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A Few Good Men is a play by Aaron Sorkin, first produced on Broadway by David Brown in 1989. It tells the story of military lawyers at a court-martial who uncover a high-level conspiracy in the course of defending their clients, two United States Marines accused of murder.
It opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in New York on November 15, 1989, in a production directed by Don Scardino, with Tom Hulce as LTJG Kaffee, Megan Gallagher as LCDR Joanne Galloway and Stephen Lang as Col Jessep. Michael O'Hare replaced Lang as Jessep later in the run.
Sorkin adapted his work into a screenplay for a 1992 film directed by Rob Reiner, produced by Brown and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay.
Summary [ edit ]
A Few Good Men- Aaron Sorkin Author of- Aaron Sorkin
The play takes place after the death of US Marine Private Santiago as the result from an ill-advised informal punishment labelled a "Code Red" at a US naval base in Guantánamo Bay. Private Downey and Lance Corporal Dawson are the two Marines put on trial for the murder of Santiago. The two men are assigned a lawyer, US Navy Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee. Kaffee is an unmotivated lawyer who goes into his cases looking for a plea bargain and the shortest sentence. It seems to be following that exact path until US Navy Lieutenant Commander Jo Galloway makes an appearance in Guantanamo Bay. Kaffee and Galloway do not see eye to eye as she believes this is a serious case of misconduct while Kaffee can not be bothered with it. He even goes as far as trying to drop the case. The two men are being put on trial because Santiago had reported he had seen a guard illegally fire his gun at night while off the base. This was Santiago's way out as he up to that point had been a lackluster Marine and had fallen behind too much. It seemed to be a clear-cut case of two men trying to cover up a mistake and eliminate a loose end. After Galloway finally got to Kaffee they spend much of the play prodding information from both men as they will not give information without a clear question. This all leads up to the climax as Kaffee finally has all the information he needs and goes for the two head men at the camp in Col. Jessep and Kendrick. Kaffee puts Jessep in a corner while implying that Santiago did not have to be moved if Jessep had given the order to not touch him as all his men listen to him. Finally, Jessep explodes with rage and yells "You can't handle the truth!" This leaves the courtroom stunned and Jessep being charged with the murder of Private Santiago and escorted out of the courtroom. But this was not the end as Dawson and Downey were found not guilty of murder but were dishonorably discharged for conduct unbecoming a Marine.
Characters [ edit ]
LTJG Daniel A. Kaffee - The main lawyer who will defend both Dawson and Downey. He starts as a plea-bargain happy lawyer and with a little help from Joanne Galloway, he develops into a lawyer who is willing to fight for his clients.
Pfc. Louden Downey - one of the two men accused of the murder of Santiago. He is the quiet member of the two soldiers and lets Cpl. Dawson do the talking for him.
LCDR Joanne Galloway - a hardworking and determined lawyer who finds and brings light to the murder case.
Capt. Isaac Whitaker - the commanding officer in Washington. He sends Galloway to Guantanamo Bay.
Lt. Jack Ross - the lawyer who oversees prosecuting Dawson and Downey.
Capt. Matthew A. Markinson - worked with Jessep and suggested moving Santiago.
Lt. Col. Nathan R. Jessep - the commanding officer in Guantanamo Bay. He ordered the murder of Private Santiago.
LCpl. Harold W. Dawson - one of the two men accused of the murder of Private Santiago.
1Lt Jonathan James Kendrick - Santiago's platoon commander.
Play [ edit ]
Sorkin got the idea for the play from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah, who had graduated from Boston University Law School and was serving a three-year stint with the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps.[1] She was going to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base to defend a group of Marines who had come close to killing a fellow Marine in a hazing ordered by a superior officer. Sorkin took that information and wrote much of his story on cocktail napkins while bartending at the Palace Theatre on Broadway.[2]
Several former Navy JAG lawyers have been proposed as the model for the character of Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee, USN, JAG Corps. These include Donald Marcari, David Iglesias, and Walter Bansley III.[3][4] The court martial was Macari's first big court case.[5] However, in a statement released by his spokeswoman, Sorkin said, "The character of Dan Kaffee in A Few Good Men is entirely fictional and was not inspired by any particular individual."[6]
Once Sorkin completed a draft, his theatrical agent sent it to producer David Brown who wanted the film rights. Sorkin sold Brown the rights, getting Brown to agree to also produce A Few Good Men as a play.[7]
Premieres [ edit ]
A Few Good Men had its world premiere at the Heritage Repertory Theatre at the University of Virginia's Department of Drama on September 19, 1989.[8] It then transferred to the Kennedy Center.[7][9]
The original Broadway stage production opened at the Music Box Theatre in New York on November 15, 1989, in a production directed by Don Scardino, designed by Ben Edwards, and with music by John Gromada. It starred Tom Hulce as LTJG Kaffee; Megan Gallagher as LCDR JoAnne Galloway; Clark Gregg as Lt. Jack Ross; Stephen Lang as Col Jessep, and Robert Hogan as Capt. Matthew A. Markinson. Replacement actors included Timothy Busfield and Bradley Whitford as Lt. Jack Ross (understudy for Kaffee),[10] Perry King, Michael O'Hare, and Ron Perlman as Jessep, and Pamela Blair as Galloway. Joshua Malina also appeared. Malina went on to reprise his role in the movie adaption.
The production ran for 497 performances.
Other performances [ edit ]
A Spanish-language production titled Hombres de Honor opened on January 10, 1991, at the Ferré Performing Arts Center in Puerto Rico, starring Cordelia González and Rafo Muñiz, directed by Pablo Cabrera.[11]
A national touring company performed through 1992 with Michael O'Keefe as LTJG Kaffee, Alyson Reed as LCDR Galloway, and Paul Winfield as the judge.
In January 1993 A Few Good Men had its premiere in German language at the Volkstheater, Vienna, Austria (translation: Gunther Baumann, director: Erhard Pauer, Daniel Kaffee: Alfons Haider). In the following years this production went on tour and was shown all over Germany, Switzerland and Austria (German title: Eine Frage der Ehre/A Question of Honor).
A revival of the play starring Rob Lowe in the role of LTJG Kaffee, Suranne Jones as LCDR Galloway and John Barrowman as Capt Ross, opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, in late August 2005 for preview showings followed by a three-month run in early September 2005. The stage show was directed by David Esbjornson.
In 2006, the Hudson Shakespeare Company of New Jersey staged a production as part of their second stage for modern shows. The tour was presented in city courtrooms, directed by Jon Ciccarelli and featured notable NYC actors such as Jon Crefeld as LTJG Kaffee and Charles J. Roby as Col. Jessup.
Jensen Ackles appeared as LTJG Kaffee alongside Lou Diamond Phillips as Col Jessep in a production of the play at the Casa Mañana Theatre, in Fort Worth, Texas, June 5–10, 2007.
It has also been performed in London, Oxford and Portsmouth by amateur groups.
A Hungarian production of the play was performed at Madách Szinház, Budapest. It was directed by Imre Kerényi, starring Sándor Czvetkó, Éva Kerekes and Gábor Koncz.
By the Book Theatre produced the play November 25, 2014 to December 6, 2014 at the McManus Studio Theatre, London, Ontario. The production won 4 Brickenden Awards including Outstanding Drama.
June 30, 2016 marked the opening of the Warehouse Studio Theatre production at The Noho Arts Center under the direction of Tony Pauletto and starring K. C. Clyde as Kaffee alongside Dennis LaValle as Jessup and Sarah Klein as Galloway.
In March 2016, NBC announced its intent to broadcast a live television production of A Few Good Men, starring Alec Baldwin as Col. Jessup, in the second quarter of 2018, with a teleplay adapted by Sorkin from his original script. The broadcast would be executive produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, and patterned upon NBC's ongoing series of live Broadway musicals.[12][13] However, NBC has yet to announce an airdate. Variety reported that the availability of Sorkin, Zadan, and Meron may have had an impact, noting that Sorkin had to represent his 2017 film Molly's Game during awards season, while Zadan and Meron (who have produced all of NBC's live musicals) were committed to other projects (such as Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert in 2018, and an upcoming production of Hair in 2019) being produced by NBC in lieu of Bye Bye Birdie, which has been delayed multiple times in order to accommodate Jennifer Lopez's other projects.[14]
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
The Broadway production earned Megan Gallagher a 1990 Theatre World Award and a Best Actor nomination for Tom Hulce at the 44th Tony Awards.[15]
Source material and legacy [ edit ]
The play is based on events that took place at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in July 1986, though various details were changed for dramatic purposes. Members of Rifle Security Company, Windward Side, 2nd Platoon believed that one of their number, Pfc. William Alvarado, was a malingerer and had informed about a Marine firing across the border into Cuba.[3] In a retaliatory hazing (called a "Code Red"), ten Marines seized Alvarado, blindfolded him, stuffed a rag in his mouth, beat him and shaved his head.[3] Alvarado was seriously injured, but did not die.[3] Of the ten Marines, seven accepted other than honorable discharges as part of a plea bargain, but three, including David Cox, refused to accept the plea bargain and went to court.[3] Cox was defended by Don Macari. Cox was found not guilty of aggravated battery, but guilty of the misdemeanor charge of simple assault. He was sentenced to time already served in the brig, and returned to active duty.[3]
Cox was honorably discharged from the Marines in 1989. When he saw the film version of A Few Good Men, he was upset at the liberties taken with the event, most notably that the Marines in the case were dishonorably discharged, and considered suing the filmmakers. Cox disappeared in 1994. He was found murdered, along a riverbank near Medfield, Massachusetts.[3] | 8,013,400 |
Hon. James M. Flaherty Minister of Finance Dear Minister Flaherty: Saw your recent letter warning Queen’s Park against illegal tax hikes. Kind of you to b.c.c. (blind copy) us while blindsiding Charles Sousa, your provincial counterpart. You addressed the treasurer, but it’s clear your hit-and-write tactics were aimed at all Ontario voters.
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Unsolicited advice, even unsolicited snarls, are always welcome. Thought I’d reciprocate. Perhaps we too can become pen pals. Your latest letter takes federal-provincial pugilism to a new level of aggression — lecturing and hectoring Sousa by telling him what he already knows: That he cannot create a regional GTA sales tax, a tax he has neither imposed nor proposed. You set up a straw man for our tax man, then burn it at the stake.
When the smoke clears, you grudgingly acknowledge Sousa has every legal right to raise the HST on a provincewide basis to help bankroll transit construction and infrastructure. In your next breath, you huff and puff about the perils of raising that tax from 13 to 14 per cent. Ahem, let’s go back in time to 2001-02, when you reigned as Ontario’s mighty treasurer: What was the combined federal-provincial rate? Oh, right — an unforgivable 15 per cent. You presided over a sales tax higher than the one you now deem unbearable. (True, as federal finance minister you carried out Stephen Harper’s opportunistic 2006 campaign promise to cut the old Tory GST from 7 per cent to 5 — a plan derided by economists for launching you on a track of perennial deficits.) Now fast forward to your latest finger wagging. At the very time civic leaders are trying to bridge the gap between right and left, muting political gridlock in order to address traffic gridlock, you toss a hand grenade.
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“We did not lower the GST to have it taken away from Ontarians by the Wynne government with a new sales tax hike,” you thundered. Sousa replied to your broadside by seeking a meeting. Your response? Not even the courtesy of a reply. Just a couple of televised retorts and rants declaring that you won’t deign to meet Sousa until he first forswears his right to raise revenues dedicated to transit. “If the government of Ontario can’t make that commitment, then I won’t meet with them,” you taunted. Churlish diktats and puerile preconditions are poor form. I don’t recall you berating Manitoba for its April plan to hike its sales tax by one point, or Nova Scotia when it raised the HST. And I haven’t heard you offer more federal funding, beyond your paltry 4 per cent share of the billions required for transit. How to explain your gratuitous, righteous, anti-Ontario rhetoric? It’s a muscle reflex. You have never broken the habit of putting down the province you represent in Ottawa. A year ago, the PM had to rein you in for running down Ontario’s finances. In 2008 you recklessly advised investors, “The last place you will go is the province of Ontario.” And you’re working for the people of Ontario? Thankfully, your bluster doesn’t reach beyond Parliament Hill and the gridlocked roadways of your Whitby-Oshawa riding. When you bizarrely tried to browbeat the big banks into raising their mortgage rates from a bargain-basement 2.99 per cent last March, they breezily ignored you (five-year rates didn’t budge for months). Rather than make yourself more irrelevant, why not make common cause with the province on transit, given that you represent many of the same people? The train is leaving the station, and you are going in the wrong direction: Janet Ecker, Ontario’s one-time Progressive Conservative treasurer (who took over from you in 2002), sits on the Metrolinx board and backs its recommendation for an HST hike allocated to transit and roads. John Tory, who defeated you for the provincial PC leadership in 2004, also argues that “dedicated” revenues are needed now. Ontario’s Chamber of Commerce is also onside. So too is Toronto’s board of trade, which reacted to your provocative letter by seeking a meeting. You still haven’t made time for them — or us. Instead, you align yourself with a raving Rob Ford in the mayor’s hour of need, feeding your shared addiction to cracking provincial heads. You cast yourself as a fearless tax fighter. But in the one area where you could truly help Ontario taxpayers — giving them equal treatment under your antiquated equalization program, which siphons $11 billion a year from this province to the rest of Canada — you continue to suck and blow and siphon at the same time. Last week, your erstwhile soul mates at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation complained that “Ontario taxpayers are getting the short end of the stick.” But not a word from our fiery finance minister. Why do all these appeals for a fair hearing keep falling on deaf ears? Stop dictating letters. Start taking meetings. Don’t just hector — help us! Respectfully, A GTA taxpayer and commuter Martin Regg Cohn’s provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. [email protected] , twitter.com/reggcohn. | 8,013,401 |
An Aberdeen hotel is shutting its doors after 137 years.
The city’s Royal Hotel on Bath Street opened in 1879 and has stood through two world wars.
But a wedding today was to be the final event for the hotel and its owner Stuart Garvie, who has been in charge of the Victorian premises for the last 18 years.
It was founded as the Bath Hotel in 1879 on the site of a former Turkish bath house on Bridge Place.
And despite standing through both world wars, Stuart said the oil downturn has seen bookings drop by up to 40% in the past six months and the historic hotel is now up for sale.
Its closure will lead to the loss of 20 jobs.
The hotel is best known for its Cafe Royal restaurant and bar.
Stuart said: “We are closing because we can’t secure investment funding for the hotel because it’s very hard just now to do these sort of things.
“Due to the current market and hotel scenario in Aberdeen it’s just not possible for us to continue.
“The hotel has been open since 1879 so it’s sad for this to happen.
“For the last six months we have seen a change.
“We have a wedding booked and that will be the last event we have at the hotel.
“In general, there has been 25% to 40% in the reduction of bookings but it varies on the types of hotels in Aberdeen.”
The closure comes the same week as reports showed a slight improvement in the hotel industry.
Having recorded months of consecutive double-digit decreases, hotels achieved an occupancy rate of 62.6% in April, which was down by only 2.5% compared to last year.
The hotel is one of the oldest in the city and will now be sold following the closure.
A buyer has yet to be found for the building and it’s not yet known what its future holds.
Stuart added both himself and regulars who often use the hotel will miss it.
“I will definitely miss it,” he said.
“I have been here for 18 years.
“We have had a lot of regulars who come in every day and every week and they have said they are sad to see it go in the last week.
“For some people, it’s an institution in Aberdeen.
“We have had a lot of happy memories and a lot of sad ones after losing members of staff.
“It’s a listed building and will be one of the oldest hotels in Aberdeen.
“The building will be sold at some point but I don’t know what the future holds for its use.” | 8,013,402 |
Pregnancy rates and abortions are both the lowest they’ve ever been since the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics began keeping track, according to a new federal report published today.
Statisticians analyzed the latest available data on rates of pregnancy, abortion and fetal loss (miscarriages) from 2010 to get a better picture of reproductive trends.
The new report found that in 2010, both the pregnancy rate and abortion rate fell to record lows since 1976. Miscarriages and abortions also evened out; of the pregnancies in 2010, 65% resulted in live births, 17% were miscarried and 18% ended in abortion.
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“Much has been written about the birth rate, and much about the abortion rate, but a lot are shown separately,” says report co-author Sally Curtin, a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics. Analyzing the numbers together helps put them in context.
MORE: Abortions In The U.S. Continue To Decline
“If we put abortions in context, you can see that in a given year, the numbers of abortions, which is 1.1 million, is about the same as fetal loss,” Curtin says. “It used to be very different, if you look back; the number of abortions in 1976 was almost twice that.”
Compared to 1990, when these numbers were last tracked, pregnancy rates were lower for women under age 30—especially for teens 14 and under, who saw a 67% reduction. Teenagers 15-19 had a 50% reduction in pregnancy rates. But women 30 and over saw a rise in birth rates, and women 40 and over saw a 70% increase (although the actual numbers for them were much lower than the other groups.) Racial gaps also narrowed between black, Hispanic and white women.
MORE: The Teen Birth Rate Is At An All-Time Low
The study wasn’t designed to determine cause, so the authors won’t speculate on reasons for the drops. Still, it’s helpful to observe the downward trends in most of the numbers. “The beauty of the report really is that it presents a comprehensive picture of fertility,” Curtin says.
Write to Mandy Oaklander at [email protected]. | 8,013,403 |
The magazine’s advice feature, “The Playboy Advisor,” encouraged men to ask questions on all manner of topics, from the best liquor to stock at home to bedroom advice to adjusting to civilian life. Troops found Playboy a useful tool in figuring out their roles in the consumer-oriented landscape they were now able to join because of the mobility and income their military service provided them.
Image The “Playboy Club” in Chu Lai, Vietnam, in 1969. Credit The Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University
The content moved beyond lifestyle and entertainment as the editorial mission of the magazine evolved. By the 1960s, Playboy included hard-hitting features on important social, cultural and political issues confronting the United States, often written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, government and military leaders and top literary figures. The magazine took on topics like feminism, abortion, gay rights, race, economic issues, the counterculture movement and mass incarceration — something soldiers couldn’t get from Stars and Stripes. It offered exhaustive interviews with everyone from Malcolm X to the American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell, exposing young G.I.s to arguments and ideas about race and African-American equality they might not have been introduced to in their hometowns. Service in Vietnam put many soldiers in direct contact with diverse races and cultures, and Playboy presented them new ideas and arguments regarding those social and cultural issues.
As early as 1965, Playboy began running articles about the Vietnam War, with an editorial position that expressed reservations about the escalating conflict. The editors were smart about it, of course: Their stance may have been critical of the president, the administration, the military leaders and the strategy, but they made sure the contributors made every effort to stay supportive of the soldiers. In 1967, troops read the liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith arguing that “no part of the original justification” for the war “remains intact,” as he dismantled the idea of monolithic Communism and other Cold War justifications for war. But that was different from attacking the troops themselves. In 1971, the journalist David Halberstam wrote in an article for Playboy that “we admired their bravery and their idealism, their courage and dedication in the face of endless problems. We believed that they represented the best of American society.” Troops in Vietnam could turn to Playboy for coverage of their own war without fearing criticism of themselves.
Playboy was also useful as a forum for the men engaged in the fighting. The publication was unique in its number of interactive features. Soldiers wrote into sections like “Dear Playboy” for advice and with reactions to articles. But those correspondents also freely described their wartime experiences and concerns. They often described what they saw as unfair treatment by the military, discussed their difficulty in transitioning back to civilian society or thanked the magazine for helping them through their time in-country. In 1973, one soldier, R. K. Redini of Chicago, wrote to Playboy about his return home. “One of the things that made my Vietnam tour endurable was seeing Playboy every month,” he said. “It sure helped all of us forget our problems — for a little while, anyway. I thank you not only for myself but also for the thousands of other guys who find a lot of pleasure in your magazine.”
In “The Playboy Forum,” another reader-response section, many wrote in addressing specific aspects of Hefner’s lengthy editorial series “The Playboy Philosophy,” including drugs, race and homosexuality in the military. The forum format allowed those who served in Vietnam to reach out not just to other soldiers, but also to the public, providing them a safe space to voice their opinions and criticisms of their service. “Traditionally, a soldier with a gripe is advised by friends to tell it to the chaplain, take it to the inspector general or write to his congressman,” a soldier wrote. “Now, probably because of letters about military injustice in The Playboy Forum, another court of last resort has been added to the list.”
Playboy magazine’s significance to the soldiers in Vietnam spread far beyond the foldout Playmate. Troops appropriated the magazine’s bunny mascot and the company’s logo, painting it on planes, helicopters and tanks. They incorporated the logo into patches and “playboy” into call signs and unit nicknames. Adopting the symbol of Playboy was a small rebellion to the conformity of military life and a testament to the impact of the magazine on soldiers’ lives and morale.
And the magazine returned the favor. Long after the war ended, it funded documentaries on the war, Agent Orange research and post-traumatic stress disorder studies. It is a commitment that testifies to this enduring relationship between the publication and the soldier, and reveals how the magazine is a surprising legacy of one of America’s longest wars. | 8,013,404 |
Report by Morgan Stanley says general election likely in 2018, and Labour winning could damage valuations of UK companies
The prospect of Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister is a more serious threat to British business than Brexit, the investment bank Morgan Stanley has warned.
Morgan Stanley told investors that another general election towards the end of 2018 was likely once Theresa May’s government realised it could not secure the Brexit deal it wants and the Conservative party began to fall apart, opening the door to Labour taking power.
The nationalisation of key industries, higher taxes and a shift in spending priorities towards low-income households under Corbyn’s leadership could damage valuations of UK companies, the US bank warned.
“The UK is in the midst of a double whammy of uncertainty in the shape of Brexit and a fragile domestic political situation. Taken together, these two factors – which are interrelated to some degree – cast a long shadow over the policy backdrop and economic outlook of the UK,” the report from Morgan Stanley’s European equity team read.
“For the UK market, domestic politics may be perceived as a bigger risk than Brexit,” the bank told clients.
“From a UK investor perspective, we believe that the domestic political situation is at least as significant as Brexit, given the fragile state of the current government and the perceived risks of an incoming Labour administration that could potentially embark on a radical change in policy direction.
Brexit talks: where are the negotiations up to? Read more
“Against this backdrop, even if we see good progress in the Brexit negotiations, the scope for UK sensitive assets to rally may be muted, unless we also see an improvement in the government’s position in opinion polls.”
Morgan Stanley said British utility companies, especially water and power companies, were most at risk from a Labour government, but also warned postal services, telecommunications and travel companies could be affected.
Higher taxes and an increase in corporation tax to 26% might damage British financial services, Morgan Stanley warned.
“Spending priorities... shift in favour of low-income households and the public sector and away from outsourcers and defence companies,” the report continued. “Higher low-end wage growth could also impact service-oriented companies with low margins, such as retailers.”
Morgan Stanley warned of the UK’s fragile political situation, saying: “For much of the past 30 years and more, a change of government ultimately had a relatively limited impact on the UK equity market, as policy settings didn’t change too dramatically. However, this may not be the case if we see a Labour government take power under its current leadership, given its very different policy approach.
“It is certainly plausible that the Labour party could ultimately moderate some of its more radical policy ideas; the alternative could be the most significant political shift in the UK since the end of the 1970s.”
In forecasts for bad scenarios for UK stocks, Morgan Stanley highlighted the prospect of the Brexit process unravelling.
“If the UK and EU find insufficient grounds for compromise and/or we see a change in the domestic political backdrop in the UK which leads to a new prime minister (possibly from either party). Fresh uncertainty around a trade agreement starts to cloud the economic outlook in the Euro area in addition to the greater woes envisaged for the UK,” the report said.
“Even though the UK economic news flow hasn’t been as bad as some feared, the UK equity market has underperformed materially over the past year. Its relative valuation is now down to its lowest level since the height of the TMT [technology, media and telecoms] bubble.
“Given this depressed backdrop, it is quite plausible that we see a relief bounce in some UK assets if and when the Brexit negotiations move on to the next stage. However, we think it unlikely that any such move would be particularly long-lasting, given that uncertainty levels look set to remain elevated for much of the next year or more.”
A Labour spokesperson said: “The next Labour government will provide the major boost to investment that business groups like the CBI and the FSB have been calling for, protect 95% of people from any tax rises and ensure our public services work for people not profiteers.
“The banks and hedge funds will not be allowed to bring our economy to its knees again. Labour will put an end to the rigged economy that benefits only the super rich, to build a society that works for the many not the few.” | 8,013,405 |
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star and creator Rachel Bloom has co-written a song for The CW's upcoming musical crossover between The Flash and Supergirl, BuzzFeed News can exclusively reveal.
Bloom told BuzzFeed News in a statement that as soon as she heard the two series were doing a musical crossover, she e-mailed The CW president Mark Pedowitz, who connected her with the shows' executive producers Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg. "I immediately offered them my services," Bloom wrote. "As soon as they picked one of my song ideas, I hopped on the phone with my old Robot Chicken boss Tom Root and we brainstormed and, based on that brainstorm, I wrote up the song ‘Super Friend.’ I am so excited to contribute more to the upward trend that is musicals in television and film. Music can be one of the most amazing and efficient forms of storytelling and character development. Also, it was really fun to write a comedy song for two superheroes.”
“Super Friend" will be performed by Grant Gustin and Melissa Benoist in "Duet," The Flash portion of the two-episode crossover, airing March 21 (the musical action kicks off at the end of Supergirl's March 20 episode). Jesse L. Martin, Victor Garber, Carlos Valdes, Jeremy Jordan, and John Barrowman will also be singing in the episode, which will include Glee alum Darren Criss as Music Meister, aka the musical's big bad.
The episode will also feature an original song written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land, Dear Evan Hansen) called “Runnin’ Home to You” that Gustin will perform. | 8,013,406 |
A billionaire Chicago family that has donated and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Obama got a deal from the federal government to avoid paying all of a $460 million settlement it agreed to in the 2001 failure of a Chicago-area bank it owned, while 1,400 former depositors are still owed more than $10 million in lost savings.
And now, 11 years later, the prospect that any of the depositors will get their money back is bleak.
The Pritzker family, which made its fortune in hotels and manufacturing, agreed to a $460 million settlement offer in December 2001 to avoid sanctions and civil lawsuits in the failure of Superior Bank in Hinsdale, Ill.
But after paying $316 million of the interest-free debt, the family quietly struck a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) in June 2011 to discount the balance in return for paying off the debt early.
“We have been stiffed again,” said Fran Sweet, 67, a depositor still owed $70,000. “It is a lot to lose. We are not wealthy people. We are white-collar and blue-collar workers who saved this money, [or] thought we saved this money.”
John W. Courtney, 67-year-old Vietnam veteran and construction worker still owed $50,000, said, “I worked hard for the money. [The Pritzkers] signed an agreement that got them off the hook, and now they are backpedaling. A deal is a deal. Who gave the FDIC the right to discount the note?”
Ms. Sweet and Mr. Courtney are among 1,400 depositors still owed $10.3 million at the end of March, records show. The FDIC Insurance Fund is still out $296 million after paying off Superior’s insured depositors. It is highly unlikely the remaining depositors or the FDIC will receive much more money since nearly all of the settlement funds have been paid out, according to records and interviews.
“The depositors got nicked coming, going and after the fact,” said Clinton Krislov, a lawyer who represents depositors whose accounts exceeded the $100,000 covered by FDIC insurance. “The depositors have gotten all they will from the Pritzkers.”
The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), which regulates federal savings associations, closed Superior and its 18 branch offices on July 27, 2001. The bank failed, the OTS said, because of its aggressive strategy of making high-risk subprime loans to borrowers with troubled credit histories.
At the time, OTS said the bank “suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision.”
Joint partnership
Superior was purchased in 1988 for $42.5 million by a partnership involving the Pritzkers and New York real estate investor Alvin Dworman. The partnership operated through Coast-to-Coast Financial Corp., a holding company.
It was one of the first banks in the 1990s to turn to subprime loans, which target high-risk borrowers at higher interest rates. Recipients of those loans often have delinquency or default histories, bankruptcies or limited debt experience, and eventually begin defaulting on their mortgages.
The dramatic rise in those defaults and foreclosures, banking and government analysts said, eventually led to the housing crash and resulting financial crisis a decade later.
Despite the bank’s failure, the Pritzkers have continued to make money — 11 of the heirs are billionaires, according to Forbes magazine. One of those heirs, Penny Pritzker, was the national finance chairwoman of Mr. Obama’s 2008 presidential race and has “bundled,” or collected, between $100,000 and $200,000 for his current campaign.
In 2009, Mr. Obama named her to the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board to help solve the nation’s financial crisis. Mrs. Pritzker and her husband, Dr. Bryan Traubert, have donated more than $133,000 directly to Mr. Obama’s political campaigns, election records show, and they and other family members have helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for him over the years.
Mrs. Pritzker, whose fortune has been estimated by Forbes at $1.7 billion, is now founder, chairman and chief executive officer of PSP Capital Partners.
Mrs. Pritzker took over as chairwoman of Superior in 1991, serving in that position until 1994, when she stepped down for a seat on the board of directors at Coast-to-Coast Financial.
Despite Superior’s failure, the Pritzkers have begun to invest in banks again. In 2010, the Pritzker Family Foundations LLC (PFF), of which Mrs. Pritzker is president, invested $503,000 in Community Bancorp, which later became Cadence Bancorp. Cadence raised $1 billion from investors.
In April 2011, Cadence — with financial guarantees from the federal government — bought from the FDIC substantially all the assets of a failed bank in Birmingham, Ala., ironically also named Superior Bank. The Alabama bank, which is not related to the Pritzker’s earlier defunct bank in Illinois, was the largest bank failure of 2011.
‘Investment vehicle’
Susan Anderson, spokeswoman for Mrs. Pritzker, said PFF is owned by a consortium of nonprofit charitable 501(c)3 tax-exempt organizations headed by Pritzker family members. She said the Cadence investment was intended to help the organizations award grants, primarily in the areas of education, science, health, art and culture.
Ms. Anderson described PFF’s investment in Cadence as “minuscule,” with no decision-making authority. She also said Mrs. Pritzker had “no knowledge of, nor was she involved in” the Superior settlement agreement that led to the early payment to the FDIC, saying it was handled by trustees for the Pritzker family.
She also said that when Mrs. Pritzker was Superior’s chairwoman, the bank achieved high ratings from the OTS, adding that she was never accused of any wrongdoing.
But OTS records show the agency identified “concerns” with Superior’s mortgage-banking operations as early as July 1993 and reported in June 1994 that its continued investments in subprime mortgage pools exposed the institution to a “somewhat greater risk than normal.”
In a February 2002 report, the General Accounting Office — since renamed the Government Accountability Office — noted that Superior’s management began to focus on its subprime lending business in 1993 by acquiring Alliance Funding Co., from which the bank adopted a business strategy that included the targeting of borrowers nationwide “with risky credit profiles, such as high debt ratios and credit histories that included past delinquencies.”
In 2008, Mrs. Pritzker’s attorney, Kevin Poorman, told The Washington Times that while his client had stepped down as Superior’s chairwoman in 1994, she wrote a letter on May 31, 2001, as a Coast-to-Coast board member urging the bank to make an expanded push into subprime loans in an effort to save itself.
“Your resolve and dedication is a primary reason for the past successes of the bank and will once again restore Superior’s leadership position in subprime lending,” she wrote.
The bank was shut down 57 days later.
Critics have cited that letter as evidence of Mrs. Pritzker’s continuing stewardship of the bank and her advocacy for a subprime lending practice that Mr. Obama has criticized. During a campaign speech in July 2008 in Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama said the nation’s mortgage crisis “has to do with the fact that people got suckered into loans they could not pay” — adding that the banks and financial institutions that made the loans were “making money hand over fist,” but knew that many of the deals were “just too good to be true.”
Played no role
White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment on the Pritzkers’ dealings with the FDIC, referring inquiries to Ben LaBolt, spokesman for the Obama campaign. Mr. LaBolt also declined to comment, but a campaign official who asked not to be named said the campaign played no role in the decision to give the Pritzkers a discount.
The $460 million settlement agreement called for the Pritzkers to pay $100 million upfront and the balance over the next 15 years in annual payments of $24 million. The Pritzkers also were not required to pay interest on a $360 million promissory note. As the receiver, the FDIC collected the money and made payments to the depositors and the FDIC Insurance Fund.
Records show the Pritzkers still owed the federal government $144 million in June 2011 as they negotiated a payoff deal. The FDIC and Ms. Anderson cited confidentiality in refusing to disclose the amount of the discount or how much the Pritzkers paid to settle the debt.
FDIC spokesman David Barr said only that the agency considered the debt paid in full.
Since 2001, the government has paid $43.7 million to Superior depositors whose accounts exceeded the $100,000 covered by FDIC insurance — about 81 percent of the $53.9 million they had in uninsured deposits the day the bank was shut down. As of March 31, records show, the FDIC had $12.9 million in its Superior receivership account, but owed $375 million to the FDIC Insurance Fund, the uninsured depositors and other creditors.
“The uninsured depositors will get pennies,” said Bert Ely, a banking consultant who heads Ely & Co., an Alexandria financial-institutions and monetary-policy consulting firm. He said there was not enough money left to make the depositors and the FDIC whole, adding that of the remaining $12.9 million, the first $1.8 million would go to pay administrative costs and the remaining $11.1 would be split — 97 percent to the FDIC and 3 percent to the depositors.
The Pritzker’s half-million-dollar Cadence investment has drawn fire from the uninsured depositors and their attorney.
“Clearly, people who run a bank into the drink should not get another bank until the depositors are paid,” said Mr. Krislov. “Owners of a failed bank should not be approved for future bank ownership while former depositors remain unpaid.”
In a letter, Ms. Sweet told the FDIC it should “prohibit the Pritzker family from investing in FDIC-insured banks until former Superior depositors are made whole.” She said she was “outraged” the family was “once again trying to make an opportunistic play off of the federally insured banking system.”
Mr. Courtney said the Pritzkers getting back into banking was “a kick in the teeth” to depositors like him who are still waiting to get their money. He also said he was annoyed that every time he gets a payment check from the FDIC, the agency charges him $25 for handling. “It is just another kick in the ass.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | 8,013,407 |
"That's what makes Donald Trump more dangerous than any person out there," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on his show a week after Trump's tweet. "He will bring up stuff that nobody else will bring up."
While other GOP candidates indicated they wouldn't make Bill Clinton's sexual improprieties an issue in the campaign — Hillary's Democratic rival Bernie Sanders has said the same — Trump was making it plain he would.
" If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women's card on me, she's wrong!" Donald Trump tweeted at the end of December. He was referring, of course, to his potential Democratic rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, and her husband, Bill.
Read more
"If Hillary thinks she can unleash her husband, with his terrible record of women abuse, while playing the women's card on me, she's wrong!" Donald Trump tweeted at the end of December. He was referring, of course, to his potential Democratic rival for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, and her husband, Bill.
While other GOP candidates indicated they wouldn't make Bill Clinton's sexual improprieties an issue in the campaign — Hillary's Democratic rival Bernie Sanders has said the same — Trump was making it plain he would.
"That's what makes Donald Trump more dangerous than any person out there," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said on his show a week after Trump's tweet. "He will bring up stuff that nobody else will bring up."
And Scarborough had a specific figure from Bill Clinton's past in mind.
"People in the know always talk about Jeffrey Epstein."
Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a financier and political donor. He is also a convicted sex offender who is the subject of ongoing litigation from at least a dozen of his then-underage victims.
Flight logs show Bill Clinton traveled at least 10 times on Epstein's private jet, dubbed the "Lolita Express" by tabloids, and he is widely reported to have visited Little St. James, Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands. That's where, according to attorneys for Epstein's victims, many of the worst crimes against minors were committed by Epstein and friends who traveled there with him.
In a 2011 interview with her attorneys, Virginia Roberts, one of the teenagers preyed upon by Epstein, said he had told her he had "compromising" information on Bill Clinton and that the former president "owes me a favor."
Yet despite Bill Clinton's ties to Epstein and Trump's stated willingness to make Clinton's sexual past an issue in the campaign, Trump will almost certainly avoid bringing up Epstein's name. Because in addition to haunting Bill Clinton's past, Epstein also haunts Trump's.
* * *
Trump's attorney Alan Garten told VICE News last week that the presidential candidate had "no relationship" with Epstein, and only knew him because Epstein was a member of Mar-A-Lago, Trump's private club and residence in Palm Beach.
"A lot of people hung out there, including Jeffrey Epstein," Garten said. "That is the only connection."
But according to someone with intimate knowledge of the situation, Trump and Epstein appeared to have a somewhat stronger connection.
"I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,'' Trump told New York magazine in a 2002 profile of Epstein written three years before Epstein began to be investigated. "He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life."
When asked about a subpoena served to Trump in 2009, Garten said it "never happened." The subpoena called for Trump to give a deposition in a case against Epstein; Garten's denial baffled Brad Edwards, one of Virginia Roberts' attorneys.
"There is no debate over what happened," Edwards told VICE news. "I served Mr. Trump with a subpoena for deposition in 2009. He talked to me voluntarily, and consequently we withdrew the subpoena in light of his voluntarily providing information…. I can't imagine there being any dispute of any of this."
Edwards also said that it is "obvious" Trump himself was not involved in any of Epstein's illicit activity.
Three days after denying the subpoena, Garten emailed VICE News.
"Brad [Edwards] called me to let me know that you had reached out to him," Garten said. "I looked back at my records and saw that Mr. Trump was subpoenaed."
In 2000, both Trump and Epstein reportedly attended a small party hosted by media magnate Conrad Black, who in 2007 was convicted and served time in prison for fraud and obstruction of justice (the fraud charges were overturned on appeal). Black is currently an enthusiastic supporter of Trump's presidential bid.
Mark Epstein, Jeffrey's brother, testified in 2009 that Trump flew on Jeffrey's private jet at least once. Meanwhile, message pads [see below] from Epstein's Palm Beach mansion that were seized by investigators and obtained by VICE News indicate that Trump called Epstein twice in November of 2004.
Two pages of Epstein's phone messages from November 2004
Garten said Trump had never been to Epstein's home. But a 2002 story in Vanity Fair listed Trump as one of a small group of mega-rich businessmen, including newspaper publisher Mort Zuckerman and Revlon chairman Ronald Perelman, who periodically dined with Epstein at his Palm Beach estate. And a 2003 story in New York reported that Trump had dined at Epstein's Upper East Side home, a nine-story building that is reportedly the largest private residence in Manhattan.
That dinner, for 30 people, was also attended by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, businessman and philanthropist Les Wexner, former British Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, and Bill Clinton aide Doug Band.
"The dialogues are so engaging," Epstein told the magazine at the time, "that serving even the most extraordinary food sometimes seems inappropriate."
* * *
Roberts and a number of Epstein's other victims are seeking to overturn a 2007 US Justice Department non-prosecution agreement with Epstein that capped financial damages against him. Epstein allegedly unsuccessfully sought to block his victims from going to court, but the case, Jane Does vs. United States of America, is currently being heard in a Palm Beach courthouse.
In the late 1990s, Roberts was recruited to perform a massage for Epstein while working as a $9-per-hour locker room attendant at Mar-A-Lago. Roberts' father also worked at Mar-A-Lago, which is located about 3 miles away from Epstein's estate, as a maintenance manager.
Roberts, who is now 32 and runs an anti sex trafficking organization in Colorado, has alleged in sworn depositions and remarks to the press that Epstein turned her into a "sex slave" and pimped her out to various friends, including England's Prince Andrew. Over the years, the passengers on Epstein's jet, she said, included "a whole bunch of other girls, sometimes famous people, sometimes some politicians."
Roberts' account is corroborated by a number of Epstein's other victims, by lawyers in the case interviewed by VICE News, and by court documents, including the deposition of Juan Alessi, Epstein's former gardener and then majordomo, who was one of the prosecution's key witnesses.
In his deposition, Alessi — he did not respond to VICE News' request for comment — said that Epstein made clear to him that he was never to ask any of the girls who came to the estate for proof of their age, so that everyone would have plausible deniability if any problems with law enforcement later emerged.
Roberts was originally recruited for Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's then live-in girlfriend and the daughter of disgraced British newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell. She is accused by a number of Epstein's victims — their accounts are supported in court records and by other witnesses — of being among Epstein's procurers of underage girls.
After three years of abuse, Roberts fled in 2002, at age 19. Last year, she filed a lawsuit against Maxwell, alleging that she was behind a smear campaign seeking to tarnish Roberts' reputation. The lawsuit is ongoing. Roberts did not respond to requests for comment.
During this same period, Epstein and Maxwell were repeat guests at Mar-A-Lago. In 2000, they hung out there with Prince Andrew, who arrived for vacation on Trump's private plane. That same year, the Palm Beach Post reported that Trump, Epstein, Prince Andrew, and Maxwell were all at a tennis tournament/celebrity event at Mar-A-Lago.
Garten told VICE News that Trump had no relationship with Maxwell aside from the fact that she periodically turned up at Mar-A-Lago. The 1997 photograph below, of Trump and Maxwell "out on the town," was taken in New York City.
Photo via Getty Images
In 2010, Epstein pled the Fifth when asked by a lawyer representing one of Epstein's victims about his relationship with Trump:
Q: Have you ever had a personal relationship with Donald Trump?A. What do you mean by "personal relationship," sir?Q. Have you socialized with him?A. Yes, sir.Q. Yes?A. Yes, sir.Q. Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18?A: Though I'd like to answer that question, at least today I'm going to have to assert my Fifth, Sixth, and 14th Amendment rights, sir.
Epstein did not respond to a request for comment.
* * *
During its investigation, the FBI obtained a copy of Epstein's private 194-page phone book. Lawyers for one of Epstein's victims told VICE News it was stolen by a household employee sometime around 2004.
A copy we obtained includes investigators' margin notes pointing to key witnesses against Epstein as well as handwritten notes identifying dozens of then-underage girls, as well as their phone numbers.
Among people listed in the phone book were well-known political figures such as Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, Tony Blair, former Utah governor and Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, Senator Edward Kennedy, and Henry Kissinger. Also listed were major political contributors like David Koch and Pepe Fanjul.
All those names were listed alphabetically at the front of Epstein's telephone book, along with the names of Trump's former wife, Ivana, his daughter Ivanka, and his brother, Robert.
Epstein created a number of other odd categories, including one called "Jeffrey." There were dozens of names in the Jeffrey category, including Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, then–Senator John Kerry, former senator and lobbyist George Mitchell, powerhouse DC lobbyist Thomas Quinn, and David Rockefeller.
Trump was also listed in this section. Under his name were 14 phone numbers, including emergency numbers, car numbers, and numbers to Trump's security guard and houseman.
* * *
The state of Florida began investigating Epstein in 2005; the FBI began its own probe the following year. Investigators amassed a mountain of evidence against Epstein, but in the end the Department of Justice agreed to a bizarre deal not to prosecute him.
On September 27, 2007 — a few weeks before the New York Post reported that Epstein was banned from Mar-A-Lago — Epstein acknowledged guilt in "knowingly and willfully conspiring with others known and unknown to… persuade, induce, or entice minor females to engage in prostitution."
The terms of the agreement, which was secret at the time and was drafted by Epstein's own lawyers, have never been fully disclosed, but an attorney with direct knowledge of the case told VICE News that it capped damages against Epstein — reportedly worth about $2 billion — to between $50,000 and $150,000, depending on what year he had abused the girl. The agreement also barred victims from seeking any future financial redress.
Roy Black, Epstein's lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment.
When asked why he believed Epstein received such a light sentence, Sky William Roberts, Virginia's father, told VICE News. "Because he's a billionaire. You're not a billionaire and neither am I; if we did what he did we'd be in prison."
In 2008, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months for his crimes by the state of Florida. He "could have been charged with multiple federal counts of sexual exploitation of minors, resulting in much harsher penalties," the Palm Beach Daily News reported in 2010 when Epstein was finishing up his prison stay. He served in a segregated, vacant wing of the county stockade. Epstein, the newspaper said, "was let out on work release six days a week for up to 16 hours a day."
Maxwell fled the United States on the eve of her deposition and never testified in Epstein's case. In fact, several of the Jane Doe lawyers, who spoke off the record because the case is ongoing, said that every key person investigators wanted to interview — especially those with potential knowledge of what took place on St. James Island — eluded subpoenas on technical grounds.
There was one exception: Donald Trump.
* * *
Edwards, the lawyer for Roberts and about 10 other Jane Does, said that after he served Trump with the subpoena in 2009, Trump immediately contacted him.
"During the conversation, Mr. Trump was open and forthright," Edwards said. "I cannot discuss the substance of the conversation. But I will say that it was obvious to me that he was in no way involved in any untoward activity."
It appears that Trump cut ties to Epstein a few weeks after the non-prosecution agreement was reached. On October 15, 2007, the New York Post reported that Mar-A-Lago had barred Epstein because he hit on a masseuse at the club. Epstein denied to the the Post that he had been banned. One of the Jane Doe attorneys told VICE News a slightly different account, saying that he had been told Trump broke ties with Epstein after Epstein tried to pick up the underage daughter of a Mar-A-Lago club member.
Garten said he was not aware of the Post story or the incident.
Virginia Roberts and at least a dozen of Epstein's other victims refused to accept the terms agreed to by the US government, and hired attorneys to seek additional damages. One of the more intriguing allegations made by Roberts in an affidavit last year is that Epstein "trafficked me for sexual purposes to many other powerful men, including politicians and powerful business executives."
She says that Epstein made her tell him about the sexual encounters she had with these men. The reason, in her estimation, was "so that he could potentially blackmail them."
Follow Ken Silverstein on Twitter: @KenSilverstein1 | 8,013,408 |
ilvl 77 off a white mob in a shrine
Jewelers: 82
Fuse Used: 133
Chromatics Used: 262
Since this chest has no requirements, I decided to aim for 3 pairs of 2 colors in each row.
The Trinity:
ilvl 77 off a white mob in a shrineJewelers: 82Fuse Used: 133Chromatics Used: 262Since this chest has no requirements, I decided to aim for 3 pairs of 2 colors in each row.The Trinity: IGN: CopyCatDan
WTB trophy items Last edited by danieldirt on Oct 15, 2013, 1:57:05 AM Posted by danieldirt
on on Quote this Post
GOOD LUCK.
GORLAK SMASH WORDS!!
--------------------
The Greatest Plate Vest Of All Time! http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/293910
So store. so item. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/136100 Posted by enshin
on Alpha Member on Quote this Post
there is no god. IGN: Arlianth
Check out my LA build: 1782214 Posted by Nephalim
on on Quote this Post
only keysus
black keysus. GORLAK SMASH WORDS!!
--------------------
The Greatest Plate Vest Of All Time! http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/293910
So store. so item. http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/136100 Posted by enshin
on Alpha Member on Quote this Post
" Kirielis been done
idc, this is going into my trophy case idc, this is going into my trophy case IGN: CopyCatDan
WTB trophy items Posted by danieldirt
on on Quote this Post
That's awesome Dan ... wish I had enough fusings to pull off a project like this :) BLAMT! Posted by Zelpo
on on Quote this Post | 8,013,409 |
Large, solid barriers have been installed on the London and Westminster Bridges, along with temporary installations in the capital in St. James’s Park and Buckingham Palace.
Germany
In Frankfurt, where the streets radiating from the city’s main train station were closed for the Bahnhofsviertel night street festival last week, the authorities took no chances. They added 3-ton concrete barriers, mindful of the attacks in Europe, most notably a truck assault that killed 15 people last year at a Christmas market in Berlin.
Over the past year, said Thomas Feda, the head of tourism for the city of Frankfurt, the threat posed by vehicles has led to the creation of a new industry. Security companies are trying to help cities develop more effective ways to protect their residents, while also preserving access for emergency vehicles.
Each city and region develops its own security measures. Although little has changed in everyday life for Germans, concrete barriers have become commonplace at festivals and gatherings from Düsseldorf to Berlin. That includes the Museum Embankment Festival in Frankfurt this weekend and the “Fan Mile” in Berlin, stretching from the Brandenburg Gate to the Tiergarten, for a German Cup soccer match.
The authorities in Munich have added security measures for Oktoberfest, requiring that all delivery trucks entering the festival grounds register in advance and leave the premises by 9 a.m., at which point visitors will be allowed to enter. In previous years the beer tents opened to the public at 8 a.m.
France | 8,013,410 |
Republican National Committee Endorses Anti-Trans ‘Bathroom Bills’
The RNC, led by its chairman, Reince Priebus, is condemning the Obama administration for 'governmental overreach' in providing equal access to facilities to trans kids.
In a move that is sure to bring cheer to anti-transgender activists and the Republican presidential candidates who seek their votes nationwide, the Republican National Committee has approved a resolution endorsing so-called bathroom bills, reports the Washington Blade.
The bill that would be the first of this kind is on the Republican governor’s desk in South Dakota, and similar measures are advancing in other states, where (mostly) GOP lawmakers are attempting to restrict transgender students from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
“The Republican National Committee calls on the Department of Education to rescind its interpretation of Title IX that wrongly includes facility use issues by transgender students,” the resolution reads, according to the Blade. The resolution passed quietly last month, and was first noted on Twitter by Time magazine’s Zeke Miller.
Just noticed this RNC resolution from last’s month’s meeting on Title IX and gender identity https://t.co/y9zLeF00vu — Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) February 24, 2016
The resolution characterizes “bathroom bills” as legislation to “protect student privacy”: “The Republican National Committee encourages state legislatures to enact laws that protect student privacy and limit the use of restrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities to members of the sex to whom the facility is designated,” the resolution states.
The resolution rejects the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to prohibit discrimination against transgender students “governmental overreach.”
In contrast to the life experience of transgender individuals around the world, the RNC defines gender as “the physical condition of being male or female,” and it claims gender is irrevocably determined at birth and can be confirmed via a test of DNA.
And in a clear attempt to circumvent pending court battles and statehouse skirmishes, the resolution says the term “gender identity” was not in the language approved by Congress under Title IX. It notes that some courts have ruled the gender provisions of the law don’t apply to transgender students, despite guidance from the Obama administration.
Asked for comment, the Democratic National Committee was swift to condemn what it called Republican “hypocrisy” on this and other issues:
“The GOP can’t find time to consider a Supreme Court nominee, or pass immigration reform, or raise the minimum wage, or enact equal pay for women, but when it comes to attacking trans people, they’ve got all the time in the world,” wrote DNC spokesman T.J. Helmstetter in an email to The Advocate.
“The Republican Party wants to keep government so small it can fit in the bathroom stall with you to check your anatomy. Their hypocrisy and bigotry know no bounds. The Republicans’ legal interpretation of Title IX to exclude trans students underscores exactly how important it is for LGBT people to call their Senators and make sure that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee gets a fair hearing and a vote.”
That process has been threatened by Republican senators who want to wait until a new president is in office before confirming a justice to the Supreme Court. With RNC expecting that its candidate for president will face Hillary Clinton, the resolution criticizes Clinton, who has campaigned for transgender rights. Without naming her, the DNC defended both Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders as well as the president.
“Under President Obama, this has been the most LGBT-affirmative and inclusive administration in history, and our Democratic presidential candidates will ensure that we continue to protect the civil rights of our trans brothers and sisters in the next administration.”
When asked for comment, Gregory T. Angelo of the Log Cabin Republicans told The Advocate in an email, “Clearly Log Cabin Republicans is opposed to any such resolution.”
Just this week, the Human Rights Campaign issued a report detailing an unprecedented 44 anti-trans bills now pending in state legislatures in 16 states across the country. The South Dakota bill has a built-in deadline of Tuesday; if the governor does not sign or veto the measure, it will become law without his signature. | 8,013,411 |
Khmer Rouge's 'chief ideologue', foreign minister and head of state face charges of crimes against humanity [Reuters]
A top Khmer Rouge leader on trial at Cambodia's war crimes court has been confronted with dramatic footage in which he defends the regime's bloody purges and calls the victims "traitors".
Prosecutors told the court on Tuesday that the clip from the 2009 documentary "Enemies of the People" showed the 1970s movement had a policy of killing enemies and those it regarded as disloyal.
Nuon Chea, known as "Brother Number Two" and seen as the regime's chief ideologue, showed no emotion as the short clip of him was shown on the second day of opening statements in the trial at the UN-backed court in Phnom Penh.
"If these traitors were alive, the Khmers as a people would have been finished so I dare to suggest our decision was the right one," Nuon Chea tells a Cambodian journalist in the clip.
"If we had shown mercy to the people, the nation would have been lost."
Also on trial are Ieng Sary, the regime's former foreign minister, and Khieu Samphan, a former head of state. Like Nuon, Ieng, 86, and Khieu, 80, avow innocence.
But Andrew Cayley, the prosecutor, said the trio could not solely blame Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge's late leader, for the atrocities perpetrated by the regime. Up to two million people are estimated to have been killed between 1975 and the Khmer Rouge's removal from power by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979.
"To this day, Nuon Chea insists that the people they murdered... were all enemies or traitors," Cayley said of the mass executions.
“The accused cannot credibly claim they did not know and had no control over the crimes that occurred'' when the group ruled what they called Democratic Kampuchea, he said.
Still-traumatised nation
Nuon Chea said the accusations against him were false.
"Whatever has been indicated in the opening statements is not true. My position in the revolution was to serve the interest of the nation and the people," he said.
The long-awaited case, the tribunal's second and most important, is seen as vital to healing wounds in the still-traumatised nation.
Missing from the courtroom is a fourth accused Khmer Rouge leader, Ieng Thirith, dubbed the regime's "First Lady" and the only female leader to be charged by the court. Ieng was ruled unfit for trial last week because she has dementia.
Led by "Brother Number One" Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge emptied cities, abolished money and religion and wiped out nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population in a bid to create an agrarian utopia.
Owing to fears that not all of the accused, who are in their 80s and suffer from various medical ailments, will live to see a verdict, the court recently split their complex case into a series of smaller trials.
The UN-backed tribunal, which was established in 2006, has tried just one case, convicting Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, the former head of the regime's notorious S-21 prison, last July and sentencing him to 35 years in prison for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other offenses.
Cayley said Duch would be a key witness in the case against Nuon Chea and his co-defendants. | 8,013,412 |
Related Headlines Sheriff: No conflict of interest in contract
- Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said he stands by his decision to give Taser International a $2 million no-bid contract for body cameras.
FOX 13 investigated events surrounding the contract, and discovered employees went on trips paid for by the vendor, the vendor made donations to Nocco's charity "Shoot-Out” event, and also hired his wife’s lobbying firm around the same time the sheriff granted the vendor the body camera contract.
Nocco said neither the donation, nor his wife's company's contract, nor the trips had any influence on his agency's contract.
“There's nothing hidden. We're hiding nothing,” Nocco said, responding to FOX 13’s questions about the contract.
The sheriff could not, however, explain why his spokesmen repeatedly claimed his emails with the vendor did not exist.
The sheriff is a publicly elected official whose communications are subject to Florida’s public record statutes.
FOX 13 requested emails between Nocco and Taser reps in 2014, the year he signed the $2 million contract. In response to the public records request, PCSO claimed there were no emails between Nocco and Taser reps in 2014.
The agency went as far as to attach a screenshot of what turned up in its search for Nocco’s emails with Taser reps – just a handful of emails in 2015, mostly mass mailings from Taser promoting its latest products, which the agency provided to FOX 13.
FOX 13 asked the Pasco Sheriff’s Office to check again.
“There are no 2014 emails on the subject,” spokesman Kevin Doll said in an email.
Actually, there were.
Buried in emails the agency produced in response to a public records request for emails between Major Mel Eakley - the man Nocco delegated to head up the body camera project - and Taser reps, were more than two dozen emails sent between Nocco and Taser reps not previously provided by the agency.
WATCH: Sheriff answers questions about his emails
During FOX’s interview with Nocco, spokesman Eddie Daniels continued to claim there were no 2014 emails, even interrupting as FOX 13 began to ask the sheriff about them. As the interview continued, Nocco suggested a crash of the agency’s email system may have wiped out his emails.
Daniels later said the sheriff misspoke.
“Sheriff Nocco mentioned an email malfunction that hit us system wide, but that took place months before our contract with any of the body camera vendors,” Eddie Daniels said in a statement emailed after the interview.
The statement also said, “The only emails between the sheriff and Taser have been provided to you.”
In the interview, Nocco eventually said he didn’t know what happened to his emails.
The agency had not offered an explanation, either, until hours before FOX 13’s investigation was scheduled to air – more than six months after the agency said there were no emails.
Spokesman Kevin Doll said they searched for the sheriff’s emails using an old system with “rudimentary” search capabilities, and the agency has since transitioned to a new system. When asked why the agency was able to produce hundreds of Eakley’s emails while still using the old system, but not a single email from 2014 with the sheriff, Doll said the emails may have been migrating from the old email system to the new one, resulting in the discrepancy.
The emails FOX 13 eventually obtained discussed a range of topics, including one on the day Taser landed the contract.
There were emails where Taser asked Nocco to endorse their products and he replied with written responses of endorsement. Also, emails from Taser asking for Nocco's input on a body camera bill in the Florida Legislature.
Members at government watchdog groups said they are concerned.
“I find it very troubling that the sheriff could not produce those records in response to a public records request,” said Barbara Peterson, president of the First Amendment Foundation.
“We have a right - and in Florida, it’s a constitutional right - to oversee our government and to hold our government accountable.”
“Whether that’s an intentional violation of the law or unintentional violation of the law, I think it does constitute a violation,” she added. FOX 13 is a member of the First Amendment Foundation.
Peter Butzin, with Common Cause Florida also said the agency’s response regarding emails is concerning.
“There seems to be a clear and compelling case that email records were not turned over,” Butzin said.
Have a tip? FOX 13 Investigates wants to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. Contact the reporter directly at (813) 870-9758 or email [email protected]. Follow her at @TinaRJensen. | 8,013,413 |
Men in the more deprived parts of London are living up to 17 years less than those living in the wealthier boroughs.
The shocking disparity was revealed in a Bureau investigation into male health in the capital. It showed that a man in Queen’s Gate, in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, lives to the average age of 88.3. But in Lewisham Central, South East London, life expectancy is only 70.8.
The poor life expectancy figures for men living in some parts of the capital was in sharp contrast to female life expectancy. In almost two thirds (61%) of London’s wards, the gap between men and women’s life expectancy is wider than the national average of 4.1 years.
The national average of women’s life expectancy is 82.3 years; for men, it is 78.2 years – just over four years shorter. However, in London, the average life expectancy for men is 77.1 years, and for women it is 81.7 years – a wider gap of 4.6 years.
The gap is most notable in the more deprived parts of the capital, where women out-live men by more than 12 years.
In one ward in the heart of the city: Cathedrals, in Southwark, the Bureau found that women live on average 12.72 years longer than men. Men’s life expectancy there is 73.75 years, while women live on average until they are 86.47 years old. That’s worse than the average disparity between men and women in Russia, the country where relatively, men live the world’s second shortest lives compared to their female counterparts.[1]
Related article: Why is men’s health suffering in London?
In 41 of London’s 623 wards, (7%) the life expectancy difference for men and women is over twice the national average, while in nine wards, men are living at least a decade shorter than women.
The wards with the largest gaps were generally located in the boroughs of Haringey, Newham, Brent, Hackney, Hammersmith & Fulham, Westminster, Lambeth, Camden, and Southwark.
Lack of spending
Yet despite the low life expectancy rate for men in many parts of the capital, only a handful of health trusts commission services specifically aimed at the male population.
Alan White, Professor of men’s health at Leeds University and lead author of a recent EU report into men’s health, said a real lack of initiatives directed at the male population was a real problem. ‘At the moment there is a blindness to the fact that there are men wanting to use the services and they can’t.’
Through FOI requests, the Bureau found that PCTs in London spent around £2m more commissioning women’s third sector services than on those directed at men’s health, while many of London’s councils did not spend a penny commissioning services aimed specifically at male wellbeing.
The trend remains even in boroughs including Haringey, Brent, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Camden, where men have the worst life expectancies.
Related article: Men’s health – A correlation between the gender gap and deprivation?
Dan Taylor, London Coordinator for the campaign against living miserably, (CALM), said: ‘Services that specifically address men and resonate with their lives and empower them to get help are urgently needed. Women’s services are important – but the balance needs to be equal, with support services that men can buy into getting their funding increased and matched to women’s services. This may require a rethink about how such services are developed and branded in the first place.’
The Data
The table below shows the 30 wards with the largest gaps in life expectancy between men and women. Alongside is the ward’s rank in the 2011 Index of Deprivation – with ‘1’ being most deprived and ‘628’ being the least. Overall, there is a general trend that the more deprived the ward, the greater the age of mortality difference. | 8,013,414 |
To save energy, the European directives from the Eco-design of Energy Using Products (2005/32/CE) have recommended the replacement of incandescent lamps by more economic devices such as Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). However, the emission spectrum of these devices is enriched in blue radiations, known to be potentially dangerous to the retina. Recent studies showed that light exposure contributes to the onset of early stages of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Here, we investigate, in albinos and pigmented rats, the effects of different exposure protocols. Twenty-four hours exposure at high luminance was compared to a cyclic (dark/light) exposure at domestic levels for 1 week and 1 month, using different LEDs (Cold-white, blue and green), as well as fluorocompact bulbs and fluorescent tubes. The data suggest that the blue component of the white-LED may cause retinal toxicity at occupational domestic illuminance and not only in extreme experimental conditions, as previously reported. It is important to note that the current regulations and standards have been established on the basis of acute light exposure and do not take into account the effects of repeated exposure. | 8,013,415 |
The conference opener is upon us, with all the national attention that a primetime Thursday night audience brings. It's been a hectic short week on Frogs O' War, with in-depth previews, Questions and answers with our friends at Viva the Matador, a bet between husband and wife and, of course, a whole lot of sh** talking. With all the tension in the air (and also because of late arriving SE Louisiana game film meaning I don't have the Video Rewind ready) let's lighten the mood a bit, and in the spirit of Attack on Tigers (recommended reading before you read this post) and the Raid on Smurf Village (the OBNUG blog bet win post, for our old readers) I welcome you back to the Frogs O' War War Room for... The Tech Problem.
December 5, 2012
Frogs O' War War Room: HawkeyedFrog, Jamie Plunkett, Patrick McCullough and Superfrog have gathered to wrap the regular season and ensure that certain mistakes- namely a triple overtime loss to Texas Tech- are never repeated again. Superfrog is on the phone as we begin.
Patrick: So we've gone over plans for the first two weeks of the season, if it's all right with you gentlemen, let's move onto Texas Tech.
HawkeyedFrog twitches violently
Jamie: Is he all right?
Patrick: He just gets a twitch when Tech is mentioned. Something about childhood trauma.
HawkeyedFrog swallows a pill: I'll be fine. The question is how do we keep our guys from losing again?
Patrick: Tech has some sort of dark magic about them that makes things go their way when they meet us. Even our own staff isn't immune. Jamie, are you sure you should be here for this briefing?
Jamie: Just because I married a tech grad doesn't mean there was dark magic involved. When we met it was...
Patrick: Magical, I'll bet. Proves my point. How is it our defense shut down Baylor like no one else could, but got shredded by Tech if not by dark magic?
Hangs up the phone: The answer is Tommy Tuberville.
HawkeyedFrog: The Tech head coach? He seems like the least of our concerns, boss, their fans don't even like him.
: I just got off of a collect call from a secret TCU backer who coached against Tuberville in the SEC, all of his information says that this is a man that needs to be feared.
Patrick: Of all of the evil things about Texas Tech he certainly does seem to be the least of them. He's no Mike Leach
HawkeyedFrog twitches again
Jamie: Is he all right?
Patrick: He just gets a twitch when Mike Leach is mentioned. Something about young adult trauma. It takes someone mentioning 12-3 to get him back to normal.
HawkeyedFrog exhales, relieved: Ah, thanks for that. I feel better remembering that Patterson can shut down Tech entirely with the right team.
: And that is precisely the problem, gentlemen. If Tech has a coach that gets frustrated when he can't score, that's a point in out favor. Tuberville is something else entirely though.
Jamie: He outscored us last year, 56-53.
HawkeyedFrog spasms
Patrick: Seriously, come on Hawk. You don't have to develop a nervous tick every time you remember a loss to Tech.
HawkeyedFrog: What? Oh, no, that last one was just a cramp in the neck. go on.
Jamie: A guy who puts up 56 points isn't going to be content if he's only scoring three.
: That's where the information I was passed comes in, gentlemen. Tuberville's dark magic secret...
Patrick: I knew it!
HawkeyedFrog: Hush. Carry on, boss.
: Tuberville's secret is that he'd rather win a game 3-2 than 56-53.
Jamie: That's ridiculous, boss. You'd have to be a defense first coach like Patterson to ever be content with a score like that.
: The evidence is clear. Tuberville even installed the worst spread offense in college football history to win the ugliest game in history- his crowning moment.
Baby I'm Burnin': Auburn @ Mississippi State 2008 (HQ)
HawkeyedFrog: Catchy. That looked a lot more like bad offense than good defense though.
Patrick: I'll bet that's where the dark magic comes in.
: That's exactly it. Because Mississippi State was that bad, he put in that offense just to win in the worst way possible. We're dealing with a sadistic coaching genius here, gentlemen.
Jamie: I'm beginning to think Superfrog is right and this is a great Tech conspiracy of some sort, guys. We have to get Tuberville away from them.
Patrick: Easier than said when you're dealing with dark magic.
HawkeyedFrog: Dark magic or not, Tuberville has a reputation for abandoning universities. Maybe we can find a new home for him?
: Hm. Well, I do have some old contacts from Conference USA.
Patrick: He's not going to go to a Conference USA school, boss. He's in the Big 12 and he's from the SEC.
HawkeyedFrog: A couple of those CUSA schools moved up to Conference USA v2. What did they call it? The Big East?
Jamie: Well, it has "Big" in it, maybe that'll be enough.
flips open his cell phone again: Is that Cincinnati AD Whit Babcock? Superfrog here, how the hell are ya, Whit? Look, I know you're shaken up over losing Butch Davis to Tennessee, nobody feels good after that. Yeah, and you lost Brian Kelly too and now he's a national title game participant. *Loud sobs are heard over the speaker*
Patrick: Is he... crying?
: Whit man, get a hold of yourself. What's important right now is that you need a new coach again. *Sobs escalate*. The problem is you've been hiring all these young up-and-comer types. They're good for padding the win column, but in a few years you're left holding the bag while they go off to a bigger job. What you need is an older coach, someone who's looking to settle down. He may not give you all the flash and charisma, but he's the kind of guy who'll stand behind you.
HawkeyedFrog: You're planning on giving him a coach who said they'd haul him from Ole Miss in a pine box and was introduced at Auburn in the next week to stand behind him?
: Huh, that? No, it's just some guy who won't have a job here for long if he doesn't shut up. Come on Whit, it's Superfrog, have I ever given you a bum steer? Remember if it weren't for us taking the spot, you'd be here in the Big 12 where it's about to implode any minute.
Jamie: What about the grant of television rights and...
: No, just another fired guy. That's right Whit, you can trust ol' Superfrog. Yeah, he even runs the spread, just like you guys like! Of course we'll speak to him for you. Yeah. Great, Whit. That's great that you feel that way buddy. Yeah, we'll have him call you. Bye
Patrick: Did he tell you he loves you at the end there?
: They all love me. Jamie, Hawk, you're unfired. Learn to be quiet when the boss is talking. Now we just have to get Tuberville to agree to coach in Cincy and we're golden.
HawkeyedFrog: That's the real problem though. You've got a man who's coached all his life in the south. A man who's coaching at a Big 12 school that isn't even Kansas, Iowa State or Baylor. This is a guy who's gone 13-0 in the SEC for crying out loud. You think he'd just up and leave a program like Texas Tech just like that?
A long pause... then all three others break out laughing
Patrick: Good one, Hawk. Let's call him on speakerphone.
Superfrog fiddles with the phone, it rings
: Tommy Tuberville here. I'm at dinner with recruits, so this had better be important
: Coach Tuberville, how would you like to be the head coach at the University of Cincinnati?
: Kirby, is that you again? You aren't going to buy me out that easy.
Patrick: No, we're calling on behalf of Whit Babcock. They just lost their coach up there in Cincy and they're hoping you'll go up there and coach them.
: Look gentlemen, I don't know what game you think you're playing, but I'd never leave Texas Tech, the home of the greatest fans in the world. (Devonte, Sunny, Javess, stay here and enjoy some of these top quality Lubbock steaks. I'm going to step out so I can give these guys a piece of my mind.)
A pause as Tuberville leaves the table
: You guys still there?
HawkeyedFrog: We're sorry coach, we didn't mean to presume...
: Screw apologies, get me the hell out of here! Tell Mr. Babcock I'll be in his office in four hours to draw up the paperwork. I'M GOING TO CINCINNATI!
A players voice is heard on Tuberville's end: (Coach?)
: (Don't worry, Javess, I'm going to Cincinnati to tell those clods what I think of their job offer. After that they'll have to take me from Lubbock in a pine box. I'll be back for dessert, don't you worry about that.)
Javess: Thanks coach, go get 'em!
: If he'll meet me at the airport we can have this done in three hours. You sure this isn't Kirby? That son of a bitch told me I was a sure thing for the A&M job too.
: Just some well wishers, coach. Knock 'em dead in Cincy.
:Thank you all so much. I AM OUT OF HERE FOREVER! (No Sunny, I mean I'm never going back into that bathroom stall in there, I absolutely destroyed it, you know what I mean? Get your guns up, right? Ha ha. Yeah, go order me a strawberry shake, they're my favorite. I'll be back soon.) Thank you so much guys. I don't know if I could take another dust storm. Bye!
The phone clicks off
Jamie: My wife says they have a word for days when the weather is awful in Lubbock
Patrick: Weekdays?
HawkeyedFrog: Damn it Patrick, it's that kind of line that gets us into trouble.
Patrick: I'm worried about this though guys. We got rid of one source of the dark magic, but what if Tech hires someone better? Shit guys, what if they get one of those young up and comers that Superfrog was talking about on the phone?
: Patrick, I've told you about the swearing. Once an athletic director gets a guy like Tuberville they get risk averse. They'll aim for an older coach who can keep the ship afloat, maybe June Jones or Art Briles. And even if they wanted it, what kind of young up and comer has any ties to Tech?
Patrick: You're probably right, Boss, I'm sorry. If you're right about this, I promise to never swear about Tech again.
Jamie: Then there's Tech sorted. Great job everyone. Will you excuse me?
Jamie Plunkett exits the War Room and pulls out a cell phone of his own.
Jamie: Hey hon? It's done, we got rid of Tuberville. You still have to keep your end of the deal though- our firstborn will be attending TCU. We're still going to beat you this year, even without him though. Yeah, I'm sure, you want to bet?
December 12, 2012
Frogs O' War War Room, HawkeyedFrog, Jamie Plunkett and Patrick McCullough are watching as Texas Tech introduces their new head coach, Kliff Kingsbury.
Patrick: Aw, shit.
*Fin* | 8,013,416 |
Mauro Zárate announced his return to near full fitness and form with a stunning goal as Watford’s Under-23 side made it three wins out of four with a 4-2 victory over Burnley.
Playing in the number 10 role behind two strikers, Zárate had plenty of support in the stands in the shape of South American teammates Miguel Britos and Roberto Pereyra, and they were all sat right behind the goal of the game just past the half-hour mark.
Collecting a cross-field pass from Ashley Charles, Zárate cut in from the left onto his favoured right foot and bent a strike from the edge of the box past the full-length dive of Burnley keeper Aiden Stone and into the far corner.
It was a goal of the highest class and would have been duly noted by two members of Marco Silva’s backroom staff who were present to see the Argentine play for 83 minutes, his longest run-out since his knee injury.
The eyes of the coaching staff would also have been on Marvin Zeegelaar, who played for 70 minutes at left wing-back, the Dutch deadline day signing impressing in particular when he came inside with a couple of eye-catching pirouettes.
It was Zárate's strike, however, that caused jaws to drop, an effort that drew Watford level after Khius Metz had scrambled Burnley ahead after 12 minutes. The Hornets then got their noses in front and stayed there with two goals inside a minute just before half-time.
Jerome Sinclair, who played up top alongside Michael Folivi, was brought down for a penalty and got up to dispatch the spot-kick himself. The Burnley keeper guessed right but Sinclair’s effort had too much pace and power.
Sinclair then created the second with the type of high pressing Silva loves from his front-men. His speed and commitment caught keeper Stone on the hop, leading to a chance for Folivi which he rammed in after jinking inside a couple of desperate challenges.
Watford were on the back-foot for most of the second-half and had to absorb plenty of pressure, particularly from corners. They stood firm for the most part until Harry Flowers headed in from a free-kick with 15 to go.
At 3-2, a grandstand finish was on the cards and the Golden Boys had to show plenty of character to withstand everything the Clarets could throw at them, only gaining that vital breathing space with the last kick of the game when Dion Pereira latched on to a through pass from fellow substitute David Sesay to rifle the fourth into the far corner.
The wild celebrations at the game-clinching goal spoke volumes for just how hard the young Watford side had to work for the three Professional Development League points and said a lot about the spirit in the group.
HORNETS | Gartside (GK); Mukena, Rowan, Mason; Eleftheriou (C), Charles, Stewart, Zeegalaar (Sesay, 70); Zárate (Pereira, 83); Sinclair, Folivi (Bradbury, 83).
Subs not used | Lacy (GK), Williams. | 8,013,417 |
Photo
The Democratic National Committee laid out a detailed timeline Saturday of what happened when Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign aides gained access to and copied Hillary Clinton’s proprietary voter data during a technological glitch, revealing new details to explain why it had blocked Mr. Sanders’s team from seeing its own data.
The timeline was posted on Medium by the party committee’s chief executive, Amy Dacey, as the Sanders campaign continued to argue that it had been treated unfairly. The campaign took the extraordinary step of suing the party committee to regain its access to the voter file. Late Friday night, the party agreed to restore the campaign’s access.
During Saturday night’s debate, Mr. Sanders repeated his complaint that the punishment was unfair, but he also apologized to Mrs. Clinton. His campaign also said Saturday that it had suspended two aides over the matter. It had earlier fired its national data director.
At issue is a Democratic Party voter list to which both campaigns have access. Each campaign can add its own data, such as which voters it believes are likely to vote for its candidate, helping officials target their outreach. One campaign is not supposed to see another’s data, but for a few hours on Wednesday, a firewall between the campaigns was dropped while NGP VAN, the vendor that controls the 50-state voter file for the party committee, was adjusting a patch on the system.
While each campaign could theoretically look at the others’ data, only the Sanders campaign did so, according to NGP VAN. The Sanders campaign initially said a low-level staff member had been involved. It later emerged that the campaign’s national data director, Josh Uretsky, had obtained information from the Clinton team. Mr. Uretsky was fired.
Three other aides to the Sanders team were seen on audit logs making more than 25 targeted searches of Mrs. Clinton’s data pertaining to early-voting states.
The party then denied the Sanders campaign access to the voter file, including its own data, a move campaign officials described as an overreaction.
Ms. Dacey’s post included details that appeared to contradict the Sanders team’s early claims that it had not retained any of the information it looked at. Mr. Uretsky had also asserted that the only reason anyone from the Sanders campaign looked at Mrs. Clinton’s data was to establish proof of a data breach, not to peek into the Clinton campaign. But according to Ms. Dacey’s account, one of the people who looked at Mrs. Clinton’s data tried to delete records to remove traces of what he had done.
“The information obtained so far shows that the D.N.C.’s concern to have a full, thorough inquiry was fully justified,” Ms. Dacey wrote. “As confirmed by the Sanders campaign in the account given the D.N.C. Friday evening, one of the employees of the campaign involved in the misconduct tried to delete the notes they made recording their accessing of Clinton campaign data to hide his activities.”
Ms. Dacey added, “NGP VAN found that campaign staff on the Sanders campaign, including the campaign’s national data director, had accessed proprietary information about which voters were being targeted by the Clinton campaign — and in doing so violated their agreements with the D.N.C.”
She continued, “These staffers then saved this information in their personal folders on the system, and over the course of the next day, we learned that at least one staffer appeared to have generated reports and exported them from the system.”
Ms. Dacey said that her team had asked Mr. Sanders’s campaign for more information on what had happened and for details of disciplinary actions it might take.
She said the Sanders campaign had delayed providing additional documentation and information until late Friday evening. Once it did, the D.N.C. restored the campaign’s access to its own voter file, “as was always our intention and as we had advised well before they sued the committee,” she said.
The D.N.C. has also asked NGP VAN to investigate how the breach happened.
In Democratic Debate, Hillary Clinton’s Focus Is on G.O.P. Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders put aside the hard feelings over the breach of her voter data, while they and Martin O’Malley had heated exchanges on foreign policy and corporate America.
Bernie Sanders Falls Behind in a Race Centered on Security After the terrorist attacks in Paris and California, Mr. Sanders’s progressive political message seems lost in a fog of fear. | 8,013,418 |
The camera is one of the most important features of a smartphone, particularly at the high end. As we see other areas of mobile hardware are starting to plateau, there's still a lot of space for the already great cameras of today to improve. In years past we've seen a push towards higher resolution sensors alongside new-fangled technologies like three-axis OIS, phase detection autofocus and laser-assisted autofocus. But this year, Samsung, one of the strongest phone makers in the area of digital imaging, might stop chasing megapixels and focus on other areas. The rumor mill suggests that the Samsung Galaxy S7 will include a main camera with "only" a 12-megapixel sensor, the lowest resolution in a Samsung flagship since 2012's Galaxy S3. But to focus on resolution alone is to miss the big picture. There are some good reasons for Samsung to go with fewer pixels — here's why and how they might do it in 2016.
We can't say for sure that the GS7 won't use BRITECELL, but there's a strong case against it. Back in November at its 2015 Investor Forum, Samsung showed off BRITECELL, its latest image sensor tech for smartphones. BRITECELL is designed to cram ever tinier pixels onto image sensors without sacrificing low-light capabilities. Traditionally, smaller pixels mean less surface area for soaking up photons, and thus poorer low-light performance. BRITECELL sensors reportedly measure in at just 1.0μm, down from the 1.12μm pixels of the Galaxy S6's Sony IMX240 sensor, with resolutions of up to 20 megapixels. BRITECELL sensors at 1.0μm have low-light capabilities comparable to a traditional RGB sensor with 1.12μm pixels, according to Samsung's slides. But if the reports of a 12-megapixel sensor in the Galaxy S7 are true, it would appear Samsung is taking a more traditional path to improving low-light performance. That's not to say the sensor definitely isn't a BRITECELL unit, but if Samsung was using this technology, it would probably go for a higher resolution part. (Otherwise a 12-megapixel BRITECELL sensor with the low-light capabilities of a regular 1.12μm-pixel sensor might actually be a downgrade compared to the GS6.) Instead, a good parallel for what we might find in the Galaxy S7 is the sensor from the Nexus 6P and 5X, Sony's IMX377. This 12-megapixel part boasts larger, 1.55μm pixels, which is why the 6P and 5X can get away with taking decent low-light shots even without optical stabilization. A similar (and, by high-end Android standards, comparatively low) camera resolution in the Galaxy S7 might suggest a focus on low light performance, especially if it's paired with optical stabilization and the rumored f/1.7 lens. To put it simply: When you're taking in more light through a wider aperture, and soaking up more of that light on larger pixels, your low-light pics are going to look better.
Samsung's cameras don't need to get any better in daylight — low light is where high-end phones will differentiate themselves in 2016.
Samsung's phone cameras don't need to get any better in daylight — they already perform spectacularly well in well-lit conditions. Low light is where phones will differentiate themselves in the high-end market of 2016. So perhaps it's worth taking a small hit to your display resolution if it means you're able to take the best photos in the dark.
So why develop BRITECELL if your flagship phone isn't going to use it? Well, Samsung is a huge conglomerate, and its imaging arm also makes sensors for firms which compete with its mobile division in the smartphone world. Samsung's smartphone arm — like any phone maker — is also free to choose the best components from any vendor. This is why we've seen Galaxy flagships use CPUs from Qualcomm, not Samsung, and image sensors from Sony, not Samsung, in previous years.
Samsung will use whatever internal hardware makes sense — whether it's a Samsung part or not.
For this reason it's also short-sighted to think that BRITECELL (or any other Samsung technology) exists just to be used in the next Galaxy S or Galaxy Note. Samsung debuted its homegrown ISOCELL technology in the Galaxy S5, but most of its successors eschewed this in favor of Sony's rival IMX240. Having in-house options for sensors and processors means Samsung can be vertically integrated where it makes sense, but product considerations will always come first. The bottom line? If the rumors are to be believed, we can expect the Galaxy S7 to blow its predecessors out of the water in low-light photography. A 12-megapixel sensor, probably with much larger pixels than the GS6 or Note 5, combined with a bright f/1.7 lens and optical stabilization, could turn out to be one of the best smartphone cameras of 2016. And just because BRITECELL exists, doesn't mean it's coming to the next Galaxy flagship. But as always, nothing's final until it's announced, boxed up and put on store shelves. We'll know more when the Galaxy S7 lands, likely at Mobile World Congress this February. | 8,013,419 |
Named 'the ENDURAsphere', GSR billed its orb as a 'sort of gated eco-commune for one ... It has Generation 5 Kevlar padding and a plastic-alloy skin that allows the occupant to withstand any impact.'
'All materials and effluent are processed for reuse in the occupant's ENDURAsphere, or for trade or exchange with another.'
It's unknown whether any of the members of press in attendance twigged that there is in fact no such company as Global Security Response, and that the ENDURAsphere was part of an elaborate hoax.
The event was the work of The Yes Men, a situationist group of political activists. The duo are best known for masquerading as spokesmen for large corporations in order to raise awareness of social and political issues, while lampooning the worst excesses of corporations.
• The Yes Men Fix The World, review
Sporting a fake moustache and claiming to be GSR spokesman 'Archibald Schumpeter', the Yes Men's Andy Bichlbaum told the press conference: "I'm really excited to be talking with you today about ways that nations that suffer terrorism can respond to terrorism in forceful but intelligent ways from within the defense and security paradigm that we're used to."
"But unfortunately, such responses have not generally been very intelligent. In fact, it's been pretty much all stupid, all the time, every since 9/11."
'Schumpeter' then highlighted how military responses to terror have generaly been counterproductive, leading to further attacks - and finally unveiled the ridiculous ENDURAsphere as an alternatice, 'guaranteed to work against terrorism'.
In a statement on the Yes Men website Bichlbaum said: "This hoax was about highlighting that there really is no solution to terrorism within the defense and security paradigm. Military 'solutions' backfire badly."
"Any 'solution' to terrorism that doesn't take colonial history into account is bound to fail completely. From the parcelling of the Middle East after WWI to the invasion of Iraq by the US, there are reasons things are as they are."
The press conference was arranged with the help of Greek MEP Stelios Kouloglou and German MEP Martin Sonneborn as part of a Charlie Hebdo commemoration. The Yes Men described it as 'the first action of its sort to take place within the European Parliament.'
Speaking to press after the event, MEP Kouloglou said: "Bombing is a recruiting tool for ISIS. If we want to undermine terrorists, we need to end the war in Syria, welcome Middle Eastern refugees, and marginalize extremists by establishing better relationships with moderate forces in Islam. We also need to better integrate the youth of our most disadvantaged communities." | 8,013,420 |
For a list of every task sorted by certain requirements, see Achievements/All achievements.
The Karamja Achievements is the first set of Achievements, released with the launch of Old School RuneScape on 22 February 2013. It is one of eleven achievement sets in Old School RuneScape. Pirate Jackie the Fruit is the task master. She is located near the Brimhaven Agility Arena.
Contents show]
Easy
Skills Needed 15 Agility 40 Mining
Quests required None
*Please note - If the table is not highlighting green when clicked, please click the reset button*
Rewards
Medium
Skills Needed 30 Agility 50 Woodcutting 16 Cooking 65 Fishing (boostable) 27 Farming 41 Hunter 40 Mining
Rewards
Hard
Skills Needed 44 Runecrafting 53 Cooking (boostable) 40 Smithing (boostable) 34 Woodcutting 50 Strength 53 Agility 50 Thieving 52 Mining 42 Ranged 100 Combat 50 Slayer
Rewards
Karamja gloves 3 Unlimited teleports to the underground portion of the Shilo Village mine
1 Antique lamp worth 10,000 experience in any skill above 40
Access to the underground portion of the Shilo Village mine
Elite
Skills Needed 91 Runecrafting 72 Farming 87 Herblore
Quests required None
Rewards | 8,013,421 |
The mysterious death of the man who investigated Argentina’s worst terrorist attack could been induced suicide, says former prosecutor
Alberto Nisman, who investigated Argentina’s worst terrorist attack before he was found dead in his home last year, may have been forced to kill himself, a prosecutor who was formerly in charge of his case has said.
Viviana Fein, who in December was removed from the investigation into Nisman’s mysterious death, had said before that it was likely suicide.
But in an interview with local radio station La Red, she acknowledged for the first time that it was possible he was “induced” to kill himself.
Spies, cover-ups and the mysterious death of an Argentinian prosecutor Read more
Fein said that Nisman had several back-and-forth calls with “six or seven people”, including the country’s former spy chief, Antonio Stiuso, and then-army chief Cesar Milani on 18 January 2015. The body of Nisman, who led the probe of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, was discovered on that day in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head.
“I find it suggestive and noteworthy that personalities of this calibre were on the same day of his death talking uninterruptedly,” Fein said.
Nisman had been scheduled to appear in Congress the next day to present allegations that then president, Cristina Fernandez, orchestrated a secret deal to cover up the alleged role of Iranian officials in the attack. Fernandez denied the allegations and judges threw out the case.
Nearly 18 months after Nisman’s death, authorities have yet to determine whether he took his own life or was killed by someone else.
Conspiracy theories have flourished around the case. While some people including his family believe Nisman killed himself because he felt his claims against the former president lacked proof, others say he was murdered because he was a threat to the Argentine and Iranian governments. | 8,013,422 |
That sexual gratification can make or break a technology is a truism as old as paleolithic paint. And no emergent technology has more sexual potential than virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTV Vive, which promise immersive experiences and are already being passed around the San Fernando Valley. But, even as we brace for too much of a good thing, a handful of psychiatrists are considering ways that VR technology might stop something awful. They believe that VR has tremendous potential as both a diagnostic and therapeutic tool.
They want to find child abusers.
But before scientists can bring the full brunt of virtual reality to bear on forensic psychiatry, they need to answer this question: How powerful is this technology and what is the source of that power? The latest research suggests that VR derives its emotional and sensory power by simulating the sense of presence, what Peter Fromberger, an expert on virtual reality psychotherapy and forensic psychiatry at the University of Göttingen in Germany, describes as “the feeling to be physically in the virtual world.”
“VR seems to be able to enhance the realism and sexual attractiveness of virtual avatars,” Fromberger says. In a recent article in PLOS One, Fromberger and his colleagues had 45 men — 20 androphilic males (sexually attracted to men) and 25 gynephilic males (sexually attracted to women) view nude, adult avatars of both sexes under three conditions: on a computer screen, with the Oculus Rift DK1, or with the Oculus Rift plus a controller, allowing the men to interact by moving the models.
The subjects interacted with the objects of their interest reflexively and naturally. And that’s no small thing. Until that study came out, the assumption that VR would create meaningful sexual experiences was just that, an assumption.
“To the best of our knowledge,” he says, “until now, there existed no empirical evidence for our intrinsic assumption that VR can provide ecologically valid environments for people suffering from sexual deviancy.”
Dominique Trottier, a clinical psychologist at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, says that scholars like Fromberger have helped “establish the validity of the procedure,” and suggest that it’s time to talk application.
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Trottier has been studying sexual deviancy through VR since 2006; as it is with Fromberger, her goal is to ultimately reverse engineer the present study, working back from behavior to diagnose motivation, thinking about how interactions predict dispositions. From there, the thinking goes, potential child abusers can use virtual environments to work through and treat their mental disorder.
“One of the best strategies to protect children from becoming a victim is to reliably assess the dangerousness of potential delinquents as well as to successfully treat them,” Fromberger explains. By creating a believable world, he hopes to monitor child abusers in incredibly realistic virtual risk situations — situations where no one will actually be at risk of harm.
How do you test if someone is at risk of abusing children, or, alternatively, no longer at risk of recidivism? Self-reports are unreliable because child abusers tend to be less than forthcoming. Between the 1950s and 1980s, Trottier says, assessments were performed with “real pictures that came from police arresting people with that type of material.” It was, as she points out, “questionable ethically and legally.” More recent methods involve playing audio recordings of sexually stimulating narrated scripts, but Trottier says that it remains possible to fake a lack of arousal. What’s harder to do, as she showed in an eye-tracking experiment, is to not look at virtual avatars. This is a task men have failed at even while trying to keep themselves from having erections.
Combining sexual interest with a feeling of presence, says Trottier, creates an environment that cognitively stimulates sexual offenders. “We can put offenders in situations that we wouldn’t want to in real life, and are able to identify faulty cognition and address that,” she says. It is a training process through repetition, she says, redoing the same situation over and over again so that those who want to get better can “train to make better decisions, or to identify sooner that he is in a risky situation.” She acknowledges VR’s potential as a tool of abuse — the internet has made child pornography easier to access for men like Jared Fogle — but the tool is powerful when used correctly.
Fromberger pictures a future where VR is applied to a host of sexual problems. Project ViRAC – Virtual Environments for the Risk Assessment of Child Abusers — has already tested VR with offenders, he points out. “VR provides the possibility to confront high dangerous criminal offenders with risk situations without endangering others,” he says, which would presumably include rape as well as child abuse. On the non-criminal side, the technology could also offer new training opportunities to eliminate the sense of a lack of control over ejaculation.
But that’s a ways off. The sexual researcher community has been slow to go virtual — the Kinsey institute doesn’t use the tech at all — so there are more theories than defensible conclusions.
“At the moment, these are only ideas, and there is a lack of empirical evidence for the usability of VR in this context. Our paper shows that it can work, but it does not show that it also works with forensic inpatients. That is the next step we have to take.” | 8,013,423 |
At 34 years of age, David Ortiz has just become the all time hits leader at the DH position.
With a double in the second inning off of Seattle Mariners’ starter Aaron Harang, Ortiz has passed Harold Baines on the list. This is just another positive feat in what could be a career year for the storied Red Sox’s slugger. Ortiz is hitting an impressive .330/.411/.621 with 18 homers and 62 RBIs on the season, and has already been worth 2.7 WAR, despite not making his season debut until April 20th with a heel injury.
This is just another milestone in an impressive career for Ortiz. He became the all time home run leader for the DH position in 2009 and has held the position down firmly. Ortiz also ranks 7th all time in RBIs (1388) for Designated Hitters over an impressive career that has spanned nearly 17 years, and he isn’t slowing down. Over his career, he’s been a .287/.381/.550 hitter with 419 career homers. His best season was, arguably, 2007 when he hit .332/.445/.621 with 35 homers and 117 RBIs. While Ortiz has played first base in his career, he was never a very good fielder. He has made a career out of hitting and is the prime example for what a DH should be.
Here is the video of his achievement- http://wapc.mlb.com/play/?c_id=bos&content_id=28788941&partnerId=as_mlb_20130711_9677314 | 8,013,424 |
As networks bask in higher ratings and elevated ad rates thanks to the deluge of coverage devoted to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, media observers and business news veterans warn that outlets are doing serious long-term damage to their credibility.
In February, CBS chairman Les Moonves celebrated at a conference how Trump’s role in the presidential race was helping CBS line its pockets with political ad money, saying, “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” He added, "I've never seen anything like this, and this going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It's a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going."
Meanwhile, CNN’s obsessive Trump coverage has reportedly led to complaints from network employees. But according to The Huffington Post, network president Jeff Zucker has waved off concerns, telling employees that there had been “too much handwringing” about how the media and CNN had handled Trump.
While Trump may be making news executives happy right now, many media observers and business news veterans tell Media Matters that outlets are dropping the ball with their Trump coverage.
According to David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times investigative reporter who has written several pieces critical of Trump in recent months, “News organizations do lasting damage to their long-term credibility by covering the presidential campaign on Trump’s terms rather than from the perspective of the public interest.”
He added, “There is a rich record to be mined, but only a few people are digging and most of those are highly focused on this specific gem, not the whole. It’s the duty of journalists to collect the many loose threads of Trump’s life and weave them into the fabric of narrative that gives meaning for readers, listeners and viewers.”
David Zurawik, Baltimore Sun media reporter, also said the open-ended coverage with little or no fact-checking or editorial judgment is dangerous for news outlets.
“When [viewers] start to sense or believe it is a kind of game, that the cable channels aren’t really covering this as news and it is really about other reasons, people can get cynical and have long memories about that,” he said. “It is especially dangerous for CNN, who is doing well and getting ratings but doing it indiscriminately. And being the cable channel with the most credibility to lose, they are long term the ones who could be hurt worse by this. This is a dangerous game for them.”
Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times media columnist, called Moonves’ comments “devastating” for CBS.
“In terms of its position as a carrier of the public interest, it is a concession that it doesn’t have the public interest in mind," Hiltzik said.
He later said, “The cable networks have already lost credibility because they have had so much difficulty in dealing with Trump’s approach, they have been very bad at challenging his misstatements, his lies, giving the audience the proper context.”
The New York Times on Monday called the coverage “a struggle” for networks, adding, “the television news industry is wrestling with how to balance fairness, credibility and the temptations of sky-high ratings as it prepares for a presidential matchup like none other.”
And they are not alone in that view.
“The rules of journalism still apply. It has to be credible and offer the proper context,” said Jeremy Smerd, editor of Crains New York and a former politics reporter. “That is something news outlets have to be worried about in terms of credibility. When they start buying into the talking points of the Trump campaign it undermines their credibility.”
He later added, “News outlets need to do more than be his amplification, they need to be his filter, Donald Trump continually changes his message and it is hard to know what he really means.”
“It almost completely erases the distinction between news value and entertainment values,” said Ed Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. “The news media adopting him as an asset and as a crowd pleaser and as a magnet for audience hits. It confers stature on him and wins him supporters with the coverage he is getting, credibility and a seriousness about him as a candidate when there is nothing in his record that satisfies that.”
He added, “This is going to go down as one of the historic [press] failures, on a par with the run up to the Iraq War. The press has not bothered with him as a serious candidate.”
Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for The Poynter Institute, said the presidential campaign “is more like a reality show than the pundit class would like to admit. Some of the errors like broadcasting so many of his rallies live and settling for phone interviews were a product of that.” | 8,013,425 |
Yesterday would have been Stanley Kubrick‘s 88th birthday, had the director not passed away so suddenly in 1999. He would in fact now be the age that Akira Kurosawa was when he died, only half a year before Kubrick.
To celebrate Kubrick’s 88th birthday, BFI have updated their particularly interesting article which was originally published in 2013 and tries to put together a list of Kubrick’s favourite films. The selection is combined from various sources and the films are commented on by Kubrick’s right-hand man Jan Harlan and long time assistant Anthony Frewin. The list contains both surprises and titles that you would expect to find among Kubrick’s favourites. Many Kurosawa films also make appearances, with Frewin offering the following comment:
Stanley thought Kurosawa was one of the great film directors and followed him closely. In fact I cannot think of any other director he spoke so consistently and admiringly about. So, if Kubrick was cast away on a desert island and could only take a few films, what would they be? My money would be on The Battle of Algiers, Danton, Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood…
Frewin also talks about the letter that Kurosawa wrote to Kubrick in the 1990s, and how Kubrick never ended up replying to it:
Talking of Kurosawa, a poignant tale: Stanley received a fan letter from Kurosawa in the late 1990s and was so touched by it. It meant more to him than any Oscar would. He agonised over how to reply, wrote innumerable drafts, but somehow couldn’t quite get the tenor and tone right. Weeks went by, and then months, still agonising. Then he decided enough was enough, the reply had to go, and before the letter was sent Kurosawa died. Stanley was deeply upset.
BFI’s article is titled Stanley Kubrick, cinephile and is well worth taking a look at if you haven’t already. | 8,013,426 |
Hold on to your tinfoil hats, folks. Naturopathic physicians, who rely on the so-called "healing power of nature," want to go mainstream and they’re accusing their opposition of libel and slander. This time, the opposition comes in the form of a lone former naturopathic physician fed up with the legitimizing of naturopathic medicine. And her supporter base is growing.
Having received her doctorate in naturopathic medicine at Bastyr University, among the most influential schools of naturopathy in North America, Britt Marie Hermes practiced as a Naturopathic Doctor (ND) for three years. Her world came crashing down when she realized she’d been duped, having spent thousands of hours “speaking, learning, and practicing fake medicine.”
“I went into naturopathy thinking it was the medicine of the future,” she says. She soon learned she was wrong.
Hermes, who is now pursuing a master’s degree in biomedicine, is devoted to exposing and fighting against pseudoscience masquerading as real medicine. She documents truths about naturopathy via her Naturopathic Diaries blog, speaks out to media, contributes to the highly respected Science Based Medicine blog and on May 21st started a petition calling on U.S. policy makers and states to block naturopathic licensure, scope of practice expansion and inclusion in federal and state healthcare programs.
The leading ND organization in the U.S., the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP) has recently pushed for licensing in all 50 states by 2025 (they are currently licensed in 17 states), and to receive Medicare reimbursements and perform more hands-on patient care. Hermes’ hackles are raised, as they should be.
“Naturopaths are not trained similar to physicians, nurse practitioners, or physician assistants,” reads the petition Hermes authored, which has garnered nearly 4,000 signatures and counting. “Naturopaths are trained in a hodgepodge of antiquated methods, mystical theories, and bare-bone fundamentals of medicine.”
“I was scared. I was very angry. And I was so sad,” Hermes tells me of quitting her naturopathic medicine practice after finding out that Ukrain, the imported medicine made from a flowering herb that her boss was administering to cancer patients, was not FDA-approved. “Patients trusted us. They were very sick, desperate for a cure, and paying thousands of dollars.”
Here's one problem with naturopathic doctors. The words “doctor,” “physician” and “medicine” carry trust. They bring to mind someone highly-skilled, someone who will use the best, most-evidence based tools available to keep us healthy and to treat us when we’re sick. But naturopathy isn’t medicine and NDs are not nearly as qualified as medical doctors, or even physician assistants according to Hermes.
I won’t go into details on the myriad follies of naturopathy and naturopathic medicine as they have been thoroughly documented by highly-respected experts and critics of alternative medicine like Dr. David Gorski and Dr. Steven Novella. Among the most damning is the requirement that all NDs be trained in the use of homeopathy, a pseudoscience based in magical thinking and concoctions with infinitesimal amounts of so-called active ingredient.
On May 26th, five days after Hermes launched her petition, the AANP feebly retaliated. The subject line of an email sent to all AANP membership: “AANP Needs Your Help - Stop Britt's Change.org Petition.”
“We need your help to stop this petition,” reads the email. It continues:
This petition violates these [Change.org] policies:
Breaks the law - this is defamatory and libelous content
Impersonates others; Britt Marie Hermes is not from the United States
Terms of service - does not abide by the law or respect the rights of others
AANP is grasping at straws here. Hermes, who is originally from California and was born and raised in the United States, lives in Germany with her husband but is still an American citizen. And Hermes isn’t backing down. “[AANP seems] threatened, and don't have a grip on reality in their reasoning for reporting the petition,” she says. She stands by the citations in her petition. “It is definitely not defamatory or libelous.” Though the email voices AANP's hope that Change.org will respond to the reports of policy violations "in a timely manner," Hermes' petition remains published and continues to gain signatures.
Presumably because AANP realized that its own reasoning to remove the petition wasn’t sound, the organization’s Executive Director Ryan Cliche moved on to the next tactic, starting a counter-petition a day after sending the email. “[W]e are confident that your due diligence will quickly uncover the truth behind the ‘Naturopaths are not doctors’ petition,” reads the retaliatory document.
“I take their interpretation as yet another example of them not understanding how the scientific process works,” says Hermes. “It is built on criticism, and given what they are asking in their political agenda, they deserve to be highly scrutinized.”
AANP's counter-petition urges U.S. policy makers to “Recognize Licensed Naturopathic Physicians for the Safe and Effective Care They Provide.”
Safe and effective? Therein lies the fatal flaw in federal and state governments recognizing naturopathic doctors. The naturopathic medicine standard of care is woefully inadequate. The standard is not safe. It’s not effective. Yet Cliche’s petition cites the NIH National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) and its “recognition of naturopathy” as a legitimate discipline to support the effort to become licensed in all 50 states.
This exemplifies what is wrong with the NCCIH and any government recognition of the profession. It allows naturopathic doctors to prance around saying, “See? We’re credible. The NIH says so.” With all due respect to the NIH, there should be no NCCIH (formerly known as NCCAM). As Dr. Gorski writes, the fundamental problem with NCCIH is that “it is charged with studying treatment modalities that are inherently unscientific, being as they are based on prescientific or demonstrably incorrect understandings of human physiology and disease.”
Recognition by NCCIH lends no credence to AANP’s cause, though unsuspecting patients and even aspiring NDs may not realize it. The words “complementary” and “integrative” say it all. Legitimate medicine is based on evidence and science. There is no integration within a gold standard, no complementing it with anything more than wishful thinking.
“I wish a blog like this existed before I made the mistake of attending Bastyr,” says Hermes. “I receive many emails from students who tell me that after reading Naturopathic Diaries, they are no longer considering a career as an ND. I consider these stories to be a success. If I can help a student not make the same mistakes I made, I feel good about my work.”
A future in which all 50 states allow licensure and expanded scope of practice for such a dangerous, ineffective profession runs contrary to what we should expect of our government’s scientific and medical authorities. It will provide an air of authority that the letters ND don’t deserve.
Take this sample question from the 2013 study guide for the Naturopathic Physicians Licensing Examination Board (NPLEX), which describes a phone call from a frantic mother of a child with a loud barking cough, gasping for breath. Part 2 of the question asks, “Which of the following homeopathic preparations would best address his clinical presentation?”
Let's stop right there (though you can read Hermes' analysis here). No frantic parent of a sick or injured child should call an ND, and no real physician worthy of the title “doctor” would advise homeopathy. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the hypothetical mother’s fault. The blame falls on a system that allows a mother to believe she should call an ND or a naturopath in the first place. This is the failure of a system in which the National Institutes of Health recognize naturopathy for any more than what it is -- dangerous quackery.
I asked Britt Hermes what she hopes the outcome of her petition will be:
“I want to aggregate a showing of support that naturopaths should not be recognized as 'primary care physicians' or doctors of anything that might be construed as medical physicians. They should not be able to use these titles: doctor or physician. The public deserves accurate terminology of medical practitioners. Naturopaths have warped the definitions of these terms in order to convince lawmakers they are highly-trained. Before I blew the whistle, so to speak, very little was known about how the education and training worked.”
Support for Hermes’ message is growing. As the AANP flails in reaction to her petition, it seems that their house was made of cards.
Kavin Senapathy is a science communicator and mom of two living in Madison, Wisconsin. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter. | 8,013,427 |
The World Health Organization in 2001 defined probiotics as "live micro-organisms which, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host" [1] and are able to prevent or improve some disease conditions. Consumption of probiotics is associated with a range of health benefits including stimulation of the immune system, protection against diarrheal diseases, nosocomial and respiratory tract infections, lowering of cholesterol, attenuation of overt immuno inflammatory disorders and anticancer effects [2, 3]. Most Probiotic microorganisms belong to the genera Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium; however, other bacteria and some yeast may also possess probiotic properties. Lactobacilli are usually described as Gram-positive, non-spore-forming and non-flagelated rods or cocobacilli, aerotolerant, fastidious, acid-tolerant, and strictly fermentative. A recent study revealed that the probiotic Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 in combination with an aqueous extract of cinnamon has strong synergetic effects on phagocytosis and on regulation of cholesterol and blood sugar levels and also confirmed that the combination reduced intestinal damage in mouse model of colitis [4].
The commercial interest in functional foods containing probiotics strains has consistently increased due to the awareness of the benefits for gut health and disease prevention and therapy [5]. Some probiotics have been shown in preliminary research to possibly treat various forms of gastroenteritis [6]. It is important to note that health benefits provided by probiotics are strain specific, and not species or genus-specific. Therefore, it should be noted that no probiotic strain will provide all proposed benefits, not even strains of the same species, and not all strains of the same species will be effective against defined health conditions [7–10]. The results of genotypic sequencing indicated that the B. coagulans MTCC 5856, the probiotic strain under study, showed more than 99 % similarity with B. coagulans ATCC 31284 (1048/1050; differed in only 2 of 1050 base pairs), B. coagulans ATCC 7050 (1049/1050; differed in only 1 of 1050 base pairs) and B. coagulans NBRC 3887 (1049/1050; differed in only 1 of 1050 base pairs). Thus, B. coagulans MTCC 5856 shared more than 99 % 16S rDNA sequence homology with B. coagulans NBRC 3887, B. coagulans ATCC 31284 and B. coagulans ATCC 7050 but differed in few base pairs (Majeed et al. Unpublished data). This was an indication that different strains of the same species may have different phenotypic and genotypic profile. Therefore, the evaluation of B. coagulans MTCC 5856 efficacy in IBS patients is essential.
Probiotic bacteria B. coagulans MTCC 5856 has been in the market as a dietary ingredient for nearly two decades, under the trade name LactoSpore®. B. coagulans MTCC 5856 is a room temperature stable, lactose free and non-GMO probiotic preparation with GRAS status. The strain MTCC 5856 has the ability to withstand high heat and has been included in functional baked foods [11]. Recent study suggested that the B. coagulans MTCC 5856 did not alter either genetically or phenotypically and was found to be consistent over multiple years of commercial production [12]. However, the safety of B. coagulans MTCC 5856 has not been adequately established in diarrhea predominant IBS patients. Thus, the current double-blind, placebo-controlled, multi-centered, two arm study was conducted to evaluate B. coagulans MTCC 5856 safety and efficacy as dietary supplement in patients receiving standard care of treatment for diarrhea predominant IBS patients. | 8,013,428 |
A UNESCO study from July 2016 says that India has the largest number of adolescent school dropouts in the world; a total of 47 million students do not progress to upper secondary school. This study also adds that “a key obstacle to achieving the agreed target is persistent disparities in education participation linked to sex, location and wealth.”
So, the fact that children who live in the coastal town of Surathkal, Mangalore often drop out of school due to lack of financial resources, and coercion on their parents’ part to help out with household chores, is not surprising.
In order to reverse this trend, a group of 10 engineering students from NIT Karnataka have started conducting free evening classes on the beach for children of fishermen who live in settlements close to their campus.
The beach schooling project was initiated at Incident, which is NIT-K’s annual cultural fest. I-Care, a social initiative by the Incident team, roped in underprivileged students from preschool to pre-university, in the backyard of the Sadashiva temple, to teach them academic subjects.
The students launched the pilot project a couple of years ago but it wasn’t very successful so they relaunched it this year on October 15, Dr. Abdul Kalam’s birthday.
One of the student volunteers, Kaushik R Udupi, told Times of India, “Since volunteers left Surathkal after completing their course (a couple of years ago), the classroom for children project fell through. During a visit to the Sadashiva temple, a student pursuing PU course urged NIT-K students to continue the programme. Volunteers signed up to revive the programme.”
You may also like: How a Fisherman’s Son in a Coastal TN Village Became a Surfing Champion & Started a Surf School
The new-age beach gurukul is immensely popular among the students because of the way it seamlessly blends education with extracurricular activities. Apart from learning core subjects like maths, science and English, the students are encouraged to participate in and learn from various activities like stargazing, football, kabaddi, sand art, cycling, etc.
Two children studying in the beach school have represented the district in hockey tournaments. And a family of four has started attending classes, inspired by a child in their household who was enrolled in the programme. According to a press release, a student in Class 4, named Akkamahadevi, now helps out her sister who is in Class 7, with math problems.
As of now, the classes are conducted in the open air; lessons in grammar are read aloud accompanied by the sounds of temple bells ringing and waves crashing. But one of the volunteers, Vishal S, told Times of India that they will construct a hut on the beach for evening school if more volunteers join them.
If you want to help sponsor the construction of huts on the beach for this program, write to: [email protected]
To volunteer, contact Vishal S: 9900162142
To know more about Incident, click here.
Like this story? Or have something to share? Write to us: [email protected], or connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
NEW: Click here to get positive news on Whatsapp! | 8,013,429 |
At least 21 people including some students were killed when a passenger bus fell 50 feet off a bridge in Odisha’s Angul district this morning. While 14 were killed on the spot, 7 others died in the nearby hospital. Another 30 have been admitted to hospitals in nearby Angul town and Cuttack. Among the injured, at least 15 are stated to be serious.
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Maharaja, a passenger bus was on its way to Athmallik in Angul district from Boudh district when the driver reportedly lost balance and swerved the vehicle off the bridge on old Manitri bridge. The bus had another 40-odd km left to reach its destination. An eyewitness, Arun Behera, said the driver was talking over phone when a kid riding a bicycle suddenly came from the opposite side. “The driver suddenly took a left turn and broke off the bridge railings,” said Behera.
Loud wailing rented the air as soon as the 10-year-old bus smashed against rocks and pebbles lying below the bridge. District collector Anil Samal said the bus has been completely damaged in the accident. “All the passengers have been taken out of the vehicle,” he said. “Arrangements are being made to shift the injured ones to Angul and other hospitals,” said Samal, adding that all the injured are being treated for free.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik announced ex-gratia assistance of Rs 2 lakh for the next of the kin of the deceased while Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan expressed their condeolence over Twitter. The prime minister said. “Bus accident in Odisha’s Angul district is heart-rending. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved families & injured.
Transport minister Ramesh Majhi asked Angul regional transport officer to investigate the cause of accident and submit report by this evening. Among the dead are 4 school students of Boudh. So far identity of 5 deceased have been known.
This is the second bus tragedy this year in Odisha. In April this year, 27 members of a jatra troupe were killed when a bus carrying it plunged down to a 300-feet gorge in Deogarh disrict during evening hours. While some of the passengers of the bus alleged the driver was drunk and had picked a fight with the owner hours before the accident, transport department officials said the vehicle did not have a fitness certificate for last 3 years.
Odisha has the highest road accident rate among all the states. National Crime Records Bureau statistics say 4,303 people died in road accident last year while 4299 persons died due to same in 2014. In 2013, 4,062 persons died in road accidents. Since 2009, Odisha is losing more than 3,500 lives in road accidents every year. State Crime Records Bureau officials said 50 per cent of accidents occurred on national highways, 25 per cent on state highways and the rest 25 per cent on the remaining roads. The major share of the road victims are pedestrians, cyclists and two-wheeler vehicles.
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Concerned over rising road accidents, the Supreme Court Committee (SCC) on road safety has asked the State Government to install speed limiters in the commercial vehicles. The state transport department has meanwhile identified 144 black spots identified on different roads including both National and State Highways to prevent road mishaps. Of the 144 black spots, 64 have been located on State Highways followed by 52 on National Highways . | 8,013,430 |
WASHINGTON — Despite all the threats Israel sees surrounding it, for the delegates assembled Sunday in the packed Washington Convention Center housing the 2013 AIPAC Policy Conference, Iran’s attempt to procure a nuclear weapon still loomed largest.
At the conference, which takes place just weeks before President Barack Obama sets off to Israel for the first foreign trip of his second term, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that 2013 will be a decisive year for Israel’s security, with dangers lurking north, south and east.
At the opening plenary session of the conference, two leading former US foreign policy officials spoke of their mutual, desired outcome for the Iranian nuclear standoff — prevention — yet offered two distinct views on how to reach it.
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Ambassador Dennis Ross, a former Mideast envoy in the Clinton Administration and previously Obama’s top adviser on Iran in the National Security Council, advocated a P5+1 negotiation strategy aimed at a final offer to Iran on uranium enrichment. “It’s time to go to an endgame,” Ross said Sunday morning. The weakness inherent in a step-by-step negotiation strategy, Ross argued, is that “Iranians have been playing the rope-a-dope strategy.”
Rather, offering an endgame proposal that would be theoretically satisfactory to both Iran and the West allows the P5+1 to call the Iranians on their bluff, Ross argued. “If you’re denying an excuse [for refusing an agreement], and the Iranians don’t respond, then maybe the position of the P5+1 has to be […] alright, we are beginning to lose patience.”
Ross’s counterpart, Elliott Abrams, was decidedly less optimistic about the prospect of recent negotiations yielding a positive outcome. “I worry about what I see in the papers,” said Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser to George W. Bush. “It appears to me we are negotiating with ourselves. We see no concessions with Iran.”
While sanctions have effectively sent the Iranians’ economy spiraling, Abrams maintained that “the goal of sanctions is to prevent them from getting closer to a nuclear weapons capability, and we are failing to do that.”
The questions over the Iranian nuclear threat come at a time in United States political discourse when policymakers face complex political and ideological fights over the future of Washington’s foreign policy.
While pro-Israel advocates have welcomed Obama’s consistent reiterations that he would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, many vociferously criticized the president for nominating Chuck Hagel, a foreign policy “realist” who has previously advocated against war with Iran, for secretary of defense.
Additionally, while leading policymakers in Washington believe that an Iran with a nuclear weapon would present a national security threat to the United States, a growing number of dissenting, isolationist-leaning members of Congress (both Republican and Democrat) have argued that America’s economic condition poses a greater threat to national security than does any outside danger. A war with Iran, these members reason, would not only be wrong-headed, but it would waste billions of dollars and divert American attention from focusing on the recovery at home.
With these contradictory factors pushing and pulling at each other on Capitol Hill, can anyone conclude with full confidence that 2013 will be a decisive year with Iran?
Many leading voices on the issue, including both Ross and Abrams themselves, have previously stated that 2013 will indeed find either the US or Israel attacking Iran military, should diplomacy fail. Other Middle East experts, however, are not so sure.
“The notion that they are somehow inexorably drawing towards military action is wrongheaded,” said Aaron David Miller, a former adviser on Middle East issues to six secretaries of state between 1988 and 2003, in an interview. “This will be the year of no decision.”
This is due to three key factors, Miller argues: Israel’s awareness of the risks of a strike, Iran’s own determination to avoid a military strike, and Obama’s wariness of potential complications arising from war with Iran.
Miller argued: “Even though I suspect Obama is prepared to act because he does not want to be the first US president to preside over Iran crossing the nuclear threshold, that decision will be a long one.” When combined with Israel’s reticence and Iran’s “Tom and Jerry game” on negotiations, “These three self-reinforcing realities [… ] will combine to make much of 2013 a year of indecision when it comes to the question of peace or war.”
Taken together, the question of whether the moment of truth with Iran is near, and if it can be avoided, may remain open for now. Still, for the thousands of delegates who showed up at Capitol Hill’s doorstep for this year’s Policy Conference — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike — the end goal was, as always, unanimous: prevention is the only option. | 8,013,431 |
According to Michael First of the DSM-5 working committee[1] the focus of a relational disorder, in contrast to other DSM-IV disorders, "is on the relationship rather than on any one individual in the relationship".[2]
Relational disorders involve two or more individuals and a disordered "juncture", whereas typical Axis I psychopathology describes a disorder at the individual level. An additional criterion for a relational disorder is that the disorder cannot be due solely to a problem in one member of the relationship, but requires pathological interaction from each of the individuals involved in the relationship.[2]
For example, if a parent is withdrawn from one child but not another, the dysfunction could be attributed to a relational disorder. In contrast, if a parent is withdrawn from both children, the dysfunction may be more appropriately attributable to a disorder at the individual level.[3]
First states that "relational disorders share many elements in common with other disorders: there are distinctive features for classification; they can cause clinically significant impairment; there are recognizable clinical courses and patterns of comorbidity; they respond to specific treatments; and they can be prevented with early interventions. Specific tasks in a proposed research agenda: develop assessment modules; determine the clinical utility of relational disorders; determine the role of relational disorders in the etiology and maintenance of individual disorders; and consider aspects of relational disorders that might be modulated by individual disorders."[2]
The proposed new diagnosis defines a relational disorder as "persistent and painful patterns of feelings, behaviors, and perceptions" among two or more people in an important personal relationship, such a husband and wife, or a parent and children.[4]
According to psychiatrist Darrel Regier, MD, some psychiatrists and other therapists involved in couples and marital counseling have recommended that the new diagnosis be considered for possible incorporation into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV).[4]
History [ edit ]
The idea of a psychology of relational disorders is far from new. According to Adam Blatner, MD,[5] some of the early psychoanalysts alluded to it more or less directly, and the history of marital couple therapy began with a few pioneers in 1930s. J.L. Moreno, the inventor of psychodrama and a major pioneer of group psychotherapy and social psychology, noted the idea that relationships could be "sick" even if the people involved were otherwise "healthy," and even vice versa: Otherwise "sick" people could find themselves in a mutually supportive and "healthy" relationship.[5]
Moreno's ideas may have influenced some of the pioneers of family therapy, but also there were developments in general science, namely, cybernetic theory, developed in the mid-1940s, and noting the nature of circularity and feedback in complex systems. By the 1950s, the idea that relationships themselves could be problematic became quite apparent. So, diagnostically, in the sense not of naming a disease or disorder, but just helping people think through what was really going on, the idea of relational disorder was nothing new.[5]
Kinds [ edit ]
The majority of research on relational disorders concerns three relationship systems: adult children and their parents, minor children and their parents, and the marital relationship. There is also an increasing body of research on problems in dyadic gay relationships and on problematic sibling relationships.[6]
Marital [ edit ]
Marital disorders are divided into "Marital Conflict Disorder Without Violence" and "Marital Abuse Disorder (Marital Conflict Disorder With Violence)."[7] Couples with marital disorders sometimes come to clinical attention because the couple recognize long-standing dissatisfaction with their marriage and come to the clinician on their own initiative or are referred by a health care professional. Secondly, there is serious violence in the marriage which is "usually the husband battering the wife".[8] In these cases the emergency room or a legal authority often is the first to notify the clinician.
Most importantly, marital violence "is a major risk factor for serious injury and even death and women in violent marriages are at much greater risk of being seriously injured or killed" (National Advisory Council on Violence Against Women 2000).[9] The authors of this study add that "There is current considerable controversy over whether male-to-female marital violence is best regarded as a reflection of male psychopathology and control or whether there is an empirical base and clinical utility for conceptualizing these patterns as relational."[9]
Recommendations for clinicians making a diagnosis of "Marital Relational Disorder" should include the assessment of actual or "potential" male violence as regularly as they assess the potential for suicide in depressed patients. Further, "clinicians should not relax their vigilance after a battered wife leaves her husband, because some data suggest that the period immediately following a marital separation is the period of greatest risk for the women.
Many men will stalk and batter their wives in an effort to get them to return or punish them for leaving. Initial assessments of the potential for violence in a marriage can be supplemented by standardized interviews and questionnaires, which have been reliable and valid aids in exploring marital violence more systematically."[9]
The authors conclude with what they call "very recent information"[10] on the course of violent marriages which suggests that "over time a husband's battering may abate somewhat, but perhaps because he has successfully intimidated his wife."
The risk of violence remains strong in a marriage in which it has been a feature in the past. Thus, treatment is essential here; the clinician cannot just wait and watch.[10] The most urgent clinical priority is the protection of the wife because she is the one most frequently at risk, and clinicians must be aware that supporting assertiveness by a battered wife may lead to more beatings or even death.[10]
In some cases, men are abuse victims of their wives; there is not exclusively male-on-female physical violence, although this is more common than female-on-male violence.
Parent–child abuse [ edit ]
Research on parent–child abuse bears similarities to that on marital violence, with the defining characteristic of the disorder being physical aggression by a parent toward a child. The disorder is frequently concealed by parent and child, but may come to the attention of the clinician in several ways, from emergency room medical staff to reports from child protection services.[10]
Some features of abusive parent–child relationships that serve as a starting point for classification include: (a) the parent is physically aggressive with a child, often producing physical injury, (b) parent–child interaction is coercive, and parents are quick to react to provocations with aggressive responses, and children often reciprocate aggression, (c) parents do not respond effectively to positive or prosocial behavior in the child, (d) parents do not engage in discussion about emotions, (e) parent engages in deficient play behavior, ignores the child, rarely initiates play, and does little teaching, (f) children are insecurely attached and, where mothers have a history of physical abuse, show distinctive patterns of disorganized attachment, and (g) parents relationship shows coercive marital interaction patterns.[11]
Defining the relational aspects of these disorders can have important consequences. For example, in the case of early appearing feeding disorders, attention to relational problems may help delineate different types of clinical problems within an otherwise broad category. In the case of conduct disorder, the relational problems may be so central to the maintenance, if not the etiology, of the disorder that effective treatment may be impossible without recognizing and delineating it.[11]
See also [ edit ] | 8,013,432 |
Wednesday, May 8, 2013 at 9:00AM
This is an email interview with Viktor Klang, Director of Engineering at Typesafe, on the Scala Futures model & Akka, both topics on which is he is immensely passionate and knowledgeable.
How do you structure your application? That’s the question I explored in the article Beyond Threads And Callbacks. An option I did not talk about, mostly because of my own ignorance, is a powerful stack you may not be all that familiar with: Scala and Akka.
To remedy my oversight is our acting tour guide, Typesafe’s Viktor Klang, long time Scala hacker and Java enterprise systems architect. Viktor was very patient in answering my questions and was enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge. He’s a guy who definitely knows what he is talking about.
I’ve implemented several Actor systems along with the messaging infrastructure, threading, async IO, service orchestration, failover, etc, so I’m innately skeptical about frameworks that remove control from the programmer at the cost of latency.
So at the end of the interview am I ready to drink the koolaid? Not quite, but I’ll have a cup of coffee with the idea.
I came to think of Scala + Akka as a kind of a IaaS for your process architecture. Toss in Play for the web framework and you have a slick stack, with far more out of the box power than Go, Node, or plaino jaino Java.
The build or buy decision is surprisingly similar to every other infrastructure decision you make. Should you use a cloud or build your own? It’s the same sort of calculation you need to go through when deciding on your process architecture. While at the extremes you lose functionality and flexibility, but since they’ve already thought of most everything you would need to think about, with examples, and support, you gain a tremendous amount too. Traditionally, however, processes architecture has been entirely ad-hoc. That may be changing.
Now, let’s start the interview with Viktor...
HS: What is an Actor?
So let’s start from the very beginning! An Actor in the Actor Model is comprised by 3 distinct pieces:
A behavior
An address
A mailbox
The Address is the thing you send messages to, they are then put into the Mailbox and the Behavior is applied to the messages in the mailbox—one at a time. Since only one message is processed at a time, you can view an Actor as an island of consistency, connected to other actors via their Addresses and by sending and receiving messages from them.
There are 3 core operations that an Actor needs to support in order for it to qualify as an Actor.
CREATE—an Actor has to be able to create new Actors SEND—an Actor needs to be able to send messages to Actors BECOME—an Actor needs to be able to change its behavior for the next message
Since what you send messages to is an Address, there is an indirection which allows the Mailbox and Behavior to live essentially anywhere, as long as the message can get routed there. This is also referred to as Location Transparency.
HS: How does Akka implement the Actor model?
Like the Actor model but requests are served by a designated pool configured on a per-actor basis. This allows for fine-grained control over execution provisioning and a means of bulkheading parts of your application from other parts of the application. Akka also allows to configure the mailbox implementation on a per-actor basis, which means that some actors might need a bounded one, some might want a priority-based one, some might want a deduplicating one, or fine-tuning things like overflow protection with head-dropping vs. tail-dropping etc.
Comparing with Threads, Akka Actors are extremely light-weight, clocking in at around 500b per instance, allowing for running many millions of actors on a commodity machine. Like Erlang Processes, Akka Actors are location transparent which means that it is possible to scale out to multiple machines without changing the way the code is written.
Akka Actors do not block on a thread when not having anything to process, which allows for high throughput at low latency as wake-up lag for threads can be avoided. It is also possible to configure the number of messages to process before handing back the thread to the pool, it is also possible to specify a time slice which will allow for the actor to keep processing new messages as long as it hasn’t run out of its time slice before handing back the thread to the pool.
This allows to tune for fairness or for throughput. Akka Actors will not be preempted when a higher-priority message arrives, but it is possible to have multiple actors sharing the same mailbox, which can mitigate this if required.
Inspired by Process Linking from Erlang, Akka Actors form a strict hierarchy, where actors created by an actor from a child-parent relationship where the parent is responsible for handling the failure of the children by issuing directives on how to deal with the different types of failure that can occur, or choose to escalate the problem to its parent. This has the benefit of creating the same kind of self-healing capabilities exhibited by Erlang. It is also possible for an Akka Actor to observe when another Actor will not be available anymore, and handle that accordingly.
HS: Can you give an example of how Process Linking works in practice?
Actor A receives message B, which entails a potentially risky operation C (could be contacting an external server or do a computation that might blow up) instead of doing that work itself, it may spawn a new actor and let that actor do this risky operation. If that operation fails, then the exception is propagated to A (being the "parent") who can decide to restart the failed actor to retry, or perhaps log that it failed. No matter if it fails or not, A has not been at risk, as the dangerous operation was delegated and managed. In the case of a more serious error that A cannot manage, A would escalate that error to its parent who might then act upon it instead.
HS: Can you go into some more detail about bulkheading, why is it important and how it's accomplished in Akka?
The Bulkhead Stability Pattern is from EIP by Nygard. It's about gaining stability by compartmentalization, just like bulkheads for a boat.
Bulkheading of Threads in Akka is accomplished by assigning different thread pools to different segments of your actor hierarchy, which means that if one thread pool is overloaded by either high load, DoS attempt or a logic error creating an infinite loop for instance, other parts of the application can proceed since their Threads cannot be "infected" by the failing thread pool.
HS: Tail-dropping?
When it comes to dealing with asynchronous message passing systems one needs to decide what contention management policies one should use. Back-pressure is one policy, dropping messages is another, and if you decide to drop messages, which ones do you drop. Usually this is something that needs to be decided on a "per service" basis, either you drop the oldest (the one at the front of the queue, i.e. front-dropping) or the newest (tail-dropping). Sometimes one wants to have a priority queue so that the important messages end up at the front of the queue.
HS: What about these abilities helps programmers develop better/faster/robuster systems?
In any system, when load grows to surpass the processing capability, one must decide how to deal with the situation. With configurable mailbox implementations you as the developer can decide how to deal with this problem on a case-by-case basis, exploiting business knowledge and constraints to make sure that performance and scalability is not compromised to get the robustness (which is more than likely the case for a one-size-fits-all solution like backpressure).
HS: How does the location transparency work?
Each Akka Actor is identified by an ActorRef which is similar to Erlang PIDs, a level of indirection between the instance of the Actor and the senders. So senders only ever interact with ActorRefs which allows the underlying Actor instance to live anywhere (in the world potentially).
HS: Is there latency involved in schedule an Akka thread to execute?
When an Actor doesn't have any messages it is not scheduled for execution, and when it gets a message it will attempt to schedule itself with the thread pool if it hasn't already done so. The latency is completely up to the implementation of the Thread Pool used, and this is also configurable and extensible/user replaceable. By default Akka uses a state-of-the-art implementation of a thread pool without any single point of contention.
HS: Given you can configure the number of messages to process before handing back the thread to the pool, that makes it a sort of run to completion model and the CPU time isn't bounded?
Exactly.
HS: Can it be interrupted?
No, but as soon as one message is done, it will check if it still has time left, and if so it will pick the next message.
HS: Can you ensure some sort of fair scheduling so some work items can make some progress?
That is up to the ThreadPool implementation and the OS Scheduler, fortunately the user can affect both.
HS: When multiple Actors share the same mailbox, if some actor has the CPU, it won't give up the CPU for the higher priority message to be executed? How does this work on multiple CPUs?
If you have 10 Actors sharing a single priority mailbox and a thread pool of 10 Threads,
there is more opportunity for an actor to be done to pick up the high-priority work than if it's a single actor that is currently processing a slow and low priority message. So it's not a watertight solution, but it improves the processing of high-prio messages under that circumstance.
By placing requirements on priority of messages increases lock contention and sacrifices throughput for latency.
HS: How do Actors know where to start in a distributed fabric?
That is done by configuration so that one can change the production infrastructure without having to rebuild the application, or run the same application on multiple, different infrastructures without building customized distributions.
HS: How do Actors know how to replicate and handle failover?
Also in configuration.
HS: How do you name Actors?
When you create an Akka Actor you specify its name, and the address of the actor is a URI of its place in the hierarchy.
Example: "akka.tcp://[email protected]:port/user/yourActorsParentsName/yourActorsName"
HS: How do you find Actors?
There are a couple of different ways depending on the use-case/situation, either you get the ActorRef (every Akka Actor is referred to by its ActorRef, this is equivalent to Address in the Actor Model) injected via the constructor of the Actor, or you get it in a message or as the sender of a message. If you need to do look ups of Actors there are 2 different ways, 1 is to create an ActorSelection, which can be described as query of the hierarchy, to which you can send messages and all actors matching the query will get it. Or you can use "actorFor" which lets you look up a specific actor using its full URI.
HS: How do you know what an Actor can do?
You don't. Well, unless you define such a protocol, which is trivial.
HS: Why is indirection an important capability?
The indirection is important because it clearly separates the location of the behavior from the location of the sender. An indirection that can even be rebound at runtime, migrating actors from one physical node to another without impacting the Address itself.
HS: How does you not have contention on you thread pools?
Every Thread in that pool has its own task-queue, and there is no shared queue. Tasks are randomly distributed to the work-queues and when a Thread doesn't have any tasks it will randomly work steal from other Threads. Having no single point of contention allows for much greater scalability.
HS: Could you please give a brief intro into Scala and why it's so wonderful?
Sure!
I come from a C them C++ then Java background and discovered Scala back in 2007.
For me Scala is about focusing on the business-end of the programming and removing repetition & "ritual" code.
Scala is a unifier of object orientation and functional programming, as well as it is trying to minimize specialized constructs in the language and instead giving powerful & flexible constructs for library authors to ad functionality with.
I personally enjoy that Scala is expression oriented rather than statement oriented, which simplifies code by avoiding a lot of mutable state which tend to easy turn into an Italian pasta dish.
A statement doesn't "return"/"produce" a result (you could say that it returns void), but instead it "side-effects" by writing to memory locations that it knows about, whereas an expression is a piece of code that "returns"/"produces" a value.
So all in all Scala lets me write less code, with less moving parts making it cheaper to maintain and a joy to write. A great combination in my book!
And not to forget that it allows me to use all good Java libraries out there, and even be consumed by Java (Akka can be used by both Scala and Java as an example).
HS: How do Scala futures fit into the scheme of things?
Alright. So I was a co-author of the SIP-14 proposal that was included in Scala 2.10. So the following explanations and discussions will center around that.
A Future is a read-handle for a single value that may be available at some point in time. Once the value is available it cannot and will not be changed.
A Promise is a write-handle for a single value that should be set at some point in time. Once the value is available it cannot and will not be changed.
The value of a Future/Promise may either be a result or an exception.
(You can get the corresponding Future from a Promise (by calling the future()-method on Promise) but not vice versa)
The strength of this model is that it allows you to program as if you already have the result, and the logic is applied when the result is available, effectively creating a data-flow style of programming, a model which easily can take advantage of concurrent evaluation.
When you program with Futures you need to have an ExecutionContext which will be responsible for executing the logic asychronously, for all intents and purposes this is equivalent to a thread pool.
As an example in Scala:
import scala.concurrent.{ Future, ExecutionContext }
import ExecutionContext.Implicits.global // imports into scope the global default execution context
// lets first define a method that adds two Future[Int]s
// This method uses a Scala for-expression, but it is only sugar for:
// f1.flatMap(left => f2.map(right => left + right))
// it asynchronously and non-blockingly adds the result of future1 to the result of future2
def add(f1: Future[Int], f2: Future[Int]): Future[Int] = for(result1 <- f1; result2 <- f2) yield result1 + result2
// Then lets define a method that produces random integers
def randomInteger() = 4 // Determined by fair dice roll
val future1 = Future(randomInteger()) //Internally creates a Promise[Int] and returns its Future[Int] immediately and calls "randomInteger()" asynchronously and completes the promise with the result which is then accessible from its Future.
val future2 = Future(randomInteger()) // same as above
val future3 = add(future1, future2)
None of the code above is blocking any thread, and the code is declarative and doesn't prescribe _how_ the code will be executed. The ExecutionContext can be switched without changing any of the logic.
So what happens if the value is exceptional?
val future3 = add(Future(throw new BadThingsHappenedException), Future(randomInteger()))
Then the exceptional completion of future1 will be propagated to future3.
So lets say we know a way to recover from BadThingsHappenedExceptions, let's use the recover method:
val future1a = Future(throw new BadThingsHappenedException)
val future1b = future1a recover { case e: BadThingsHappenedException => randomInteger() }
val future2 = Future(randomInteger())
val future3 = add(future1b, future2)
So here we first create future1a, which will be completed exceptionally with a BadThingsHappenedException,
then we call the "recover" method on future1a, and provide a (partial) function literal that can convert BadThingsHappenedExceptions to an Int by calling our amazing randomInteger() method, the result of "recover" is a new future, which we call future1b.
So here we can observe that futures are only completed once, and the way to transform the results or exceptions of a future is to create a new Future which will hold the result of the transformation.
So from a less contrived example standpoint, we can do things like:
val future1 = Future(callSomeWebService) recover { case _: ConnectException => callSomeBackupWebService() }
val future2 = Future(callSomeOtherWebService) recover { case _: ConnectException => callSomeOtherBackupWebService() }
val future3 = for(firstResult <- future1; secondResult <- future2) yield combineResults(firstResult, secondResult)
future3 map { result => convertToHttpResponse(result) }
recover { case _ => HttpResponse(400) } // underscore means "anything"
foreach { response => sendResponseToClient(response) }
So what we do here is that we asynchronously call a couple of web services, and if any of them fail with a ConnectException we try to call some backup webservice, then we combine the results of those web-service responses into some intermediate result, then we convert that result into some HttpResponse, if there has been any exceptional things happened this far, we'll recover to a HttpResponse which will have a 400-status and as the very last step we send our HttpResponse to some client that requested it.
So in our code we never wait for anything, what we do is to declare what we want to happen when/if we have a result, and there is a clear flow of data.
HS: Is a Future a scalar or can it have structure (arrays, maps, stucts, etc)?
It is a single memory slot that can only be written once. So what you write to it should be a value (i.e. immutable) but can be a struct, a Map or what have you.
HS: How do you implement more interesting state machines where results from one state are used in another? I think that's what I have a problem with a lot of times. I would prefer to go to clear error state where errors handled, for example. In the linkedin example they parallelize three separate calls and have a bit of error handling code somewhere that doesn't seem to know where the error came from or why, which makes crafting specific error response difficult.
I understand what you mean, but I view it differently. With Futures you deal with the failure where you can, just as you deal with exceptions in Java where you can. This may or may not be in the method that produces the exception, or in the caller, or in the callers caller or otherwise.
You could view Futures (with exceptional results) as an on-heap version of exception handling (in contrast to plain ex
Exception handling which is on stack, meaning that any thread can choose to deal with the exception and not only the thread that causes it).
HS: A lot of the never wait for anything seems normal to me in C++. Send a message. All IO is async. Replies comes back. Gets dropped into the right actor queue.
I hear you! A lot of the good things we learned from C/C++ still applies, i.e. async IO is more resource efficient than blocking IO etc.
HS: The actor state machine makes sense of what to do. Thread contexts are correct. In your example there's no shared state, which is the simplest situation, but when shared state is involved it's not so clean, especially when many of these are bits of code are execution simultaneously.
Of course, but it depends on what one means by shared state. Something that I find useful is "what would I do if the actors were people and they'd be in different locations?"
Sharing state (immutable values) via message-passing is perfectly natural and in reality mimics how we as humans share knowledge (we don't flip each others neurons directly :) )
Related Articles | 8,013,433 |
How Much Philosophy in the Philosophy of Science?
Anke Bu ter 0 1 Ramiro Glauer 0 1 Holger Lyre 0 1 0 R. Glauer H. Lyre Institut fu r Philosophie, Universita t Magdeburg , 39104 Magdeburg , Germany 1 A. Bu ter (&) Institut fu r Philosophie, Universita t Hannover , 30167 Hannover , Germany This supplement serves a double purpose. It presents, on the one hand, a selection of papers devoted to the title question ''How much philosophy in the philosophy of science?''. On the other hand, it signalizes the newly established cooperation between the German Society for the Philosophy of Science (GWP: Gesellschaft fur Wissenschaftsphilosophie) and the Journal for General Philosophy of Science (cf. U. Krohs, H. Pulte and G. Schiemann, Journal for General Philosophy of Science 44:1-2, 2013). The GWP was founded in Hannover in 2011 and had its inaugural conference in March 2013 [for a report on the ''GWP.2013'' by H. Lyre see EPSA Newsletter 2 (1) 2013]. The society was launched for several reasons. Albeit the German community of philosophers of science is quite large (roughly, between 40 and 50 full professors of philosophy of science), it is at the same time a rather distributed and dispersed community. This has to do with the university landscape in Germany, which is dispersed rather than being focused on a few main universities and centers. Hence, one idea was to foster the interconnections between the members of the German philosophy of science community on all levels of the academic system. This is particularly important for young researchers like PhD students and young postdocs. Also, the GWP seeks to maintain fruitful and professional relations to all national and international societies in the field of philosophy of science. A further motivation for founding the GWP is indicated by our special issue title itself. Over the last decades, philosophy of science has evolved into a number of autonomous subdisciplines, the disciplinary standards of which derive much more from the respective - scientific disciplines on which they focus rather than from any core of common methodological, epistemological or metaphysical principles. As one of the consequences, philosophers of science quite often must make efforts to motivate and even to legitimize their discipline both within their own broader philosophy community and with respect to the various special sciences. In this context, the GWP will help to provide focused institutional support for the academic and scientific interests of philosophers of science. Finally, of course, the title question is of eminent interest for philosophy of science itself. For many, the development into a number of autonomous philosophy of science subdisciplines seems to fulfill the dream of philosophy as approaching finally the firm course of science, to quote from the GWP.2013 announcement. However, the legitimate question arises as to how much philosophy there is in recent philosophy of science. How strongly has philosophy of science moved towards science and, perhaps, away from the philosophical tradition? How is this move to be valued? What are its consequences for the scientific relevance of the work that philosophers of science do? What are its consequences for philosophy of science as a unified and recognizable discipline? And in which direction should philosophy of science move in the near future? The following selection of five papers in this special issue addresses these questions from various angles and perspectives. Rather than pursuing a common take on the title question, the papers present a number of exemplary connections between philosophy, philosophy of science, and science that show that the different fields are permeable in many ways and in many directions. For instance, science interacts with ontology (Friebe); methodological considerations of one field can be drawn on for clarifications of another, completely disparate field (Mantzavinos); and particularities of explanations in one discipline can shed light on general philosophical questions (Manafu), as can specific problems of certain research fields (Hillerbrand). Here comes an overview of each contribution. In Categoricalism versus Dispositionalism: a Case Study in Metametaphysics, Cord Friebe engages in some meta-metaphysical reflections on the metaphysical status of Humean and Anti-Humean ontologies. He argues that both constitute considerably substantive claims concerning ontology and that neither can be read off contemporary physical theories and thereby fathoms the relation between scientific theory and ontology, the latter being more deeply entrenched in philosophy than the standard Quinean take on Humean categoricalism would have it. Rafaela Hillerbrands Climate Simulations. Uncertain Projections for an Uncertain World argues that the considerable uncertainties in climate modeling are impossible to quantify, due to the role of tacit knowledge as well as the necessity to draw on many different models in order to generate policy-relevant knowledge. While based on methodological issues of a specific research field, this argument has implications for dealing with uncertainty and complexity in other disciplines, too. Moreover, it demonstrates the relevance of philosophical considerations for policy-making by suggesting a revision of the current IPCC process based on its conclusion. In How much Philosophy in the Philosophy of Chemistry, Alexandru Manafu argues that the philosophy of chemistry is replete with philosophical questions. For one, there are questions that come up specifically in the context of chemistry. For another, chemistry provides an ideal case study for questions of reduction and emergence. There are many received procedures for measuring chemical entities and properties and therefore they are better candidates for an investigation of reduction and emergence than are the comparatively less easily investigable entities and properties of, say, psychology. According to Chrysostomos Mantzavinos Text Interpretation as a Scientific Activity, there is a strong parallel between text interpretation and the formation and testing of scientific hypotheses. In both cases, hypotheses are formed on the basis of empirical evidence, reasons are given for their support, and they are subsequently tested on the available material. Thus, scientific methods are applied to objects that lie outside the classical domain of philosophy of science which makes them amenable to considerations from philosophy of science. This is an example for the broader philosophical significance of the field. Last but not least, the position paper of Marie I. Kaiser, Maria Kronfeldner, and Robert Meunier provides an exploration of the general issue of Interdisciplinarity in Philosophy of Science. By distinguishing between and reflecting upon different forms of interdisciplinarity, they generate a foundation for discussions of the status of the disciplinefor example regarding questions of the methodological unity of philosophy of science or its possible connections to the sciences. The selection of these papers gives but a small sample of the diverse interrelations between philosophy, philosophy of science, and science and a likewise small sample of the perspectives that can be taken on these interactions. It is a starting point for a continued investigation of philosophy of science and its place among academic fields. The special issue is completed by a sixth paper that presents a survey-based overview and quantitative analysis of German philosophy of science for the period from 1992 to 2012. Paper and survey have been provided by the group of Gerhard Schurz and his coworkers Matthias Unterhuber and Alexander Gebharter from the Du sseldorf Center of Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS). | 8,013,434 |
Can’t … stop … playing.
Photo by Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock
Summoners War (sic) is not a good video game. I should know; I play the free-to-play title from Com2uS daily, mindlessly clicking through repetitive scenarios for hours on end. I do this in spite of knowing that the game is irredeemable. I can offer no justifications for this behavior because I don’t think there are any. The game is tedious. It’s derivative. It’s dumb. It lacks substance. It’s uncreative. It’s a cynical machine designed to trick fools into parting with their hard-earned money. No one should ever play it. So why the heck can’t I stop playing this thing?
If you’re a gaming snob, like I am, then you already know that the sort of “game” you can get for free on a tablet or a smartphone is hardly even worthy of the name. The “gameplay” consists of poking dumbly at a tiny screen. The “story” is forgettable to the point that I can barely bring an outline of it to mind. If it stands out, it is for being even more packed with tedious minutiae than your average MMORPG. If gaining competency through the accumulation of useless knowledge is your bag, then there are certainly enough tiny, boring, mundane, verging-on-incomprehensible details to master as you advance in Summoners War.
If you’ve never heard of it, don’t worry—unlike more popular freemium titles such as Clash of Clans or Plants vs. Zombies 2, no one else has either. But the basic outline will seem familiar if you’ve ever played Pokémon: Collect monsters, help them grow stronger, fight them against others. It’s not exactly breaking new ground.
Perhaps part of the appeal—though I don’t exactly mean appeal, per se, I think I really mean potential for compulsion-forming—is that there’s a built-in measure of automation in the game, allowing one to play it all the time. You can grind scenarios and level-up evolution fodder at work. You can farm for high-level runes or awakening materials while doing the dishes (sort of—be sure to have a dry towel at hand for wiping off your touch screen finger). You can even write an article for Slate while farming the Hall of Light for a rare inugami secret dungeon. In fact, you can do just about everything you normally do in a distracted, mediocre, half-aware way, all while obsessively replaying whichever level it is that you’re currently grinding. Do this for enough hours (or days, or even weeks in some cases), and you’ll eventually earn a reward. This will briefly satisfy you, and then you’ll forget about it completely in your hunt for the next absolutely useless must have thing you need for your advancement.
[Totally Unavoidable Interruption]
During the writing of this piece, the author actually did find the rare secret dungeon for a light inugami. It was therefore incumbent on the author to cease all non-SW activity for the duration of the hourlong secret dungeon period, in order to accumulate the 40 summoning pieces necessary to summon this important monster.
[Interruption Ends]
Anyone who’s taken an intro-level psych course will be familiar with the concept of intermittent reinforcement, whereby a reward for the desired behavior is given … occasionally. I’m no psychologist (just a former psych major), but I have a dim memory of cocaine-addicted rats endlessly pressing disconnected levers and ultimately starving to death. That image keeps surfacing as I write about the experience of participating in free-downloadable gaming. There are ancient levers in our brains, and once these have been activated they will channel our behavior in certain predictable directions. Even knowing what a cynical trap I’m in, I find myself still looking forward to bragging about the secret dungeon I found to my friend Drew next time I see him. I know Drew has already spent hundreds of dollars on the game and that there are countless other people like him who have been convinced that $30, $50, or $100 at a time was not too much to spend for a package that would increase their chances of summoning a rare and powerful monster. This isn’t just a harmless diversion for semi-unsuspecting fools like yours truly—it’s big business, and the way it works is quite insidious. Although you can play for free, indefinitely, and get quite far along, the temptation to spend money for an upgrade is repeatedly dangled in front of you. And while all of the content can be accessed, the highest echelons of player-vs.-player combat are practically unattainable for free-to-play customers.
Thus far, my frugality has kept me from wasting my money in the same cavalier way I’ve been wasting my time. But you, gentle reader, may not be so lucky. I must therefore encourage you, in the strongest possible terms, not to start playing Summoners War or any of the other games of its ilk. It’s too late for me, but perhaps my cautionary tale will help you save yourself. | 8,013,435 |
Mamata Banerjee's reaction on the Durga idol immersion controversy is symptomatic of a leader suffering from a deep confusion about political trajectory. For the first time in her career, the firebrand mass leader appears unsure. Faced with a dominant, cunning and resourceful political adversary, the Trinamool Congress supremo is dithering. She has taken a series of missteps and the BJP would have noted it.
The West Bengal chief minister has ended up scoring an own goal while trying to be too clever by half. Her plan of using cultural chauvinism as an antidote to BJP's Hindutva card was giving dividends, and the BJP of late had suffered a cognitive setback while trying to introduce identity politics into Durga Pujo, Bengal's biggest cultural (not just religious) festival.
She didn't need to tamper with immersion dates or put a curb around timings. By trying to do so, however, Mamata may have allowed BJP a moral victory. Worse, her every step since the issue of firman has been confusing, bewildering and even contradictory, betraying an uncharacteristic nervousness.
The West Bengal government first declared that Durga idol immersion could only be carried out till 6pm on Dashami (30 September, Saturday) — the traditional day of immersion for Bengalis — and the curb will be lifted on 2 October. If the chief minister was apprehensive of a challenge to law and order, this was a daft way to meet it. Muharram, the day of mourning for Shia Muslims, fell on 1 October (Sunday). There was no need for a curb on immersion on Dashami.
On being dragged to court, the state government blinked and allowed immersion till 10pm. A fresh order was issued, and the earlier deadline was blamed reportedly on a "typographical error".
More was to follow. Acting on three petitions against the 1 October-ban on immersion, the Calcutta High Court bench of acting Chief Justice Rakesh Tiwary and Justice Harish Tandon took the state government to task on two consecutive days. On Wednesday, according to Times of India, the court asked the government not to "hide its inability by imposing immersion restrictions", observing that the state cannot block a citizen's constitutional right to practise religion on the mere assumption that there could be disruption of law and order.
On Thursday, the Calcutta HC revoked the Mamata government's order, allowed immersion till 12am on all days, and sternly reminded the state that "You are exercising extreme power without any basis... Just because you are the state, can you pass arbitrary order?"
In an 18-page order, the court said: "It is axiomatic to record that the state has no religion, which is one of the fundamental facets underlying secularism. There should not be any order of precedence in performance of the religious rites, rituals, ceremonies and mourning amongst the religious communities. There should be an equality in every citizen’s right with corresponding obligation of very state to protect the same."
At this point, the sensible thing for the chief minister to do would have been to accept the court's ruling and try and implement the court's direction that separate routes should be designated for Tazia and immersion processions, ensure adequate police bandobast and advertise the routes well in advance.
The chief minister seemed to have taken the court rebuke to heart, and though careful not to express open dissent, left no space for doubt that she disagreed with the ruling. In thinly veiled criticism for the HC order, she was quoted as saying soon after, "I will do what I can to keep peace in the state. Also, someone can slit my throat, but no one can tell me what to do."
By Thursday night, media reports indicated that the state will challenge the high court order in Supreme Court. On Friday, a TMC MP said there were no such plans and claimed that the HC order had actually been in state's favour.
Kalyan Banerjee told News18: "Yesterday, most of the media reported wrongly information that the High Court revoked the state government’s decision on banning immersion on Muharram day. Actually, the court’s verdict went in our favour. We are not going to move Supreme Court because the Calcutta High Court order is actually in our favour. Some people are trying to politicise the issue. Let them do it."
If this wasn't bizarre enough, a defiant Mamata passed a new order on Friday, making it mandatory for Durga Pujo organisers to seek a government permit for immersion, reported India Today.
Mamata is insistent that these steps are being taken to "maintain law and order" and she probably has a point, given the spate of low-intensity communal clashes that have taken place recently in Bengal. Her clumsy steps, however, have made it difficult for others to buy this logic. TMC and BJP's competitive identity politics has rapidly polarised the state polity and in this context, Mamata's move may very likely be interpreted as 'anti-Hindu'. The BJP will certainly try its best to convey that impression.
Last year, too, the Mamata government had been at the receiving end of a court rebuke, with the Calcutta HC holding it responsible for "minority appeasement."
The state BJP expectedly didn't waste any time. President Dilip Ghosh said "it is really sad that the Hindus in Bengal have no religious rights. They have to depend on the judiciary to celebrate Durga Puja" while an RSS functionary accused ruling party of "depriving the Hindus of their basic rights, only for the sake of appeasement of a particular community."
Abhijit Ghosal has pointed out in Hindustan Times that Mamata's steps to curb immersion were unnecessary, because hardly any Hindus immerse the Durga idol on 'ekadoshi' (the 11th day in Matri Paksha) which coincided with Muharram this year. Given the TMC's formidable influence among Puja committee members, writes the author, she could have easily leant on them to avoid that date.
It's worth pondering why Mamata missed out on such an obvious move, handing the BJP another chance to paint her as anti-Hindu. One possibility is that by issuing the curbs and diktats against immersion, Mamata has managed to send a message to TMC's Muslim votebank. In this calculation, the court rebuke is actually a favour. The gamble could have been that given Bengal's fierce cultural chauvinism, a section of Bengali Hindus will never vote for the BJP. As the recent controversies around depiction of goddess Durga and her children at a Jawed Habib salon, or a social media video on egg rolls (a popular Bengali snack) have shown, the BJP has still been unable to wrap its head around the fact for Bengalis, cultural identity may trump every other selfhood markers. Stringent Hindutva politics might not work here.
The second, more likely possibility is that Mamata's missteps are not deliberate, and stem from a confusion around her political trajectory. Her stunning victory in 2011 that ended 34-year Left rule in the state was made possible largely due to the agitation around Singur and Nandigram when Mamata successfully tapped into farmers' over losing land to Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government's industrial push.
As Rajat Roy writes in Economic and Political Weekly, "Muslim population in Bengal is around 28%, and that of Scheduled Castes is around 23%, a majority of them peasants… After coming to power, the Mamata government took some steps to bring benefits to these socio-religious sections of the society. Though some of the steps—for example, provision of a monthly allowance to imams and muezzins—were symbolic, the administration was forced to turn a blind eye when there were incidents of a serious breakdown in law and order that involved Muslim population."
In an effort to consolidate the Muslim vote base, Mamata introduced identity politics in Bengal which had largely been free of it — paving the way for BJP to make inroads. Two can play this game, and in the race for consolidation of Hindu and Muslim votes, Mamata suddenly finds herself trapped in an image problem. This may explain her late dabs at soft Hindutva such as uploading a volley of Durga Pujo inauguration pictures on Twitter, or breaking into an impromptu Chandi Path (mantra).
Everywhere, it is a magnificent spectacle of superb creativity. My best wishes to all. pic.twitter.com/QNRhsflKEE — Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) September 20, 2017
This ambivalence and soft Hindutva may actually work against her because it plays into BJP's hands. It remains to be seen if Mamata has the ability to pull off such a precarious balancing act.
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc said on Tuesday said it was dropping copy protection from songs sold on the Internet and debuted its slimmest 17-inch laptop yet, but with no dramatic products or master pitchman Steve Jobs, the company’s final Macworld performance disappointed Wall Street.
Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing at Apple Inc, speaks about the Apple program "Faces" at the Macworld Convention and Expo 2009 in San Francisco, January 6, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
Apple shares slid 0.7 percent, lagging by far the Nasdaq’s 1.7 percent gain, reflecting frustration over the lack of news from the trade conference that had previously introduced the iPhone to the world.
“There were some innovative products, but no true blockbusters,” said Robert Francello, head of equity trading for Apex Capital hedge fund in San Francisco. “People were bullish going into it, and now they’re kind of taking money off the table.”
Apple said its iTunes music store, which has sold 6 billion songs thus far, will offer its 10-million-song library free of digital rights management — or copy-protection — by the end of the quarter, for between 69 cents and $1.29 a song.
Songs will also be available straight to iPhones over the air, instead of through a computer.
The company decided not use Macworld to launch any major new product, as it had in past years, when it introduced such industry-changing devices as the iPhone.
In years past, the company’s Macworld product launches had produced so much buzz that they managed to overshadow events at the far larger Consumer Electronics Show. The 2009 CES show kicks off this week in Las Vegas.
Tuesday’s event produced few surprises. Apple announced a $2,799 17-inch laptop that is the company’s lightest and slimmest ever, as well as tweaks to software for home movies and photographs.
The event culminated with singer Tony Bennett crooning “The Best is Yet to Come” and “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” in a farewell of sorts to Apple, which will no longer attend the cultural event thronged annually by Mac-faithful.
Jobs, a fixture at past events, was nowhere in sight, despite some hopes for a cameo. Last month, the company said its chief executive and salesman extraordinaire would not deliver the Macworld address. That raised fresh concerns about the cancer survivor’s health and signaled to many Apple-watchers that the company had no plans to launch a major product at Macworld. | 8,013,437 |
OCZ Storage Solutions will showcase a new range of SSD drives at Computex 2015. The all new series, from the Toshiba Group owned company, are to be called the OCZ Trion 100 range. These 2.5-inch/7mm drives will become OCZ's new value-oriented SSD range aimed at users seeking to upgrade their SATA-6Gb/s desktop or laptop systems.
Key performance components of the OCZ Trion 100 drives include Toshiba's Alishan SSD controller and its premium A19 TLC (triple-level cell) flash memory technology. Available later this summer, the series is touted as one that will "deliver a superior balance of performance, reliability, and value". Example performance statistics from the new Trion 100 drives include figures demonstrating up to 550MB/s of bandwidth and up to 91,000 random read IOPS.
TLC NAND is generally considered less durable than MLC (multi-level cell) NAND but is the most affordable variety of this type of memory. With a good firmware and controller configuration it can still provide the basis of a fast and reliable SSD, giving several years of service. Thus these OCZ Trion 100 drives could be some of the most competitive entry-level SSDs yet produced.
OCZ won't just be showing off entry level flash products at Computex. The firm is also exhibiting its upcoming Z-Drive 6300 NVM Express (NVMe) Add-In-Card (AIC) for enterprise customers. A new member of the Z-Drive series, this 6300 model will offer transfer speeds approaching 3GB/s and up to 700,000 IOPS with capacities up to 6.4TB. The already available Z-Drive 6000 will be on demonstration too.
OCZ's complete portfolio will be on display at booth #J0224 at the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall. At this time we don't have a release date for the Trion 100 range except 'later this summer'. Hopefully we will find out the pricing before release, perhaps as early as next week at Computex. | 8,013,438 |
This is a guest post written by Anonymous.
[Note: Among the many things conservative radio broadcaster Paul Harvey was known for was his essay “If I were the Devil,” versions of which you can see here. This piece is a rebuttal to Harvey’s essay.]
…
If I were the Prince of Darkness I would want to engulf the world in the darkness of ignorance; I would use this ignorance to cause divisiveness among men, and my success would give me control of every nation in the world.
First, I would invent religion. Not just one religion, but many religions, and I would delude the followers of each into believing that theirs was the “one true faith.” In so doing, I would promote an attitude among mankind that the followers of religions other than their own must do so only through ignorance or the primitiveness of their culture. And I would promote an attitude among them all that those who refuse to accept any religion are delusional, arrogant, or evil;
I would have families indoctrinate their children into their particular religion prior to an age at which the children could understand or question the concepts of that religion. I would know that children are trusting of their parents and very few will ever consider that their parents could possibly be wrong about a topic of such consequence;
I would have everyone believing that anything they ever experienced that might be beyond their personal understanding must be rooted in supernatural causes;
With the cunning of a fox, I would make them believe that I was the Creator of mankind, the earth and the entire universe. I would have them believe that their achievements could only happen under my guiding hand, and that any tragedy that befell them happened at my will for reasons beyond their capability or need to understand;
I would convince some of them that failure to worship and love me would result in their having an eternal punishment following the end of their already wretched earthly lives;
If religion were not fully sufficient to cause divisiveness between men, I would teach them to weave flags and create borders between lands, and I’d give those born within each border a feeling that they are more deserving of the resources within their own borders than those who aren’t;
I would fool some of them into including religious symbols or oaths into their currency and nationalistic pledges in such a way that any who took offense would be seen as unpatriotic.
My closest disciples would work to pass laws subjugating all men who reside within certain borders to live according to the religion most prevalently followed within those borders;
I would convince humanity that men who lived in earlier times were inherently wiser and more pure of heart;
If some of the people began to study, unlock and understand the realities of nature I would have them branded as blasphemers; If these blasphemers attempted to educate others about the true nature of the universe, I would have my disciples fight tooth and nail to stop them;
If I were the devil I would make men believe that they are superior to women; that work performed by a woman is not worthy of the same pay as that performed by a man; and that laws should be passed to deny women from controlling their part in reproduction;
I would make humans think that they are my favorite form of life and that other animals need not be treated with respect or compassion;
I would make euthanasia a crime so that I could enjoy watching the terminally ill writhe in agony or spend their final days in a drug-induced stupor;
I would persuade people that sexuality comes solely from personal choice, and that those who are not heterosexual are sinners not entitled to the rights of other citizens.
I would infiltrate the wealthiest of corporations and instill in their leaders the idea that they and only they are entitled to live in comfort and I’d tell them that those who labor on their behalf are not worthy of pay or benefits that would enable them to live without having to worry about having to choose between paying the electric bill or the water bill, or between buying groceries or buying school supplies;
I might even pose as a professional essayist and get paid to read my propaganda to millions of radio listeners in a neighborly, persuasive voice.
If I were the devil I would do all of these things and more because I would take delight in the immeasurable suffering caused by ignorance and intolerance.
But I’m not the devil, nor do I believe in the existence of such a hideous being, any more than I believe in the existence of gods, unicorns, leprechauns or dragons.
… and that’s the rest of the story. Good day! | 8,013,439 |
I have received an interesting list of three books from my Secret Santa.
Kitchen Confidential, Insider's Secrets - Anthony Bourdain
The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton (this sounds like it will be a very interesting read, not really read much set before world war one apart from Shakespeare so this should be an interesting read with a possibly amazing story)
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
I haven't read any of them before and the only author I knew of was Anthony Bourdain and he is an amazing and wonderful person who is truly one of the most honest and brutal writers and tv personalities and his world he creates within his shows like Parts Unknown are places I dream of one day visiting in his footsteps and I mentioned that he would be the person I would want to have a meal with out of anyone, dead or alive, just look at his meal with Obama and you'll see the simplicity and comfort his program provides. I love the fact I'm finally being able to explore his writings for the first time and thankyou! | 8,013,440 |
Abdi Waise was convicted of supplying class-B drugs, one count of kidnap and four counts of attempted kidnap
An illegal Somalian immigrant is facing jail after trying to kidnap children by posing as a policeman weeks after being released early from a jail sentence for rape.
Abdi Waise, 28, was supposed to be deported after serving six years of an eight-year sentence for raping a young woman he snatched off the street in 2008.
But a deportation order from 2013 was stayed after the jobless migrant, who came to Britain at the age of ten, appealed on human rights grounds.
Only three weeks after the sex offender was released on licence in January this year, he struck again – kidnapping one schoolgirl and trying to abduct four other children over two-and-a half hours as they walked to school in Hornsey, north London.
Waise struck on January 18 this year. His kidnap attempts started at 7.30am when he chased a ten-year-old boy, offering him £10 and cannabis if he went with him.
A short time later he stopped a schoolgirl and tried to search her bag claiming to be a police officer. He followed her until the girl pointed him out to her parents. Minutes later he approached another girl, grabbing her wrist, telling her he was a police officer looking for his daughter, but she managed to wriggle free.
At 8.10am, Waise blocked the pathway of two girls and accused them of buying drugs. He attempted to lure them a nearby garden so he could search them, but they ran off.
Posing as a plain-clothes police officer, Waise then tried to kidnap an 11-year-old girl, putting his arm around her and trying to convince her she should come to his house for breakfast to look at some photos.
He grabbed her bag and coat, but she managed to run away. At 9.10am he grabbed another girl by the shoulder at a bus stop, but she was able to escape. He also attempted to search schoolgirls after accusing them of buying drugs.
Scroll down for video
Shocking CCTV footage shows Waise harassing one of the five girls he attempted to kidnap in a two-and-a-half hour period in North London
When the ruse failed, Waise then targeted a group of schoolboys, offering them £20 if they could get girls to take liquid isopropyl nitrate, known as poppers.
He claimed it would make the victim faint and said, 'If you give it to girls you can do what you want to them', but the boys refused.
Prosecutor Edward Franklin said: 'He tried to use force and intimidating behaviour to stop the children and divert them to accompany him.
'Fortunately those children got away and many of them continued to school where they reported the incidents, others told their parents.'
Waise targeted a group of schoolboys, offering them £20 if they could get girls to take liquid isopropyl nitrate. He claimed it would make the victim faint
Yesterday at Wood Green Crown Court, Waise was convicted of supplying class-B drugs, one count of kidnap and four counts of attempted kidnap. A further charge relating to the attempted kidnap of a 15-year-old girl was laid on file after the jury were unable to reach a verdict.
Details of the deportation order, which was served in 2013, were revealed after yesterday's verdict. It was issued following his 2009 conviction for throttling and raping a 21-year-old woman in Edmonton, North London back in August 2008.
It is believed Waise remained in the UK because he was appealing against the order on human rights grounds. Yesterday Judge Witold Pawlak expressed astonishment that he was not deported, saying: 'If he had been deported then, all those children would not have gone through their unfortunate experiences.'
He said the criminal, who has a string of previous convictions including robbery, theft and possession of cannabis, was 'dangerous'. Before he was convicted of rape, Waise was also charged with sexual offences including an attempted rape that involved throttling, but in both cases the charges were dropped. Waise is due to be sentenced next week.
Outside court, Detective Sergeant Gareth Coffey said: 'He is an illegal immigrant. He was appealing against the deportation at the time and that was why he had not been deported.'
DCI Paul Trevers, in overall charge of the investigation from Haringey CID, said: 'Waise went out with the plan of abducting a girl. When deception didn't work, he became increasingly forceful. Fortunately all the girls saw through his ruse, and whilst frightened, all made it away safely.'
A number of illegal immigrants and foreign criminals have been deported from the UK to war-torn Somalia. They are either flown back on chartered private jets, which are often half-empty, or on scheduled flights via another African country – at vast expense to the taxpayer.
Yesterday, it emerged that ministers have squandered a staggering £57million flying foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers home on private jets over the past five years. Scheduled flights for deportations are thought to have cost the taxpayer at least an additional £30million. | 8,013,441 |
The U.S. Department of State announced on Wednesday that President Donald Trump has ordered an NSC-led review of the nuclear agreement with Iran brokered in 2015.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, known more commonly as “the Iran deal,” was the result of negotiations between former President Barack Obama, members of the United Nation’s Security Council, Germany, and the EU. The NSC-led review will investigate whether lifting sanctions against the world’s top sponsor of terror may not be in the U.S. national interest.
“Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror, through many platforms and methods,” Tillerson said in a statement issued on Wednesday. “President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
The State Department announcement states that the agency is certifying the action through a letter to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.
This letter certifies that the conditions of Section 135(d)(6) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA), as amended, including as amended by the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 (Public Law 114-17), enacted May 22, 2015, are met as of April 18, 2017. Notwithstanding, Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods. President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States. When the interagency review is completed, the administration looks forward to working with Congress on this issue.
On March 29, Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), told Congress that the U.S. needs to have military action as an option on the table given Iran’s continuing belligerence and support for terrorist groups in the Middle East and beyond.
“Iran poses the most significant threat to the Central Region and to our national interests and the interests of our partners and allies,” Votel said in his prepared testimony.
“We have not seen any improvement in Iran’s behavior since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), addressing Iran’s nuclear program, was finalized in July 2015,” Votel said.
Votel said that, since the agreement was finalized, the U.S. military has seen a heightened number of “malign activities” on the part of Iran and its proxies in the Central Region, including “Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, the Sinai, and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait [located between Yemen and Djibouti and Eritrea] and in other parts of our area of responsibility.”
The Central Region, or CENTCOM AOR, covers more than 4 million square miles that includes 20 predominantly Muslim nations stretching from Northeast Africa across the Middle East to Central and South Asia. | 8,013,442 |
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A healthy copycat version of the Great American Cookie Company’s signature cookie. Two tender chocolate chip cookies with light and fluffy buttercream frosting between.
I’m reaching way back into my childhood for this recipe. I used to LOVE the double doozie cookies from The Great American Cookie Company. Every time we went to the mall and walked past that glass display case, my mouth would start watering. I loved those things! My mother didn’t let me indulge too often, but when she did . . . ! So good! Even into my adulthood, I would sometimes have one (every several years) just for nostalgia sake.
My husband is the one who inspired the idea for this recipe. I had made the Chocolate Moisties (from the Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook ) and he was dreaming about using them for a “cookie sandwich.” I did make a double doozie with those cookies, using my Healthy Coconut Oil Chocolate Frosting. (See my Facebook post about those cookies).
While those were delicious, I knew I wanted to try it with a more traditional vanilla type of frosting. I figured the perfect cookie for that would be my Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe! I mixed up a simple buttercream frosting, and came up with a double doozie that tastes amazingly like the original Double Doozie cookie!
I am so pleased to have re-created one of my favorite child-hood favorites! Now I can have them more often – and not even feel guilty!
This recipe only makes 2 Double Doozie Cookies, but feel free to double or triple the frosting recipe if you want to make more than 2 at a time. (If you make a full batch of the Chocolate Chip Cookies you should have plenty of cookies.)
This post contains affiliate links, which provide me with a small compensation when you purchase your products through my links. Thank you for your support!
Print Recipe 5 from 1 vote Double Doozie Cookies {THM-S, Sugar Free, Low Carb} Ingredients 4 Favorite Low Carb Chocolate Chip Cookies For the Frosting 2 Tablespoons Softened Butter
2 Teaspoons Gentle Sweet
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
1 Tablespoon Hydrolyzed Collagen Instructions In a small mixing bowl, mix all ingredients with a hand mixer until fluffy.
Spread half of the frosting on two cookies, and top with the remaining cookies. Notes This makes 2 Double Doozie cookies. I would only eat 1 as a serving.
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Apple Bows To Chinese Censorship Demands
from the tibet-or-not-tibet dept
It isn't news that Apple's app store is a garden with some mighty high, awfully arbitrary walls. Whether Apple is rejecting developer's apps on the grounds of profanity or subject matter, the fact is that the reasoning for these takedowns is a thinly veiled form of what I call "Apple morality". Swearing is bad for kids, or kids shouldn't have access to games about war. Definitely no nudity. These, business practices or not, are all moral claims. We might disagree with their version of morality, but that's what it is.
Which is why I'd be curious to hear Apple's reasoning for taking down an app in China that allowed users to read books about Tibet. The company claimed that they did so because that content is illegal in China, of course.
The app, "jingdian shucheng", offered access to ten books via the iPhone and iPad. Mr Hao said he believed three titles by Wang Lixiong, a political writer and activist, had prompted the ban, according to The Financial Times. Mr Wang is a prominent critic of Chinese policy in Tibet.
Concern over Apple’s weakness in the booming Chinese smartphone market has been seen by investors as a potential problem for its continued growth. It has been a major cause of a share price slump in recent months that has forced Mr Cook to repeatedly defend his strategy. The firm has been repeatedly rumoured to be developing a cheaper iPhone designed to court Chinese consumers but it has not yet revealed its plans.
Here's the problem: if you're going to take a moral stance in the rest of the world, you need to take one in China as well. Bowing to pressures to censor speech in China would not square with any flavor of morality. On the other hand, were Apple to stick to their "it's illegal" reason for taking the app down, then they need to come out and explain the other examples of takedowns above, since those areillegal. It seems to me that Apple wants to apply their "Apple morality" everywhere...until a dollar is introduced.In other words, rather than try to push the Chinese to stop censoring, as others have, Apple is selling their convictions down the Huang He river in favor of money. Nice going, guys.
Filed Under: censorship, china, free speech
Companies: apple | 8,013,444 |
Obama shakes hands with Cuba's Raul Castro
CLOSE Nelson Mandela's memorial service Tuesday brought together -- briefly -- the leaders of two long-estranged countries: The United States and Cuba.
President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro (Photo11: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images)
Nelson Mandela's memorial service Tuesday brought together — briefly — the leaders of two long-estranged countries: the United States and Cuba.
President Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raúl Castro during the service at which both spoke.
The United States and Cuba have not had diplomatic relations since the communist revolution led by Castro's brother Fidel more than 50 years ago.
This appears to have been only the second U.S.-Cuban leader handshake in the last five decades. Back in 2000, Fidel Castro shook the hand of then-President Bill Clinton.
The Castro handshake was not planned, said Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. The president greeted many of the world leaders who gathered for the Mandela service.
Obama only "exchanged greetings" with Castro and the other leaders, Rhodes said, adding that "what the day was about was Nelson Mandela."
NEWS: South Africans mourn, celebrate Madiba
Fidel Castro backed Mandela's anti-apartheid efforts, and Mandela often expressed his admiration of Castro. Fidel Castro visited South Africa for a conference in 1998, years after Mandela's release from prison and election as president.
During Mandela's memorial service in Johannesburg, South Africa,, Obama could be seen chatting with a variety of world leaders, including Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.
"Mandela showed us the power of action," Obama said in his remarks at the stadium, "of taking risks on behalf of our ideals."
In his speech, Raúl Castro called Mandela "the ultimate symbol of dignity and unwavering dedication to the revolutionary struggle, to freedom and justice, a prophet of unity, peace and reconciliation."
At a 2009 conference, Obama shook hands with another prominent anti-American critic, then-Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez.
From the Associated Press:
"Obama was greeting a line of world leaders and heads of state attending the memorial in Johannesburg. He also shook hands with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who has clashed with Obama over alleged National Security Agency spying.
"The U.S. and Cuba have recently taken small steps toward rapprochement, raising hopes the two nations could be on the verge of a breakthrough in relations. But skeptics caution that the two countries have shown signs of a thaw in the past, only to fall back into old recriminations."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1bzqtL8 | 8,013,445 |
When he was elected president of the Philippines in July 2016, President Rodridgo Duterte promised to negotiate peace agreements with the major insurgent groups that have destabilised much of the country for decades.
His government announced it would commence peace talks with the representatives of the National Democratic Front, the umbrella organisation that represents both the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army. Duterte also committed himself to a peace agreement with the Philippines’ largest insurgent group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
At the time, these seemed like breakthroughs in the making. But the early optimism has dissolved, and the peace talks have stalled. While the government does seem genuinely willing to negotiate, the president seems to be been prioritising another one of his election campaign promises: eradicating crime and drugs.
This notorious “war on drugs” has been extraordinarily bloody, and criticised by human rights organisations and foreign governments alike. Nonetheless, it is supported by a majority of the population.
The popular narrative of the effects of drugs – in particular, shabu, or methamphetamine – seems to be exaggerated. Shabu use, urban legend says, results in not just theft and robbery, but paedophilia and arson; horror stories abound of addicts slaughtering entire families. The president himself has been quoted likening shabu addicts to “the living walking dead … of no use to society anymore”.
This rhetoric normalises a culture of impunity for the police and vigilantes, many of whom resort to extreme violence. Many innocent people have been targeted, both intentionally and unintentionally; journalists, police, politicians and other critics have been threatened, intimidated, fired or arrested for alleged links with drugs. Yet during my own research, many Filipinos told me they feel safer and that crime seems to have gone down.
The “war on drugs” may seem distinct from longer-running security issues, but it isn’t. The crackdown is contributing to a culture of unchecked violence, which is increasingly accepted as a necessary measure. If this normalisation continues, lasting peace will never be achieved.
Getting it wrong
For all its conciliatory talk, the government is still using tough tactics to deal with violent insurgents. So far, they have not paid off.
In May 2017, the military launched an operation to apprehend Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group, a faction of bandits designated as a terrorist organisation. But when the army swooped in, Hapilon was protected by scores of armed men who quickly took strategic positions throughout Marawi City. Instead of capturing Hapilon, the military raid seemed to kick-start the group’s unanticipated plan to seize the city.
Duterte was on a state visit to Russia at the time. The operation unravelled, and martial law was declared not just in Marawi, but on the entire island of Mindanao. The government has claimed it had intelligence about the group’s plans, but has issued contradictory statements on the rationale behind the siege, citing both jihadism and the drug trade.
Reports state that a few hundred jihadists managed to hold onto several neighbourhoods in defiance of government troops; they held off the military with improvised explosive devices, a sophisticated network of underground tunnels, and snipers placed in strategic locations across the city. This is a remarkable change in tactics for the Philippines’ insurgents, and clearly echoes recent urban battles in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
The ongoing Marawi City crisis has scotched the government’s ceasefire with the New People’s Army. The deal was ultimately breached by both sides; in response, the Communist Party’s central command ordered increased operations in other parts of the country.
Generation gap
This decision is partly grounded in history. Communists still harbour bitter memories of the last period of martial law, imposed by dictator Ferdinand Marcos. True, the post-Marcos 1987 Constitution has more checks and balances in place than its predecessor, but martial law in Mindanao has already been extended to December 31, and may yet be extended to the entire country.
But outside the insurgent movements, many Filipinos see martial law as a necessary means with which to solve various problems in Mindanao. Aside from the insurgency, the region is home to many powerful families and clans with private armies and large weapon caches – something exemplified in the Marawi Crisis, where small groups of “terrorists” enjoy access to remarkably advanced weapons.
The problem is that martial law has hardly been a storming success. The government’s airstrikes have caused both civilian casualties and immense material destruction. The armed forces have attempted to secure the area around Marawi City, but it seems likely that Hapilon and the Maute leadership have escaped. Nor has the army managed to prevent new fighters from entering Marawi City; on the contrary, the Maute Group and Abu Sayyaf seem to have no problem recruiting ever more members.
Other groups are having problems, too. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s leadership has expressed concerns over its lack of control over the younger generation; the disconnect between what the Communist Party leadership says and what the New People’s Army is actually doing could mean that the Communists have lost control of their armed affiliate.
The success of any peace process is measured not only by what agreement ultimately gets signed. What will matter is whether it can be implemented, and the extent to which it addresses both the roots and consequences of the conflict. Only then will any further violence be avoided, and permanently. The prospect of any such peace in the Philippines remains slim. To quote Duterte himself, “There will be no peace for a generation.” | 8,013,446 |
Image copyright PA Image caption Campaigners have been struggling to get their message across in the early stages
American generals like to talk about "preparing the battlefield". And so it has been with the EU referendum campaign.
There have already been eight weeks of skirmishes but Friday is the curtain-raiser on the official EU referendum campaign.
That still leaves a longer period before voting than a general election. And the campaign is unlikely to catch fire until May when other polls are out of the way - mayoral/local contests and elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly. (For more on those elections, see our guide.)
What the opening rounds of the referendum campaign have been about so far is testing lines and arguments and trying to embed a narrative in the minds of the voters. The lesson of the Scottish referendum was "don't leave it until the final weeks".
This initial period has only confirmed what many continental Europeans regard as "Britain's eternal ambiguity towards Europe".
One French paper opined a couple of years back that "the British have only ever been interested in the single market and the rest of the European project leaves them indifferent".
It is not entirely true, but many of the initial debates revolve around a cost-benefit analysis; how much do we put in and what do we get out.
One commentator described it as a "bean-counting" referendum. You certainly don't hear much about the vision of the European project.
It is clear that the Remain campaign believes its strongest card is the economy and risk.
David Cameron has warned of an "economic shock" from leaving the EU. All kinds of figures have been used to forecast the hit to UK living standards - perhaps by as much as 10%, suggests one European research institute.
Image copyright PA Image caption David Cameron has warned of an economic shock from Brexit
The Remain side points out that when Boris Johnson declared for the Leave campaign the pound had one of its steepest falls since October 2009. Already uncertainty has knocked 0.3% off growth forecasts.
At risk, they argue, is not just sterling but foreign investment and the UK's balance of payments. And the UK will have to renegotiate more than 100 international trade and investment agreements.
So on to the Remain stage are summoned various business titans, American bankers, European business organisations and some of the heads of mighty European companies. All with the same message: "risk".
And this week the IMF, one of the heavier guns, has warned of "severe regional and global damage" - a risk not just to the UK but the world economy. The pulpit of the White House will shortly be deployed with a similar message.
Project fear
The Leave campaign responds to all this as "project fear".
Initially Leavers were repeatedly asked what life would be like after a British exit from the EU.
After flirting with the Swiss, Norwegian or Canadian model they, too, now talk more about risk.
For them the real risk is staying in an unreformed EU that they depict as the slow-growth region of the world economy.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Boris Johnson has generated much publicity for the Leave campaign
Dr Gerard Lyons, chief economic adviser to Mayor Boris Johnson, says: "The economies that will succeed need to be flexible, adaptable and control their own destiny."
Leave campaigners concede there might be some short-term pain but in the longer run they predict benefits from being outside the EU.
Yes, trade agreements would have to be renegotiated, but who wouldn't want to trade with the world's fifth largest economy?
The business community, they argue, is not of one mind and the IMF misjudged the impact of austerity on Greece.
Many of the claims, counter-claims and warnings from both sides are hard to assess.
For example, it was asserted that "leaving the EU would mean deep funding cuts for the NHS". Not long after, another group argued that leaving could free up funds that could be injected into the health service.
In the campaign so far what is rarely referred to is the deal that David Cameron returned with from Brussels in February. "Red cards", "emergency brakes" and release from "ever closer union" scarcely get a mention.
EU reform deal: What Cameron wanted and what he got
EU deal: What will it mean for Cameron at home and abroad?
The Leave campaign has decided to base its pitch on the ideal of control, of regaining control of the British economy, of borders (although the UK is not in Schengen) and of sovereignty.
It is an appeal to the gut, and the heart. The Remain campaign understands that passion as much as facts will determine the outcome.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Sir John Major has warned of the possibility of emotion trumping reality
The former Prime Minister Sir John Major said: "The underlying mantra of the Out campaign is - and I use their words - 'I want my country back'. It is an emotional appeal but a bogus one. If emotion trumps over reality, we will lose power, prestige, security and some of our future well-being."
On Tuesday this week the former Foreign Secretary David Miliband called on those arguing for Britain to remain in the EU not to "cede passion or patriotism to the other side".
The chairman of the think tank Open Europe, Lord Leach of Fairford, said: "Voters are little better informed about what the future might look like inside or outside the EU. Brexit will not be an economic disaster and it will not be a utopia. There are tough choices involved in Brexit - nothing comes for free. Withdrawal from the EU is likely to result in an initial economic cost but Britain can prosper if it takes a liberal approach to trade, immigration and regulation post-Brexit."
And here's the problem. So much of this for the voters will be difficult to quantify and to weigh the risks and opportunities.
Image copyright AP Image caption David Miliband said the Remain campaign must be as passionate as its opponents
Mujtaba Rahman, from the Eurasia group, says: "If Cameron's team is not able to win the economic argument - something they have been heavily focused on over the last eight weeks - they are unlikely to win the vote."
Some people tell me they expect a sterling moment when a poll triggers a further slide in the currency or a wobble on the financial markets - a development that could influence the vote.
But the Leave campaign also waits on events - a possible deepening of the European refugee crisis; a further bruising of the reputation of the prime minister; or the suspicion of elites that has been a feature of recent European polls.
The Remain campaign believes that ultimately voters won't take risks with the economy; they'll stick with the status quo. The Leave campaign believes it can sell the promise of a UK free from EU control.
Significant effort is going into establishing facts and debunking myths. But passion will be a factor in the outcome of a referendum which must judge the future. | 8,013,447 |
(CBS/AP) The wife of Army Sgt. Robert Bales, who is accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in a shooting rampage that has frayed ties between the U.S. and Afghanistan, called the portrait of her husband painted by his alleged deeds "out of character."
In a written statement obtained by The News Tribune in Tacoma, Karilyn Bales said: "Our family has little information beyond what we read and see in the media. What has been reported is completely out of character of the man I know and admire. Please respect me when I cannot say I cannot shed any light on what happened that night, so please don't ask."
This is not the first time Bales' family has described the incident as shocking and not consistent with what they know about the 11-year military veteran. In an earlier statement released by Bales' defense team, his family said they only know him "as a devoted husband, father and dedicated member of the armed services."
Karliyn Bales also said in her statement that the March 11 incident was a "terrible and heartbreaking tragedy" that has made her family "profoundly sad."
"We extend our condolences to all the people of the Panjawai district, our hearts go out to all of them, especially the parents, brothers, sisters and grandparents of the children who perished," Bales said in the statement.
Charges expected this week in Afghan killings
New revelations about Sgt. Robert Bales' past
Sgt. Bales' past put under microscope
In a separate development Monday evening, Sgt. Bales' attorney told CBS News' Peter Van Sant that Bales has no memory of the allged attack.
Bales' friends and former colleagues have said they remember Bales as a man of honor.
"Bales is an extremely professional NCO," Capt. Chris Alexander, who served with Bales and has known him for years, told CBS News. "No job too menial or too dangerous, and he would always get it done, and get it done very well."
Bales joined the Army shortly after September 11, 2001. He was already 27 years old at the time.
Family friend Steve Berling says Bales "felt that he needed something bigger in his heart and his mind and in his soul, (and) that's why he went in the military."
"Something terribly terrible has happened to him," neighbor Stuart Ness said. "And I think anybody in the military who's been in combat certainly understands the kind of stress these guys have been going through."
Sgt. Bales, meanwhile, met for the first time with his attorney Monday at the Fort Leavenworth, Kan., military prison where he is being held in solitary confinement.
CBS News has learned that Sgt. Bales is to be charged in those killings this week.
Observers expect a long legal process and a court-martial is likely, reports CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker.
CBS News correspondent Peter Van Sant reports that his lawyer's goal is to make sure that Robert Bales does not get the death penalty. Under the military system, conviction on these charges would bring the death penalty, and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said it is definitely on the table in this prosecution. | 8,013,448 |
A former chief of Nato has launched a powerful attack on hardline Brexiters, accusing them of seeking to use Britain’s armed forces as a bargaining chip to secure a future trade deal with the EU.
George Robertson, the Labour peer who was secretary-general of the western military alliance between 1999 and 2004, said it was vital that the UK continued to be part of a strong European defensive shield, whatever the outcome of the talks on trade.
Robertson, who fears that missteps in dealing with Russia, above all, could have potentially catastrophic results, told the Observer: “There is no doubt, from discussions I have had with some of the Brexiters, that they want to use the British military as part of a bargaining tool. [But] we don’t stop being part of Europe, part of the neighbourhood, or remote from our allies, and certainly not remote from the threat.
“If there is going to be a European capability, then it needs Britain. It can’t be done by the other European countries on their own.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest George Robertson said he thought article 50 letter was ‘clumsily put together’ Photograph: David M. Benett/Getty Images
Russian divisions numbering tens of thousands have amassed just across the EU’s eastern-most border in recent months.
The UK is among a select number of EU member states, alongside the US, deploying hundreds of troops, as well as aircraft and armour, to eastern Europe as part of the biggest build-up of Nato forces in the region since the cold war.
The former Nato chief, who was also defence secretary in Tony Blair’s first administration, spoke out after the prime minister, Theresa May, was accused of threatening the EU with weakened cooperation on security matters in her letter notifying the EU of the UK’s intention to leave.
May wrote that the UK wanted “to agree with the European Union a deep and special partnership that takes in both economic and security cooperation”. The letter then added: “If, however, we leave the European Union without an agreement, the default position is that we would have to trade on World Trade Organisation terms. In security terms, a failure to reach agreement would mean our cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism would be weakened.”
The link between security and economic cooperation was made 11 times in the six-page letter, and an article penned by the prime minister and published in newspapers in seven countries reasserted the connection. In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, she wrote: “This partnership should contain economic as well as security policy cooperation because this is in the interests of the UK, Germany, the EU and the whole world.”
In Brussels, the comments drew a furious response. The European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, said it was a “big mistake … to start with launching threats to each other”.
François Fillon, the conservative French presidential election candidate, warned that “Mrs May should not be setting conditions in security matters – we should not get into that sort of blackmail.”
Robertson said he could only assume the letter was “clumsily put together” and “not properly read before it was sent”. He added: “If this is a threat, it is an empty threat.
Brexit Britain’s Nato strategy is fatally flawed | Martin Kettle Read more
“The way this government is going about this negotiation is filled with carelessness, which is really regrettable. This is just another indication of the carelessness with which they handle what is going to be a very, very sensitive negotiation. It looks like a clumsy threat.
“The fact is, we will be needed. The problem will be that [after Brexit] we won’t be in when the missions are decided on, we won’t be there when the details are considered, and we won’t be there when the exit strategies are developed.”
The British government rushed to reassure the European council’s president, Donald Tusk, in the wake of the row, insisting that it had not intended to make a threat.
On Friday, on a visit to Nato in Brussels, the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, said: “It is not some bargaining chip in any negotiations that may be taking place elsewhere in this capital. We make an unconditional commitment to the defence and security of Europe.”
However, the defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, insisted that the UK and the EU would both be weaker if they did not agree a Brexit deal on fighting organised crime and terrorism.
“If there is no deal on that, we are all weaker … because that is a joint effort to tackle organised crime and terrorism,” Fallon said. | 8,013,449 |
Donald Trump. AP Photo/Carlos Osorio Real-estate mogul Donald Trump repeatedly blasted Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-South Carolina) on Sunday after reports emerged that the influential congressman is set to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) for president.
Trump, the Republican front-runner, pointed to Gowdy's high-profile October hearing on the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.
"His hearings were a disaster. Everybody was looking forward to something that was going to be really productive. And he didn't win with those hearings. It was a total not-good for Republicans and for the country," Trump said Sunday morning on "Fox & Friends."
Gowdy chairs the House Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi, which grilled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the attack for 11 hours, much of which was broadcast live on cable news. That day was widely regarded as a political win for Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, though some critics chastised that media narrative.
But Trump was clearly unhappy with how Gowdy managed that hearing.
"I mean, beyond Republicans it was very bad for the country," he said. "So I hope he does a lot better for Marco than he did for the Benghazi hearings. Because they were not good. That was not a pretty picture."
The Rubio team announced Saturday that Gowdy would campaign with the senator in Iowa and released a statement from Gowdy that praised Rubio as a "rock-solid conservative and a strong leader we can trust." Trump said he saw a flood of people on Twitter criticizing Gowdy for the move.
"I've been seeing on Twitter many, many people extremely angry about the whole thing. Because, you know, Marco's been very strong for amnesty and very weak at the border. And a lot of people are very upset with Trey Gowdy for doing that," Trump said.
Trump retweeted a number of people criticizing Gowdy, including one person who called him a "loser" and another who said he "let Hillary get away with murder." | 8,013,450 |
One question for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, what does this have to do with the 2016 Presidential Election? I think he’s fishing in a pond with no ripples.
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Mueller is expanding his Russian probe into President Trump’s civilian life, possibly 10 years ago. This is uncalled for!
If Mueller goes there with Trump, then the Clinton Foundation should be included as well as John Podesta’s ties to the Russians. Let’s keep going, we could then investigate all of Congress for their closed door dealings to line their pockets and business interests. Once you go there, let’s go there.
Personally, I don’t think he should go that far with investigating. President Trump was a civilian and a businessman and has nothing to do with him being President. Just a witch hunt and is getting way out of hand.
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Source: Bloomberg
The president told the New York Times on Wednesday that any digging into matters beyond Russia would be out of bounds. Trump’s businesses have involved Russians for years, making the boundaries fuzzy so Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears to be taking a wide-angle approach to his two-month-old probe. FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said. The investigation also has absorbed a money-laundering probe begun by federal prosecutors in New York into Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers, said on Thursday that he was unaware of the inquiry into Trump’s businesses by the two-months-old investigation and considered it beyond the scope of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be examining. “Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code,” he wrote in an email.
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Seems to me that they are looking into everything else because they didn’t find any Russian collusion. This all should be beyond the scope of the original investigation. When will someone put a stop to this?
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A lot of us think Mueller is out to discredit the President. Mueller is best friends with disgraced James Comey, and he is a Hillary supporter. He hired lawyers (wasting our tax dollars) that are Clinton donors which mean he probably will be biased. Think he should be fired along with all the lawyers.
Trump was a global businessman with all kinds of investments who cares he was a private citizen, so this is a witch hunt. He should be investigating Barack Obama and Clintons, especially Hillary, but that would take guts, see none here.
What Trump did in regards to Russia as a private citizen is none of their business. If they are going after Trump as a threat to our corrupted system they will fail and fail big. Russia is not a threat but these politicians are and Clinton is at the head of the class.
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What do you think of Mueller expanding the investigation into Trump’s civilian life? Share your opinions in the comment section below.
Help support conservative news and views by sharing this post on Facebook and Twitter. Want more of my views? Don’t forget to follow the Wayne Dupree Show social media accounts on Facebook, Spreaker, iHeartRadio, Google Plus & Twitter. | 8,013,451 |
Masked raiders armed with machete and pool cue storm Manchester pub "Strawberry Duck"Bolt doors and tie up staff and customers to empty tillPub's CCTV cameras captured the terrifying lunchtime raid last monthOne of raiders oddly pets a sandy coloured dog while watching hostagesMen escaped with quantity of cash and are still being hunted by police A police spokesman said the two men left the pub with a quantity of cash and ran off down the canal in the direction of the city centre.CCTV footage of the robbery on at 12.40pm on February 7, has now been released in the hopes of identifying the robbers.As one of the raiders was left alone to guard the hostages he stroked a pet dog that had wandered into the downstairs barDetective Constable Alexander Day said: 'Almost four weeks has passed since the robbery and I hope that by releasing this footage it might help to identify who the two men responsible for this terrible incident are.'This is still very much an active investigation and I would like to reassure anyone who may have been concerned by the events of that day that we are committed to finding the offenders.'I would also like to pay tribute to the pub's owners and staff who managed to stay calm and reassure the customers who had been caught up in this terrifying situation.'If anybody has any information at all, no matter how little you might think it is, then please contact the police.' | 8,013,452 |
As a devout Mormon who is also an out gay man, I occasionally get letters from people looking for insight, validation, or a simple sounding board. So I wasn’t surprised when, a few days ago — in the wake of some unfortunate remarks made at my faith’s semi-annual conference — I received a letter from a friend of a friend. She was distraught and wanted someone to listen to her as she wrestled with feelings that had no other outlet.
It’s truly a blessing to receive letters like this. I take them seriously and do my best to respond with both care and haste; it’s a fine line.
It was a long letter, as these sorts of things go, so I decided to reply inline.
I share the letter with you, with permission, in hopes that it might prove useful for others …
JS: Christian, you probably don’t remember me — we’ve met a few times at events and symposia — but I’ve had these thoughts rattling around my head, lately, and I finally pounded them out on my computer.
DCH: Of course I remember you!
JS: You seem more willing to discuss these things than most people I know, so I was wondering if you could give me your thoughts… on this hot button topic!
DCH: I love that you thought of me. I’ve tried very hard to be someone that was easy to approach when folks had questions. It’s hard work! So I’ll reply as best I can — and be as up-front as possible. And you, in turn, are welcome to follow up with more questions!
JS: I just need to sort out my thoughts on this issue. My religious leaders continuously remind me that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
DCH: They’re my leaders too. I’m an active and faithful Latter-day Saint … I served a full time mission in Québec, Canada … and I currently have 4.5 callings in my ward (including Elders Quorum instructor).
JS: Yet there are some of Heavenly Father’s children who have same-gender attraction. I can’t put judgment on these people!
DCH: As a gay man, I appreciate this.
JS: NO-ONE would CHOOSE to put themselves through the heart-wrenching trials that are faced by those with same gender attraction. I can’t come to the conclusion that being gay is a choice. They are children of our Heavenly Father, who were born with certain attributes and tendencies exactly the way everyone else is.
DCH: I think you’re close, here, but I’m not entirely comfortable with the first sentence.
Let’s face it: the difficulty of a trial is not a good gage as to whether folks would choose it. My mother, for example, chose to start smoking at 16 — she’s now dying of emphysema. She probably did not choose the consequences, but she certainly made choices that locked her into certain outcomes.
Regardless, being gay is most certainly not a choice. There is significant research in this area and scientists agree that homosexuality is most certainly biologic in origin. Just like being straight. Or being left-handed. Or blue-eyed.
JS: Here is where the dilemma lies; should these people have to live a life alone without the closest of relationships? Telling them that they cannot marry is saying that they should only have shallow, brief relationships. Not stable lifelong ones. OUCH!!! If you take religion out of the picture all together, then it is obvious what is better for society in general. Everyone knows this. Solid households, stable relationships, this is what our society NEEDS, yet we tell people that they are not allowed, because they desire to have this relationship with someone of the same gender. So we would prefer them to go from partner to partner? How is this better?
I guess there is the school of thought that same-gender attraction is sin and should not be acted upon. OUCH again! Heavenly Father gave us ALL sexual urges, yet for some it is sin?
DCH: This is mostly rhetorical, so I’ll just nod my head in agreement.
JS: One thing that I can agree with whole-heartedly is that sexual relationships should be reserved for marriage. The end. It is better spiritually and socially. But that just brings us back to the beginning. You told gay people that they can’t get married!
DCH: Amen!
JS: No-one wants to know what is going on in the bedroom of married couples, no-one mandates what is right and wrong there. Unless you’re gay. Why is no-one all riled up that there are heterosexual couples who have intercourse outside the bounds of marriage? Isn’t this more disturbing than gay people wishing to have sex with-in the bounds of marriage? Isn’t it more disturbing that less and less people don’t want to get married at all? That children are being born without families intact; families that are needed for emotional and financial support?
DCH: Again, this is mostly rhetorical, so I’ll just nod my head in agreement.
JS: I think if we put more energy into making families happen instead of making sure they don’t, that our society would be headed in a better direction.
DCH: My thoughts, exactly.
JS: Once upon a time my very same religion told us not to marry outside our race, yet I am sealed for eternity to someone of a different race. What changed?
DCH: We changed.
JS: So now what?
DCH: So, first and foremost: this is obviously something you’ve thought about and have strong feelings about … if you want to put a little effort into the mix, I’d encourage you to “like” the Facebook page for Mormons Building Bridges. They’re a group of faithful Latter-day Saints, just like you. They’ll share ideas and give encouragement, and a couple times a year they’ll have opportunities for members to roll up their sleeves:
http://www.facebook.com/groups/mormonsbuildingbridges/
1) Our Leaders are Imperfect.
Our leaders are imperfect — not just in the day-to-day stuff, where they sometimes lose their temper — but in the big stuff, too. We’ve been reminded of this time and again throughout the 200 years the Church has been around. But we often forget it because pretending that out leaders are perfect or some other silliness is comforting — it means we have to think and do less. But my testimony doesn’t rely on our leaders being perfect. It resides in the quiet whisperings of the Spirit that we’re doing the Lord’s work.
2) “Sustain” & “Obey” are not Synonyms
So what do we do when they’re wrong? Doesn’t sustaining our leaders mean agreeing with them? No. A lot of people think that “sustain” and “obey” are synonyms. They aren’t. “Sustain” actually, literally, means to “hold up from beneath”. It hasmore meanings than that, of course. But that’s its literal meaning. One of my favorite associations for the term is “sustenance” — it’s about feeding and keeping something alive! Sustaining is much less about obeying and much more about hoping the person we’re sustaining succeeds in their calling — and helping them to do so! It’s about helping our bishops, our choir directors, and our apostles magnify their calling. Even when — especially when — they’re wrong. You have to figure out how to do that, of course, and that’s okay: we’re meant to work out our own salvation — “with fear and trembling before the Lord”.
3) This isn’t Happening in a Vacuum
Where does all of this come from and why do our leaders not see that they’re wrong? Well we’re all a little afraid of things that are different. That bumper sticker that says “no one’s born a bigot” is wrong. We’re all born a little bigoted. We don’t like things that are different. It’s part of our genetic make-up that served us well for 100s of millions of years. The great thing is that we’re not just genetic creatures — we’re also cultural creatures — and children of heavenly parents who want more from us than what our genes dictate.
Our leaders are all by-products of an era that specifically targeted homosexuals. You see, for much of the world, homo-sociality is the norm. Homo-sociality is what you have in countries where mixing of the sexes doesn’t happen all that often outside of marriage. And just 100 years ago, the US was no exception. So when America went to war in in 1917, it drafted young men who were used to holding hands and being physically close — intimate, even — with other men. In the trenches, this homo-sociality became sexual and sexually transmitted diseases flourished — to the horror of military command. It’s been said that they vowed never to let that happen. And they didn’t. Whether it was official or not might be debated, but the evidence is clear: by the outbreak of WWII — just 20 years later — the military was home to a savage anti-homosexual furor.*
Our leaders grew up in that era — some served and others were the children of men who served. The vitriole spread, and America became downright homophobic.
So if you grew up thinking that gays were monsters — barely human; given over to the most perverse behaviors — how much effort would it take for you to ask God if everything you thought on the subject was wrong? Especially when the gays you saw on TV and in the media looked just like the boogeymen your parents and drill sergeants told you about?
It might take decades. It might never happen.
And since change in the Church requires unanimity among the Brethren, one or two hold-outs make a huge difference.
4) So What Do We Do?
We live out loud … we become the best we can be. We love our gay children and neighbors. We earnestly fight for normalization outside of the Church. And then … well, then, by their fruits you shall know them: gays will be great parents and earnest spouses, great politicians and leaders of industry. They’ll also be muggers and used car salesmen. And the Brethren won’t be able to testify to anything but that gays are just humans who happen to love differently. | 8,013,453 |
Tiny Macintosh Replica is a Working Copy of the Original
If you’re old enough, you’ll immediately recognize the form of this miniature computer: it’s a tiny working replica of Apple’s iconic Macintosh. John Leake of RetroMacCast built this 1/3 scale model from scratch.
Using a 3.5″ composite monitor, some easily-shaped PVC, a Raspberry Pi, and other various electronic bits, Leake made a tiny functional Macintosh that has some very modern guts.
On the back of the little Apple are two USB ports, an ethernet port, and an HDMI port. The computer charges via USB and has Bluetooth connectivity so you can use a wireless keyboard and mouse to control it.
Dealing with such a tiny space meant that Leake had to modify the computer’s hardware a bit. Some cutting and soldering were needed to get everything to fit into the very small case. While the Macintosh runs System 6 thanks to the Mini vMac Emulator, the floppy disc slot on the front is sadly non-functional. | 8,013,454 |
Photo
It’s hard to read faces, but voices are even harder to gauge. Timothy J. McVeigh, the anti-government extremist who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, had a calm, almost reassuringly matter-of-fact way of speaking. He could have been a building inspector, a driving instructor or a Persian Gulf war veteran, which, of course, he was, having earned a Bronze Star before he went completely off his head.
“See, with these tapes, I feel very free in talking ’cause I know you’re using the information appropriately,” McVeigh told a journalist in a prison interview. “Here, I’m just letting it all come out.” The reporter, Lou Michel, co-author of “American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing,” shared 45 hours of those taped prison interviews to MSNBC.
“The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist,” which will be shown on Monday, the 15th anniversary of the bombing, comes at a time when right-wing militia groups are on the rise, or at least more audible, and heightened anti-government talk is heating up anti-anti-government fervor. McVeigh’s descent into violence is presented as much as a cautionary tale as a commemoration.
“Nine years after his execution we are left worrying that Timothy McVeigh’s voice from the grave echoes in a new rising tide of American anti-government extremism,” is how the MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow, who narrates the film, puts it in her introduction.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
But strangely, this film, which claims to be the first ever to present McVeigh in his own words, blunts its impact by relying on stagy computer graphics, and even an actor whose looks are digitally altered, to re-enact McVeigh’s movements. Scenes of this domestic terrorist in shackles during a prison interview or lighting a fuse inside a rented Ryder truck look neither real nor completely fake, but certainly cheesy: a violent video game with McVeigh as a methodical, murderous avatar. | 8,013,455 |
How to Cook
The following cooking instructions are for 1 or 2 Baked Potatoes. For smaller quantities reduce the cooking time accordingly. For best results cook from frozen. DO NOT overcook!
MICROWAVE
Remove from carton and place your McCain Ready Baked Jackets in the microwave oven. Cook on full power. Allow to stand for 2 minutes before serving. Ensure potato is piping hot throughout before eating.
Cat B/650W Cat D/750W Cat E/850W 1 Baked Potato 5 mins 10 secs 5 mins 4 mins 30 secs 2 Baked Potatoes 8 mins 10 secs 7 mins 40 secs 7 mins
Leave to stand for 2 minutes.
PLEASE TAKE CARE: AFTER COOKING THE POTATO WILL BE VERY HOT!
Please note: all microwave ovens vary – you may need to adjust cooking times to suit your own model.
Do not leave microwave oven unattended while cooking.
Do not use this product after the best before date.
OVEN
Preheat the oven to 220°C / 430°F / Gas Mark 7.
For fan assisted ovens that’s 210°C / 425°F.
Place your McCain Ready Baked Jackets onto a baking tray and pop them into the middle of the oven. Bake for 45 – 55 minutes, until they’re lovely and crisp. | 8,013,456 |
Antiquities ministry reiterates calls for international community to intervene after reports of new attack on ancient city of Dur Sharrukin
The Iraqi antiquities ministry has acknowledged reports of a new attack by Islamic State militants on an ancient Assyrian city north-east of Mosul, reiterated calls for the international community to intervene and condemned the jihadi group for “erasing the history of humanity”.
There have been reports that Isis bulldozed landmarks in the ancient city of Dur Sharrukin, now called Khorsabad. The ministry said it was in keeping with the militant group’s “criminal ideology and persistence in destroying and stealing Iraq’s antiquities”.
Outcry over Isis destruction of ancient Assyrian site of Nimrud Read more
Dur Sharrukin is a former capital of the Assyrian empire in Nineveh that dates back to the 8th century BC.
“The hand of terrorism insists upon erasing the history of humanity by erasing the heritage of the land of the two rivers amid the shock and astonishment of the world,” the ministry said in a statement.
“We have warned previously and warn now that these gangs with their sick, takfiri ideology will continue to destroy and steal artefacts as long as there is no strong deterrent, and we still await a strong international stand to stop the crimes of Daesh that are targeting the memory of humanity,” it added, referring to the militant group by its Arabic acronym.
Last week Isis bulldozed the ancient city of Nimrud, also near Mosul, which the militant group conquered in a lightning advance last summer.
The previous week the group released a video of its fighters toppling and smashing ancient Assyrian statues in Mosul museum and destroying a winged bull near the ancient Nergal gate to Nineveh.
Over the weekend the group attacked the 2,000-year-old fortress city of Hatra.
Isis fighters destroy ancient artefacts at Mosul museum Read more
On Sunday Iraq’s tourism and antiquities minister, Adel Shirshab, called for air strikes by the US-led coalition to protect the country’s heritage.
“Our airspace is not in our hands. It’s in their hands,” Shirshab told reporters, according to Reuters. “I am calling on the international community and coalition to activate its air strikes and target terrorism wherever it exists.”
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, described the sites’ desecration as a “war crime”. His spokesman said on Sunday: “The secretary general urgently calls on the international community to swiftly put a stop to such heinous terrorist activity and to counter the illicit traffic in cultural artefacts.”
Eleanor Robson, professor of ancient Near Eastern history at University College London, who has done extensive archaeological work in Iraq and returned last week from a trip to the country’s south, said air strikes were unlikely to succeed in protecting the monuments, and the focus instead ought to be on retaking the province of Nineveh.
She said that initially guards posted on the major sites by the antiquities ministry had continued to do their job after the Isis takeover, but the group then beheaded the Nineveh sites’ chief of security in October, and at any rate the guards were equipped to tackle looters rather than “crazed fanatics with machine guns”. “In the short term I think we have to just sit it out,” she said.
Robson said Isis was persisting with the destruction of artefacts because it was a “propaganda winner” that elicited strong reactions, but she said ignoring the issue may also lead to an escalation in the destruction.
She said Isis could not erase the millennia of history below the ancient ruins – archaeological layers that the group could not get to. But she said she was particularly worried about the damage in Hatra, which is built of stone and is well preserved, with no archaeological layers beneath it.
She said the other major site under threat from the militants was Ashur, a Unesco world heritage site on the banks of the Tigris not far from Mosul, named after the chief god of the Assyrian pantheon.
Separately, a force led by Shia militias and backed by the Iraqi army and Sunni tribal fighters has scored modest gains in an offensive against the Isis stronghold of Tikrit, south of Mosul. The pro-government fighters took control of Bouajil and Dawr, two areas on the approach to Saddam Hussein’s home town and thought to be key Isis-held territories.
Isis vandals want to turn the clocks back to ‘year zero’
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Isis fighters removing the border between Syria and Iraq. Photograph: Medyan Dairieh/Zuma Press
Taking bulldozers and sledgehammers to irreplaceable Assyrian antiquities is not just another way for Isis to attract attention or a PR novelty after its beheading and immolation videos.
Destroying some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures is something that flows from a fanatically purist interpretation of Sunni Islam as first laid down in 7th-century Arabia and revived more than a millennium later.
Early Islam defined itself against the age of jahiliyyah (ignorance) that preceded the prophet Mohammad, who smashed idols in the name of monotheism, as, before him, did the Jewish patriarch Abraham – hence the Old Testament ban on “graven images”. Both religions promoted iconoclasm in the service of one God. Christians, who saw Jesus as the incarnation of God, were more relaxed about his portrayal.
Islam evolved until the Wahhabi movement, founded by Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahab in the 18th century, aimed to purify the faith by returning Muslims to what he believed were its original principles as typified by al Salaf al Salih (the pious forebears). He rejected what he saw as pagan accretions introduced by bid’a (innovation) and shirk (idolatry or polytheism), which detracts from the absolute transcendence of God.
Abdel Wahab also revived interest in the works of the 13th-century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, who came to be seen as the mentor of the Salafi-jihadi world view, and the doctrine of takfir – permitting the killing of anyone deemed to be an apostate.
The influence of Wahhabism meant that 90% of Islamic monuments, holy places, tombs and mausoleums in the Arabian peninsula were destroyed on the grounds that they were “polytheistic”. In 1924, Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud occupied Mecca and destroyed the grave of Khadijah, the prophet Muhammad’s wife, and that of his uncle, Abu Talib. In Medina, he demolished the mausoleum over the graves of the prophet Muhammad’s descendants, including that of his daughter, Fatimah.
Strikingly, the Isis department responsible for destroying antiquities is called the committee for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice – the same name as the official Saudi body charged with enforcing morality.
Isis not only rejects religious shrines of any sort and condemns Iraq’s majority Shia Muslims as heretics, but takes a “year zero” attitude to the areas it controls. This explains its readiness to eliminate any traces of pre-Islamic Assyria.
The assault on Iraq’s ancient heritages has been compared to the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. Yet the damage wreaked by Isis, not just on ancient monuments but also on rival Muslim places of worship, has been far more extensive. Last July, it destroyed the tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul. Isis has also attacked Shia places of worship and last year gave Mosul’s Christians an ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death by the sword. It has also targeted the Yazidi minority in the Sinjar mountains west of Mosul.
The rise of Isis has even generated fears for the fate of splendid Roman ruins in Libya, where Sufi shrines have been vandalised.
Ian Black | 8,013,457 |
Donald Trump's economics speech at the Detroit Economic Club was interrupted thirteen separate times by protesters, mostly women, who yelled slogans into a cavernous convention center ballroom and drew mostly indifference from the Republican nominee for president.
As Trump wound his way through a stinging indictment of the Obama administration and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's economic proposals, one agitator after another screamed in anger.
One boomed about 'victimized' females. another blared: 'You have to answer to women, Mr. Trump!'
The comic relief came from the lone male protester, who ranted: 'Tiny hands! All you've got is tiny hands!'
Scroll down for video
UNFLAPPABLE: Donald Trump stuck to his economic message during a speech Monday to the Detroit Economic Club
ONE AFTER ANOTHER: Thirteen different women erupted in screams, one at a time, as Trump spoke to an audience of 2,000
'PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN': A left-wing Michigan group took credit for organizing the protest
'TINY HANDS!' The lone male protester screamed an insult at Trump before security yanked him from his seat
The audience responded with standing ovations and cries of 'We love you!'
TRUMP'S PLAN AT A GLANCE INCOME TAX Currently: Seven tax brackets start at 10 per cent and go up to 39.6 per cent Under Trump: A zero tax band for the lowest earners, then bands of 12 per cent, 25 per cent and 33 per cent ESTATE TAX Currently: 40 per cent tax on all estates over $5.45 million for individuals and $10.9m for couples Under Trump: Abolished CHILD CARE Currently: Up to 35 per cent of childcare costs of $3,000 for one child or $6,000 for two ore more is tax deductible. Actual amount depends on parents' income Under Trump: 100 per cent of childcare costs tax deductible CORPORATION TAX Currently: Statutory rate of 35 per cent, effective rate can be as high as 39 per cent Under Trump: Effective rate of 15 per cent
Trump mostly shook his head silently, and plowed ahead through his prepared remarks without giving television audiences a hint at what was transpiring.
Eventually, though, a few quips snuck into his delivery after a black woman screamed on her way out: 'I did it for you!'
'This is what happens when you go from 35 people to more than 2,000, I guess,' Trump said, a swipe at Clinton's smaller crowds on the campaign trail.
'It's all very well planned out,' he said as police dragged one kicking protester out of the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit.
'I will say the Bernie Sanders people have far more energy and spirit,' he said of another.
As that activist was ejected, a woman hear her in the audience yelled, 'Get a job!'
By sheer coincidence, the next line in Trump's speech was: 'We must have law and order.'
A left-wing group called Michigan People's Campaign claimed credit for organizing the protest, and said its members each purchased tickets to the speech – which cost about $100 each according to audience members.
The organization said in a press release that it was protesting against Trump's 'stance on sexual harassment' and his policies' likely impact on automotive jobs.
OPEN DOOR POLICY: The fifth demonstrator to interrupt Trump found herself ejected
OUT YOU GO: Trump's security chief Keith Schiller, left, and a mixture of Secret Service and Detroit police officers, hauled protester after protester out of the Cobo Center
STANDING O FOR IVANKA: Trump name-checked his elder daughter as someone who has advised him on jobs, and the Detroit crowd erupted in appreciation
GOP TICKET: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump's running mate, said Trump is 'a dreamer, he's a builder, he's a driver and he's a man who speaks his mind'
Trump said his message was the need to start 'a conversation about how to make America great again for everyone, especially – and I say especially – for those who have the very least.'
But most of his largest applause lines were slaps at Clinton, including some that linked Democratic politicians to Detroit's crumbling, crime-ridden inner city.
'The city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent's failed economic agenda,' Trump said. 'Every policy that has failed this city, and so many others, is a policy supported by Hillary Clinton.'
'She supports the high taxes and radical regulation that forced jobs out of your community, and the crime policies have made you far, far less safe, and the immigration policies that have strained local budgets, and the trade deals like NAFTA, signed by her husband, that have shipped your jobs to Mexico and other countries.'
'And she supports the education policies that deny your students choice, freedom and opportunity,' he continued, to wild applause.
'She is the candidate of the past. Ours is the campaign of the future.'
HILLARY-BASHING: Trump clobbered Hillary Clinton as a voice from the past and promoted his economic vision as a plan for the future
'OUT OF IDEAS': Trump clobbered his opponent, saying that 'if you were a foreign power looking to weaken America, you couldn't do better than Hillary Clinton's economic agenda'
'This is a city controlled by Democratic politicians at every level. And unless we change policies, we will not change results,' Trump said 'One hundred per cent.'
'Our opposition ... has long ago run out of ideas,' Trump said, promising an expansion of his economic proposals on his website.
'All Hillary Clinton has to offer is more of the same. More taxes, more regulations, more bureaucrats, more restrictions on american energy and on American production. More of that!'
'If you were a foreign power looking to weaken America, you couldn't do better than Hillary Clinton's economic agenda. Nothing would make our foreign adversaries happier than for our country to tax and regulate our companies and our jobs right out of existence.'
After Trump left the podium, a female emcee said: 'I want to apologize to all of you and to Mr. Trump for the interruptions. This is not what the Detroit Economic Club is all about.'
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump's running mate, introduced the billionaire candidate.
'We've become best friends. He seems like somebody I've known all my life,' said Pence. | 8,013,458 |
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and NASDAQ indexes have closed at record-setting highs 130 times and made some $4 trillion in gains since President Donald Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In 2017 alone, the three major U.S. indexes notched record closings on 93 occasions.
Off the heels of Trump’s first address to Congress in late February, the Dow breached 21,000 for the first time in its history. The index broke 19,000 for the first time Nov. 22, and also marked the beginning of a market rally that continues today. It took just 13 trading days for the Dow to break 19,000. The Dow ticked above 20,000 35 trading days ago, which also marked the second-fastest surge to a new 1,000 point milestone.
Prior to the November jump, the Dow hadn’t experienced a 1,000-point rally since 1999, when it went from 10,000 to 11,000 in just over 24 trading sessions. This rally was also the single fastest 1,000-point jump in the Dow’s history. (RELATED: US Stock Markets Hit All-Time High Tuesday Morning)
Not too far behind is the NASDAQ, as the index has set records 41 times in 2017 and 49 times since Trump defeated Clinton, LPL Financials reports. Also in the mix is the S&P 500, which has closed in record territory some 27 times in 2017 and 39 occasions since the November election.
Analysts believed the market had firm expectations leading into Trump’s presidency that he would quickly usher in tax and regulatory reform, which have largely yet to play out, aside from a few executive orders regarding deregulation. Despite a few botched attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare and allegations regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election cycle, the market continues to post record-setting gains on a near weekly basis.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected]. | 8,013,459 |
Claim: Pope Francis once said “Women are naturally unfit for political office.”
FALSE
Example: [Collected via e-mail, March 2013]
Did Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, really once say this? Did Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, really once say this? “Women are naturally unfit for political office. Both the natural order and facts show us that the political being par excellence is male; the Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man who thinks and does, but nothing more.”
Origins: This quote about Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s stating that “Women are naturally unfit for political office” was circulated in the immediate aftermath of his selection as pope in March 2013 and was supposedly voiced by him in 2007 in reference to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s successful candidacy for the presidency of Argentina that year. However, no documentation or reference for this quote antedating March 2013 has been found other than a single source of dubious veracity, as noted in an article denouncing the statement as an “urban legend” on Foros Perú:
I’m an acid critic of the Catholic Church, but I alway try to maintain objectivity. I’m an acid critic of the Catholic Church, but I alway try to maintain objectivity. So I searched for a reliable source for the quote attributed to the new Pope Francis I, supposedly made when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. But apparently it is just a malicious invention. Jorge Mario Bergoglio has not yet served his first 24 hours as pope and the far left is already using the dirty propaganda tactic of lying, attributing to him a specific false statement supposedly made when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2007, even though there was no trace of the quote on the Internet prior to yesterday. These false statements about Monsignor Bergoglio saying that “women are naturally unfit for political office” were posted on Yahoo Answers by an Argentinean using the handle “Bumper Crop.” This user posted what seemed to be an official report from the Argentinean news agency Telam but included no source link. A thorough Google search shows that before March 13, 2013, there was no other trace of such a statement on the Internet, except in the Yahoo Answers forum. If the Argentinean media had published an official report from the Telam news agency documenting the openly misogynistic statement of an archbishop, leftist Argentine media, forums, blogs, etc., Would have echoed it and prompted a scandal. But there is no documentation for the alleged statement, no sign of it before the hoax began spreading widely yesterday. In fact, the website of the Telam news agency includes no evidence of such statements. Despite the lack of evidence, a Mexican atheist organization spread these false statements on Facebook last night, reaching 18,000 followers in 13 hours and achieving nearly 11,000 shares. The dissemination of this hoax was furthered today when the Costa Rican daily newspaper El Pais published the hoax quotation without documentation, skipping the most basic of journalistic ethics and saying only that it was “a wire report from the Argentinean state news agency, Telam,” which had been circulated on the Internet. | 8,013,460 |
Image copyright PA Image caption The man told the 999 operator he had "only just got away" after the badger chased him for a "good 20 or 30ft" in Yeovil in Somerset
A 999 call from a man complaining he had been chased by a "vicious" badger, has been released by police.
He told the operator he had "only just got away" after it had chased him for a "good 20 or 30ft" in Yeovil in Somerset and thought he should report it.
In another call a man complained his fish and chip dinner was too expensive while a woman reported her seat belt in a taxi was too tight.
Police are highlighting the number of "inappropriate" calls they get daily.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Emergency call over 'vicious' badger
'Busted'
Another caller dialled 999 to speak to the Queen, while a woman rang the police to complain about the airport losing her luggage and delivering it to her neighbours, who were out.
The case of a car thief who changed his Facebook profile picture to one of him sitting in a stolen vehicle, was also highlighted by police with the tweet "busted".
Image copyright Twitter Image caption Police have been tweeting some of their 999 calls
The 24-hour "tweetathon", which has seen hundreds of updates posted from across the force area, began at midnight on Tuesday. | 8,013,461 |
Update, July 30th: The lab has issued a new version of the VMM viewer, and the links to the download in this article have been updated accordingly.
A reminder that as recently announced by Linden Lab (and as I reported here), automated migration of Direct Delivery items on the Marketplace to the Viewer- Managed Marketplace capability commences on Thursday, July 23rd, 2015.
All Marketplace merchants will receive an e-mail at the start of the migration process, and another when it has completed. In addition, those with 5,000+ listings will receive an e-mail related to the scheduling of their store migration.
Operations will run from 21:00 SLT through to 09:00 SLT on weekdays, starting on Thursday July 23rd, and will continue in this manner until all stores on the Marketplace have been migrated. Merchants will not be able to modify their stores while their items are being migrated, but sales of items that are not in the process of being migrated will continue.
Note that Magic Box items will not be migrated during this process; they will require a manual migration, and no date has yet been given as to when support for Magic Boxes will discontinue.
The Viewer-Managed Marketplace ideally requires a viewer updated to support VMM in order to make managing items easier. At the time of writing, viewers supporting VMM are:
Linden Lab VMM release candidate viewer, version 3.8.2.303891
Black Dragon 2.4.4+
UKanDo 3.7.9. Beta (not the main release and dated June 10th)
Cool Viewer 1.26.14.0+ (managed via Inventory, no dedicated Marketplace Listings floater)
Note that if you are a Merchant using a viewer that does not have VMM support, once your store has been migrated, you will have an additional folder in your inventory display called Marketplace Listings.
This is the controlling folder for VMM, and should not be deleted, or have contents deleted or moved (it will be hidden in the majority of viewer with VMM support).
While it is possible to use this folder to continue to add new VMM items to your Marketplace store (providing you create the required folder structure, etc.), as Whirly Fizzle notes on the VMM migration forum thread, this is not a recommended approach given that it might lead to mistakes or confusion.
It had been indicated that VMM migration would not commence until after the viewer code had been promoted to release status. As such, the sudden announcement of the start of migration ahead of such a promotion has caused understandable consternation with TPV developers and merchants, prompting the Commerce Team to comment:
As many of you noticed, we did shorten the time line to get Merchants migrated to VMM. This is due primarily to the need to get Merchants off of Xstreet, as it was down for a weekend in early July, forcing us to accelerate our dates.
Those who are concerned about the migration process should refer to the migration forum thread, linked-to above. I also have a high-level overview of VMM (written when the project viewer first appeared), including a look at manual migration.
The Lab’s own resources on VMM can be found here:
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This installment of Probability in games focuses on the concept of variance as it relates to rolling lots of dice. Rather than looking at the probability of rolling specific combinations of dice (as we did in Probability in Games 02), this article is focused on the probability of rolling dice that add up to different sums. The inspiration for this topic comes from two different sources. The first was a statement by Geoff Engelstein that more dice can mean less luck in a game [during the Dice Tower podcast on Nov12th, 2013]. And the second was an assertion by James Ernest about the long lasting advantage of rolling well early in a game [during a GenCon2012 lecture]. Lets try to shine some light on both of these observations by digging into the concept of variance.
Having players add up the numbers rolled on several dice is a common mechanism in many games. Part of what makes this mechanism interesting is that different sums often have different probabilities of being rolled. For instance, you are about twice as likely to roll a sum of 7 as you are to roll a sum of 4 on two six sided dice. Yet, a sum of 7 is over four times more likely than a sum of 4 when rolling three six sided dice. This is in contrast to rolling a single die, where every side (and every possible sum) is equally likely.
When working with two or three dice, it’s not too hard to write an exhaustive table (or graph) for the probabilities of every sum. However, this becomes tedious for larger numbers of dice. Let’s look at some graphs for the distribution of sums when rolling multiple dice. The “n=” title for each graph tells you how many dice are being rolled. Below that, the height of each bar indicates the likelihood of rolling a specific sum with that many dice.
Notice that there are a few important changes to these graphs as the numbers of dice increase. First, the central and most frequent sum of each graph moves to the right (getting larger) as more dice are added. We’ll look at calculating the mean, which is the measurement of this central and most common sum. Second, the curve gets closer and closer to the common bell shape of a normal distribution. In fact, the Central Limit Theorem provides some insight into why the sum of a bunch of random dice must always approximate this normal distribution. This is part of what makes that bell curve so common. The width and steepness of this bell can be quantified with a measurement called variance that we’ll explore in more detail below. And third, the entire curve gets wider by five extra sum possibilities per die. The measurement of this space of possible sums is called the range, and the only reason that I mention it is to help distinguish it from variance. Let’s jump right into calculating the mean and variance when rolling several six sided dice.
The mean of each graph is the average of all possible sums. This average sum is also the most common sum (the mode), and the middle most sum (the median) in a normal distribution. In terms of looking at bell curves, the mean is how far left or right on the x-axis you’ll find the highest point of the curve. To calculate this mean for a single die, we can take the weighted average of every possible sum. However, the symmetry in a bell curve provides us with a nice shortcut of averaging only the smallest and largest possible sums.
Mean(1D6): (1 * 1/6) + (2 * 1/6) + (3 * 1/6) + (4 * 1/6) + (5 * 1/6) + (6 * 1/6) = 21/6 = 3.5 Mean(1D6): (1 + 6) / 2 = 7/2 = 3.5 Mean(2D6): (2 + 12) / 2 = 7 Mean(3D6): (3 + 18) / 2 = 10.5 Mean(nD6): (n + 6*n) / 2 = n * 7/2
Now that the mean is out of the way, we can discuss variance. Variance is a measure of how spread out the values in a distribution are. In our example, a low variance means the sums that we roll will usually be very close to one another. By contrast, the variance is large when the sums that we roll are frequently distant values. The way that we calculate variance is by taking the difference between every possible sum and the mean. Then we square all of these differences and take their weighted average. This gives us an interesting measurement of how similar or different we should expect the sums of our rolls to be.
Variance(1D6): (1 - 3.5)^2 * 1/6 + (2 - 3.5)^2 * 1/6 + (3 - 3.5)^2 * 1/6 + (4 - 3.5)^2 * 1/6 + (5 - 3.5)^2 * 1/6 + (6 - 3.5)^2 * 1/6 = 70/24 = 2.91
This was a bit more involved than calculating the mean. But fortunately, variances (like means) can simply be added up to account for extra dice (this is because each random die roll is an independent event).
Variance(2D6): 70/24 + 70/24 = 140/24 = 5.83 Variance(3D6): 70/24 + 70/24 + 70/24 = 210/24 = 8.75 Variance(nD6): n * 35/12
We now have a nice way of calculating the mean and variance for the sums of any number of six sided dice. The mean is easy to see in each graph, but the variance is a bit trickier to wrap our heads around. A more natural way to think about variance is to think about the percentage of rolls that share a small range of sums. Something like, most (68%) of rolls should sum to a value between 13 and 22. But there is one step we must take between finding the variance and relating it to a percentage like this, and that is to calculate something called the standard deviation.
Think of the standard deviation as another way of measuring variance; much like the way that distance can be measured in inches, meters, and light years. The standard deviation is easy to calculate once you know the variance, it’s just the square root of the variance. Another benefit of the standard deviation is that it is in units that we can visualize in relation to our graphs. Approximately 68% of our rolls will have sums that land within one standard deviation of the mean. And about 95% of our rolls will fall within two standard deviations of the mean. These magic percentages are common to all normal distributions. Here’s a graph that shows how these standard deviations relate to the chances of different sums. The greek letter mu is used here to label the mean, and the greek letter sigma represents the standard deviation.
CC BY 2.5 – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_deviation_diagram.svg
We can now find the ranges of sums that will be most commonly rolled with any number of dice. Let’s go through the example of finding the range of sums that will account for 68% of all six die rolls. We start by calculating the mean, the variance, and the standard deviation for the sums of six dice.
Mean(6D6): 6 * 3.5 = 21 Variance(6D6): 6 * 35/12 = 17.5 StandardDeviation(6D6): SquareRoot(17.5) = 4.18
Because 68% of a normal distribution is always within one standard deviation of the mean, we now know that 68% of the time that we roll six dice, those dice will have a sum between 21 – 4.18 = 16.82, and 21 + 4.18 = 25.18. Obviously we can only roll sums that are whole numbers, so it’s 17 to 25. But remember that this is only an estimate, and that the distribution of sums for six dice are merely and approximation of the normal distribution.
It’s natural to look at this relationship between standard deviations and percentages, and wonder about the percentages that lie between each multiple of the standard deviation. For instance, you might want to calculate the percentage of rolls that sum to a value within 3 of the mean. This is a fairly complex calculation to perform by hand, but it is common enough to warrant look-up tables and calculator functions (like logarithms and various trigonometric functions). While preparing this article, I came across the following link to an online table / calculator of what are often called z-scores: http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/z_table.html. Let’s try entering the mean and standard deviation that we just calculated for the sum of six dice into this webpage. Now, we can find out the percentage of rolls that will fall above, below, between, or outside of any particular sum(s). For instance, we can find the chance of rolling six dice to sum a value within 3 of the mean by entering “Between: 18 and 24”. The area (probability) field then populates with the value 0.5267, which tells us that 52.67% (or just over half) of our rolls should fall in this range.
If you think of this conversion from mean, standard deviation, and range to a percentage as a table look-up, you might correctly guess that you can perform the look-up in reverse. Instead of looking up a percentage based on a range of sums, you can just as easily look up a range based on a desired percentage. For instance, maybe you’d like to find a range of sums that account for 30% of the rolls of six dice. To do so, change the radio button at the top of the webpage linked above, from “Area from a Value” to “Value from an Area”. Then enter the mean and standard deviation for six dice, followed by the area (which we’ve been calling the probability) of 0.3 for 30%. The radio buttons at the bottom should now allow you to calculate the following six die 30% chance rolls.
Sum < 18.8 Sum > 23.1 19.3 < Sum < 22.6
Based on the length of this post, I believe this will be a good place to end. Hopefully you are now more comfortable calculating probabilities for rolling any range of sums on any number of dice. In order to reach this point, we've had to wrap our brains around the concept of variance, and acquire some experience working with normal distributions. To keep your brain going until next time, here's the problem posed by James Ernest (see the link above):
In a dice-driven horse race where each player will roll a 6-sided die 50 times, suppose the results after turn 1 are 1 versus 6. This early in the game, with 49 rolls to go, you would hope that the game is not already tilted heavily in one player's favor.
This takes a bit of clever-ness, but see if you can use this concept of variance to figure out each players' chance of winning in this game. Please post your solutions and how you got them below, along with any questions or requests you have for this or future installments of the blog. Thanks for reading! | 8,013,463 |
Ben Lynfield | The Independent
Israel is threatening to kill off a crucial West Bank economic project unless the Palestinian Authority withdraws a request to the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged Israeli crimes during last winter's Gaza war.
Shalom Kital, an aide to defence minister Ehud Barak, said today that Israel will not release a share of the radio spectrum that has long been sought by the Palestinian Authority to enable the launch of a second mobile telecommunications company unless the PA drops its efforts to put Israeli soldiers and officers in the dock over the Israeli operation.
"It's a condition. We are saying to the Palestinians that 'if you want a normal life and are trying to embark on a new way, you must stop your incitement," Mr. Kital said. "We are helping the Palestinian economy but one thing we ask them is to stop with these embarrassing charges."
As long as the Wataniya Mobile company is unable to begin its operations, communications costs are likely to remain inordinately high for Palestinian businesses and individuals. But thwarting the company benefits four unauthorized Israeli operators who make sizeable profits in the Palestinian market using infrastructure they have set up in the illegal Israeli settlements across the West Bank.
The Qatari-owned Wataniya had begun making what was planned as the second largest private investment in West Bank history - to total seven hundred million dollars. But amid frustration at more than two years of Israeli foot-dragging over the frequencies it is now warning that if forced to miss its launch date of 15 October it may close down West Bank operations and seek the return from the Palestinian Authority of its $140m licensing fee and other damages. Mr Kital said the possibility of Wataniya closing "is something the PA will have to take into consideration."
"This is sheer blackmail by the Israelis," said Nabil Shaath, the former PA foreign minister. "Israel has no business stealing the frequencies, keeping them and using them as blackmail to escape an international inquiry into its violations."
Nearly 1400 Palestinians, most of whom were not taking part in the hostilities, were killed during the Gaza war, according to the Israeli human rights group B'tselem. Fourteen Israelis died, some from Hamas rocket fire that Israel says forced it to mount its operation. A UN probe released last month found that both Israel and Hamas had committed "war crimes".
Mr Shaath said the PA would not back down over the matter."The Palestinians in Gaza suffered greatly and we are responsible for them. We are the aggrieved party. Israeli soldiers and those who gave orders should be questioned and be liable to prosecution."
The Palestinian request to the ICC dates back eight months. But Israeli concern over international legal steps has intensified since the UN commission, headed by South African judge Richard Goldstone, concluded that the Israeli military judicial system did not meet international legal standards of independence and impartiality. It called for the ICC to activate an indictment process within six months unless the country mounts its own credible investigations of its troops actions.
The Israeli stance on the frequencies marks a flouting of the efforts of the international community's Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, who last month urged that they be released and warned of harm to the local economy if Israel persisted in its refusal. Mr Kital said today that Mr Blair "is very aware" there will be no release unless the Palestinians drop their request to the ICC.
Read more at The Independent | 8,013,464 |
amazingxkcd Profile Blog Joined September 2010 GRAND OLD AMERICA 15736 Posts Last Edited: 2018-04-08 04:55:23 #1 Ninjas in Pyjamas vs Fnatic The Legendary Series
MLG X Games Aspen Semi-Finals
With MLG over and the winner crowned, we take the time to look back at what could possibly be an early contender for the best series of 2015. After a tumultuous group stage, the two Swedish teams were once again pitted against each other. This time, however, the tables were turned. The once dominant Ninjas in Pyjamas came in as the underdogs, and Fnatic came in as the favourites.
If you haven't watched the series yet, please do so as the following analysis is a series-specific performance overview. It looks at how each player performed throughout the series, and what went wrong, or right, for each team.
+ Show Spoiler [NiP vs Fnatic VODs] + Map 1 - Cache
Map 2 - Inferno
Map 3 - Mirage
Fnatic
Robin “flusha” Rönnquist - The Shield
Known for his incredible game sense, flusha came under fire in the latter half of 2014 as accusations of aimlocking were directed towards him. While nothing has come to light proving his guilt, flusha himself has taken to social media to respond to the claims, stating how it has negatively affected his motivation and performance. Usually a strong contender for being one of the most consistent members of Fnatic, his own admission rings true throughout the series as he was one of the weakest links for Fnatic and a key factor in allowing NiP freedom to stampede through their defenses. In most scenarios, flusha simply failed to connect his shots to get key kills that would have allowed Fnatic to stabilize and regain their composure.
Usually seen as the defensive counterpart to JW’s hyper aggression on their Counter-Terrorist side, flusha’s goal is to simply contain what JW let past, whether it be a trickle or a flood. A key round that showcases how it all fell apart was the fifth round of Inferno, where JW was rushed down on arch by a marauding NiP force. Instead of putting a stop to their rampage, flusha was distracted by a single member of NiP while Maikelele snuck behind him in library and got a knife kill for the eco round win.
On the Terrorist side, flusha continues to complement JW by playing towards the opposite bomb site. Rather than being the last line of offense to support JW, he instead lurks, picking off any rotating CTs and allowing JW an incredible amount of space to work with. On Inferno and Cache, it was flusha who punished friberg’s curiosity at the B bombsite, preventing NiP from gaining any information about the whereabouts of his teammates and their plans. While his Terrorist side was somewhat strong, it was unfortunately the many blunders on his CT side that left Fnatic bleeding too many rounds to NiP.
Jesper “JW” Wecksell - The Sword
Regarded as one of the strongest AWPers in 2014, JW had a lot to prove coming into MLG to reinforce his pedigree as a force to be reckoned with. The aggressive AWPer is a dynamic force with deadly accuracy, capable of destroying opponents on his CT side and causing enemies to fear the very threat of his presence. Similar to Maikelele, JW lives and dies by his aim. While some AWPers flourish by simply holding an angle and netting the team a kill or two, JW will either go big, or go home. Unfortunately for him, he went home, simply because his shots missed a few too many times.
While JW’s success or failure would create a problem for most other teams, Fnatic has created a situation where they do not rely solely on their AWPer. Of course, any game where JW fails to perform may be an uphill battle, but Fnatic often pulls it out in the end. The question then becomes, why did Fnatic end up losing this series? It comes back to flusha, as the duo complement each other so well that when both fail to perform, the team crumbles. Regardless, it was an incredibly close series, but that was mainly due to the next few players on the list.
Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer - The Soldier
While JW and flusha are a dynamic duo, the ex-LGB teammates, olofmeister and KRiMZ, make a deadly combination themselves. An all-around strong player, olofmeister wears various hats on Fnatic, electing to AWP or rifle as needed and switching between lurker and entry fragger on the fly. olofmeister acts as clay in pronax’s hands, being used to fatal efficiency. On the CT side, olofmeister was instrumental towards shutting down all of NiP’s attempts at A on Mirage. Fnatic devised a cunning triangle of death in which JW would hold from jungle, olofmeister defended from CT spawn, and KRiMZ would roam between connector and stairs. This meant that although NiP were able to secure the bombsite and plant the bomb, they had an incredibly difficult time holding off the incoming retake as the triple threat would decimate anyone who tried to defend the site. olofmeister also managed to prevent Xizt’s one-versus-three clutch, which would have caused a huge swing in momentum and perhaps allowed NiP an even better Terrorist half.
While his performance on Mirage was admirable, olofmeister made some critical errors on Inferno that allowed NiP to snag an amazing T side against one of the world’s greatest CT Inferno teams. Combined with the weaknesses of flusha and JW, it created a huge hole in their A defense, allowing NiP to exploit it with great arch control and providing the Ninjas an option to fake back towards B when needed. olofmeister needs to step up his game in his next appearance. Although he ended the tournament as the team’s second-best fragger, his performance was far from perfect throughout the series.
Fnatic had too many underperforming players
Markus “pronax” Wallsten - The Kingmaker
The in-game leader for Fnatic, pronax has risen to become one of the great minds of Global Offensive. He is a player that can be relied on to not only adapt mid-game, but also to prepare specifically for a team and counter their strategies. First and foremost, pronax is a bloodhound. On the CT side, he exists solely to feed information to the other players on the team and to lift them up and make them stars. More than once, pronax pushed his luck by aggressively gathering information. Key examples include him pushing squeaky or A main on Cache or rushing through apartments on Inferno and Mirage to sniff out information there. This allows for an immense early game advantage throughout each round as the remaining CTs can adjust their game plan accordingly and prepare for any executes.
This tactic paved the way for the incredible triple kill on Cache by KRiMZ during the 23rd round. With pronax taking over A main, it allowed KRiMZ to stealthily push into vents and quickly snipe off Xizt, duel with f0rest, then drop down and backstab a distracted GeT_RiGhT as Fnatic knew the Ninjas were not at A. Aside from being the brilliant mind behind his stars, pronax himself pulled off some extremely clutch rounds that brought his team back into the fold. In what was one of the greatest clutch situations of MLG Aspen, pronax managed to salvage a chaotic A take by somehow securing three one-versus-ones with the NiP players. After losing three teammates to Xizt, pronax managed to pick him off before GeT_RiGhT rounded the corner to the site. pronax pivoted and killed the Swedish legend at truck before deftly turning back to graveyard, where a confused friberg met his demise. However, there is something to be said about his snap decisions when it comes to strategies. Right after that round he immediately called for a rush through banana, running straight into the crosshairs of friberg and halting their momentum.
With everything on the line, instead of playing out a different strategy or taking it slow, he called for the exact same strategy with a small tweak: rather than throwing a molotov into the porch area at B, he landed it at the cart instead, exactly where friberg plays. This alteration forced friberg to jump in front of sandbags where he was instantly flashed, allowing the Fnatic players to pick him off without losing a single player. This adjustment, along with his clutch plays, allowed Fnatic to stay in the game and remain as competitive as they were, bringing the series to a third map.
Freddy “KRiMZ” Johansson - The Giant
While this overview has been quite negative in regards to most of the Fnatic squad thus far, that is simply because most of the praise for this nail-biting series is reserved for this single player. KRiMZ was by far the standout player for Fnatic throughout the entire series. Topping the scoreboard on every map, KRiMZ was playing far above the level of any other Fnatic player on the team.
It was night and day. While JW and flusha let NiP plough through their setup at arch side on Inferno, KRiMZ slammed the door shut at B, denying any Ninjas entrance to the site. On Mirage, KRiMZ proved to be a stellar player once again, holding down the most crucial position on the map, connector, and getting a quad-kill on NiP when they attempted an almost-successful A execute on their first gun round.
Of course, he isn’t just great at holding sites. On Cache, KRiMZ played an invaluable role in keeping Fnatic in the game, grabbing some magnificent entry kills onto B against the near-indomitable friberg and f0rest. He provided Fnatic with opportunities to stay in the game and helped keep the series neck-and-neck. While his performance was brilliant, the frustration was clear on KRiMZ's face as each map bore on. On Inferno, he ran straight down alternate middle and attempted to take a fight with a P250 against Xizt on patio with no help from his teammates. Unfortunately for KRiMZ, his efforts alone could not keep Fnatic in the game, and they fell disappointingly short on Mirage after an anti-eco gave NiP the momentum to shut down any notion Fnatic had of a possible win at MLG. Known for his incredible game sense, flusha came under fire in the latter half of 2014 as accusations of aimlocking were directed towards him. While nothing has come to light proving his guilt, flusha himself has taken to social media to respond to the claims, stating how it has negatively affected his motivation and performance. Usually a strong contender for being one of the most consistent members of Fnatic, his own admission rings true throughout the series as he was one of the weakest links for Fnatic and a key factor in allowing NiP freedom to stampede through their defenses. In most scenarios, flusha simply failed to connect his shots to get key kills that would have allowed Fnatic to stabilize and regain their composure.Usually seen as the defensive counterpart to JW’s hyper aggression on their Counter-Terrorist side, flusha’s goal is to simply contain what JW let past, whether it be a trickle or a flood. A key round that showcases how it all fell apart was the fifth round of Inferno, where JW was rushed down on arch by a marauding NiP force. Instead of putting a stop to their rampage, flusha was distracted by a single member of NiP while Maikelele snuck behind him in library and got a knife kill for the eco round win.On the Terrorist side, flusha continues to complement JW by playing towards the opposite bomb site. Rather than being the last line of offense to support JW, he instead lurks, picking off any rotating CTs and allowing JW an incredible amount of space to work with. On Inferno and Cache, it was flusha who punished friberg’s curiosity at the B bombsite, preventing NiP from gaining any information about the whereabouts of his teammates and their plans. While his Terrorist side was somewhat strong, it was unfortunately the many blunders on his CT side that left Fnatic bleeding too many rounds to NiP.Regarded as one of the strongest AWPers in 2014, JW had a lot to prove coming into MLG to reinforce his pedigree as a force to be reckoned with. The aggressive AWPer is a dynamic force with deadly accuracy, capable of destroying opponents on his CT side and causing enemies to fear the very threat of his presence. Similar to Maikelele, JW lives and dies by his aim. While some AWPers flourish by simply holding an angle and netting the team a kill or two, JW will either go big, or go home. Unfortunately for him, he went home, simply because his shots missed a few too many times.While JW’s success or failure would create a problem for most other teams, Fnatic has created a situation where they do not rely solely on their AWPer. Of course, any game where JW fails to perform may be an uphill battle, but Fnatic often pulls it out in the end. The question then becomes, why did Fnatic end up losing this series? It comes back to flusha, as the duo complement each other so well that when both fail to perform, the team crumbles. Regardless, it was an incredibly close series, but that was mainly due to the next few players on the list.While JW and flusha are a dynamic duo, the ex-LGB teammates, olofmeister and KRiMZ, make a deadly combination themselves. An all-around strong player, olofmeister wears various hats on Fnatic, electing to AWP or rifle as needed and switching between lurker and entry fragger on the fly. olofmeister acts as clay in pronax’s hands, being used to fatal efficiency. On the CT side, olofmeister was instrumental towards shutting down all of NiP’s attempts at A on Mirage. Fnatic devised a cunning triangle of death in which JW would hold from jungle, olofmeister defended from CT spawn, and KRiMZ would roam between connector and stairs. This meant that although NiP were able to secure the bombsite and plant the bomb, they had an incredibly difficult time holding off the incoming retake as the triple threat would decimate anyone who tried to defend the site. olofmeister also managed to prevent Xizt’s one-versus-three clutch, which would have caused a huge swing in momentum and perhaps allowed NiP an even better Terrorist half.While his performance on Mirage was admirable, olofmeister made some critical errors on Inferno that allowed NiP to snag an amazing T side against one of the world’s greatest CT Inferno teams. Combined with the weaknesses of flusha and JW, it created a huge hole in their A defense, allowing NiP to exploit it with great arch control and providing the Ninjas an option to fake back towards B when needed. olofmeister needs to step up his game in his next appearance. Although he ended the tournament as the team’s second-best fragger, his performance was far from perfect throughout the series.The in-game leader for Fnatic, pronax has risen to become one of the great minds of Global Offensive. He is a player that can be relied on to not only adapt mid-game, but also to prepare specifically for a team and counter their strategies. First and foremost, pronax is a bloodhound. On the CT side, he exists solely to feed information to the other players on the team and to lift them up and make them stars. More than once, pronax pushed his luck by aggressively gathering information. Key examples include him pushing squeaky or A main on Cache or rushing through apartments on Inferno and Mirage to sniff out information there. This allows for an immense early game advantage throughout each round as the remaining CTs can adjust their game plan accordingly and prepare for any executes.This tactic paved the way for the incredible triple kill on Cache by KRiMZ during the 23rd round. With pronax taking over A main, it allowed KRiMZ to stealthily push into vents and quickly snipe off Xizt, duel with f0rest, then drop down and backstab a distracted GeT_RiGhT as Fnatic knew the Ninjas were not at A. Aside from being the brilliant mind behind his stars, pronax himself pulled off some extremely clutch rounds that brought his team back into the fold. In what was one of the greatest clutch situations of MLG Aspen, pronax managed to salvage a chaotic A take by somehow securing three one-versus-ones with the NiP players. After losing three teammates to Xizt, pronax managed to pick him off before GeT_RiGhT rounded the corner to the site. pronax pivoted and killed the Swedish legend at truck before deftly turning back to graveyard, where a confused friberg met his demise. However, there is something to be said about his snap decisions when it comes to strategies. Right after that round he immediately called for a rush through banana, running straight into the crosshairs of friberg and halting their momentum.With everything on the line, instead of playing out a different strategy or taking it slow, he called for the exact same strategy with a small tweak: rather than throwing a molotov into the porch area at B, he landed it at the cart instead, exactly where friberg plays. This alteration forced friberg to jump in front of sandbags where he was instantly flashed, allowing the Fnatic players to pick him off without losing a single player. This adjustment, along with his clutch plays, allowed Fnatic to stay in the game and remain as competitive as they were, bringing the series to a third map.While this overview has been quite negative in regards to most of the Fnatic squad thus far, that is simply because most of the praise for this nail-biting series is reserved for this single player. KRiMZ was by far the standout player for Fnatic throughout the entire series. Topping the scoreboard on every map, KRiMZ was playing far above the level of any other Fnatic player on the team.It was night and day. While JW and flusha let NiP plough through their setup at arch side on Inferno, KRiMZ slammed the door shut at B, denying any Ninjas entrance to the site. On Mirage, KRiMZ proved to be a stellar player once again, holding down the most crucial position on the map, connector, and getting a quad-kill on NiP when they attempted an almost-successful A execute on their first gun round.Of course, he isn’t just great at holding sites. On Cache, KRiMZ played an invaluable role in keeping Fnatic in the game, grabbing some magnificent entry kills onto B against the near-indomitable friberg and f0rest. He provided Fnatic with opportunities to stay in the game and helped keep the series neck-and-neck. While his performance was brilliant, the frustration was clear on KRiMZ's face as each map bore on. On Inferno, he ran straight down alternate middle and attempted to take a fight with a P250 against Xizt on patio with no help from his teammates. Unfortunately for KRiMZ, his efforts alone could not keep Fnatic in the game, and they fell disappointingly short on Mirage after an anti-eco gave NiP the momentum to shut down any notion Fnatic had of a possible win at MLG.
Ninjas in Pyjamas
Mikail “Maikelele” Bill - The Streaker
The newest addition to Ninjas in Pyjamas, Maikelele proved his worth at Dreamhack Winter with his exceptional AWPing on Terrorist halves. Going into MLG, expectations were high for Maikelele to perform on a level similar to what he displayed at the recent major. Following the trend of some of the strongest AWPers, Maikelele is as streaky as they come. Being able to hold down A site on Mirage allowed NiP to get the crucial rounds they needed to take the final map. For Cache, his constant switch between bombsites kept Fnatic on their toes as he searched for the opening frag. Indeed, it was Maikelele that secured a fantastic falling no-scope onto pronax on the B site of Cache, securing an important round for NiP’s CT half.
However, as with other streaky snipers, he has some pitfalls. On Inferno, Maikelele was the weakest link on their CT half. His poor AWP play at arch allowed Fnatic to open up the entire A site. This proved fatal for them as they barely lost Inferno 14-16. While Maikelele underperformed overall, his addition to the team has still been a net positive for the team. His chemistry with GeT_RiGhT in particular has amassed them some incredible clutches. For example, they had successful two-versus-three retakes on both sites of Mirage, which ultimately propelled NiP to the grand finals.
Richard “Xizt” Landström - The Strategist
With the departure of Robin “Fifflaren” Johansson and the recent addition of Maikelele, Xizt remains the sole in-game leader of NiP and has managed the team excellently while contributing key frags in certain matches himself. The in-game leader has stepped up to the plate in a considerable fashion and has taken this improved NiP squad to great heights.
Through the use of a flexible play style, Xizt has allowed each player on NiP the freedom to execute their own moves, while still having control on the overarching strategy round by round. This was shown multiple times throughout Cache and Inferno, where a potential misstep by a NiP player could have caused the entire round to crumble. Thanks to Xizt, those rounds were salvaged with the use of a key pop flash or a fast rotation.
Xizt and his squad walk a fine line as usual. What makes this team strong is the trust shared between the players and the ability for certain members to step up when a teammate is underperforming. However, while it was enough to beat Fnatic, they subsequently fell prey to LDLC for a second time. It begs the question: will NiP, as a whole, ever perform up to par simultaneously to secure a championship once more, or will there always be a hole for teams to take advantage of? The answer is one Xizt cannot provide alone.
GeT_RiGhT and Maikelele make a deadly combination
Adam “friberg” Friberg - The Tower
Known as a strong entry fragger, friberg was more valuable on the CT side as the sole defender of the B site on Cache and Inferno. He played a crucial role on both maps as he essentially shut off any rushes towards B. His presence forced Fnatic to attempt to take mid control in order to force rotations, gain new angles onto B, and focus their efforts on A. One of his greatest strengths in holding the B sites of various maps is his patience and familiarity with his surroundings. Because he is frequently left alone on the site, friberg has devised a handful of devious flashes that have proven to be absolutely devastating against oncoming enemies, and that is what allows him to take down incoming Terrorists and stall for time with incredible consistency.
Hailed as the “King of Banana,” friberg lived up to the name on Inferno by once again destroying all of Fnatic’s attempts at entering the site, even going as far as securing the top of banana every round, a tactic that NiP often strays away from. It proved to be effective as it lured Fnatic into running straight into a meat grinder consisting of a single Famas and a flashbang, crushing any momentum they gained from the previous round. Unfortunately, friberg did show some flaws in his play. While a stalwart defender of sites, he often struggled when he got impatient and abandoned his post, pushing into enemy territory. There he usually met his demise and allowed Fnatic a rare chance to take control of the site, and sometimes the round. While he will rarely be a player that will net an ace, friberg plays an incredibly important role in NiP’s roster. Having the ability to lock down an entire site and possessing great awareness when ripping one open, friberg remains a key player in NiP’s success.
Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg - The Wanderer
Often regarded as second to GeT_RiGhT, f0rest put up an incredible showing in the series against Fnatic. Criticized for underperforming in online matches and during the latter half of 2014, f0rest picked up his game considerably with some brilliant plays throughout the series. Starting on Cache, f0rest played off his teammate GeT_RiGhT as both were responsible for their dominant mid control which, along with the strength of friberg at B, led to a fantastic start on Cache. f0rest continued to excel on Inferno, where he posted up in and around apartments and slayed anyone who dared to set foot on his balcony.
However, while his CT side was strong, what truly brought f0rest above and beyond in this series were his entry frags on the Terrorist side. On multiple occasions, f0rest atoned for friberg’s slack, demolishing olofmeister at apartments on Inferno while gathering more kills into the A site. His clever maneuvering around arch on another round allowed him to take out both flusha and olofmeister and secure control of the area. f0rest’s kills were some of the most crucial of the game, affording NiP a good amount of T rounds on Inferno.
Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund - The Janitor
The clutch maestro, GeT_RiGhT was absolutely on point in this series. While each member of the team had some strong individual plays that highlighted their importance to the team, almost all of his highlights were incredibly clutch rounds that decided the fate of the match. At A site on Cache during an eco round on their Terrorist side, GeT_RiGhT found himself at quad with an AWP with the score tied at 13-13 and NiP on the ropes. After a quick kill on olofmeister on highway, he missed a shot onto flusha. GeT_RiGhT, however, did not immediately run to quad, but instead waited for KRiMZ to change his position from e-box as he moved closer to the site. GeT_RiGhT then smartly jumped to quad and posted up on the right side of the box, allowing Xizt to bait KRiMZ into revealing himself to GeT_RiGhT’s crosshairs and securing the kill. This forced flusha out into the open, where he was finished off with GeT_RiGhT’s Tec-9. GeT_RiGhT’s ability to remain calm under these tight conditions is what brings the legend a level above the rest, and it is what allows NiP to edge out wins against some of the world’s best teams.
An amazing lurker, GeT_RiGhT acts as the cleaner for the team, neatly sweeping away the messes left behind by f0rest and friberg. GeT_RiGhT has proven time and time again that he possesses an incredible game sense to bully his opponents into one-versus-one situations. Another key factor of his success at Aspen is his fantastic chemistry with the new AWPer, Maikelele. This proved instrumental during the 25th round of Mirage as Maikelele dealt fatal shots to the scrambling Fnatic members, bringing the retake to a two-versus-three with GeT_RiGhT rotating from B. Able to play off one another, Maikelele confidently strode across the site knowing full well that the angle from jungle was being watched by his teammate, allowing him to deftly jump onto firebox and pick off JW to secure the round. Although there is room for improvement, GeT_RiGhT and his team should feel incredibly proud for what they accomplished at MLG Aspen. With some of the strongest performances this team has seen, 2015 should prove to be an amazing year for Ninjas in Pyjamas.
The newest addition to Ninjas in Pyjamas, Maikelele proved his worth at Dreamhack Winter with his exceptional AWPing on Terrorist halves. Going into MLG, expectations were high for Maikelele to perform on a level similar to what he displayed at the recent major. Following the trend of some of the strongest AWPers, Maikelele is as streaky as they come. Being able to hold down A site on Mirage allowed NiP to get the crucial rounds they needed to take the final map. For Cache, his constant switch between bombsites kept Fnatic on their toes as he searched for the opening frag. Indeed, it was Maikelele that secured a fantastic falling no-scope onto pronax on the B site of Cache, securing an important round for NiP’s CT half.However, as with other streaky snipers, he has some pitfalls. On Inferno, Maikelele was the weakest link on their CT half. His poor AWP play at arch allowed Fnatic to open up the entire A site. This proved fatal for them as they barely lost Inferno 14-16. While Maikelele underperformed overall, his addition to the team has still been a net positive for the team. His chemistry with GeT_RiGhT in particular has amassed them some incredible clutches. For example, they had successful two-versus-three retakes on both sites of Mirage, which ultimately propelled NiP to the grand finals.With the departure ofRobin “Fifflaren” Johansson and the recent addition of Maikelele, Xizt remains the sole in-game leader of NiP and has managed the team excellently while contributing key frags in certain matches himself. The in-game leader has stepped up to the plate in a considerable fashion and has taken this improved NiP squad to great heights.Through the use of a flexible play style, Xizt has allowed each player on NiP the freedom to execute their own moves, while still having control on the overarching strategy round by round. This was shown multiple times throughout Cache and Inferno, where a potential misstep by a NiP player could have caused the entire round to crumble. Thanks to Xizt, those rounds were salvaged with the use of a key pop flash or a fast rotation.Xizt and his squad walk a fine line as usual. What makes this team strong is the trust shared between the players and the ability for certain members to step up when a teammate is underperforming. However, while it was enough to beat Fnatic, they subsequently fell prey to LDLC for a second time. It begs the question: will NiP, as a whole, ever perform up to par simultaneously to secure a championship once more, or will there always be a hole for teams to take advantage of? The answer is one Xizt cannot provide alone.Known as a strong entry fragger, friberg was more valuable on the CT side as the sole defender of the B site on Cache and Inferno. He played a crucial role on both maps as he essentially shut off any rushes towards B. His presence forced Fnatic to attempt to take mid control in order to force rotations, gain new angles onto B, and focus their efforts on A. One of his greatest strengths in holding the B sites of various maps is his patience and familiarity with his surroundings. Because he is frequently left alone on the site, friberg has devised a handful of devious flashes that have proven to be absolutely devastating against oncoming enemies, and that is what allows him to take down incoming Terrorists and stall for time with incredible consistency.Hailed as the “King of Banana,” friberg lived up to the name on Inferno by once again destroying all of Fnatic’s attempts at entering the site, even going as far as securing the top of banana every round, a tactic that NiP often strays away from. It proved to be effective as it lured Fnatic into running straight into a meat grinder consisting of a single Famas and a flashbang, crushing any momentum they gained from the previous round. Unfortunately, friberg did show some flaws in his play. While a stalwart defender of sites, he often struggled when he got impatient and abandoned his post, pushing into enemy territory. There he usually met his demise and allowed Fnatic a rare chance to take control of the site, and sometimes the round. While he will rarely be a player that will net an ace, friberg plays an incredibly important role in NiP’s roster. Having the ability to lock down an entire site and possessing great awareness when ripping one open, friberg remains a key player in NiP’s success.Often regarded as second to GeT_RiGhT, f0rest put up an incredible showing in the series against Fnatic. Criticized for underperforming in online matches and during the latter half of 2014, f0rest picked up his game considerably with some brilliant plays throughout the series. Starting on Cache, f0rest played off his teammate GeT_RiGhT as both were responsible for their dominant mid control which, along with the strength of friberg at B, led to a fantastic start on Cache. f0rest continued to excel on Inferno, where he posted up in and around apartments and slayed anyone who dared to set foot on his balcony.However, while his CT side was strong, what truly brought f0rest above and beyond in this series were his entry frags on the Terrorist side. On multiple occasions, f0rest atoned for friberg’s slack, demolishing olofmeister at apartments on Inferno while gathering more kills into the A site. His clever maneuvering around arch on another round allowed him to take out both flusha and olofmeister and secure control of the area. f0rest’s kills were some of the most crucial of the game, affording NiP a good amount of T rounds on Inferno.The clutch maestro, GeT_RiGhT was absolutely on point in this series. While each member of the team had some strong individual plays that highlighted their importance to the team, almost all of his highlights were incredibly clutch rounds that decided the fate of the match. At A site on Cache during an eco round on their Terrorist side, GeT_RiGhT found himself at quad with an AWP with the score tied at 13-13 and NiP on the ropes. After a quick kill on olofmeister on highway, he missed a shot onto flusha. GeT_RiGhT, however, did not immediately run to quad, but instead waited for KRiMZ to change his position from e-box as he moved closer to the site. GeT_RiGhT then smartly jumped to quad and posted up on the right side of the box, allowing Xizt to bait KRiMZ into revealing himself to GeT_RiGhT’s crosshairs and securing the kill. This forced flusha out into the open, where he was finished off with GeT_RiGhT’s Tec-9. GeT_RiGhT’s ability to remain calm under these tight conditions is what brings the legend a level above the rest, and it is what allows NiP to edge out wins against some of the world’s best teams.An amazing lurker, GeT_RiGhT acts as the cleaner for the team, neatly sweeping away the messes left behind by f0rest and friberg. GeT_RiGhT has proven time and time again that he possesses an incredible game sense to bully his opponents into one-versus-one situations. Another key factor of his success at Aspen is his fantastic chemistry with the new AWPer, Maikelele. This proved instrumental during the 25th round of Mirage as Maikelele dealt fatal shots to the scrambling Fnatic members, bringing the retake to a two-versus-three with GeT_RiGhT rotating from B. Able to play off one another, Maikelele confidently strode across the site knowing full well that the angle from jungle was being watched by his teammate, allowing him to deftly jump onto firebox and pick off JW to secure the round. Although there is room for improvement, GeT_RiGhT and his team should feel incredibly proud for what they accomplished at MLG Aspen. With some of the strongest performances this team has seen, 2015 should prove to be an amazing year for Ninjas in Pyjamas. With MLG over and the winner crowned, we take the time to look back at what could possibly be an early contender for the best series of 2015. After a tumultuous group stage, the two Swedish teams were once again pitted against each other. This time, however, the tables were turned. The once dominantNinjas in Pyjamas came in as the underdogs, andFnatic came in as the favourites.If you haven't watched the series yet, please do so as the following analysis is a series-specific performance overview. It looks at how each player performed throughout the series, and what went wrong, or right, for each team.
The world is burning and you rather be on this terrible website discussing video games and your shallow feelings | 8,013,465 |
File Photo: China's Tiangong-1 space station
China is to launch an “optical module” along with the under-construction space station, said Zhang Yulin, Deputy to the National People’s Congress and Deputy Minister of Central Military Commission Equipment Development Department, on March 7, 2016. The “optical module” is similar to Hubble Space Telescope, but the field of view is 300 times that of Hubble.
The module would maintain a certain distance to orbit with the space station. When suffers malfunction or needs maintenance, it will dock to the space station and be operated by astronauts, Zhang said. This will solve the problem Hubble has encountered, when NASA had to send up astronauts particularly to repair it. This special design of China’s space station makes in-orbit maintenance possible, and can thus bring the numerous defunct satellites to life, Zhang said.
Within 10 years of orbit, the module would capture about 40 percent of the space with a precision no less than Hubble. With these data, it is hopeful that China will make breakthrough development on the origin, development, and evolution of the universe. | 8,013,466 |
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Voice Calls (VOIP) $1499 For a small cost we will be able to build in voice calls inside of the app so that none of your providers and customers will be able to share each others’ numbers | 8,013,467 |
In theaters Friday, March 13
3 stars (out of 4 stars)
By now, you, every kid you know, and your kooky neighbor with all the cats, has let it go. But after 239 viewings of Frozen, even Olaf the snowman's shtick gets cold. I mean, old. So open the palace doors and rejoice! A new short film, titled Frozen Fever, will be released in theaters on March 13. (It plays before Disney's full-length Cinderella movie). Here's one fact for each minute. That would be seven in all.
PHOTOS: Stars dressed like Disney princesses
1. The ice woman cometh! Yup, Idina Menzel (Adele Dazeem jokes are sooooo March 2014) returns to voice Queen Elsa. And her personality has warmed up considerably since the days when she was taught to conceal, don't feel. Kristen Bell (Princess Anna), Jonathan Groff (Kristoff), and Josh Gad (Olaf) also reheat their vocal pipes.
2. There's time for an actual plot. Kinda. It's Anna's birthday, and Elsa wants to throw her the perfect celebration. But plans change after big sister falls under the weather.
PHOTOS: Famous film princesses
3. Hold on to your mittens: We have a brand-new song. Oscar winners Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez have composed a fresh ditty, titled "Making Today a Perfect Day." It's not quite as catchy as you-know-what, but it is bright and fun.
4. Do you want to build a snowman? No? Okay, would you rather watch dozens of snowmen wreak havoc? Every time ailing Elsa sneezes, she a-choos out a flurry of Olaf mini-mes. They're frigid, adorable and mischievous.
PHOTOS: Celebs visit Disney theme parks
5. Sinister Hans (Santino Fontana) would have lorded over a kingdom if it weren't for those meddling kids. Fear not, he's getting his comeuppance.
6. Nods to the original are cleverly dotted throughout the film, from sandwiches to Anna's bed head to Marshmallow the snow creature. And the Easter eggs are hidden in plain sight so your 2-year-old niece will notice them and be delighted.
7. It's too short! Seven minutes is such a tease. Just five more minutes would have this a perfect winter treat. The running time of Frozen never bothered us anyway.
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Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now! | 8,013,468 |
A Heathrow board member has said the airport should be open 24 hours a day, and that local residents under the flightpath would soon get used to the noise.
Akbar al-Baker, representing Qatar Holdings, which owns a 20% stake in the airport, said locals enjoyed excessive freedom and made too much fuss.
Speaking to journalists from the Times and the Telegraph in Doha, Baker, the chief executive of Qatar Airways, said: "If you live under the flightpath of an airport, I assure you, over a period of time you will not even hear the aircraft passing over your house.
"The thing that is impeding Europe's growth is that airports are locked up from 11 o'clock at night to 5.30 in the morning, which is a very, very critical time for east-west transfer. People [in Qatar] are not making as much fuss about noise as they are in Europe."
He said that objections to noise, which affects more people around Heathrow than anywhere else in Europe, should be overriden. "I know people require freedom, but I think this is too excessive. Sometimes the national interest must be considered."
Heathrow moved swiftly to distance itself from Baker's views. A spokesman said: "Mr al-Baker's views are his own and do not represent the views or policy of the Heathrow board or executive committee. We recognise that adding the flights Britain needs for growth must come hand in hand with reducing aircraft noise for residents. Round-the-clock flying from London is not an option. We take the concerns of local communities very seriously and have never argued for 24-hour flying."
Local campaigners, however, expressed deep concern. John Stewart, the chairman of Heathrow Association for the Control of Aircraft Noise (Hacan), said: "He wants to bring the Qatari version of democracy into west London, where the benighted residents under the flightpath will have no voice, no say and no rights. The big worry is that this is the second-biggest shareholder in Heathrow and whatever the airport says publicly, he must have a significant influence in developing company policy."
Heathrow noise is accepted to significantly disturb 250,000 people on standard measurements, more than its rival hubs elsewhere in Europe.
Protesters from across the continent descended on Frankfurt airport on Monday to join thousands of campaigners who have been occupying a terminal for 100 weeks since a new runway was opened. Residents claim they were misled over new flightpaths created over neighbourhoods that were previously unaffected by noise.
In the interviews, Baker also defended some of his airline's controversial employment policies. Qatar Airways bans female cabin crew from getting married in the first five years of their employment. He told the Telegraph: "We used to allow this and a lot of people started to get married and then two to three months later they were pregnant so we were losing a lot of trained people that we had then to stop them flying. We had to put a stop to this. But after five years they can get married to anybody they want." | 8,013,469 |
Research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science has found that men orgasm faster and ejaculate more semen when masturbating to unfamiliar women.
“Our findings are the first to demonstrate that men’s ejaculate behavior and composition change in response to a novel female stimulus,” the researchers wrote in their study, which was published in June.
In the study, the researchers examined the time to ejaculation, ejaculate volume, and number of motile sperm in 21 heterosexual men between the ages of 18 and 23 years old who watched seven sexually explicit films over the course of 15 days.
The men in the study watched six films depicting the same actress and actor, then watched a similar film with a new actress but the same actor.
The researchers found the time to ejaculation ranged between 4 and 21 minutes overall. There was no habituation effect — repeatedly viewing the same woman did not increase or decrease the time to ejaculation.
But men did ejaculate more quickly when viewing the seventh film, which included a new woman. In addition, ejaculate volume and total number of motile sperm in the ejaculate increased significantly when viewing the seventh film. “Men produced higher quality ejaculates when exposed to novel, rather than familiar, women,” the researchers wrote.
But why does ejaculate volume and total number of motile sperm increase for novel women? Men who produce higher quality sperm for unfamiliar women may have an evolutionary advantage, the researchers explained. The decrease in the time to ejaculation may make it easier for a cheater to copulate with another woman without his partner finding out.
In addition, evolution “would favor males who invest more in ejaculates transferred to novel females for two reasons: (i) Males may have already fertilized the egg(s) of (or have their sperm stored by) females with whom they have already mated; and (ii) novel females may be more likely to have mated recently with another male resulting in increased likelihood of sperm competition,” they wrote. | 8,013,470 |
Liverpool have taken their summer spending over £100 million by outmaneuvering Chelsea and agreeing a deal for Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
The England midfielder was undergoing a Liverpool medical at the national squad’s training base at St George’s Park on Wednesday night ahead of a £35m move to Anfield. He earlier rejected the chance to join the Premier League champions.
His move to Merseyside will end a Liverpool chase for his signature which began six years ago, when Oxlade-Chamberlain was still at Southampton.
Liverpool’s ex-captain Steven Gerrard and vice-captain Jamie Carragher met Oxlade-Chamberlain and his father Mark at Melwood in 2011 in an effort to convince him to move north. Instead, he chose Arsenal, who he joined for £15m that summer.
Now Jurgen Klopp’s scouting team has been aided by glowing references from Liverpool’s current senior players, skipper Jordan Henderson and midfielder Adam Lallana among those who urged their club manager to bring their international team-mate to Anfield. Both have testified to Oxlade-Chamberlain’s quality and the dynamism he can bring to Klopp’s side.
Klopp also recalls how impressive Oxlade-Chamberlain was for Arsenal against his Borussia Dortmund team in the 2014 Champions League. | 8,013,471 |
Hello!
What you'll find here is a new e-sketchbook from Indigo Montag. This one, Cheesecake and Coffee From The End Of The World (as we know it), is a collection of slightly risqué images which he produced for yet another book that (alas) isn't on the market.
But at least you can get a glance at some of the cool and sexy pictures that would have been in the work if all had gone well.
So take a peek! There's lovely girls, handsome lads, and even a lady with a thing about dragons.
This work is offered on a PWYW-basis. If you don't want to pay anything, that's fine. Just specify $0 and you will be able to download the book (without leaving, by the way, a credit card number).
But, if you do like the material, won't you considered slipping Indigo a little cash to further his career? You can come back to this page to do so, or, if you prefer, there's a link in the book itself that will take you to a site where you can tip the artist.
Thanks hugely in advance. | 8,013,472 |
Getty Images
In the wake of the shocking announcement from the Raiders and Chargers that the teams currently are pursuing a joint stadium plan in Carson, California, some additional information is trickling out.
Per the same league source who told PFT in October that the NFL intends to return to L.A. within 12-24 months, a shared stadium by the Chargers and Raiders means that one of the teams likely would move to the NFC.
The current thinking is that the Raiders would be the most likely of the two to leave for the NFC West. The question then becomes which of the NFC West teams would move to the AFC West.
The Seahawks belonged to the AFC West from 1977 through 2001, but the early rumor/expectation is that the Rams or Cardinals would change conferences, with the Seahawks and 49ers staying put.
Of course, this all hinges on the Chargers-Raiders alliance securing the ability to move to Carson over the Rams, who apparently want to move to Inglewood. | 8,013,473 |
SEXUAL offences carried out by migrants in Germany have doubled in the past year, new statistics show.
German authorities have released a report that shows 3,304 sex attacks involved migrants last year.
AP:Associated Press 3 German Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under pressure as her country tries to cope with an influx of refugees
It compares to 1,683 sex crimes that were carried out in 2015, the government study said.
Crimes ranges from sexual assault to rape.
Of 37,442 sex crimes committed in Germany last year, just over nine per cent were carried out by migrants.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel has overseen a wave of immigration in recent years as Germany attempts to ease the migrant crisis.
More than a million asylum seekers fled to Europe's largest economy with Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis forming the bulk of those welcomed in.
But the wave of migration has created friction around the country.
Most notably 1,200 women were sexually assaulted by a group of around 2,000 men in Cologne on New Year's Eve 2016.
AP:Associated Press 3 Police have been forced to make a series of arrests. Here, a stock file, shows a Syrian man accused of smuggling migrants from Austria to Germany being detained
Getty Images 3 Police presence was ramped up in Cologne last New Year's Ever following a spate of sexual assaults a year earlier
The majority of those involved are believed to have been recent migrants to the country.
Similar incident took place around Germany with Hamburg, Stuttgart and Dortmund also hit by the wave of assaults.
At the time, Merkel said: "The events of New Year’s Eve have dramatically exposed the challenge we’re facing, revealing a new facet that we haven’t yet seen.
"We have to protect the many law-abiding refugees that have sought safety and refuge with us.
"But against foreign criminals we have to be very determined.”
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EUGENE, Ore. -- When Oregon running back Royce Freeman left Eugene last winter after finishing up exams, he knew he wanted to spend some time consulting people in his life about his NFL decision. He expected to talk with his family and friends, former Oregon running backs coach Gary Campbell and some others who had coached him over the years.
But he didn’t expect to hear from new Oregon coach Willie Taggart, who got to campus after most players had already left for winter break. And he certainly didn’t expect to hear from him in the form of a home visit, not unlike the ones Taggart was conducting with 2017 recruits last December.
“It was a surprise to me,” Freeman said. “Not a lot of coaches would do that with me being a part of the team already, but he went out of his way to show much he cares about his players.”
Willie Taggart keeps a watchful eye on Royce Freeman during a spring practice. Andy Nelson/The Register-Guard via AP
Taggart wanted to let Freeman know -- in the running back's living room in Imperial, California -- that he saw him not only as a talented back who had plenty of options but as a player who could continue to be important to the program -- so much so that Taggart would come off the recruiting trail when he already had a condensed amount of time to sign a class.
“It was good to get him around my family and hear what he had to say,” Freeman said. “Hearing all the little details and what he had planned for the future -- and he has followed up on all that. He didn’t make any promises that I didn’t feel like he’d be able to keep.”
One of those promises was likely about how much Taggart expected to rely on Freeman -- FBS’ leading active rusher coming into next season (4,146 yards) -- during the 2017 season.
“It’s not fitting [him] into what I do, it’s fitting into what Royce does,” Taggart said. “We’re not going to complicate it or reinvent anything. We’re going to let Royce be Royce and play ball.”
And Freeman didn’t have to look too deep into the past of Taggart, a former triple-option quarterback himself, to get an idea of how run-heavy his final season at Oregon could be under Taggart.
At USF, after transitioning into his “Gulf Coast offense,” Taggart’s team went from finishing near the bottom of the FBS in rushing yards in 2013 and 2014 to finishing 11th in 2015 (3,205 yards) and fifth in 2016 (3,709 yards). A lot of those rushing yards were thanks to mobile quarterback Quinton Flowers, who led the Bulls in rushing last season with 1,530 yards.
With Flowers complemented by running back Marlon Mack, the Bulls leaned heavily on the run in offensive playcalling. They rushed the ball on 61 percent of offensive plays in 2016 and 66 percent of plays in 2015. During Freeman’s career, the most the Ducks have ever utilized the rush was 62 percent during his sophomore season in 2015.
Those kinds of numbers certainly weren’t lost on Freeman. And better yet, one of Taggart’s holdovers from his USF staff now in Eugene was Donte Pimpleton, who coached the Bulls’ running backs the past two seasons.
“Having Coach Taggart here adds to the comfort level,” Freeman said. “And the staff, seeing who he brought in, makes me feel as if we can do big things.”
One main difference when translating Taggart’s Gulf Coast offense to Oregon is that quarterback Justin Herbert, who’s expected to retain his role as the starter, isn’t nearly as mobile as Flowers.
In that regard, this team is far more like Stanford in the late 2000s, when Taggart coached running backs for the Cardinal. He has already said that Freeman reminds him a bit of former Stanford back Toby Gerhart, who combined for more than 3,000 rushing yards and 42 touchdowns in his final two seasons in Palo Alto. During his senior season, Gerhart led the FBS in rushing and won the Doak Walker Award.
Taggart saw that kind of potential in Freeman and hoped he would return for a final go-round. But in order to do that, Taggart knew that just as he was out recruiting high schoolers for the future of the Ducks' program, he also would need to recruit Freeman, who would be more important to the 2017 future of this team than any other piece. | 8,013,475 |
Turnbull joked his new All Blacks tie had a whiff of a bit of lemon and Steinlager about it.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made good on his rugby wager with John Key.
Turnbull debuted his black and white All Blacks tie during question time in the Australian parliament across the ditch on Monday, after losing a Rugby World Cup final bet with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key.
"I've offered him (Key) a bet on the cricket but he doesn't think the odds are good enough on that," Turnbull said.
LAWRENCE SMITH The trans-tasman Rugby World Cup final went beyond the sports teams.
"It's a nice tie, apart from its circumstance. I am sure there are no apple stains on it at all.
"However, I have detected a bit of lemon and Steinlager which just goes to show you have to be careful when you're getting the beer out of the chilly bin."
Turnbull had said it would be "cool" to see John Key wearing a gold tie in honour of a Wallabies win.
READ MORE:
* Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull to wear black tie after All Blacks win
* Prime Minister John Key dons Wallabies jersey after losing bet
* Key and Rudd's rugby bet
But after Australia's defeat on Turnbull, responding to a Twitter follower who asked if he intended honouring the bet, said: "I am afraid it does bro". | 8,013,476 |
poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201701/360/1155968404_5298675246001_5298660291001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true GOP leaders won't say how border wall will be paid for
PHILADELPHIA — Republican leaders are vowing to pass a spending bill to build President Donald Trump’s border wall. What they won’t say is how they plan to cover the costs.
House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said Thursday that Congress will pass a supplemental bill before Sept. 30 that would fund a wall building project, which will cost about $12 billion to $15 billion, according to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. But Ryan dodged a question about whether Congress would raise taxes or cut spending to pay for such an endeavor.
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“We’re going to wait and see from the administration what the supplemental looks like. I’m not going to get ahead of a policy and a bill that has not been written yet. But the point is we’re going to finance the Secure Fence Act,” Ryan said, referring to a 2006 bill.
Later Thursday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said a tax overhaul that includes a new 20 percent tax on imports from countries with which the United States has a trade deficit, such as Mexico, would sufficiently fund the wall.
Speaking to reporters at the GOP retreat, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suggested he would oppose such a funding bill without more details about using drones and towers to protect the border and said it's incumbent on newly installed Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to sell the proposal to Congress. McCain also said he was "confident" the initial bill would not include $15 billion in spending.
"A major factor in this will be if Gen. Kelly can come before the Congress and say here’s my plan to give you a secure border," McCain said. “We have to see the details of it and the cost and if they aren’t going to use all those tools I'm talking about I’m not inclined to support it. Whether it will succeed or fail will be directly dependent upon Gen. Kelly’s presentation of a plan for how it’s going to happen. “
Promising that the fence will be paid for with taxpayer dollars could complicate things on Capitol Hill, where coming up with several billion dollars is no small task. Republicans could raise revenues, cut spending or require the U.S. Treasury to borrow money for the costs — a move that would increase the deficit. Later on Thursday, Ryan would not commit that this Congress would keep the deficit from growing, though he said items like infrastructure improvements would be paid for.
“We are fiscal conservatives,” he said. “We have to get our fiscal house in order to prevent a debt crisis in the future.”
Though leaders declined to say how the wall would be funded, rank-and-file conservatives began insisting that no matter what, the wall would be paid for. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said House appropriators were already crafting ways to offset the costs of the border wall.
“I vote for things that are offset. I’m a stronger believer in offsetting, whatever it is you’re gonna be spending money on," said Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho). "The government today borrows one and a quarter billion dollars a day. And that can’t go on. So it needs to be offset.”
Trump clearly wants to get going soon, saying Thursday that if Mexico ultimately doesn’t refund the U.S. for building a border wall “it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting” with the Mexican government. With that urgent directive coming from the new president, Republicans are promising to pass a bill funding the border wall even if they have no guidance on what exactly Trump wants in the legislation.
“The last administration frustrated the deployment of the fence," Ryan said. "This administration is doing the opposite. They’re facilitating the deployment of the fence. We agree with this. We voted for this in 2006, along with plenty of people like our friend Chuck Schumer,” the Senate minority leader.
Republicans will need at least eight Senate Democrats to come together and help pay for the wall — and Schumer (D-N.Y.) indicated earlier this month that he could oppose such legislation. Republicans think the 10 Senate Democrats up for reelection in Trump states could help fund the wall, but it’s going to be a heavy lift regardless.
“The same Republicans who howled ‘fiscal responsibility’ when it comes to investments to help working families are apparently willing to light billions of taxpayer dollars on fire and add to the federal deficit in order to build Trump’s useless border wall,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “The wall is a multi-billion dollar boondoggle in the making." | 8,013,477 |
A $1.5 billion plan to create an all-season tourist destination at Hemlock Resort in the Fraser Valley has been approved by the B.C. government.
The resort, north of Chilliwack, was bought in 2006 by the Langley-based Berezan Group, and the new five-phase plan is based on a collaboration between the developer, the province and the local Sts'ailes Band.
The plan will see the resort's footprint increase from 350 hectares to 6000, and will see an additional 20,000 bed units and 23 lifts added over 60 years.
The plan also includes waterfront development on Harrison Lake, to include a marina and a First Nations-themed village.
Phase 1 will cost $500 million and an estimated 1,153 full-time jobs will be created.
Berezan Group and the Sts'ailes Band will implement a forestry licensing plan that will maintain resource management of the area as the resort is developed.
The mountain resort was one of many in B.C. that suffered from a lack of snow last year, and was forced to cancel the ski season in February.
The 2013/14 season was also badly affected, only saved by a late dump of snow that allowed it to open in January 2014. | 8,013,478 |
A Closer Look: Scaling Analogies With Powers of Ten
It’s not easy to imagine dividing something into ten pieces nine different times.
In order to make the difference in size scales more comprehensible, we can expand the size of the original object to something with which we are familiar. Let’s look at physicist Richard Feynman’s example of expanding a hydrogen atom to the size of an apple.
To make this calculation easier, we round off to the nearest power of ten. Feynman knew that an atom is a few angstroms (10-10 meters) wide. Let’s round off to 10 angstroms = 10-9 meters. An apple is about 10 centimeters (or 10-1 meters) wide. In order to make the hydrogen atom as large as the apple, we have to make it ten times bigger a total of eight times. In other words, we must expand it by a factor of 108:
The size of hydrogen atom (10-9 m) multiplied by the expansion factor (108) equals the size of an apple (10-1 m)
or:
10-9 m x 108 = 10-1 m
An easy trick when multiplying powers of ten is to simply add their exponents (the power to which ten is raised). In the above example, this shortcut gives us
10-9 m x 108 = 10(-9 + 8) m = 10-1 m
To rescale the size of the apple, so that we may compare it to our expanded hydrogen atom, we multiply the size of the apple by the same expansion factor:
The size of an apple (10-1) multiplied by the expansion factor (108) equals the size of earth (107 m or 10,000 km)
or:
10-1 m x 108 = 10(-1 + 8) = 107 m (or 10,000 km)
The diameter of the earth is approximately 12,000 km, so this is a good estimate.
Thus, if you expand a hydrogen atom to the size of an apple, the apple would expand to the size of the Earth. Having a student visualize the difference in scale between an apple and the Earth is more expressive than simply stating that an apple is 108 times bigger than an atom. This is the power of these kinds of analogies. | 8,013,479 |
More than a year into the implementation of a landmark deal on the Iranian nuclear program, Tehran and the European Union are holding a high-level seminar with the aim of promoting bilateral cooperation in the field of atomic energy.
The event, titled “International Nuclear Cooperation: Expectations and Responsibilities,” kicked off in Brussels on Tuesday, with senior European and Iranian officials in attendance.
Joint efforts by European Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action Miguel Arias Canete and Iranian Vice President and head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi have helped bring about the seminar.
Secretary-General of the European External Action Service, Helga Schmid, and Director-General of the European Commission’s Directorate‑General for Energy, Dominique Ristori opened the event.
“The seminar represents an important element of the growing cooperation between Iran and the EU, following Implementation Day of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the European Commission said on its website.
The JCPOA was concluded between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, comprising the US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany, in July 2015, and went into effect in January of the following year.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (R) and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini hold a joint press conference during Iran and the P5+1 talks at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna on January 16, 2016. (Photo by AFP)
AEOI spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi, is heading the Iranian delegation, which also comprises Foreign Ministry officials and parliamentarians.
Read more:
He read out a message by Salehi, in which the AEOI head thanked the EU for its effective and constructive role in the conclusion of the historic accord.
“Development of scientific and technical cooperation between Iran and members of the P5+1 has been one of the fruits of the agreement,” the message added.
In his own address to the conference, Kamalvandi said Tehran’s complete commitment to its contractual obligations has not been met with similar dedication on the part of the other parties to the agreement, “especially some of them.”
“It is hoped that the unbalanced approach in the execution of the contractual obligations will be corrected as soon as possible,” he added.
Despite the removal of nuclear-related sanctions against the Islamic Republic on the back of the agreement, European banks and financial institutions still largely balk at resuming cooperation with Iran, fearing punitive US measures.
Observers say the United States has prevented much post-JCPOA détente and revitalized economic cooperation between Iran and the international community, especially after the inauguration in January of US President Donald Trump. | 8,013,480 |
A federal judge has granted a stay on deportations for people who arrived in the US with valid visas but were detained on entry, following President Donald Trump’s executive order to halt travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.
The stay is only a partial block to the broader executive order, with the judge stopping short of a broader ruling on its constitutionality. Nevertheless, it was an early, significant blow to the new administration.
US airports on frontline as Donald Trump's travel ban causes chaos and protests Read more
Less than 24 hours after two Iraqi men were detained at John F Kennedy airport in New York on Saturday morning, Judge Ann Donnelly of the federal district court in Brooklyn ordered an emergency stay, blocking the deportation of any individual currently being held in airports across the United States.
“I think the government hasn’t had a full chance to think about this,” Donnelly told a packed courtroom.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups filed the lawsuit earlier on Saturday, challenging the detention of the two Iraqi men, with two more plaintiffs later added to the suit, who were both valid US green-card holders. But the judge’s ruling extended to all individuals facing similar situations across the United States.
The two Iraqis, who spent hours detained at JFK, were Hameed Khalid Darweesh, who had worked for the US government for a decade, and Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who arrived in the country to join his wife, a US contractor.
Donnelly, who was nominated by former president Barack Obama, ruled that the deportations could cause the plaintiffs “irreparable harm” by returning them to countries where they had been threatened. She also noted that the plaintiffs included visa-holders who had already been approved for entry to the US and who, only two days before, would have been let into the country without incident.
“Obviously, we’re extremely pleased,” the head of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, told the Guardian. The judge, he said, “obviously gets the importance of the executive order and its impact on hundreds if not thousands of immigrants and refugees”.
The stay, which applies nationwide, will last at least until a hearing scheduled for 21 February, the judge said, and includes people on valid visas of all kinds and green-card holders.
However, it would only impact those who were “on American soil” – ie those who had been mid-flight or had landed while the executive order was being signed by the president, Romero said.
He estimated that there were at least 100-200 people being held in airports across the country, but said the number could be higher. Asked by the judge to confirm the number, government lawyers were unable to respond with confidence.
Donnelly ordered the government to provide a list of all people being held in violation of the order at US airports or in flights, to protests from the government lawyers.
“I don’t think it’s unduly burdensome to get a list of names,” Donnelly said.
Darweesh and Alshawi had both been released earlier on Saturday, the US attorney confirmed. However, Romero specified that Darweesh had been released “at the discretion of the executive branch”.
Despite the stay, lawyers for the plaintiffs and civil liberties advocates raised immediate concerns for the wellbeing of those granted a stay, as it was widely assumed that they would be held in immigration detention facilities until their hearing, three weeks away.
New York Yemenis stunned by Trump's ban: 'I feel like somebody has killed me' Read more
“It’s a long time for people to be sitting in detention centers,” Romero said, adding that the ACLU would be monitoring the conditions in those facilities.
Brian Chesky, the co-founder of Airbnb, tweeted that his company would provide “free housing to refugees and anyone not allowed in the US” and suggested that anyone in urgent need of housing should contact him.
Judge Donnelly suggested the lawyers should return to court if the travelers were to be placed in detention rather than be released. “I guess I’ll just hear from you,” she said.
Earlier on Saturday, President Trump’s executive order, signed the day before, sowed chaos in airports, universities, corporations and living rooms in the US and abroad, as people grappled with the ramifications of its sometimes vague language.
Travelers were pulled off planes or detained at checkpoints, universities urged at-risk students not to leave the country or to seek legal advice and tech giants recalled their workers from abroad. Families took calls from panicked loved ones who were unable to return to their homes, with everything from cars to pets waiting where they left them.
While the ruling gave hope to those detained on US soil, millions of people around the world face uncertain futures. They include They include Farah Alkhafji, who came to the US as a refugee from Iraq having endured the killing of her husband, the burning of her house and the kidnapping of her father, was just weeks away from taking her US citizenship test.
Another is Hayder, who has asked the Guardian not to use his real name. He survived multiple bomb attacks while translating for US troops during the war in Iraq. He has a plane ticket from Texas from Baghdad that he may never get to use.
Shortly after Donnelly’s ruling, a federal judge in Virginia banned the deportation of detainees being held at Dulles international airport and ordered officials there to allow detainees to meet with their lawyers. Judge Leonie Brinkema’s temporary restraining order, however, blocked deportations for just seven days.
In another case in Washington state, federal Judge Thomas Zilly stopped the US government from deporting two people. A hearing was set for 3 February for Zilly “to determine whether to lift the stay”.
The hearing in Brooklyn, though short, was potent and dealt the first successful legal challenge to an administration which has barrelled aggressively through its first week in power, implementing a draconian set of “extreme vetting” measures.
The swift pace at which the travel ban was drawn up was plain in the conduct of the court. Lawyers representing the government displayed a clear lack of information, echoing the confusion of various government agencies and officials in the past 24 hours, who had been implementing the order haphazardly.
“Things have unfolded with such speed, that we haven’t had time to review the legal situation yet,” an attorney representing the government said.
Alerted by the ACLU to the fact that a Syrian woman with a valid US green card had been detained upon arrival into the United States and had been placed on a plane due to take off “back to Syria” within 30 minutes, the judge moved swiftly to reach her conclusion.
Iraqis lament Trump travel ban that disregards their service to America Read more
“Apparently there is someone being put on a plane. What do you think about that?” an increasingly frustrated Donnelly asked lawyers for the government. “Back to Syria.” She pressed them further on whether the government could give assurances that the woman would suffer no “irreparable harm” upon her arrival in Syria.
But Gisela Westwater, a government lawyer who spoke to the judge by phone from Washington, simply replied that the government did not have sufficient information about the woman or the circumstances of her detention. “And as your honor has suggested, we all do require additional time to have more facts.”
“Well that’s exactly why I’m going to grant this stay,” Donnelly replied to muffled cheers in the room. Theaudience, which included civil liberties advocates, lawyers and journalists who had tunnelled through a crowd of protesters chanting “No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here”, was told by the judge to rein in their palpable excitement.
A lawyer with the ACLU later confirmed that US immigration officials were removing the Syrian woman from the plane.
Several hundred people waited for the verdict outside the courthouse, holding signs and chanting “Let them go!” and “We believe that we will win”. When the verdict was announced to the crowd less than an hour later, those gathered in the bitter cold erupted in loud cheers.
Similar protests were replicated at more than a dozen airports around the country. Hundreds of people gathered to demonstrate at Kennedy airport in New York and the international ports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia and other cities where people were detained and families separated overnight. Multiple immigration lawyers were also at airports, offering their services pro-bono to those detained.
Additional reporting by Spencer Ackerman. | 8,013,481 |
Chevrolet When the all-new model, known to aficionados as the C7, debuts at the Detroit Auto Show next January, Chevy is clearly hoping to deliver the sort of sports car that can challenge global leaders like Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini.
It’s long been known as “America’s sports car.” But as Chevrolet gets ready to roll out the latest version of the Corvette, that’s clearly no longer good enough for the General Motors division.
When the all-new model, known to aficionados as the C7, debuts at the Detroit Auto Show next January, Chevy is clearly hoping to deliver the sort of sports car that can challenge global leaders like Ferrari, Porsche and Lamborghini.
"We set out to build a world-challenging sports car with design, refinement, efficiency and drive engagement that is second to none," declared Tadge Juechter, the program’s chief designer.
The new model, as its code name signifies, will be only the seventh version of the Corvette since its debut in 1953. First seen in concept form at GM’s annual Motorama car show in New York City, the production “’Vette” quickly developed a following among those who wanted an alternative to the heavy steel land yachts rolling off Detroit’s assembly lines.
Though early models were more show than go, they were popularized in song and on such TV shows as “Route 66,” a CBS series that followed two buddies cruising the back roads of the West in search of adventure.
By the late 1960s, models like the legendary Corvette Stingray had evolved into some of the more powerful automobiles ever produced in the U.S. But the twin oil shocks of the 1970s changed the automotive equation. Downsized Japanese automobiles challenged the Detroit mainstream, while European brands delivered sleek and more nimble alternatives to U.S. luxury and sports car buyers.
While the Corvette could still deliver neck-snapping acceleration off the line, it couldn’t come close to matching the handling of a Porsche or Ferrari in the corners. At the other end of the price spectrum, Americans discovered nimble little Japanese models like the Mazda Miata and so-called rice rockets such as the Honda Civic.
The Detroit Bureau Chevrolet reveals the heart of the C7 Corvette.
The GM division shifted gears with a fifth-generation Corvette introduced in 1997 and the even smaller, more nimble C6 that debuted eight years later, now about the size and weight of a Porsche 911 — though still boasting the trademark small block V-8 that had powered Corvettes since the mid-1950s.
Despite such improvements, efforts by Chevy to sell its two-seater abroad gained little traction except among a few select fans who wanted something decidedly offbeat. But with Chevrolet today earmarked as GM’s lead brand globally, the automaker is clearly targeting its European rivals with the C7.
And that’s led to an assortment of rumors about what’s in store. Early in its development, there was speculation that Chevy engineers would shift to a Lamborghini-like midengine layout, or migrate to the sort of small, high-tech turbo or supercharged six-cylinder power trains favored by other European competitors.
As the development program heads for the finish line, spy shots have begun leaking out showing that the new Corvette won’t be nearly as radical as some had anticipated. The 2014 model appears to be roughly the same size as the current C6, although it’s expected to make use of new materials and advanced manufacturing techniques that will result in a sports car that’s lighter, more aerodynamically efficient and a lot more nimble.
Meanwhile, the new C7 Corvette will deliver even more power than before. Chevy this week revealed the next-generation LT1 engine, a 6.2-liter small block that is expected to make “at least” 450 horsepower and 450 foot-pounds of torque — 20 horsepower and 26 foot-pounds more than the outgoing LS3 V-8.
AP file This undated file photo released by General Motors shows a 1953 Chevrolet Corvette. When the all-new model debuts at the Detroit Auto Show next January, it will be only the seventh version of the Corvette since its debut in 1953.
If the new two-seater is indeed notably lighter than the outgoing Corvette, that would signify a major improvement in its power-to-weight ratio. For the moment, Juechter is only hinting that it will deliver zero-to-60 times of 4.0 seconds or less, “and that is on the entry-level vehicle.” Chevy has yet to reveal what it has in store for the limited-edition Corvette Z06 and ZR1 versions.
There may yet be some surprises, such as a small, high-tech power train option, more in line with the likes of Porsche or Ferrari, but that possibility — along with a shift to a midengine layout — appear likely to be on hold for the eventual C8 Corvette.
The one other detail Chevy is confirming is that there’ll be an all-new “crossed flags” logo appearing on the 2014 Corvette.
While the Corvette has always been a low-volume niche product, it is the halo brand for Chevrolet and takes on even more significance as the brand’s role grows for post-bankruptcy GM.
So, anticipate plenty of media attention in the weeks building up to the January auto show in Detroit, including a flood of spy shots and endless reports and speculation. This could be a critical moment for America’s sports car and a critical opportunity to take on the world’s best.
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Pushing for a huge, across-the-board tax cut in the final year of his life, President John F. Kennedy dismissed the idea that it would increase the debt in the long run: “By removing tax roadblocks to new jobs and new growth,” he declared, “the enactment of this measure next year will eventually more than make up in new revenue all that it will initially cost.”
When assessing the legacy of President Kennedy 50 years after his death, journalist Ira Stoll makes the case that Kennedy wasn’t what we think: The title of his new book “JFK, Conservative” says it all.
Stoll lays out Kennedy’s fierce anti-communism, his religious devotion (he gave faith-based speeches of a kind Michele Bachmann might consider extreme today) and his advocacy for low deficits, a strong dollar, free trade, tax cuts, free enterprise and individual responsibility. If JFK were here today, he would either have to renounce most of what he stood for or join the Republican party.
Even as late as 1980, supply-side policies could be denounced as “voodoo economics” by George H.W. Bush, but before the term was popularized Kennedy was an instinctive supply-sider. It’s important to keep in mind how unusually courageous a stance this was. The triumph of Keynesian economic theory in the immediate postwar decades was complete. It was simply taken for granted by the leadership class that the government needed to stimulate the economy with centralized spending during downturns. One adviser to Kennedy, the Keynes disciple John Kenneth Galbraith, argued as much. The waggish Kennedy simply exiled him with the post of Ambassador to India.
Kennedy inherited a major recession (a contraction at an annualized rate of five percent in the fourth quarter of 1960) but kept domestic spending basically flat while ramping up military and overseas spending. Though he did preside over a 25 percent increase (over two years) in the federal minimum wage and launch several domestic programs beloved by liberals including food stamps and what became Medicare when it was passed in 1965, he harbored deep suspicions of the creeping influence of the state. Albert Jay Nock’s anti-New Deal book “Our Enemy, the State” was a volume JFK kept at his Boston home in the 1950s and he sometimes echoed the book in public statements. “I do not believe in a super state,” he said in a 1960 speech in which he declared himself a liberal, with heavy qualifiers that made him sound more like one of today’s conservatives. “I see no magic to tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned,” he continued, smartly summarizing the voodoo economics of Keynesianism. “I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well.”
Even Kennedy’s “ask what you can do for your country” line may not be as chilling an endorsement of state supremacy as it appears: longtime Democratic operative and pundit Chris Matthews believes it was simply a “hard Republican-sounding slap at the welfare state.” JFK didn’t seem to foresee what would happen to Medicare, calling it “a very modest proposal cut to meet absolutely essential needs, and with sufficient ‘deductible’ requirements to discourage any malingering or unnecessary overcrowding of our hospitals.” He also twice rejected a union proposal to reduce the work week from 40 hours to 35. He kept deficits modest (his budget shortfalls for 1961-63 were, when totalled, only slightly more than the 1959 deficit alone), maintained a strict, inflation-fighting price of $35 to the ounce of gold and, despite his gauzy rhetoric about a New Frontier, framed the Space Race as simply a new front in the Cold War: “Everything that we do really ought to be tied in to getting onto the moon and ahead of the Russians….Otherwise we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money, because I’m not that interested in space.”
Kennedy reserved the bulk of his energy for opposing communism abroad and freeing up markets at home. Pushing for “the fullest possible measure of tariff reduction,” Kennedy made a stirring appeal. In 1962 he said, “The American consumer benefits most of all from an increase in foreign trade. Imports give him a wider choice of products at competitive prices….The warnings against increased imports based upon the lower level of wages paid in other countries are not telling the whole story.” And he added that the “philosophy of the free market” was “not a partisan philosophy” but is “as old as freedom itself.” Kennedy carried on a robust disagreement with statist Sen. Al Gore Sr. about the virtues of Keynesianism: Gore later said, “I thought the real needs of our society lay in the inadequacy of health, education, transportation. These were largely in the public sector. Not the private sector.” He also warned dourly that “once taxes are cut, they are not likely to be reimposed.”
Exactly, replied Kennedy, who understood that only permanent tax cuts provide a true economic stimulus because consumers who expect their taxes to go right back up after a momentary easing tend to spend cautiously. “To increase demand and lift our economy,” he said in 1962, “the Federal Government’s most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures….the greatest danger is a tax cut too little or too late to be effective.” Republicans, in general, considered the idea of tax cuts reckless, and in the Kennedy-Nixon debates it was the former who mused about the presumed need to increase taxes. Kennedy even framed his tax relief as a Civil Rights issue: “In 1963 he counted on his tax cut to reduce Negro unemployment,” wrote his adviser Arthur Schlesinger.
It’s almost impossible to picture a Democrat even speaking this way anymore, and yet Kennedy followed up on his beliefs with action. As his speechwriter Ted Sorensen put it, “In fiscal matters, he was extremely conservative, very cautious about the size of the budget.” He went on to say, years later that Kennedy, “never identified himself as a liberal….on fiscal matters he was more conservative than any president we’ve had since. On Nov. 22, 1963, the fateful motorcade through Dallas was headed for Fort Worth, where Kennedy planned to say these words: “by maintaining a more stable level of prices than almost any of our overseas competitors, and by cutting personal and corporate income taxes by some $11 billion, as I have proposed, [we will] assure this Nation of the longest and strongest expansion in our peacetime economic history.” Ronald Reagan couldn’t have said it better. | 8,013,483 |
The country's only playing cards manufacturer had been subtly marking its cards to help gamblers in the know cheat their way to a fortune.
Officials at Caesar's Casino in Johannesburg first suspected something when over a three-week period blackjack takings dropped by 11 per cent, with total takings plummeting by $333,000 in 19 days.
A winning hand at blackjack has a value close to but below 21
At least five gamblers behaved strangely, either darting their eyes quickly over the deck or making bets of widely different amounts.
Investigators found that the patterns on the back of the ten, jack, queen, king and ace were almost imperceptibly different.
Each were found to have a tiny blank space inside a repeated floral pattern on the horizontal edge on the back of the card, visible to players before the croupier deals.
Over a year the equivalent losses across the whole industry would have reached some $10m, said Ernie Joubert, chief executive of Global Resorts which part-owns the casino near Johannesburg.
The company said it had received 4,000 marked packs.
Other casinos alerted
Executives believe information about the marked cards was sold to gamblers either for a flat fee or commissions on their winnings.
It was not clear exactly who was behind the operation and no arrests have been announced.
Protea Playing Cards has been the sole card supplier to all 22 of South Africa's casinos and others in southern Africa for more than a decade.
The company has not yet commented.
Investigations are now under way to find out whether other casinos are affected.
"People always thought ... that South African blackjack players were the best in the world," Mr Joubert said. "Now there may be another reason."
Casinos in South Africa generate revenues of more than $333m a year. | 8,013,484 |
Most treaties submitted to the Senate have received its advice and consent to ratification. During its first 200 years, the Senate approved more than 1,500 treaties and rejected only 21. A number of these, including the Treaty of Versailles, were rejected twice. Most often, the Senate has simply not voted on treaties that its leadership deemed not to have sufficient support within the Senate for approval, and in general these treaties have eventually been withdrawn. At least 85 treaties were eventually withdrawn because the Senate never took final action on them. Treaties may also remain in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for extended periods, since treaties are not required to be resubmitted at the beginning of each new Congress. There have been instances in which treaties have lain dormant within the committee for years, even decades, without action being taken.
The Constitution provides that the president "shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur" ( Article II, section 2 ). The Constitution's framers gave the Senate a share of the treaty power in order to give the president the benefit of the Senate's advice and counsel, check presidential power, and safeguard the sovereignty of the states by giving each state an equal vote in the treatymaking process. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist no. 75 , “the operation of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the participation of the whole or a portion of the legislative body in the office of making them.” The constitutional requirement that the Senate approve a treaty with a two-thirds vote means that successful treaties must gain support that overcomes partisan division. The two-thirds requirement adds to the burdens of the Senate leadership, and may also encourage opponents of a treaty to engage in a variety of dilatory tactics in hopes of obtaining sufficient votes to ensure its defeat.
During the summer of 1787 delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated the structure and responsibilities of a new legislative body. One of the questions they posed was, should the power of treatymaking reside within the legislative or executive branch? Under the Articles of Confederation a treaty could be entered into with the consent of nine of the thirteen states, or two-thirds. Some delegates, such as South Carolina’s Charles Pinckney, urged that the Senate, where each state had equal representation, should have the sole power to make treaties. Alexander Hamilton argued that the executive branch should exercise powers related to foreign relations, and should therefore have the power to make treaties “with the advice and approbation of the Senate.” In the end, Hamilton’s argument proved most persuasive.
Since the first Congress convened on March 4, 1789, the U.S. Senate has carefully guarded its concurrent power in treatymaking. On August 22, 1789, President George Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox arrived at the Senate Chamber seeking the Senate’s advice and consent to a treaty with Native American Indian tribes. While the president, seated in the presiding officer’s chair, and his secretary waited, the Senate voted to refer these questions to a committee rather than debate the issue in the presence of the august president. Irritated, Washington decided that, in the future, he would send communications regarding treaties in writing, setting the precedent that all of his successors have followed.
The Senate approved the ratification of one of the most contentious treaties in U.S. history during the Washington administration. At the urging of Federalist Party senators, the president sent Chief Justice John Jay to London to settle open disputes with Great Britain. Washington did not consult the full Senate before requesting its advice and consent to the completed treaty, known as the Jay Treaty. The treaty's opponents, mostly Jeffersonian Republicans, supported New York senator Aaron Burr's motion to reopen the negotiations, pursuant to a set of specific proposals, but Federalist senators defeated that plan and secured the approval of the controversial Jay Treaty on June 24, 1795. Jeffersonian Republicans in control of the House of Representatives threatened to withhold the funding necessary to affect some of its provisions, but the appropriation ultimately passed the House on April 30, 1796, by a narrow margin. It was a critical victory for the Senate's unique and vital role in the making of treaties.
Originally, the Senate had conducted its sessions behind closed doors, and debates over the Jay Treaty were no exception. Even after the Senate opened a public gallery in December 1795, the tradition of debating treaties and nominations in secret session continued into the early 20th century. Newspapers frequently published accounts of the secret discussions, occasionally printing the text of a treaty before senators received their official copies. The Senate investigated, fretted, and protested but proved powerless to stop the leaks, which likely came from the members themselves. Not until 1929 were executive sessions routinely open to the press and the public. Today the Senate holds closed sessions only under the rarest of circumstances, usually to deal with classified information.
Advice and Consent
The Constitution provides that the Senate exercise its “advice and consent” in treatymaking, an ambiguous phrase which presidents and senators have debated since the nation’s founding. During the War of 1812, Delaware senator James Bayard was a member of the delegation to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent. His presence raised the question of whether having senators on the negotiating team would make the Senate more favorably inclined to approve the treaty, or whether it would violate the separation of powers. That debate has continued for generations without resolution. The Senate rejected a number of treaties during the last quarter of the 19th century. In an effort to avoid the same fate for his peace treaty with Spain, President William McKinley shrewdly named three U.S. senators to negotiate the treaty in 1898. Senators from both parties roundly criticized his action, but the Senate ultimately approved ratification of the resulting treaty. A generation later, senators criticized President Woodrow Wilson for not including members in the delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I and establishing the League of Nations. Instead, Wilson personally negotiated the treaty. When the president hand delivered the treaty to the Senate on July 10, 1919, Democrats mostly supported it, but Republicans were divided. The “Reservationists,” led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, called for approval of the treaty only if certain reservations, or alterations, were adopted. The “Irreconcilables” opposed the treaty in any form. In November Lodge sent the treaty with 14 reservations to the Senate floor, prompting an angry Wilson to urge Democrats to reject Lodge’s plan. On November 19, 1919, a group of Democratic senators joined the Irreconcilables to defeat the treaty. The United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles nor did it join the League of Nations. With the Treaty of Versailles in mind, Wilson's successor, Warren G. Harding—who had served as a senator during the fight for the treaty's ratification—appointed Senator Lodge and Democratic Leader Oscar Underwood as delegates to the Washington Arms Limitation Conference to improve the likelihood of the Senate’s consent to ratification. For much the same reason, Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman involved the chairman, Tom Connally, and the ranking Republican of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Arthur Vandenberg, in the creation of the United Nations. This action helped to spare the U.N. the fate of the League of Nations; there were only two Senate votes against its charter.
Executive Agreements
In addition to treaties, which may not enter into force and become binding on the United States without the advice and consent of the Senate, there are other types of international agreements concluded by the executive branch and not submitted to the Senate. These are classified in the United States as executive agreements, not as treaties, a distinction that has only domestic significance. International law regards each mode of international agreement as binding, whatever its designation under domestic law. The challenge of obtaining two-thirds vote on treaties was one of the motivating forces behind the vast increase in executive agreements after World War II. In 1952, for instance, the United States signed 14 treaties and 291 executive agreements. This was a larger number of executive agreements than had been reached during the entire century of 1789 to 1889. Executive agreements continue to grow at a rapid rate. In recent years, the growth in executive agreements is also attributable to the sheer volume of business conducted between the United States and other countries, coupled with the already heavy workload of the Senate. Many international agreements are of relatively minor importance and would needlessly overburden the Senate if they were submitted as treaties for advice and consent. Another factor has been the passage of legislation authorizing the executive branch to conclude international agreements in certain fields, such as foreign aid, agriculture, and trade. Treaties have also been approved that authorize further agreements between the parties. According to a 1984 study by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, "88.3 percent of international agreements reached between 1946 and 1972 were based at least partly on statutory authority; 6.2 percent were treaties, and 5.5 percent were based solely on executive authority." | 8,013,485 |
Perhaps it’s about injecting Hollywood glamour into New York’s classical musical world. Or maybe it’s about a local boy coming home to make good. Or maybe it’s just about getting a name in granite.
However you look at it, the world of New York high culture was given a surprise dose of glitz on Wednesday, when Lincoln Center announced that David Geffen, the entertainment mogul who has shaped cultural tastes in pop music, art and movies, will donate $100 million to renovate — and rename — Avery Fisher Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, at Lincoln Center.
Mr. Geffen’s gift will help pay for the hall’s gut renovation, which is expected to cost more than $500 million. Although construction is not scheduled to begin until 2019, the building will become David Geffen Hall this September, with the start of the Philharmonic’s 2015-16 season.
The hall, built in 1962, has long been viewed as outdated and acoustically problematic. But raising money promised to be a challenge; the family of Avery Fisher had threatened legal action 13 years ago if the concert hall were to be rebuilt or renovated under a new name. That obstacle was overcome in November, when the Fisher family agreed to give up the naming rights with inducements including a $15 million check. | 8,013,486 |
I just watched, for the first time in over 20 years, the third season blooper reel from Star Trek The Next Generation. It’s going to be included on the Blu-Ray disc, and I get to see it before it’s released to offer any notes or concerns that will be politely ignored.
It’s very, very funny. By the third season, we were all a very close-knit family on the set, and when we messed up, we laughed about it and reset the scene.
Well, everyone, that is, but me. In this reel, when I screw up, I get angry at myself. I try to laugh, but it’s clear that I am frustrated beyond belief. I say, “I am so sorry,” but without any of the 10th Doctor’s charm. My frustration and embarrassment is palpable.
When I watched this just now, I viscerally remembered being that awkward 15 and then 16 year-old kid, with the awful helmet hair, the uncomfortable grey spacesuit with the embarrassing muscle suit underneath it, and almost crippling desire to be the kind of cool I was never going to be. I remembered how, when I was on the bridge spouting nothing but technobabble (which was a large percentage of what Wesley got to do in Season 3, so much so that it lead to my asking to be written off the show), it was so hard to remember because it didn’t mean anything, and that was frustrating on a number of levels. I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to perform a character, and most of what I remember doing that season was plotting courses and saying “Aye, sir.” In the blissful, arrogant ignorance of being a teenager, it never occurred to me that there were eight regular cast members, and everyone except the Holy Trinity of Picard, Riker and Data had their turn spouting technobabble and saying “Aye, sir.” I was the only one who was too young and foolish to understand. I was the only one who was too young and foolish to attempt to understand.
Wesley (and I) did get to do some really great things in Season 3: The Bonding is fantastic and Ron Moore wrote a couple of magnificent scenes for Wesley in that episode, Evolution was pretty awesome (and I got to work a lot with Whoopi, which was as totally cool as you’d expect it to be, and got real character growth from writer Michael Piller), and Yesterday’s Enterprise remains one of my favourite episodes of all time. But, like youth being wasted on the young, most of what made that season awesome was wasted on me.
Season 3 and part of Season 4 are really tough for me to watch, because I regret being such a tool back then. I wish I could go back in time and tell that kid to relax and enjoy what was a pretty awesome job, but I know that he wouldn’t listen to me any more than he’d have listened to anyone else. He was a confused, weird, awkward nerd trying so hard to be an adult, and failing spectacularly.
I wish I could go back in time and have a talk with that kid, but I learned something important from Star Trek when Picard told Riker: “There are many parts of my youth that I’m not proud of… there were loose threads… untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads… it had unraveled the tapestry of my life.”
I will continue to simultaneously feel ashamed of myself, embarrassed by myself, but compassionate towards myself. That kid was doing the best that he could, and I’ll keep trying to accept that. Maybe one day, I’ll even make peace with it.
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An Astonishing Colorist Laura Martin By Jennifer M. Contino
March 1, 2006
Award-winning colorist (and Sequential Tart 's Art Director) Laura Martin sat down with us to answer a few quick questions about her upcoming plans for world domination — both in and out of comics.
Sequential Tart: You're working on, among other things, one of the highest profile comics that Marvel currently puts out, Astonishing X-Men . As someone who, generally, likes to be kind of a private person, how does it feel to be working on something like this that has everyone talking, voicing opinions, and, probably, asking you a million questions at conventions, in email, and through other sources?
Laura Martin: I'm loving it! I admit that I don't read a lot of the press, except for the letters in the back of the book, but every once in a while a review will catch my eye and I blush at the praise — not just for me but for Joss and John and for the characters. The truth is, I just love this book, and would pick it up even if I wasn't working on it, which is high praise indeed as I don't read much superhero stuff anymore. So all the buzz over it is well deserved, in my oh-so-very humble opinion. Me? I'm just happy to be here!
I don't mind answering questions about the work I do. Since I don't hang out on messageboards as much as I used to, and I've cut down my convention attendance — I don't get sought out that much. Which is nice, because then I can take the time to chat with the few people who do seek me out. :)
ST: When you work on several different projects at one time — as you're usually spending your days, nights, and every other waking moment doing, how do you differentiate the pallette between them? What factors determine your color style for each book?
LM: Overall, I'll adjust my palette a certain way depending on the story. Take a look at the three Cassaday books I'm on — I Am Legion is a grim thriller set in World War II; Planetary is a modern-day detective tale with supernatural overtones; and Astonishing X-Men is a straight-up superhero story. So each book has a specific overall palette, even though it's the same artist on all three books. I wouldn't use X-Men Yellow in a WWII setting, for instance, nor would I use such an earthy palette in X-Men .
Beyond that, I try to differentiate each scene by its color scheme. I like it when each scene is noticeably different from other scenes in the book. You'll notice that especially in Ultimates, where we're spanning numerous locations, from the Triskelion to characters' homes to the streets of New York ... each location has its own palette, but it still corresponds with the story and mood.
ST: Have you ever colored a project straight from pencils — like some comics are being created now? If so, how is that different than working with inks? If not, is it something you'd like to attempt in the future?
LM: I colored some Ultimate Fantastic Four colors over pencils; on the first two or three, I had a hard time, but I eventually got the hang of it. The approach is looser, sketchier; I use the pencil or hard brush tool to create deliberate strokes, and don't even touch the gradient tool, which is what I use quite often in my regular work. It does require a lot more attention to detail and therefore a lot more time. When it comes out right, it's totally fun; when it doesn't, it's excruciatingly frustrating.
The Serenity miniseries was also colored over pencils, but that was an odd situation — Will Conrad drew the pages as if they were going to be inked. For instance, rather than creating different values of shading with the pencil, which I could have then tinted, he crosshatched all of his shadow areas. All I had to do was darken the pencils, and suddenly it looked like it had been inked. I was caught in a conundrum: do I darken the pencils and color it "straight" (as if it were inked), or do I obliterate most of Will's work and create my own shadows to make it look "painted"? Eventually the deadline dictated what I did. I really think it was my least successful project, ever, and a big part of me wishes I could go back and take the other path. Especially since I loved the TV show Firefly so much.
Would I do another project like this? I really don't know. I think I'd have to powwow with the artist first to see how he or she is approaching the art, and hopefully share my own ideas and approaches. Digitally painting a book should be a collaborative effort all the way, even more so than with standard coloring.
ST: As someone who probably gets offers on a daily basis to color one series or another, what factors — aside from the payment of course — influence whether or not you really want to take on another assignment?
LM: The biggest factor is time. I'm notoriously bad about overextending myself; as you mentioned before, it seems like I'm always working. So I have to take great care in predicting whether my schedule can handle the extra work. Especially since I'm in school now, and homework has to take priority on occasion. Sure, the art and the story have their influences, but by and large it's the time factor that will make or break my decision.
ST: If one of our readers is thinking about possibly coloring comics as a career, where would you direct him or her to learn more about this and to find help that would let them make an educated decision whether to pursue the career or not? What do you think are some of the best resources to help in cases like that?
LM: Probably the best primer for a beginning colorist is Mark Chiarello's The DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering Comics . (2004, Watson-Guptill Publications) It's a great handbook for everything from color theory to troubleshooting strategies. It assumes a general basic knowledge of Photoshop, which any colorist student should already have, although the steps are clearly described even for a beginner Photoshopper.
Another great resource is GuruEFX's How to Color for Comics (2004, Antarctic Press) series. The series goes into greater detail about technique and style. This should be within reach of any new colorist's Wacom tablet.
Beyond that ... there are tons of discussions on Gutterzombie.com about all sorts of specific issues, plus critiques and feedback from some of the industry's best and most prolific colorists. There are also discussions about the less savory side of coloring, such as the heinous deadlines, the constantly-shifting page rates, questionable contracts and shady publishers. When it comes to actually making a living in this industry, that's your best bet for a "street education".
ST: How, in just the time you've been a colorist professionally, do you think the industry has changed the most?
LM: I've noticed two major and interrelated changes: One, there wasn't much manga available in comic stores in 1995; now it's paying the rent in many stores. As a result, female fans — particularly of the teen and tween variety — have also increased exponentially. Girls don't come to the conventions just to accompany their boyfriends; now it's the boyfriend who gets dragged along in the fangirl's wake. It's good to see girls in comics stores, although I don't know if they're even looking at the American books ...
Those are huge changes, but the biggest change by far has been the Internet. In 1995, the Internet existed, but modems were too slow to handle large graphics. The consumer-level broadband modem provided a delivery system capable of publishing comics on the web. Online comics grew into their own category. Fans could interact more directly with their favorite creators and publishers. Reviews could be published the day the comic hit the stands. Dozens of comics journalism sites cropped up. Books could be ordered from online distributors or directly from the publisher. Excitement or apathy about a particular project could spread quickly and could make or break that book's future. People have access to books that aren't available in the U.S. — including manga. The impact on the market is HUGE.
ST: When you think about the future, is coloring comics something you think you'd be happy doing until you "retire" or do you have dreams of doing something else — either in comics or another field?
LM: There are so many things that I want to do that I can't even list them all here! Every time my interest gets piqued, I start dreaming about launching myself off in a different direction. In fact, I'm going back to college, contemplating a major in visual effects or animation. I do know that I'd like to do more digital painting on my own, maybe expand into illustration or matte paintings (backdrops for film) ... maybe learn how to make maquettes ... who knows where this will lead me?
So what I'm trying to say is, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. :)
But I always come back to comics. I like my career; it's been extremely good to me. I would have a very hard time giving this up, and will probably keep one foot in coloring as long as I can — and as long as my pencilers and editors want me!
ST: Where can our readers see more of your work?
LM: Before you ask: No, I don't have a gallery website. The closest thing I have is my Livejournal Scrapbook which contains some portfolio pieces, as well as personal and school projects. In print: Keep an eye out for Astonishing X-Men , The Ultimates , and Planetary ; also, the English version of I Am Legion Vol. 2 should be hitting the racks any time now! And if you just want to chat about colors, stop by Gutterzombie. I'm there at least once per day. See you on the Intarwub!
Laura Martin Scrapbook A place where you can see some of Laura's portfolio pieces.
Gutterzombie A place where colorists and those interested in that field hang out and chat about the industry.
The DC Comics Guide To Coloring and Lettering Comics An excellent source for budding colorists to learn more about the field.
GuruEFX's How To Color For Comics Another fine resource for those interested in coloring comics. | 8,013,488 |
A woman who continued receiving public assistance after winning hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Michigan lottery game was found dead in a Detroit suburb this weekend.
Amanda Clayton, 25, was sleeping with her 18-month-old daughter at a home in Ecorse when, according to police, she died of a possible drug overdose.
The baby "was right next to her sleeping. They were watching a movie together. She started crying, and that’s when Rachel walked in and she tried to see what was going on and she flipped (Clayton) and she was gone,” a friend's boyfriend told CNN affiliate WXYZ-TV, asking that he not be identified.
The WXYZ story did not further identify Rachel, but the station reported that a friend and her boyfriend had been babysitting Clayton's daughter and son.
An autopsy has been completed, according to the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, and no definite cause of death can be determined until a toxicology report comes back in six to eight weeks, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Clayton won $1 million in the "Make Me Rich" lottery game show in October. She took a lump sum, and after taxes, had a little more than $500,000 with which she bought a house and car. She also continued to collect $200 a month in state food assistance until the state learned of the lottery win and pulled her benefits in March.
Asked by CNN affiliate WDIV-TV if she felt she was entitled to the money, she replied, "I thought that they would cut me off, but since they didn't, I thought maybe it was OK because I'm not working."
After the state Department of Human Services and Office of Inspector General looked into the matter, the Lincoln Park woman was charged with two felony counts of welfare fraud.
Michigan law requires that public aid recipients report any changes to their assets within 10 days, but the state inquiry revealed that Clayton collected $5,475 in food and medical benefits for which she should have been ineligible.
Clayton pleaded no contest to the charges and was placed on probation in July, The Detroit News reported, adding that her attorney said she had paid back the inappropriate benefits. The case prompted state legislation barring lottery winners from receiving government benefits.
The friend's boyfriend who spoke to WXYZ said Clayton had been in "a bad stage" lately and had been tormented in the aftermath of her lottery win.
"So many people tried to take advantage of her, act like they are her friends just to get some money from her. It gets to the point where you start questioning yourself: Are they really my friends or are they using me?” he said.
A neighbor who had known Clayton for at least 17 years described her to The Detroit News as "a nice, pleasant girl who never got in trouble, until she won the lottery."
Sheryl Schonfeld also told the newspaper that Clayton had been going through a custody battle over her son, had recently moved to escape her boyfriend's pestering and that Clayton's mother recently said Amanda had been taking prescription drugs.
In August, the paper reported, two men and two women were arraigned after Clayton and a neighbor were involved in a dispute over yard clippings. Clayton had cut her grass and left the clippings in the driveway of neighbor Victor Bartola, who swept them back into her yard, The Detroit News said.
The two argued, and a friend of Clayton's left and returned with three other people, according to the paper. A fight broke out involving a knife, bat and airsoft gun, and Bartola was hospitalized and released, the paper reported.
Clayton's funeral is scheduled for Wednesday in Allen Park. | 8,013,489 |
Sultan Hussein Kamel (Arabic: السلطان حسين كامل, Turkish: Sultan Hüseyin Kamil Paşa[dubious – discuss]; November 1853 – 9 October 1917) was the Sultan of Egypt from 19 December 1914 to 9 October 1917, during the British protectorate over Egypt.
Hussein Kamel was the second son of Khedive Isma'il Pasha, who ruled Egypt from 1863 to 1879. Hussein Kamel was declared Sultan of Egypt on 19 December 1914, after the occupying British forces had deposed his nephew, Khedive Abbas Hilmi II, on 5 November 1914. The newly created Sultanate of Egypt was declared a British protectorate. This brought to an end the de jure Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt, which had been largely nominal since Muhammad Ali's seizure of power in 1805.
Tomb of Sultan Hussien Kamel in Refaii mosque - Cairo - Egypt
Upon Hussein Kamel's death, his only son, Prince Kamal al-Din Husayn, declined the succession, and Hussein Kamel's brother Ahmed Fuad ascended the throne as Fuad I. At the beginning of Naguib Mahfouz's novel Palace Walk, Ahmad Abd al-Jawwad says "What a fine man Prince Kamal al-Din Husayn is! Do you know what he did? He refused to ascend the throne of his late father so long as the British are in charge."[1]
Stereoscope photographs of the coronation procession and burial procession of Sultan Hussein are available on the Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library of the American University in Cairo.
Honours [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Media related to Hussein Kamel of Egypt at Wikimedia Commons
Stereoscopes of Hussein Kamel's coronation and burial processions | 8,013,490 |
From the "nice work if you can get it" desk, the New York Times business section offered this headline the other day: "Pay Stretching to 10 Figures." No, this isn't about innovators being paid for their smart and indispensable products, a la Steve Jobs. It is a story of hedge fund managers, the tin-pot potentates of the financial world.
They are America's top-dog moneymakers, pulling in more than movie stars, top athletes, even banking CEOs. They tend to shun the spotlight, and for good reason. An average family would have to work for 18 years and 146 days to make what an average hedge fund manager makes in one hour. We must all look like barbarians at the gate to them.
Are they worth it? They certainly think so. But the system is rigged. Even when hedge funds, which are basically big, sparsely regulated pools of investment capital, don't do any better than market returns, their managers can walk away with the equivalent of a small nation's GDP.
Take Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors. Cohen's 2012 pay was $1.4 billion. For this, he obtained a 13 percent return for investors. Sounds good, right? Except that the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index shot up 16 percent last year when factoring in dividends. SAC investors paid a 50 percent performance fee to Cohen despite the lagging numbers.
Having no shame is one of the rules for success as a hedge fund manager.
There are other rules, too, such as: "Don't ever get into the business of making things. Your job is to take money away from people who make things." The rules are entertainingly spelled out in How to Make a Million Dollars an Hour by Les Leopold, a book that carries the ominous subtitle, "Why Hedge Funds Get Away with Siphoning Off America's Wealth." As fun as this book is to read, its message is no laughing matter.
Leopold makes a compelling case that hedge funds are destructive forces that suck money out of the productive economy — which creates products, innovates and provides real services — and redirects it into a financial services betting parlor. The funds also encourage some of the best young analytical minds to enter Wall Street's casino rather than apply their talents to a career in medicine or science, which might be of some real benefit to the common good.
To make gobs of money and outsmart the next guy, Leopold says hedge funds rely on strategies that are often illegal or should be. They use insider information to transfer money from unknowing investors to themselves. (SAC is currently embroiled in an insider-trading scandal.) They spread rumors that manipulate the market to their benefit, another illegal act. Leopold points to an interview that Jim Cramer, the TV investment guru, did with TheStreet.com in which he let slip that dissembling is part of the business.
This directly counters the claim of hedge fund supporters that the funds make market prices more accurate.
And then there is high-frequency trading, or in Leopold's parlance: how to "bet on the race after you know who wins." Hedge funds now employ automated computers that are so fast they can elbow into a transaction a split second before a stock is bought or sold and make a tiny profit. This skims off millions of dollars from investors. It means the hedge funds don't care about the quality of the companies they are investing in — they are in and out in nanoseconds — and don't serve the function of allocating capital efficiently toward growth, as their supporters claim.
Members of the million-dollar-an-hour club need to have their casino counter closed with fair regulations, more government enforcement and new taxes, such as a financial transactions tax (which would put an end to high-frequency trading). Their 10-figure pay has destroyed America's once-healthy distribution of rewards for work. They are the real moochers. | 8,013,491 |
Pope Innocent X, painted by Diego Velazquez circa 1650
As the plume of white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel chimney at 7:06pm on 13 March 2013, the intense speculation which had surrounded the election of Pope Benedict XVI’s successor drew to a spectacular close.
Greeted by an immediate, deafening cheer of exaltation from the crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square, the few wisps of vapour spiralling into the sky signalled that after two days of voting, a new pontiff – Pope Francis – had been chosen. But in this age of instant communication and media hype, that little puff of white smoke is also a reminder of the intense, arcane secrecy with which modern conclaves are surrounded. Barring this most primitive of signals, no communication passes in or out of the Vatican while the Sacred College of Cardinals is locked in its deliberations and onlookers can only guess at what goes on behind those carefully-guarded doors.
Given the speed with which Popes Francis and Benedict XVI were elected, however, it is at least clear that the sober, grey-haired cardinals of the twenty-first century approach the task of choosing St. Peter’s heir calmly, piously, and reasonably. But papal elections have not always been so sober; nor have they always been so swift. In fact, for much of the Church’s history, conclaves have been glorified playground squabbles, only much longer-lasting, much more unpleasant, and much more corrupt as ten of the most dramatic – and surprising – conclaves of all time show:
1. The Never-Ending Story (1268-1271)
Although voting had first been used to choose a new pope in 1061, papal elections during the Central Middle Ages were certainly not the secret affairs that they were later to become. Housed in luxurious fashion, cardinals were free to come and go as they pleased. It was very civilised, but it certainly wasn’t efficient, and provided no incentive for bickering factions to reach a decision. After the death of Clement IV in 1271, this created the conditions for the longest papal election in history. Locked in bitter squabbles, the cardinals argued and squabbled for almost three years without choosing a pontiff. Indeed, it lasted so long that three of the twenty cardinal-electors died while it was going on. The poor people of Viterbo – where the papal court then resided – grew so frustrated with the deadlock that they eventually locked the cardinals into the Palazzo dei Papi and gave them only bread and water until they picked a new pope. Legend also has it that the roof of the palace was also removed, but one way or another, the Viterbesi’s actions gave rise to the word ‘conclave’ (meaning ‘with keys’ – i.e. locked in) and provided the newly-elected Pope Gregory X with the motivation to draw up the laws which were to provide the basis of the modern conclave.
2. Extra Homines (1280-81)
Unfortunately, Gregory X’s good intentions took a while to come to fruition, and for the rest of the thirteenth century, papal elections remained fairly chaotic. Medieval cardinals were simply too wily to be shut in without a struggle, and in the election of 1280, the most ambitious of their number were dashing in and out of the Palazzo dei Papi in Viterbo with such eagerness for political horse-trading that it became all but impossible to reach a decision. Eventually, the Viterbesi intervened once again, and violently ejected Cardinal Matteo Orsini and his kinsman Cardinal Giordano Orsini for “impeding” the election.
3. The Accidental Pope (1334)
For the majority of the fourteenth century, the papacy was resident in Avignon, where it was to acquire a dreadful reputation for moral dissipation and worldly corruption. It was in Provence, however, that the cardinals also became too cunning for their own good. When they gathered to elect a successor to Pope John XXII in 1334, they all decided to follow the usual practice of voting for a total no-hoper in the first ballot to see which way the political winds were blowing. Unwittingly, however, all but one of the cardinals picked the same no-hoper. The least likely candidate of all, Cardinal Jacques Fournier was accidentally elected Pope Benedict XII.
4. Crazy Compromise (1378)
Finally restored to Rome after more than sixty years in Avignon, the College of Cardinals was under pressure from the Roman people to choose a solidly Italian pope when they gathered for the election of 1378. Unfortunately, they were every bit as divided as ever before, and negotiations dragged on almost interminably. In desperation, someone suggested an obscure, but apparently pious archbishop named Bartolommeo Prignano as a compromise candidate. Although he wasn’t a cardinal, and was all but unknown, the exhausted cardinals agreed, and Prignano ascended the papal throne as Pope Urban VI. It was, however, a ghastly mistake. Urban turned out to be a violently unhinged lunatic with a massive persecution complex. Within months, he began locking cardinals up in the Castel Sant’ Angelo and torturing them for his own amusement. His behaviour split the Church in two and catalysed the Great Schism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was the last non-cardinal to be elected pope.
5. The Scrummage (1458)
By the mid-fifteenth century, the Church had recovered from the traumas of the Schism and the rules governing conclave seemed to have become firmly established. But, as the papal election of 1458, the ambitions – and tempers – of cardinals had not been moderated at all. After the death of Callixtus III, Cardinal d’Estouteville was determined to seize the papal tiara for himself. Holding secret meetings in the latrines, he tried to bribe and intimidate his colleagues into voting for him. Things, however, did not quite go to plan. Very quickly, the learned Cardinal Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini began to emerge as the front-runner. D’Estouteville was furious. After the final ballot, cardinals were given the opportunity to change their votes if they wished, and within minutes, Piccolomini was only one vote short of victory. As Cardinal Prospero Colonna stood up to change his vote in Piccolomini’s favour, d’Estouteville finally lost his rag. Running across the chapel, he and one of his supporters grabbed hold of Colonna and tried desperately to drag him out of the room. A brawl erupted. And in the midst of it all, Piccolomini was chosen as Pope Pius II.
6. A Buyer’s Market (1492)
Cardinal d’Estouteville’s conniving ways were just a taste of things to come. As the power and wealth of the papacy grew, cardinals lusted after the papal tiara with ever greater fervour, and elections rapidly became dominated by rampant simony. None, however, was worse than the conclave of 1492. The ferociously ambitious and worldly Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia would stop at nothing in his quest to become the next pope, and was reputed to have offered four mule-loads of silver and benefices worth over 10,000 ducats a year to Ascanio Sforza alone. Rome was said to have been awash with Borgia money while the election was going on. But, from Borgia’s perspective, it was all worth it: he was duly chosen as Pope Alexander VI.
7. King Philip Votes (1590)
One of the most obvious features of all conclaves is that voting is restricted to members of the Sacred College of Cardinals. But in 1590, this all changed. In its dual capacity as an elective monarchy and a European power, the Church was unusually sensitive to outside pressures at moments of transition, and since it was to every Catholic king’s advantage that a pope should be well disposed towards his realm, each naturally did his utmost to ensure that his preferred candidate got the job. Previously, kings had simply given cash to their top man in Rome to spend as they thought appropriate, but in 1590, King Philip II of Spain went one step further. Having set his eyes on the French throne, he actually wanted to control the votes directly, and as the most powerful man in Europe, he thought he had the clout to do just that. Just before the conclave met, his ambassador circulated two lists of ‘recommendations’ amongst the cardinals. The first contained the names of the seven cardinals Philip would accept as pope; the second detailed the thirty cardinals that he wished to veto. Suitably cowed, the College did as it was bid, and from this point until 1903, the right of royal veto (ius exclusivae) was exercised by most Catholic monarchs when they saw fit.
8. The Brothers Grim (1644)
The election which followed the death of the notoriously nepotistic Pope Urban VIII should have been a foregone conclusion. Urban had appointed three of his close relatives to the College of Cardinals, two of whom – the brothers Francesco and Antonio Barberini – were widely perceived to have both the wealth and the ambition to force the conclave to do their bidding. But the Barberini boys had more money than wit, and instead of presenting a united front in the hope of gaining a quick election, they actually split the conclave. An ugly bout of fraternal bickering ensured, with playground insults and mountainous bribes being hurled across the floor during ballots. It was only after nearly bankrupting each other than they settled on Giovanni Battista Pamphilii (who would become Pope Innocent X) as a compromise candidate.
9. The Flying Squad and the Only Honest Man (1655)
After the debacle of 1644, the Barberini brothers were determined not to make the same mistake again, and at the 1655 election, had strengthened their hand immeasurably. But after years of nepotism, the College of Cardinals was worn out, and a group of reform-minded cardinals known as the squadrone volante (‘flying squad’) had begun to form in opposition to the Barberini bloc. The only obstacle to reforming the Curia was, however, the apparent paucity of candidates untainted by corruption. All of the obvious papabili were pretty murky types. In desperation, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni exclaimed: “we need an honest man!” To everyone’s amazement, the squadrone’s unofficial leader, Decio Azzolino, then pointed to the unsuspecting Fabio Chigi and exclaimed “If you want an honest man, there stands one.” No-one seems to have noticed Chigi before, and when it proved impossible to find any honest alternative, he was duly elected as Alexander VII.
10. Election in Exile (1799-1800)
By virtue of the fact that Napoleon’s invasion of Italy had forced the Curia to flee Rome and take refuge in Venice, the conclave of 1799 was the last papal election to be held outside of Rome. It was also the last papal election to be held in chaotic circumstances. To begin with, the political turmoil sweeping across Europe meant that there were only thirty-four cardinals present, the lowest number since 1534. Then, this motley little bunch of exiled cardinals was locked out of St. Mark’s Basilica when they refused to accept the Austrian Emperor’s preferred candidate. And even after they had finally settled on a compromise choice – Barnaba Luigi Chiaramonti – some of the cardinals were still grumbling about the new Pope Pius VII’s previous, shocking claim that good Christians could also be good democrats. That Pius VII had to be crowned with a papier-mâché tiara in a tiny little church was a fitting end to the conclave.
Alexander Lee is an Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick. His book, The Ugly Renaissance will be published by Hutchinson in September. | 8,013,492 |
BENGALURU: India is a bright spot for IBM . It was called out for its performance by CFO Martin Schroeter in the June and October quarters. And the financials it has filed most recently with the Registrar of Companies bears this out.IBM India's revenue rose 10.3% to $3.43 billion in 2015-16, from $3.11 billion in the previous year, riding on the robust performance of its domestic IT and export IT services businesses. The former grew 10.6% to $731 million and the latter grew 13.6% to $2.34 billion. The export business growth is better than that for most Indian IT services companies. Nasscom had estimated that the industry average growth in the year was 12.3% in constant currency.Some 133 executives in the company received a salary of Rs 1 crore or more in the year. Infosys had 49 executives with compensation of Rs 1 crore or more in the same year. IBM has some 1.3 lakh employees in India.India's standout performance has got a lot of attention because IBM's Asia-Pacific business has decelerated due to a decline in the Japan business and weaker performance in China.IBM India has four primary business segments -- hardware, software, financing, and sale of services (includes domestic IT services and export IT services). The sales from hardware and software dropped 16.4% and 4.9% respectively in 2015-16.IBM India's net profit rose 12.6% to $242 million. Operating profit increased by about 5%, from $441 million to $463 million.The company has merged three subsidiaries in India -- Bigfix Software, Telelogic India and Unica Softtech Systems India -- into Sterling Commerce Solutions India and a one-step down subsidiary IBM Business Consulting Services.IBM globally has seen its revenue decline for 18 consecutive quarters, as the company struggles to deal with the massive changes in the technology environment towards cloud and mobile. It is investing significantly in areas like analytics and cognitive computing.It has an analytics centre of excellence in Bengaluru. Last year, it launched its first public cloud data centre in Chennai as part of a $1.2 billion investment to grow its cloud footprint. A few months ago, it opened a mobile first iOS Garage in Bengaluru that's part of its network of centres in Atlanta, Cupertino and Chicago to drive digital transformation on the iOS platform. | 8,013,493 |
Belinda Van Sickle was scared. What had started as an online debate over media ethics in video game journalism had erupted into a visceral campaign of harassment toward women in the industry. Threats to dox, rape or even murder were consolidated by certain gamers under the Twitter hashtag #GamerGate. It got so bad that Van Sickle, executive director of Women in Games International, bought motion-detector lights for her home and added multilevel password security to all her financial sites. Even today, two years later, Van Sickle says she sees how the controversy hurt the recruitment of female gaming pros, and the episode fueled perceptions of rampant sexism throughout the gaming world. “It was a scary time for the industry, and it really hasn’t ended,” Van Sickle told OZY. “If you were on the fence about staying, this pushed you over the edge.”
The misogyny that boiled over then, and simmers today, has many roots, but much of it stems from the idea that women are impostors. Never mind that there are more adult women playing games than teenage-and-younger boys, according to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2016 report. Demographics aside, the assumption that women are less suited for gaming is on shaky scientific ground. Sorry to tell you, boys, but …
Women advance as quickly as, or faster than, men in massively multiplayer online (MMO) games.
That’s the finding of a recent study analyzing more than 10,000 men and women in two MMOs, EverQuest II in the United States and Chevaliers’ Romance III in China. In such games, a player’s progress is measured in levels, which are reached by gaining experience through killing enemies or accomplishing key tasks. If men are better gamers, they should advance to higher levels faster in the same amount of time. Studies have shown that women tend to spend less time playing, and choose more assistive characters, such as healers, which can make leveling up harder. But once those factors are controlled for, women level up just as fast as men, says Michigan State’s Rabindra Ratan, one of the study authors, proving it’s playing time, not gender, that affects player skill. This all matters because researchers have shown at least a partial connection between gaming and the decision to pursue work in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), in which women remain significantly underrepresented.
Women do start, in aggregate, with less spatial awareness, which can be a roadblock in first-person shooter games like Call of Duty or Medal of Honor. But that disparity all but disappears after just 10 hours of game time, according to a study published in Psychological Science in 2007. The MMO study wasn’t able to compare the most advanced gamers, since the leveling speed of a max-level player is essentially zero. Still, the study adds to a growing body of research suggesting one thing … one of the potentially more dazzling special effects in gaming: Give a girl a controller and watch the gender gap disappear — in a flash.
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A dose of Lucentis is priced 40 times higher than a similar drug called Avastin. Both are made by Genentech, which profits far more when it sells the expensive drug. (Photo courtesy of Genentech)
The two drugs have been declared equivalently miraculous. Tested side by side in six major trials, both prevent blindness in a common old-age affliction. Biologically, they are cousins. They’re even made by the same company.
But one holds a clear price advantage.
Avastin costs about $50 per injection.
Lucentis costs about $2,000 per injection.
Doctors choose the more expensive drug more than half a million times every year, a choice that costs the Medicare program, the largest single customer, an extra $1 billion or more annually.
Spending that much may make little sense for a country burdened by ever-
rising health bills, but as is often the case in American health care, there is a certain economic logic: Doctors and drugmakers profit when more-costly treatments are adopted.
Genentech, a division of the Roche Group, makes both products but reaps far more profit when it sells the more expensive drug. Although Lucentis is about 40 times as expensive as Avastin to buy, the cost of producing the two drugs is similar, according to scientists familiar with the drugs and the industry.
Doctors, meanwhile, may benefit when they choose the more expensive drug. Under Medicare repayment rules for drugs given by physicians, they are reimbursed for the average price of the drug plus 6 percent. That means a drug with a higher price may be easier to sell to doctors than a cheaper one. In addition, Genentech offers rebates to doctors who use large volumes of the more expensive drug.
“Genentech continues to maintain that Lucentis is the most appropriate medicine,” the company said in a statement, adding that it costs “significantly” more to make and is tailored for use in the eye. The drug “has made an immense impact.”
Many ophthalmologists, however, are skeptical that it provides any added value over the cheaper alternative.
“Lucentis is Avastin — it’s the same damn molecule with a few cosmetic changes,” said J. Gregory Rosenthal, a Toledo ophthalmologist who, outraged by the price, co-founded a group called Physicians for Clinical Responsibility to protest its use. “Yet Americans are paying a billion dollars every year for no good reason — unless you count making Genentech rich.”
The story of Genentech’s two drugs, Lucentis and Avastin, began with a scientific marvel — a breakthrough in biology that, thanks to the vast budgets of U.S. entitlement programs, has produced enormous financial returns.
Those profits have yielded benefits. By paying for such drugs without regard to cost, the Medicare system has helped stimulate investment in medical research that contributes to the development of more lifesaving technologies.
But the flow of cash also pushes up the health-care costs that are projected to deplete federal budgets. For while Genentech has aggressively marketed the more expensive drug and sought to restrict the use of the cheaper one, critics say, Medicare has been powerless to do anything but pay up.
That’s because over the past seven years, despite pleas from the Food and Drug Administration and doctors groups, Genentech has maintained the barriers that make it harder for doctors to use the cheaper drug.
Avastin was not originally intended for use in the eye, and the company has refused encouragement from the FDA to seek official approval for using it to treat eye ailments, according to unpublished internal FDA documents. This forces doctors to use it “off-
label,” or in ways not specified on the medicine’s label.
The company also packages the drug, which was approved for cancer in 2004, in doses far too big for use in ophthalmology, meaning that the drugs must be repackaged by other companies for use in the eye, raising the risk of contamination.
Genentech has argued that Avastin may pose a greater danger of severe side effects than does Lucentis, although independent scientists say such worries are unsupported by the six trials that have been conducted.
In a statement, the company said that it has not sought FDA approval of the cheaper drug for use in the eye because it has already developed one drug for the ailment known as wet age-
related macular degeneration, or wet AMD.
“Genentech continues to maintain that Lucentis is the most appropriate medicine for wet AMD as supported by clinical and other scientific data,” the statement said.
“We specifically designed Lucentis for use in the eye and to clear quickly from the bloodstream after leaving the eye to potentially minimize side effects,” the statement said. “The two medicines were designed for different purposes and, we believe, may have different systemic and ocular safety profiles when used in the eye.”
Genentech defended its pricing by noting that the Roche Group spends $9 billion annually on research and development.
“The price of Lucentis supports the research and development of new potential medicines, including the 92 percent of drugs that never make it to patients,” the company said. “We re-invest a larger portion of our revenue into clinical research than most pharmaceutical companies. Genentech believes it is in the best interest of patients to continue to focus our efforts in ophthalmology on discovering and developing new potential medicines for other serious diseases of the eye.”
Most doctors, however, prefer to use the cheaper drug. Despite the company’s position, U.S. doctors have been using Avastin in about 56 percent of such cases, according to Medicare data analyzed by The Washington Post. In the most recent survey by the American Society of Retinal Specialists, about 61 percent of doctors preferred using Avastin for macular degeneration, with the rest of the market split between Lucentis and Eylea, a new drug made by Regeneron that is almost as expensive as Lucentis.
Because so many doctors continue to use Lucentis, Genentech has rung up more than $1 billion in U.S. sales of the drug for four years running. Roughly 80 percent of U.S. sales are paid for by Medicare and its beneficiaries.
The rising cost of U.S. entitlement programs such as Medicare has prompted outrage in Congress, but it is Congress that has made it difficult in this case and others for Medicare to limit such expenses.
To begin with, the Medicare agency is blocked from seeking better drug prices by negotiating directly with the drug companies, as health agencies in other countries do. Authorities in Britain, for example, have negotiated a price of about $1,100 per dose of Lucentis, and in the Netherlands a dose sells for about $1,300.
Moreover, in cases in which two equivalent options are available, such as Lucentis and Avastin, Medicare is forbidden from restricting payment to the amount of the less costly alternative. After it sought to do so in 2009, a federal appeals court said it lacked that authority.
It’s often difficult, of course, to know when two drugs are equivalent. When the debate over the two drugs and their pricing erupted more than six years ago, Genentech asserted that its more expensive new drug was superior. At the time, it was hard to show otherwise. No one had tested them in side-by-side comparisons.
Since then, the six randomized clinical trials involving more than 3,000 patients have found the drugs to be largely equivalent.
Yet in 2012, the Medicare program and its beneficiaries spent $1.2 billion on Lucentis, according to The Post’s analysis of Medicare data.
Medicare officials said they have no choice but to pay the bill when a doctor prefers to use Lucentis.
“We do not have the authority to dictate treatment based on cost,” Tami Holzman, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement. “Under current law, Medicare must cover treatment that is deemed reasonable and medically necessary by a physician or other provider.”
Pharmaceutical firms argue that this is the way it should be.
The industry’s main lobbying group, known as PhRMA, opposes allowing the government to negotiate prices with companies — a process it calls “price controls” — and similarly opposes attempts by Medicare to pursue a policy of paying only for the least costly alternative.
The industry has spent more than any other in the United States to have its voice heard in Washington. Over the past 15 years, the pharmaceutical industry has far outstripped any other in the money it has devoted to lobbying, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Drug companies spent a total of $2.7 billion over that time.
“Proposals to change this system by imposing price controls or only giving patients access to treatments deemed the ‘least costly alternative’ by Medicare would have severe unintended consequences,” Matthew Bennett, a senior vice president at PhRMA, said in a statement.
Such proposals could discourage medical progress, he said. Moreover, because every patient responds differently to a treatment, it may be difficult for the government to set rules for coverage.
“The cheapest option on average is not always the best option for many patients,” he said.
What’s the right price for a miracle?
Every year, about 200,000 people in North America are diagnosed with wet age-related macular degeneration, a chronic disease characterized by abnormal blood vessels that leak blood or fluid into the retina.
Sufferers lose clarity in the center of their field of vision, and among older people it has long been the leading cause of blindness.
Then came Avastin and Lucentis.
Both are the outgrowth of pioneering work done by Napoleone Ferrara, a Sicily-born molecular biologist.
Ferrara studied at the University of California at San Francisco and joined Genentech in 1988. First assigned to the company’s efforts to develop a hormone called Relaxin, Ferrara devoted his discretionary research to a theory that blood vessel growth could cause cancer and other illnesses.
Over several years, Ferrara and his collaborators identified a protein called VEGF that causes blood vessel growth. They then linked that protein to cancer and macular degeneration. Finally, they developed an “anti-VEGF” drug that would attack VEGF, halting the harmful blood vessel growth.
The first anti-VEGF drug was Avastin, which won approval from the FDA in 2004 for the treatment of colorectal cancer.
Lucentis followed. It is a stripped-down version of the same molecule, and it can likewise attack VEGF and bind more closely to it. It won FDA approval in 2006.
“People weren’t sure that VEGF would prove particularly important, but sometimes in science, you just follow your own ideas,” said Ferrara, now a distinguished professor at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine. “The magnitude of the benefit of these drugs far exceeded our expectations.”
The company spent almost $1.4 billion on the development of Lucentis, which included 18 clinical trials, a Genentech vice president testified to Congress in 2011.
The company appears to have recovered those costs and quite a bit more.
In the first 2 1/ 2 years, it sold $2.1 billion worth of Lucentis in the United States alone. Another Swiss company, Novartis, in partnership with Genentech, sells billions more overseas.
Much of that is profit.
The company will not disclose how much it costs to manufacture a dose of Lucentis, saying only that it costs “significantly” more to make than Avastin. But scientists knowledgeable about manufacturing drugs of this kind say that the costs of making Lucentis are not much different from those of making Avastin.
Indeed, some scientists said that some aspects of Lucentis make it cheaper to produce.
The Avastin process begins with growing a culture from mammalian cells taken from the ovary of the Chinese hamster.
The Lucentis process begins with growing cultures of the common bacteria E. coli, and these are easier to produce.
The subsequent purification process with bacteria may be more complicated, but “production in bacteria is cheaper than in mammalian cells for several reasons,” said Herv é Watier, a medical professor at the University of Tours in France who has studied the drugs.
While there are some “drawbacks” to the bacteria production method, Watier said, “the financial result still remains in favor of bacteria.”
“I think the difference in cost in producing them is very modest. They cost almost the same, from what I can tell,” Ferrara said.
If so, Genentech is making a lot on each dose. The manufacturing costs may account for 10 percent or less of the price of a Lucentis dose, according to a conservative calculation generated with industry experts.
The company declined to reveal how much it is making from Lucentis above the drug’s manufacturing costs.
“Lucentis and Avastin are not the same medicine and should not be treated, nor represented, as if they are,” the company said in a statement.
After the development of Lucentis in the early 2000s, it was the only drug known to have such effects.
It seemed to be in a class by itself and seemed poised to win even more in sales than it gathers today.
But then Philip J. Rosenfeld, a Miami ophthalmologist, made a discovery.
Rosenfeld was lead investigator on some of the Lucentis trials that Genentech had conducted, and he recognized how effective it could be.
After reading the research that some Genentech scientists had published, he realized that Avastin and Lucentis were derived from the same antibody and thus were functionally equivalent.
“I realized they would perform in the same way,” he said.
Under a university-approved research program, he’d also learned that Avastin, injected into a patient’s arm as is done with cancer patients, had the same effects as Lucentis. The trouble was, since the Avastin was going into the entire body, a large dose was needed, and that could produce dangerous side effects. He calculated that a much smaller dose injected into the eye would be just as effective as Lucentis.
In May 2005, Rosenfeld had a patient who was quickly losing her vision. A retired nurse in her 60s, she’d lost the use of one eye already, and none of the available remedies could slow the disease’s progression.
Rosenfeld knew that Lucentis could help her, but it would be another year or more before the FDA would approve it.
With the patient’s permission, he injected her eye with a small dose of Avastin — one milligram — and ordered her back the next week.
“We were astounded by the results,” he said.
The billion-dollar drug Lucentis was about to be beaten to market, and by one of Genentech’s own products.
In July 2005, Genentech held what amounted to a coming-out party for its new drug.
At the annual meeting of the American Society of Retinal Specialists, the company presented several detailed studies showing how effective it was in treating macular degeneration. With hundreds of ophthalmologists crowded into the room, speakers for Genentech described the marvel of Lucentis.
“Our jaws were on the floor,” recalled Daniel F. Martin, chairman of the Cole Eye Institute at the Cleveland Clinic.
Right after, Rosenfeld presented his Avastin experiment on one patient.
“Phil showed one case report — no animal studies, no randomized trials,” Martin said. “But after this meeting, every ophthalmologist on the planet was injecting it. The therapeutic effect was so powerful.”
Because Lucentis had yet to win FDA approval and couldn’t be sold, ophthalmologists quickly embraced Avastin, which had been approved the year before, albeit as a cancer remedy.
When Lucentis did go on sale, Genentech’s blockbuster drug already had a competitor. How could the company convince doctors and hospitals that Lucentis had any major advantage over Avastin?
Over and over again, it sought to discourage the use of Avastin by raising concerns about its safety.
They told doctors that Avastin was not approved by the FDA for use in the eye — Lucentis was. They reminded doctors that if the repackaging firms cutting Avastin into smaller doses were careless, infection could be introduced. And despite the lack of conclusive evidence on the point, they said that Avastin patients might suffer more adverse events than Lucentis patients.
Sometimes, senior FDA officials said, these warnings stretched the truth.
In October 2007, the company announced a move that would severely restrict the supply of Avastin for ophthalmology: It would no longer sell the drug to the repackaging firms that were cutting it into eye-appropriate doses.
The company’s president of product development at that time, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, explained in a letter that Lucentis was already available. Moreover, she said that during a routine FDA inspection of the company’s Avastin manufacturing facility, “concerns were raised by inspectors related to the ongoing ocular use of Avastin because it is not designed, manufactured or approved for this use.”
An FDA ophthalmology official, Wiley A. Chambers, told colleagues that the company had misconstrued the agency’s position.
That routine FDA inspection at a Genentech plant, Chambers told his colleagues, was unrelated to the intrinsic safety of Avastin in ophthalmology. Instead, it showed that Avastin had been contaminated by glass particles, a danger that could have harmed cancer patients or eye patients.
“Genentech has found a way to blame FDA for their decision to limit the distribution of Avastin,” Wiley wrote to colleagues in an e-mail. “The manufacturing problem at their facility that resulted in glass in their product would be an issue for either the on-label oncology indications or the off-label ophthalmology indications.”
Genentech said in a statement: “We have never sought to restrict the ability of physicians to prescribe Avastin as they see fit for their patients. . . . Genentech did not blame the FDA and took the decision independently.”
Eventually, after ophthalmologists and their professional societies strenuously objected to Genentech’s move to limit Avastin sales — they even threatened lawsuits to make sure the flow of Avastin continued — Genentech backed down and continued to provide the drug to the repackaging firms.
About the same time, Genentech asked the FDA for permission to change the Avastin label to instruct doctors that it was not to be used for eyes. The FDA said there was no evidence to support such a change to the label.
The FDA believed “there was no safety-related basis adequately justifying that labeling change,” according to an internal agency e-mail, and the label was not changed.
Today, millions of doses of Avastin have been administered successfully. Six randomized clinical trials around the world, beginning with one called Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials, have found its effectiveness equivalent to that of Lucentis. After the CATT study, the National Institutes of Health issued a news release headlined, “Study finds Avastin and Lucentis are equally effective in treating age-related macular degeneration.”
The effort was funded by the NIH because Genentech had refused to test the drugs itself and, in a break from industry custom, had refused to provide the drugs to government researchers. An internal company document described the strategy of not performing a test or contributing the drugs as “in the interests of shareholders and the interests of patients,” according to a Senate Aging Committee investigation memo from 2008.
Because it had developed Lucentis, the company said, “there was no need to invest substantial resources and years of clinical development to explore the safety and efficacy of another medicine.”
Since the CATT study, five more head-to-head trials have been conducted. They also found Avastin just as effective as Lucentis.
“There have now been six randomized clinical studies that show no difference in the major areas of safety concern — deaths, heart attacks and stroke,” said Martin, the Cleveland Clinic doctor who also led the CATT trial.
Indeed, Genentech has acknowledged that the drugs are similarly effective. But the company has argued that Avastin may be dangerous when used in eyes.
“The emerging data consistently show differences in safety — particularly in systemic serious adverse events — between Lucentis and Avastin,” Anthony P. Adamis, global head of ophthalmology at Genentech, said in an interview.
These differences are “biologically plausible,” Adamis said, because studies have shown that Avastin remains in the blood longer.
The main basis for Genentech’s safety argument is a finding in the CATT trial that has not reappeared in any of the following five trials and that some scientists involved regard mainly as a curiosity.
The incidence of what are known as serious adverse events — a catchall category that includes hospitalizations for any reason — was slightly higher in the Avastin group: 40 percent vs. 32 percent. The adverse events included broken bones and urinary tract infections.
“The majority of the adverse events would be difficult to imagine being caused by the drug,” Martin said. Martin noted that while small, probably random effects favored Lucentis in some cases and in others they favored Avastin. Neither should be viewed as conclusively related to the drug, he said.
It is very difficult for such trials to detect differences in rare safety events. To do so, a trial might need more than 10,000 patients. Running a trial of that size could cost billions of dollars.
To look for effects in large numbers of patients, researchers often turn to Medicare claims records, examining how patients fared on the treatments in question. It is this kind of review that Lesley H. Curtis, a Duke University medical professor, performed, looking at 146,000 patient claims.
After fully adjusting for patient and provider characteristics, Curtis and her colleagues found that there was no difference in the safety profiles in the drugs.
“In conclusion, we found no evidence of increased risks of mortality, myocardial infarction, bleeding, or stroke,” their research paper said.
The other danger to using Avastin, however, has attracted a lot of publicity in recent years.
The fact that the drug needs to be repackaged into smaller doses introduces an element of risk because it opens the possibility that the drug could be tainted during the repackaging process. (Genentech says because the FDA has not approved it for use in the eye, the company cannot legally distribute Avastin in doses appropriate for the eye.
Indeed, in three cases that made the news — in South Florida, Nashville and Los Angeles — just such a problem has arisen. Several patients reportedly suffered vision loss as a result.
“I’ve never used Avastin because of the potential for contamination,” Warren L. Herron Jr., a Pensacola, Fla., ophthalmologist, said after a morning in which he did 11 eye injections. “Is it a rare thing? Yes, it’s a rare thing. But I can’t stand the idea of ever telling my patients that they can no longer see because I used a tainted drug.
“Besides,” he said, “I don’t think the extra money being spent for Lucentis is totally wasted because it’s going into research and development.”
But as Herron noted, the likelihood of contamination is negligible. Globally, hundreds of thousands of injections are doled out every year without trouble, making the risk of contamination in repackaging smaller than the risks that doctors routinely ignore when deciding on a treatment.
Whether a patient gets Avastin, Lucentis or the new drug Eylea depends on an array of factors. Some doctors use only one of the drugs; some let their patients choose; many decisions are guided by whether the patient’s insurance covers the entire cost or just a portion; and some doctors may consider how much they earn with each drug.
John Thompson, a Baltimore ophthalmologist who is president of the American Society of Retinal Specialists, noted that most doctors use Avastin and that even more would do so if the company sought FDA approval for using it in eyes and packaged it in appropriate doses.
“If Genentech decided to get FDA approval and make Avastin available in small quantities for the eye,” he said, “the American Society of Retinal Specialists would applaud.” | 8,013,495 |
In the past 15 months, police in British Columbia and Washington have been counting potential crimes by the foot. The total so far is seven, all apparently washing up in sneakers on remote beaches. The first human extremity was discovered by a shocked 12-year-old Washington girl who came upon it on a cool, clear Monday, Aug. 20, 2007, along Jedediah Island, a rocky isle in the Strait of Georgia’s Gulf Islands. Curious, the girl picked up the man’s size-12 Campus brand sneaker off the beach, and out tumbled a wet sock. Inside was a decomposing right foot.
The find rated an intriguing news story in the Alberni Valley Times on Vancouver Island. Authorities were mystified. “There’s all kinds of scenarios and possibilities,” said Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Garry Cox, noting he was unsure whether the foot had floated in or was the product of some kind of beach mayhem. “It was a regular foot with the skin intact,” he said. “It didn’t appear to be there too long because it wasn’t that decomposed.”
Mounties bagged the foot and sent it to the British Columbia Coroners Service in Vancouver, where DNA testing commenced. That seemed that, and the story faded. Somewhere there was, presumably, a cadaver minus one foot. Officials could wait to see if the other shoe literally dropped.
It took only six days. The second foot was found on Aug. 26, a calm, sunny Sunday. It too was inside a sock, and in a man’s sneaker, and was a size 12.
And one more similarity: The second foot was also a righty. A case that had gone two feet forward suddenly took a step backward. “I’ve heard of dancers with two left feet, but come on,” the RCMP’s Cox told reporters, making it clear he had two separate floating-feet cases to investigate. And bizarre cases they were. “Finding one foot is like a million-to-one odds,” he said, “but to find two is crazy.”
And 40 miles apart at that. The second foot, encased in a Reebok, was discovered by a Vancouver couple strolling along a beach trail on Gabriola Island, known for its shellfish and limestone formations, located down the strait from Jedediah.
Another Mountie, Cpl. Brad Szewczok, seemed to be urging the media and public to stay calm. “My best guess,” he said, “is that they are from missing-persons cases. There have been people that fall off ferries, missing boaters, and a tugboat that went down within the last year. And people fall off fishing vessels all the time.”
B.C. law enforcement has about 2,400 missing-persons cases on the books, and Washington 2,000. Many in both jurisdictions are cold cases dating back years, even decades. They include abducted children, the homeless, runaways, and those designated presumed dead/body not recovered.
B.C.’s missing-person count is the highest of any Canadian province, according to a 2005 Simon Fraser University study, and many are thought to have drowned from accidents or suicides in B.C.’s vast waters. Some also might be victims of B.C. serial killer and pig farmer Robert Picton from 1997 to 2001. He was convicted last December, and is doing life for the murders of six women, parts of which he fed to his pigs. Officials say he once confessed to killing 49 women, the majority of them prostitutes and drug users from the mean streets of downtown Vancouver’s Eastside.
The second foot joined the first at the Coroners Service in Vancouver for DNA tests. But for a test to succeed, a matching sample is needed, and that’s not often available in missing-persons cases. Medical examiners did confirm the disarticulated extremities were from males, but where the flesh and bone came from and who the owners had been, authorities couldn’t yet say.
Within six months, that story also faded. Then came the third foot.
It was another male righty size 11, inside a Nike sneaker, found Feb. 2 this year on Valdes Island, a short drift south of Gabriola. That sparked new interest by the public, some of whom began combing beaches for sneakers bearing feet—and finding them.
The fourth foot, a female righty size 7, inside a New Balance, was found May 22 on Kirkland Island, across the strait from Valdes off the B.C. mainland, which catches the current coming out of the Fraser River.
The fifth, a male lefty size 11, inside a Nike, was found June 16 on Westham Island, near Kirkland Island; DNA tests later confirmed it was the mate to foot #3.
The sixth, a male righty size 11, inside an Everest sneaker, was found Aug. 1 mired in seaweed along the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Pysht, west of Port Angeles. That is more than 150 miles from foot #1, although Canadian currents flow that direction into the Pacific.
And the seventh, a female lefty size 7, inside a New Balance, was found last month, Nov. 11, near Richmond on the B.C. mainland south of Vancouver. Last week it was confirmed as a mate to foot #4.
By installments, newspapers tracked the carnage, which appears to total four male and one female footless victims, most discovered in the past 10 months along adjoining Canadian and U.S. waters. Forget Mountie Szewczok and his words of caution! It had become the Seven-Foot Mystery, a suspected epidemic of foul play.
That’s what some thought, anyway, particularly Seattle and Vancouver radio talk-show callers, Internet bloggers, and newspaper reader-commenters. With the seventh floating foot came a tide of conspiracy theories: The straits had become a watery graveyard for Vancouver’s organized crime; the extremities belonged to illegal immigrants murdered by their smugglers; a foot-fetish serial killer was on the loose. “All these feets, all the wackings, all these people getting kidnap [sic] 5 years ago,” wrote a Vancouver Sun reader/commenter last month, making reference to a Vancouver crime wave, “all coming up now.”
Actually, with the seventh foot, what’s coming up now are some answers, says former University of Washington oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer, Ph.D., known as Dr. Duck to the rapt audience of schoolkids he lectures on flotsam, jetsam, and buoyant body parts.
Sorry, says Ebbesmeyer, who has kept a head and foot count of the serial washups. “It’s not much of a mystery.”
At 65, semi-retired Curtis C. Ebbesmeyer is busier than ever, he says, keeping one boot in salt water and the other in his workspace at home in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood. The gray-haired, trim-bearded Ebbesmeyer says his daily goal is “trying to make sense of science.” He’s a protégé of Cliff Barnes, the respected UW professor of oceanography for whom the school’s marine research vessel is named. When Barnes died in 1995, Ebbesmeyer cleaned out the professor’s office—then took everything home and recreated the office in his basement.
As a writer, leader of international science expeditions, and private consultant, Ebbesmeyer is immersed in the sea, specializing in its movements. He tracks surface currents and such watery curiosities as floating garbage patches and container spills to determine flow patterns. His unique research has helped such institutions as oil companies and the City of Seattle’s sewage treatment division chart the fateful drift of their products.
A sideline to his research now and then is to work with forensics experts to divine the travel time and distance of a dead body or its parts, when there is some mystery surrounding their discovery. He’s often queried by reporters on such stories, to the point that he now gets calls from the kin of drowning victims, asking for estimates as to where and when a body is most likely to surface and be recovered. He also gives school lectures that include the subject of floating appendages. “The kids get real quiet,” he says with a grin.
Over coffee at the Varsity Restaurant in Ravenna, Ebbesmeyer seems to brighten as he talks about one of his study cases, a man who, for extreme sport and without bungee cords, jumped 221 feet off the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1988. His friends were to pick him up at the beach below, but never saw him again until his funeral. He hit the water at 80 miles an hour, and washed up 32 hours later on Alki Beach in Seattle.
“He drifted south to Fox Island and came around and up through Colvos Passage,” says the oceanographer, adjusting his bifocals. “Quite a trip.” Ebbesmeyer and then–King County Medical Examiner chief investigator Bill Haglund wrote a paper on the case for the Journal of Forensic Sciences in 1994, to aid other investigators in tracking floating carcasses. They charted tides and currents and recreated the whirling trip through hydraulic trajectory modeling, Ebbesmeyer says, trying to keep the macabre stuff academic. “My wife doesn’t want me to talk about this kind of thing at home—it’s not something you can bring up at dinner.”
In a thoughtful tone, Ebbesmeyer rattles off a litany of the items found in recent years to have been sleeping with the nation’s fishes. “Let’s see. A head in Oregon, a complete skeleton in Hawaii, arms and legs in Texas, head in Florida…” And he knows this how? “I have a network of beachcombers worldwide, and they report in.”
Go to Ebbesmeyer’s Web site, beachcombersalert.org (he also issues a quarterly newsletter), and you can find the link to report oceanic treasure and trash. Ebbesmeyer depends on readers to keep him posted on the global arrival of messages in bottles, incoming glass balls, telltale driftwood, and the contents of container spills. The reports augment his studies of ocean currents and help him map out floating garbage patches and junk beaches. You can’t necessarily see the semi-submerged ocean patches when flying over them, he says, but a closer look would reveal a plastic island that includes floating refrigerators, TVs, computer screens, tires, smashed-up yachts, and you-name-it. “The patches are twice the size of Texas,” Ebbesmeyer says. “Plastic has helped make them a global catastrophe. We dump this garbage and it ends up in the sea and the sea life we live off. Basically, we’re poisoning ourselves.”
Also among the relevant oceanographic input is the migration of bathtub duckies, such as the 1992 toy spill in the Pacific. About 28,800 plastic ducks, turtles, beavers, and frogs packed in containers slid off a freighter; after drifting 2,200 miles, portions of the toy armada began washing up near Sitka, Alaska. Ebbesmeyer even tracked one frog and one duck in a watery trek across the North Pole to Newfoundland “where their paths diverged—one to Maine and the other to Britain.” The toys were still being discovered as late as 2004, helping him score some new hydraulic drift findings. The ducky is also now emerging as his personal logo: One is featured on the cover of his forthcoming book, Flotsametrics and the Floating World, written with local author and former Seattle Weekly staffer Eric Scigliano. The autobiography is due out in March from HarperCollins.
Ebbesmeyer sometimes alerts his followers to hazardous finds—an ominous aluminum cylinder floating north of Guam—and splendid encounters—a 90-foot beer tank bobbing off Scotland. He gives the scoop on weather balloons, too:Almost a thousand are scattered worldwide each day, bearing miniaturized electronic weather stations known as radiosondes. But 100,000 balloons and sondes annually end up in the ocean, to scientists’ chagrin. “Sondes signify our throwaway society,” Ebbesmeyer says, figuring they have left a billion bits of Styrofoam on Earth’s 382,000 miles of shoreline.
And, of course, Ebbesmeyer investigates floating sneakers, having made a big splash solving the Great Nike Shoe Spill of 2003. Global media tied up his phone line after he reported the spill from three shipping containers in the Pacific. One of his beachcombing correspondents had alerted him to the discovery of unmatched Nikes on the Washington coast near Queets and sent along the bar-code numbers. Ebbesmeyer broke down the code to determine the footwear was new. He e-mailed Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., and heard from exec Dave Newman. “Three containers went overboard in December 2002 off the northern California coast,” Newman confirmed, about 35 miles off Cape Mendocino, Calif. Generally, Newman said, 5,500 pairs fit in a standard 40-foot ocean container. That was enough to outfit 16,500 high-school hoopsters, at $100 a pair.
Evidence in hand, Ebbesmeyer called up an Alaska science writer he knew, and the story broke on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News: Free shoes! Moochers stormed the beaches, and though no one was counting, scads of the shoes were found on the West Coast tides—with one catch: Nike forgot to tie the laces. Beachcombers would have to find matching mates on their own.
It was with that background that Ebbesmeyer approached the Seven-Foot Mystery.
Like all sneaker brands, plastic-and-rubber Nikes float soles to the sky, with or without a decaying human foot, and can bob great distances. In the 2003 Nike spill, they went almost 2,000 miles in 72 days, Ebbesmeyer deduced, from California to Rose Spit at the top of the Queen Charlotte Islands, B.C., near the Alaska border. Others curled around and went off to Hawaii, perhaps Japan.
Some surprisingly heavy objects ride the surf almost as well. “I’m constantly amazed at what floats and what doesn’t,” Ebbesmeyer says, thumbing through a small spiral notebook he keeps. “On the beach I came across a bowling ball once. ‘What’s this doing here?’, I thought, and pitched it into the ocean. It floats!”
Bodies, however, decompose in a comparatively short time, or can be partially or wholly dismembered by currents or eaten by marine life. “The head separates easily after a time in water,” Ebbesmeyer says, starting to shrug. “It’s just sitting here atop our spines.” He tilts his head as if making it fall off.
The head that washed up in Oregon belonged to a headless body that washed up at Westport, Wash., the result of natural decomposition, separation, and tides, he says. Ebbesmeyer gave a legal deposition on currents in that 1995 case, in which an Oregon woman named Linda Jean Stangel, 23, was convicted of manslaughter for pushing her boyfriend, David Wahl, 27, off a beach cliff.
But feet in particular detach naturally, below the ankle, and most important, through the aid and protection of sneakers, are more likely to drift off and be discovered—to the shock and suspicions of many. Examinations of the six feet found in Canada gave no indication of foul play, says Terry Foster, a spokesperson for the B.C. Coroners Service. “In all cases, these remains appear to have naturally separated from the body,” since no tool or trauma marks were found on the feet. That was also the case with the U.S. foot found near Pysht, Clallam County officials say. Yet the feet became serially linked by the media reports, and the assumption grew that they were related by a criminal cause of death.
The discoveries puzzled Ebbesmeyer in the beginning, too. But not today.
“It was baffling at the start—four right feet,” he says. That seemed to defy the odds, feeding suspicions of a serial killer leaving a calling card. “But then we started getting lefts and matches. And it began to look more commonplace.” With the seventh foot last month, he’s convinced there’s no widespread foul play. Actually, considering that thousands of people have been reported missing in B.C. and Washington, “I’m surprised we haven’t found more body parts,” Ebbesmeyer says. “We’re dealing with only a few people here, in an arbitrary period of time, and it’s routine for some to have fallen in the water and been there long enough for the feet to disarticulate and float away.”
No one can yet say how victims in the Seven-Foot Mystery might have died—understandably, given the lack of evidence. But Ebbesmeyer typically finds such cases lead back to sunken craft, missing swimmers, and other accident victims whose bodies were never recovered. B.C. authorities have been focusing in that area as well, attempting to match the feet’s DNA with drowning, boating, and aircraft accident victims, including five who died in a 2005 B.C. float-plane crash.
“The sensational aspect of this case,” Ebbesmeyer says, “the serial killer, was wild speculation. Quite a few people go overboard, jump off bridges, and so on—no crimes involved.” For example, the partial skeleton of a man found last year on a remote beach west of Point Lawrence, Orcas Island, was likely a drowning victim. Yet the seemingly benign find has now become part of the Seven-Foot Mystery.
San Juan County Prosecutor and Coroner Randy Gaylord says a hiker made the discovery in March 2007, five months prior to the first B.C. foot find. A forensic anthropologist determined that the nearly decomposed man, who had a gold inlay, was about 5 feet 9 inches tall and likely white, Native American, or Asian.
Gaylord and investigators found no evidence of foul play, though one arm and the other hand were missing from the corpse. Notably, so were both feet. That’s not unusual if the remains came in on the tide, says Gaylord. “Feet and hands are small and light,” he notes, “and with a wide range of motion and smaller connective tissue, it is part of the natural progression that they separate from the rest of the body.”
Did the feet float off to B.C.? Ebbesmeyer says currents from the San Juans are capable of carrying objects up into the gulf waters. And B.C. investigators, who belatedly learned of the Orcas finding—though Gaylord had publicized it last year—recently asked for a DNA sample.
B.C. Coroners spokesperson Foster says he doesn’t yet have any findings to release, and Gaylord says it’s his understanding that DNA profiling is still ongoing. (DNA testing, usually done on a priority basis, is delayed when no apparent crime is attached to a case.) Thus, Gaylord says, so far “nothing conclusive” links the Orcas remains with the Canadian feet, or the foot found near Pysht.
There was no indication the Orcas corpse and its feet were forcibly parted, adds Gaylord. “The word ‘severed’ showed up in some early stories in the Canadian press, and seems to me to be a source of why it is so sensational there, and got so much less interest here.”
Lost in the conspiracy noise is the understanding that Canadian authorities have made progress in their six difficult cases. They have matched shoes #3 and #5 as well as #4 and #7, and, thanks to DNA tests and a public tip, have confirmed the identity of the person whose foot started it all 15 months ago.
In July, they announced that foot #1 on Jedediah Island belonged to a B.C. man—still publicly unnamed at his family’s request. He was indeed listed in the missing-persons database, and when he disappeared in 2007 reportedly suffered from depression.
The possibility he was a suicide victim didn’t interrupt the serial count of extremities—his foot was included in the latest ominous-sounding reports on the seventh find, the sixth in Canada. But the mystery up north is in fact down to three unknown victims—the owner of foot #2 and the two owners of the matching pairs of sneakers. Still to be determined is any B.C. connection to the Pysht foot.
Should any of the Canadian feet match the Orcas skeletal remains, in U.S. jurisdiction, that could leave B.C. with just two unknown victims. “Two. Nothing unusual about that,” says Ebbesmeyer.
Of course, more feet could float in. In fact, Ebbesmeyer is almost certain they will. Blame it on style. People will die, he says, “and a lot of them will be wearing sneakers.”
[email protected] | 8,013,496 |
Best D3.js courses & tutorials 2019
Mastering data visualization in D3.js by Adam Janes is will help you get started with D3.js. All the fundamental D3.js topics and features are taught. You will learn to design and build beautiful D3.js data visualizations. This D3 course will help you master D3.js advanced tools, building choropleth maps, brushes, tooltips, and layouts. You will start of by gaining an understanding of D3.js fundamental building blocks.
Using D3.js programming, you will learn to build D3.js layouts including the following D3.js charts:
Line Charts
Area Charts
Stacked Area Charts
Pie Charts
Donut Charts
Wordclouds
Choropleth Maps
Node-Link Diagrams
Tree Diagrams
Treemaps
Circle Packs
Sunburst Plots
This D3.js online tutorial will teach you what SVGs are and how they can be used with D3.js. You will learn how to properly structure D3.js code. Adding legends, tooltips, and sliders to your visualizations will become second nature to you. D3.js sample code and D3.js examples will help you learn D3.js faster. Writing scales, axes, and labels to make some basic D3.js data viz will be shown. This D3.js online training will teach you will handle user interactions by adding events. This D3.js video course will teach you how to interpret open source code from the D3 community and use it in your own projects. By the end of this D3.js programming course, you will be able to develop D3.js web apps with multiple data visualizations. This is one of the best D3.js tutorials in 2019.
Learn and Understand D3. js for Data Visualization by Luis Ramirez Jr will take you on a D3.js dive deep. You will learn the D3.js core concepts and build stunning data visualizations using D3 version 5.x. This is a comprehensive D3 video tutorial with 10 hours of video content. The D3js training will give you a basic overview of SVG. You will learn about D3.js scales. Scales help you by converting your data into values that are used to display your data. You will learn to build various graphs such as bar graphs, pie charts, scatter plots and even maps. This data viz course will teach you to add interactivity and animation to your graphs. The graphs you build will be responsive and work on any device. You will learn how to build maps and have a solid grasp over GeoJSON which powers maps. This is one of the best D3.js tutorials for beginners in 2019.
Build Data Visualizations with D3.js & Firebase by Shaun Pelling will teach you how to use D3js (v5) & Firebase (Firestore) to create dynamic SVG data visualizations. You will learn D3 and Firebase from scratch. This D3js course will teach you to create data-driven visualizations. You will learn to store and retrieve data from a real-time database, Firebase’s Firestore. Using Firestone, you will learn to update data visualizations in real-time. This D3js video tutorial conatins 3 projects to help you master D3 and Firebase.
Data Visualize Data with D3.js The Easy Way by Infinite Skills is a beginners guide to learning how to use D3js to visualize data. You will start by learning the basics of D3. This easy to follow course will show you how to use D3 to make dynamic and interactive graphics. Creating a line chart and a scatter-plot data visualization. By the time you finish this D3js course, you will have developed a solid working knowledge of D3 and be able to build your own data visualizations easily.
Best D3.js books 2019
Bestsellers
D3.js Quick Start Guide: Create amazing, interactive visualizations in the browser with JavaScript by Matthew Huntington will help you learn D3 fast. You will build interactive graphs that are viewable in any web browser using JavaScript, D3.js, and SVG. This D3 book will start at D3js basics. You will learn to build:
Scatter plot
Bar graph
Pie chart
Force-directed graph
Map
Interactive graphs
This is one of the best D3.js books for beginners in 2019.
Learn D3 4.x with downloadable code and over 140 examples
Create bar charts, scatter plots, pie charts, stacked bar charts, and force-directed graphs
Use smooth, animated transitions to show changes in your data
Introduce interactivity to help users explore your data
Create custom geographic maps with panning, zooming, labels, and tooltips
Walk through the creation of a complete visualization project, from start to finish
Explore case studies with nine accomplished designers talking about their D3-based projects
Interactive Data Visualization for the Web: An Introduction to Designing with D3 by Scott Murray will help you get started with D3.js . This book starts at the very basics, walking you through HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SVG. You will:
Updates for D3 v4 and ES6
Reusable layouts and components
Geospatial data visualizations
Mixed-mode rendering
D3.js in Action Elijah Meeks is a practical guide that will help you create interactive graphics and data-driven applications with D3. You will start with D3.js fundamentals and move all the way to advanced D3.js features. The D3.js ebook is split into 3 parts: 1) Fundamentals, 2) Information Visualization and 3) Advanced Techniques. The book contains:
You will learn from practical D3 usecases. Every D3 feature is explained in-depth along with how to use them. Once you are done with the book, you will be able to integrate D3.js into your web applications. The book starts of with simple and easy to follow D3 examples, which increase in complexity as the book advances.This is a great D3 reference book.
Data Visualization with D3.js 4.x Cookbook by Nick Qi Zhu is full of practical D3.js recipes. This book features over 65 recipes. Data Visualization with D3.js Cookbook teaches you how to become proficient at D3.js by using ready-to-use code examples. The book tackles real-world data visualization problems and solves them with practical recipes. You will:
Solve real-world visualization problems using D3.js practical recipes
Understand D3.js fundamentals
Learn from D3.js code samples
Use pre-built D3.js chart recipes
Use D3.js for data visualization
Learn D3.js application development
Use practical tips to design effective interfaces
Learn how to create custom charts as reusable components to be integrated with existing projects
Create a powerful and high-quality analytics dashboard
Find out how to create custom maps and integrate D3 with third-party mapping libraries
Follow steps to create data-driven applications by integrating D3 with Backbone
Learn how to collaborate with Firebase for real-time data analytics
Mastering D3.js takes a comprehensive D3.js guide. You will topics and fundamentals you need to become an advanced level D3.js developer. You will:
D3.js By Example Michael Heydt
Publisher: Packt Publishing - ebooks Account
Paperback: 304 pages
D3.js By Example by Michael Heydt help you create data-driven visualizations with D3. You will learn the D3 concepts with examples and quickly create visualizations including charts, network diagrams, and maps. This book is packed with practical examples of visualizations using real-world data sets. You will:
Install and use D3.js to create HTML elements
Use development tools such as JSBIN and Chrome Developer Tools to create D3.js applications
Retrieve JSON data and use D3.js selections and data binding to create visual elements from data
Create and style graphical elements such as circles, ellipses, rectangles, lines, paths, and text using SVG
Use D3.js to turn your data into bar and scatter charts, and add margins, axes, labels, and legends
Use D3.js generators to perform the magic of creating complex visualizations from data
Add interactivity to your visualizations, including tool-tips, sorting, hover-to-highlight, and grouping and dragging of visuals | 8,013,497 |
Cartoonist Seth is one of many to have contributed new, rare or never-before-seen work. Photograph: Drawn & Quarterly
As fat and as heavy as an old family Bible, Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels is the ultimate gift for the comics fan – and should no one close to you be capable of taking a hint, you should simply go straight out and make a present of it to yourself. For this 776-page celebration of the Canadian publisher of the world’s best cartoonists is unmissable. Adrian Tomine, Chester Brown, Jillian Tamaki, Tom Gauld, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman have all contributed new, rare or never-seen-before work (among many others). It also fairly bulges with archive photographs, reminiscences, interviews and essays: Margaret Atwood in praise of Kate Beaton; an appreciation of Tove Jansson by Sheila Heti; Lemony Snicket on how he discovered the mighty Seth. Really, what more could you want?
D&Q, which was founded by Chris Oliveros in 1990, at first struggled to survive in the face of the widespread perception that comics were mostly about superheroes. But having clung on pluckily for more than a decade, it suddenly found itself riding the wave of interest in graphic novels that followed both the movie adaptations of Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and the crossover success of Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (winner of the Guardian first book award in 2001).
Since then, it has gone from strength to strength. In 2005, it published Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, a groundbreaking travelogue by Guy Delisle that went on to sell 50,000 copies. In 2007, it had the fantastic idea of putting together all Tove Jansson’s Moomin strips (it has since published nine volumes of them). In 2011, Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant enjoyed five months on the New York Times bestseller list. All these landmarks, and dozens more, are celebrated in Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years…
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joe Matt, ‘the comic-book king of confession’. Photograph: Drawn & Quarterly
You feel a bit giddy turning the book’s pages. There’s something so generous about it, and so democratic, a lonely image from one of Chris Ware’s sketchbooks giving way to the strange watercolours of the Belgian cartoonist Brecht Evens; a full colour story by the peerlessly talented Israeli artist Rutu Modan following hard on the heels of a monochrome strip by Joe Matt (I am devoted to the cantankerous Matt, the comic-book king of confession).
Peggy Burns, D&Q’s stalwart publicist, insists the compendium is a thank you to the more than 50 cartoonists whose belief in the publisher never wavered down the years. And perhaps it is. But it’s really us (and them) who should be thanking D&Q. The company, always punching above its weight, has helped to change the landscape of comics and even of publishing itself, for what self-respecting literary list does not now include the odd graphic novel? (D&Q sold its first UK rights to Jonathan Cape in 2005.) This column would probably not exist were it not for its determination, its (in the main) effortlessly good taste.
Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning is published by Drawn & Quarterly (£30). Click here to order a copy for £24 | 8,013,498 |
The European Commission knows how important bees are: In 2011, it passed a two-year moratorium on a class of pesticides thought to be facilitating the decline of global bee populations. The chemicals, scientific studies suggested, could be contributing to colony collapse disorder, or CCD, the acronym that's come to define the frightening and mysterious disappearance, seemingly overnight, of entire hives. Over the past six years, the U.S. has lost about $2 billion in such hives and, as a result, $30 billion in crops, to CCD.
The controversial move, of course, isn't enough to save the bees, but it's a start. The U.S., despite acknowledging a “complex set of stressors and pathogens,” including agrochemicals, as potential culprits in the die-offs, has yet do anything. In March 2013, a group of beekeepers and environmental groups sued the EPA for its failure to protect the insects, and, by extension, our food supply. The agency, however, said it won't complete its review of the pesticides until 2018.
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But the problem isn't limited to pesticides, says Dave Goulson, and it's not just honeybees that are feeling the stress. There are more than 20,000 species of bees in the world, and habitat loss and disease, in addition to pesticides, are threatening them all -- not to mention the other insects that are likely being affected, or the larger species that rely on those species for food.
A professor of biology at the University of Sussex and founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Goulson is the author of more than 200 scientific studies on bees and other insects and, most recently, of "A Sting in the Tale," which chronicles his lifelong fascination with bumblebees and the quest to forestall their decline. "I think it’s clear that the world my children grow up in is going to be a poorer place than what we have today," he told Salon. However, he's careful to add, we still have a chance to makes things, if not all better, then at least a lot less worse than they could have been. And he has a lot of suggestions for how that might be done. A condensed and lightly edited version of our conversation follows:
You've been studying the decline of bees for about 20 years now. Are the die-offs that we’re hearing about right now a recent phenomenon, or are they part of a larger pattern of decline?
So the die-offs we’ve been hearing about recently mostly relate to honeybees, which are the managed bees that we keep in boxes and get honey from. A lot of people think that’s the only species of bee, and of course it isn’t. There really 20-odd thousand species of bee in the world. Almost all the others are wild bees that nobody looks after; they just look after themselves. They’re all important, but we actually don’t know what’s happening to most of them.
Basically, though, the causes of these die-offs and generally of bee declines are broadly the same for all types of bees, as far as we know. And there are three main ones for which there are good evidence. You’ll read all sorts of nonsense about other things. People will tell you that mobile phones are the cause of bee decline; or genetically modified crops is a popular one -- it’s slightly more plausible, but not much more than mobiles phones.
Firstly, is habitat loss. Farming has really radically changed in the last hundred years. In Britain we used to have about 50 million acres of flowery hay meadows, and nearly 98 percent of it was destroyed in the 20th century, when we intensified farming to try and increase food production. It was really kicked up with the second World War: Subsidies were introduced to pay farmers to rip out the hedges and to essentially destroy all this natural habitat and turn it into a crop monoculture. That happens or has gone on everywhere: These days much of North America has these massive fields because of the availability of pesticides, and herbicides in particular, which means you can grow a crop without any weeds at all. I would question whether it’s sustainable, but at least in the short term it produced heaps of food. But it also means there are a lot less flowers. That’s bad if you’re bee because all you eat is pollen, nectar and flowers. That’s probably still the biggest thing that's affecting all bees.
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Reason number two is disease. We accidentally redistributed bee diseases around the world. Honeybees aren’t native to the Americas at all; they come from Africa. Sadly, when people move bees around they accidentally move their diseases and parasites with them if they’re infected. And these are shared across bee species, so the diseases that affect honeybees will also spread to bumblebees and vice versa.
Number three is pesticides, which is a whole story in itself, but some of the insecticides we use are really toxic to bees, and to wildlife generally, and that certainly contributed to the problem. So with those three things together it’s going to be bad.
Just to clarify, what’s the main difference between honeybees, which we usually hear more about, and other species? Comparatively, how important are they for food, agriculture, pollination, that sort of thing?
If you ask a child to draw a bee, they’ll draw something big and fat with yellow and black stripes. That’s a bumblebee. Honeybees are much smaller: they’re not very furry, they’re very slender, pale brown creatures and they’re what lives in honeybee hives. And then there are all these other species of bee, which are mostly small and quite inconspicuous.
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In terms of crop pollination, they're all important to some extent: Different crops tend to be better pollinated by one or the other. It has to do with the shape and size of the bee and the length of its tongue. Tomatoes are almost always pollinated by bumblebees, along with things like blueberries and raspberries, strawberries, beans and lots of other vegetables. Honeybees do a whole bunch of other things; almonds are almost always pollinated by honeybees. And many are pollinated by several different species of bee. But the long and short of it is that they’re all important. It would probably be wiser to make sure that we look at a range of bees, because one of the dangers of the modern world is that some crops very heavily rely just on honeybees. When you use lots of pesticides then you get rid of the native and wild bees, and then your only option is to buy honeybees.
Almonds are a great example of this. They grow them very intensely and something like 1.5 million honeybee hives are transported to Northern California. Most of the honeybees in North America go to pollinate the almonds in one small area of California every spring. And if anything happens to that supply of honeybee hives then the almond growers are screwed, because they’ve got nothing else to fall back on. And that’s pretty worrying. It would be a much healthier situation if they encouraged and supported wild bees as well as honeybees so they’ve got a backup. As it is, it’s very risky.
The European Union has been a lot more progressive than the U.S. on banning pesticides that may be harming bees. Can you talk a little bit about how the E.U. managed to pass its rule and whether it’s being seen as having any effect?
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Yeah, so in the European Union we recently banned, for two years, three particular types of neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide that’s chemically related to nicotine. It's a nerve toxin that affects the brain of the bee and any other insect. It’s really toxic to insects, much more than almost anything else we’ve invented before. To illustrate that, a fifth of a teaspoon is enough to kill 250 million bees. In the U.K., which is a pretty small area, we have to buy 80 tons of these chemicals every year -- the U.S. figure is much, much higher. So we’re putting tons and tons of stuff into the land which is persistent, it’s systemic, it gets into plants, it gets into pollen and nectar.
Most scientists that work in this area are deeply concerned that this is basically harming our bees. Not necessarily by directly killing them, but there’s really good evidence that the doses they get are enough to mess with their behavior. As I said, these are nerve toxins; they affect the brain of the bee. The bee becomes less able to navigate and it can’t learn or associate; it’s kind of confused, it’s intoxicated. And bees need to be able to navigate; it’s one of the key things that they’re really good at. It’s essential for what they do because that’s how they find flowers and get to or from their nest. So with a honeybee or bumblebee, the workers go out and forage all day long and they can fly miles to find patches of flowers and bring food back. But if they’ve been given a dose of the nerve toxin, they can’t navigate, and they get lost, and that’s going to cut off the food supply to the nest.
So there’s really good reason to believe these things are harming our bees. And as a result, thankfully, we decided to go ahead with this moratorium. But it hasn’t really come into effect yet. The moratorium came in the effect in December 2013, so five months ago, but all our autumn crops, which is when most of our crops are sown, were treated before the moratorium. So if you drive around Britain today, you’ll see lots of canola fields in full flower. They're all treated. So even with the moratorium now in effect we won’t see any benefits, at the very earliest, until next year. To be honest, it will probably take longer than that.
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A two-year moratorium doesn’t seem long enough to measure whether this is having any real impact. How long would we realistically need?
Well, probably quite a few years, and I should emphasize that even with this moratorium in place, bees still have plenty of other problems, so populations are not going to go through the ceiling. But in any case these chemicals are really persistent; we know that they last in soil for five to 10 years, essentially. And they’ll last in plants for years. So it will take time for these things to slowly disappear from the environment, and nothing is going to happen quickly. I would hope that in three or four years, if the ban is renewed, we will start to see at least a small improvement -- not just in bees but hopefully in other wildlife, because I think there’s pretty good reason to believe that these chemicals have had negative effects on all insects: things like ladybirds, butterflies and all kinds of beneficial insects that we’d like to see, and probably the things that eat them, like birds, as well.
So yeah, it will take a long time to benefit. But the sooner you start, the better. I don’t want to be rude about it to you guys, but it’s quite depressing that the U.S. is really slow on this. There’s nothing much happening in North America at all and I think it’s about time you guys caught up.
So can it be argued that if bees are experiencing these negative effects from pesticides, that it’s likely to move up the food chain, and that large animals or people might be affected also?
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It’s very likely that a number of animals are being affected through lack of food. I’ve been some as yet unpublished studies and there’s various indirect evidence that’s pretty convincing, that seems to suggest that bird populations, particularly insect-eating birds, have been hit. Probably not because of direct poisoning, but simply because all of their food has been wiped out.
It’s possible that there are direct toxic effects on the food chain as well. These particular pesticides are less toxic to us than they are to insects, but they’re still toxic. And all the safety testing is based on really short-term tests. Generally speaking, it’s just over 48 hours or barely a week at the longest, and if you test rat or whatever it might be is still alive at the end, then you assume that all is well. But actually what happens in the real world is that animals and humans are exposed continually throughout their lives. More or less everything you eat contains a whole range of chemicals.
Getting back to the bees, some groups in the U.S. have pressured the EPA to enact a similar ban to the U.K.'s, but so far the EPA says it’s not going to even look into it for a number of years. Are there other things we can be doing to help preserve bees in the meantime?
A lot of conservation stories are very depressing because you can’t get involved very easily. You can’t get involved to save polar bears or tigers or whatever, but you can help to save bees just in your back garden. It’s easy to find resources that list bee-friendly flowers: the Xerces Society has lists for North America, and the Bumblebee Conservation Trust has a list for the U.K. So anyone can quickly go to their local garden center and find some big, friendly plants. And as soon as those things flower, you’ll see bees -- even in the middle of a big city, bees will hunt you out and visit your flowers if you grow them. If you can provide them with some clean, healthy food that really helps, because that’s one of the big things they're missing at the moment. And maybe they can cope with diseases and poisoning if they’ve got access to some nice, healthy food every now and again. If you haven’t got a garden maybe there are local places where you work, or community parks and gardens that are owned by the city -- putting in bee-friendly plants will make a real difference.
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How hopeful are you that we'll be able to turn the overall decline around?
The decline will continue for some time. Not just of bees, but of wildlife. The picture at present is quite depressing: We’re basically in the midst of what's called a mass extinction event. Probably several dozen species go extinct every day, and nothing is going to stop that quickly. But if we start changing, if we start stopping messing up the planet, at least we can make it less bad than it might be otherwise.
It’s really hard to know. I mean, on a bad day I can get quite depressed about all this, and, to be honest, I think it’s clear that the world my children grow up in is going to be a poorer place than what we have today. It’s inevitable because this process is underway right now. We’ve already destroyed huge proportions of the natural ecosystems of the world and we destroy more every day. We grow food in an extremely environmentally unfriendly way and probably in an unsustainable way. We’re seeing massive soil erosion around the world, which inevitably will lead to crop yield dropping. So one might get pretty depressed and think the future is quite bleak -- I don’t know. I hope it’s not.
All we can do is do our best right now. And anything we do will make it better than it might have been. Maybe this is a bit cheesy, but there’s an old proverb that goes, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And the second-best time to plant a tree is today.” Well, you know, if everyone starts doing something, then it’s certainly going to help. So you have to try and be positive, don’t you? If people give up and think there is no point, it’s all too late, then we’re definitely screwed. Some things are pretty tough. Some types of bee are much tougher than others, so we’re going to lose some -- we've already lost some -- but unless we’re really stupid we won’t lose all of them. | 8,013,499 |
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