on my part, but it tries to open a conversation rather than head one off through brash opinion making or strictly sterile robotic reportage. In addition, we want to create a positive atmosphere and a forum for that open conversation to happen. To that end, I came across an interesting Smithsonian article about Jaron Lanier, which led me down the rabbit hole to BigThink. In the video entitled “Let’s Unmask The Great & Powerful Oz of Technology,” Lanier points out, I think correctly, how we’d be doing ourselves a massive disservice by removing the human element from technology (and, by extension, artificial intelligence, robotics and a host of other branches) and treat it as a completely autonomous entity. Not only does it leave humans without any credit for making this magnificent machine, but it could also create a situation where we distance ourselves from confronting the consequences. I’m fond of saying that to augment our advances in technology, that we should have a world-wide therapy session about them. The purpose of such a conversation would be to assert our dominance over technology, rather than relinquishing that dominance so technology can direct our future for us. It’s also to say that we need to recognize those are going to be disadvantaged in the process and see what we can do to lessen the strife or try to completely avoid it. Necessarily, that is a political question but one that can be dealt with in as little of an ideological manner as possible through sharing all perspectives on the situation. We are the drivers behind this autonomous car, and we deserve all the glory for building it yet we shoulder all the responsibility for it as well.
The next time you reach the airport with less than 45 minutes for your flight to take off and the airline counter does not issue you a boarding pass, ensure you have already read up this week's bestseller How To Assault Airline Staff And Get A Boarding Pass, by Telugu Desam MP from Andhra Pradesh, JC Diwakar Reddy. One of the chapters in the "book" also talks about striking a friendship — political or otherwise — with civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju. It's only these two things that will get you a boarding pass, 10 minutes before the flight takes off. For those unaware of this latest display of VVIP arrogance, the incident took place on Thursday morning, when Reddy reached Vishakhapatnam airport at 7:40 am for an 8:10 am Indigo flight to Hyderabad. The airline counter refused to issue him a boarding pass, upon which an argument ensued. Reddy pushed an airline official, and yanked the printer and nearly threw it away. He then realised Raju was at the airport too. Since they both belong to the same TDP family, Raju put in a word with the duty officer and got Reddy the boarding pass. And Reddy, in whose eyes Raju ban gaya gentleman, was ready to go! Ashok Gajapathi Raju, a scion of the royal family of Vizianagaram, is in the process of selling off the original Maharajah, Air India, but before he manages to do that, he is encouraging a breed of neo-Maharajahs: This is the tribe of MPs, ministers and MLAs who throw their weight around, demanding special privileges, so that they remain distinguished from the cattle class. What Reddy had not bargained for was CCTV footage of the assault exposing him. He kept denying he pushed any official, without realising the footage had given him away. He then tried to cover himself up by claiming that the push did not amount to an assault. And therefore, according to Reddy, the question of an apology does not arise. Reddy is a repeat offender. In October last year, a similar such incident took place at Vijayawada airport. Reddy demanded Air India issue him a boarding pass, though he was late again. When those manning the counter did not, the MP barged into the Air India office and damaged furniture. Incidentally, Chandrababu Naidu, his party president and Andhra chief minister was at the airport at the same time, and he sent Vijayawada MP Kesineni Nani to pacify Reddy and buy him a ticket on the next flight. Reddy's episode comes just a few months after Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad assaulted an Air India employee. That incident created a furore with all airlines refusing to fly the MP. Subsequently it was decided to create a national no-fly list for unruly passengers and a ban on flying them, ranging from three months to an indefinite period. Reddy now faces the ignominy of being the first MP to be on the list, with Indigo and Air India refusing to fly him, and Spicejet and Jet likely to follow suit. But along with Reddy, Raju's conduct too will need to come under the scanner. Of course, he could claim ignorance of the fracas that broke out near the booking counter. Raju should have ideally let the airline handle the issue instead of putting his ministerial weight behind Reddy. Raju is himself a non-fussy minister who also travels in the airline bus till the tarmac and does not throw his weight around, but he has clearly slipped up on this one. This is surprising because Raju has ensured lawbreaker lawmakers got the rough end of the stick on previous occasions. YSR Congress MP Midhun Reddy was arrested for allegedly assaulting an Air India official at Tirupati airport in 2015. Did Diwakar Reddy's party affiliation then make the difference this time? Reddy is MP from Anantapur, that falls in the Rayalaseema region of south Andhra, a patch notorious for its factional feuds where bloody battles are fought for dominance between families over generations. Reddy in many senses is a typical Rayalaseema warlord — temperamental and used to having his way. He spent most of his political career in the Congress and was a minister in the YS Rajasekhara Reddy Cabinet between 2004 and 2009. However, he was sidelined by YSR and Kiran Kumar Reddy after 2009 and then crossed over to the TDP just before the 2014 elections and won the Lok Sabha poll from Anantapur. The Reddy family's domination over Anantapur is said to be complete. It dabbles mainly in the mining and transport business. The family's Diwakar Travels has a fleet of buses that operate mainly in Andhra, Karnataka and Telangana. Ironically, Reddy had claimed on Thursday that the airline business had become as unruly as the private bus sector, where owners overbook and do not allow the passengers who booked first to board. Thursday was not a good day for the Reddy family. His brother's son-in-law Deepak Reddy, who was arrested last week on allegations of land grabbing and intimidating people to give up their lands, was suspended by Chandrababu Naidu from the TDP. Deepak Reddy is a TDP MLC and allegedly used his political clout to encroach on land worth Rs 160 crore in the posh Banjara Hills area of Hyderabad. Airports in India have the culture of a protocol officer who meets the VVIPs at the airport gate and guides them till the aerobridge or the ladder. It is this "jee huzoori" culture that has made politicians feel they are a cut above the rest. Just like the red beacons were taken away, it is time these privileges are withdrawn as well. Let the politicians also ensure they report to the airline counters on time, stand in a queue, get frisked and wait for their baggage at the conveyer belt, like any one of us. The Vishakhapatnam episode is proof that the red beacons have disappeared only from the cars. Because if you throw the rulebook at the politicians, they see red almost immediately. Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.
But after six months on the Australian trial of a new drug, his health had improved remarkably. "He's like a new boy," she said. "He has so much more energy and stamina, and he's so happy. "His confidence and self-esteem have shot up, he eats normally, and he's so cheerful and positive all the time rather than being down and tired. He's a completely different boy." Today, 10 months on from that epic hockey game, Connor, now 15, has continued to thrive and hasn't had to be rushed to hospital once, whereas he'd normally spend between nine and 15 weeks there a year. But last week came the most crushing blow of all: the government ruled that the new drug, Orkambi, should not be made available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), pushing its cost up to an estimated $5000 a week for Connor, or $260,000 a year. "That kind of money is unattainable for people, no one in the world can afford that," said Mrs Philpott, 45, a teacher. "It's horrifying not to be able to give a child a better chance at life because of a decision like this." For her and husband Shane, also 45, a mine machine-driver, the decision is doubly tragic: their seven-year-old daughter Macyn also has CF, although, at her young age, her body hasn't yet started to deteriorate at such a fast pace as her big brother's. Their youngest child, Hamish, five, was born clear. For the other 1000 or so Australian CF sufferers the drug could help, that decision has been shocking, CF NSW CEO Michele Adair said. "On the trial happening here, many say their quality of life has improved significantly so to take that away from them now is absolutely devastating," she said. "We believe the government should make the drug available while it continues to negotiate a fairer price with the drug manufacturer Vertex." The drug was rejected for the PBS on the basis of cost and evidence of a "substantial" benefit. A spokesman for the Department of Health said it was decided not to recommend PBS listing "based on an unacceptably high and uncertain incremental cost-effectiveness ratio at the requested price by the sponsor, and uncertainty around the impact on long-term improvements in lung function and survival … The net cost to government was more than $100 million in each of the first five years of listing." But, with the average age of death due to CF in Australia standing at 27 years, and even small increases in lung function – like the average three per cent the trials found – leading to huge improvements in health and slowing the rate of health decline, the sufferers and their families say the cost of not making the drug available is incalculable. "They're not looking at the big picture, at the lifetime cost on the health system of all the treatment they need, at all the hospital beds we're taking up, at the cost of not having healthy, happy members of the community who can all contribute," Mrs Philpott said. "Connor's increase has been six per cent and, for us, for the past 16 months, our sadness had been replaced by hope. To have that hope taken away and know we've going to have to watch him deteriorate again … that's so horrifying. "My child isn't a statistic. He's my heart and my living breath, my world. For them to say my child isn't worth the chance of a longer life, it breaks my heart. Every child deserves a chance." BITTER PILL Clinical trials show Orkambi has cut relapses of Cystic Fibrosis by 39 per cent, meaning a 61 per cent fall in the number of hospitalisations. It has also led to a 56 per cent decrease in the need for intravenous antibiotics among sufferers. It's now available under subsidy in the US, Germany, France and Austria – but has been rejected in Britain for reasons similar to those listed in Australia. In Australia, sufferers will now have to pay an estimated $260,000 a year for the drug, as against $200-$1500 on the PBS, according to financial circumstances.
7 years ago Washington (CNN) - As Rick Perry moves closer and closer to a run for the White House, a new national survey indicates that the longtime Texas governor is close to the top of the pack in the hunt for the Republican presidential nomination. According to a CNN/ORC International poll, 15 percent of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP pick Perry as their first choice for their party's nomination, just two points behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who's making his second bid for the White House. Romney's two point margin over Perry is within the survey's sampling error. Read full results (pdf). The poll's Thursday release comes two days before Perry gives a speech at a major conservative gathering in South Carolina where he is expected to announce his run for the White House. Later in the day Perry travels to New Hampshire to meet with GOP lawmakers, activists, and voters. Perry's travels Saturday come as the rest of the political spotlight will be shining on Iowa, for a crucial presidential straw poll in Ames. Perry heads to Iowa Sunday to speak at a Republican party gathering, which means he will visit three of the crucial early voting primary and caucus states this weekend. The survey indicates that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who is making his third bid for the White House, are at 12 percent apiece. While both Giuliani, who ran for the presidency four years ago, and Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, have flirted with bids, neither has taken concrete steps towards launching a campaign. According to the poll, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota has the support of seven percent, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich at five percent, both former Godfather's Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain and former Utah Gov. and former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman at four percent, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at two percent. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Rep. Thad McCotter of Michigan both register at less than one half of one percent. If the choices are pared down to exclude Giuliani and Palin, Romney remains at the top of the list, with 23 percent, followed by Perry at 18 percent and Paul at 14 percent. The survey indicates Bachmann at nine percent, Gingrich one point back, Cain and Huntsman at five percent, Pawlenty and Santorum at three percent and Johnson and McCotter both registering at less than one half of one percent. According to the poll, the GOP candidates and potential candidates match up differently against President Barack Obama in hypothetical 2012 general election showdowns. Giuliani has a 51-45 percent advantage over Obama among registered voters, while Romney matches up evenly against the President - 49 percent for Obama and 48 percent for Romney. But the survey indicates Obama appears to have a slight edge over Bachmann (51-45 percent) and Perry (51-46 percent) and Obama has a lead over Palin (55-41 percent). The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International on August 5-7, with 1,008 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points. - CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report. Read an opinion article about Perry's run for the White House here.
Since being filed in 2009 by former UCLA basketball player Ed O'Bannon, the NCAA v. O'Bannon case has taken many different forms, but as it stands, it will go to trial on June 9 in an attempt to deliver a major blow to the NCAA's concept of amateurism. Click a section to learn more about each of the case's major factors. What's the case about? ★ Video games and TV ★ Arguments already decided ★ What NCAA needs to prove ★ What O'Bannon needs to prove ★ What happens if O'Bannon wins? ★ What happens if the NCAA wins? ★ Who will testify? ★ Whom to follow and what to read The O'Bannon case is a class-action antitrust lawsuit seeking an injunction. It claims the NCAA has violated antitrust law by not allowing athletes to receive money from their likeness, particularly in television deals. You'll hear three of those words a lot: antitrust, injunction, and likeness. Here's what they all mean in terms of this case. Antitrust: The O'Bannon plaintiffs are alleging that the NCAA's members are being anti-competitive by keeping all of their television revenues to themselves and not giving anything to the players, whom they claim are the primary revenue-generators. Since college sports are the only path to a pro career for athletes in many sports, the NCAA has no competition, and thus players have no leverage. Injunction: An injunction means that a party has to stop doing what it's doing. In this case, the NCAA would have to stop keeping revenue from the athletes if it loses. Likeness: An athlete's likeness is a reference to the use of his or her image. The O'Bannon suit alleges that it is illegal for the NCAA to use athletes' images for profit -- mostly by broadcasting games -- without sharing that profit. The O'Bannon suit is basically a lawsuit against the NCAA that challenges its right to sell broadcasts without paying players anything. If the O'Bannon plaintiffs succeed in getting an injunction, then the NCAA will be forced to pay the players some sort of broadcast rights. However, the case hasn't always taken this form. Initially, the O'Bannon plaintiffs were seeking damages and an injunction, but the damages portion was not certified by Judge Claudia Wilken, meaning the NCAA won't have to pay past players for the use of their likeness. The plaintiffs were going to receive individual damages, but they decided not to, so they could have a bench trial decided by Wilken instead of a jury trial. In 2010, the O'Bannon suit was combined with a lawsuit filed by former Arizona State and Nebraska quarterback Sam Keller, who sued Electronic Arts, the Collegiate Licensing Company, and the NCAA. However, EA and the CLC settled with the plaintiffs last September for $40 million, effectively taking them out of the case. EA also announced that it would stop making college sports video games. The NCAA refused to settle, and the Keller suit was still combined with the O'Bannon suit. The NCAA wanted to delay the O'Bannon trial, so it requested that the O'Bannon and Keller suits stay together, citing the Seventh Amendment. But Judge Wilken officially split them in late May, meaning the O'Bannon trial will go on as scheduled on June 9, while the Keller trial will be in March 2015. Video games will still play a part in the case. Wilken denied an NCAA motion to not allow documents from that case to be used during the O'Bannon trial. That's bad news for the NCAA, since evidence has shown that the organization knew players in the video games were based on current players, despite claiming otherwise. EA Sports modeled players in its games on real-life athletes, with the NCAA's knowledge and without compensation. Judge Wilken has already ruled on a few points that cannot be used at trial. Among the three biggest, two were big losses for the NCAA. The NCAA wanted to argue that it has a First Amendment right to broadcast games however it wants, but Wilken won't allow that argument. She said the athletes have not validly transferred their broadcast rights to the NCAA. In turn, the organization tried to argue that broadcast companies pay to show stadiums, not players, but that was dismissed. Wilken also ruled that the NCAA cannot argue at trial that it can't pay players because it needs the money to finance non-revenue sports. She said the NCAA has not explained why it couldn't just force stricter revenue-sharing rules, as schools typically spend enormous sums on football and basketball facilities and coach salaries. Other than the damages claim, the O'Bannon plaintiffs lost their pre-trial argument that broadcasts of games are commercial speech. Wilken's explanation was that the games themselves aren't commercial. Rather, commercial breaks coincide with the play on the field. Wilken's dismissal of the non-revenue sports argument shows that the NCAA can't argue that it needs to continue to appropriate money the way it currently does. It's clear the NCAA has the money to pay players if it wanted to, even though it says that would hurt the universities' purpose of educating students. Now it meets its ultimate test: show why paying players hurts its mission. Now the NCAA meets its ultimate test: show why paying players hurts its mission. The NCAA has lived off of rhetoric for decades, because it could. At the beginning of the case, the organization did the same thing, touting maintenance of amateurism as a reason to not change the system. But Wilken has dismissed that notion, saying amateurism won't be a "useful word" during the trial, because an organization can't make up its own rule and claim to be bound by that rule. Wilken summed it up best in a pre-trial hearing when she placed the burden on the NCAA to explain how its policy against paying players "actually contributes to the integration of education and athletics." That's a tough task, but that's what it will take for the NCAA to get out of this lawsuit without paying a cent. Hey, we finally joined Facebook! O'Bannon plaintiffs will look to prove why the amateurism policy is unfair and point out how much money the NCAA makes as a result of the players. Expect mentions of the following: Large conference and tournament TV contract figures will undoubtedly come up, as will every budgetary detail that proves the NCAA makes enough money that it needs to be paying its primary revenue generators. To prove the anticompetitive argument, the O'Bannon attorneys will likely argue that there are no other options for athletes coming out of high school to play sports and profit off their likenesses and that the NCAA has fixed the price for the industry at the value of a scholarship, allowing the organization and the schools to get rich. The plaintiffs will also drive home their argument that athletes have not validly transferred their broadcast rights to the schools because of the way the market is set up, and that the NCAA and the schools get an unfair proportion of the revenue. The O'Bannon plaintiffs have to prove that athletes are entitled to broadcast revenue and that the NCAA's gaming of the market has led to them being denied what they're actually worth. To do that, expect them to show a lot of numbers about the business of college sports and how sports are no longer co-curricular, like the NCAA still claims. The simple answer is that the players will receive a cut of the television revenue, but the process is much more complicated. The NCAA, conferences, and schools all have lucrative rights deals, and the players would be given a portion of money from those pools. It's impossible to say the sum, but the NCAA alone made over $700 million off of just television revenue in 2012-13, so it would certainly be substantial. The O'Bannon plaintiffs are asking for up to half of that revenue, but it won't necessarily get all of that appropriated to the players. The NCAA could potentially settle for a much more reasonable number and smaller changes to its rules, but it's indicated it isn't going to do that. The plaintiffs are asking for group licensing for players. Rather than each player getting paid on his or her market worth, the players would split revenues evenly, like the media rights deals in the professional leagues. They would likely do so through some sort of union. As far as the effects on college sports, there are wildly different perspectives. Some have said college sports would disappear, though that certainly won't happen, because successful industries don't just disappear. More likely, there would be changes to how non-revenue sports operate and a more open market for players. As you've probably figured out by now, it's not very likely the NCAA gets out of this scot-free. It has a very difficult case to prove that legally, players don't deserve any of the money that they generate. Its best hope is to give up as little as possible. Still, even if the the NCAA does win and doesn't have to give up any of its television revenue, it has other lawsuits to worry about. Perhaps the biggest is the Jeffrey Kessler lawsuit, which alleges that the NCAA and the five major conferences have engaged in price-fixing to cap athletes' compensation at the price of a scholarship. Kessler aims to create a free-market system, but it could also end with the creation of a collective bargaining agreement between the athletes and the NCAA. There are others, too. For instance, former Florida football star Sharrif Floyd is among the plaintiffs who are looking to force the NCAA to allow full cost of attendance scholarships for football, men's basketball, and women's basketball players in all of the FBS conferences. Oh, and there's that pesky Keller video games trial coming up next March. Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd is one of several athletes waging legal battles against the NCAA. At Florida, Floyd was suspended by the NCAA in 2011 for receiving benefits from a man who went on to adopt him. Hannah Foslien, Getty Both the NCAA and the O'Bannon plaintiffs have submitted their witness lists, and CBS Sports' Jon Solomon has a nice rundown. Here's a look at a few who could testify. NCAA president Mark Emmert Numerous conference commissioners, college presidents, and athletic directors The NCAA's former director of corporate relationships Numerous economists and professors A current athlete on the NCAA's Student Athlete Advisory Committee Author and historian Taylor Branch, who wrote "The Shame of College sports" for The Atlantic. The NCAA called his potential testimony "a veritable Russian Matryoshka nesting doll of hearsay," and his participation is doubtful. The testimony is predictable. The NCAA will parade a bunch of commissioners, presidents, and athletic directors who will say what they believe the goal of the NCAA is, even though the Northwestern unionization case taught us that is irrelevant in legal proceedings. The former NCAA director of corporate relationships will likely testify that NCAA revenue comes from the schools' platforms, not the players, which could be substantive if Wilken agrees. The focus of the O'Bannon plaintiffs, meanwhile, will be to bring in economists to discuss how much money the NCAA makes and how the money is appropriated, along with getting testimony from former players on their college experiences. If you have Twitter, here are the people you should be following for the potential 15-day trial. If you don't have Twitter, get Twitter. Jon Solomon, CBS Sports (@JonSolomonCBS) Steve Berkowitz, USA Today (@ByBerkowitz) Rachel Bachman, The Wall Street Journal (@Bachscore) John Infante, The Bylaw Blog (@john_infante) Andy Staples, Sports Illustrated (@Andy_Staples) Patrick Vint, SB Nation (@HS_BHGP) Patrick Hruby, Sports on Earth (@patrick_hruby) Andy Schwarz, OSKR economist (@andyhre) Ben Strauss, The New York Times (@bstrauss1) If you'd like, you can also follow me on Twitter at @k_trahan. You can also read up on our past coverage of the O'Bannon trial and the NCAA. Follow @SBNationCFB Follow @SBNRecruiting
After years of diligently weighing the cost of Spice And Wolf Season 3, the release date for the anime never came, and now, even the manga adaptation of the Ookami to Koushinryou story is coming to an end. Author Isuna Hasekura finished the light novel series, bringing Holo and Kraft Lawrence’s journey to a close, but now the sequel, Spice And Wolf New Theory: Wolf And Parchment, is reviving the story for a new generation. Is it possible that a third season of the Ookami to Koushinryou anime could jump straight to the sequel? Hasekura wrote and published the initial 17 volumes of Spice And Wolf from 2006 through 2011, but it took him 10 years just to get the first volume published. After finishing the third volume, the writer plotted out the ending for Volume 14, although the novel series was longer than planned because of three side story novels labeled as Side Colors. “I did have an idea of what I wanted the ending to be,” Hasekura said, according to Barnes & Noble. “I knew the conclusion, but the intervening arcs I thought of along the way.” The writer admits he almost ran out of mental energy during those five years, and there were times he wanted to give up. He kept his mental energy afloat by “praying to any god who would listen,” and by Volume 14, he decided that Volume 17 would be the actual ending. “I would say that the story pretty much went the way I wanted it to from the beginning to the end,” he said. “For example, it didn’t suddenly turn into a battle manga.” The ending of the story was actually a bit of a surprise even to the author. While Lawrence likes Holo from the beginning, he did not anticipate that Holo would start to like Lawrence by the end. The reason the author was surprised by his own creation was that he initially started with an economics story only to add a fantasy character. He knew he could not write slice of life stories, but he did not want his economics story to be typical. Despite never studying economics in school, the Spice And Wolf writer loves economics so much that he wrote Billionaire Girl and the Kickstarter-funded visual novel World End Economica. Hasekura says he chose to write about economics because it’s interesting in the same way a puzzle fascinates people. “For example, when the U.S. Dollar grows in value in relation to the Japanese Yen, or other currencies, it will change too while other economies that aren’t as connected to the dollar will not. It’s a puzzle because one factor affects a whole number of other things and you see what changes and what doesn’t. That’s what I like about it,” he told The-O Network at Anime Expo 2015. “My three favorite genres, in order are economics, anything history related and neurology. My favorite book is Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Economics was also the most memorable part for voice actress Ami Koshimizu, who played the Japanese version of Holo the Wise Wolf. When Otaku Mode asked her about “memories of the series,” the actress said the most memorable scenes involved coins, furs, and apples. “To me, the most memorable part of the anime has to be the scene about coins. The one where Holo explains how even the same coins can have different values based on factors like credit and how much gold they really contain. The lines for that scene were all very, very long, and I struggled quite a bit as I reviewed them. I would get confused with all the names and types of coins there were. It was a difficult scene, but also an incredibly interesting one. I still remember it like it all happened yesterday. Another memorable scene would be the one where Holo trades fur. Using her idea, Lawrence stored the furs he purchased with apples to remove the odors. By branding them as special furs that produce floral scents, he was able to sell them at much higher prices. I remember thinking about how much the smell of furs would change if they were infused with the scent of apples.” Spice And Wolf Manga Reaches Journey’s End In 2017 Keito Koume’s manga adaptation of Spice And Wolf began being serialized in 2007 in Kadokawa ‘s Dengeki Maoh magazine. Ten years later, the magazine announced that the Ookami to Koushinryou manga would end with Chapter 100 on December 27, 2017. That will bring the manga up to Spice And Wolf Volume 16, which will be released in 2018 in Japan. The English translation of Spice And Wolf Volume 14 came out recently in North America. The release date for Spice And Wolf Volume 15 is scheduled for March 20, 2018. The English release of the final manga volume has not yet been announced. Yen Press published the English translation of Volume 17 of the light novels in April of 2016 (do not look at the cover of Volume 17 unless you want a major spoiler). There is also an omnibus Spice And Wolf 10th year anniversary edition that provides the entire story in hardcover format, but the price starts at around $200 USD for a new copy. The two versions of the story noticeably depicted Holo and other Spice And Wolf characters in different styles. Some fans prefer the light novel version, while others like the manga or the anime. So, which is better according to the creator? During NYCC 2016, Hasekura said that he had almost no contact with light novel artist Ju Ayakura or mangaka Koume. The two artists developed their own art styles for the story, with the light novel version of Holo being noticeably more poignant and sad while the manga version’s Holo was boisterous and cheery. Personality wise, the author prefers the manga version, but he still prefers the light novel version because Ayakura drew Holo’s breasts smaller. As it is, Hasekura thinks Holo’s breasts are way bigger than they were supposed to be based on his own vision of his character. The cover art for the first volumes of 'Wolf And Parchment.' Featured image credit: Ju Ayakura ASCII Media Works Parchment And Wolf Novel Sequel Focuses On New Characters Years after finishing the first series, Hasekura is now releasing the new series Parchment And Wolf along with side stories focused on Holo and Lawrence called Spring Log. The first series may have drained the author mentally, but the passing of time has allowed him to become motivated again. “When you draw water from a well, you can keep drawing from that well until it is dry,” Hasekura allegedly said, according to an unconfirmed quote by Crunchyroll user Martin Phipps. “This was where I was at in the later Spice and Wolf novels. After I stopped writing it has rained and the well has gradually filled back up.” The English translation of the first volume recently came out in North America and Parchment And Wolf Volume 2 is scheduled for April 24, 2018. Without getting into spoilers, the story involves Holo and Lawrence but is now focused on a new wolf character named Myuri and bathhouse employee Tote Col. This human character would have been shown as a young boy in Spice And Wolf Season 3 if the anime had been renewed, but he’s now like an older brother to Myuri. The pair go on an adventure after they hear about a growing crisis within the Church. Third Season Of Spice And Wolf Anime Could Skip To Parchment And Wolf Sequel? Despite having plenty of source material to work with, Spice And Wolf Season 3 has continued to be a phantom over the years. The first two seasons only adapted the first five volumes of the light novels and then left anime fans hanging. If the Side Colors novels are discounted, there are nine volumes left to adapt, which is enough for Spice And Wolf Season 3, 4, and 5, assuming the anime resumed the same pacing. There are older interviews where Hasekura seemed to be quite negative about the chances of an anime sequel ever happening. But during NYCC 2016, Toonzone quotes the author as saying there’s “nothing concrete yet.” While that answer would seem to indicate that backroom discussions about Spice And Wolf Season 3 are at least taking place, a Reddit user who attended the panel claims they said there were “no updates or knowledge of a possible third season.” The discrepancies in these reports are explained by the fact that the questions by fans were fielded by an interpreter, and the original Japanese response is not available since videos were not allowed. Warning: Major spoilers in the remainder of the article. Regardless, an anime production committee will often produce a season as a means of advertising a new manga or light novel series. Producing a Parchment And Wolf anime would make sense now that three Japanese volumes are out as of September of 2017. The problem is how to connect the original story with the new one. At the ending of the anime, Lawrence had confessed his love for Holo, and the pair took a boat in pursuit of Eve. While the anime’s ending provided some sort of resolution to their relationship, the following books detailed how that relationship grew as Lawrence, Hol, and young Col investigated rumors about legendary wolf bones. They continued their journey to Yoitsu, Holo’s homeland. By Volume 14, a business opportunity forced the traveling companions into self-examination, and Holo confesses her true love for Lawrence. Art for Holo's wedding dress has resulted in a collectible figure being created for the 10th anniversary of the series. Featured image credit: Ju Ayakura ASCII Media Works In the epilogue novels, readers learned about how Holo and Lawrence married and settled down in a hot spring town called Nyohira to create a bathhouse called Spice And Wolf. Their traveling companion, Col, stayed with them as an employee and grew up with them. Holo became pregnant and gave birth to her daughter, Myuri. Years pass, and after religious student Col hears about the division in the Church and the potential for war, Lawrence permits the young man to take his daughter on an adventure. The new story is like a romantic inverse of the original. The ordering of the reference to the characters in the new title is noticeably switched, with the wolf coming last rather than first. The author has not explained his reason for this title difference, but the object of romantic attention has also switched, as well. Whereas Lawrence confessed his love to Holo first, the new wolf Myuri is pining after Col now that she’s confessed her love for him. Holo and her daughter, Myuri. Featured image credit: Ju Ayakura ASCII Media Works While anime fans would love for Spice And Wolf Season 3 to detail the culmination of Holo and Lawrence’s romance from a storytelling perspective, it is possible to summarize the highlights during the initial episodes of a Parchment And Wolf anime. An introductory scene could briefly show how their travels ended, Holo’s wedding dress, and the creation of the bathhouse. Thus, a new anime series could serve as both an ending and a bridge to the new story. But, in the end, let’s just hope that a new Spice And Wolf anime is ever made.
Instead of pulling out of Afghanistan, the United States needs to flex its military muscles throughout the Islamic world to combat attacks on America, former Vice President Dick Cheney told nearly 2,000 movers, shakers, students and policy makers Thursday at Perspectives 2012. "I want them to know if they're going to kill a U.S. ambassador, they're going to hear from us," said Cheney at the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce's annual speakers forum. He noted that there have been anti-U.S. uprisings in 27 nations following the YouTube release of a crude video mocking the Prophet Muhammad. In Pakistan, where a nationwide anti-U.S. protest is planned today, the people "don't respect us either – that's the most important thing," Cheney said. Since the United States has reduced its military presence in the region, he said, "they've just seen the U.S. pull out, we're bailing our friends in the region no longer trust us." Cheney, 71, served as vice president under George W. Bush from 2000 to 2008. He defended the U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying Saddam Hussein was on the verge of developing weapons of mass destruction. "The story that we dreamed this up to attack Iraq is just not true," he said. "Saddam had no nuclear weapons stockpiled, but he had the people, the technology, the raw materials." Cheney, a heart transplant recipient, urged people to become organ donors. He got a standing ovation from the crowd at the Sacramento Convention Center. The audience also heard former Mexican President Vicente Fox call for immigration reform and the legalization of drugs in the United States to blunt the influence of Mexican drug cartels and the related violence that he said has killed 80,000 people, many of them under 25, in the past five years. Because so many young people in Mexico don't get college educations and can't find good jobs, "those kids went and joined the cartels for $500 a month," Fox said. In Mexico, it's illegal to sell drugs, but not to consume them. "After 10 years of legalization, we've learned that kids don't go crazy" using drugs, Fox said. If the United States legalized drugs and reduced demand, he argued, there would be less violence in Mexico because fewer drugs would be shipped through the country. Mexico is losing a lot of tourism and foreign investment due to the drug wars, but there's good news, too, Fox said. The country has a growing manufacturing sector, "over 70 percent of the people are middle class, and Mexico buys over $250 billion a year from the U.S. and accounts for millions of jobs for U.S. citizens." Fox doesn't favor open borders, but he does support a regulated guest worker program, noting that as the U.S. population get older, younger Mexican workers could fill the jobs. Instead of building a wall at the border, "why not build bridges?" he asked. Other speakers included Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, business guru Peter Sheahan and Oakland Raiders football legend and sports analyst Howie Long. Huffington condemned the war in Afghanistan and challenged American media to focus on what works and what inspires, rather than what's dysfunctional. "The American dream is really in trouble – America is now No. 10 in the world in upward mobility behind France," Huffington said. "That's like France being behind us when it comes to croissants and afternoon sex." Huffington noted that while the presidential campaign is going to cost $2.5 billion, "the war is really absent in this campaign, even though we are spending $2 billion a week" on the war. With tens of millions unemployed and underemployed, and more college grads coming into the workforce, Americans have no time to waste to embrace change and find ways to give back, Huffington said. "It's like the house is on fire and we're sitting around discussing the Kardashians." Demonizing candidates "makes it very hard to reach common ground" in solving economic problems, she said. "There's also a lot that's working. What happened if we covered those stories as obsessively as what is dysfunctional?" The Huffington Post has created a good-news section and a feature on "the greatest person of the day." The website is also spotlighting job creators and innovators to recapture "the spirit of the Greatest Generation" that won World War II, when nothing seemed impossible, she said. Huffington's call for innovation was underscored by Sheahan, author of "Flip" and "Generation Y," who said the best new ideas come from within the cracks of existing organizations and collaborations among employees from different departments. He noted that Sacramento's "still a $100 billion economy" and encouraged Americans to let go of their assumptions, to "have an open mind politically, economically, business-wise and actually reach out and create partnerships." Sheahan said Best Buy didn't dominate the home electronics market – where men spent $200 million a year – until it realized that women approved 90 percent of the purchases. Then it asked female employees what it needed to do, and learned to create better signage, more functional labels and clean toilets – a plan that he said drove sales into the billions. Long called working in television "stealing money" compared with playing football, which hasn't gotten any safer over the years. "Everybody's gotten bigger," Long said, noting that the average lineman has gone from about 250 pounds to 330.
One way to attract attention in the United States Capitol is to stand by the basement entrance to the Senate elevators, holding up a copy of The New York Times dated Aug., 9, 1974, the one with the big headline on the front page that says: NIXON RESIGNS HE URGES A TIME OF ‘HEALING’ FORD WILL TAKE OFFICE TODAY “Are we there yet?” a reporter was canvassing this week, brandishing the yellowed broadsheet like a newsboy in knickerbockers, corralling senators as they passed by. It was Watergate season in the American capital, with the 45th anniversary of the bungled break-in at Democratic Party headquarters that would lead to a president’s self-destruction coming up on Saturday. These same senators, some months from now, may well be called upon to vote on the conviction or exoneration of the current White House occupant. Should this occur—and hundreds of millions of Americans and other Earthlings are hoping desperately that it does—the lawgivers will need to take Watergate and the self-made shame of Richard Milhous Nixon as their guide. “Are we there yet?” “Not quite yet,” chuckled Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, beaming with un-senatorial decorum. “Are we there yet?” Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, was asked. (Not to be outdone by the president’s putative high crimes and misdemeanors, Sen. Menendez is facing his own federal trial in September on 14 counts of corruption, bribery and lying to investigators about his dealings with a Florida eye doctor/campaign donor. Menendez has called Trump’s ballyhooed border barricade “a great wall of hate” and blasted him for “terrible and ugly” policies in general.) “There’s only one guy who can make that happen!” the indicted legislator cheerily cracked. A chuckling caucus of wide-eyed solons paused to scan the cataclysmic issue, which had been purchased for 15 cents in 1974 and preserved all these years by the reporter’s mother in a carton along with KENNEDY SHOT DEAD and MEN WALK ON MOON. On the day that Nixon resigned, the only president (so far) to do so, the Times wondered, as millions are musing today of Donald Trump, “How could a public figure who so well perceived the instincts of a majority of his countrymen have misused the powers and duties those same countrymen so eagerly ceded him?” “By his own description,” the Times continued of Nixon, though this could apply just as easily to Trump, “he was a man of action rather than contemplation, a student of technique who always seemed impatient with substance . . . and who, on reaching his destination, was not always certain what to do when he got there.” Now, of course, Washington and the wider nation have come again to the same junction, as another president bungles—rather than burgles—himself into the crosshairs of the sharpest legal assassins that public money can buy. Trump, it was reported last week, is being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller to determine whether or not he obstructed justice, or if he was merely, as Speaker Paul Ryan lamely mewled, “New at this.” Trump’s own son-in-law is a target of scrutiny; his vice president has lawyered up. Vice President Mike Pence’s attorney is the godfather of the daughter of James Comey, the FBI domo whom Trump allegedly asked to back off, then angrily canned. So much for draining the swamp. What is about to ensue here are months, perhaps years, of investigations, accusations, resignations and incriminations as Americans of a certain age relive the events of 1972, 73 and 74. Those dizzy days culminated in August, 1974, when Nixon told the nation that “I have never been a quitter” and then quit, while, the Times reported, “the young women who work in the press office went through the motions of their job with tears streaming down their faces.” Four decades later, no one in the Capitol basement has been noticed weeping for Trump. “Are we there yet?” Christopher Coons, Democrat of Delaware, was asked. He smiled and looked at the headline. “Steadily closer,” said Senator Coons. Here is a simplified, one-paragraph primer for those too young to remember, so that you are up to speed should the beautiful wall come crashing down around Donald Trump. On June 17, 1972, five men broke into offices of the Democratic Party in a complex called “The Watergate” on the Washington riverfront. These “plumbers” and their ringleaders were arrested and copped to being freelance Nixon loyalists of an anti-Castro bent. (Nixon was running for re-election and would carry 49 of the 50 states that November.) The burglars’ alibi soon unraveled and, thanks to diligent reporting by The Washington Post and leaks from an associate director of the FBI who came to be known as “Deep Throat,” it became clear that senior White House aides and Nixon himself had masterminded the burglary, the cover-up, and the firing of the main prosecutor in the case—and that Tricky Dickie had audiotaped the whole sordid thing. After Congressional hearings mesmerized the country, Nixon resigned rather than face certain impeachment and conviction. “To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body,” Nixon said as he surrendered. “But I must put the interests of America first.” The constable who processed the Watergate trespassers that warm June night was a man named John Barrett who, nearly half a century later, was enjoying a beverage in the newly-refurbished Watergate Hotel and saying that “Nixon was paranoid for sure. He didn’t start Watergate, but he wanted to protect his people. He demanded loyalty, and he gave loyalty.” “That sounds familiar,” a reporter said. (So do the words “America first.”) Barrett voted for Trump last fall, he said, “because I hated Hillary Clinton. She’s a bigger thief than Donald Trump will ever be. If they want to investigate Trump, fine. As I always say, a city, a town, a country gets the government it deserves. Let’s roll the dice.” Now retired from the D.C. force, Officer Barrett once served as a technical advisor on the film version of All The President’s Men, which detailed Nixon’s Machiavellian machinations even as he wound down the war in Vietnam, engineered a stunning opening to Communist China, and established the Environmental Protection Agency. Barrett said that he even got to meet Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, and that one was a gentleman and the other was a creep, but good taste forbids revealing who was who. “Nixon was a broken man at the end,” the ex-cop sighed. “I think he did the right thing, but I always felt a certain degree of sympathy for him.” And he went on to retell the story of Nixon spending one of the last nights of his presidency sitting at the piano aboard the presidential yacht Sequoia on the Potomac River, playing God Bless America over and over again while drinking Ballantine’s scotch. “Do you feel sorry for Trump?” the arresting officer was asked. “He hasn’t done enough for me to feel sorry for him,” he replied. Barrett was at the Watergate to take part in a panel discussion about the events of 45 years ago and to help the capital’s elite prepare for the delicious public undressing of a president whom nearly all of them viscerally despise. In attendance was a writer named Thomas Mallon who fictionalized the scandal in a novel entitled Watergate that the Times called “a stealth bulls-eye.” “I hope it ends soon,” Mallon said of the Trump investigation. “Anything would be better than this. Yes, we will have to have Pence and, yes, we will hate it, but then we will have an election. It’s an old cliché that ‘the cover-up was worse than the crime.’ This will be the case where the crime was worse than the cover-up.” Novelist Mallon—until recently a registered Republican—called the administration of George W. Bush “an age of poetry and diplomacy” compared to the Trump White House. And he warned that, should Trump not be impeached, “God help us. He will pout his way to glory.” There is no indication whatsoever that Donald Trump is going to go down easy, if he goes down at all. “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt,” he tweeted on Friday. And: “You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history—led by some very bad and conflicted people!” And: “Despite the phony Witch Hunt going on in America, the economic & jobs numbers are great.” Compare that to a headline from The Washington Post dated July 22, 1973: NIXON SEES ‘WITCH HUNT,’ INSIDERS SAY “I was on the House Judiciary Committee that began the consideration of impeaching of President Bill Clinton,” a former Republican Congressman from South Carolina named Bob Inglis wrote recently in the Washington Post. “Armed with information from independent counsel Kenneth Starr, we were convinced the president had lied under oath. We drafted articles of impeachment, and a majority of the House concurred with our assessment. “Clinton was impeached for charges less serious than the ones before us now. “ Then came comparisons to Watergate, to Nixon, to the precedent that will be cited every single day and hour until Trump is convicted, is cleared, or resigns. “Confronting Trump,” Inglis wrote, “will take more courage than it took when Republicans told President Richard Nixon that it was time for him to leave office. Not that Trump is more imposing than Nixon; Nixon was a serious president with significant accomplishments. The difference, now, is the presence of sycophantic media.” While the nation waits for the president to reveal whether or not there exist audio recordings of his conversations with James Comey—or if Comey confesses that he himself was “wearing a wire” in what would be an act of astonishing skullduggery—the impeachment of Trump will have to wait until enough Republican members of Congress concur with Sherman’s assessment. Until then, during Watergate week in the U.S. Capitol, Democrats danced around the scaffold, their calls for patience a flimsy cloak. “It’s a big deal to talk about impeachment,” House minority leader Nancy Pelosi was reported to have told her caucus. “I think he’s going to self-impeach.” “The issue of impeachment strikes at the core of our democracy,” Rep. Joe Crowley, Democrat of New York, was telling a handful of reporters, deep in the Capitol basement. “This is something we need to do in a very sacred way.” “Anybody can allege anything, and if it’s repeated enough times, people believe it,” said Rep. Linda Sánchez, Democrat of California. “I am an attorney. You have to have the facts before you make a judgment.” “We need to let the investigation of the special prosecutor do its work,” agreed Joe Crowley. “If he’s not fired beforehand.” Down the hall was Rep. Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, and the only Member of Congress who shares a birthday—June 14—with Trump. “Impeachment,” someone ventured, and the one word was enough. “The facts will tell us,” said Steny Hoyer. “We’re not there yet.”
At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes. Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. By emphasizing the influence of family background, the studies not only challenge American identity but speak to the debate about inequality. While liberals often complain that the United States has unusually large income gaps, many conservatives have argued that the system is fair because mobility is especially high, too: everyone can climb the ladder. Now the evidence suggests that America is not only less equal, but also less mobile. John Bridgeland, a former aide to President George W. Bush who helped start Opportunity Nation, an effort to seek policy solutions, said he was “shocked” by the international comparisons. “Republicans will not feel compelled to talk about income inequality ,” Mr. Bridgeland said. “But they will feel a need to talk about a lack of mobility — a lack of access to the American Dream.” While Europe differs from the United States in culture and demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of Canadians. “Family background plays more of a role in the U.S. than in most comparable countries,” Professor Corak said in an interview. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Skeptics caution that the studies measure “relative mobility” — how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the income distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because the country has grown richer. Some conservatives say this measure, called absolute mobility, is a better gauge of opportunity. A Pew study found that 81 percent of Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for family size). There is no comparable data on other countries. Photo Since they require two generations of data, the studies also omit immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American strength. “If America is so poor in economic mobility, maybe someone should tell all these people who still want to come to the U.S.,” said Stuart M. Butler, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation . The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more mobile. Reihan Salam, a writer for The Daily and National Review Online, has calculated that a Danish family can move from the 10th percentile to the 90th percentile with $45,000 of additional earnings, while an American family would need an additional $93,000. Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid. About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. While Americans have boasted of casting off class since Poor Richard’s Almanac, until recently there has been little data. Pioneering work in the early 1980s by Gary S. Becker, a Nobel laureate in economics, found only a mild relationship between fathers’ earnings and those of their sons. But when better data became available a decade later, another prominent economist, Gary Solon, found the bond twice as strong. Most researchers now estimate the “elasticity” of father-son earnings at 0.5, which means that for every 1 percent increase in a father’s income, his sons’ income can be expected to increase by about 0.5 percent. In 2006 Professor Corak reviewed more than 50 studies of nine countries. He ranked Canada, Norway , Finland and Denmark as the most mobile, with the United States and Britain roughly tied at the other extreme. Sweden , Germany , and France were scattered across the middle. The causes of America’s mobility problem are a topic of dispute — starting with the debates over poverty. The United States maintains a thinner safety net than other rich countries, leaving more children vulnerable to debilitating hardships. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Poor Americans are also more likely than foreign peers to grow up with single mothers. That places them at an elevated risk of experiencing poverty and related problems, a point frequently made by Mr. Santorum, who surged into contention in the Iowa caucuses. The United States also has uniquely high incarceration rates, and a longer history of racial stratification than its peers. “The bottom fifth in the U.S. looks very different from the bottom fifth in other countries,” said Scott Winship, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, who wrote the article for National Review. “Poor Americans have to work their way up from a lower floor.” A second distinguishing American trait is the pay tilt toward educated workers. While in theory that could help poor children rise — good learners can become high earners — more often it favors the children of the educated and affluent, who have access to better schools and arrive in them more prepared to learn. “Upper-income families can invest more in their children’s education and they may have a better understanding of what it takes to get a good education,” said Eric Wanner, president of the Russell Sage Foundation, which gives grants to social scientists. The United States is also less unionized than many of its peers, which may lower wages among the least skilled, and has public health problems, like obesity and diabetes , which can limit education and employment. Perhaps another brake on American mobility is the sheer magnitude of the gaps between rich and the rest — the theme of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which emphasize the power of the privileged to protect their interests. Countries with less equality generally have less mobility. Mr. Salam recently wrote that relative mobility “is overrated as a social policy goal” compared with raising incomes across the board. Parents naturally try to help their children, and a completely mobile society would mean complete insecurity: anyone could tumble any time. But he finds the stagnation at the bottom alarming and warns that it will worsen. Most of the studies end with people born before 1970, while wage gaps, single motherhood and incarceration increased later. Until more recent data arrives, he said, “we don’t know the half of it.”
Goran Dragic looked like he was ready to spar after Tuesday's 93-92 loss to Detroit. The Heat's starting point guard had wraps on both hands, the one on his right hand to support his sore thumb -- which has been bothering him for a while -- and the one on his left hand to support his inflamed wrist. Dragic isn't exactly sure of the origin of the latter ailment, other than that the wrist blew up on him after Sunday's win against Portland. An MRI was negative, as was an X-ray, so the team suspects it's tendinitis. Even so, Dragic couldn't commit to playing Friday on Christmas against New Orleans, not until he sees the swelling go down. He said he might be able to deal with the injury, if he could use his other hand completely, but he can't do that either. In Dragic's place, Beno Udrih played well, making 7-of-11 shots in 34 minutes, recording 14 points, three rebounds and six assists, as well as a plus-12. Miami, however, was minus-13 in Josh Richardson's 14 minutes. The Heat is now minus-48 in the rookie's 120 minutes.
The 30 year cover-up of the Daniel Morgan murder is often portrayed as a murky morass. But revisiting the news coverage of the time, the outlines of the alleged conspiracy are clearer than you would imagine. As the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel continues to sift through years of evidence on the most investigated murder in British history, four key characters emerge from the news coverage of the time. DANIEL MORGAN What is startling about the Daniel Morgan murder is that the key allegation of police conspiracy was made within weeks of the 37-year-old's murder on 10 March 1987. The Times reported Daniel was "due to be interviewed by West Yorkshire police about a fraud he had uncovered." Meanwhile, in the Daily Express: According to the Express, the 'swoop' followed 'irregularities' in files found at Southern Investigations, the private detective company based in Croydon Daniel set up two years before. Though the arrested police officers aren't named in this April 1987 article, 'John' Rees was Daniel's business partner and co-founder of Southern Investigations. It would take a year, until the inquest at Southwark coroner's court, for a more detailed picture of the alleged conspiracy to become clear. The accountant for Southern Investigations, Kevin Lennon, told the inquest jury that Jonathan Rees plotted with police to have Daniel killed and the murder investigation compromised. In a witness statement Lennon named one of the original investigating officers, DS Sid 'Fullery' (actually Fillery) as part of the murder plot, and claimed Fillery would then leave the police force and take over Daniel's role at Southern Investigations. By the time of the inquest, Fillery had indeed left the Met and was by then Rees' business partner. Detective Superintendent Douglas Campbell told the coroner's court that Daniel was trying to sell a story of police corruption to a national newspaper for £250,000 in the days before he was murdered. Four days later, Alastair Morgan made the accusation that Rees was a party to a plot to kill his younger brother. Towards the end of the article the senior investigating officer made an astonishing admission which broadened the Daniel Morgan allegations beyond police corruption to a wider conspiracy involving the media. Detective Superintendent Douglas Campbell told the coroner's court that Daniel was trying to sell a story of police corruption to a national newspaper for £250,000 in the days before he was murdered. After the jury reached a verdict of 'unlawful' killing, Alastair denounced the plotters as 'Scoundrels' and an internal investigation by Scotland Yard was announced. The mention of an organisation which "provides a meeting place between serving officers, former colleagues and private investigators" seems to be an oblique reference to Freemasons lodges in the area. The following day the papers reported that the Met's Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Winship had been tasked to head up the investigation into the 'Scoundrels.' TAFFY HOLMES DAC Peter Winship was having a busy year because he was already leading another investigation into allegations of police corruption in South East London - one that had already led to the violent death of DC Alan "Taffy Holmes". Not only was Taffy's suicide just four months after Daniel's murder, the private eye and the detective sergeant knew each other. Both were Welshmen with the same circle of acquaintances in the Croydon area. Not only was Taffy's suicide just four months after Daniel's murder, the private eye and the detective sergeant knew each other. Both were Welshmen with the same circle of acquaintances in the Croydon area. At the inquest into Holmes' death, a couple of weeks before Daniel's, two motives for the policeman's suicide were mooted: a tangled love life and an internal police investigation. Taffy was previously a member of SO1 (7), the serious crime squad, and was partnered with DS John 'OJ' Davidson on the Brinks Mat investigation. (Davidson would go on to be castigated in both the MacPherson and Ellison reports and accused of links with the families of Stephen Lawrence's killers). The jury was not allowed to ask questions about this secret 'probe' back in 1988 - but they would not have to look back far to discover what it was. RAY ADAMS Early in July 87 - four months after Daniel's murder and a few weeks before Taffy's suicide - news leaked out about a secret investigation into a Top Yard Chief. A month later a front page on the the Express had more details, linking the corruption allegations to Kenneth Noye and the Brinks-Mat bullion heist. Norman Luck (who seems to be the best informed crime reporters of the time) explicitly linked the death of Taffy Holmes with this investigation of "his former boss." The next day the "senior officer" was named as Commander Ray Adams, recently installed as head of criminal intelligence. The voluminous redacted version of Operation Russell is online here (summary starting on page six). Though the formal investigation began on 12 April 1987, it was in February 1987, before the murder, that a minor drug dealer, Raymond Gray, began to make a series of five taped interviews. In the final interview, on 8 April 1987, Gray made over two dozen allegations of police corruption, focusing on Ray Adams. Quizzed during the internal investigation, Commander Adams was obviously familiar with the Daniel Morgan killing: indeed he accused his accuser, Gray, of instigating Daniel's murder. After two years of investigation into these allegations Adam was exonerated of all but a few minor disciplinary charges. However, Adams turned up again in another corruption investigation in the nineties, Operation Othona. He retired from the Met for health reasons in 1993, and - after brief stint a Kroll security - Adams became head of European Security for NDS. NDS was an important subsidiary of News Corp as it provided the digital encryption service for satellite smart cards which were key to Rupert Murdoch's expansion plans in the 90s. Adams remained a head of 'Operational Security' for NDS for nearly a decade, reporting direct to the chair of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch. In 1998 he was quizzed as potential 'channel of influence' in the Macpherson Inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence murder, and though the inquiry noticed "strange features" in his evidence he was cleared of any wrong doing. Adams remained a head of 'Operational Security' for NDS security for nearly a decade, reporting direct to the chair of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch. Adams was named in 2002 and 2003 in civil legal suits by Canal Plus and Echostar alleging the News Corp subsidiary hacked their satellite smart cards and flooded the market with clones. A similar allegation was made by a Panorama program about hacking British digital rivals in 2012 during which Adams was doorstepped: he denied all the allegations. The Australian Financial Review alleged Australian Pay-TV companies had also been hacked. The Daily Mail alleged links between "Murdoch's Yard Man" and Kenneth Noye. ALEX MARUNCHAK The second figure in Murdoch's News Corp connected to events in the Summer of 87 was a rising young crime reporter in the best-selling News of the World - Alex Marunchak. While the original police investigation had discovered evidence suggesting Daniel may have been killed because he was going to expose police corruption to a "national newspaper" a former boss of Rees and Daniel Morgan has been much more specific. As Labour MP Tom Watson said in parliament in 2012: "Daniel was about to take a story exposing police corruption to Mr Marunchak and was promised a payment of £40,000." Marunchak responded by denying he'd ever heard of Daniel Morgan or Southern Investigations until after the murder. However, an examination of newspaper archives for 1986-7 reveals that many of Marunchak's exclusive crime stories derived from the South East Regional Crime Squad area, and he often quoted anonymous 'senior officers'. After Daniel's murder and Taffy's suicide, Marunchak also appeared in Operation Russell, apparently calling in to report a meeting between a 'senior' officer and Adams when the latter was still under investigation. Up until this point Marunchak had written about Taffy Holmes in the same terms as Norman Luck at the Express: as a suicide provoked by a police investigation into cops suborned by Kenneth Noye, and communicating through freemasonry. Two weeks later, covering Taffy's funeral, the Noye connection had become secondary. Now the emphasis was on Holmes' tangled love life. Despite front page coverage of Lennon's accusations in the rest of the press the News of the World ignored the explosive revelations of the inquest throughout 1988 - a strange omission given their crime correspondent's interest the previous summer. (Alastair Morgan believes he saw Marunchak at Southwark coroner's court in the company of Rees.) Meanwhile, though no crime articles appeared in the News of the World, Rees and Marunchak allegedly formed a lucrative business partnership at this time. Another book keeper, Marjorie Williams, hired days after Daniel's murder, told BBC Radio's the report that Southern Investigations started invoicing Marunchak for hundreds of small cash payments per month, amounting to tens of thousands of pounds, which they would collect from him in person. Williams did the book-keeping from 1987 to 1990. Southern Investigations started invoicing Marunchak for hundreds of small cash payments per month, amounting to tens of thousands of pounds, which they would collect from him in person. Through the nineties this trade increased, with Southern Investigations billing News of the World hundreds of thousands of pounds per year. Rees and Fillery worked with the tabloid's star reporter Mazher Mahmood during this time. A police bug in the Southern Investigations officer overheard Rees and Marunchak falling out over unpaid invoices in 1999 and discussing Kenneth Noye. That legal dispute was allegedly settled by the paper's managing editor, Stuart Kuttner. (Evidence in the Hacking Trial suggests the police are in possession of Kuttner's News International notebooks.) In 2000, upon Rebekah Brooks' assumption of the editorship of the paper, Marunchak was moved to Dublin as Ireland editor of News of the World. On June 24 2002, two days before a new murder investigation was publicly launched on Crimewatch, Marunchak took a call from Fillery which triggered surveillance of the new investigating officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Cook and his family. One of the vans used to surveil Cook was leased to Mahmood's photographer, Bradley Page. When the editor of The News of the World, Rebekah Brooks, was confronted by Cook with evidence of this surveillance and Marunchak's long term financial relationship with Rees six months later she praised him as a "great editor." After this meeting Brooks went on to talk to the head of the Met, Commissioner Stevens. Sources claim she briefed Stuart Kuttner the next day. On release from prison in 2005 Rees was re-employed by the paper's new editor, Andy Coulson. When quizzed by Tom Watson at a DCMS select committee hearing in 2011 about when he first met his long standing crime and Ireland editor "Mr Alex Marunchak..." Murdoch replied; "Mister-?" Mr Watson: Alex Marunchak. He worked for the company for 25 years. Rupert Murdoch: I don’t remember meeting him. I might have shaken hands walking through the office, but I don’t have any memory of him. But no-one asked Murdoch about Ray Adams or whether his own Management and Standards Committee have looked into the multiple links between his media empire and one of the darkest chapters in the history of the Met revealed in the Daniel Morgan murder. CORRECTION: 16:07 15/07/2015 - not S018 as in previous version. If you have corrections, queries or wish to comment in the piece itself, please contact me peter at byline dot com. Meanwhile, if you have information that could be relevant to the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel, you can contact them here.
Pro-white rights organizations the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement and Ku Klux Klan groups participate in a cross and swastika burning in Temple, Ga. (ERIK S. LESSER/European Pressphoto Agency) Organizations tracking hate crimes have seen a spike in racist and anti-Semitic incidents over the last several days. In the words of Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center: “The white supremacists out there are celebrating his victory and many are feeling their oats.” Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard who caused controversy with his comments on women, announced in The Post that he was never going to use the term “political correctness” again. The real threat, in Summers’ view, stems from the “terrifying events” that Donald Trump’s election has set off, leading to an upsurge in hateful incidents and speech. Timur Kuran’s academic book, “Private Truths, Public Lies,” helps explain why Trump’s election victory has been associated with an upsurge in hate crimes. Kuran may seem an improbable person to explain why public expressions of racism are increasing: He doesn’t believe that U.S. racism is as bad as many think, opposes “political correctness” and “affirmative action” and argues that the U.S. has metamorphosed “from a country that oppresses blacks into one that gives many blacks special privileges.” Even so, his intellectual arguments can be separated from his political beliefs. His notion of “preference falsification” provides a plausible explanation for why many racists, anti-Semites and the like were reluctant to reveal their true beliefs until recently. It also explains why they are more willing to do so now that Trump has been elected. Preference falsification means that people often don’t say what they really think Kuran’s key idea is that ‘preference falsification’ explains many aspects of human society and politics. Preference falsification is “the act of misrepresenting one’s genuine wants under perceived social pressure.” Trivial examples of this are commonplace. When we go to our boss’s house for dinner, we don’t necessarily express our true opinion of his or her hideous taste in furniture, and may indeed praise it. At Thanksgiving dinner, we may want to bite our tongues when relatives express loud and confident political opinions that we completely disagree with. As political philosophers have observed, a certain degree of hypocrisy is essential to the smooth functioning of society. Yet preference falsification doesn’t just apply to trivial forms of social hypocrisy. It can have profound social and political consequences. Most authoritarian societies force people to express public support for the regime, for example by effectively requiring store owners to have a picture of the dictator in their shop window. The reason is straightforward. If most people publicly express support for the regime, then no one can be sure how many people quietly oppose it. It might even be that a large majority of citizens oppose their government and want to overthrow it. However, unless they know that enough other people oppose the regime to overthrow it, no one will make the first move. Everyone fears that their own private opposition to the regime is not widely shared, rendering any attempt at regime protest doomed. Preference falsification plausibly explained why the brutal regime ruling Tunisia was stable for so long, and why it fell when Facebook made it easier for people to figure out that other people hated the regime too. Preference falsification happens in free societies too Most academics interested in the concept of preference falsification have examined how it works in nondemocratic regimes. However, Kuran’s book spends a lot of time arguing that it can have consequences in open societies too. He argues that social pressure generates the same kind of outcomes in open societies as state repression does in authoritarian ones, making people unwilling to express unpopular opinions. Kuran claims that both arguments for affirmative action and efforts to enforce political correctness rest on a kind of preference falsification. Many people disagree with these arguments, but are frightened to express their opposition in public, for fear of social sanction and shaming. Kuran is skeptical of claims that racism is a major problem in modern American society, although he notes that new empirical evidence might emerge that shows that his claims are wrong. However, the notion of preference falsification is itself a value neutral one, which does not depend on Kuran’s own political beliefs. Although Kuran does not dwell on this, he acknowledges that preference falsification can in some contexts and from some perspectives be beneficial. We are probably all better off if we don’t tell our boss how horrible his or her taste is, or get into a heated fight over the Thanksgiving turkey that leaves everyone in the family feeling miserable. Preference falsification might have helped suppress racist expression As Summers’s opinion piece suggests, what some people view as problematic ‘political correctness’ might from another perspective be perceived as a mostly benign set of informal norms and social institutions that prevent people from expressing their actual racism. A large body of social science research indicates that racism is still relatively widespread within the American public. For example, Adivit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell and Maya Sen’s influential recent paper shows how people are far more likely to identify as Republican, oppose affirmative action, have negative feelings toward African Americans and believe that black people ought to be able to overcome prejudice as other minorities did if they live in counties that had high slave ownership in the 1860s. This strongly suggests that attitudes to affirmative action and the like are indeed closely linked to historic racism. Yet over the past few decades, it has become increasingly socially unacceptable to publicly express racist views or sentiments. People in public life who express these beliefs are likely to be treated as pariahs on the national stage. There is regional variation: For example, Jeff Sessions who was denied confirmation as a federal judge during the Ronald Reagan administration for expressing sympathy with the Ku Klux Klan, has repeatedly been elected as senator for the state of Alabama. Even so, overt racism is usually viewed with abhorrence. This can plausibly be interpreted as a mixture of sincere change in beliefs and preference falsification. On the one hand, changes in attitudes to mixed-race marriages suggest that there are fewer strong racists in the United States than there were 40 years ago. On the other, people who are racists are more plausibly likely to keep their views to themselves except in certain contexts and perhaps certain parts of the country. Those who are still racist have had good self-interested reasons to falsify their true beliefs, either refraining from expressing their views in public or actively pretending to hold different views than the views they do hold. That is what Trump has changed Trump’s election victory has many consequences, which the social sciences are only beginning to parse. However, if reports of a substantial upsurge in racist incidents are correct, they suggest that one of these consequences is a breakdown in preference falsification around racism. People who are and always have been racists have just witnessed the election of a president who has made grossly racist claims about Mexicans and has surrounded himself with some people who are more racist still. This does two things. First, it gives racists new heart by suggesting that many more people share their beliefs than they might hitherto have believed. Trump’s electoral success tells them that at the least racism is not a politically disqualifying problem for presidential candidates any more, and that perhaps for many voters it is a plus rather than a minus. Second, it tells them that if they themselves publicly express their racism, they are less likely to be socially punished than they previously believed. Of course, we don’t know for certain that preference falsification is the real reason people seem to be more willing to show their racism in public than before. However, if it is, we can probably expect that there will be a long-term increase in the rate and level of public expressions of racism. Trump’s appointment of Steven K. Bannon as his head of strategy, and his nomination of Sessions as attorney general are likely to further suggest to racists that they do not need to hide their true views. The direct policy consequences of Trump’s presidency will be very important. His election will have indirect consequences too. One of these indirect consequences is plausibly to weaken implicit social sanctions against racism and empower racists to publicly express their true preferences.
Beauty trends change. Sometimes they make a full circle. How many times have we seen beauty and more specifically fashion making a come back ? In 100 years, women’s makeup and hair routines have evolved from pin-curls and doll lips to soft waves and a subtle glow. Model Nina Carduner sat through prodding makeup artists and hair stylists for a time-lapse video that shows a century of beauty, from 1910 to 2010. There’s some years that we do not want to go back to …. Let’s never go back to 1986 — ok, ladies? French/American actress and model Nina Carduner demonstrates 100 years of beauty trends in an 1 minute long timelapse video. Produced, Directed, and Edited by: http://www.cut.com Crew Shyn Midili – Makeup Juel Bergholm – Hair Jessica Law – PA Music: Danny And The Devil – Boy Eats Drum Machine Here’s an animated gif version of the youtube video :- Originally appeared on Mashable Share this: Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Pinterest
I also wish Alcatel had gone with physical or capacitive navigation buttons below the Idol 4S's screen, instead of relying on the software keys in Android. Those digital buttons take up a row of display space, and disappear whenever I play a game or full-screen video. On the right side sits a round silver button that Alcatel calls the "boom key." You'll also find a circular fingerprint sensor etched into the Idol 4S's rear, right under the camera. This placement is designed to be easy for your finger to reach while the phone is in use, but it's not the easiest to find by touch, because the area isn't depressed like it is on other phones. VR box When you first open the Idol 4S packaging, you'll find a white rectangular box with a silver circle on the bottom. Press that, and you can pull apart the whole setup. The top half is the headset, which at first blush looks nearly identical to Samsung's Gear VR, while the bottom half is a case that contains accessories. The Idol 4S VR Goggles (yes, that's the official name) differs from the Gear VR in a few ways. Alcatel placed its controls on the bottom of the viewer, as opposed to on the right edge like Samsung. The Idol 4S also comes with an extra headpiece to help the headset sit more comfortably on your head. Most important, Alcatel's system is based on Google's Cardboard, whereas Samsung's is the result of a collaboration with Oculus. Those who have never used the Gear VR probably won't notice the difference in quality, but since I've spent a good deal of time with both, it's clear to me that the Alcatel viewer is not as immersive. I've never noticed pixels when using the Gear VR, but a few minutes into a 360-degree video on the Idol 4S VR Goggles I started spotting the fine dots. Otherwise, the headset, which is spongy around the eyes, feels light and comfortable enough to wear for extended periods. If you wear glasses, putting the goggles on may be a hassle, but it's not much more difficult than with other setups. Alcatel provides a VR launcher app that serves as your gateway to compatible content. With it, you get a basic navigation menu with seven tiles floating in a horizontal row over a starry backdrop. These icons let you see games, regular pictures and videos, 360-degree images and videos, a tutorial and Littlstar. The latter is a third-party provider of VR video content from channels such as ABC News, Discovery VR, Showtime and other independent brands. Its offerings are mostly short, entertaining clips that occasionally look suspiciously like promotional material for those brands' upcoming shows. In the week that I've had the Idol 4S, though, the Littlstar library doesn't appear to have been updated with new stuff. But to be fair, neither Alcatel nor LIttlstar promises frequent additions to the selections. Thankfully, Littlstar isn't the only way to get good VR content on the Idol 4S. You can also go into the VR store app or find more media through Google's own apps for Cardboard section. Unfortunately, the Idol 4S isn't certified for Google's Daydream mobile VR platform yet, so it might not be forward-compatible with upcoming media. Still, for the price, the Idol 4S Goggles and the basic content Alcatel offers is an easy and accessible way to dip your toe into virtual reality. Display and sound Just like its predecessor, the Idol 4S has a bright panel that's easy to see even in direct sunlight. Its 5.5-inch Quad HD AMOLED display is vibrant and sharp, which makes watching Netflix and playing games more immersive. Colors looked more saturated than I'm used to on my iPhone 6s screen. Even though I did eventually start noticing pixelation in VR content when looking through the viewer, high-res videos generally appeared crisp on the phone itself. One other novelty in the Idol 4S is its dual JBL-certified speakers that pump out sound through both the front and back of the device. This prevents muffling of the audio when you put your phone down on a surface, and worked surprisingly well on both an office table and my bed. I noticed slightly clearer echo when the phone was face up rather than down, but the difference isn't noticeable unless you go looking for it like I did. The Idol 4S's speakers were also satisfyingly loud, and I never had to struggle to hear it at top volume. The included Waves MaxxAudio app lets you change sound profiles for specific situations such as Music, Movie or General. You can also customize the output of bass, treble and revive, but, in general, I left these settings alone. Software Like any respectable phone being launched this year, the Idol 4S ships with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. The company said an update to Android Nougat is on its way, although it hasn't given a timeframe yet. As is its habit, Alcatel has skinned the otherwise stock OS with the company's own icons for apps such as Messages, Dialer, Camera and Contacts. This cartoonish look won't be for everyone, but it's simple enough to resolve with a theme download. A new feature for the Idol line is the aforementioned Boom key on the device's right side. Pressing this in specific apps launch specialized tasks, such as activating photo collages in the Gallery, volume and bass boost in a music player, enhanced surround sound in a video playback and improved voice quality and loudness during a call. These are preset in the software, and you can't change them or add more, but you can customize what pressing (or double pressing) the Boom key does when the phone screen is off and on. The in-app Boom functions are hit or miss: I didn't ever need photo collage mode when viewing my Gallery, but I found the volume boosts very handy. I also liked being able to open a specific app of my choice with one press while the screen is on. Thankfully, not much bloatware comes loaded on the Idol 4S. In addition to the VR apps mentioned earlier, Alcatel also includes its fun Music app that has a Mix mode for turntable-style DJ-ing on the go. You'll also get useful titles such as Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, and the just-tolerable NextRadio and Swiftkey. Camera
FILE PHOTO: Guangzhou Evergrande's head coach Luiz Felipe Scolari attends a training session before their AFC Champions League 2016 Group H match against South Korea's Pohang Steelers, in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China, February 23, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer HONG KONG, (Reuters) - Luiz Felipe Scolari confirmed his departure from champions Guangzhou Evergrande but refused to rule out coaching in the Chinese Super League again after securing a third league title in a row. World Cup winner Scolari took over from Fabio Cannavaro in June, 2015 and led Guangzhou to three league crowns as well as the Asian Champions League and Chinese FA Cup. He originally signed an 18-month contract with the club before extending his deal for another year at the end of last season, but has decided to end his association with the seven-time CSL winners. “My story with Evergrande is finished,” the 68-year-old Brazilian said on Sunday. “But my story with China may continue. I will carefully think about it. No one knows where we are heading, but I hope Evergrande club can have a bright future. “I don’t know if I will come back to China. I will make my decision carefully. My football life has taken me all over the world, but China is one the three best places that I’ve ever worked.” Scolari led Guangzhou to the title this season despite rivals Shanghai SIPG spending more than $150 million(£114.7 million) over the last two years to lure big-name players like Brazilians Oscar and Hulk to the club. Evergrande clinching the crown with two rounds to spare. They fell short elsewhere, however, with SIPG knocking them out in the Chinese FA Cup semi-finals and Asian Champions League quarter-finals, a trophy Scolari won with Evergrande in 2015. Chinese media have linked Italians Carlo Ancelotti and Cannavaro with the coaching position at Guangzhou who are expected to name Scolari’s successor within the next week.
With more cases of fake entertainment agencies surfacing, tricking�young hopefuls out of their dreams, the government has decided to step in with preventive measures. On May 9th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism announced that they will be investigating entertainment agencies and launch a database that requires agencies and managers to register to be considered legal, as a preventive measure. The ministry will be working with the Korean Entertainment Management Association to create a database that houses basic information of entertainment agencies like the number of staff and public figures they manage. The database will be made into a safe and reliable tool for parents and trainees to use to find or verify agencies. In addition, entertainment agencies that don't pass the standards set will be banned from running as a business. In order to register, agencies must submit proof verifying that they have the assets fit to run a business along with an office building registered under their name. The ministry concluded, "Recently, several entertainment agencies have been causing a stir in society for the unlawful acts they've committed against trainee hopefuls. We plan to stop unfit agencies from entering the market and focus on building a clear and responsible market." [gallery link="file" order="DESC"] Source + Photos: E-Daily via Naver
NEW DELHI: A 28-year-old student has filed a case against a fellow student and leader of the AISA, the student wing of the communist CPI (M-L), accusing him of raping her in a hostel room on the university campus, police said Sunday. The accused, Anmol Ratan was state president of the AISA until last year. JNU has been embroiled in a number of rapes and harassment cases against students in the last few years but its student union violently oppose any police involvement on campus. The woman, a Ph.D student, alleged that Anmol Ratan, also a Ph.D student, offered her a copy of the movie Sairat that she was looking for, took her to his hostel room and offered her a spiked drink. When she awoke, she found the youth lying beside her. He threatened to harm her if she revealed the matter to anyone. The police said that an FIR had been lodged and her statement under CrPC Section 164 would be recorded on Monday. The victim approached Vasant Kunj (north) police station and registered a complaint later that night. An FIR under sections of rape and criminal intimidation has been registered against the youth. The complainant was taken for a medical examination and its report is awaited. The youth will be asked to appear for questioning, police said. The youth is a senior member of the students’ council through AISA and he threatened to use his clout to get away with the crime, the woman told the police. Members of the students’ council refused to first take action and then said that they will probe into the allegations. “We have taken serious note of the fact that a leading activist of AISA is facing a criminal complaint of sexual assault. He has been expelled from the primary membership,” said AISA Delhi state secretary, Ashutosh Kumar, after the media highligted the case.
Look out Mike Duffy, your reputation as Canada’s most forgetful senator is under assault. It turns out the Old Duff is not the only former denizen of the Red Chamber who forgot where he lived. The auditor-general’s report on senators’ expenses reveals that a collective amnesia struck the Upper House, with senators like Rod Zimmer and Rose-Marie Losier-Cool mistakenly believing they lived somewhere else, even though they spent most of their time in the national capital region. Recollection was restored, however, when it came to claiming living expenses on their “secondary” residence — i.e., the one in the capital where they spent all their time. I’d recommend a diet of oily fish. The portrait painted of Zimmer by Michael Ferguson’s office is of a figure from Dickensian fiction. He claimed for everything. If the public knows anything about the 73-year-old senator, it is as a result of the inflight fight with his 26-year-old wife, Maygan Sensenberger, who was arrested and charged with causing a disturbance after uttering threats against her husband. To that, can now be added his top ranking in the Senate rapaciousness league table. The AG’s department suggests he claimed $176,014 in ineligible expenses and his case should be referred to the RCMP. Zimmer was appointed to the Senate by Paul Martin after a loyal career as a Liberal Party bagman (he was a member for the fundraising committee for Martin’s leadership campaign in 2003). He claims his primary residence is in Winnipeg, but the AG claimed he stayed in Ottawa 613 of 731 days during the audit period. In addition to the $47,132 in ineligible living expenses, the AG says he took several round trips to Winnipeg during which no parliamentary business was done, charging the Senate $102,524. Other expenses were ladled on the taxpayer for a board meeting of a corporation of which he was a director, for taxis for personal activities and miscellaneous gifts. A digital camera and computer equipment belonging to the Senate were not returned when he retired in August 2013. Zimmer claims this should all be sub-judice during the Duffy trial, where Senate residency rules are central to the proceedings. He says he is a proud resident of Winnipeg and only ill-health prevented him spending more time there. He also complained he only had 500 words to make the case for the defence in the report. But it wouldn’t have mattered if he and his fellow senators had been given the word count of War and Peace. Canadians have already heard enough — the Senate’s credibility is shot. Parliament might make mistakes that cost millions — the AG’s report itself will cost $21-million. But spending $2,000 on taxis over two years on personal business in a small town like Ottawa is something that everyone can understand. It’s the little things that get you into trouble. Canadians don’t need the auditor general to tell them that “oversight, accountability and transparency” of senators’ expenses are not adequate. Or that “senators did not always consider the requirement to ensure expenses funded through the public purse were justifiable, reasonable and appropriate.” Or even that 30 senators “incurred expenses that we determined were not in accordance with the applicable Senate rules, policies or guidelines.” They know all this intuitively. The revelations in the report will merely pour some gasoline on a bush-fire of anger that is already smouldering across the country. It requires an almost ancien regime sense of entitlement to justify claiming a per diem meal allowance when a meal has already been provided. We’re in Marie Antoinette territory when the justification is that it’s not possible to get a reasonable meal on an airplane in Canada. But what to do about it all? A recent study by Richard Albert, an associate professor at Boston College Law School, suggested the Canadian constitution is the world’s most difficult democratic constitution to change by formal amendment. Major changes are “virtually impossible,” he said, to the detriment of our democracy. The NDP attempted to starve the Senate of $57 million of funds in a vote on Monday night. It was defeated in the House of Commons, but even it had succeeded the Supreme Court has been clear that letting the Senate wither and die is not an option. Killing the Senate requires the unanimous consent of all provinces, the court said. Abolition by stealth may not be an option but that doesn’t mean nothing can be done. The question now rests squarely on the prime minister’s desk. Does he want to make the Senate a campaign issue? To this point, Stephen Harper has made it sound as if the Senate is a far-away country of which he knows little. “As you know the Senate is an independent body and the Senate is responsible for its own expenses,” he said, in response to a question in Europe last weekend. But the prime minister helped break the Senate by appointing avaricious senators, and now he owns it. He could yet resolve to act, if he decides it’s in his own political interests to give Canadians their say. His party, after all, was born from the green shoots of grassroots democracy. How better to display he has retained his populist credentials than by holding a referendum on Senate abolition on the same day as the October general election? Hugh Segal, master of Massey Hall at the University of Toronto, twice proposed such a plebiscite while serving in the Senate in 2005-14. He advocates a straight yes or no option that would require 50 per cent plus one support in every province. “The question should be put honourably to Canadians — we should afford them the chance to have their say. Otherwise, the system rolls on and the general cynicism will spread to other things, which is not a good thing for our democracy,” he said. For the Conservatives and NDP, this might even offer the happy coincidence of an energized electorate coming out to the vote. Armed with an abolition vote from every province, the prime minister would have a mandate that only a brave or foolish provincial premier would block. A statement by Brad Wall suggests that forces in favour for abolition have been worn down by intransigence in the provinces. The Saskatchewan premier, who introduced a motion for Senate abolition in his own legislature, said the Red Chamber isn’t necessary and isn’t making any contribution. It would give the Senate, for the first time ever, the tiniest shred of democratic legitimacy “(But) I’m not going to campaign for the Senate to be abolished. Everyone knows Saskatchewan’s position. I would like to see other provinces come on board but if they don’t, even in the light of the latest mess, then it’s not really worth the effort to try to change their minds.” If an abolition referendum vote fell short, it would kill the abolition debate for a generation and offer a rationale for reform. “It would give the Senate, for the first time ever, the tiniest shred of democratic legitimacy,” said Segal. In the past, the Conservatives have shied away from the idea of a referendum, but its time may have come. Even recently retired senators are now making the case. Terry Stratton, the former Conservative senator who was questioned over $5,466 of ineligible expenses, used his response in the AG’s report to campaign for the idea. “I must implore the prime minister at the time of the next election, in order to limit expense, to have a referendum on the abolition of the Senate,” he wrote. “This (is) despite the decision of the Supreme Court, who seem to limit their decisions to narrow confines of their interpretation of the law. After all, who governs Canada — the Supreme Court or Parliament?” he wrote. National Post • Email: jivison@nationalpost.com \| Twitter: IvisonJ
Over this past Memorial Day weekend, four of the original members of the Anniversary — the much-beloved band from Lawrence, Kansas — reconvened to rehearse a few of their old songs. This would be the first time that the four of them — Josh Berwanger, James David, Adrianne DeLanda, and Chris Jankowski — had been in one room together since the band awkwardly and officially broke up back in 2004. It was a reunion that no one ever really seemed to think would happen. Having parted ways well over a decade ago, most of the band now live in different parts of the country and literally everyone has children, which makes the idea of getting everyone back together in a room to play songs that were written when most of them were barely out of their teens seem not only logistically difficult, but financially and commercially implausible. Still, after several months of chatting and testing the waters (everyone seemed genuinely surprised by the almost cult-classic status of their records), four of the original five band members managed to clear their schedules for a spate of reunion shows that will take place this fall. (Fifth original member, guitarist Justin Roelofs, isn’t currently involved, though he encouraged the other members to proceed with the reunion. Ricky Salthouse will be joining the band on guitar for the upcoming shows.) Fittingly, the reunion took place in same place the band first played together back in 1997 — the basement at guitarist Josh Berwanger’s mom’s house. CREDIT: Zach Bauman At a time when every band that ever existed seems to be getting back together for some kind of delayed victory lap or cash grab, the fact that the Anniversary — a band that only ever released two proper albums back in the early 2000s — are reuniting is not terribly surprising. Judging by the lineups of summer festivals this year, nostalgia for early-2000s emo is at an all-time high, which means if you came of age in the era of Hot Rod Circuit or Reggie And The Full Effect, this is your time to LIVE. Despite having made what is now often talked about as one of the great emo albums of that era, 2000’s Designing A Nervous Breakdown, the Anniversary were generally kind of weirdo outliers in what was a fairly homogenous scene. Though they were often compared with their friends and labelmates the Get Up Kids, by the time the Anniversary released a sophomore album (2002’s Your Majesty), they had moved well past the squiggly pop of their debut and were wading into more psychedelic, classic-rock waters. At a time when the band was poised to do something really interesting — the kind of thing that would have likely allowed to them shake off the emo moniker once and for all — they essentially imploded in a sort of indie rock version of Fleetwood Mac-style romantic entanglements and long-simmering personal tensions. Like most breakups that happen before anyone involved has reached the age of 25, the band’s demise was dramatic and painful and weirdly ambiguous. A message was posted on a website and everyone eventually went their separate ways. Berwanger went on to play with the Only Children and will release a new record of his own this fall. DeLanda, who eventually left Kansas for San Francisco, currently plays in Extra Classic. Jankowski moved to Texas and still plays drums in a couple of different bands around Dallas. David essentially stopped playing music altogether. Roelofs, who now lives in Hawaii, continued post-Anniversary as White Flight and is currently working on new music of his own. In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I’m writing about the Anniversary because they were (and are) my friends. I met them in 1999 after seeing them play at a tiny bar in Wichita, Kansas while I was in grad school. At the time, they were peddling a homemade cassette release and everyone was fresh out of high school. I asked them to come back and play what would be a fairly disastrous show in Wichita a few weeks later — a show that would involve playing on a borrowed PA in a coffee shop to an audience of about 10 people, following up a high school band that opened and closed its set with a cover of Foo Fighters’ “Everlong.” On their way back to Lawrence that night, the Anniversary got lost and struck a deer with their van, totaling the vehicle. Against all odds, we remained friends. Eventually I moved to NYC and I’d see the band when they played here, including a particularly memorable show at Bowery Ballroom at which a then-unknown Dashboard Confessional served as the opening act. If you look closely at the “Sweet Marie” video — filmed at Irving Plaza during the tour behind Your Majesty — you can see a baby-faced version of me standing on a chair, and DeLanda sitting nearby holding a prehistoric-looking cell phone. As someone who knew the band for years and who had lovingly followed their progress, the saddest thing about their breakup — aside from the emotional fallout for everyone involved — was the sense that if they’d just stayed together a little longer, whatever they did next would have been incredible. If you check out Devil On Our Side, the collection of B-sides and rarities that Vagrant released in 2008, you can get a sense of where things were heading. This is all to say that I’m writing about these upcoming Anniversary reunion shows with no small amount of pleasure. And while I understand how easy it is to be cynical about the current glut of reunion tours — the idea of cashing in on nostalgia for a bygone era that isn’t actually all that bygone yet — it’s also unfair to make judgments about such things without knowing the people or the motivations involved. For the members of the Anniversary, the lure of playing together again, even if only for a few shows, had more to do with reconnecting with old friends than making money. For a bunch of people who came of age playing music together and experienced a fleeting (and somewhat bewildering) amount of success while they were all still essentially kids, reconnecting to play these shows is a nice way to revisit their old songs and also put a bit of closure on what was ultimately a hilarious, exciting, occasionally sad, but mostly amazing chapter in all of our young lives. No one will likely get rich, but it’s an appropriate way to give an ending to the band that doesn’t involve tears and broken relationships. Whatever acrimony might have clouded their breakup back then is truly now so much water under the bridge. I talked to everyone in the band to get their impressions on what it feels like to get back together after all these years. Here’s what they had to say. Berwanger: Since the day we broke up, Chris has been trying to get the band back together. He’s been on board since we all walked out of that bar where we broke up in 2004. He was like, “Are you sure we want to do this?” He was always trying to get the band back together. David: To be honest, I thought for sure the reunion would never happen. I remember when we actually decided to break up, Chris was like, “We’re just going on hiatus, right? ” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s done, never again.” I just figured the Anniversary would never play again. I’m surprised and excited though. Sometimes these things happen when you literally least expect them to. Jankowski: I was ready for a reunion anytime after the breakup. It’s true. The breakup happened, and it sucked, but time passes, and within a few years I was like, “Whenever you guys want to do this, I’m ready to play again.” I had a good time doing the Anniversary. It was a big part of my life. I’m ready for it, it’s just weird that we’re doing it now. I’m still kind of nervous about the shows, and the crowd response, and if people are going to be there for us. It’s been 13 years since we played, so it’ll be interesting to see. DeLanda: I actually always thought we would reunite. I just didn’t know when or what the circumstances would be. I always felt like it would happen though. Berwanger: I was doing a Berwanger tour last year and we were opening for the Get Up Kids. We did two nights in San Francisco and I asked Adrianne if she wanted to join me to do a version of “The Siren Sings” during my set. She wanted to do it and it was really cool. People really dug it. Adrianne and I had a blast that night. We ended up doing it again the next night. After the show we were all hanging out and we ended up having a conversation about reuniting the band. It was kind of like, if we are ever going to do this, the time is now. Ten years from now, there’s no way I’m going to want to do it. So we sent out an email to everyone and got in contact with our booking agent. That’s kind of what got the ball rolling. DeLanda: I wasn’t actually too nervous about getting back together, at least not as far as our playing was concerned. Relearning the songs was kind of a trip though, just looking back at the music and thinking about the decisions we made as musicians. It’s funny to go back and listen really critically to something you made so long ago, when you were so young. But I wasn’t nervous so much as just excited to be around everybody again. Walking into that room — the basement at Josh’s house where we had first practiced together back when I was a senior in high school — was so nuts. I walked in and Chris and Josh and Ricky were already there and playing one of our old songs. I open the door and say, “Jeez you fuckers, I thought practice started at one o’clock!” and without missing a beat Josh is like, “It’s 1:05,” and keeps playing. From the minute I got there it was like no time had passed. We just laughed all day and played music. It’s a little nerve-wracking that our first show is at a festival in front of so many people, but ultimately that’s just super motivating. Like, we can’t suck. We just can’t. Berwanger: Seeing everyone again — having us all in a room together — was really fun. I was definitely nervous about a lot of things. The big one, ultimately, was how we would sound. Secondly, it was just how it would feel to play these songs now. We wrote some of these songs, the Designing A Nervous Breakdown stuff, when we were 19 and 20 years old. I was nervous about being able to practice or get up on stage and have the same emotions where I could convince people that, “I mean this.” It’s just a weird thing — singing words you wrote when you were 20 years old and that you haven’t sung or really thought about in 13 years. Then we practiced and it was amazing. We sounded so great, and I realized it wasn’t so much of needing to, lyrically, dive into exactly what I was writing about at that point in my life. It was more about the band bringing that out. That is where all the meaning came from — all of us playing together and that energy that we had. It’s still there, and that was really cool. It was really wild, actually. Seeing everyone, it was like we had been hanging out every day for the past 13 years. CREDIT: Zach Bauman David: It was really weird for me to listen to those old songs and I was surprised at how much I really still liked them. I was like, “God, why did we never play this song live?” It was a super-weird experience to relearn how to play them all, but it’s also just a lot of muscle memory. Once I actually started playing, it kind of came back pretty quick. Like riding a bike. When we had practice for the first time it was kind of crazy because I hadn’t seen Adrianne in forever — like, over a decade — and it was not weird at all. It was kind of like how it’s supposed to be when you’re really good friends with someone, even though you haven’t really talked for a long time. DeLanda: If I were to have nerves about the whole thing, it’d just be that we were all getting back together after having done something that felt unfinished. It was good that so much time had passed, I think. There were some really hard times at the end of the Anniversary and it was good that we could kind of rejoice in all of the good stuff and really appreciate the good things that happened for us. All the other stuff — the negative stuff — has all been hashed out at this point and we’ve all moved beyond it. It’s nice to be able to get back to a place where it all felt so familiar and good between us. We were all such a huge part of each other’s lives during what were also the most formative times in our lives as human beings. I spent more time with them than anyone, and the time we spent was so all over the place. We were travelling together, which always teaches you things about each other and about yourself. We were making music together, which was powerful. We were going through intense emotional shit with each other. Our lives were totally intertwined. So when that was all abruptly gone, it was painful. It was probably good and healthy in some way for us to be away from each other for that period of time, but those guys are always going to be my bros, my family. CREDIT: Zach Bauman David: I had kind of hung it up as far as music was concerned. I played a reunion show with some other bands that I’d been in over the years, and played with Josh a couple times at the Replay in Lawrence, Kansas, just sat in on some songs for fun, but I had kind of quit playing. So it was weird, I had to relearn all the songs. I really had no idea how the songs went on the first record. We kind of quit playing all that Designing stuff when we started working on the next record. We’re like, “We’re done with this material.” We were kind of a weird band in that way, we wanted to have a short term memory, and we were always like, “Oh, that’s old, we’re only playing new.” Berwanger: I think, as you get older, you read a book or you watch a movie and you look at it differently than you did when you were 20 years old. I mean, hopefully you do. For instance, I was watching a Michael Jordan documentary recently and at the end of it I was thinking, “What if Michael never left and played baseball? How could his career have ended differently?” I don’t live in regret. You can’t do that, but there are times in everyone’s life when you do think about things like that. You do say the words, “What if? What if I did this instead? What if the Anniversary hadn’t broken up?” So that was definitely part of how I thought about this reunion. Ten years from now I don’t want to say, “What if I said no and didn’t try this one last time?” I don’t want to live with that. There is a great opportunity, right now, for us to go out there and do this again. If it goes great, awesome. If it doesn’t, then at least we went out there and had fun and got to spend time together and ended this chapter of our lives on a good note. We left too much on the table. We broke up so prematurely. Jankowski: Honestly, as far as these shows are concerned, I’m not doing it for the money. I’m just doing it for fun and to hang out with my friends. I just want to play music in front of people again, that’s the greatest thrill for me. I like playing in front of people. Also, our last show that we played as the Anniversary was in San Antonio at this place called Sin Thirteen. There wasn’t a huge turnout, but it was a nice-sized crowd. After we got done playing, within about half an hour the place turned into a goth dance party. They were playing goth music while we’re trying to load out, and we’re like, “Holy crap man, what’s going on here?” They couldn’t get us out of there fast enough so they could start the goth party. Little did we know that it would be the last show we would ever play together, which somehow seems like a terrible way to go out. We need to play together again just to make sure that particular show isn’t the last thing we ever do together. DeLanda: You never really know what the reaction is going to be in a situation like this or if anyone is going to care, but over the years I did have a sense that we still had an audience that was interested. No matter what kind of music I was doing — and I think the same was probably true for Josh — there would always be people who would come up to me and say how much they had loved the band and that they had continued to follow what we were doing. We had definitely meant something to people, and there were people who were kind enough to keep track of us. Berwanger: Adrianne reminded me of this the other day. She said, “Yeah, Josh the first interview you ever did, someone asked you if we were an emo band and your answer was, ‘Why would I say we are an emo band? That’s pretty much like saying we are a bunch of pussies.'” I don’t remember saying that, but I probably did. Now I don’t really care. If people want to call us an emo band or remember us that way, it’s cool. Apparently it’s coming back. People want to be a part of something, and that was a big part of what the emo thing was about for people back then — they felt like they were a part of this cultural thing that was happening. Still, I never thought about us in that way. To be honest, I don’t know if I can even name any emo bands. I never really understood what that term meant. A lot of those bands sounded very different to me, and I never thought we sounded like any of them. CREDIT: Zach Bauman Jankowski: The Anniversary, unfortunately, were just thrown into that group of bands that were considered emo — partly because of where we were from and because of the label we were on — but we never thought of ourselves as an emo band. We went on a lot of tours with bands that were considered emo, so we just fell into that category by default. A few years ago someone — Alternative Press or LA Weekly or someone — put out a list of the top 20 emo albums of all time, and Designing A Nervous Breakdown was no. 17 on the list. I was like, “Oh cool, I guess we are an emo band after all.” But mostly it reminded me that it was actually a really good album that we made together, and it was nice to be reminded of that. I always think the most interesting thing about the two albums we made is just the stark contrast between them. DeLanda: I’ve seen a lot of reunion tours. I know how it feels to see a band you love come back, and how weirdly powerful that can be and seeing the responses to our reunion announcement was really amazing. I think a lot of the people who loved our band were also very close to us in terms of age, so a lot of what we were singing about and the things we were feeling were also things they could identify with and relate to. When I listen to certain records that I loved when I was young, it takes me back to a certain time and place that’s so specific that I literally almost taste it and smell it and feel it. Now to know that maybe we also provided that feeling for people is pretty incredible. To be able to make people happy by going out and playing these songs while also revisiting this amazing time in our own lives is also pretty incredible. Jankowski: So many funny things happened to us in this band, but someone just reminded me about this. When we made the “All Things Ordinary” video I think our total budget was 600 bucks and we pretty much did everything ourselves. I was the director. We made the video and sent it out to a bunch of small video places and they started playing it on their programs and stuff. We sent a copy to MTV, since we had a friend who worked there at the time. As the story goes, she was sitting in one of the control rooms and watching the video when, totally by chance, Carson Daly walks by with Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit. They stopped and ended up watching the video and talking about it. I kid you not, the next video by Limp Bizkit is pretty much a direct copy of our video. If you’ve ever seen the Limp Bizkit video for “My Way,” it’s essentially the same concept as our video, just done with a bigger budget, including a scene where they are also wearing caveman costumes. They ripped off our idea, which is hilarious. It’s flattering, right? David: My kids have zero interest in the fact that I was once in a band. I’ve kind of tried to show them things, but they couldn’t be bothered. Recently someone showed them the video for “All Things Ordinary” on YouTube and they came home asking “Dad, do you still have that chicken suit?” I was like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” They’re like, “The yellow chicken suit!” I seriously had no clue, and they were like, “On YouTube, your video, your band.” They started singing one of our songs, and I was like, “What?” They had to show me the video that we made where I was wearing a yellow chicken suit, and I was like, “Holy crap, I forgot all about this.” That’s the problem with me, there’s just so much shit that happened during those years and somehow I don’t actually remember any of it, I guess because I don’t hang out with a lot of the same people I hung out with back then. When we were all back together for rehearsals, it was really like the fog finally lifted. All of the truly ridiculous stuff that happens on the road, it all comes flooding back. Berwanger: After our first rehearsal, Jim was saying that the most exciting thing about this upcoming tour is just getting to hang out together again. I feel the same way. You don’t always know how much you’ve missed people until you spend time together again and realize that you all have the exact same stupid sense of humor that you did when you were teenagers. DeLanda: Being with the guys, I started to remember all of these amazing things I had totally forgotten. One thing I’ll never forget is us driving across country in an RV and getting stuck in a blizzard. We just had to park on the side of the road and wait it out. At six o’clock in the morning, Jim woke up and started the RV because we had to be in Salt Lake City that night to play. I was riding shotgun and it was like, “Let’s fucking do this.” We drove through the snow for about four more hours and I remember it was kind of terrifying but we were also listening to Grateful Dead’s Europe ’72 — still one of my favorite albums — and we get to Salt Lake just before the doors were supposed to open. We just barely made it. Talk about celebrating life that night — it was all pizza and hugs and Jack Daniels. Those are the things I remember about being in the Anniversary. That vibe. Like, we’re alive and we’re doing this. CREDIT: Zach Bauman The Anniversary 2016 tour dates: 07/16 San Bernardino, CA @ Taste of Chaos Fest at San Manuel Amphitheater Festival Grounds 09/08 Allston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall 09/09 Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts 09/10 New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom 09/11 New York, NY @ The Bell House 09/12 Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel 09/13 Columbus, OH @ Skully’s 09/14 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop 09/15 Detroit, MI @ The Shelter 09/17 Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
One-Way Gap in Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway Set to Be Closed This Fall Construction continues on the Brooklyn Waterfront Greenway along Van Brunt Street, with a two-way buffered bike lane extending the greenway south through Red Hook striped recently, but there’s a conspicuous gap in the route that won’t be filled until at least this fall. Reader Anna Zivarts flagged the problem with this short video and set of photos showing how southbound cyclists on Imlay Street find that the two-way bike lane suddenly ends at Verona Street, giving them the option to backtrack, divert to a cobblestone street, ride on a narrow sidewalk, or ride against traffic for two blocks before rejoining the new bike lane on Conover Street. Why the gap? As shown in this DOT presentation from February [PDF], the missing link is supposed to be bridged by a bike path that jumps off the street and runs along the edge of a Port Authority truck storage yard, but it appears negotiations between the Port Authority and DOT didn’t wrap up before the on-street section was striped. “The permanent greenway route along the Basin is expected to be completed in the fall,” DOT spokesperson Nicholas Mosquera said in an e-mail. In the meantime, he said, DOT will be installing temporary bike route indicators on the sidewalk. This stretch of sidewalk, while not heavily used by pedestrians, isn’t especially wide, and on a recent visit was blocked by companies that were unloading trucks. “We continue to work with the Port Authority and other agencies to implement the portion along Atlantic Basin,” Mosquera said. Streetsblog has inquired with the Port Authority, but is still awaiting a response.
Holly Holm’s Octagon career has only just begun. \| Photo: TJ De Santis/Sherdog.com At some point during her foray into mixed martial arts, Holly Holm went from accomplished champion boxer with potential to Ronda Rousey ’s next great foil.It happened suddenly, and somehow, it also happened before Holm ever agreed to terms with the UFC . As the Jackson-Wink MMA standout made the rounds from New Mexico’s Route 66 Casino to the Bellator MMA prelims to Legacy Fighting Championship titlist, Rousey’s shadow loomed large, perhaps much larger than it should have for a relative novice to the sport.Interest in the hypothetical reached a fever pitch when Holm’s manager, Lenny Fresquez, suggested that his fighter would need a six-figure payday and a fast track to a title shot if she were to ever join the Las Vegas-based promotion.“The UFC doesn’t have anybody but maybe five girls who can give Holly competition,” Fresquez said in December 2013. “We’re just waiting for them to give us the right opportunity to fight Ronda Rousey, because we want a title fight.“We’re looking for six figures, and there’s not too many fighters in the UFC that make six figures,” he continued. “Holly’s a franchise, as you can see. She’s not just your normal fighter; she’s more of a franchise. To be honest, I think she’d represent as the face of the UFC better than Ronda Rousey.”From that point on, negotiations played out in a less-than-ideal public forum, as UFC President Dana White called Fresquez a “lunatic” and later asserted that the organization was “not interested whatsoever” in signing Holm following a meeting with the New Mexico-based manager. Perhaps Fresquez was more savvy than White realized, as the back-and-forth only served to raise Holm’s profile.Eventually, cooler heads prevailed. “The Preacher’s Daughter” finally inked a deal with the UFC in the summer of 2014, a few months after capturing the Legacy FC bantamweight crown with a victory over Juliana Werner in her seventh professional MMA bout.Holm was initially booked against “The Ultimate Fighter 18” cast member Raquel Pennington at UFC 181, but a neck injury suffered in training resulted in the bout being postponed. That delay only allowed the stars to align so that Holm made her Octagon debut against Pennington on the same UFC 184 card where Rousey would defend her title against Cat Zingano It seemed like the perfect showcase to audition for a future spot opposite the Olympic judoka, but pressure continued to mount as Holm’s first UFC appearance drew near, culminating with the announcement that her fight was going to be elevated to the co-headliner.“Holly was good that last camp until all of a sudden she found out on the Internet that she was the co-main event,” longtime coach Mike Winkeljohn told Sherdog.com. “And that was a heavy load at the moment no matter what anybody thinks. It’s hard when you have all that pressure and everybody has all those expectations. You second guess everything you’re doing.”“It builds up a lot,” Holm said. “We were talking about negotiations with the UFC before my last fight with Legacy. So it was just negotiation, all this hype and media for months. And then I finally signed. We talked about the first fight, finally set it up, injured myself with my herniated disc, had to postpone the fight.“So then they said, ‘Well, we’re gonna put you on the same card as Rousey.’ I knew they were going to be comparing the two. That’s what promoters like to do is drop a little bit of hype. I knew that , so I’m like, ‘Well, we’ve already got all this going on. My first fight in the UFC, might as well just bring it on.’ [Then it got moved] to the co-main event, and at that point I was just numb to it... I felt like that was the longest training camp I’ve ever had because all the talk before I even had a fight, then having to postpone it even longer. I felt like I was talking about Raquel Pennington for months and months -- well, I was. It was a relief when the fight was over.”It wasn’t that Holm’s performance against Pennington was bad. She won, after all, but the split-decision triumph was hardly the type of outing to strike fear into a champion who has made a habit of clocking out in less than a minute.Unable to author the type of spectacular knockout that bolsters a contender’s portfolio, Holm was summarily dismissed by the hyper-critical MMA community as a viable threat to the reigning bantamweight queen. Of course, Holm never made any promises, because Conor McGregor -esque bluster just isn’t her style.“[Before the fight] everybody said, ‘Do you think you’re going to live up to the hype? I said, ‘No,’” Holm recalled. “The movie that comes out that everybody talks about that is the most awesome movie, when you go watch it, it’s usually not as good as they say. If ou go check it out with no expectations it’s like, ‘Wow, that was good.’ I feel like that’s what it was.“Everybody was expecting me to go in and do a head-kick knockout. There was a couple that would have been it, but I just skimmed her hair,” she added. “A fight can change just like that. You can be on an even playing field and one punch lands just right and it’s like, ‘Wow, look at that performance.’ I just figure I’m glad they’re talking about me. Because if they weren’t, then I wouldn’t be anything to look for.”Perhaps those near misses were a blessing in disguise. If Holm had managed to produce anything nearly on par with Rousey’s 14-second submission of Zingano, the scene would have been set for the Albuquerque native to take center stage before she was truly ready.“I’m glad that my best performance of my life wasn’t my first fight,” Holm said. “I’m glad that I know I have more to prove.”Holm’s sophomore Octagon appearance will come with considerably less fanfare, as she faces Marion Reneau on the main card of UFC Fight Night “Mir vs. Duffee” at Valley View Casino Center in San Diego. It’s a card that takes place on a Wednesday evening, on the heels of UFC 189 , the promotion’s most heavily-hyped event of 2015. Ronda Rousey is nowhere to be found. Neither, thankfully, are the premature comparisons that accompanied Holm’s rookie outing.“It’s been nice. I’m not gonna lie,” Holm admitted.Still, Holm knows that a different kind of expectation looms. As overwhelming as her initial UFC bout might have been, it is the type of environment she eventually wants to experience again, when the time is right. If she doesn’t deliver against Reneau, Holm could be relegated to also-ran status as quickly as she became a person of interest.“There’s different feelings this time,” she said. “Before, there was a lot of anxiety about it and coming off of injuries. But this time it is more, ‘Well I know that I was hesitant in the first one so I better show more.’ So I still feel just as much pressure but in a different way -- and pressure I put on myself. I know that my performance wasn’t as I wanted it to be last time, so I need to do more.”The Pennington bout was only Holm’s eighth as a pro, and despite her shortcomings there was plenty to like. Her ability to land combinations while moving in and out of danger was apparent in rounds one and two, and she stuffed all five of Pennington’s takedown attempts throughout the contest. On the flipside, naysayers will point out that Holm didn’t show knockout power, and a third-round slip by Holm looked worse than it was and was the fight’s last lingering image. (FightMetric.com does not credit Pennington with a knockdown.) That Holm has to quell doubters on the heels of a win is much better than the alternative.Sometimes it can be easy to forget that Holm is still grasping the many intricacies of MMA. In her professional debut, Holm returned to her corner awaiting a standing eight count after scoring a knockdown. With her boxing days now completely in the rearview mirror, Holm’s skills remain a work-in-progress, but sometimes it’s difficult for that progress to match expectations.“It’s coming along, and I feel better all the time in practice. But every fight gets harder too. I feel like I’m always on the fast track,” Holm said. “I didn’t get to have an amateur MMA fight. I had to hop right into it. I’ve only had [eight] fights in MMA ever -- and zero grappling tournaments. And people talk about fighting for the title, so I do feel like I’m on an accelerated path. But I don’t really want it any other way. I’d rather just take the challenge. I don’t want to be a paper champion.”And don’t think for a second that the championship aspirations have subsided within Holm’s camp. While Winkeljohn is more measured than Fresquez, he has no doubts that his longtime pupil is on the right path.“I think it will be next year. I think it’ll be a 2016 thing,” Winkeljohn said. “She’ll have that belt around her waist. I’m a believer in Holly Holm. She’s always overcome. She works harder than anybody in the gym.”If Holm’s bandwagon is a little less full than it was five months ago, as a longtime combat sport athlete, she understands that comes with the territory. In the long run, it isn’t going to change her approach.“I’ve had plenty of that pressure, and I’ve had a ton of negativity in boxing. It’s not something that ever bothers me. I’m gonna do it regardless of what people say. Most of the people behind the computers are not doing what I do and don’t understand it anyway,” she said. “It really has no effect on me.”MMA history is littered with flash-in-the pan stars who burned out shortly after they arrived. Holm may not have made the greatest first impression, but in her mind, that only means the best is yet to come.
It won’t be much longer until Slime-san appears on Switch. Today, publisher Headup Games announced that the action-platformer is set to debut on Nintendo’s console next week. Slime-san is coming to Switch on August 3 via the eShop. HD Rumble will be supported, and the multiplayer mini-games can be played locally with one set of Joy-Con. We’ve included more details about Slime-san below, along with a new Switch trailer for the game. About Slime-San Slime-san was minding his own business, sliming around in a peaceful forest when suddenly…A giant worm appeared and gobbled him up! Now deep within the worm’s belly, Slime-san has to face a decision: Be digested by the incoming wall of stomach acid… Or jump, slide and slime his way through the worm’s intestines and back out its mouth! Features – Incredibly fast-paced and twitch-timing platforming madness! – No time to stay still as you are chased by a wall of acid at every corner! Run, run, run! – Being a slime has its perks. Slime your way through cracked walls and surfaces! – Bust through brittle obstacles or tense situations with a speedy dash move. – Slime to slow time, dash to speed it up. Feel like an absolute badass with pixel precise maneuvers! – A game filled with content: 100 levels made out of 400 rooms combined with 100 new game+ levels totalling to a staggering 200 levels and 800 rooms! – Collect partially-digested apples to unlock different play styles, outfits, shaders and mini-games! – Get your shopping done in a town of survivors within the worm, home to colorful characters and surprising secrets. – Each level is timed with online rankings, for the competitive and score-oriented. – Unlock extra game modes like New Game+, Speed Running and Boss Rush modes! – Get engrossed in a unique, 5 colored, pixelated world…found… within… the worm? – Adhesive Wombat, Tiasu, Meganeko, Kubbi, Inverse Phase, Richard Gould… Over 10 composers contributed with over 20 songs for a chiptune album that you can’t help but groove out to! Source: Headup Games PR Share this: Twitter Facebook Reddit Tumblr Google More Email Print LinkedIn Pinterest Pocket
Talking about your sexual history with a new partner is best done early and honestly. A few months ago, a friend messaged me to ask for advice. This friend was in a bit of a bind, and wanted an outside opinion. My friend, who has been poly for a long time, has a partner who has started a relationship with someone new. This new someone disclosed that they were HSV2+, which is the virus that causes genital herpes. My friend wasn’t sure how to handle this news, and asked me for advice. Non-poly people, and folks new to our world, often ask about how polys handle the reality of sexually transmitted infections (STI); specifically, how to protect yourself and your partners, and how to negotiate acceptable risk. You don’t want your first conversation with your partner about sexual health to happen because someone brought home the wrong kind of crabs. Let’s take the second part first: negotiating acceptable risk. Like everything else in a relationship, you have to talk to your partner/s about STIs, preferably before you ever have a problem with them. You don’t want your first conversation with your partner about sexual health to happen because someone brought home the wrong kind of crabs. Flippancy aside, as difficult as this subject can be to talk about, you don’t want to make an extremely tense topic to talk about even more so by waiting until a crisis hits. STIs are one of those things that I try to get out on the table with a potential new partner as soon as possible, especially if I want to have a sexual relationship with them. In my case, HPV is in my sexual history. I may or may not be a carrier, and there is no real way to know for sure either way. It behooves me to tell potential sexual partners this, so they can decide what their level of acceptable risk is for themselves. For some people, it won’t matter at all. Maybe they already have it (or had it). Lots of humans fall into that category. Maybe they won’t want to have any kind of sexual contact with me at all. But this person deserves to make an informed decision, right? You’ve got to find each other’s comfort zones, and then honor them. Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free Here’s the hard part. You have to be OK with rejection. It doesn’t matter if you think their response is unreasonable, or illogical, or fair. It doesn’t matter if you think this is your new soulmate, the first person you’ve crushed on in years, or whatever. That person gets to decide what is acceptable for them. I’m not saying you shouldn’t educate them. There’s lots of misinformation out there about STIs, as I found out about HPV. When I was dealing with that, I quickly discovered that most of what I thought I knew was wrong. Be careful not to step over the line into “pushy”, because you don’t want to be That Guy (or Girl), either. But if they say no, you have to accept it. And as much as it sucks to be rejected for any reason, you are far better off getting that out of the way as quickly as possible, before anyone involved gets really invested. You have got to be OK with setting your boundaries. Only you can decide for yourself what risks you are willing to take. After all, this is your body and health we’re talking about here. Not to mention your other partners’, if you have some. And that is the advice I gave my friend. It is up to every new couple who begin a sexual relationship to decide what their acceptable level of risk is, to themselves and to their other lovers. You have to be OK with ending a relationship before it goes too far, if the risk is too great. No one can or should try to force anyone else to decide what they want. ♦◊♦ This is another one of those “poly questions” that is really a “relationship question.” It doesn’t matter if you are poly or not, straight or not, whenever you begin a new relationship with someone, the STI question has to be dealt with. Unless your new love interest is a virgin, he or she’s got a history. And unless you are, so do you. Establishing open communication right from the beginning will only help your relationship in the long run. The first part of the question—how to protect yourself from STIs—is easier, since I don’t have to answer it. Getting information about STIs and how to protect yourself has never been easier than in the Digital Age. I have to assume if you are reading this then you have reliable access to a computer. There are tons of resources available, from sites like Planned Parenthood or the CDC to blogs such as the excellent STD Project, a blog dedicated to educating the public about STDs and reducing the stigma attached to them. If you really cannot get online much, there are still plenty of resources available. Planned Parenthood is an excellent place to get information from. Even if you don’t have a local clinic, write to them and they’ll help you if they can. Your personal care physician, ON/GYN, local walk-in clinic or hospital can also help. —Photo credit: Big Al/Flickr
The ground underfoot was still wet as more than 90,000 Tifosi made their annual pilgrimage to Monza's royal park on Sunday morning. Rain during qualifying had left their beloved Ferraris fifth and sixth on the grid, but it's often said that hope springs eternal in this part of the world and Saturday's disappointment hadn't dampened their spirits. For the first time in five years, the Italian Grand Prix race programmes showed a Ferrari driver leading the championship in early September, and there was still the possibility that the SF70-H might come good in dry conditions. Ferrari's seven-year victory drought on home turf has left the Tifosi battle-hardened, but the sight of scarlet bodywork exiting the Parabolica for the first time is still enough to raise the roof on Monza's aging grandstands. The atmosphere on the grid at the Italian Grand Prix is unlike any other in Formula One, and the cheer that met Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen as they were rolled through the chaos to their starting positions was only matched in volume by the boos for Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. LUCA BRUNO/AFP/Getty Images By comparison, the 75 minutes of racing that followed was an anti-climax. The promise of a Ferrari win was always distant at the weekend, but the extent of the defeat was unexpected. In a season in which the margins between Hamilton and Vettel have so often been measured in tenths, the Tifosi overlooking the pit straight had to wait 36 seconds between Hamilton taking victory and Vettel securing third. "Mercedes power is definitely better than Ferrari power!" Hamilton said on the podium after receiving boos and jeers from the crowd below. The comments were made in jest, but there was no denying their truth; the combination of Mercedes' latest power unit and the W08's trimmed-out aero package was unbeatable on Sunday and no level of support or intimidation from the crowd was going to change that. A race Ferrari was never going to win www.sutton-images.com But if you strip away the emotion of Sunday's proceedings, it's easy to argue that Vettel left Monza with his mission accomplished. A third place finish yields 15 points whether a driver is one second off the lead or 60, and Ferrari knew ahead of the Italian Grand Prix that it was going to be Mercedes' one-two victory to lose. Ever since the early design principles of this year's car were sketched out in early 2016, the Mercedes was always set to have an innate advantage at tracks like Monza, just as Ferrari has been the team to beat on high-downforce, slow-speed circuits, like Monaco and the Hungaroring. Throughout the season the W08 has lacked peak downforce compared to the Ferrari, but it has enjoyed a much better trade-off between downforce and drag. Monza is an outlier on Formula One's downforce spectrum - sitting at the extreme as a low-drag circuit - but non-draggy downforce is still very useful in the corners. So not only was the Mercedes fast on the straights, it was also able to generate sufficient downforce to make Hamilton and Bottas faster than anyone else in Monza's high-speed corners. "Everyone talks about Monza and Monza wings," Mercedes boss Toto Wolff explained after the race, "and you could see that on some of our competitors, like Red Bull, they experimented with a very low downforce wing in Spa and I think the one they had here was flat. "Yes, there was a Monza package [for Mercedes], but it wasn't down to a low downforce configuration. Our car was very strong through the corners, every type of corner and that is encouraging." With less than a quarter of the race complete, both Mercedes drivers turned down their engines to preserve them for a future battle. Job done. Not only had Mercedes conquered Ferrari on home turf, it had done so by a significant margin. Turning the tables Sutton Images That will, of course, be of some concern to Maranello, which had designed a much less efficient low-drag aero package than its main rival and saw its deficiencies brutally exposed in front of its home crowd. But the wings that ran in Monza will not be needed again this season -- even the long straights of Mexico City require a much higher setting in order to generate the necessary downforce from the thin air at 2,250 metres -- and are now as much a part of the team's history as the 1947 Ferrari 125 Vettel rode in on Sunday's driver parade. There will be lessons learned for next year's Italian Grand Prix, but there is no reason to believe that Vettel will be more than 30 seconds off Mercedes at any of the remaining races this season. On the contrary, the next round in Singapore is a high-downforce track where drag becomes a secondary concern and steep wing angles return to maximise downforce through the street circuit's 23 corners. "Plenty of positives" Dan Istitene/Getty Images Looking back at the last two races, Vettel finished second and third on two tracks where he could have reasonably expected to finish third twice. What's more, he finished ahead of the Red Bulls, which are becoming increasingly competitive and would have likely beaten Vettel had the grid not been rearranged by engine penalties on Saturday night. With those 33 points secure on Mercedes' strongest tracks, the tables are set to turn in Singapore when Hamilton and Bottas are more likely to feel the pressure from the ever-improving Red Bull. "At the moment you can say that Mercedes has an edge," Vettel said after Sunday's race. "Saturdays they're very strong which obviously has its contribution to Sundays, but it's not a big secret. I think we are strong, we don't need to hide and there's plenty of positives. "Things are coming, I'm sure they are developing their car but we are developing ours so I'm not so fussed about what they doing. I'm more focused on what's going on inside us, inside Ferrari and it makes me quite positive, what's coming. We just need to see and then there's always the extra element of racing that you can't predict, that you can't put down on paper and that's usually the most exciting bit so I'm very much a fan of that and a fan of the moment and see what we can do." As painful as the 36-second gap at Monza was, Ferrari knows it was not a true reading of the balance of performance between its car and Mercedes'. Hamilton has made the most of his team's strongest tracks at the start of the second half of the season, but now it is Vettel's turn to do the same at Ferrari's. Bring on Singapore.
“I know the narrative is we don’t have a lot of good players, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the truth,” tight end Greg Olsen said last week. Carolina’s 38-10 victory over Tampa Bay Sunday, gave the Panthers home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. Olsen is one of 10 Panthers recently named to the Pro Bowl. Quarterback Cam Newton, a fellow Pro Bowler, is also among the top contenders for the Most Valuable Player Award, along with Tom Brady of New England and Carson Palmer of Arizona. But it is worth noting that none of Newton’s wide receivers were selected for the all-star game in Hawaii. Perhaps no position on the Panthers has been more disparaged than wide receiver. The Panthers entered the season without a clear No. 1 or No. 2 wideout for Newton, who received a five-year, $103.8 million contract extension in the offseason, becoming one of the highest-paid players in the game. How could the Panthers be that good when their best receiver, Kelvin Benjamin, tore a knee ligament in the preseason and was lost for the year? When their default No. 1, the speedy Ted Ginn Jr., was a free-agent pickup who had been cut after a disastrous season with Arizona in 2014? When their No. 2, Corey Brown, was a free-agent rookie in 2014 and had only 21 catches? When their No. 3, Jerricho Cotchery, 33, was eight years removed from his lone 1,000-yard season, with the Jets in 2007? Of course, Newton had Olsen, one of the NFL’s best tight ends. It is no surprise that he has 77 catches for 1,104 yards and seven touchdowns this season. The Panthers’ receiving corps, though, has been unexpectedly good. Newton finished with 35 touchdown passes (his previous high was 24) and a 99.4 quarterback rating. Newton has spread the ball around — Ginn is the only Panthers wide receiver ranked among the top 100 in receptions in the NFL this season. He finished with 44 catches, and has 739 receiving yards. A first-round draft pick of Miami in 2007, Ginn has played for four NFL teams. He is on his second stint with Carolina, having managed just 14 catches with Arizona last season. “Arizona was Arizona,” said Ginn, who had 36 catches for 556 yards and five touchdowns with the Panthers in 2013. “You fall into a system sometimes, and the system doesn’t work for you. That’s all I can really say about that. I was eager to come back and play. I just wanted to play football. It wasn’t nothing to prove to nobody. It was just a joy for Ted Ginn Jr. to come and play football, and knowing that I could come to a team that was going to use me the way Ted Ginn Jr. is supposed to be used.” Although Ginn has a history of dropping passes — he was second in the league this season, with 10 before Sunday’s game — he also has a career-best 10 touchdown receptions. In nine years in the NFL, Ginn has 21 touchdown catches. Fifteen have come in his two seasons with the Panthers. “I think Cam has a tremendous amount of trust in him,” the Panthers’ wide receivers coach, Ricky Proehl, said, referring to Ginn. “If he drops a ball here or there, he’s going to come back to him.” Proehl added: “He’s got the physical attributes. It’s been mental with him, getting down on himself. Now he knows he’s got to let it go, move on to the next play.” Cotchery, who spent seven seasons with the Jets, has 39 catches and is an option mainly on third downs and in the red zone. He made a winning touchdown reception against New Orleans in December. Brown has added 31 catches and four touchdowns. Almost unnoticed is Devin Funchess, a rookie second-round pick out of Michigan who, at 6 feet 4 inches and 225 pounds, was supposed to be a bookend with the 6-foot-5, 243-pound Benjamin. Funchess was slowed by injuries early in the season, but he has 31 catches for 473 yards and four touchdowns. If there is a wild card to this playoff run, it might be Funchess. “I think he can be an X-factor-type player for you, because there’s not a lot about him that people know,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera said. “He’s a young guy that’s been developing for us, has come in in some key situations, has caught some big touchdown passes for us and some tough catches. “If he gets rolling, continues to do things he’s been doing, he could be. He could have that kind of an impact.” For now, though, the Panthers’ wide receiver corps — which lacks the kind of presence that Larry Fitzgerald provides for Arizona — is not likely to throw fear into the opposition in the playoffs. Even with the dominant season Newton has had, a question remains: Can the Panthers win a Super Bowl with those guys? With that question comes motivation. “Since Day 1,” Newton said, defending his receivers, “we kind of pride ourselves in playing with a chip on our shoulder.” That chip is unlikely to go away any time soon.
Email Share +1 6K Shares Mexico City lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill that would allow transgender people to legally change their gender without a court order. Members of Legislative Assembly of the Federal District, in which Mexico City is located, approved the measure by a 42-0 vote margin. Six lawmakers abstained from the vote on the measure that Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera proposed. Manuel Granados Covarrubias of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, known by the Spanish acronym PRD, welcomed the proposal’s approval. “It eliminates cumbersome trials and judicial proceedings, procedures, to generate the administrative change of a legal action to which everyone has the right,” said Granados in a press release the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District released after lawmakers approved the measure. “Their dignity is also recognized.” The Mexico City Commission to Prevent and Eliminate Discrimination, known by its Spanish acronym COPRED, launched a campaign in support of the measure. COPRED spokesperson René Said Nieto told the Washington Blade that Mexico City on Thursday “took a major step forward” towards the recognition of trans people. “(The measure) guarantees the rights of people to the recognition of their gender identity,” said the Human Rights Program of the Federal District in a statement. Mexico City is the first city in Latin America to allow trans people to legally change the gender on their birth certificates without a medical examination. The Mexican capital’s comprehensive anti-discrimination law already includes gender identity and expression and designates transphobia as a form of discrimination. Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2012 signed a law that allows trans Argentinians to legally change their gender on official documents without sex-reassignment surgery and an affidavit from a doctor or another medical provider. The Chilean Senate next week is expected to vote on a bill that would allow trans people in the South American country to legally change their name and sex without sex-reassignment surgery. Supporters of Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, credit her with successfully lobbying her father’s government to begin offering free sex-reassignment surgery under the country’s national health care system in 2008.
MIAMI Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump stirred controversy once again in Miami Friday night, making vague insinuations about what would happen if Hillary Clinton’s bodyguards had their guns taken away. Trump buries "birther" issue -- sort of “She wants to destroy your Second Amendment,” Trump said, starting on a familiar refrain. “Guns, guns, guns, right? I think what we should do is she goes around with armed bodyguards, like you have never seen before. I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm, right? Right? I think they should disarm. Immediately, what do you think? Yes? Yes. Yeah. Take their guns away! She doesn’t want guns. Take their - let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away. Okay, it would be very dangerous.” CBS News' Major Garrett calls out Donald Trump "birther" event Trump uses "birther" debate to promote new hotel in Washington, DC The boisterous crowd yelled as Trump suggested disarming Clinton’s bodyguards, something he has said in the past. It continued cheering when he said, “Let’s see what happens to her.” It wasn’t the first time Trump had expressed a similar sentiment. At the National Rifle Association convention in May, Trump said, “So Americans use guns to defend themselves against violent crime more than a million times a year, okay. More than a million times a year. And they want to take them away, heartless hypocrites like the Clintons want to take this and get rid of guns, and yet they have bodyguards that have guns. So I think that in addition to calling for them to name judges, we’ll also call them and let their bodyguards immediately disarm.” Trump continued: “Okay? They should immediately disarm. And let’s see how good they do. Let’s see how they feel walking around without their guns on their bodyguards.” Just weeks ago - at another rally in early August, Trump ignited another firestorm while talking about the Second Amendment. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment,” Trump said in Wilmington, North Carolina. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people. Maybe there is. I don’t know.” Trump’s critics slammed the comments as potentially inciting violence against Clinton, an accusation that Trump vigorously denied. Trump also denied reports in the aftermath that the Secret Service had a conversation with him about those comments. The rally was in Miami, where the large Cuban population means President Barack Obama’s normalizing of relations with Cuba remains a hot topic. “We’re also going to stand with the Cuban people in their fight against communist oppression,” Trump said. He said that the normalization with Cuba was a “one-sided” deal that “benefits only the Castro regime.” He went so far as to suggest he would reverse the deal in office unless the Castro regime meets Trump’s demands, which now include “religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners.” This seemed to mark a shift in Trump’s tone on Cuba over the last year. Asked in September of 2015 by the Daily Caller if he opposed normalizing relations with the island nation, Trump said, “I think it’s fine. I think it’s fine, but we should have made a better deal. The concept of opening with Cuba — 50 years is enough — the concept of opening with Cuba is fine.” In March, Trump told CNN that he would likely continue the normalization process with Cuba in office. “Probably so,” Trump said when asked if he would continue to normalize economic and diplomatic relations. “But I’d want much better deals than we’re making.” Trump’s recently professed hardline stance now seems to align him further with more traditional Republican thinking, especially policies espoused by Florida’s home state senator, Marco Rubio, once Trump’s former foe in the primary and now reluctant supporter. Trump’s speech in Miami came on the same day that Trump held a bizarre press conference at his new hotel in Washington. After teasing on Fox Business that he would be making a big announcement about the debunked birth movement, of which Trump was a vocal leader, he spent time promoting the hotel and then lined up military veterans to praise him. Finally, at the end of the event, Trump gave a cursory statement falsely claiming that Clinton started the birther movement and that he finished it. “Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy,” Trump said. “I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again. Thank you.” With that, Trump walked away from the microphones. There was neither an apology, nor any mention of his vocal cheerleading for years - as recently as 2015 - of the birther movement. He did not say why his opinion changed or when. He had spent more time discussing his hotel than the birther issue.
Flashback He said that Baxter’s Ukrainian lab was in fact producing a bioweapon disguised as a vaccine. Flashback "Kiev - The death toll from a swine flu outbreak in Ukraine rose to 34 on Saturday, as the government announced new measures to control the spread of the virus.Two of the victims were infants, Health Minister Vasyl Kniazevych told Channel 5 television.As of Saturday morning, the flu was thought still to be limited in to the country's western provinces, but because of the number of suspected cases, a spread was likely, he said.""August 21, 2009 - Today, the MSM are not talking about this case any more. Yesterday, they wanted us to believe that Joseph Moshe was a nutcase and a terrorist, arrested for threatening to bomb the White House. Interesting detail about his arrest (the “Westwood standoff”) was that he seemed to be immune to the 5 cans of tear gas and 5 gallons of law-enforcement grade pepper spray they pumped into his face. He very calmly remained in his car , as the video footage of his arrest shows.Professor Moshe had called into a live radio show by Dr. A. True Ott , broadcast on Republic Broadcasting claiming to be a microbiologist who wanted to supply evidence to a States Attorney regarding tainted H1N1 Swine flu vaccines being produced by Baxter BioPharma Solutions.He claimed that the vaccine contained an adjuvant (additive) designed to weaken the immune system, and replicated RNA from the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic Spanish flu, causing global sickness and mass death.Sources tell us that Bar-Joseph Moshe made no threat against the President or the White House. He did not mention any bomb or attack. He then proceeded to inform the White House he intended to go public with this information. When he noticed men in suits in front of his house and feared that the FBI was about to detain him, he packed some belongings into his car and, him being a dual Israeli citizen, tried to reach the Israeli consulate located in close proximity to the federal building where the standoff took place. The FBI and the bomb squad prevented him from reaching it. Who is this man? His profile on biomedexperts.com says he is a plant disease expert with many publications on his name involving the genetic manipulation of virii."- MSM story about the incidentSo did this man have something extremely important to disclose or was he a dangerous terrorist who "threatened to bomb the white house"?Considering how officials have consistantly lied about terrorist threats we should take all their declarations with a large grain of salt. The fact of the matter was that he had called into a talk show and then the word came down from above to mount a gigantic operation to aprehend the man. The "neighbor" in the video above appears to be a plant specifically to bolster the offical version that has Moshe mentally unbalanced, off his "meds", not to be taken seriously. Apparently he was immediately sent to Israel. added - "An apc, at least 50 officers with weapons drawn, streets closed, apartments evacuated, fed building on lockdown, 8 hours plus to remove him from his RED BEETLE, all because he "threatened" the White House? From L.A.? In a red v dub? And he took 3 tear gas shells in that tiny car and was hosed with pepper spray? And he's not dead? ok... is it just me? Or does anyone else see something wrong with this picture?"But what about his assertion that Baxter was deliberately releasing tainted vaccines in Ukraine? Take a look at the story at the top. Then one more little flashback about another Baxter vaccine release:March 3, 2009"It could be a Hollywood Worst Case Thriller, but it is real: According to the scientific network PROMED,
Donate Loading the player... In early September, SouthFront’s YouTube channel became a target of another attack. The project work was blocked when the project’s channel received two community guidelines strikes. With two community guidelines strikes, SouthFront was not able to upload new videos on YouTube. This was a clear violation of the freedom of speech and an attempt to eliminate the independent media. On September 8, 2017, SouthFront’s war report video “Syrian War Report – September 8, 2017: US-led Coalition Rescues ISIS Commanders From Deir Ezzor?” was removed because it allegedly violated “YouTube Community Guidelines”. The video included no graphic content, but was nevertheless flagged and deleted. On September 6, 2017, SouthFront’s channel received another community guidelines strike when Youtube deleted our video “Foreign Policy Diary ‘War on Terror’ [remastered]”. However, this video was already reviewed by YouTube in 2016! On February 15, 2016, YouTube deleted the video and the project channel received a community guidelines strike. However, the strike was removed after SouthFront’s appeal. (You can find more about this HERE [strike added] and HERE [strike removed]) The video remained deleted and SouthFront did not attempt to re-upload it. The video “Foreign Policy Diary ‘War on Terror’ [remastered]” was somehow restored by YouTube and deleted again because it allegedly violated “YouTube Community Guidelines”. Thus, our channel received a new community guidelines strike. SouthFront immediately appealed the both “Community Guidelines” strikes. All SouthFront content is produced with informational purpose in mind and is aimed to provide an independent coverage of the threats of international terrorism as well as the geo-political, military and security issues of our time. The only thing that SouthFront violated is the mainstream media’s exclusive right to provide informational coverage of world events. SouthFront faces systematic ‘false flagging’ on YouTube from the project’s ill-wishers that seeks to oppress the freedom of speech on the platform. Late on September 8, Youtube removed one of the two “Community Guidelines strikes” from SouthFront’s channel and restored our video “Syrian War Report – September 8, 2017: US-led Coalition Rescues ISIS Commanders From Deir Ezzor?” SouthFront became able again to upload new videos to our Youtube channel. However, the Community Guidelines strike that was added to the channel on September 6 remained. The remaining strike directly impacts SouthFront’s ability to provide exclusive content. We cannot more host live streams because our Youtube channel has a Community Guidelines strike. Furthermore, a threat that SouthFront’s YouTube channel might be closed down or once again frozen (as a result of further ‘false flagging’) remains while the channel still has one Community Guidelines strike. Support our work. This will allow SouthFront to have resources to keep the broadcasting if the channel is downed: PayPal Account: southfront@list.ru Tinypass (Piano) This systems accepts all types of cards, PayPal, Amazon Payments, bitcoin (FAQ is under the main text, in P.S.) You can subscribe for a monthly donation of $15 (or any another amount) OR make one time donation by clicking buttons below Patreon Donate via SouthFront’s Patreon account (click here) Payza southfront80@list.ru Sincerely yours, SouthFront: Analysis & Intelligence Team If you have technical problems with making donation, please, write to info@southfront.org to get detailed help. P.S. How to donate via Tinypass (Piano): 1) One time donation 2) Monthly subscription Donate
America’s Most Wired Cities Posted by Steve Spalding in Featured \| View comments Forbes recently put together its yearly list of America’s most wired cities. They took into account public Wireless access, broadband adoption, and the number of broadband providers available. Logical enough. With so many options though, where should an up and coming web entrepreneur set up shop? After a weekend trip through the frozen tundra of Indiana, I decided to take a look at Forbes’ list and re-sort it based on the only thing that really matters — weather. Consider this your Winter travel guide to the wired world. America’s Most Wired Orlando, Florida – Weekly High 82 \| Weekly Low 52 Photo Credit Atlanta Georgia – Weekly High 69 \| Weekly Low 41 Photo Credit San Francisco, California – Weekly High 68 \| Weekly Low 45 Photo Credit Charlotte, North Carolina – Weekly High 65 \| Weekly Low 42 Photo Credit Raleigh, North Carolina – Weekly High 65 \| Weekly Low 32 Photo Credit Seattle, Washington – Weekly High 54 \| Weekly Low 35 Photo Credit Baltimore Maryland – Weekly High 53 \| Weekly Low 28 Photo Credit New York, New York – Weekly High 49 \| Weekly Low 25 Photo Credit Chicago, Illinois – Weekly High 37 \| Weekly Low 9 Photo Credit (Image) (RSS)
Anglo-Dutch energy giant Royal Dutch Shell said Thursday it made a net loss of 2.81 billion US dollars (2.15 billion euros) in the final quarter of 2008 as plunging oil prices slashed the value of inventories. The loss compared with a net profit of 8.47 billion US dollars during the fourth quarter of 2007 when crude prices were far higher, Europe's largest oil company said in a statement. "During the fourth quarter 2008 worldwide oil and gas related commodity marker prices declined significantly," Shell said. "As a consequence, net working capital decreased by some 15 billion US dollars during the fourth quarter 2008, mainly due to the lower valued inventory in oil products" held by the group. Shell's earnings were battered badly in the three months, with oil prices slumping to near five-year lows below 33 US dollars a barrel as the global economic slowdown curbed demand for energy.
CLOSE U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, at an Affordable Care Act open enrollment event in West New York, talked about the corruption case against him a day after a judge declared it a mistrial. He said he would cooperate with a Senate ethics investigation. Catherine Carrera/NorthJersey.com Sen. Bob Menendez, center, stands with his daughter, Alicia, as his lawyer Abbe Lowell, right, speaks to reporters outside Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Courthouse after U.S. District Judge William H. Walls declared a mistrial in Menendez's federal corruption trial on Nov. 16 in Newark. (Photo: Julio Cortez/AP) A new poll says that Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, fresh off a federal corruption trial that ended in a hung jury, is less popular than ever before, but several factors are working in his favor should he decide to run for re-election next year. Only 20 percent of New Jersey residents have a favorable view of Menendez, versus 33 percent with an unfavorable view and 41 percent with no opinion, and about half think he does not deserve a third full term in the Senate, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton poll released Thursday. The poll also said that 49 percent of residents think Menendez should resign in light of his recent trial. But his support among Democrats and left-leaning voters remains solid, and every major Democratic power broker in the state — even his rumored rivals — endorsed him for re-election after a federal judge declared a mistrial in his corruption case last month. In a state where Democrats hold an 800,000 voter registration advantage and no prominent Republican has yet announced plans to challenge him, Menendez can glimpse a path to re-election despite the public's souring on him. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez. (Photo: Kevin R. Wexler/NorthJersey.com) “Menendez will still be a formidable candidate for re-election for a number of reasons,” Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, said in a statement. “He may still have some bumps in the road ahead, but as of now, he is well funded, has ample constituent experience and there is no well-known Republican opponent in sight.” Still, major challenges lay ahead for Menendez, who was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993 before filling the Senate seat vacated by Jon Corzine in 2006. Federal prosecutors are yet to decide whether to retry him on charges that he did official favors for a wealthy Florida eye doctor in exchange for lavish gifts and political contributions. KNOW WHO THEY ARE: Menendez won't say who crossed him during trial, but 'they know who they are' COURTS: Menendez mistrial could make it harder to prosecute corruption cases BOB MENENDEZ: A defiant Bob Menendez gets back to work with legal cloud above him Such a trial could coincide with his re-election bid. Menendez is also the subject of an ethics investigation in the Senate. To make matters worse, the Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that New Jersey residents told about the corruption trial first were much more likely to say the senator does not deserve re-election — 63 percent — compared to those asked about re-election before any mention of the trial — 39 percent. “Making Menendez’s corruption charges and current trouble salient clearly takes a toll on his re-election prospects with New Jerseyans,” Koning said. “Menendez can still face a new trial and will face an ethics investigation in the Senate, so this issue for him will not go away anytime soon and has the potential to become a key part of any opponent’s campaign, to Menendez’s detriment.” Foreshadowing possible election attacks, the National Republican Senate Committee pointed to the poll Thursday afternoon as proof that Menendez has "lost the trust of New Jersey voters." "Disgraced Sen. Bob Menendez has embarrassed New Jersey for too long, and it’s clear Garden State voters are ready to move on,” committee spokesman Bob Salera said in a statement. "If Menendez decides to run for re-election, he will be rejected by New Jersey voters who are sick and tired of his blatant corruption." NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Get breaking news from all around North Jersey delivered to your inbox as soon as it happens. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-282-3422. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Cory Booker, New Jersey’s junior senator, remains more popular than Menendez, with 44 percent of residents viewing him favorably and 19 percent viewing him unfavorably, according to the poll. Booker, Gov.-elect Phil Murphy, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, incoming Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin and South Jersey power broker George Norcross — all Democrats — endorsed Menendez after the mistrial earlier this month. Even two Democrats floated as replacements for Menendez in the event he was convicted, former U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli and Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, issued endorsements. The Rutgers-Eagleton poll included responses from 600 New Jersey adults and had a margin of error of 4.3 percent. Email: pugliese@northjersey.com Read or Share this story: https://njersy.co/2zCqX3f
Success has turned into a habit for Washington State's football program. The Cougars have become a disruptive force in the Pac-12 North under Mike Leach. For the third consecutive season, Washington State is going to a bowl game. The Cougars deployed their usual offensive fireworks. They also added one of the Pac-12's strongest defenses to become a true contender for a North division title until the final week of the regular season. With several young stars returning on both sides of the ball next season, the future looks bright in Pullman. Here's a look back at the biggest stars and best moments for Washington State in 2017: Offensive MVP: Luke Falk, QB Only a few quarterbacks have undertaken a more incredible journey than Falk. He climbed the ladder from walk-on freshman to the Pac-12's career passing leader. Falk (above, right) owns a legion of school records and has been the engine driving Washington State's offense all season. He's the NCAA's active career leader in passing yards (14,481) touchdown passes (119) and total offense (14,081). Defensive MVP: Hercules Mata'afa, DL One major factor behind Washington State's strong defense this season is Mata'afa. The redshirt junior is an absolute beast on the defensive line and makes life miserable for both opposing quarterbacks and running backs. Mata'afa led the Pac-12 with 21.5 tackles for a loss and 9.5 sacks. He also totaled 43 tackles with two forced fumbles and a fumble recovery. Best Newcomer: Jahad Woods, LB It didn't take long for Woods to leave a mark on the field. Woods emerged as a tackling machine in his debut season and holds plenty of potential to become an even bigger star in seasons ahead. The redshirt freshman linebacker is the second-leading tackler for the Cougars with 61 total stops. He is tied for second with 30 solo tackles and has a team-best 31 assisted tackles. Biggest Surprise: Erik Powell, K Powell blossomed into a consistent kicker as a senior after enduring some struggles as a junior. Powell is 19-of-23 on field goal attempts this season and his made field goal percentage (.826) ranks third in the Pac-12. He came through with big performances in wins over USC, Oregon and Utah — going a combined 11-of-12 on field goals in those games. Best Play of the Season: Derek Moore's fumble recovery against USC A signature moment of Washington State's upset win over the Trojans came when USC tried to mount a final scoring drive in the final two minutes. It came to an end when Jahad Woods sacked Sam Darnold on a second-down blitz. Woods popped the ball loose on the sack and Derek Moore jumped on the fumble to ice a 30-27 win over the eventual Pac-12 champions. Best Performance: Luke Falk vs. Stanford After getting benched in the second half of a loss to Arizona, Falk rebounded with one of his finest performances of the season. The senior threw for 337 yards and three touchdowns in a 24-21 upset win over the eventual Pac-12 North champions. Falk also surpassed former Oregon State quarterback Sean Mannion for the Pac 12's all-time passing yardage record before halftime. Best Game: Upset of USC There's no question which result ranks highest for Washington State this season. No other Pac-12 team handed the Trojans a loss. The Cougars did it with defense. Darnold threw for just 164 yards and an interception. He also had a costly late fumble that sealed the upset win for Washington State. Falk won the quarterback duel, throwing for 340 yards and a pair of touchdowns. Defining Moment: Comeback vs. Boise State Washington State appeared headed for another lackluster non-conference start until making an incredible comeback to upset Boise State 47-44 in triple overtime. The Cougars trailed by 21 points in the fourth quarter, but Peyton Pelluer's 36-yard pick-six and a muffed punt return by the Broncos helped force overtime. It propelled Washington State to a 6-0 start and has positioned the Cougars to finish with 10 wins for the first time since 2003. Biggest Disappointment: Loss at California Washington State's perfect start crashed to a halt in a lifeless 37-3 loss to California. Luke Falk turned in one of his worst outings of the season, throwing five interceptions. It ended up being the only game where the Cougars failed to score a touchdown. The loss feels even more inexplicable now, given the fact that the Bears were one of three Pac-12 teams not to qualify for a bowl game this season. Senior That Will Be Missed the Most Next Season: Luke Falk Replacing a quarterback like Falk isn't going to be easy. The air raid offense fit his skills perfectly and Falk led Washington State to three straight bowl games after a decade of mediocrity. Washington State has plenty of offensive talent to remain competitive, but it isn't a stretch to say the Cougars could take a temporary step back without Falk. Player to Watch in 2018: Tyler Hilinski, QB Transitioning to life without Luke Falk will be made easier with Hilinski on the roster. Hilinski proved he has the tools to be a capable successor in limited time this season. The sophomore has thrown for 904 yards and five touchdowns while completing 70.5 percent of his passes. Turnovers could be a problem area for Hilinski though. He totaled six interceptions over 129 pass attempts. Biggest Offseason Question Mark: Can the Offensive Line Improve Pass Protection? Luke Falk's ability to move the chains and put points on the board is all the more impressive when you consider how much pressure he faced from game to game. Washington State allowed 44 sacks for a loss of 317 yards during the regular season. Only three FBS teams allowed more sacks. This trend can't continue if the Cougars want to take the next step forward in the Pac-12 North. — Written by John Coon, who is part of the Athlon Contributor Network. Coon has more than a decade of experience covering sports for different publications and outlets, including The Associated Press, Salt Lake Tribune, ESPN, Deseret News, MaxPreps, Yahoo! Sports and many others. Follow him on Twitter @johncoonsports. (Top photo courtesy of www.wsucougars.com)
The dog was found in a horrific condition (Picture: Caters) A stray dog found on the streets of Thailand with a hole in her head has made a miraculous recovery thanks to a British charity. Parts of the dog’s skull were exposed and covered in dirt after being abandoned in the northern city of Chiang Mai. Smallest surviving baby boy ever born weighing 1lb finally goes home Heart-breaking photos of the dog named Kiss show her in horrible condition and looking terrified after her ordeal. Even experienced rescue vets struggled to hold back their tears at her condition, described by Worldwide Veterinary Services (WVS) as ‘the worst injuries we have ever seen’. But after over a month of intensive treatment, the forgotten street dog was back to full health with a luscious coat of fur. Her wound was so bad the skin and tissue was rotting away (Picture: Caters) When she was discovered Kiss was severely underweight, emaciated, unresponsive and shut down to the point of semi-consciousness. Advertisement Advertisement An old injury on her face had been left untreated for so long that her skin was literally rotting away with maggots living inside the tissue. Babysitter finally admits to suffocating her son and two other infants in 1980 WVS Thailand operations director Ian Clarke said: ‘The suffering was unbearable to see and the injuries caused distress for many of the vets and vet nurses that came into contact with the dog. ‘To think of what she must have been going through, physically and emotionally over the few months before she was rescued was enough to break the hearts of some of even the most experienced staff.’ It took five weeks but eventually vets were able to turn her life around. Kiss is unrecognisable from the dog found five weeks before (Picture: Caters) After several months of suffering, her wounds were finally cleaned and sewn shut. With further medication and rehabilitation Kiss recovered fully and is now able to lead a healthy, normal life. The CEO at WVS, Luke Gamble said: ‘We have shared this story so that our supporters and dog lovers across the world can see the challenges we face every day here at WVS Thailand. ‘Our staff work extremely hard to help the dogs of Chiang Mai and beyond and often have to deal with some very emotionally challenging circumstances of which many people are unaware.’ MORE: School apologises after claiming kids do better if they wear nice shoes MORE: University boss quits after uproar over £468,000 salary
ANOTHER MAJOR TNA NAME LOOKS TO BE LEAVING THE COMPANY TNA Knockout Velvet Sky has either finished or will be finishing up with TNA shortly, according to numerous sources. One source tonight noted that Sky is "as gone as can be without having pen to paper". Sky, one of the most popular females in the promotion, has been with TNA since 2007. A former Knockouts and Knockouts Tag Team champion, most recently, she was cast in a Montgomery Gentry music video through the company. Sky's status with the company has been tenuous for several weeks, although she's been in negotiations for a new potential deal. Most signs have pointed to her exit. Sky worked the TNA Basebrawl event in Memphis several weeks back, which may end up having been her final appearance for the company. She is currently booked for a Legends of the Ring convention in New Jersey the same weekend as TNA's Bound for Glory festivities as well. Love's former Beautiful People partner Angelina Love also recently left the promotion. If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more, right now for THREE DAYS free by clicking here!
The update coincides (and celebrates) our 77th place on the Disrupt 100 list of companies sourced from more than five million startups worldwide. You can read more about it via: www.disrupt100.com/company/firef-ly. More importantly, it’s the first in a refresh based on your feedback, so stayed tuned as we will be pushing more updates soon. So what’s new? -> We conducted user tests and from the feedback, we’ve added a series of ‘primers’ to help you understand the different sections of the app. This should help you navigate the app better. ->We are trying to simplify a few things and add more clarity. Firef.ly can do a lot but we don't want to overwhelm you. So we’ve ripped out a few sections and will continue to rationalize things down to the core elements of journal, guide, and relive. ->We’ve improved iconography and labelling. We bumped up and super-sized some things such as fonts and images. We hope this will make it easier for people to read, see and identify things in-app. ->Okay we were a bit lazy with our icon descriptions. They are finally in, and now you won’t need to work out that the funnel-looking thing is actually a filter which helps you view your moments and the points of interests the way you want to. ->Orientation updates. We are trying to ensure you can use the app in both portrait and landscape throughout. We still have some work left, but soon you be able to choose the best orientation for you. ->Numerous other bug fixes = less crashes, more stability, world peace. Coming soon to an app near you. ->We are working on making the experience even simpler: for example, we are planning on automating some of your journal entries. ->We have some new city content as well, stay tuned for that. ->We are also working on the meta-data to have a bit more fun with the moments and points of interest you share and engage with. We are still in open beta and want to hear from you! Tell us what you like, hate and want to see! Email alpha@firef.ly.
From the environment and LGBT rights to reproductive health and women’s empowerment, Cambodia’s female-forward young activists are blazing a new path The forcible removal of Cambodians from their homes has created a subclass of the dispossessed, with hundreds of thousands affected by conflicts over land. But the suffering endured by the mostly poor evictees, usually moved on to make way for corporate interests, has had an unintended side-effect: galvanising a growing wave of female Cambodian activists. The women of Boeung Kak lake, whose noisy and vibrant protests on the streets of Phnom Penh have seen them arrested multiple times, are perhaps the best known, with news of the deal to fill in the lake and seize residents’ land resonating in media outlets around the globe. Yet they are far from alone: Cambodian women regularly spearhead land rights demonstrations, and in recent years some have even parlayed their newfound activism into entering the political sphere. “Persisting cultural beliefs about the traditional role of Khmer women as caregivers and homemakers mean that land conflict, and the lack of income it often brings, has a disproportionate impact on women,” Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) executive director Chak Sopheap said earlier this year, “with the result that they are often the ones motivated to engage in activism on behalf of their community.” And this desire for an end to such injustices has caused ripples in other spheres of activism. In 2009, Lim Kimsor, who also goes by Gigi, watched on in horror as her community was evicted from the Group 78 site in central Phnom Penh. “Our family was offered decent compensation, but my father said he could not leave the community behind. So we stayed and protested with them, for the sake of the whole group,” she said. Inspired by this show of solidarity, the 28-year-old went on to become an outspoken activist for Mother Nature, the gritty environmental network that has exposed illegal sand dredging on multiple occasions (the non-governmental organisation was recently disbanded following sustained pressure from authorities, but its members plan to continue their work as a loose, informal coalition). Kimsor regularly travels to meet with villagers in remote areas, where she alleges she has been threatened, physically assaulted and, on one occasion, detained for 17 hours. “Whenever we have meetings or conduct any training [sessions] with villagers, plain-clothes police or security guards come [as an act of intimidation],” she said. As an activist in a country where many women still cannot access education and are pushed into traditional homemaker roles, Kimsor feels a sense of responsibility to help guide other women to begin pursuing lives free of the confines of gendered expectations. “This is a powerful way to lift each other up,” she said. The strict moral code set down in the Chbab Srey, or ‘Rules for Girls’, and their male equivalent, has long acted as a behavioural guide for men and women. It describes the ideal woman as being gentle, shy and subservient to her husband. Included as a course in the national school curriculum until 2007, a pared-down version continues to be taught at public schools in grades seven to nine. But as Cambodia, a fast-developing nation, continues to undergo rapid economic change and smartphone technology proliferates, a social transformation is also beginning to take hold. Catherine V Harry, a 23-year-old vlogger known for her frank videos that mostly centre on sexual and reproductive rights, said that young women – particularly those in the increasingly cosmopolitan capital of Phnom Penh – were “rising up to claim their rights”. “It has become this tug-of-war because there’s a generation gap,” she said. “The new generation, the majority of them are under 30 and social media is coming into play, people are being exposed to different cultures, different people in different countries, and they get more information – not just from their parents or their peers or their schools but they get information from other countries.” Harry’s most popular video to date – an exploration of the taboos around virginity – has garnered two million views. But while her opinions have won her plenty of fans, they have also provoked a hostile response. “I also get a lot of hate, a lot of backlash. Many of them are men – they feel threatened because they think I’m trying to destroy the culture. But also there are some women saying I’m ruining the image of what a Khmer woman should be,” she said. For Noy Chhorvin, the national coordinator of the Cambodian Young Women’s Empowerment Network (CYWEN), challenging stereotypical notions of Khmer womanhood is central to her mission. A vocal feminist, she is leading the members of her voluntary organisation as they focus on a trio of key areas over a three-year period to 2019 – gender-based violence, labour rights and education, all of which she sees as key areas for the progress of Cambodian women. “The main point is to build up leadership through [imparting] feminism to our members,” she said. “We want to provide awareness-raising to people, especially young people, on gender equality.” Advocating for changes that have their roots in the West’s 1960s women’s liberation movement, Chhorvin and her contemporaries are seeking to transplant feminism into Khmer culture: a mission that’s not always straightforward. Like many women, she had to overcome the judgement of her relatives in provincial Kampong Cham before forging her own path, which to date has included becoming the first member of her family to earn a bachelor’s degree. “When I was starting to pursue my education it was very challenging. Many people disagreed with my idea, they thought that women don’t need higher education, [that] just to graduate from Year 12 or Year 9 is fine,” she said. There was also opposition to the idea that she should attend university in Phnom Penh, far from home and deemed “unsafe for women”. And while Chhorvin described herself as fully ensconced in the “sisterhood” of CYWEN, she has seen her own attitudes evolve since learning about, and embracing, feminism. “Before I felt discriminatory [toward] sex workers and LGBT people. Now I have made myself free of that,” she said. Now, she recognises that “everyone has their right to [fulfil] their potential by themselves”. In that vein, gender equality still has a long way to go. Rachana Chhoeurng, also known as Tana, is well aware of the prejudice that Cambodia’s LGBT community faces: she came out as a lesbian five years ago at the age of 25 and has been subjected to discrimination. Now an activist with Phnom Penh-based human rights group CamASEAN, she works to tackle issues faced by the LGBT community, such as forced marriage, mental and physical abuse, and a lack of access to services. “I wanted to fight for my lifestyle, just to have a normal life,” she said. “We need to start the movement, starting from women and the LGBT movement. I won’t give up.” Similarly to the other activists, Chhoeurng said that she would like to see all Cambodians embrace notions of equality. “It is not only LGBT people who should take control of this,” she said. “I would like the whole society to help raise each other up, not only the LGBT community, but everybody.” As more men and women come to a similar conclusion, the movement for equality is mushrooming. Thida Khus, the executive director of Silaka, has been a mainstay of the fight for gender equality in Cambodia since establishing her NGO, which is dedicated to increasing women’s participation in politics, in the early 1990s. She believes that efforts to promote women’s rights are now passing into the hands of young female activists. “Where we are today, it was not [a result of events] over the past 10 or 20 years. It was over the past 100 years that we have been neglecting [gender equality] and allowing this to take place. It is a continuous battle,” she said. “The next generation will make the change”. This article was published in the November edition of Southeast Asia Globe magazine. It is part of a three-part series profiling inspirational women from Cambodia, Malaysia and Myanmar.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s views on abortion rights are heavily influenced by his religion as a born-again evangelical Catholic. During the first (and only) televised vice presidential debate of the 2016 election Tuesday night, he said, "For me, my faith informs my life." Though it may have been the first time watching Pence speak for some, many voters — particularly, many women — may already be familiar with Pence, who is one of the most extreme anti-abortion legislators in the country. "It all, for me, begins with cherishing the dignity, the worth, the value, of every human life," he said. Earlier this year, Pence signed a controversial anti-abortion law that would have banned abortions of fetuses sought over gender, race, ancestry, or diagnosis of a genetic disorder. The law also criminalized fetal tissue collection or transferring, a practice that is vital to life-saving fetal tissue donation and research (including for understanding the Zika virus), and required women to view the fetal ultrasound hours before receiving an abortion. The law was so far-reaching that women in Indiana began calling Pence’s office to tell him about their periods — you know, since he seems to care about women’s reproductive health so much. A federal judge blocked the law in June. As a member of Congress and later as governor, Pence also gutted Planned Parenthood funding in his state, which resulted in the closure of multiple clinics. In 2015, this "inadvertently created" an HIV outbreak in one Indiana town, Media Matters reported, "by shutting down access to the only HIV testing centers available to many residents." Though there is little doubt how extreme Pence’s anti-abortion stance is, he made it explicitly clear on the campaign trail. “I’m pro-life and I don’t apologize for it,” he said during a town hall in July. Of a Trump/Pence administration, he said, “We’ll see Roe v. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs." Pence also has a history of making homophobic comments. In 2006, he said that same-sex couples were a sign of “societal collapse," and he voted against repealing the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Last year, Pence signed a religious freedom bill that critics said enables anti-gay and other types of discrimination. According to the Huffington Post, the bill "would allow any individual or corporation to cite its religious beliefs as a defense when sued by a private party" — meaning that businesses that "don’t want to serve same-sex couples, for example, could now have legal protections to discriminate." After the backlash from business leaders, Politico reports that Pence "backpedaled on language" in the bill that worried critics. Oh, and for an extra kick in the pants: While in Congress, Pence voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — which calls for equal pay for women — three times. Election Day is Nov. 8. If you haven’t registered to vote yet, you can do so here. This post was updated on 10/4/2016 at 11:24 pm to include Pence’s comments on abortion during the vice presidential debate. Follow Prachi on Twitter.
The TV anime Akame ga Kill! rushed into its second season at the beginning of October. The anime is an adaptation of the manga of the same name written by Takahiro and illustrated by Tetsuya Tashiro. The series depicts the activities of the assassination squad Night Raid which stands up to destroy the evil in the decayed capital. Now, it has been revealed that various events will take place to commemorate the release of the Volume 1 Blu-ray and DVD on Oct. 15. A museum where materials will be on display, a fair where you can get limited items, and other events will be held. The Akame ga Kill! museum is on now and is located in the special fifth floor space in Akihabara Gamers Honten. Beginning with raw anime artwork and collections of reprinted storyboards, there are many kinds of documents available to the public including background photography panels, illustrations signed by the author, and more. In addition to Akame’s outfit on display, Esdeath’s outfit will also be on display beginning on Oct. 19. Also, the Garapon Lottery will be held throughout the duration of the museum. With each purchase of at least 2,000 JPY worth of specially marked products in the museum, attendees will be able to test their luck at the Garapon once. Until Friday, Oct. 17, attendees can also get tickets to enter to win a personal, special gift straight from Satomi Akesaka, the voice of Esdeath. Other noteworthy campaigns are also being held. These include the collaboration cafe “Akame ga Kill! Cafe in AkiDra” located in Akihabara’s Akiba Drag & Cafe, or AkiDra for short. Set under the command “Bring out the Night Raid’s secret hideout in Akihabara!”, the cafe offers collaboration food and drink items themed after the world of the series. The cafe will be open until Oct. 25. Another campaign called “Akame ga Owatashi Campaign” will be held at Toranoana Akihabara B on Oct. 15. Those who purchase either the Vol. 1 Blu-ray or Vol. 1 DVD will receive the item from a staff member cosplaying as Akame. You can check the official site for more details on each campaign.
If you thought criticism by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis implies the controversial Development Plan (DP) for Mumbai will be scrapped, you are mistaken. The key to ensure the plan goes through a major overhaul is filing objections, as the CM’s remark is just an observation and not a decision, claim experts and citizen groups. On Friday, Fadnavis admitted to the mistakes in the DP and gave a 15-day extension to the special panel to study the errors in the DP. Fadnavis said he would not hesitate to scrap the DP, if it has errors. The statement has confused the citizens, who were actively engaged in spotting errors in the maps, on what their plan of action should be, leading to a dip in their interest level. This will, in effect, lead to fewer objections being filed, thus reducing the pressure on the CM to make changes to the DP. “Many have started believing the DP will be scrapped. We have been getting calls from people who felt the CM’s statement means a decision has been taken. So they have stopped writing to the BMC, to protest against the DP,” said Pankaj Joshi, executive director, Urban Design Research Institute. According to Fadnavis, the three-member panel that he appointed was to submit their report by April 25. However, April 24 is the last date for citizens to submit their suggestions and objections. So there is no lack of clarity over whether citizens will get extra time to study the plan, said citizens. “We have been clear that the authorities need to extend the deadline to get our feedback, if they want a studied response from us. Studying the maps and checking them for inaccuracies is tough. Unless we get an extension, most citizens will not be able to submit their responses in 60 days,” said Vidya Vaidya, trustee, General Arun Kumar Vaidya citizen association. First Published: Apr 13, 2015 22:53 IST
With the purchase of the UFC from the Ferttita brothers in July 2016 came a number of major changes. Among them are the layoffs of a number of former fighters that were given executive positions in the company upon their retirement. One of the names included in this list is former light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell. When “The Iceman” announced his retirement from the sport in 2010, he was then hired as the UFC’s executive vice president of business development. Liddell, along with fellow Hall-of-Famer Matt Hughes, held executive positions in the company for a total of seven years, before the new owners from WME-IMG decided to lay them off in December of the previous year. According to UFC president Dana White, such executive decisions are “absolutely normal,” but Liddell apparently had a difficult time dealing with it at first, especially since he was promised a lifetime arrangement. “That’s what was told to me, too,” Liddell said on his recent MMA Hour appearance (via MMA Fighting). “But it happens. Life changes. And I think at first I took it a little hard, but now I look at it as a blessing in disguise. It’s got me re-motivated to go out and find what I really want to do.” “It is what it is. It’s a business decision, you know? They made a business decision and that’s what it is. I was led to believe that’s not what it was going to be, but it happened and it is what it is.” While Liddell lost his job, White and the Ferttitas pocketed a hefty amount from the $4 billion sale. But even so, he harbors no ill feelings, and even congratulated his former employers for all the hard work that had massively paid off. “Congratulations to the guys, man. They did a great job of building the sport and the company and they were able to sell it for a lot of money. That’s a lot of money,” Liddell said. “It’s a crazy amount.” “I wasn’t aware they were even selling. I mean, I heard the rumors and then talked to Dana, he said they weren’t, then they ended up selling a couple of weeks later. So, I wasn’t really privy to that, to what was going on, but that’s a high number, man. I’m happy for them, and they took a risk for a long time. Frank and Lorenzo took a risk for quite awhile trying to make it work, and it worked for them.”
Some time recently, Microsoft quietly removed its Delve application for Windows 10 from the Microsoft Store. Credit: Microsoft I don't mean the Delve for Windows 10 Mobile (which wouldn't be news, given Microsoft's move away from its mobile OS). I'm talking about the version for Windows 10 on PCs -- which is surprising, given Delve was one of Microsoft's most celebrated Windows 10 applications. Delve, which Microsoft officials described back in 2014 as a "Flipboard for Office 365," was meant to be a new kind of search and presentation application. It was built using the Office Graph (now known as the Microsoft Graph). I'm not sure exactly when Microsoft removed the Office Delve app for Windows 10 from the Store, but @GlynPress alerted me to this a week ago. A note on the Delve support page says: "The Office Delve for Windows 10 app is no longer supported and has been removed from the Windows Store. We recommend that you use the Web version of Delve instead.... "If you already have the Office Delve for Windows 10 app installed on your device, you can still use it, but the app may stop working in the future." I asked Microsoft when and why the company decided to drop Delve. I got no response on the "when." But the rest of the answer, sent to me by a spokesperson, was not what I expected; it was more interesting: "Delve is one of many personalized search and discovery experiences powered by the Microsoft Graph, and has provided a model for how search results surface across Office and Windows. Our vision for workplace search is that it is accessible from wherever you are working, personalized and relevant to you, and that it surfaces results from across Microsoft 365. "As we announced at Ignite, we continue to enhance the search and discovery experiences across Microsoft 365. As part of this, we're focusing our efforts on the Windows taskbar search experience which includes content and people inside your organization, as well as content on your local device, and on the rich web search experience including Delve and other search bars within Office 365." Aha. So this is more about a consolidation and rethinking of search inside Windows and Office 365 than anything else. At Ignite, company officials explained that instead of expecting users to go to a particular site to search for information pertinent to their business requests, Microsoft is trying to bring search to where the users are. Whether inside SharePoint, Bing (via Bing for Business) or Windows 10, Microsoft is looking to make search more consistently and intuitively, officials said. On the Windows front, it looks like Microsoft is exploring new ways to make search more front-and center in Windows 10. A new, immersive search experience, similar to Apple's macOS Spotlight, will likely be testable soon by Windows Insiders. Users will be able to search for files, pictures, settings, apps and more via a search box that will be independent from the current Cortana search box in Windows 10. I'm curious what Microsoft's new consolidated Microsoft 365 search experience will mean to Cortana's future evolution. So far, we don't have clues on that....
I recently tried my hands with React - A Javascript library for building user interfaces. I started following this amazing tutorial - React 101 by Tighten. I had just finished building my first GIF search engine and Facebook open sourced Litho - A declarative UI framework for Android. Well, Litho takes a lot of inspiration from React. I had just started to get my hands dirty with React (and liked it), I thought I give Litho a try. So what should I do? GIF search engine for Android using Litho! GIF search engine with Litho - Android Preface This is a first post in the series - Exploring Litho. We will explore various apsects of Litho including LayoutSpec, MountSpec, Props and State, Navigation, Events, State synchronization between Litho components. In this post, we will see how to add dependency of Litho in your project’s build.gradle file, followed by a brief introduction of Components and how we can use these components to build ourselves a GIF search engine. Introduction to Litho by Facebook Litho is a declerative UI framework for Android. It uses Yoga - cross-platform layout engine which uses Flexbox like styling. Before, proceeding further, I would suggest that you go through Getting Started and Tutorial of Litho. Since Litho seems to be inspired from React, it uses Components and you can make a great UI with adding bunch of components and those components are reusable! Facebook has spent a lot of time and resources in making Litho efficient. It wants to be so efficient that it generates most of its own code. As an end user, you can not create a Component (You can but it would not be efficent). You write a ComponentSpec and Litho will generate all the code for you. Have you used Dagger 2? Yes, it’s that amount of generated code so I guess method count is going to go sky high! There are two types of CompoentSpec. 1. LayoutSpec 2. MountSpec MountSpec is if you want to customize a lot of things. We’ll talk about it later. LayoutSpec - quoting from the docs, A layout spec is the logical equivalent of a composite view on Android. It simply groups existing components together in an immutable layout tree. Let’s just dive into it. Adding Litho as Dependecy In your build.gradle file, include these things to add Litho as a dependency to your project. // Litho compile 'com.facebook.litho:litho-core:0.2.0' compile 'com.facebook.litho:litho-widget:0.2.0' provided 'com.facebook.litho:litho-annotations:0.2.0' annotationProcessor 'com.facebook.litho:litho-processor:0.2.0' // SoLoader compile 'com.facebook.soloader:soloader:0.2.0' We need to initialize SoLoader to mke Litho work. We’ll do this in our Application class. Let’s create a class MyApplication which extends Application . public class MyApplication extends Application { @Override public void onCreate () { super . onCreate (); SoLoader . init ( this , false ); } } Don’t forget to add MyApplication class to AndroidManifest . Now, we are ready to work with Litho. Before diving into the code, let’s ponder on what we are going to make and how Litho will help us build it. GIF search engine App It’s just a simple one screen - no navigation (yet) app to search GIFs from Giphy. It’s a glorified search engine. I have used Retrofit to fetch data and Glide to load gifs. We don’t need to cover that in this series so you can just grab the code from Github repository. Layout of a search engine Since it’s a simple app, all we need is an EditText and a RecyclerView . Conventionally, we would use a LinearLayout with vertical orientation and add an EditText and a RecyclerView in XML. But we’re going to talk Litho and bit of React. In Recat, these things are considered components. So Let’s start there. Components We will start with one component to hold EditText and RecyclerView. Let’s call it HomeComponent . HomeComponent To generate HomeComponent, we require a HomeComponent Spec. We will create a class named HomeComponentSpec and annotate it with @LayoutSpec. This annotation lets Litho know that this is a component spec class and it needs to generate component from it. Litho doesn’t know what to render. It expects ComponentLayout so we will create a static method which returns ComponentLayout annotated with @OnCreateLayout . ComponentLayout represents a component’s compound layout state. Litho uses it to define the size and position of the component’s mounted Views and Drawables. In simpler terms, it tells Litho what to draw and where to draw. Litho will generate HomeComponent class which we will use. If you notice, we are using @Prop String hint . @Prop comes from React where you can pass some properties to components. For HomeComponent, it is not required to pass this prop as we can hardcode it. But for demonstration of how props work we are going to use it. We take this property and set it as EditText’s hint. We need to stack the views horizontally, so we are using Column as it stacks the views horizontally. We can add views with child method. Note: EditText is a litho’s widget. It is to be confused with Android’s EditText because litho’s EditText renders Android’s EditText. To display HomeComponent on the screen, we will modify MainActivity . Litho provdes a builder pattern to create a component so that if we change some parameters, we don’t have to update the constructor again and again. It also helps when we have a lot of props. Litho is quite smart and it generates code based on the variable/parameter name. We have added [email protected] String hint so it will create a builder method hint(String hint)` and we can pass the value using it. What is ComponentContext? ComponentContext is a context subclass used by Litho internally to keep track of a lot of things including components. If you run the app now, you’ll just see an EditText at the top. We have not added any data/views to the RecyclerView component. Try chaning the hint prop by updating the value that we pass to the builder and run the app again. It’s so much better than hardcoding it. What would happen if we do not pass hint prop to the component? The screen is empty and our aim is to show GIFs in a list or a grid. We will first add some dummy data to see how exactly things work with Litho and RecyclerView. GifItemViewComponent As we discussed, all the views are components. Each item in the RecyclerView will also be a component. We need to make a component for that. Since we are going to show a gif, let’s name it GifItemViewComponent. We will write write a Component Spec for it. Before jumping into images, let’s try displaying a basic TextVeiw. Now, we need to add some dummy data so that we can see something on the screen. We need to update HomeComponentSpec.getRecyclerComponent . What is RecyclerBinder? RecyclerBinder is sort of a super RecyclerView Adapter which takes care of creating views. It’s supposed to be highly optimised. RecyclerView Adapter recycles ViewHolders but RecyclerBinder recycles each view (component to be correct) based on the type. If we have two different components for different items in Recycler as Component1 and Component2. Text (child) component of Component1 may be recycled and used in Component2. Litho would take care of correctly measureing and redering the recycled components. We don’t have to write boilerplate code for RecyclerBinder like we do for RecyclerView.Adapter. We don’t need to have a specific dataset. binder.insertItemAt(position, ComponentInfo) is used to add Component at a specified position. What is ComponentInfo? ComponentInfo keeps the component and necessary information regarding how to render the component. It even takes care of span size and isSticky . It is so difficult to have a sticky item in a RecyclerView but Litho does it all under the hood and gives us simple APIs. We have added some data to RecyclerBinder and let’s see what it renders on the screen when we run the app. No surprises! It renders exactly 20 items which display Hello World, Let’s add more items and see how the scrolling works. No issues at all! It uses RecyclerView under the hood but with super optimizations. Static content is nice, but we want to know how easy or difficult it would be to have some dynamic content. One easy way to add dynamic content would be to add a @Prop to our component and pass diffreent values for different items. We should update our Recycler.insertItemAt method. We have defined @Prop String title for our component and if we do not provide it via builder, Litho will throw a RuntimeException. Let’s hit that run button again. Yes, we see different data for different items even after scrolling. RecyclerBinder is recycling the views correctly as we don’t see any data repetitions. Let’s add some more data and scroll it like crazy. Data is not jumbled up so we can safely assume that Litho’s RecyclerBinder is going to work just as well if not better as RecyclerView.Adatper. We know that Litho can handle dynamic data well. But is the data really dynamic? We usually have a lot of APIs and we populate the data based on the response and update the adapter. Let’s find out if we can do that with RecyclerBinder or not. We can call some API to give us some data so that we can feed it to the RecyclerBinder but that would mean a lot of boilerplate. There’s an easy way to replicate the behavior. We’ll use a Handler and feed data via a Runnable which we call using Handler.postDelayed . We also need access to RecyclerBinder so let’s modify our HomeComponent and add the Handler in MainActivity. Since we need access to RecyclerBinder, we will create an instance in MainActivity and pass it to HomeComponent as a Prop. After a lot of trial and erros, I figured out a better way to do it. Since we use RecyclerBinder to add/remove components, we just need access to that. So I decided to pass binder as a prop. Let’s change our MainActivity to create an instance of RecyclerBinder to pass it to HomeComponent and add a Handler to feed data to the binder after some time. Let’s run the app and see if this works or not. It does. That’s great news because now we know that we can also feed the response of API to the recyclerview. But, how would we update the data if the API is called again or user calls refresh. RecylerBinder provides following methods. removeItemAt(int position) removeRangeAt(int position, int count) We can remove particular or all the items and insert new items. We have established that we can update the data dynamically. We will start working on the part - Listen to updates in the EditText value. Getting EditText Value in Litho EditText that we are using is a Litho Component and it does not have the verbose onTextChangeListener(TextWatcher watcher) method. For these things Litho relies heavily on its Event API. What is Event in Litho? Litho provides a general purpose API to connect components through events. The components that are provided by Litho have all the necessary callbacks and events baked into it. We’ll explore Event API in upcoming posts. EditText component builder has .textChangeEventHandler method which lets us pass an EventHandler . More about EventHandler in upcoming posts. Litho will generate an EventHandler for us if we want. To do that, we need to create a static method with annotation OnEvent(TextChangeEvent.class) . This annotation lets Litho know that we want an EventHandler for the given Event class. Another example of an Event class is - ClickEvent . If we dig in the source code and check out TextChangeEvent class, we’ll see it’s just a dumb class. @Event public class TextChangedEvent { public String text ; } With @Event annotation, Litho will know that it’s an Event class and it will generate some code for it. The field String text is to let Litho know that this event will carry some data and the variable name of the data. In our component class, this is show our @OnEvent method will look. @OnEvent ( TextChangedEvent . class ) static void onQueryChanged ( ComponentContext c , @FromEvent String text ) { } It’s so amazing. Everything is so interconnected by annotations. Based on this method, Litho will generate a method in our component - static EventHandler onQueryChanged(ComponentContext c) . It’s like What You See Is What You Get. ComponentContext takes a piggy back ride and comes everywhere. Let’s add a log statement to see if it even works or not. @LayoutSpec public class HomeComponentSpec { ... some code here private static Component < EditText > getEditTextComponent ( ComponentContext c , String hint ) { return EditText . create ( c ) . textSizeDip ( 16 ) . hint ( hint ) . textChangedEventHandler ( HomeComponent . onQueryChanged ( c )) . build (); } @OnEvent ( TextChangedEvent . class ) static void onQueryChanged ( ComponentContext c , @FromEvent String text ) { Log . d ( "TextChangedEvent" , "Value: " + text ); } } It does work. We get the correct value as soon as we update something in the EditText. We need to send this value to our MainActivity so that we can call some API. We’ll do this via callback. We’ll declare an interface, pass its implementation as a @Prop to HomeComponent and invoke in onQueryChanged method. Litho API is quite amazing. Even though we have passed our Prop in some different method, it will pick it up and add to the builder. We’ll create an implementation of the callback interface and pass it to the builder. Let’s run the app once again and see if what we just did works or not. It does because I have spent some time exploring litho and finding correct ways to do stuff. Step by step we have tested and integrated small things to make our GIF search engine. The last thing remaining is - Showing GIFs. Conventionally, we would just use ImageView and load GIFs using Glide . Let’s see what component Litho provides for ImageView. Image Component in Litho Litho provides Image component for us to use but it’s not as flexible as ImageView . It doesn’t have setBitmap method. We can convert Bitmap to a Drawable and set it but loading GIFs is asynchronous task and how would we set it in the Image component? Props are immutable and State is really difficult to manage outside the component. Even Glide doesn’t support Image . After looking into Litho’s samples, they have used Image component with Fresco . We don’t want to be tied down with a particular library. If we can use Glide, we can modify the component a bit to use Piccasso or any other image loading library. It’s about time we made our custom component. To create a custom component and customize how and what it renders, we’ll use @MountSpec . What is MountSpec? A mount spec defines a component which can render itself. So if we ever want to create something that needs customizing or not provided by Litho, we should create a mount spec. How to use MountSpec to create an ImageView component? To create a mount spec, we need to annotate the class with @MountSpec . . In a layout spec, it is necessary for us to define a method with @OnCreateLayout annotation. Similarly, in mount spec, we must define a method annotated with @OnCreateMountContent . This method will be called before the component is mounted on the host. This is where we’ll prepare/initialize the item that we want to render. We may return View or Drawable in this method. Litho will render the value that we return in this method. Here, we want to render an ImageView so we will create a new instance of ImageView and return it. annotation. Similarly, in mount spec, we must define a method annotated with . This method will be called before the component is mounted on the host. This is where we’ll prepare/initialize the item that we want to render. We may return or in this method. Litho will render the value that we return in this method. Here, we want to render an ImageView so we will create a new instance of ImageView and return it. We will also create a static method annotated with @OnMeasure . This method will be called during layout calculation. Sometimes if the component doesn’t need layout calculation, this method will not be called. We will use MeasureUtils.measureWithDesiredPx() method provided by Litho. We’ll pass fixed width and height for each component. This method updates Size size parameter which Litho uses for layout calculation. You can find in-depth docs about MountSpec here. To test if the ImageView will render correctly, we’ll just set a static drawable to it. If that works, it should also work for Bitmaps. We have updated GifItemViewSpec from LayoutSpec to MountSpec and updated bunch of methods. The component does no longer require @Prop String title so we would need to update MainActivity as Litho would remove .title(String title) method from the builder on code generation. Let’s also update the RecylerBinder to show grids of 3 columns. Let’s hit that run button again and see what we get. It is as expected. We see a grid of 3 columns with android icons everywhere! ImageView component using Litho MountSpec We are sure that we can use ImageView and this deduces that we can also use Glide, Piccasso or any other image loading and caching library with Litho. Let’s start working on the final part to make ourselves a GIF search engine. Boilerplate We’ll use Retrofit to fetch data from Giphy search API and feed it to the RecyclerBinder. Nobody likes writing boilerplate code so here’s the model part of this app - models. Let’s create a POJO to hold GIF data - GitItem. We’ll pass an instance of GifItem as a prop to GifItemView so that it can access the url of the GIF. Use Glide with ImageView component in Litho Glide is a magical library which is quite convinient and easy to use. We just need to call Glide.with(context).load(url).into(imageview) . We will create a static method annotated with @OnMount . This method will be called after @OnCreateMountContent and before the component is mounted to the host. This is where we should set a bitamp or a drawable to the ImageView. Litho will give us a reference to the value returned by @OnCreateMountContent method in @OnMount method as a parameter. We would call Glide to load image into the ImageView in this method. In @OnMeasure , we’ll use MeasureUtils.measureWithAspectRatio and pass aspect ratio of 1 to get square images. More Boilerplate Let’s update our MainActivity call API and feed data to RecylerBinder. We’ll use OnQueryUpdateListener to get data and call API using Retrofit and once we get the data, we will feed it to the binder. We also don’t want to make API calls for every characeter that user enters so to make things easy, let’s keep a limit of 6 letters - because Batman. GifProvider takes care of initializing retrofit and when search(String query) is called, it will make an API request and return List<GifItem> in ResponseListener callback. We could have used RxJava but it seemed out of scope for this demo. Final Run Let’s run the app one more time and search for batman. If it did not work, please make sure that you have added Internet permission in your AndroidManifest file. Custom Litho ImageView component to display GIFs with Glide There are some optimizations that we can do. Instead of calling Glide.with(context) in GifItemViewSpec, we can pass Glide.RequestManager as a prop. So our GIF search engine powered by Litho (and Giphy) is ready! We’ll explore more about state, good practices, and other awesome features in upcoming posts. Conclusion about Litho Litho by Facebook is new, dynamic and powerful. It is definitely interesting. Facebook uses Litho in their production app for news feed so it is production ready and baked with all the necessary things. There’s still more to explore about Litho. Be Social If you liked this post or found it helpful, please spread the word! Code You can find current code here - LithoGifDemo - v1 You can find the latest code (keeps updating) here - LithoGifDemo In the next post - Managing State in Litho, we will see how we can implement state in Litho! P.S. I do not (yet) fully understand Litho, State, Yoga, Flexbox so feel free to suggest updates and best practices. Series
Military allegedly pressured medical personnel to downgrade soldiers' diagnoses John Byrne Published: Wednesday April 8, 2009 Print This Email This US military officers pressured Army medical personnel not to diagnose soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder in an apparent effort to save money and reduce benefits, according to an investigation published Wednesday. Interviews conducted by Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna for Salon revealed that at least two Army medical personnel say they've been pressured by higher-ups to avoid giving wounded soldiers post traumatic stress diagnoses. Concerned that he had been misdiagnosed, an unidentified Army sergeant surreptitiously recorded his military psychologist as he told him "in a moment of candor" that he'd been advised to give him a lesser diagnosis. "OK," Fort Carson psychologist Douglas McNinch told the sergeant. "I will tell you something confidentially that I would have to deny if it were ever public. Not only myself, but all the clinicians up here are being pressured to not diagnose PTSD and diagnose anxiety disorder NOS [instead]." McNinch said Army medical boards were "kick[ing] back" PTSD diagnoses, saying soldiers had not seen enough trauma. "Unfortunately," McNinch continued, according to the recording, "yours has not been the only case ... I and other [doctors] are under a lot of pressure to not diagnose PTSD. It's not fair. I think it's a horrible way to treat soldiers, but unfortunately, you know, now the V.A. is jumping on board, saying, 'Well, these people don't have PTSD,' and stuff like that." McNinch answered questions when contacted by the reporters but when told that they'd obtained the tape, said he'd deny that the conversations ever occurred. Unfortunately for McNinch, they published the tape. A second Army psychiatrist, recently retired but still employed by the government, also told Benjamin and de Yonna that he'd been told not to inform soldiers they had PTSD and instead diagnose them with disorders that "would reduce their benefits." "The psychiatrist said he would be willing to say more publicly about the cases and provide specific names, but only if President Obama would protect him from retaliation," Benjamin and De Yonna wrote. Why is the Army writing off PTSD diagnoses? A former Army psychologist who now chairs a Texas university psychology department explained: "Each diagnosis is an acknowledgment that psychiatric casualties are a huge price tag of this war," David Rudd was quoted as saying. "It is easiest to dismiss these casualties because you can't see the wounds. If they change the diagnosis they can dismiss you at a substantially decreased rate." Benjamin and de Yonna said they'd contacted the Army and the Senate Armed Services Committee about the recording in which McNinch admitted he was being pressured by military brass. Both declined to investigate. More details, including that of the attack that left the anonymous sergeant traumatized, are available at Salon . Get Raw exclusives as they break -- Email & mobile Email - Never spam:
Richard Douglas of the Crows during the 2015 AFL Round 01 match between the Adelaide Crows and the North Melbourne Kangaroos at Adelaide Oval, Adelaide on April 05, 2015. (Photo: AFL Media) Midfielder Richard Douglas will be sidelined for up to six weeks with a foot injury. Douglas was able to play out the game against Port Adelaide on Sunday but has a strained plantar fascia, which is the thick connective tissue that supports the arch on the bottom of the foot. Crows Head of Football David Noble said the injury required a period of rest to heal. “It looks like ‘Dougy’ has a strain to his Plantar Fascia,” Noble said. “Unfortunately, that could be a 4-6 week injury.” Watch the full injury update with David Noble by clicking the play button above Rory Sloane and Ricky Henderson will both need to pass fitness tests to play against Gold Coast at Metricon Stadium on Saturday evening. Sloane was substituted in the fourth quarter of Adelaide’s Showdown loss because of a corked calf. Henderson also finished the game on the bench after suffering a knock to his chest. Young defender Sam Siggins (buttock) and rookie-listed ruckman Jack Osborn will also be assessed during the week ahead of Adelaide’s SANFL clash with Norwood. Talls Luke Lowden and Mitch McGovern made successful returns from injury in the Club’s loss to South Adelaide on Sunday. Utility James Podsiadly will miss another fortnight with a fracture in his back. Riley Knight (ankle) and Sam Shaw (hamstring) are only a few weeks away from returning from long-term injuries. Young onballers Brad Crouch (foot) and Rory Atkins both aim to be back in between 3-5 weeks. Andy Otten (knee), Harry Dear (shoulder) and Brent Reilly, who is on the long-term injury list recuperating from a fractured skull, remain longer-term propositions. Injury List as of Monday, May 4 Rory Sloane (corked calf) – Test Ricky Henderson (chest) – Test Jack Osborn (concussion) – Test Sam Siggins (buttock) – Test James Podsiadly (back) – 2 weeks Riley Knight (ankle) – 2-3 weeks Sam Shaw (hamstring) – 3 weeks Brad Crouch (foot) – 3-5 weeks Rory Atkins (knee) – 3-5 weeks Richard Douglas (foot) – 6 weeks Harry Dear (shoulder) – TBA Andy Otten (knee) – TBA Brent Reilly (fractured skull) – TBA
I've seen some horrific crashes over the years, but this one might just top them all. Earlier this weekend the driver of a Porsche 964 RSR overshot a corner, locked up the brakes, hit a concrete barrier come launch pad and then catapulted through the air only to land upside down in a canal. Watch for yourself. What's even more amazing is that, according to the team's facebook page, both the driver and co-driver walked away from this crash with only minor injuries. I'm not sure what you can say about the spectators. No one really appears to react in the first video and in the second you can hear laughter as they watch one of the two competitors trying to extricate the other. I would have thought more people would be trying to help... Other Porsche Blog Posts You Will Enjoy Porsche Flips Over and Catches Fire While Racing On Highway Listen to these Rally Prepared Porsches Ice Driving in 911 Rally Cars Porsche 911 Climbing Sand Dunes
Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments of YouTube Millionaires here. At age 17, Lia Marie Johnson has already spread her creative efforts across a number of different platforms. She is known for her frequent collaborations with The Fine Bros (she is a cast member on their MyMusic web series and has participated in the Kid, Teen, and YouTuber editions of React) and her regular presence on the main channel of the AwesomenessTV YouTube channel. Her work has also recently brought her to TV; in June, she starred in a movie on Nickelodeon. In addition to all these endeavors, Johnson continues to maintain an active presence on her own YouTube channel, which just passed one million subscribers. We spoke to Lia about that part of her online video profile: Tubefilter: How does it feel to have one million subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans? Lia Marie Johnson: Having 1 million subscribers feels the same as 999,999…haha, no really, I can’t believe how far I’ve come! I just want to say thank you to everyone who believes in me! It’s hard being a teenage girl putting myself out there on social media, but so many people are so supportive. It makes me feel great! TF: How do you think your appearances on the ‘React’ series shaped the online video personality you have created for yourself? LMJ: I think showing my personality on Kids React made it easier for people to get to know me. Every week, I just answered questions and gave my opinion, which is a great way to get to know someone.I actually started working with Benny and Rafi Fine before Kids React. I was in a video they wrote and directed. About a year or so later I started on Kids React and it really took off a few months later. TF: How would you characterize your main channel? Do you primarily consider yourself a vlogger, first and foremost? LMJ: I can’t really characterize my channel because I do so many different things. Some people like more structure, which is fine. My channel is very random with lots of little gems hidden everywhere. TF: You’ve done a lot of collaborations. Who are some YouTubers with whom you have not yet collaborated, but would like to in the future? LMJ: Collaborating is so much fun! There is always someone new I want to work with, but I guess maybe some gaming video collaborations would be fun. I like playing video games. TF: Are you interested in songwriting, or do you plan to continue focusing your musical efforts on covers? LMJ: I’m already working on my music career, and I do a lot of writing. Hopefully I’ll be coming out with an EP in the next year. TF: How do you find your video making style is changing as you grow older? LMJ: It’s gotten a lot more professional above anything else. Definitely uploading more sketches and higher quality [content] and that’s pretty cool. TF: You seem to have a stronger relationship with your partner network than many other YouTubers. Why do you think you’ve been able to work so closely with AwesomenessTV? LMJ: Well, I started working with AwesomenessTV before they became a network. They’re like my family. I know just about everyone there. All the girls are like my big sisters and best friends. They also support me so much and help me with my YouTube career. I’m really lucky! TF: Describe the process of bringing Terry the Tomboy to TV. Did you have to make any significant changes to the character to make her TV-friendly? LMJ: No changes to the character really, just an incredible story, director and crew! I’m so happy with the great response the movie received. TF: What’s next for your channel? Any fun plans? LMJ: I am trying to get more music uploaded, but, you know, I’m young and just going with the flow. On Deck (channels that will soon reach one million subscribers): Game of Thrones, Overboard Humor, Anna Akana
We may have food down cold, but wine? This is where we'll conquer it. Join us; we don't want to drink alone. Today: Wines to drink alongside your entire mezze spread. Shop the Story This week, Kristen shared a Genius Recipe for hummus, the classic Middle Eastern dish that’s at home on tables from New York to Jerusalem to Carthage and back. Part of the pleasure and the charm of the Middle Eastern food culture is that a wide array of dishes are put out on the table at once. Each dish has distinct flavors, textures, and ingredients, which complicates the question of what wines to drink with this particular cuisine. Rather than get tied up in the complication, do what locals do: go with a common denominator. That’s the advice of Victor Schoenfeld, head winemaker at Golan Heights Winery in Israel. His recommendation for a “common denominator wine” for Middle Eastern mezze? Sparkling wine, because it’s a refreshing palate cleanser and because its high acidity can cut through the heat, oil, and saltiness that you’re likely to find on the table. More: Throw a mezze party, on a weeknight. Try his 2007 Blanc de Blanc, made of 100% Chardonnay. The grapes come from vineyards at a very high elevation, which gives the wine its sought-after acidity. But just because it can match with a number of foods doesn’t mean it’s a dumbed-down, one-size-fits-all wine. It has a lot of complexity to it -- you can smell aromas of pear, lemon, and flowers, for example -- but it’s delicate as well, making it a sophisticated and very agreeable choice. Here are Schoenfeld’s recommendations for other popular Middle Eastern dishes. Hummus “Hummus has a really earthy kind of flavor,” Schoenfeld says, “so I’d go for something to contrast it, like a bright Sauvignon Blanc.” Look for the 2011 Rock Hollow Winery from Santa Barbara, or try an Old World-style wine with the 2012 90+ Cellars Sancerre. Grilled Lamb Chops As far as Schoenfeld is concerned, lamb and Syrah have a very special relationship. “Earthy Syrah to go with earthy lamb,” he says. Yarden’s Syrah offers a unique twist on any Syrah, New World or Old World: it has a bit of pepper and spice that can easily be enhanced by the seasonings of the lamb dish. Or try Kerloo Cellars’ 2011 Majestic, a blend of Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre out of Washington State. Eggplant Go with Gewürtz -- short for Gewürtztraminer. “Gewürtztraminer normally has a little bitterness to it,” Schoenfeld says, “so you want to balance it with the bitterness of eggplant.” This one is a dream; and the bitterness, to my palate, is very secondary. Gewürtztraminer, with its very lively, spicy aroma, can also pair with hot red peppers and different variations of harissa. Serve hummus as your main feature or use it as an anchor to your mezze -- either way, there are harmonious wine pairings to match. Tell us in the comments which work for you! Photos by James Ransom
Coming Soon Cagaster of an Insect Cage Thirty years after humanity was decimated by a disease that turned the infected into bloodthirsty insects, two kids struggle to survive. Followers After an aspiring actress hits it big thanks to a candid Instagram, her life intersects with many other Tokyo women as they follow their dreams. Budapest Two best friends put their careers and marriages on the line when they launch a business hosting outrageous, anything-goes bachelor parties in Hungary. Shadow and Bone Sinister forces plot against a young soldier when she reveals a magical power that might unite her world. Based on Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse novels. Upstarts Determined to ride the burgeoning wave of startup companies, three college graduates set out to change the world while making millions. Behind Her Eyes Pachamama Dreaming of becoming a shaman, an impish boy from the Andes journeys across uncharted lands to recover a stolen treasure in this animated adventure. American Jesus A 12-year-old boy learns he's returned as Jesus Christ in a final effort to save mankind and must step into his destiny. Based on Mark Millar's comic.
Promises are becoming a common part of the JavaScript code. The native Promise object is already supported by all the major browsers including Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Despite making asynchronous code simpler, dealing with promises in unit tests is a hassle. You need to wire your test’s assertions into the callbacks of the promise, which adds extra code into the test. In this way the test itself becomes a bit complicated and it’s harder to see what’s happening. In this article, I’ll show you how to fix this issue and discuss useful patterns which are able to simplify common promise-scenarios in tests’ stage. --ADVERTISEMENT-- I’ve created an example project that you can download from my website which shows the techniques introduced in this article. Getting Started For this project I’ll use Mocha as the testing framework and the Chai library to provide the assertions. You’ll understand why in a moment. We can install the duo simply running the command: npm install mocha chai When you first encounter promises in unit tests, your test probably looks something like a typical unit test: var expect = require('chai').expect; it('should do something with promises', function(done) { //define some data to compare against var blah = 'foo'; //call the function we're testing var result = systemUnderTest(); //assertions result.then(function(data) { expect(data).to.equal(blah); done(); }, function(error) { assert.fail(error); done(); }); }); We have some test data, and call the system under test – the piece of code we’re testing. But then, the promise shows up, and the code gets complicated. For the promise, we’re adding two handlers. The first one is for a resolved promise, which has an assertion inside it to compare equality, while the second one is for a rejected promise, which has a failing assertion. We also need the done() calls in both of them. Since promises are asynchronous, we must tell Mocha this is an asynchronous test, and notify it when done. But why do we need assert.fail ? The purpose of this test is to compare the result of a successful promise against a value. If the promise is rejected, the test should fail. That’s why without the failure handler, the test could report a false positive! A false positive is when a test should fail, but actually doesn’t. For instance, imagine we remove the rejection callback. Your code should look like this: result.then(function(data) { expect(data).to.equal(blah); done(); }); In this case, if the promise was rejected, there would be no error, since there is no error handler in the test to check for it. But it’s clear the test should fail in that situation, as the expectation won’t run. This is definitely one of the main reasons why promises become complicated in tests. Mocha and Promises I decided to use Mocha in this project because it has a built-in support for promises. This means that a rejected promise will make your test fail. For example: it('should fail the test', function() { var p = Promise.reject('this promise will always be rejected'); return p; }); The above test returns a rejected promise, which means that it fails every time. We can use what we’ve learnt to improve our earlier test, as shown in the following snippet: var expect = require('chai').expect; it('should do something with promises', function() { var blah = 'foo'; var result = systemUnderTest(); return result.then(function(data) { expect(data).to.equal(blah); }); }); The test now returns the promise. We don’t need the failure handler or the done callback anymore, as Mocha handles the promise. If the promise fails, Mocha will fail the test. Improving the Tests Further with Chai-as-promised Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do assertions directly on promises? With chai-as-promised, we can! First, we need to install it running: npm install chai-as-promised We can use it like this: var chai = require('chai'); var expect = chai.expect; var chaiAsPromised = require('chai-as-promised'); chai.use(chaiAsPromised); it('should do something with promises', function() { var blah = 'foo'; var result = systemUnderTest(); return expect(result).to.eventually.equal(blah); }); We’ve replaced the entire then setup with a Chai assertion. The key here is eventually . When comparing values with Chai, we can use expect(value).to.equal(something); But if value is a promise, we insert eventually and return it: return expect(value).to.eventually.equal(something) Now, Chai deals with the promise. Note: don’t forget to return the promise, otherwise Mocha won’t know it needs to handle it! We can use any of Chai’s assertions together with eventually . For example: //assert promise resolves with a number between 1 and 10 return expect(somePromise).to.eventually.be.within(1, 10); //assert promise resolves to an array with length 2 return expect(somePromise).to.eventually.have.length(2); Useful Patterns for Promises in Tests Comparing Objects If your promise’s resolved value should be an object, you can use the same methods to compare as you normally would. For example, with deep.equal you can write a statement like: return expect(value).to.eventually.deep.equal(obj) The same warning applies here as without promises. If you’re comparing objects, equal will compare references, and make your test fail when the objects have all the same properties, but are different objects. chai-as-promised has a convenient helper for comparing objects: return expect(value).to.eventually.become(obj) Using eventually.become is the same as doing a deep equal comparison. You can use it for most equality comparisons with promises – with strings, numbers and so on – unless you specifically need a reference comparison. Asserting Against a Specific Property from an Object Sometimes you might want to check against only a single property in an object from a promise. Here’s one way to do it: var value = systemUnderTest(); return value.then(function(obj) { expect(obj.someProp).to.equal('something'); }); But, with chai-as-promised, there’s an alternative way. We can make use of the fact you can chain promises: var value = systemUnderTest().then(function(obj) { return obj.someProp; }); return expect(value).to.eventually.equal('something'); As the final alternative, if you are using ECMAScript 2015, you can make it a little bit cleaner using the fat arrow function syntax: var value = systemUnderTest() return expect(value.then(o => o.someProp)).to.eventually.equal('something'); Multiple Promises If you have multiple promises in tests, you can use Promise.all similar to how you would use it in non-test code. return Promise.all([ expect(value1).to.become('foo'), expect(value2).to.become('bar') ]); But keep in mind that this is similar to having multiple assertions in a single test, which can be seen as a code smell. Comparing Multiple Promises If you have two (or more) promises which you need to compare, then the following pattern can be used: return Promise.all([p1, p2]).then(function(values) { expect(values[0]).to.equal(values[1]); }); In other words, we can use all to resolve both promises, and use a function in then to run a normal Chai assertion on the returned values. Asserting for Failures Occasionally you might want to check that a certain call makes a promise fail instead of succeed. In those cases, you can use chai-as-promised’s rejected assertion: return expect(value).to.be.rejected; If you want to ensure the rejection comes with a specific type of error or message, you can also use rejectedWith : //require this promise to be rejected with a TypeError return expect(value).to.be.rejectedWith(TypeError); //require this promise to be rejected with message 'holy smokes, Batman!' return expect(value).to.be.rejectedWith('holy smokes, Batman!'); Test Hooks You can use promises in the test hooks in the same way as in any other test function. This works with before , after , beforeEach and afterEach . For example: describe('something', function() { before(function() { return somethingThatReturnsAPromise(); }); beforeEach(function() { return somethingElseWithPromises(); }); }); These work similar to how promises work in tests. If the promise is rejected, Mocha will throw an error. Promises and Mocks/Stubs Lastly, let’s look at how to use promises with stubs. I’m using Sinon.JS for the examples below. To do that, you need to install it by executing the command: npm install sinon Returning Promises from Stubs If you need a stub or a mock to return a promise, the answer is fairly simple: var stub = sinon.stub(); //return a failing promise stub.returns(Promise.reject('a failure')); //or a successful promise stub.returns(Promise.resolve('a success')); Spying on Promises You can use spies as promise callbacks like other functions, but it might not be useful due to promises being asynchronous. If you need to do an assertion against a promise, you would be better off doing it using chai-as-promised. var spy = sinon.spy(); var promise = systemUnderTest(); promise.then(spy); Sinon-as-promised To slightly simplify stubs and promises, we can use sinon-as-promised. It can be installed via npm: npm install sinon-as-promised It provides helper functions resolves and rejects on stubs var sinon = require('sinon'); //this makes sinon-as-promised available in sinon: require('sinon-as-promised'); var stub = sinon.stub(); //return a failing promise stub.rejects('a failure'); //or a successful promise stub.resolves('a success'); Conclusions Promises can simplify our asynchronous code, and they can even simplify asynchronous tests – provided you add some helpful libraries to the mix. Mocha’s built-in promise support combined with Chai and chai-as-promised makes it simple to test promise-returning code. Add SinonJS and sinon-as-promised into the mix, and you can stub them easily too. One important thing to remember: when using promises in your tests, always return a promise from the test, otherwise Mocha won’t know of it, and your test may silently fail without telling you about it. As I mentioned in the introduction, I’ve created an example project that you can download from my website which shows the techniques introduced in this article. Feel free to download it and play with it.
Fellow crawlers, I’m here to let you know that DCSS 0.20 will be officially released on the 24th of May! Two days later, from 20:00 UTC Friday 26 May through 20:00 UTC Sunday 11 June we’ll be running the 0.20 tournament. More details along with a 0.20 tournament rules page will be given in an upcoming post. Note that we’re not quite at feature freeze and that the 0.20 version doesn’t yet have its own game branch listed on official servers, but those things will happen soon! There aren’t many new features since our last update, since we’re so close to feature freeze, but here’s a teeny tiny trunk update all the same: Gnolls, the new species that senses items and have a short attention span, have been disabled for the next release. This commit talks about some of the issues with the current species, and this commit is a preview of Gnolls 2.0, which may get merged soon. Although Gnolls won’t be in the 0.20 release, don’t worry, you’ll still be able to play these puppers in trunk. Wu Jian has also been disabled for the 0.20 release. We’re examining a few different options for Wu, which may involve reworking an ability or two or even merging some of the god’s abilities into Uskayaw (!). This work won’t take place until after the tournament finishes, but until then, you can continue to worship Wu in your trunk games. New cloud ego for scarves that grants immunity to all clouds, replacing the ultra boring rC+ scarf ego. Cast conjure flame and stand in the flames! Stand in miasma clouds, breathing in deeply! Laugh in Xom’s face when he dumps chaos clouds all over you! Coming soon: more transporter loot vaults, featuring steamed eels, bookish nerds, Jiyva/Lucy/Beogh altar ambushes, and more. See you all in the Hall of Zot!
PUNE: Four foreign nationals were arrested and three others were booked for misbehaving with a woman traffic constable who tried to stop them from performing motorbike stunts on the busy Salunke Vihar Road around 9pm on Friday.A magisterial court has sent Afghan nationals Mudassar Mateen (22), Mohammad Ahmed (21) and Musavar Ahmed (21) and Yusan Bothir (21) from Uzbekistan in police custody remand for four days.Senior inspector Rajendra Mokashi said the foreigners were performing wheelies on their bikes, which made a lot of noise because the silencers had been removed. Mokashi said the youngsters were screaming and creating nuisance.Woman constable S Ghodke, who was passing that way, stopped them and sought an explanation. However, the youths misbehaved with her. One of them pushed Ghodke so hard that she fell on the road. A police team reached arrested four of them while the others fled.All are students of city-based colleges. They live in Kondhwa, Fatimanagar and Hadapsar areas. They were charged for obstructing a public servant from performing his/her duty and indulging in rioting under sections of the Indian Penal Code.
BUFFALO, N.Y. – When Army Sgt. Patrick Hart decided a decade ago that he would not serve in the war in Iraq, he expected to follow the same path as thousands of American war resisters during the Vietnam era and take refuge across the border. But after five years of wrangling with the Canadian immigration system, he came back to the U.S. — and ended up in a military prison. The country that once welcomed war resisters has developed a much different reputation during the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan: Supporters say no U.S. soldier who has sought legal residence in Canada, either as a refugee or on humanitarian grounds, has been successful. READ MORE: Soldiers with PTSD more likely to see ‘world full of threat’ “Nobody’s won,” said Hart, a Buffalo native who exhausted his legal options then turned himself in to the Army, was court-martialed for desertion and sentenced to two years in prison. There are an estimated two dozen U.S. military members still waiting out their fate in Canada, and the resisters’ movement is seen as nearing a crossroads. With a national election three months away, supporters are hopeful for a Liberal Party victory and more sympathetic stance toward American military exiles, but bracing for the possibility Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper wins re-election. Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau has not committed to letting the resisters stay, but many are buoyed by his family history. It was his father, Pierre Trudeau, who while prime minister during the Vietnam War said Canada should be “a refuge from militarism.” “Why not do it again? It’s only a couple of dozen people,” said Michelle Robidoux, spokeswoman for the War Resisters Support Campaign in Toronto, which has been lobbying members of Parliament. READ MORE: Highest-ranking ISIS figure in Afghanistan killed in US strike After a flurry early on, between 2004 and 2006, it’s been at least four years since any known residency requests have been filed, Robidoux said. Besides Hart, at least three other soldiers who were deported or left Canada have been sent to prison: Pfc. Kim Rivera, a mother of five, was sentenced in 2013 to 10 months; Spc. Clifford Cornell of Mountain Home, Arkansas, received a one-year term in 2009, and Pfc. Robin Long of Boise, Idaho, was sentenced in 2008 to 15 months. Some deserters face court-martial but the majority are discharged on less-than-honourable terms. Army officials said more than 20,000 soldiers have deserted since 2006. Canada’s immigration laws have tightened since the Vietnam War, the support campaign said, giving U.S. soldiers few options other than to try for refugee status based on the fear of persecution if made to go home. Government guidance issued to immigration officers in 2010 requires them to consult supervisors on U.S. military cases and spells out that desertion is a crime that may render those who’ve left the military as criminally inadmissible to Canada. READ MORE: As rate of PTSD increases, ‘Loops for Troops’ run raises awareness “Military deserters from the United States are not genuine refugees under the internationally accepted meaning of the term,” Citizenship and Immigration Canada spokeswoman Nancy Caron said in an emailed statement. “These unfounded claims clog up our system for genuine refugees who are actually fleeing persecution.” It’s a strikingly different stance from what Bruce Beyer saw when he found a safe haven in Canada and spent five years there after refusing induction into the Army during the Vietnam War. “The word is definitely out in the anti-war community that going to Canada is not beneficial,” said Beyer, of Buffalo, who returned to the United States in 1977 and has publicly supported the current resisters. Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board does not track claim types and could not provide the number of claims made by American soldiers, spokesman Robert Gervais said. He said each case is decided on merits. Robidoux estimated the number of claims filed at 45. She said about two dozen soldiers remain in the country while appealing decisions or pursuing other action. One of them, Rodney Watson, has sought sanctuary in a Vancouver church for nearly six years to avoid a second tour in Iraq. Both Watson and Hart spoke out publicly against the war after arriving in Canada, and Hart believes his lengthy prison sentence was a direct result. Prosecutors sealed their desertion case against him with clips from anti-war rallies that captured him saying he had no plans to return. Hart finally did, he said, after deciding with his wife, Jill, that it would be best for their son, now 13, to leave Canada on their own terms. “We had kind of run the course of legal action to stay there, so we were pretty much just sitting there waiting for a deportation order to come down,” said Hart, who was released from the prison complex at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 2013 after serving 15 months. Hart left his Fort Campbell, Kentucky, base in 2005, a month before he was to be sent to Iraq and after serving nearly a year in Kuwait in 2003. He now lives in Florida and is pursuing a nursing degree, helped by the G.I. Bill. He is seeking to have his bad conduct discharge — a step up from dishonourable — upgraded to other than honourable. “Up until the second part of the Iraq War, I was pretty much a model soldier,” said the sergeant, who had hoped his more than 10-year record would work in his favour upon his return, “but they didn’t see it that way.”
This strikes me as exactly right: The Labeling is sort of like using the magic word NI on “conservatives”, because after being called racist, sexist, or some sort of “phob”, the “conservative” starts groveling, and abandoning the debate at hand, proceeds to prove his street “social justice” cred to his leftist masters (Oh yes my most high and precious masters, I adore minorities and diversity, and worship at the altars of Womyn and Molok and Kaos and Demos and I fully partake in all the sacraments of Great Progressivism™, just remember how many times have you seen X apologizes for Y, or I’ve got nothing against Z, my friends/family members are Z, or H are the real Z-ists). On the other hand, leftist that meets a neoreactionary, whether online or offline is terrified (so much it seems, that word ‘neoreactionary’ has become a new label), despite actual power and influence of Neoreaction being less than null (and the power of the Left total). The scare comes from Neoreaction’s memetic immunity. Neoreactionary is immune to the Labeling, in fact, for a neoreactionary it is a badge of honor, and therein you can imagine the terror of the leftist when his weapon not only doesn’t work on his enemy, but actually strengthens his enemy.
Funny T Shirts? We have over 1000 of them! Looking for novelty, crazy and funny t shirts for guys and girls? We also carry women and kids sizes but dont leave out the big and tall guys, we have those too. Is math or science your area...we have them. Nerd and Geeks tees...we cover them all. Up to 6xl and tall tees. We have 100% cotton t-shirts, heavy duty, pre-shrunk, true to size. Our Favorites Featured Designs Customer Favorites More of Our Favorites Funny T-Shirts! Looking for novelty, crazy and funny t-shirts? Rip off that old one and get into something new. Select from over 12 color choices, 10 different styles, and sizes up to 6XL! We also carry women and kids sizes. Place your design on the front or back, whichever you prefer! We have 100% cotton shirts, heavy duty, pre-shrunk, and true to size. With our current Deal, you can stock up for 1/2 the price of the other guys. We now offer pocket tees! No matter what kind of shirt you are looking for, we've got you covered, Literally. Enjoy! SIZES!!! We have your size. From Youth Small and women's Xtra Small...and for Men, we have XL, 2xl, 3xl, 4xl, 5xl and 6xl t shirts...we have you covered. We have tall tees for big and tall men. We have baby dolls, casual, tank tops, hoodies and more. For the boy or girl in your family...mom or dad...we have something for everyone. We have some of the best funny shirts on the web with thousands of designs to choose from! Help us help you. If you like our funny shirts, and consequently if you like us, then spread the word. Like us on facebook, reference us on twitter, mention us in your blogs and we will do our part to do the same for you. The power of the people is back like never before and the only way to make something of significance is to do it together. New Get Your Smile On! We find humor in just about anything! Hey, we're not thirteen and we still chuckle at the words boobie, blow and beaver! But our minds aren't always in the gutter; Sometimes they're in the toilet. You gotta admit, you'd smile if you saw someone wearing an "Ask Me About My Explosive Diarrhea" t-shirt. It's gross--but in a genius kind of way. Quality No joke, our t-shirts have the right stuff. They're made of 100 percent pre-shrunk cotton (go ahead, wash and dry to your heart's content!) with professionally screened text and images. Yes, there are some professionals who work here. Selection We counted, and we have over a thousand funny shirts to choose from. One (if not all of them) are bound to make you laugh. Policies All kidding aside, we want you to be happy with your shirts and your Roadkill shopping experience. If you're not satisfied, let us know. Exchanges and refunds are no laughing matter to us. Hey, a smile never killed anyone. Wear one of our shirts and spread some joy! It's been said that a good sense of humor will get you anywhere. And we have all the amusing, outrageous, offensive t-shirts to wear on the journey. Looking for comical designs? We've got you covered. Nothing screams Ritalin like: "AD/HD...Highway to Hey Look a Squirrel!" Looking for something edgier? How about "I'd Tell You to Go to Hell, but I Work There and Don't Want to See You Every Day." Not your style? Is the offensive, politically incorrect shirt more to your liking? Road Kill has your back with designs touting bitch, balls, boobs and more! Offensive Nobody does rude like us. Be it balls or beavers, smart asses or dumb shits, we have all the shirts you'll ever need to land you in bed with that hot babe you've always wanted; Or behind bars with a rap sheet. There are some days when you just gotta wonder out loud: "I Shaved My Balls for This?" Then there are other days when you're feeling all Charlie Sheen-ish and you wanna shout, "I Wasn't Born with Enough Middle Fingers to Let You Know How I Feel." Sure, your mom may blush. But she'll be soooo proud when she sees you wearing our "I Promise I'm a Doctor" shirt. Sometime sarcastic is offensive... We also offer tall tees and big and tall t shirts. Bottom of the page- So you made it past all the designs and are now really text at the bottom of our page. Well, this is all about our shirts, what we have and the fun you could have when wearing one. Questions can be answered under FAQs. We have been in business for almost 10 years and have one of the largest selections on the web. We also offer one of the best discounts out there. Our shirts aren't cheap, just VERY LOW priced. Why can't clothes be functional and funny? Since you have to wear them anyway (Tatum Channing, we'll give you a pass), you might as well make someone laugh doing it. We have hundreds of comical, amusing t-shirts to choose from. Sure, a lot of them are borderline rude - "I'm Not a Proctologist But I Know an Asshole When I See One" might earn you a kick in the butt from some. But a few are even clean enough for church. "God Is Great Beer Is Good People Are Crazy" shows the whole congregation, for example, that you have your priorities straight. We have hundreds of cheap shirts; We mean that literally, most are uner 20 bucks! Not bad for a cheap laugh, eh? We have shirts for all the holiday, St Patricks Day, 4th of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Father' Day, and even for mom on Mothers Day. TV/Movies Whether you're into chick flicks or the cult classics, we've got you covered when it comes to tees highlighting some of Hollywood's most brilliant moments. Randy Quaid may not have won an academy award for his role in Christmas Vacation, but give Cousin Eddie his due by sporting our hilarious "Shitter's Full" t-shirt. Got a friend who is always MIA? What could be a more approriate gift than a "Bueller ? Bueller? Bueller?" shirt? But hey, it's not all fun and games here at Road Kill. From aliens to zombies, we've got scary shirts that warn "Paddle Faster. I Hear Banjos" and "I Like Turtles." We haven't forgotten those awesome sitcoms either. Be it How I Met Your Mother's famous line "I Just Awesomed All Over the Place" or Seinfeld's made-up holiday "Festivus for the Rest of Us," we've turned some of TV's funniest lines into the funniest t shirts! Women's Every woman has a little Lindsay-Lohan-on-a-bender in her. And when the urge strikes, we have just what you need to wear. "Everyone Loves a Drunk Chick" and "Guess Where I'm Pierced?" will get you noticed faster than Amanda Bynes with a shaved head. Channel your inner Paris Hilton with "Buy Me Things and I'll Be Nicer." And we gotta believe that if Kim Kardashian could have her pick of all our shirts, she would choose "Have You Ever Wondered If There Was More to Life Than Being Really, Really, Ridiculously Good Looking?" That's deep Kim. You might need to ask your mom Kris Jenner for help. Offensive Now it's time to get dirty with our offensive shirts. If you agree that hillary sucks or repubulican suck, then we have shirts for you. We have anti Hillary shirts and many other. This section will have you laughing your ass off especially if you "love being a prick" and would rather be a "smart ass than a dumb shit". Every man can appreciate a good blow job and it may be "The only job you'll ever love". But the offensive selection isn't just about your gigantic cock, it's got racial jokes that will crack you up like "Immigrants are like sperm, millions get in, but only one works" and "I'm not a racist, I hate everyone equally". So sit back, grab yourself and enjoy some fucking funny shirts! The sibling to the funny category as well as the bastard from the other marriage. These shirts will shock and appall if you're in a stiff crowd or get you laid if you go to college. Partying What's the name of the game! THUMPER! Why do we play! To get fucked up! Real partying (not that corporate mess) includes three things: Beer, Bitches, and Bros, in that order. We have just the thing to make your night of drunken debauchery even better, a tee shirt that tells everyone of your plan for drunken debauchery, and if that's not enough for you then perhaps you need another drink. Cheers! Price How can you sell them so cheap. We have awesome t shirts. We don't pay rent at a store front... We keep prices low, buy funny tshirts direct from the vendor and use slaves to design our shirts. These are American Slaves, we don't sink so low to import our shirts! People ask us, why do you make fun of everyone, I say, why not. This is 'Merica, if you don't have a sense of humor, leave, life is already so freaking crazy. Put on a funny t-shirt and tell everyone to get over it. We have some sick t shirts and you can't beat the price, the selection or the original content. One stop shopping! We have funny t-shirts and people will think you are cool because you know us. We are the biggest graphic t-shirts site on the web. We sell funny t shirts and more than anyone else. These are not cheap t shirts, they are the best heavy cotton, mainly Gildan and very cheap t shirts. No one comes close with selection, size and choices. Not even Al Bundy t shirts. We beat them all. Why, who knows maybe they believe that you should like the 10 funny shirts they think are good. Well we all know the answer...Enjoy the t-shirts, link to us, buy a geek tee. Holidays No need to fret over what to wear to the neighborhood Halloween party. Our "Just Give Me the Damn Candy" design tells 'em you're there for the chocolate, not the inane chit-chat. And why should the department-store Santas have all the fun? How about an "I'm Not Santa But You Can Sit in My Lap" shirt? It's a surefire way to spread some holiday cheer (but hopefully not any holiday chlamydia). Everyone needs some new duds for the holidays and no matter what you're celebrating (Festivus anyone?), we have a shirt that fits. So buy them for yourself. Or buy them for gifts. Just buy 'em! Novelty What do you think of when you think of the word novel? Very good if you said Kurt Vonnegut or Tom Wolfe. But bring the brain down a notch. We're thinking stuff like weird, unusual, supremely creative and clever (no disrespect Kurt and Tom). Really, all our shirts fit this category, so it's hard pulling out just a few. But how about the ones that make you use your noggin a little? I mean, it takes more than just average intelligence to get the jokes in our "May the 4th Be with You" or "My Pen Is Huge" or "Grab Your Balls We're Going Bowling" tees. So go ahead and be novel. Don't just read one. Kids Got a mini me? We have awesome designs for your spawn! While not all our shirts are appropriate for the wee ones (yes, we do have some morals), plenty are. Bodily functions are always good for a laugh and who can resist a little ankle-biter wearing an "I Pooped Today!" shirt. Makes you want to squeeze 'em. Don't have the most well-behaved kid on the block? Do society a favor and give us all a warning. No one wants to be stuck in a long grocery-store line next to a kid wearing "Ask Me About My Ability to Annoy Complete Strangers" or "I Should Come with a Warning Label" shirt. And your kid is sure to win over enemies (think all those humorless grade-school teachers) with this shirt that highlights some of his top-notch vocabulary skills: "Immature: A Word Boring People Use to Describe Fun People." We have youth sizes from small to extra large, so get'em suited up! We also have a friend here: www.roadkilljr.com Individuality: The world is has evolved into one big on demand service. What consumers want, when they want, and how they want it is the basis for business models now and moving forward. There are apps for your phone, content for your TV, wireless devices that can connect to everything else and more! Well here at Road Kill we have taken this approach to funny t-shirts. First and foremost we have a wide selection of designs that will get you ready for the day; but aside from that, our shirts can be customized to the exact look and feel of your style. We offer Men's and Women's styles, and also a Hoodie option. On top of that each style has different cuts that will go well with any outfit, from simply wearing it as is to layering it as a tank top, you can't go wrong with us. However, just allowing you to pick the cut of your shirt wasn't enough…no that would be letting you off too easy! Once you've selected your style, then it's on to size. From youth-small to 6XLarge and everything in between is available for any body type, because we don't judge like the rest of the world. And then, after that, you are able to add color, the spice of life…or something like that, to your shirt. So how's that for on demand and individual style?
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada’s Hydro One Ltd is in talks to buy municipal electricity distributor Toronto Hydro Corp for about C$3 billion ($2.2 billion) as the city of Toronto explores options to finance various infrastructure projects, people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The two companies have been in discussions about the deal for the past few months but the talks have not entered final stages, one of the people said. They cautioned the talks could fall apart. The combined company could generate potential synergies of about C$1 billion, the people added. The city of Toronto, which owns 100 percent of Toronto Hydro, is also exploring other ways to monetize its assets, including by publicly listing Toronto Hydro, as well as by selling its Green P parking business or other real estate assets, one of the people added. The Green P parking asset, which includes a popular app, is likely worth more than C$1 billion, that person said. Toronto Mayor John Tory denied the sales talks are taking place. “I can confirm that no discussions are taking place with respect to the sale of Toronto Hydro to anyone,” Tory said in an emailed statement. Canada’s most populous city needs a massive infrastructure upgrade to meet the growing demands of residents. But the city has struggled to raise sufficient funds to finance its rail and road networks. Toronto Hydro has also been under financial pressure as it attempts to make infrastructure investments surrounding its electricity grid. Last November, it cut its dividend to the city of Toronto. A deal would also help Hydro One’s growth ambitions as a public company after it raised C$1.8 billion in one of Canada’s biggest IPOs in 2015. Hydro One, backed by the province of Ontario, has a market value of C$14 billion. Under one proposal, Hydro One would pay about half the deal value in cash and the rest in stock, one of the people said. A cash-and-stock transaction with Hydro One would allow the city to benefit from Hydro One’s dividend as well, the people said. Spokesmen for Hydro One and Toronto Hydro declined to comment. The people declined to be identified as the talks are confidential. The discussions involve Toronto Hydro Chief Executive Anthony Haines, Hydro One CEO Mayo Schmidt, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Mayor Tory, one of the people said. While the talks are making progress, a successful deal faces significant hurdles as it requires approval of the city council. It would also have to overcome potential opposition from unions.
Image caption The charity claims there is a lack of services to help male victims of domestic abuse The number of men abused by their partners has increased by 9.4% over the past year to record levels, according to a charity. The statistics, collated by Abused Men in Scotland (Amis), were based on the number of incidents reported to Scotland's eight police forces. The number of men recorded as abuse victims by Scottish police rose from 7,908 in 2008-09, to 8,649 in 2009-10. The charity accused many public services of "looking the other way". Amis co-founder Alison Waugh said a man was a victim of domestic abuse in about one in every six recorded incidents in Scotland - but the country lacked the specialised services needed to address the problem. "Unfortunately there is still a culture of denial among many politicians and providers of services who do not want to acknowledge the evidence in front of their eyes that thousands of men every year in Scotland are victims of domestic abuse," she said. "They are abused first by their partner or ex-partner and then again by the public narrative that does not want to know about the damage they and their children experience." Whatever lies behind the figures we know that many public services look the other way when it comes to men who suffer domestic abuse Jackie Walls, Amis The Scottish government recently provided funding for the Men's Advice Line which went live in April this year. The freephone number is staffed from Monday to Friday 1000-1300 and 1400-1700 and aims to increase the safety of men experiencing domestic violence - and the safety of their children - and reduce any risk. The figures gathered by Amis through the Freedom of Information Act suggested there was an increase in the number of male abuse victims across six forces - Central, Fife, Grampian, Lothian & Borders, Strathclyde and Tayside. Dumfries and Galloway and Northern recorded a fall in both male and female victims. Only Tayside reported a rise in the number of female victims, with the statistics indicating a 6.1% reduction overall across Scotland in the number of female domestic abuse victims, from 45,612 to 42,821. Fife Police reported the biggest percentage increase in the number of male victims recorded - up 23.1% to 580 from 471 the previous year. 'Immense pressure' Amis co-founder Jackie Walls said: "The statistics don't lie. Some people will say it's because more men are coming forward to report. Others, that more women are being violent and abusive. Others, that public awareness of the reality out there is running ahead of the politicians. "No-one really knows. Whatever lies behind the figures we know that many public services look the other way when it comes to men who suffer domestic abuse. "We have had enough of that one-sided approach." The charity was recently awarded funding from National Lottery Awards for All Scotland to establish a helpline and an office in Dunfermline. Communities Minister Alex Neil said: "Men and women can both be victims of domestic abuse and we know that men feel under immense pressure to keep up the pretence that everything is okay. "This government is taking a lead in breaking this taboo and doing all we can to get the message across to men that they are not alone and that there is someone standing ready to listen and help." Mr Neil highlighted the confidential Men's Advice Line in Scotland, training for health professionals and funding for organisations such as Victim Support Scotland. The Amis helpline can be contacted on 01383 624411 and is currently staffed in the evening, along with weekend cover and the facility to leave a message to be contacted back.
LEAFS DAILY: Giving Kadri a New Contract Despite playing the best hockey of his career, leading the Leafs in ice-time among forwards and being consistently praised by Mike Babcock, Nazem Kadri just can’t seem to get any respect. I feel like Kadri is the perfect example of the level of discourse permeating the NHL. When the team hit the 25% mark of the season, many media outlets released grades for each player: I saw someone rank Kadri a C; I saw another guy rank Bozak ahead of him. Then, in perhaps the worst intermission “analysis” I have ever seen, TSN’s panel (Jeff O’Neil, Craig Button and Bob McKenzie) recommended that the Leafs do not give Kadri a long-term contract, and in one case, even suggested he should take a pay cut because he has just 3 goals. Look, these guys are professionals and they get paid to go give their opinions on TV. But as a hockey fan, I feel that fans of the NHL’s most important and widely watched team deserves a level of discourse on the TV broadcasts that is, at the least, intelligent and well thought out. It doesn’t matter what the topic is, one of the first things you learn about in science class is that if you want to analyze something you need to look at the process and not the results. In hockey, goals are the results of everything else a player does to try to score them. It is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt (i.e it is a fact) that goals are just the random results of shots – whether a goalie makes a great save, or an error; whether the player makes a great move or scores on a fluke from centre-ice, given enough time and big enough sample size about 9% of all shots go into the net. Therefore, it is not intelligent to analyze a player based on his goal totals, especially not 20 games into the season where variance is clearly going to be very high. Nazem Kadri has 3 goals, but he is shooting 3.1%. His career average is over 9% (because he’s a better-than-average player) but clearly he isn’t a 3% shooter which would make him much worse than the worst player of all time. Inevitably this number will go up, and I just think that it was really disingenuous of TSN to have three professional hockey analysts (guys who shape how Leafs Nation thinks about its players) go on TV and tell viewers that a player who has demonstrably been one of the best players in the NHL this year deserves a pay cut. Let’s Look at Some (5v5) Numbers: Kadri is a 52% possession player, which is absolutely fantastic for a top centre on a bad team (or any team, actually). He is third in the NHL in shots. He has a + 52 scoring chance differential, which is 5th among NHL centres. His two wingers happen to be 1st and 2nd in the NHL overall. He is 4th in the NHL in individual scoring chances. He is 7th in the NHL in individual high-danger scoring chances. Kadri is 8th in total shot attempts: Brent Burns, Alex Ovechkin, Max Pacioretty, Taylor Hall, Tyler Seguin, Vladimir Tarasenko and Jason Spezza are the only players ahead of him. But don’t take my word for it, go to waronice.com or stats.hockeyanalysis.com yourself and play around with the filters – these are the players who show up regularly near Kadri on the list of any stats. If we are to believe what the people on TV tell us, we should discount all of this because the puck has gone in the net at a rate that would suggest he is the worst shooter of all-time. Basically, logic says you have to either suggest Kadri is the victim of terrible luck or you have to call him the worst shooter ever. And yet, if you do what science suggests is an absolute necessity – analyzing process and not results – then you have no choice but to say that Kadri has been one of the NHL’s best players so far this year. Look beyond the points: He’s limiting other teams chances, which means he is playing excellent defense. He creates offense at an elite rate and draws more penalties than anyone else in hockey. A pay cut? That is absolutely insane. It is the complete opposite of what even a cursory view of the data suggests. Maybe for the guys on TV, but not Kadri. If anything, the Leafs could take advantage of the low goal totals and sign Kadri to an extremely team friendly deal once he is eligible, although it’s highly doubtful that his agent is an idiot, so I’d settle for a fair deal, which, if you look at the guys he produces like, is over $6 million/year. Thanks for reading.
news Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull today announced that he had appointed three senior executives, including Simon Hackett, Internode founder and doyen of Australia’s broadband industry, to be non-executive directors sitting on the board of the National Broadband Network Company. In a statement issued this morning, Turnbull said as part of the Government’s continuing National Broadband Network reforms, three directors with extensive relevant industry experience had been appointed to the NBN Co Board. “The three new non-executive directors are Patrick Flannigan, Simon Hackett, and Justin Milne,” wrote Turnbull. “They further enhance the board’s capabilities and expertise to provide appropriate oversight and guidance to this vitally important national project.” NBN Co executive chairman Ziggy Switkowski said: “This is a period of transition for the company and it will be a great asset to have a new board that brings decades of combined experience in the industry.” The trio will join current NBN Co board members Ziggy Switkowski, Alison Lansley and Kerry Schott. Switkowski was appointed by Turnbull in early October as NBN Co’s new executive chairman, temporarily replacing the company’s retiring chief executive Mike Quigley until a replacement can be found. Lansley and Schott are holdovers from the previous NBN Co board under the previous Labor Federal Government. Most of that board was asked to resign by Turnbull shortly after he took office. The appointment of Hackett to NBN Co’s board follows a minor social media campaign on the issue created by Delimiter, which had argued that the Internode founder’s skills, temperament, experience and ongoing interest in the NBN project made him a perfect candidate for the refreshed NBN board under the Coalition. Hackett graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Adelaide in 1986. He then worked at the university and became a part of the team that created the Australian Academic and Research network (AARNet), the first emergence of the Internet in Australia. In 1991 he founded Internode, an Internet Service Provider, and then in 1997 he founded its sister company Agile, a licensed telecommunications carrier. Over the next 20 years the company group deployed its own network to deliver ADSL2+, optical fibre, microwave, and fixed wireless Internet services around Australia to residential and business customers. Internode was one of the first companies to connect customers to the NBN in 2010. The group was sold to iiNet Limited in early 2012, when it had around 180,000 broadband customers nationally. Simon joined the board of iiNet in August 2012. Hackett has been an opinion leader in the national broadband debate for many years. He is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a fellow of the Australian Computer Society. Hackett will resign his position on the board of iiNet at the end of this month to focus on his role with NBN Co, according to Turnbull. Aside from his qualifications for a role at NBN Co, Hackett has also been one of the most vocal analysts of the NBN over the past several years since the project was founded in April 2009, and has proved uncannily accurate at predicting the future dynamics of the project. As early as December 2010, Hackett warned that the ACCC’s Points of Interconnect decision with relation to the NBN would cause massive headaches for smaller ISPs and a dramatic consolidation of the industry. The executive turned out to be right. In September 2011, Hackett warned that if the Coalition won the 2013 election and changed NBN Co’s model, there would be a much greater impetus for other ISPs to deploy their own fibre, which is precisely what is happening currently with TPG. In October 2011 Hackett called for ownership of Telstra’s copper to be transferred to NBN Co as part of its deal with the telco, arguing future Federal Governments may want to use the infrastructure to build hybrid fibre to the node networks. This precise model is being discussed by Telstra and NBN Co right now. In all of these cases, Hackett argued against conventional wisdom espoused by the previous Labor Government, the competition regulator (the ACCC) or NBN Co itself — and turned out to be accurate in his predictions about the future of the NBN project. And even though Hackett has formally relinquished ownership of the company he founded and led to national prevalence, Internode, the executive still maintains one of the most prescient voices in the industry. In July this year, Hackett outlined a series of measures by which NBN Co could cut its costs and bring its pricy FTTP rollout more in line with the Coalition’s FTTN-based alternative. NBN Co will be examining precisely this situation in its current strategic review of its operations, to be presented to Turnbull for examination. Some issues remain around Hackett’s involvement with the NBN. The executive currently holds a substantial tranche of iiNet shares, stemming from iiNet’s acquisition of Internode. This could be seen as a conflict of interest for his position at NBN Co, given that iiNet is a substantial NBN Co customer. However, it could also be argued that Hackett’s position gives him a solid position to represent the interests of retail ISPs on NBN Co’s board. Other directors The other two directors appointed by Turnbull are similarly high-profile. Milne first rose to prominence in Australia’s technology sector as he joined Microsoft in 1995 as managing director of MSN, the company’s first entry into the internet portal business, which he helped establish and develop in the Australian market. In 1999, Justin joined OzEmail as Head of Data Casting and was later appointed chief executive officer, in a role which saw him work directly with Turnbull, who was an early investor in OzEmail and helped in its public listing. In 2002, Milne joined Telstra as managing director of Telstra’s BigPond ISP division and was later promoted to the role of group managing director, responsible for Bigpond and Telstra Media. Milne ran Telstra’s Bigpond business as it was transitioning from dial-up to delivering broadband services, increasing its customer base from 200,000 users to 2.5 million. During his time at Bigpond he also delivered and launched the first wireless broadband products in Australia and Milne was also involved in purchasing and operating new media businesses in China for Telstra. He resigned from Telstra in 2010 and is currently a non-executive director of Tabcorp, Members Equity Bank, NetComm Wireless, Basketball Australia and the Leichhardt Rowing Club. Milne has previously been reported to have been a Turnbull pick for NBN Co’s board. However, the executive’s potential involvement in the NBN has come under strong criticism due to the fact that Milne has had a close personal connection with Turnbull in the past. The third new director, Patrick Flannigan, will re-join NBN Co after a previous stint at the company. A construction engineer by trade, Flannigan joined Skilled Engineering in July 1990 and was promoted to executive general manager of the company in 1998, which included responsibilities for the Telstra and Optus HFC rollouts. He established his own business, Integrated Maintenance Services in 2000. Flannigan co-founded ASX-listed infrastructure provider Service Stream in 2003, where he was the chief executive from 2003 to 2009. He joined NBN Co as the company’s head of construction in 2009, where he managed the company’s network construction and relationships with major contractors. However, the executive quit NBN Co in April 2011 under a cloud; just days after negotiations broke down between the fledgling fibre monopoly and some 14 construction firms about the construction of the nation-wide network. Since leaving NBN Co, Patrick founded Utility Services Group, and is currently chief executive officer and managing director of the company, which employs approximately 2,000 people nationally, servicing linear infrastructure in the electricity, gas, water and telecommunications sectors. Patrick is a director of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and has a business degree from Victoria University, is a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a fellow of the Australian Institute of Management. opinion/analysis I think it’s fairly clear what I think about the appointment of Simon Hackett to NBN Co’s board. After all, I founded a petition to get him appointed, as well as writing an extensive article for Delimiter 2.0 (subscriber content) in late September on the issue. I wrote: “As with journalists, the role of board directors is not to say comforting things to people in powerful positions. The role of directors is to bring all their skills to the board table and speak all the truth that they know, no matter how uncomfortable, for the benefit of the organisation they represent and its stakeholders. They are wise, disciplined, outspoken counsellors that aim to stop good organisations going off the rails. It’d be hard to find a better description than this for Simon Hackett, who’s been a wise counsellor to Australia’s telco industry for several decades. And if the Coalition is going to stack NBN Co’s board with past Telstra executives, it’d be nice to see a little energy and variety added to the mix — for example, someone who has spent the past couple of decades wrestling Telstra to get better broadband outcomes for all Australians. Give Simon Hackett a call, Minister Turnbull. I positively guarantee you won’t be disappointed. The only thing the Coalition might need to be concerned about is that Hackett might eventually end up running the whole show. But then, that outcome has worked out fantastically for Australia in the past.” I can live with the other appointees. There are doubts about Milne, and Flannigan has already had one stint at NBN Co. Both also have substantial conflicts of interest in sitting on NBN Co’s board (as does Hackett himself, with his iiNet shares) However, the appointment of Hackett to NBN Co’s board is a legendary move which will instantly buy Malcolm Turnbull back a swathe of credibility with both consumers and Australia’s telecommunications industry. I suspect the Minister is very aware of that fact. You only need to look at the reaction to Hackett’s appointment on social media today to see how popular Hackett’s appointment to NBN Co’s board will be. I’ve published an article on Delimiter 2.0 (subscriber content) on the areas I think Hackett should focus on in his new role at NBN Co. A sample paragraph from behind the paywall: “Not for nothing (and not just for their similar choice of facial hair and elegant glasses either) has your writer previously compared Hackett to Gordon Freeman, the stubborn protagonist of Valve’s seminal video game Half-Life 2. Hackett has Freeman’s drive, energy, and very likely his engineering skills with a crowbar. For the NBN, Hackett has long been the right man in the wrong place. His appointment this morning perhaps places him where he can be most useful to the project.” Image credit: Internode
The Santo Domingo Sting by Joe Harkins Robert Redford is in town, shooting his new film, Havana. If anyone enjoys the tale you are about to read, it might be him. Many fans say their favorite Redford film is The Sting, in which he bests a con-man at his own game while turning his rules against him. That is exactly what happened recently when a Santo Domingo street flimflam man was taken by a tourist with faster wits and fresh revenge on his mind. Like the one in the movie, this sting was based on simple principles first laid down in the turn-of-the-century autobiography of a man in Chicago who called himself Yellow Kid Weil. Most of the plot of The Sting comes directly out of Weil's life story. The Rules (1) As P.T. Barnum once complained, "You cant cheat an honest man." By that logic, if a greedy tourist is a good target, a professional con-man makes the best "mark" of all. (2) The mark should believe, for as long as possible during the game, that he is the cheater, not the cheatee. (3) Finally, if the revenge is to be complete and the sting is to live up to the sharp pain implied by that word, when the mark has been beaten he should be "tipped", that is, know hes been cheated but have good reason to leave the scene (and his money) as quickly as he can. Tipping the mark, as its called, is fundamental to the elegance and charm of The Sting. Heres how one common Santo Domingo con-game, known on the street as The Fast Change, was turned into The Sting. As they say in television commercials, dont try this at home. Every tourist is warned, "Dont change currency on the street." But offers of 50, 60 or 90 percent, and even more, above the legal rate are dangled as bait. The Con One day last week, a reporter from the Santo Domingo News witnessed a Fast Change. A "cambio" (currency exchanger) approached a tourist and offered pesos at the incredible rate of ten per dollar at a time when the legal rate was below six. He swiftly got past the tourists skepticism by counting out ten one-hundred peso bills and pressing it into his hand. "See, here it is. Youve got it in your hand. Give me $100 before a cop comes along." The mark had seen it counted out. With a quick shuffle he saw he really was holding ten one-hundred peso notes. He handed over a $US100 bill. The game moved to the next step when the helpful change-maker said, "Make sure I didnt make a mistake. Count your money. How much you got?" The tourist obediently did exactly that, counting aloud and making sure each bill really was a one-hundred peso note. As he got to " . . . seven, eight, ni . . .", the con-man smoothly reached out, grabbed the sheaf of pesos and forced the US Currency in his hand on the startled tourist. The Cambio affected agitation. His previously good English turned broken. "Hey, my numbers ain so good. You got too much pesos. I say seven, not ten. Im no changin that rate. Take you damn dollars. I no do business you. Keep you dollars." Then, to distract the mark, he warned, "Watch out. That guy on the corner is cop and he watchin us." Gotcha The cambio-man continued to act annoyed, accusing the tourist of trying to cheat him and backed away, holding the confused victims attention with dramatic gestures. At the corner, he stepped behind the building and was gone. When the mark finally looked at the bill in his hand, he realized the $100 bill had been exchanged for a folded "single" while he was counting the pesos. The greedy tourist was out $99. The Fast Change is possible, while not overlooking the tourists own responsibility, because US currency, unlike that of many other countries, is all the same size, color and graphic style. When properly folded, one note is virtually undistinguishable from another. Game Over - Maybe; Maybe Not That might have been the end of this story. But, do you remember the old adage, "Dont get mad; get even?" Thats what this freshly educated tourist did. He walked a few blocks along the Zona Colonials main street before turning into a quieter side street after noting there were four policemen lounging in a small bunch just above the corner, apparently awaiting the afternoon shift change. Within a few yards, a man stepped from a doorway. "Change money. Good price. Eight pesos." Another Fast Change artist. Said our supposed bumpkin, "Its illegal isnt it?" "Nine. Change one hundred dollars. I give you nine-hundred pesos." "Oh, maybe Id change $50 but for $100 cant I get a better price?" He flashed his one-hundred dollar bill. The cambio-shark smelled blood in the water, but didnt realize it was his own. "OK, I give you 12 Pesos a dollar." He urgently counted out 12 one-hundred peso notes. Knowing this first count will also be the last one, the tourist watched carefully to be sure there truly were 1200 pesos. As the cambio handed over the wad, he accepted the US $100 dollar bill and moved the script along. "Count your pesos. Did I give you the right amount?" The tourist acted confused and asked, "What did you say? I dont understand." And, with that as a distraction, he shut his hand firmly around the 12 notes and stuffed them deep into his trouser pocket. Here It Comes The hustler suddenly had at least two problems. Unless he could get the pesos out into the open again, he had just given away 600 pesos more than the $100 bill is worth. And he hadnt been able to distract his "victim" with counting while he switched it for the folded single hidden in his other hand. He reached in his pocket and pulled out another one-hundred peso note. "Somehow Ive got an extra hundred pesos. I think maybe I didnt give you the full amount. Lemme see what you got." The Sting Begins Our mark was now in control and his voice turned cold. "No, your first count was correct. You have $100. I have the 1200 pesos you offered me." Hands jammed in his pocket, he started to walk away but he couldn't resist speaking the line that usually ends the scene, "Watch out. That guy on the corner is cop and he watchin us." With sudden awareness of whats been pulled, the street sharpie panicked. "Hey, gimme my money. Take back your dollars." A swift glance confirmed that the genuine $100 is being tendered. This con-man either wants out or a chance to re-start the script. "Unh-unh. Its a done deal." The tourist moved backward toward the intersection of the main street just a few yards away. The cambio threatened, "Policia. Policia. I call the policia. You steal my money." They shuffled down the street, one pulling frantically but futilely at the others arm, and bumped awkwardly around the corner. The cambio continued to threaten in an increasingly loud and urgent cry, "Policia! I call the policia!" And there, just a few feet away, stood eight of them. The afternoon shift had arrived and the earlier one hadnt yet left. Their usually dull day was about to turn interesting. The platoon opened and swallowed both men into their blue-shirted midst. The cambio blanched when he realized he was actually waving the one-hundred dollar bill, illegal for him to possess, in the cops' faces. Trooper that he is, he told the amazed police that the US $100 bill wasn't his. To accentuate his dramatic disowning of the offensive evidence of currency-law violation, he flourished the note and grandly stuffed it into the tourists shirt pocket. "He dropped this. Maybe." Tipping The Mark Thus prompted, the tourist addressed the officer with the most braid on his shoulder boards. "You did hear him say this is my money, not his, didnt you? I must have dropped it." The entire platoon of cops began laughing. They didnt know the details of what had happened but they did recognize the results. They'd been hearing tourist's embarrassed complaints all season. The freshly minted mark's sputter of "But, but . . ." faded as he realized he had no further lines in this drama. The tourist spoke. "Officer, isnt currency changing illegal except in the banks? He hasnt accused himself of anything and Im not going to accuse him, either." He turned to the glowering con-man. "You didnt break any laws did you? This is my $100 right?" The silence grew until the cambio turned away with an angry epithet. The tourist threw a final barb into the retreating back of his tipped mark, "I guess one of us made the mistake of not knowing what he was getting into." As he walked away with the original $100 bill plus the con-mans 1200 pesos, easily worth another $200 at the nearest bank, the only sound was the buzz of The Sting, Santo Domingo Style. Who was that tourist? He might have been Robert Redford, but he wasnt. He just walked like him. 30- Santo Domingo News - February 9, 1990 ( A personal note : I can be seen in an early scene of "Havana" as an out-of-focus extra, directly behind Redford and his leading lady, Senta Berger, at the moment they meet. Based on the great success of my performance in that moment, I'm sure it was professional jealousy that caused my later scenes to be cut. It is also noteworthy that my Oscar nomination never was made public.)
Pennsylvania farm family loses seven children to fire By Phyllis Scherrer and Andrea Peters 10 March 2011 Late Tuesday evening a fire engulfed the house on a family farm in Blain, Pennsylvania, killing seven of eight children. The blaze completely destroyed the structure owned by the Clouse family, which was located off a rural road about 25 miles north of the state capital. The fire began after 10 p.m. when the children’s mother was performing the evening chore of milking the cows and their father was at work. The Clouse’s three-year-old daughter ran to the barn to get her mother, Janelle, who first tried to get into the house but was unable to. She then went to a neighbor’s home to call 911, but discovered they were not home and had to go to another neighbor’s place farther down the road. Janelle then ran to alert her husband. Ted Clouse, who was out on his truck picking up milk from local farms for delivery to stores the next morning, had nodded off while waiting for a farmer to turn over his product. He was parked about a mile down the road from their house. Janelle woke him up, and the two ran back to the home. But the distances, as is typical in farm country, were too great. By the time the Clouses got back to the house their seven children—girls ages 11, 9, 6, 4, 2 and 7 months and a 7-year-old boy—had died of smoke inhalation. According to the Associated Press, friends and family gathered outside the gutted home on Wednesday morning to offer support, helping milk the cows and doing other chores. The children’s grandfather told the AP that the parents were talking and meeting with people, trying to find ways to cope with the tragedy. Initial reports have emphasized the fact that the children were alone at the time of the blaze. In a crude effort to vilify the parents and stoke up bigotry against rural people, an MSNBC article was headlined, “7 kids die in fire as mom milks cow, dad naps.” Other press reports have carried titles such as, “7 children killed in farm house fire as ‘father sleeps in truck’ in Pennsylvania.” Making clear that the crudity of the American press is not a national phenomenon, one British newspaper advertised the story as, “Seven kids killed in blaze as mum milked cows.” Many MSNBC readers commented about the gross insensitivity of the news service’s title, pointing out the difficult and long hours involved in running a dairy farm, and rejecting the idea that the Clouses were negligent towards their children. They expressed sympathy for the Clouse family’s unimaginable loss. MSNBC ultimately changed the headline of their article, but only after it was picked up by other media outlets. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The grandfather of the dead children, Noah Sauder, told the Patriot News that it could have started in the kitchen, where a propane heater is used to warm the home. As was noted in an inquiry into deadly house fires in Detroit last year by the Committee Against Utility Shutoffs, portable propane and electric-heaters are one of the leading causes of lethal blazes in homes. Many people, either urban residents who cannot afford their utility payments or rural families who have no other options, are forced to resort to these unsafe heating methods during cold weather.
As Bubbles operates a home brewery, Julian and Ricky try to go legit. But when a big business deal beckons, the Boys soon fall into their old ways. 1. Chlamydia 32m Bubbles's new brewing business is taking off, but things aren't going well for Julian and even worse for Ricky, who claims he has a big announcement. 2. Godspeed My Muscular Friend 30m In an attempt to go legit, Julian looks for a job at the mall and Ricky becomes a handyman. Lahey and Randy head to the racetrack. 3. The C*t Word 26m Julian runs a side hustle at his security job. Ricky sends Jacob and Trinity to his car when he hosts Susan for a romantic dinner that turns chaotic. 4. All The Sht I Need 25m Bubs loses it when Ricky "borrows" the truck to deal with a rat problem in the park, then lends it to Julian as part of another racket at the mall. 5. Happy Birthday Bubbles 30m The boys cause a panic in the trailer park when a stunt they organize for Bubbles's birthday goes a bit haywire. Julian puts his job in jeopardy. 6. Flow Me The Money 32m The Boys learn that the prosecutor for Julian's trial is his ex. Ricky steps in to represent Julian in court after another plan goes awry. 7. Big Ck 29m Ricky and Julian help Bubbles fill a huge order of his new beer, Freedom 35, but a secret Ricky's been keeping could derail the delivery. 8. Will You For To Be Fking Married To Me? 29m Lahey tries to squeeze his way into the beer business. Ricky and Susan's fighting prevents Candy from getting a private moment with Julian. 9. Angel Sh*t Sent Down From Jesus God 31m When a big beer company wants to work with the Boys, they need to come up with $50,000 to close the deal -- and Ricky has an idea that could pay off.
On MSNBC following President Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address, hosts and pundits expressed grave concern at a speech that was “dark” and “militant” with anti-Semitic overtones with the use of the phrase “America First.” Co-host Rachel Maddow seemed emotional, speaking softly about how “it was militant and it was dark, the crime, the gangs, the drugs, this American carnage, disrepair, decay” and a speech Barack Obama couldn’t have given. Maddow moved to how “America First” frightened her as a harkening back to the World War II era rife with anti-Semitism: The new President also repeating that our guiding principle will be America first, America first. We know how he has used that as a campaign slogan, that does also have very dark echoes in American history. There was an America First Committee that formed in this country, hundreds of thousands of people in this country, some of the richest businessmen in the country who were part of it, they were formed to keep us out of World War II. They were infiltrated by the Nazis, many of them are anti-Semitic, part of why they weren't alarmed by Hitler's rise in Germany. <<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>> She added that the phrase “is something that means a specific thing in this country” and “to repurpose it now, not that far down the historical path” was “hard to hear.” Hardball host Chris Matthews actually praised Trump for emphasizing the forgotten men and women of the Rust Belt, but also had some gripes: Of course, nothing about human rights, nothing about gender rights and other things you'd hear from a Democrat but I thought it was a strong statement to the people who voted for him. I was looking all the people in the cat hats — in the Make America Great hats out there. They wanted to hear this. He said I'm going to be the guy I said I was going to be. You dance with the one that brung ‘em. Former Bush administration official Nicolle Wallace fell much more along the lines of what Maddow felt, fretting how “it was unnecessarily dark” because it “felt like a bit of an overreaction” to the past three Inaugural address (Bush in 2005, Obama in 2009, and Obama in 2013). However, the MSNBC liberal that was almost as startled as Maddow as NBC News historian Michael Beschloss. As if none of Obama’s speeches were partisan, the best-selling author complained that Trump wasn’t conciliatory enough for his liking. “Well, usually you hear an inaugural address an effort to bring the nation together as much as possible and I think that is not the road that Donald Trump took today. If you heard this and you didn't know the occasion for it, I think one might think that this was actually a party convention speech or a campaign speech, not an inaugural address,” Beschloss argued. Dubbing the speech as “dark” and “fierce,” Beschloss chided the billionaire for offering “very few olive branches thrown to people who are skeptical of him and might be open-minded to support someday Donald Trump as President, or to the other side, people who voted against him and who will never support him.” “But in the tradition of the inaugural addresses that are intended to heal the country after a bruising campaign, and maybe even expand the Pres — new President's political base and appeal among the American people, hard for me to see how it does that,” he concluded. Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s 2017 Presidential Inauguration coverage:
A federal judge in Arizona has delivered a major – and hopefully final – victory in the fight to stop Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO) from racial profiling and illegal detentions that target Latinos. In a ruling on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow ordered numerous concrete measures to ensure that Arpaio and his deputies stop violating the U.S. Constitution. They include the appointment of a federal monitor, the creation of a community advisory board, video and audio recording of every vehicle stop his officers make, wholesale changes to MCSO policies and training, and data collection on how traffic stops are carried out. The order should put an end to the sheriff's recalcitrant attitude and refusal to see the need for serious reform. It includes almost all the measures requested by the plaintiffs, including many that Arpaio doggedly resisted. The order will be in place for a minimum of three years as MCSO is required to institute sweeping reforms. By issuing this injunction, the U.S. district court instituted major changes needed to address years of discriminatory practices and unconstitutional policies that occurred under Sheriff Arpaio's leadership. These practices included targeting Latinos for traffic stops based solely on their race and detaining Latinos in order to interrogate them about their immigration status. It was revealed in court that many of the operations conducted by MCSO were in places suggested to Arpaio in calls, emails and letters from racists complaining about immigrants in their communities. For example, one caller asked the police department why "nobody gets all the Mexicans hanging out" in a certain area, and another person complained that Spanish was being spoken at a McDonald's and asking that a raid be conducted there to get rid of the illegal immigrants. Five brave individual plaintiffs and Phoenix-based community group Somos America stepped forward to lead the litigation on behalf of the certified class. Among our clients were Jessika and David Rodriguez, both U.S. citizens, who were singled out while driving with their young children. An MCSO deputy allegedly pulled the Rodriguez family over for driving on a stretch of road that had been washed out by a storm. During the stop, the MCSO deputy demanded that Mr. Rodriguez produce his social security card and issued him a citation. The Rodriguez family watched helplessly as other, non-Latino drivers were waved through the area by MCSO deputies. Such humiliating violations have come to an end. The final injunction follows previous orders in December 2012 and May of this year, in which the court ruled that MCSO has violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution by targeting Latinos for traffic stops and detaining them based solely on suspicion of illegal immigration status. The May ruling came after a three-week trial in July and August of 2012, during which the plaintiffs' team submitted voluminous evidence that the MCSO was illegally discriminating against Latinos. The plaintiffs proved—through the MCSO's internal correspondence and public statements, and statistical analyses—that the MCSO had the intent to discriminate. Evidence also showed that the discrimination had harmful effects, including higher traffic stop rates and longer stop times for Latinos. The court order overruled one of MCSO's most vehement objections in mandating the creation of a Community Advisory Board. That step is critical as it could begin to repair the deeply damaged relationship between MCSO and those members of the Maricopa County community that have been directly harmed by Arpaio's discriminatory policies. "Thanks to the brave souls who came forward to tell their stories, the MCSO is being held accountable," said Lydia Guzman of Somos America. "It's not a crime to be brown and now we have the necessary tools to make sure that Sheriff Arpaio doesn't forget that." Counsel on Ortega Melendres, et al. v. Arpaio, et al. included Cecillia Wang and Andre Segura from the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, Daniel Pochoda and Anne Lai (cooperating attorney) from ACLU of Arizona, Nancy Ramirez from MALDEF, and from Covington & Burling, LLP, Stanley Young, Andrew Byrnes, Lesli Gallagher, and David Hults.
In short, it is no longer even capable of honestly confronting the massive problems that it’s creating nor can it make due on its many promises. It is characterized by cowardice, exhaustion, and fear. The Sword of Damocles is starting to wobble a bit. But we’re only going to consider this in microcosm right now, which means - yes - another clip from Bloggingheads.tv. Comes now Mr. Adam Serwer who is a young and up-and-coming lefty that writes for The American Prospect, I believe he is Jewish with a shade of Black blood - a real man for our time. His interlocutor is Mrs. Amy Wax who is here to discuss with Adam her new book, “Race, Wrongs, and Remedies”. And here is where things get interesting, Mrs. Wax happens to be a liberal who is really concerned about the hopelessly dysfunctional state of the American underclass (both Black and Hispanic), she is worried that their situation is quickly going from bad to worse and that we - the collective liberal elite - have abandoned these people. Of course, she is right; the liberal elite have abandoned these people because they don’t give a damn about them, the colored underclass is just a voting farm and an object to be manipulated for the left’s benefit. But they are a growing problem, and I think Mrs. Wax senses that we can’t continue to ignore their dysfunctionality forever because, well, eventually we won’t be able to. Mr. Serwer - the future of the left and a man for our time - is having none of this, with his gaze always shifted to the side he spits out the standard retorts and the mindless babble that passes for conventional thinking. Mrs. Wax won’t have any of it in return, which means an entertaining spectacle for the likes of us is about to take place. Enjoy. Mr. Serwer is, for me, just another piece of evidence for why the left is finished and exhausted.
Dosimeter calibrator Have you checked in with your DR 2000 dosimeter calibrator / spectrophotometer lately? You should come on down and grab this wondrous contraption, figure out how it works and fill your heart with polyphonic tones Cat in the hat Do we have any friends who are science teachers? Would this teacher need a STEM themed cat in the hat? *... Would you need a cat in a hat with an avocado and noodle cup...? There is a cardboard STEM cat in the hat balancing an avocado and erlenmeyer on the NXX loading dock: (made with mostly scavenged materials, this cat is as green as ham) TI-92 Graphing Calculator Are you a D-Pad and QWERTY type of calculating connoisseur? Do you demand more than double the computing power of the Apollo 11 moon mission? Is Dot Matrix the only type of matrix for you? Are you of the opinion that early 90’s blues, greys, and black the only serious colors to fabricate a sleek science machine? Well then Friend….. I have a calculator for you…. Come get this Texas Instruments TI-92 on Reuse today for the low low price of free. Empower, enlighten, calculate, side load dot matrix Tetris. Conquer. Darth Vader action figure carrying case (ESB era) Early 1980’s Darth Vader Star Wars action figure as released by Kenner. It’s empty and in better shape than the one Kylo Ren talks to. You can display it on your desk, or put all your little electronic bits that you like to carry around in it and tote it around campus. I am not putting this powerful Sith artifact out on the bench for any passer-by to grab, I want to make sure that it goes to a good home. That is why it will go not to the person who arrives to an arbitrary location first or even the first person to see this and respond, but the person who can email me directly (don’t hassle the list!!!!) with their best Darth Vader imitation. And don’t you go sending me the quote that everyone always says (wrong even!) because that is an automatic disqualification. You’ve got to go deep. Search your feelings... I will email the list when the case has been claimed by the new owner. PS – I am sorry that this breaks with the normal claiming business, but there isn’t any reuse-cool-contest mailing list. PPS – Don’t spam the list with your Dark Side quotes or send the quote that everyone says. 3" diameter Rope I need to have this rope removed. It weighs several hundred pounds. If you are interested, please contact me. Misc useful and delightful things - a black Eddie Bauer backpack in decent shape with excellent student mojo - lightweight adhesive for scrapbooking, etc. - a Boston Music Conference reuseble bag - a tuner I used for tuning cellos. Battery powered. - a button opposing hate - a mysterious Muppety image Everything is contained in the backpack outside XX. Take whatever you like. Statuary of female figure roughly in the style of Venus of Neuchatel I’m helping a friend move and downsize, and she gifted me with (offloaded onto me) five statues that can most closely be described as the female figure roughly in the style of Venus of Neuchatel - no heads, no arms, no lower legs, oversized breasts and behinds. Hubby calls them “Headless de Milo”. Four of them were made by her as an amateur sculptress; one looks purchased. Also one female head with extremely large bosom, and what is supposed to be an incense burner for charcoal but the legs are askew (also handmade). Much as I love my friend, to say I don’t want to keep them is an understatement. Putting it out here first on Reuse just in case, otherwise these ladies become pottery shards for the bottom of plant pots or possibly dropped off at Salvation Army after closing hours. fatal glass of water 10 months ago - Macbook Air took a big gulp of water No startup -----so - there's a nice looking ( sleepy/dead) unit for your exploration Z0NZLL/A, 1.7GHz,8GB,128ssd, Email - preference to someone looking for parts Collages to bedazzle a space with surreal kitsch Collage 1: Mother Nature as a maiden with boobs for ears and a leaf mouth channeling a rooster spirit that heralds the start of spring. Collage 2: A shiny green apple with a cyclopic eye and a handy eye leaf. These would also make great text book bookmarks. Claim away!
This weekend, images from the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, VA were widely circulated, showing white supremacists marching with tiki torches as they chanted Nazi-associated slogans. The events in Charlottesville have once again forced Lowe’s Home Improvement, one of the country’s largest vendors of tiki torches, to remind our customers that our tiki torches are meant to be used exclusively for burning American flags. There should be no ambiguity here. Thanks to their durable design and long-lasting, refillable fuel canisters, our bamboo tiki torches are the ideal implement for torching the American flag. It should thus go without saying that using our tiki torches for things like neo-Nazi rallies, backyard luaus, or restaurant decor is wildly inappropriate. The only proper use of a Lowe’s tiki torch is in the safe, controlled immolation of the symbol of American imperialism, slavery, and genocide. Advertisement Additionally, while citronella does have the side effect of repelling mosquitos, its primary function is to mask the acrid smell of burning synthetic flag fibers. Please do not use Lowe’s tiki torches to keep insects away from your backyard barbecue. I would also like to stress that Lowe’s Home Improvement’s tiki torches are meant exclusively for outdoor use, like on the steps of a courthouse or in front of a police station. Lowe’s in no way condones the actions, objectives, or beliefs of the Charlottesville marchers. We aim solely to provide the best prices, products, and customer service to make Lowe’s your one-stop shop for home improvement and American flag–burning. Advertisement Thank you.
TONY JONES: Good evening and welcome to Q&A live from Founders Theatre at Federation University in Ballarat. I'm Tony Jones and here to answer your questions tonight, the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Please welcome our guest. Thank you very much. Now, David Marr's Quarterly Essay paints Bill Shorten as a consummate backroom party man who's risen to the top without ever really being tested by Australian voters. According to the polls, eight days ago he was coasting towards The Lodge in front of one Australia's most unpopular Prime Ministers. Now he's facing Malcolm Turnbull and a much tougher challenge. But tonight it's the testing questions of both Labor and Coalition voters, who want to know more about the alternative Prime Minister. Let's go straight to our first question. It's from Steve Theodore. TURNBULL ASCENDANCY STEVE THEODORE: With due acknowledgement to Bill Hayden, a drover's dog could have led the ALP to electoral victory over a government led by Tony Abbott. Do you acknowledge that the ascension of Malcolm Turnbull has made your job a lot harder and that your leadership is now a lot less secure? BILL SHORTEN: Let me state at the outset that I'm not going to be mealy-mouthed about the rise of Malcolm Turnbull replacing Tony Abbott. I think it is a good thing for this country that Tony Abbott is no longer Prime Minister of Australia. Now, of course... TONY JONES: Now the boost to Malcolm Turnbull? BILL SHORTEN: I've pretty much covered that. Of course, though, I would liked to have been the one who replaced Tony Abbott because whoever did that was going to get a boost in the polls, as they say. But what I'm looking forward to is a change not in the personalities of who the Liberal Leaders are, but a change in the way we do politics in this country. Now, I understand that the last two years have been deeply unsatisfactory to Australians. Labor has been making that point for the last two years and, to some extent, we take some, you know, satisfaction that because we stood strong against the 2014 Budget and the 2015 Budget, because we didn't cop the pension cuts and the broken promises, that put more pressure on a first term Liberal Government than I think the experts were saying would occur and certainly Mr Abbott. So now, what I'm hoping with the rise of Malcolm Turnbull, is not just a change in salesman, but a change in direction for this country and we will have a debate about who has got the best plan for the future, because that's what I think really matters, and let's have a debate about ideas and not some of the negative shouting, the dividing of this country that we've seen. Really, I think the last two years has underestimated Australia. TONY JONES: Okay, Now, I read in David Marr's essay that you admire Napoleon, especially for his maxim, "Find your enemy's weakest point and concentrate your attack there." Is that true, first of all, that you admire Napoleon? BILL SHORTEN: I admire Napoleon. I think he's a great figure of history, yes. TONY JONES: So Malcolm Turnbull's weakest point, what is that? BILL SHORTEN: I'm not sure that will be yet. I think the challenge... TONY JONES: You only see his strengths at this time? BILL SHORTEN: Well, no, I just think he has been there for six days, that's all. Well, I don't think that, actually, I know that. What I believe is the challenge will be for Malcolm Turnbull will be can he move his party, which is more right wing than the Liberal Party has been in decades, can he move it through its policies back to the centre of Australian politics? See, I'm up for a debate about the future. We will have arguments, Malcolm Turnbull and I, but there will be things we agree on, too, but I think it's really important that Malcolm Turnbull doesn't change his views that he had when he was the sort of Liberal gadfly giving Tony Abbott a hard time and that I hope that he sticks true to his views about climate change about marriage equality, about making sure that we can have a debate about ideas and we don't just get back into the politics as usual. TONY JONES: Okay. Our next question will take us to some of what you are mentioning there. It's from Belinda Jones. POLITICAL EXPEDIENCY BELINDA JONES: Malcolm was last ousted as Leader of the Liberal Party due to his support for a world leading carbon trading scheme, yet now he thinks that our joke of a Direct Action plan is sufficient. Mr Shorten, you were famous for your role in the Rudd Gillard Rudd fiasco, flipping allegiance to make, then re make a Prime Minister. At what point does pursuing political survival become more important than upholding your own principles and values? BILL SHORTEN: Well, I actually think - well, there's two parts to your question or two points in your question and I would like to answer them both and I will try to do it as succinctly as I can. The leadership instability in Labor in the last six years that Labor was in, I think, caused a lot of harm. Now, it was done to try and prevent Tony Abbott and a more extreme view of Australia come to the fore but, ultimately, that failed, too. So Labor it was very difficult. It was very difficult, but I think that Labor has learned its lessons. For the last two years, one thing you haven't had out of Labor is a whole lot of discussion about our disunity and division, when I think a lot of people thought that would be the case. But you ask the question about, you know - about principles. I know that for Labor to get elected at the next election, we have to say what we mean and mean what we say. Well, there is no short cut. I think this is going to be the greatest conundrum or problem that the Liberals face. Are they a party of the centre? Or are they a party of the right? And no issue illustrates that more clearly, I believe, than climate change and an emissions trading scheme. One thing I admired about Malcolm Turnbull when he was Leader of the Opposition, he said he didn't want to lead a party which wasn't fair dinkum on climate change. I don't think he used those precise words, but that was the dense sense of what he meant, and that involved having an emissions trading scheme; letting the market set a price on carbon pollution. Now when we ask him questions about this in Parliament he has changed his tune. That will be up for Malcolm Turnbull and for Australians to work out if they're satisfied with that but for Labor on climate change, we've made it very clear and we made it clear when Tony Abbott was full of his carbon tax rhetoric when he was Prime Minister, we made it very clear we want to put a price on it. We will have an emissions trading scheme. We are going to push for 50% renewable energy by 2030 as part of our energy mix. Labor can't afford to backflip on its core policies, and we won't. TONY JONES: Now, I'm going to just press you on part of the question that was about you that you avoided essentially and the principle talked about here could be loyalty to the leader that you helped install in this Rudd Gillard Rudd fiasco that was mentioned there. Do you think people are confused about you and your loyalty because of your role in two coups: the coup to put Julia Gillard in, the coup to take her out? BILL SHORTEN: Well, as I said earlier in answer to the question, so I didn't really think I was avoiding it that was very difficult. Labor believed a lot of people in Labor believed that the Government had lost its way and we thought that Julia Gillard would do a better job, and then much more recently when it was clear that Labor was heading for a very big defeat, there was a view which formed that Kevin Rudd would at least help save the furniture, which he did. But what Labor learned from that, what we did learn from that, all of us, every party member, every member of the parliamentary party, is that you can't treat this as business as usual and that politics is all just about the next opinion poll. That would be a mistake. So now I've watched the Liberals do exactly what we did. They've done exactly what we've done. The difference is that the Labor Party has learned and we are two different things to what happened then. One, we are much more united and, two, we introduced rules which make it a lot harder to do. So, we know what we've got to do. We've got to be united. That's the sort of initial thing that Labor has to do. Then we've got to develop policies and that's what we've been doing this year and, along the way, I think we've been a very strong Opposition to Tony Abbott. The Opposition, we're still here and Mr Abbott is gone. TONY JONES: Okay. We're going to go to another question, again related to what we've been talking about, it is from Mary Hollick. BIPARTISAN BILL? MARY HOLLICK: With the end of Australia's failed experiment with US style Tea Party politics, and the Government and Opposition now offering more centrist policies, could you, Mr Shorten, specify which issues you would work with the Government on to arrive at consensus for the good of the nation? BILL SHORTEN: Yes, I can, actually, and I think that's a really important question, Mary, because whilst there will be things that we disagree on, I agree and we said when Joe Hockey brought down his second Budget that the future of Australia's economy needed to be based around science and technology. It would appear that the Government, the Liberals, are now saying the same thing, so he we will work together on that. One issue which I think we can work together on is climate change. I do believe that we need to encourage the Government to have a renewable energy future, to perhaps be bolder than their current policies on tackling climate change. Now, what Malcolm Turnbull was in Opposition is he worked with the Government of the day, Mr Rudd, on climate change and then his own party tore him down. I can make this promise to Mr Turnbull, that if he wants to go back and be fair dinkum on climate change, my party will back it. You know, in some ways my job is easier on climate change than Malcolm Turnbull's. My party believes in it. So there is climate change we can work together. Another issue I would like to work together is the issue of domestic violence. In Mr Abbott's last week, or - I think, sorry, the week before, three women were killed by former partners who once upon a time said they loved them. Now, I don't think we need to wait to an election to really tackle domestic violence. I would also like to say through this audience to Australians that we could work with Mr Turnbull on marriage equality. We are happy to have a conscience vote right now. We don't need to have an ongoing debate over the next number of years to have a taxpayer funded opinion poll of $160 million which we know was designed by Tony Abbott to delay marriage equality. Let's just have a conscience vote. Let's just do it. If there is not a majority in the Parliament to do it, so be it. At least we found that out and we don't have to spend $160 million. So marriage equality, climate change, domestic violence we can work with Mr Turnbull and also the priority of science and research. That's something Labor fundamentally believes in our DNA TONY JONES: All right. You're watching Q&A, where we encourage political leaders to express their opinions but stick to the facts. So if you hear any dodgy claims on Q&A tonight, tip us off with a tweet using the hashtags Fact Check and QANDA and keep an eye on our Twitter account for those fact checks. Well, the next question comes from Jim Liaskos. TRADE UNION ROYAL COMMISSION JIM LIASKOS: Integrity is always a key attribute for any Prime Minister. With your involvement in the downfall of two former Prime Ministers, the stench of the Health Services Union, the CFMEU and unanswered questions from the royal commission colouring your years as a key player in the union movement in Australia, does the high standard your party has set in regard to perceptions about Royal Commissioner Heydon mean that your leadership is likewise damaged, or is there a different standard for potential Prime Ministers? BILL SHORTEN: There's a few assumptions in your question, which I'm going to take issue with. I mean, we're not here just to, you know, just agree with each other for the sake of it. The royal commission was set up by Tony Abbott to go after his political rivals. If you want to deal with issues of criminal behaviour in the workplace, then we use the police and there is measures we can do there. In terms of the Royal Commissioner, who saw nothing wrong with attending Liberal Party events whilst he is hearing matters investigating the political rivals of the Liberal Party, that just doesn't pass the common-sense test. But when it goes to, I think, the broader issues about integrity and change in leadership, what Australians want is they want to focus on the policies. What I can promise people here and now is that when we commit to a policy, that's what you are going to get, and what I can also commit to Australians is that when we talk about issues at the highest possible standards, the Labor Party is committed to maintaining those standards. TONY JONES: Okay. Now, look, the questioner referred to unanswered questions from the royal commission. One of them is whether you demanded side payments from for the AWU to the AWU from employers while you were negotiating EBUs on behalf of workers. Did you do that? BILL SHORTEN: Well, actually there's two points you just made there. The gentleman did say "unanswered questions". I answered over 900 questions at that royal commission. TONY JONES: Did you answer that one? BILL SHORTEN: Yes. But I'm just going to the point... TONY JONES: So what's the answer now? BILL SHORTEN: Well, Tony, you make a serious issue so I'm going to treat your question with the seriousness that I actually think you expect. TONY JONES: No, I hope you do. BILL SHORTEN: So the first thing is over 900 questions asked of the Opposition Leader, yet, when you look at how the royal commission has managed to ignore other people who have gone there and ask them far less diligent questioning and, indeed, was helping prepare witnesses they like to answer questions, I don't think this royal commission has been a level playing field. But going to your specific question, the answer is no, I didn't. TONY JONES: Okay, so 2005, a deal was struck with Thiess John Holland to pay the AWU $100,000 a year for three years during the course of the giant EastLink project. Did you negotiate for that $100,000 to be paid each year to the AWU? BILL SHORTEN: The EastLink project that Tony is referring to was the single largest civil construction project that had been built in Australia. It was worth something like $3 billion in terms of the cost to taxpayers. I negotiated an agreement which saw the best payment of construction pay rates to construction workers ever negotiated in Australia. As part of that, I have a philosophy. I had a philosophy then and I still have a philosophy now. That workplace relations doesn't just have to be us versus them, the bosses versus the workers. Now, sometimes there is conflict and you've got to be willing to, you know, represent your corner or your group as strongly as you can, but I believe that the EastLink project, which saw not a single worker seriously injured, which saw the best pay rates and saw taxpayers' money being well spent and finished ahead of time, was a good deal. In terms of the relationship of the company working with the union, there has been an argument put somewhat bizarrely by some conservative commentators that a company and a union having shared interests is something to be suspicious of. Now, I don't have that view. So it is correct that when we negotiated with this company on behalf of our members, we would also ask the company to train our delegates in health and safety, that we would also ask our company to release workplace delegates to be able to learn more about how to do their jobs and resolve matters, so certainly that is the case. TONY JONES: Okay, but specifically, because it can't be magic that each year for three years they gave the union $100,000, so there must have been a deal, a quid pro quo deal where you do this, we do that? BILL SHORTEN: So our point about all of this, working with companies and working with the construction companies and other companies is this: We think that workplace relations works best when a union is making sure that our delegates and workplace reps are well trained. So certainly we would charge the company money for the training of our representatives so they could do their job better on the site. No, but there was no... TONY JONES: Yes, but did you strike that deal. But did you strike that deal while you were negotiating the EBA, that's the critical question, because people wonder whether that's a conflict of interest, asking money for the union while simultaneously negotiating a pay and conditions deal with the company? BILL SHORTEN: My first priority at all times, as it is with union reps generally, is to get the best deal for your members. In addition, we also would work with the company to make sure they provided training to the union reps so that they could do their job very well. This has been the case well before that project and well after. TONY JONES: So I'm going to interrupt you there again. So was there a specific deal to give the union $100,000 a year for three years and was that deal made during the negotiations for the EBU? BILL SHORTEN: No. Well, the answer - sorry, I thought I had said that earlier, but, sorry, the answer is no. The arrangement which is entered into quite often is that the union will ask the company to help pay for the training of their workers with time off and the payment of training services and we certainly did that, yes, but in terms of a specific arrangement to somehow do a worse deal for your members, absolutely not, categorically not. TONY JONES: Okay. The next question is from Bruce King. CLEAN EVENT TRADE OFF BRUCE KING: Bill, I love that word "integrity" by the way, it's something I live by. Bill, the EBA agreement you made with Cleanevent was well under the Fair Work Australia award conditions, including weekend penalty rates, which I thought Fair Work was there to save people from that. This placed other contractors trying to compete for the same work in a bad position. Will this practice go on to other awards such as retail or even maybe hospitality? TONY JONES: Well, there is an assumption in your question, which isn't quite correct. In terms of negotiations done by unions, they have to get their agreements - certainly under most of the time, most of the laws except for Tony Abbott's WorkChoices laws - they have to be approved by the members, they have to be voted upon and, secondly, they have to pass the various no disadvantage tests which are put forward by the industrial relations law and, specifically, in the case of Cleanevent and arrangements which I am involved in, we were made sure that people were paid properly. Anyone who has ever worked in event cleaning or if you've ever seen the cleaning at the end of the day at a race track or a dog track or the shows, knows there is a lot of fly by night contractors. So the assumption that this agreement was disadvantaging unscrupulous contractors is not correct. In terms of the extension to retail and other awards, the way in which penalty rates are negotiated is either through enterprise bargaining or through the award system, and that's been the case for a long while, and Labor is certainly very sceptical of proposals to simply get rid of the safety net which exists to protect people TONY JONES: Sorry, I'm just going to quickly I will go back to our questioner because he threw his hand up there. BRUCE KING: Bill, once again we talk integrity here. As far as voting goes on award, those members were signed up without even knowing, so I don't know how they can vote on an award when it's that case and it's my belief you only need a certain number of people to do that vote. So I have been involved with event clean up, in fact I was involved with Skilled Stadium and I know that mob. Cleanevent come in to take over that contract, which also took away local Geelong jobs, because they all came down from Melbourne to do that job. TONY JONES: Keep it brief, if you can, Bruce. Okay, thank you very much. Do you want to respond to that? BILL SHORTEN: Well, in terms of voting, agreements have a process to go through and at no stage has any argument been led with any evidence that that process isn't pursued. TONY JONES: Okay. Let's go to our next question. It's from Veronica Levay. ADVERSE FINDINGS? VERONICA LEVAY. Opposition Leader Shorten, if you receive an adverse finding from the trade union royal commission, will you immediately resign as leader, and allow Anthony Albanese to take Labor to the next election? BILL SHORTEN: In terms of the royal commission and its findings, I said a bit earlier and I'm trying to move through questions so people get the chance to ask as many questions as possible, but I want to come back and look at this royal commission again, I will just state some facts here. The royal commission, in my opinion, was set up for a range of motives. On one hand it is to look at particular arrangements in the construction industry and also, I believe, it was set up to smear its political rivals. So, I do not believe I do not believe automatically that because the royal commissioner if, and you stressed it was a hypothetical question, if they're to make an adverse finding, no, I don't accept that automatically I am going to allow that royal commission, which is set up on a political basis, to start dictating what the Labor Party does or how we run our politics in this country. If there is criminality found by this royal commission, well, then, that is a matter which needs to be looked at, but I don't accept that everything that this royal commission is doing is started with the best of motivations, nor do I believe that this process has been entirely fair. TONY JONES: Let me, a quick follow up on that: What happens if former company represent reps, like Stephen Sass from Thiess John Holland, come forward and give evidence to the royal commission which contradicts what you have said about what happened in those behind closed doors negotiation? BILL SHORTEN: Well, that won't be correct then but, again, you're talking about a hypothetical. Listen, I'm very happy with the record I have for looking after workers in Australia and the workers I represented. Now, we've spoken about a couple of agreements. I probably signed off on around 700 agreements. In my time, I know that we lifted the wages faster than the inflation rate for workers. I know that we made workplaces safer. I know that from time to time we'd have to make decisions to make sure that people were able to work co operatively with their management and we would always give people a voice in what was happening, so I stand by my record. At the same time I was representing, along with hundreds of other people, workers in Australia in the union movement, we had a Liberal government winding back conditions for workers, for millions of workers, taking away the safety net. You know labour relations has always been a controversial area where there are strong views. But one thing I will not do is allow a royal commission or a conservative government to undermine the safety net for Australian workers. You know, if we want to see what the world looks like if you want to take away the capacity of unions to represent workers, have a look at 7 Eleven. You know, these are not issues of the last century. When people say that unions no longer have a role in Australian society, well, I say they don't quite understand the nature of our democratic society. I am proud of being a trade union representative. I am proud of my record and I will contrast standing up for literally thousands of workers against Mr Abbott's record or Mr Turnbull's record. At the same time I'm negotiating for cleaners or representing construction workers, these gentlemen were sitting at the Cabinet table of John Howard voting to take away conditions en masse from millions of Australians. TONY JONES: Okay, a quick follow up on the royal commission. Are you suggesting that Dyson Heydon, because of the fundraising Liberal fundraising scandal, will not have any findings which you will accept? BILL SHORTEN: No, I'm not saying that, but I've been asked two hypothetical questions in a row... TONY JONES: Well, I'm just asking you about that because you were talking about the royal commission being political. Obviously the fundraising issue fed into that. Are you going to accept anything the royal commissioner says? BILL SHORTEN: Well, I put two caveats on what I said. One is if there is criminal matters, well, no one has got any tolerance for that in the Labor Party. No one has come forward to me from the union movement and said that if someone is found to have broken the law, to have behaved in a criminal fashion, no one is saying they shouldn't be charged, no one is saying that they shouldn't feel the full consequences of the law but this... TONY JONES: But I'm talking about if he makes adverse findings against you, which are not necessarily criminal. BILL SHORTEN: Okay. that's a different question you're asking. The first question you're saying is if Dyson Heydon made any findings, are you saying automatically we put them all in the bin and ignore them. TONY JONES: Let's stick with the findings about you. BILL SHORTEN: But then you've asked that latter question. You (Indistinct) yourself. I know what I've done. I know that I've stood up for workers. I know that I've been happy to accept scrutiny for what I do. I offer myself for the highest position in the land in our democracy, so I accept scrutiny, but what I don't accept is that it's worth $60 million to second guess whether or not you pay someone a casual rate or a penalty rate on a Sunday and have every sort of industrial negotiation second guessed by barristers who are paid $3.5 million. It's nonsense. You know, it's all very well everyone says, oh, it's a royal commission, therefore everything it does must be respectable. That is not true. A royal commission is not a court. It is an extension of the Executive Government of Australia. I don't believe it is the best use of $63 million, to investigate gossip and innuendo when, in fact, there are other mechanisms to investigate criminality. I don't buy that. I imagine what could have been done with those tens of millions of dollars. I don't accept that counsel assisting - who gets to ask questions, who is paid $3.5 million of your money, to ask questions - I actually don't think that is the best use of taxpayer money. And, yes, Tony, I do think the royal commission is politically motivated, and so I'm not going to simply just give up and say, oh, well, there is nothing you can do about it. I don't buy that. TONY JONES: Okay. You're watching thank you very much. You're watching Q&A, live from Ballarat, with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. The next question comes from Lisanne Doyle WHY TRUST LABOR & UNIONS? LISANNE DOYLE: Having lived in the Latrobe Valley for 15 years from 1985 to 2000, I experienced first hand the negative effect the unions had on that economy. I'm now seeing within the Victorian economy under the Labor Government, an increase in the number of strikes and industrial disputes. This suggests to me that the unions seem to have a freedom under Labor where they can easily gain the upper hand. Please give me one good reason, Mr Shorten, why I should not be afraid for Australia's economy should Labor win the next federal election? BILL SHORTEN: If you lived in you live in the Latrobe Valley, I think you said, between 1985 and 2000. For people not have Victoria, that's in sort of central West Gippsland, it was a powerhouse region of the economy. Sir John Monash was put in charge of setting up the State Electricity Commission after the First World War. So it's not dissimilar to the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, for instance. It was a coalmining province. I mean, it's much more than that but that was certainly the State Electricity Commission. But if you lived there between 1985 and 2000, it wasn't industrial relations which caused the dislocation of Latrobe Valley, it was Jeff Kennett privatising the SEC and thousands of people lost their jobs. Now, I do not condone every form of industrial militancy. I was a moderate union leader. You know, we were talking about earlier working with EastLink. I was determined that you could have good industrial relations. I don't agree with every wild cat strike. I've had more arguments, I suspect, with the militant elements of the trade union movement than probably anyone in this room because I believe that industrial relations works best when there is cooperation. You should never be afraid to have a disagreement but you should never be in fear of negotiating either. So when you talk about your concern about unions in Victoria, I also have to say this: industrial disputation in this country is far down on what it was in the 1980s in the Latrobe Valley. Productivity, unfortunately, is down even though there is less industrial action. What concerns me in this country isn't that the 12% of Australians in the private sector who belong to unions are about to take over the country. What concerns me is that real income growth in this country is flat lining. See, what we actually need in this country is a new discussion about workplace relations. Yes, there have been times when unions have done the wrong thing, and, yes, there have been times when employers have done the wrong thing, but the truth of the matter is that that example, those examples of workplace relations don't describe, in my opinion, 95% of people's experience going to work. So I do believe in a strong safety net and if you believe in a strong safety net at work, you're more likely to vote Labor than Liberal, that's the truth of the matter because Mr Abbott, Mr Turnbull and the rest of them -I've never really heard them get excited about lifting the minimum wage in this country. They keep voting against lifting compulsory superannuation. You know, the compact in this country, what makes the Australian economic story so special is we don't have vast disparities of the working poor, like you see in perhaps the United States, and the super rich. We do have a good safety net. So I want to reassure you, because you asked give you a reason. The future of work in this country, the future of economic growth in this country, a better future, is not going to be determined by a scare campaign about trade unions which has a lot more to do with what happened 30 years ago than it does today. What will make Australians better off in the future, is a proper education system, is a decent safety net of health care and wages, is a commitment to innovation and I'm telling you don't worry about the unions per se. TONY JONES: Let's move on to - let's move on. I'm sorry to interrupt you but we will move on to some of those issues. BILL SHORTEN: Excellent. TONY JONES: And the next question comes from Jean Flynn. PRIVATE SCHOOLS JEAN FLYNN: Two years ago I stood in the hail with my two children and a group of other protesters to show the then Premier, Denis Napthine, that we gave a Gonski but do you think that allocating government funding for education according to individual student needs is enough or should Australia look to Finland for inspiration and do away with private schools altogether? BILL SHORTEN: Thank you for standing up two years ago with your kids. It's one of the great broken promises of this Liberal Government. Before the last election, for all the difficulties Labor had through its division, there was one issue time and time again people rated Labor better than Liberal on. It was proper funding of schools according to need. Now, you referred to the Gonski campaign. That's named after the chap who chaired a review set up by Julia Gillard to talk about what should the future of schools funding be. And we came back with an answer, which I support. It's individual needs based funding. So schools should be funded based upon a series of criteria and it is a bit more scientific, but to save time I will just go through what the needs based funding that Labor has always supported. You know, is the school in a low income area? Does it have a lot of, for instance, children from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background? Is it a small school? Does it take children with disabilities? These were some of the criteria. I like that needs based funding because, traditionally, what's happened in education over the last 40 years is the Commonwealth has funded private schools and the states have been left to fund government schools. Now, I think that that private government debate is not the right debate to have, so I will just disappoint you a bit slightly with the second part of your question. For me, I'm not fussed about private and government, I'm fussed about needs based funding. Now, I think though, that there's a lot from Finland and its education that we can learn from and one of the key things is the central role of teachers. Supporting our teachers, making sure they're getting the best quality training, making sure they are given respect in society and they are paid properly, I think Finland has plenty to teach us about that. What annoys me a little bit about two years ago is both Liberal and Labor said we would fund according to need, but the Liberals have backslid ever since on needs based funding in schools. So I can promise you Labor will do needs based funding in the schools. That will be our policy at the next election. Kate Ellis, my shadow spokesperson and others, we're finalising our approach. Labor is still committed to the principles which you stood in the hail for and at the next election, I have to say if the Liberals say they are on a unit ticket with us, Christopher Pyne and the rest of them, they didn't do it last time so why do we think they'd change next time. TONY JONES: Very briefly, have you figured out how to pay for it yet and will you tell the public how you are going to do that, along with the increased cost of the NDIS, along with the increased cost of health care, in particular hospital care, which is requiring billions of dollars of new funds. BILL SHORTEN: I'm just making a note: health care, NDIS and schools. You're right, Tony, it isn't easy. It's not straightforward because in the last two years the current government have doubled the deficit. I think they promised two years ago that they'd be a government of adults. Now we've got a new government of adults to replace the last group of adults. But in terms of the budget position, we are going to need a bigger discussion over the next number of months about what the true numbers are, because I don't think the Government has been straight with us. But, yes, we will have costed policies for the next election. Now, on the NDIS ... TONY JONES: Will they include tax increases? BILL SHORTEN: Well, I'll just try and - I know you want to move me... TONY JONES: Inevitably they will have to, won't they? BILL SHORTEN: I know you want to move me along with your first question but just on the National Disability Insurance Scheme in particular, I just want to - you mentioned it. I just want to come to it. I'm disappointed the new Prime Minister hasn't make a Minister for disabilities. I think that that is important because the National Disability Insurance Scheme is a real reform, which will provide packages of support to families with family members who have severe and profound disabilities. The National Disability Insurance Scheme is already paid for in the Budget. So when we talk about health care in schools, I don't want to see NDIS automatically lumped into that, because that is paid for already in the existing Budget. TONY JONES: Well, for the next three years, that's true, and beyond that it gets much more expensive and so does everything else. BILL SHORTEN: Well, just on the National Disability Insurance again... TONY JONES: No. BILL SHORTEN: Okay. TONY JONES: So, but we'll come to the National Disability Insurance Scheme. There are questions on it later. BILL SHORTEN: Oh, okay. TONY JONES: But the real question is are you going to raise taxes in order to pay for all these promises? BILL SHORTEN: Well, we have proposed that there are taxes which can be raised, so, yes, but what I say is that the first two which we've looked at involve dialling back the excessive loopholes in superannuation tax concessions which currently the very, very, very well off enjoy. I mean, if you've got a couple of million dollars in superannuation and you've got an income stream of interest of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, I don't see why that should be tax free income when someone else who is going to work earning far less, still pays more action tax. So, yes, we are interested in clamp down on some of the loopholes at the top end of superannuation, and also there are more taxes we think can be raised from multinationals who do business in Australia. TONY JONES: Okay. I'll just make the point - we may come back to this later, but none of the things you've talked about there are going to pay for the huge deficit in funding which we're talking about. But let's move on because we've got a question on - effectively on tertiary education from Anne Sced. TERTIARY EDUCATION ANNE SCED: Hi, I am a teacher and since the Coalition Government proposed the deregulation of tertiary education, I've been in the unfortunate position of having to speak to some of the kids that this is going to affect in a real way very shortly, or they are afraid it is. So I've had to counsel them and console them and try and reassure them that things will be okay. But they're really, really concerned - a number of them are concerned that they will no longer be able to afford a tertiary education and they are great kids. They're talented. They're enthusiastic. They're hard working. They're astonishing and they've got so much to offer the country if they can get their foot in the door. And so, on their behalf, my question is: what are you going to do to make sure that our tertiary system remains fair, affordable and merit based? TONY JONES: I want to clap that, too. Labor has been really strongly opposed to what the Liberal Government have proposed in higher education. In a nutshell I mean, before the last election, the Liberal Opposition said there would be no changes and then, after the election, surprise, surprise, they've decided to cut 20% from university funding and fully deregulate the price setting by universities. I think this has been a disastrous proposition for universities. On one hand, you take 20% out of university funding - Federation University, right here, would lose $52 million. Okay, the problem is if you take 20% away from universities, what are they going to do to recover that loss? Charge students more. And that's the deregulation. Now, I always understood that deregulation was positive where it would increase competition and decrease prices. But this would have the exact opposite effect. So, today Labor announced our policy for higher education. We've decided that with some of the money we would raise from multinational taxation and superannuation loopholes that we would commit to put a floor, that's an F-L-O-O-R, in university funding and that would be more generous than what the Liberals are proposing. So we've proposed to basically take away the 20% cuts that the Libs are doing and restore it to as it was. What that means is that universities don't have the same pressure to increase prices. So the first part of my answer to your question is that Labor will you tell a government and a political party by the choices they make. We have decided that if this country is to have a bright future, we need to have people being able to go to university from all backgrounds, so we've decided that we will find the money in a difficult economic circumstances, as Tony said, and that's just our priority. See, one thing I don't think this Government understands about young people and, indeed, not so young people who want to go to university, is that - you know, young people today have to pay 9.5% into super. They've got to pay their HECS debt. The only way most young people can hope to get a house is if their parent - if they inherit it from their parents and now the Liberals want to put a GST on and they want to charge you more to go to university. The answer in Australia is not always to increase the price of everything. In terms of the equity, we've made it very clear that in return for providing guaranteed funding, we expect the universities and we'll sit down and work it through with them, to have equity as one of their criteria. I want to see more mature aged students who are brave enough to seek to change their career to be able to do it without being discouraged by higher prices. We want to make sure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island kids who currently don't get the same access, get more access to higher education. There is a 6% gap in completion between kids from regional Australia and metropolitan Australia. We think that's an important gap to bridge and we are asking our universities to focus on quality, on improving completion rates and, of course, to prioritise support for teaching in universities. It is a good equity platform on higher education. TONY JONES: Okay. Thank you. Let's change tack again. Our next question comes from Wayne Harbour. BALLARAT BUSTS BUST WAYNE HARBOUR: Mr Shorten, the Ballarat Botanical Gardens have a fine avenue containing 27 bronze portraits of every Australian PM. BILL SHORTEN: Oh, yeah. WAYNE HARBOUR: The last bust unveiled being that of Julia Gillard. However, the bequest has run out of money and there is insufficient funds for additional busts. If you are elected Prime Minister, will you allocate funds to allow Tony Abbott's bust to be cast and placed on the avenue looking into Julia Gillard's eyes and standing to the left of Kevin Rudd? TONY JONES: Well, you should, shouldn't you? BILL SHORTEN: Do I take that as a comment? Absolutely. Let's not wait until the next election to do that. I will ask Malcolm. I think he'd probably be up for funding it, anyway. He should. He helped put him there. TONY JONES: I suspect he'll have the first option to fund that. Now, the next question is from Andrew Young. CHINA FREE TRADE AGREEMENT ANDREW YOUNG: As a regional development consultant working with a number of regional development businesses who are awaiting the signing of the ChAFTA agreement, those businesses collectively will be looking at over $100 million of new investment and 400 new jobs. You're telling us that we need to change that agreement because somehow those businesses... TONY JONES: Let's just make it clear to everyone watching... ANDREW YOUNG: Yeah, I'm asking the question. TONY JONES: No, no, no, sorry. You're talking about the China... ANDREW YOUNG: Free trade agreement. TONY JONES: ...Australia free trade agreement. ANDREW YOUNG: Free trade agreement, yes. TONY JONES: Yep. So what I'm hearing from the Labor Party and yourself is that somehow these businesses are going to be obliged to employ Chinese workers in these regional businesses. There is a lot of confusion. They are sitting on this money waiting to invest and so are the regional communities that they represent, with new jobs. I'm interested in your view, please. BILL SHORTEN: Thanks, Andrew, and when I say thank you for that question I really mean it because the debate - oh, I meant it every other time for every other question too. But in the case of the China free trade agreement it is a really important public policy debate, so it's a chance for me just to spell out what Labor thinks. We support having a China free trade agreement, so that's good. Our position has been misrepresented in parts of the media and not surprisingly by elements in the Government. The treaty has been negotiated. The idea that we expect our negotiators to go back to China and vary the actual terms of the treaty is not what we are saying. The only proposition, and it is a pretty reasonable proposition, I hope you'd agree, once I go through it, is that we are concerned that there are matters arising from the treaty which need to be belt and braced, and I'm talking about the use of temporary labour coming into Australia and that there should be appropriate safeguards around that. Now, when I talk about appropriate safeguards, with the previous PM negotiating with him, frankly, was a waste of time. Once they had decided there was a political game to play here, I couldn't get them to negotiate. I've already raised with Malcolm Turnbull that we need to talk about the legitimate concerns which have been raised and the concerns are very simple. They're three. TONY JONES: Have you got a compromised position, though? BILL SHORTEN: Oh, of course. TONY JONES: Because there are a number of people here who have asked about this and people want to know in this region and in other parts of the country when Labor will sign the agreement, when Labor will vote to allow the agreement through the Senate? Well, the agreement doesn't come to the Senate. There is enabling legislation which deals with some of the administrative matters arising from it. Labor's position is very straightforward. For projects over $150 million, there has been an arrangement entered into, not in the actual treaty, but in related matters which would say if there is an investor who is putting in more than $150 million, they can bring people in from China to do the jobs on it. Now, our view is that they should ask and ensure that Australians who could do the work get first crack at the work. That is not an unreasonable proposition, and that is what exists in other free trade agreements TONY JONES: But Andrew Robb consistently says the conditions under which Chinese workers or other foreign workers could come into the country under this agreement are exactly the same as Labor has agreed to in the past. BILL SHORTEN: Well, I thought you would raise that. I've got here the Korean agreement, the Malaysian agreement, the Chile agreement and the ASEAN agreement, New Zealand agreement. They all do have different conditions to the China agreement. But be that as it may, it is not a template of other free trade agreements. This $150 million clause has not been in other trade agreements. Furthermore, we would just like them to do labour market testing. We just want to be satisfied that if we are going to do a trade agreement that Australians, not just some Australians, but Australians - all Australians - get a benefit from it. Now, this is not a deal killer. It doesn't involve changing the treaty. I'm optimistic that there is a compromise, as you say, so, you know, I don't think this will be the concerns which you, Andrew, are raising. TONY JONES: Can you guarantee - can you guarantee to business people like that and others in the audience who are waiting for this agreement to be signed and ratified so that they can go ahead and make these investments, can you guarantee this won't be allowed to drag on until the next election, simply because it makes a good election issue? BILL SHORTEN: I certainly don't think it should drag onto the next election. Just for the record, the Government only presented the legislation last week, so and there is - and they know that there has been a Senate inquiry set up to review - and there's, sorry, a joint committee of Parliament reviewing the circumstances and the detail of the arrangements and so there hasn't been any undue delay. TONY JONES: So how quickly do you reckon it could be resolved? BILL SHORTEN: As soon as the Liberal Party sit down and work through our concerns. Like, I'm not running for the Liberal Party. It is not my job to be a rubber stamp for Tony Abbott. Imagine if every time the Liberal Party of Australia said, "You must do as we say." You'd have a GP tax, your pensions would have been cut, you'd have $100,000 degrees. But don't get me wrong, Labor has always, when it's been unfashionable, supported developing our links with China, from Gough Whitlam through to Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Now, a lot of people say, oh, the 1980s was when all the good reform was happening. That's when Labor was, you know, doing all the reforms. But the point is, at the same time that we were floating the dollar, at the same time as we were creating independent monetary policy through the Reserve Bank, it was Labor who were saying and we want a strong minimum wage, and we want to introduce compulsory superannuation and we want to have Medicare. It's now our turn to step up to the plate for reform. TONY JONES: Okay. BILL SHORTEN: I'm on board for a China... TONY JONES: No, we've got a lot of other... BILL SHORTEN: This is a really important... TONY JONES: There's a lot of other... BILL SHORTEN: I appreciate that. TONY JONES: Briefly, go ahead. BILL SHORTEN: No, because you said so many businesses are interested. I'm up for reform, we are up for a China free trade agreement. I just want to make sure that some Australians don't get done over when there is a simple administrative remedy available. If the Government says there is nothing to fear from this arrangement, then our compromises will be very easy to agree to. TONY JONES: So can you guarantee it won't go through to the next election? BILL SHORTEN: I certainly believe that with the change in leadership in the Liberal Party, the chances of having an intelligent discussion and negotiation, I certainly hope they've improved. Okay? TONY JONES: All right. Let's move on. Our next question - thank you. Very little time. Our next question comes from Brendan Johnston. YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT BRENDAN JOHNSTON: Mr Shorten, as a secondary schoolteacher I have observed continuous cutbacks to youth services, especially in employment training and VCAL programs. BILL SHORTEN: Yeah. BRENDAN JOHNSTON: With Ballarat's youth unemployment currently at over 20%, if you are trusted by the Australian electorate to become PM, what will your government do to the youth unemployment in regional communities like Ballarat? BILL SHORTEN: That's a good question. First of all, you talk about cutbacks in the school system. Only Labor is going to have policies to deal with needs based education which will improve your task as a secondary teacher and the people you can help. Secondly, what we've got to do is have - I think there has been too much when it comes to TAFE, trust in private providers. The pendulum has swung too far in favour of private providers. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are good providers of training in this country. There are excellent, outstanding providers, but I want to go and restore funding to TAFE, because I think that if kids are getting the best opportunities in terms of their trades qualifications, that gives kids who go through the VCAL stream the best chances in life. I think the other thing we can do is we can also make sure that there's more jobs being created. And how do you create more jobs? You do it through not just relying upon mining and not just relying on financial services but making sure that we have manufacturing. One of the big challenges in Ballarat - and I know that Rivers shed 100 people last week, we've seen the car components industry hit - is that you start backing in manufacturing. The way you back in manufacturing, you get behind climate change and renewable energy. There's a lot of car component makers who could start making solar products. We need the government of Australia, the Liberal Government of Australia, to drop its unreasonable, unscientific, really stupid anti-renewable energy policies and then we can create more manufacturing jobs. TONY JONES: Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. We've got another question on a different subject from Jayson Tayeh. DIVERSITY & BENDIGO MOSQUE JAYSON TAYEH: Within the regional Victorian city of Bendigo in recent weeks we've seen violence and racism shut down the CBD for an anti immigration rally against the building of a mosque in Bendigo. As a local, and as a Bendigo business owner, I feel this is both harmful to our community, our local economy and our reputation as a diverse and inclusive city. With the success of the re settlement of Karen refugees in rural Victoria and the discussion of resettling 12,000 refugees from Syria, how do we, as a regional community, remain confident that our nation's message of inclusion and diversity is echoed through our regional cities and businesses? TONY JONES: Try and keep it brief. BILL SHORTEN: I've been appalled at some of the protests against the mosque and no doubt that will trigger some hate mum from parts of Australia for me saying it. All I say to people who are intolerant of other's religion, just remember where you came from. My mum grew up in Ballarat. She grew up in the late 40s, early 50s. She got knocked back for a job in a supermarket here because she was Catholic. All I say is that when we start treating minorities poorly, then remember whatever majority you're in, you can turn into a minority. This is an immigrant nation. Other than Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people we all came from somewhere else. The first of my ancestors came here looking for gold. They didn't find any so the others got here as convicts. The point about it is intolerance demeans us all, and I really admire all those citizens of Bendigo and the small business whose have said that, you know what, let's have a bit of tolerance for diversity. You should be very proud of what you and others have been doing. TONY JONES: Thank you. Thank you very much. You're watching Q&A. We're live from Ballarat. The next question comes from Joanne Kermond. WIND FARMS JOANNE KERMOND: My family has been forced out from our home by intrusive sound waves, proven by acoustician Steve Cooper to come from nearby wind turbines at Cape Bridgewater. Many others have had to abandon their homes. There is no compensation, just cruel denial. My husband and I live in a battered old bus. Our children have been unable to stay with us? Is this fair? And why does the ABC love these dangerous and unsafe machines so much? TONY JONES: Bill Shorten, you don't have to answer the ABC part of it or you can attempt to if you like, but that's the other side of the renewable energy story, as far as some people is concerned? BILL SHORTEN: I am sorry that you are in the difficulties that you and your family are in. But I can't I don't agree with the general view that wind farms are, as I think you said, dangerous and, by implication, very bad. I think that wind energy has proven around the world in terms of delivering jobs, more climate friendly energy and income for farmers who have them on their properties. I'm not going to tell you that what you are going through is good or right for you for you but I don't believe that wind farms are causing the sort of collective menace which you and other sceptics of wind farms believe they are. TONY JONES: Just for the record, I don't think the ABC has a specific policy on wind farms, although there is awful lot of hot air generated in some of our studios. That is true. The next question is from James Hogben. EUREKA REPUBLIC JAMES HOGBEN: Mr Shorten, 161 years ago the seed for a Republican Australia was sown. When a person turns 21, they get the keys to the house. Do you think it's time that the Australian people got the keys to Government House and had the option of directly electing their Head of State? Thank you. TONY JONES: He was talking about Eureka Stockade, obviously. BILL SHORTEN: No, no, some of my family helped to hide Peter Lalor when he was on the run. Yes, I think we should become a Republic. I do, I think, in 2020 it will be 250 years since Captain Cook made first landfall in Australia. In that time we are ready, we are ready to have an Australian Head of State. I take nothing away from the Queen and her service, it is incredibly distinguished. But, you know, we've got Asia rising. We're an independent nation. I actually think constitutional reform would give this country more, like, sort of lifeblood energy when we deal with the rest of the world. So, yes, I do think we should become a Republic. I'm looking forward to having discussions with Malcolm Turnbull about that. He said that it's not the most important issue. I think Australians are capable of doing more than one thing at a time. In terms of your second part of your question or observation about direct election, I'm not sold on that yet. I think the first thing that we need to do is... TONY JONES: You say you are not sold on it. Do you oppose the model specifically because that was the model that the vast majority of Australians wanted at the last referendum, according to opinion polls? BILL SHORTEN: Yeah, I see some of the case for it in that how do you select people, and I would rather have it people being more involved in the decision than just members of Parliament. But I think there are issues around how do you avoid it becoming some sort of, you know, celebrity survivor like contest and the fact that Donald Trump could be anywhere near becoming President of America - goodness me. TONY JONES: Are you equating the Republican candidates to survivors? BILL SHORTEN: Oh, no, for the sake of foreign relations, I will just let people work out what they think. But I do think, you know, your point does contain a grain of what I think Australians are concerned about. I think that Australians want to see more from their politicians and their media about debates. Now, I include myself in that, I include you in that, too. I think what people are looking for is more depth of argument. So on an issue like the Republic, it is not simple, but I do think that what we need is leadership. You know, I think that in the next five years - well, first of all, we should set up a constitutional commission so that Australians learn more about their Constitution. This argument that it was written drafted in the 1890s and can never be changed, I don't buy that argument. TONY JONES: Okay, well, our questioner has got his hand up again. JAMES HOGBEN: Mr Shorten, with all due respect, the politicians have tried to have leaders - five leaders in the last five years. BILL SHORTEN: Yeah. JAMES HOGBEN: If we are going to have a President or a Governor General that is elected by the people, I think we can do a better job than what politicians have done in the last five years. TONY JONES: Okay. BILL SHORTEN: Hang on. TONY JONES: No, no. BILL SHORTEN: No, no, there's an obvious (indistinct). Come on. Come on. TONY JONES: I'm going to take that as a comment. BILL SHORTEN: All right. Take it as a comment, but I tell you, the same people also vote for us, and thank you. Okay. TONY JONES: Okay, the next question is from Luke Gahan. PUBLIC TRANSPORT LUKE GAHAN: Yeah, the front page of this morning's Brisbane Courier Mail had the headline 'Ride with Mal' announcing Turnbull's plan to free up hundreds of millions of dollars for public transport projects. Here in Ballarat our train has gone off the tracks. Will a Labor Federal Government join Turnbull in prioritising public transport, particularly here in the regions? BILL SHORTEN: Short answer yes. Slightly longer answer is Labor went to the last election with a public transport policy. We haven't had the sort of fatwa against public transport that the Liberals have had for the last two years and I tell you now, I think in the next five years work should start on cross river rail in Brisbane, start on work on a railway link for Badgerys Airport in Sydney. I think Melbourne should have and Victoria should have a metro, a Melbourne metro. I also think South Australia, Adelaide should have light rail. I think Western Australia and Perth should have a Perth metro rail plan. In terms of public transport infrastructure, one thing Mr Turnbull could do is it's good to catch the train, but what's more important is reverse the 4$.5 billion cuts that they took away from public transport infrastructure. So we back it. Don't worry about that. We are the public transport party and we are looking forward to Mr Turnbull converting the Liberals into being a little more pro public transport than they have been for the past two years. TONY JONES: Just very briefly, you didn't mention high speed rail which, of course, is Anthony Albanese's baby. Are you going to back that as well? BILL SHORTEN: We support funding the feasibility study, having a look at how it works. Ten years ago I wrote that Australia needed an inland railway tracking up the western side of the Dividing Ranges. But the reason why I spoke about the public transports in the big cities is there is $4.5 billion which the current Liberal Government have cut. If you really believe in public transport rather than just social media memes, what we need to do is see some of that money come back into public transport, and if Malcolm Turnbull wants to do it, we will work with him, that is our promise. TONY JONES: Okay, we've got time for one last question. We're running out of time so save your applause for later. It's from Denise Fitzpatrick. ECONOMY - WHAT MUST CHANGE? DENISE FITZPATRICK: Forty per cent of the workforce or five million Australian jobs are at risk of being taken over by computers in the next 10 15 years. Climate change will bring significant challenges to our economy. When Malcolm Turnbull took over the leadership of the Liberal Party and the country last week, he articulated a positive vision for Australia, but stated our need to be agile, and to take advantage of the opportunities this new century brings. Mr Shorten, what are the fundamental changes that you think will need to be made for us to take advantage of the opportunities that these changes are going to bring? BILL SHORTEN: Thanks, Denise. Five things I think we could do. Got to make sure our education system is working well. Got to make sure we have needs based funding in our schools, that we get TAFE having its funding restored, that we get higher education properly fund, not this deregulation which the current government has been proposing, so education is one. I mentioned infrastructure earlier tonight, public transport. I think if we become a nation who can make generational decisions on our infrastructure, that makes our cities and our regions more liveable. I also believe that we need to be a science base nation. I said in my budget reply speech back in May that, as a nation, we should commit to three per cent of our GDP being spent on science and research. Science, infrastructure, education. I also fundamentally believe in fairness. You know, let's talk about inequality. It doesn't always get the coverage it should. Australian statistics show that we are at the most unequal we've been in 75 years and some of the ways we can deal with inequality, a proper health care system, a proper system which tackles discrimination against older people, and I think a fifth area that we can really make this country sing, just treat women equally. We will start in Labor, by 2025, half of our MPs, at least half, will be women. We want to see 50% of all government boards, the positions being at least women, and also we think it's long overdue to tackle domestic violence which is if this nation does nothing else in the next 15 years but treats women equally, we are home. We've got a good future. TONY JONES: Okay. Thank you very much. I'm afraid that is all we have time for. It seemed to go very quickly. Please thank tonight's guest: Bill Shorten. And naturally we will be issuing a similar in fact, we already have issued a similar invitation to the new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to come and join us in the same format and our thanks to Ballarat's Federation University. It's a great audience here. Please give yourselves a quick round of applause. Thank you. Now, next Monday Q&A will be joined by the author of the Quarterly Essay, profile of Bill Shorten journalist David Marr. The Minister for agriculture and water, Barnaby Joyce, the Shadow Minister for Health Catherine King, Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs and school mate of Bill Shorten, John Roskam. Until next month's Q&A, goodnight.
Preview \| Recap \| Notebook Bucks-Rockets Preview By JEFF BARTL Posted Feb 27 2013 1:17AM Clinging to the Western Conference's final playoff spot, the Houston Rockets know they must capitalize on prime opportunities to pick up victories. Houston seeks a sixth straight home win while avoiding a second consecutive loss to a sub-.500 opponent as it hosts the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night. The Rockets (31-27) lead the ninth-place Los Angeles Lakers by three games and are in the midst of a five-game stretch of playing teams with losing records. It didn't get off to a good start, though, after a 105-103 at Washington on Saturday. Houston hit 19 of 46 3-point attempts - the most in the NBA this season - but allowed at least 103 points for the eighth time in nine games. "We shoot a lot of 3s as a team, but I think we got a little 3 happy," coach Kevin McHale said. "We didn't get enough penetration and enough ball movement." The Rockets had won three of their previous four - all against teams with winning records - but also had lost to Sacramento on Feb. 10 prior to that stretch. James Harden scored 27 points and Chandler Parsons netted 24 on Saturday, but Harden knows they missed another solid chance to add to their win total. After facing the Bucks, the Rockets will play at Orlando on Friday before back-to-back games with Dallas. "We let two games slip away," Harden told the team's official website of the Sacramento and Washington defeats. "We're not allowed to do that at this point in the season. We (play) a lot of teams under .500 so we've got to do a good job on really focusing in on what we have to do in order to win those games." New acquisitions Thomas Robinson and Francisco Garcia could make their debuts Wednesday, though how much they'll play - if at all - isn't clear. McHale said they will have to work for spots in the rotation. "I assume if you would rebound, run and defend, coach might find a spot for you," McHale said. Harden scored 29 points and Carlos Delfino netted 22 while hitting 6 of 7 3-pointers off the bench in a 115-101 win at Milwaukee on Jan. 4, and this time around they'll face a Bucks team coming off a 95-90 win at Dallas on Tuesday. Monta Ellis scored a game-high 22 points and Larry Sanders added 13 and 13 rebounds for Milwaukee (27-28), which had dropped three straight and nine of its previous 11. "We can put that behind us now and build off of that," Ellis said. Despite this recent rough patch, the Bucks still have a five-game advantage over Toronto and Philadelphia for the final playoff spot in the East. J.J. Redick scored 14 points and played the final minutes instead of starter Brandon Jennings, who shot only 3 of 11 and scored eight points. "I just felt like that group was playing well together," coach Jim Boylan said. The Bucks were a bit thin on the bench after Samuel Dalembert was suspended for an unspecified team violation. Boylan didn't specify if Dalembert will be in uniform Wednesday. "Everybody on the team or involved with the team - players, coaches, staff - they have certain responsibilities to the team," Boylan said. "When those responsibilities aren't met, there are consequences." Milwaukee's 105-99 win over the Rockets on Jan. 25, 2012, ended an 11-game losing streak in Houston. Copyright 2013 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited Copyright 2013 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited Ellis' last-second 3 lifts Bucks over Rockets By CHRIS DUNCAN Posted Feb 28 2013 12:09AM HOUSTON (AP) The Milwaukee Bucks are learning how to pull out the close ones. Monta Ellis sank an off-balance 3-pointer just before the final buzzer to give the Milwaukee Bucks a 110-107 victory over the Houston Rockets on Wednesday night. Ellis scored 27 points and handed out 13 assists, Ersan Ilyasova added 20 points and 10 rebounds, and the Bucks won in Houston for the second straight season. Milwaukee went down to the wire again after beating Dallas 95-90 on Tuesday and losing the previous three games by no more than three points. The Bucks and Rockets were tied 105-all when Larry Sanders tipped in Ellis' miss. James Harden tied it again on a driving layup with 35 seconds left. Ellis rebounded Ilyasova's miss with 23 seconds left, giving the Bucks one last chance to win it in regulation. Ellis then took a pass from Brandon Jennings and threw up the game-winner off one foot. The ball rattled around the rim before dropping in, and by then, Ellis was running to the locker room. "I just threw it up," Ellis said. "The buzzer went off when it was rolling around the rim. Wasn't any need for me to come back out." The referees reviewed the shot and confirmed that it beat the buzzer. Jennings thought he delivered the pass too late for Ellis to get it off in time. "But I'm kind of glad I made my move early," Jennings said. "I didn't have anything, so I just kicked it out to him and he hit a one-legged 3-point shot for the win." James Harden scored 25 points, Chandler Parsons added 20 and Omer Asik grabbed a career-high 22 rebounds for Houston, which led by 17 points in the first quarter. "It was a bad loss," Parsons said. "There's no way around it. There is no way we should have lost that game." Mike Dunleavy had 16 points and new acquisition J.J. Redick added 14 for Milwaukee. Dunleavy thinks the Bucks learned from the late-game mistakes they made in the close losses over the past week. "It kind of wakes you up," Dunleavy said. "Sometimes, you can feel bad for yourself, bad for the team for a little bit. But eventually you come around on it, and say, `All right, enough of this, we've got to get wins."' Jeremy Lin had 10 points and seven assists and Donatas Motiejunas scored 13 in his first start for Houston. The Rockets made 12 of their first 13 shots and Lin had one of the early highlights, spinning a behind-the-back pass to Parsons for an easy dunk. Houston had 10 assists on its first 12 baskets, but after Asik finished an alley-oop from Parsons with a dunk, Houston went scoreless for almost three minutes. "We just didn't have the same spacing, pace, that we had in the beginning," Lin said. Jennings hit consecutive 3s and Dunleavy scored on three layups as Milwaukee mounted a 21-6 run to cut the deficit to two. It was close the rest of the way, and the lead changed hands 13 times in all until the Bucks made more plays down the stretch to win it. "We're just getting stops and we're just countering on the offensive end," Jennings said of the late-game execution. "We're just getting easier buckets and we're taking our time more." Harden played with a wrap on his left knee after he bumped into Ellis in the first half. Ellis scored seven points early in the third quarter to help Milwaukee build a seven-point lead. The Rockets quickly rallied, and Asik completed a three-point play to put Houston ahead 70-68 with five minutes left in the third quarter. Dunleavy twisted his right ankle in the last minute of the third quarter and hobbled to the locker room. He returned with just under 10 minutes left in the game and the Rockets leading 88-84. Houston continued to misfire from 3-point range early in the final quarter and Redick's 3-pointer near the six-minute mark put Milwaukee up 99-96. Houston went 7 for 23 from 3-point range, but blamed this loss on its poor defense at the end. The Bucks outscored the Rockets 11-2 over the final three minutes. "Defense was not very good tonight," Parsons said. "Bad game overall." NOTES: Bucks C Ekpe Udoh sprained his right ankle in the first quarter and did not return. ... Ellis had six steals and leads the NBA with eight games this season with at least five. ... Rookie Thomas Robinson, acquired in a trade with Sacramento last week, had a basket, a rebound, an assist and three fouls in his Houston debut. ... Asik has 26 double-doubles and 39 games with double-digit rebounds this season. Copyright 2013 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited Copyright 2013 by STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited
In a column for WorldNetDaily this weekend, Matt Barber reported that although he may be called an anti-gay “hater,” he was in fact “called by God to sound the alarm” that those who die of AIDS are being punished by God for homosexuality. “The wages of sin is death,” Barber writes. “Yet in today’s upside-down world it is we who are disingenuously accused of ‘hate’ — those of us who remain compassionate and bold enough to warn our fellow fallen human beings of the spiritual, emotional and, yes, even the physical death that comes as a natural consequence of unnatural behaviors.” Barber isn’t bothered by criticism because he knows God sent him to be an anti-gay activist: “When God calls you to be an instrument of His truth, the biblical harmonies you play will often strike sour with those in rebellion against Him, sending them into blind rage and deep denial.” Barber, of course, finds it “sublimely humbling to be used of God in this way.”
ACT NOW Chinatown is fighting a heritage battle. You can help. 華埠面對的是一場硬仗，一場為文化遺產而打的仗 Go to 105 Keefer’s open house on Tuesday, January 10 and oppose the development. Open house details Tuesday, January 10, 2017, 5 – 8 pm Chinese Cultural Centre Auditorium 50 East Pender Street Let us know you are coming: Vancouver’s Chinatown is a living community created out of struggle, resilience and hope. It is an important part of a larger Vancouver community, as well as Canada as a nation. Recognized as one of the city’s first urban areas, Chinatown is one of Vancouver’s founding neighbourhoods , along with Gastown, Japantown and Strathcona. In 2011, Vancouver’s Chinatown was designated a National Historic Site of Canada 溫哥華華埠的發展歷程充滿著艱辛、勞苦，另一方面亦富有靭力、希望，才能成為今天這個多姿多采的社區。華埠在溫哥華市，甚至從國家層面來看，都扮演著獨特而重要的角色。華埠與煤氣鎮 (Gastown)、小東京 (Japantown) 和士達孔拿 (Strathcona) 一樣，皆為溫哥華最早建立的社區。溫哥華華埠在 2011 年被加拿大承認為國家歷史遺址；可是，單單一個名銜並不足以確保華埠的持續發展。 The 105 Keefer site is one of the last large parcels of land in Chinatown and located in the heart of the neighbourhood, adjacent to the Chinatown Memorial Square and neighbouring the Chinese Cultural Centre and Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden. The rezoning would cost Chinatown’s distinct character, as well as opportunities to better fulfill Chinatown’s Vision plan. 奇化街 105 號鄰近華埠悼念廣場及孫中山紀念公園，是華埠所餘無幾的空地。倘若更改其土地用途，華埠將失去既有的文化氣質和社區特色，無法實現大眾對華埠的願景。 There are many ways that the 105 Keefer site can be better used to execute the community vision, such as having more senior housing, and more community and cultural space. 如果溫哥華市政府可以用土地買賣或土地交換形式來獲得奇化街 105 號這塊地，就可以善用它來服務大眾，達成願景，例如興建供長者居住的房屋，或者建立更多公共文化空間。 NOW IS THE TIME. 當下請即行動 We need to protect this historic heritage site. And we need to do it now. 華埠是歷史文化重鎮，必須受到保護。我們邀請你立即行動。 Join the movement 加入我們的運動
Key Facts —————————- Overview Many members of Congress have a double standard when it comes to spending on public services like transportation or education versus spending on corporate tax cuts. This year, Republicans leaders in Congress refused to provide $10 billion in extended unemployment benefits unless they were paid for. But in the U.S. House of Representatives they recently passed five budget-busting corporate tax breaks, known as “tax extenders,” that would increase the deficit by $518 billion over the next 10 years. Just two of the tax breaks account for 85% of the cost. The “bonus depreciation” tax break ($287 billion over 10 years) allows businesses to depreciate capital investments quickly. Supporters claim it boosts the economy, but the Congressional Research Service concluded that it “in general is a relatively ineffective tool for stimulating the economy.” The “research and experimentation tax credit” ($155 billion over 10 years) is supposed to spark investment in new technologies. However, it often subsidizes activities that companies would pursue without tax incentives. The primary beneficiaries are large corporations like Boeing, Apple and Google — all recognized as aggressive tax avoiders. How are these corporate tax breaks justified? Republicans say that the $518 billion cost of the corporate tax breaks passed in the House doesn’t matter despite the huge impact on the deficit. They argue that the same tax breaks had been passed on a temporary basis in the past, and that some have been extended many times (hence the name “tax extenders”). But the House voted to make these tax breaks permanent — adding more than half a trillion dollars to the national debt over 10 years. Apparently, the deficit doesn’t matter when it comes to corporate tax cuts — they are “off the books.” House extends tax breaks for corporations but not for low-income working families A tax credit the House did not vote to extend was an improvement in the Child Tax Credit for low-income working families, which expires in 2017. That means 12 million people, including 6 million children, will be pushed deeper into poverty in 2018. A mother with two children working full time at the minimum wage would see her Child Tax Credit drop from $1,725 to zero. Instead, the House voted to increase the credit for upper-income families — giving a family making $160,000 a new $2,200 tax credit — and denying the credit immediately to over 5 million children in immigrant families, including over 4 million citizen children. The Senate bill — the good, bad and outrageous The five corporate tax breaks that the House voted to make permanent are part of a much larger (but less costly) two-year “tax extender” package in the Senate. That bill has more than 50 temporary tax breaks — a mixture of good, bad and outrageous. It will cost $85 billion over two years, with 80% benefitting businesses. There are popular tax deductions for schoolteachers who pay for supplies out of their own pockets and for commuters that use public transportation, as well as tax credits for wind energy production. And the package includes much-ridiculed special-interest tax breaks for wealthy owners of thoroughbred horses or NASCAR racetracks. Some tax extenders enable hiding profits offshore The Senate bill includes the “active financing exception,” a loophole that enables Wall Street investment banks, insurance companies and other corporations with big financing arms to dodge billions in taxes by deferring taxes on U.S.-based financing income that is made to look like it’s being generated offshore. It also contains the “CFC look-through” rule, which makes it possible for multinational corporations to make some of their profits disappear for tax purposes. The House Ways and Means Committee voted to make permanent both the active financing exception ($59 billion over 10 years) and the CFC look-through rule ($20 billion over 10 years). The bills have not yet been brought to the House floor. A “special interest orgy” Organizations on the left, right and center have been harshly critical of the tax extender bills. The conservative Club for Growth called the Senate package a “special-interest orgy” in The Wall Street Journal. The center-right Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote that the Senate bill would “squander” the savings from the “fiscal cliff” budget deal at the end of 2012. Fifty-four public-interest organizations and labor unions, led by Americans for Tax Fairness, decried the double standard by which other government spending must be “paid for” but corporate tax breaks can be bought on credit. Tax extenders likely to face votes after elections Congress is likely to vote on a two-year tax extender package after the November election for two reasons — there is something in it for everyone, and there is a huge corporate lobbying effort behind it. A key question is whether the worst corporate giveaways will be included in the package. A few tax extenders provide modest help to working families. Most of them provide largess to large corporations. That is why a small army of 1,359 lobbyists representing 373 companies and trade associations lobbied members of Congress on tax extenders between January 2011 and December 2013. Corporations have not contributed a dime towards deficit reduction in any of the budget deals that Congress passed in recent years. Yet, Congress is eager to pass tax extender packages primarily benefiting corporations that are worth from $85 billion to more than $500 billion — totally unpaid for. This double-standard should end and corporations should start paying their fair share of taxes for the good of the country. —————————- News Coverage Opinion Resources Download this document in PDF format. Drawn from Americans for Tax Fairness’ 2014 Tax Fairness Briefing Booklet.
Arguments for legalisation imply cannabis is harmless and legalisation is beneficial. Both assumptions are incorrect. In the last year there has been ongoing advocacy for the legalisation of cannabis in New Zealand, with a recent survey suggesting nearly two thirds of respondents think cannabis use should be legalised. These claims have been reinforced by petitions to permit the use of medicinal cannabis. An unfortunate feature of this debate is that few contributors have discussed the harms of cannabis or the risks of legalisation. Many contributions to this debate imply that cannabis is a relatively harmless drug and that legalisation has beneficial consequences. Both assumptions are incorrect. New Zealand has some of the richest data on the adverse consequences of cannabis use coming from two major studies: the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS) and the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (DMHDS). The CHDS is a study of a cohort of 1265 children born in 1977 who have been studied to the age of 35. The study has now published 30 scientific papers on the issue of cannabis. This research shows that: * Cannabis use by cohort members was common, with over 75 per cent reporting use, and in the region of 15 per cent developing a pattern of heavy use and dependence at some point. How has cannabis affected your life? Share your stories, photos and videos. Contribute * The use of cannabis was associated with increased risks of a number of adverse outcomes including: educational delay; welfare dependence; increased risks of psychotic symptoms; major depression; increased risks of motor vehicle accidents; increased risks of tobacco use; increased risks of other illicit drug use; and respiratory impairment. These effects were most evident for young (under 18-year-old) users and could not be explained by social demographic and contextual factors associated with cannabis use. Recent findings from the US There has been a widespread assumption that the legalisation of cannabis will be beneficial by: * Removing the adverse effects of prohibition. * Increasing taxation to assist with health issues. Supporters of these views have often referred to the experiences of US states in legalising cannabis, and it has widely been assumed that legalisation does not have harmful effects. This assumption has recently been challenged by two reports of the adverse consequences of medical marijuana and the legalisation of cannabis in the US. In the first report, investigators found the legalisation of cannabis in Colorado was associated with multiple adverse consequences including: increased use of cannabis; increased risks of cannabis-related driver mortality and accidents; increased use by teenagers; and increases in hospital attendance for cannabis related outcomes. A more recent study in JAMA Psychiatry looking at the impact of medical marihuana concluded: "Medical marijuana laws appear to have contributed to an increased prevalence of illicit cannabis use and cannabis use disorders. State specific policy changes have also played a role. While medical marijuana may help some, cannabis-related health consequences associated with changes in state marijuana laws should receive consideration by healthcare professionals and the public." We need a cautious approach to both the legalisation of cannabis and the introduction of medical marijuana. What needs to be done This recent evidence suggests that both the provision of medical marijuana and legalisation of cannabis may have adverse effects by increasing the use and harms of cannabis. At the same time it is clear the current prohibition in New Zealand has had the adverse effects of criminalising otherwise law-abiding citizens, and targeting individuals coming to official attention for other reasons, resulting in men and Maori being at increased risks of arrest and conviction for the possession of cannabis. What is required are revisions to the current laws on cannabis which achieve the following objectives: * Depenalisation of simple possession for individuals aged 18+. * Increased protection of young people under 18 against the adverse effects of early cannabis use. * Changes to the law regarding medical marijuana to permit medical practitioners to prescribe cannabis-related treatments. * Maintenance of current laws about the supply and sale of cannabis. * Thorough evaluation of the consequences of policy change through regular data collection on the use of cannabis and rates of cannabis-related harm. These suggestions are intended to steer a middle course between the legalisation of cannabis and its attendant risks while at the same time avoiding the adverse consequence of prohibition. Emeritus Professor David Fergusson is the founder of the Christchurch Health and Development Study Disclaimer: The views stated in this commentary are my personal views on the issue of cannabis legalisation in New Zealand. They do not represent the views of the Christchurch Health and Development Study or the University of Otago.
172 SHARES Facebook Twitter Linkedin Reddit Ambitious Sci-fi adventure game Loading Human from developers Untold Games is one of the first made-for-VR titles we covered and it’s now been confirmed to be one of the day-one launch titles for the forthcoming PlayStation VR headset on October 13th. Untold Games had lofty ideals with its first made-for-VR title Loading Human, a title we first covered back in 2014. Long before VR enthusiasts found themselves swimming in motion controller options (slight exaggeration), Untold Games were trying to build a virtual game world that reacted intuitively to human input where no consumer VR devices existed. Load Human started life as a Kickstarted development, with the team surpassing their original $30k goal a couple of weeks into the campaign. One of the reasons the title attracted so much attention from VR enthusiasts was the development team’s commitment to providing the most natural and complete human interaction system with the game’s environment as possible. This goal of an ‘invisible’ interface aspect of the game was so important to Untold, they even gave the systems involved a name (U.N.I.C.S) and an introduction video all to itself. In practice this means if you pick up a key, find the box it matches and use it everything from your in-game hand animation to your requirement to rotate your motion controller to turn that key in the lock should be as seamless and as natural as possible. Now, Untold Games via publishers Maximum Games have announced that Loading Human is to become one of the first games available on Sony’s PlayStation VR headset. The first chapter of the game will launch alongside PSVR on October 13th. As for the game’s core, it resolves around you the protagonist, being summoned to your dying scientist father’s Antarctic base to undergo an intensive interstellar quest: retrieve the Quintessence, an elusive energy sources that will help reverse the ageing process. Untold promise full freedom gameplay stating that Loading Human is “one of the only existing VR games that isn’t on rails” It’ll be great to see Loading Human in its final form after a development journey that spans most of the early years of VR’s most recent renaissance and it’ll be fascinating to see if Untold Games’ highly ambitious interactivity goals carry through on PSVR’s Move controllers. We won’t have long to wait to find out.
By Wam The UAE President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has issued a number of special federal laws, including one amending Federal Law No. 45/1992 pertaining to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and one on regulating of the competencies of the National Media Council. Sheikh Khalifa also issued federal laws on combating cybercrimes and judicial fees at federal courts. Information Technology Crimes Sheikh Khalifa also issued Federal Law No. 12/2016 amending Federal Law No. 5/2012 on combating information technology crimes. Article 1 provides for replacing the text of Article 9 of Federal Law No. 9/2012 as follows: Whoever uses a fraudulent computer network protocol address (IP address) by using a false address or a third-party address by any other means for the purpose of committing a crime or preventing its discovery, shall be punished by temporary imprisonment and a fine of no less than Dh500,000 and not exceeding Dh2,000,000, or either of these two penalties. Article 2 of the law states that the law shall be published in the Official ‘Gazette’ and shall come into effect the day following publication. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Federal Law No. 10/2016 amends some of the provisions of Federal Law No. 45/1992 on regulating the work of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The first article of the law, published in the latest issue of the Official ‘Gazette’, changes the text of Clause 10 of Article 2 of Federal Law No. 45/1992 and replaces it with the following text: Issuance and renewal of diplomatic and special passports for nationals of the state as well as service passports. Specifying the eligible groups (of people) and rules for issuing these passports as an exception from the provisions of Federal Law No. 17/1972 on naturalisation and passports and amendments. A diplomatic or special passport is given to groups of people, who are not specified in the previous clause, excluding their families, and by virtue of a decision made by the President or the Vice-President of the State, based on a proposal from the Foreign Minister. Article 2 states that each and any provision that contradicts the provisions of this law shall be abolished. Article 3 provides for the publication of this law in the Official Gazette and that it will come into effect the day after publication. National Media Council Sheikh Khalifa also issued Federal Law No. 11/ 2016 regulating the competencies of the National Media Council. According to the law, the National Media Council is the federal government body established to oversee and undertake the media affairs of the United Arab Emirates. It has corporate character, an independent budget and the legal capacity required to undertake all activities to ensure achievement of its goals. It is a government body affiliated with the Cabinet and shall have its seat in Abu Dhabi City. The Council may set up branches and offices inside and outside the UAE. Article 4 of the law states the objectives of the NMC and accordingly it shall develop the UAE's media policy, draft media legislation and ensure its execution and co-ordinate the media policy between the emirates, in line with the UAE's domestic and foreign policy to ensure support for the Federation of the UAE and project national unity. Article 5 states the NMC's scope of jurisdiction which includes the following: Developing and executing the required policies and plans to develop the media sector; proposing bills and regulations relating to the work of the Council in coordination with the relevant authorities in the country; proposing regulations, standards and foundations required for licensing and accrediting media outlets and their staff and activities, including e-publishing; issuing rules and regulations that ensure the achievement of the Council's goals in line with the controls it specifies; coordinating with the authorities of media free zones on developing an organisational framework to regulate the Council's relationship with these zones; representing the UAE at media meetings, events and activities in and outside the UAE; undertaking any other relevant responsibilities specified by the Cabinet's regulations and resolutions. Article 6 states that a Board of Directors, formed by virtue of a decision issued by the Cabinet, shall run the Council. Article 7 states that the Board of Directors is the supreme authority of the Council and shall accordingly exercise all its powers and the required authority. It may develop the Council's general policy, propose amendments to the required plans and follow up the plans for their execution, propose draft regulations pertaining to the work and competencies of the Council as well as to the achievement of its objectives and submitting the same to the Cabinet for approval as well as the preparing of a draft organisational structure for the Council, specifying the responsibilities and competencies and departments of the Council, and submit the same to the Cabinet for approval, propose a draft annual budget for the Council and a draft annual closing account in addition to any other competencies delegated to the Board by the laws, regulations and resolutions issued by the Cabinet. The Board may also delegate some of its competencies to its Chairman. According to the law, the Chairman of the National Media Council is responsible for overseeing the management of the Council for all aspects in line with the provisions of the Council's effective regulations. The Council shall have a director general, to be appointed by virtue of a federal law based on a proposal from the Chairman, who will be the legal representative of the Council. The Board of Directors shall issue a decision specifying the Chairman's competencies and jurisdiction. Article 10, a clause about the standards and regulations issued by the Council, states that media organisations in the state must comply with the regulations and rules issued by the Council, as well as commit themselves to provide information and data required by the Council to achieve its objectives. Article 11 states that the fiscal year of the Council shall start on the 1st of January and ends on the 31st of December every year. According to the law, regulations and decisions which are effective in the National Media Council shall remain enforced at the time of issuance of the law without conflict with its provisions. The law shall be published in the Official ‘Gazette’ and will come into effect the day following publication.
Voters forgive leadership change, but not disunity Updated Despite Tony Abbott's protestations to the contrary, there is no golden rule in Australian politics damning a governing party that changes leaders mid-stream to eternal political opprobrium, writes Paula Matthewson. Only days since returning from a short summer break, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is struggling with the issue he left unresolved before Christmas - the Government's litany of policy disasters, its rejected budget, and his own failure to deal with his increasingly alarmed ministers and backbenchers. Admittedly, the PM made some half-hearted attempts to 'reset' matters at the end of last year. He reshuffled the ministry without offloading most of the dead wood, held a press conference in which he failed to nominate any policy for resetting, and then went on to 'give ground' on policies such as the Medicare rebate and the paid parental leave scheme without actually giving any real ground. Not surprisingly, this fooled no one, leaving ABC 730's Leigh Sales to be the first to ask the PM whether he would consider stepping aside in order to give the Coalition the best chance of holding on to power. Abbott's response was to evoke the deposing of Rudd as justification for his retention, arguing "the one fundamental lesson of the last catastrophic government was that you don't lightly change leaders". This rationale has become almost an invocation, most recently uttered by the PM today in response to questions about the viability of his leadership: "If there is one lesson to be learned from the fate of the former government in Canberra - maybe even the former government in Victoria - is you do not change leaders. You rally behind someone and you stick to the plan, and we've got a good plan." To make matters worse, the PM was then treated to a serve by a talkback caller describing himself as a Liberal voter, who said Abbott was "on the nose with Liberal voters" and "the world's worst salesman", and that "people don't know where you are going and business is saying there are roadblocks because there is no direction and no leadership". Once one gets past the irony of Prime Minister Tony Abbott citing the coup against Kevin Rudd as the main reason not to dispense with him, it's worth examining whether it's actually true that voters don't like parties who change leaders midstream. In fact, several Australian governments have changed leaders and gone on to win the following election. After stalking and then knocking off Australia's once most popular PM Bob Hawke, Paul Keating went on to beat Opposition Leader John Hewson at the 1993 federal election. At the state level, a leadership transition was made from Queensland Premier Peter Beattie to Anna Bligh, who despite losing seats at the next state election still retained government. And after losing the confidence of his party room, South Australia's Premier Mike Rann stood aside for Jay Weatherill, who scraped through the following election to form a minority government. Sure, each of the governments took a hit in the polls, but they still managed to retain office. And let's not forget that despite PM Abbott using Rudd's political demise as a cautionary tale, Julia Gillard actually managed to form government after the subsequent election, albeit a minority one, despite Rudd's best efforts to sabotage Labor's election campaign. That's not to say Labor voters weren't unhappy with the way Rudd was treated. Firstly, they were shocked at the seeming swiftness of the rebellion, and then mystified when it became clear neither Gillard nor those who backed her would give a valid explanation for the coup. That emotion later intensified to anger when Gillard failed to deliver on the fresh start she had promised voters, demonstrating the same political tin-ear and poor judgement that had plagued Rudd. Gillard's perceived broken oath on the carbon tax combined with her various political mishaps and pratfalls had more influence on her poor electoral standing than the way she became prime minister. Despite PM Abbott's protestations to the contrary, there is no golden rule in Australia politics damning a governing party that changes leaders mid-stream to eternal political opprobrium. Most of those that did manage to retain office after a leadership change occurred late in the life of long-running governments looking to extend their incumbency. And while some of the changes were orderly handovers, a couple were so well telegraphed they became inevitable. There are messages in these facts for the current prime minister: governments that have an orderly transition of leadership can survive to fight and win another election. And the removal of a prime minister will generate less voter anger if it's clear why the change is being made. If there is a lesson for anyone in the Rudd-Gillard saga, it is actually for Abbott. Voters are more concerned about political disunity, incompetency and unmet expectations than they are about changes in the Government's leadership. Paula Matthewson is a freelance communications adviser and corporate writer. She was media advisor to John Howard in the early 1990s. She tweets and blogs as @Drag0nista. Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government First posted
The young man had already been on the way to Frankfurt airport on Tuesday when the court decision was made, forcing the driver to turn around, according to media reports. The European court's ruling to block the deportation was not a final decision on the case itself, but rather was a way to ensure that the procedure would run properly as the court begins to consider the case, explained a court spokeswoman. Germany's own Constitutional Court just last week had already given the greenlight to such deportations of suspects dubbed Gefährder - a term used to describe potentially dangerous suspected terrorists - even if they have not been convicted of a crime. In March, for example, authorities decided to deport two German-born men with Algerian and Nigerian citizenship who had been accused of planning a terror attack, though investigators ultimately could not find sufficient evidence to pursue criminal proceedings against them. The men were still deemed to be dangerous and thus deported after police raids uncovered Isis flags, ammunition and weapons where the men lived. The Constitutional Court also decided last week to allow the deportation of the Russian teen, who had spent nearly his entire life in Germany. Authorities accused him of being capable of planning a terror attack in Germany, arguing that he had sympathies with Isis as well as suicidal thoughts, and alleging that he had told another Islamist from Essen that he was ready to carry out an attack on civilians. The law under which a so-called Gefährder may be deported allows interior ministries to send non-German citizens out of the country through an expedited process “to defend against a particular danger for the security of the Federal Republic of Germany, or against a terrorist risk.” Though the law was first established following the September 11th 2001 attacks, it was not brought into full force until this year after the Berlin Christmas market attack in December.

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