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The Rangers signed free agent reliever Joe Nathan to a two-year contract worth $14.5 million with a club option for a third year (and a buyout) on Monday. It means that Neftali Feliz will come into spring training as a member of the club's starting rotation.
One of the club's biggest questions last spring training was whether Feliz would start or be back in the bullpen after winning the 2010 AL Rookie of the Year. He came into spring stretched out as a starter and the spotlight was on him every time he pitched. Because of that, the Rangers decided this offseason that they'd let Feliz know one way or the other what his role would be before spring training began. Now he knows.
This is the right move. It's time to see if Feliz can start. He's more valuable to the Rangers as a starter who can give them innings every fifth day than as a closer. He played a critical role in the bullpen the past to years, but many front office officials wondered if he could start. Now everyone will get to find out.
Is Feliz's secondary stuff good enough? How will he handle the innings workload? No one knows. But we'll never know if he doesn't get the opportunity. I think the timing is right. It's unclear whether C.J. Wilson returns, so the Rangers need to make sure they've got as many good arms in the rotation as they can get. Feliz is one of those. He has an electric fastball and if he can find more consistency with his slider and other secondary pitches (and he'll be forced to throw them more as a starter), he could prove to be a real weapon in the way that Alexi Ogando was for the Rangers for much of 2011.
The move doesn't mean the quest for Wilson ends. But if the lefty gets an offer larger than the Rangers are comfortable with, they've got to be prepared for some alternatives.
The secondary benefit is for Feliz's psyche. I do believe he'll move on from the disappointment of the World Series. But manager Ron Washington said that Feliz was in no condition to pitch after that ninth inning and that's tough on any player knowing the championship was so close. Maybe it doesn't hurt to have Feliz come into spring with a totally different job and focus. Could it help him put Game 6 in his rearview mirror quicker?
Do you like this move? Do you want to see Feliz start? | 200 |
Suburban-style fast food restaurants are a dying breed on High Street near The Ohio State University. The Wendy’s at 18th Avenue has been rebuilt as the nearly-completed View on High project, and Campus Partners announced last summer that the Wendy’s at 9th Avenue would be next to go. The Robert Weiler Company plans to continue that trend with a new development that would replace the Taco Bell near the South Campus Gateway with a new multi-story building.
“It’s all still very preliminary — nothing is finalized and we haven’t come up with exterior elevations or materials — but our plan is to redevelop the site with a multi-story building,” said Skip Weiler, owner of The Robert Weiler Company. “We’re still meeting with all people to make sure that we’re on the right track.”
Weiler said that the building would meet new neighborhood design guidelines that push for urban density on High Street through the University District. The building would be approximately 70 feet tall — roughly six stories — comprised of underground or rear-facing parking, first floor retail and apartment units above.
“We’re still working on those details, but the ground floor would definitely include a new Taco Bell with no drive-through and an additional 5,000 to 7,000 square feet of retail,” said Weiler. “This is the trend all over the country, to do density with retail and create a work-live environment where people who don’t have a car can walk to work or walk to school.”
Weiler said that he expects to have a more formalized plan in place within the next 45 to 60 days to present to the University Area Review Board and if approved anticipates a Summer 2017 construction completion date.
“We’ve been looking at opportunities like this up and down High Street for years,” he added. “We like this area and would like to do more student-and-retail type projects.”
The Robert Weiler Company doesn’t appear to be alone in this sentiment. Next door to the Taco Bell, Buckeye Real Estate is redeveloping two historic buildings, and Edwards Communities will be redeveloping the land across High Street with a large-scale mix of retail, residential and parking structures.
For ongoing discussion and updates on this development, CLICK HERE to visit our Messageboard. | 201 |
Have you been missing Rahm Emanuel? To be more specific, have you been missing angry Rahm Emanuel? Well then, today is your lucky day.
When asked where his children will attend school in Chicago (a question previously posed to Barack Obama as he prepared to leave Chicago for the White House), the mayor responded by telling NBC reporter Mary Ann Ahern that it was a private, family decision. Fair enough. When pressed by Ahern, however, Emanuel responded thusly:
Mary Ann, let me break the news to you. My children are not in a public position. I am. You’re asking me a value statement and not a policy. No, no, you have to appreciate this. My children are not an instrument of me being mayor. My children are my children, and that may be news to you, and that may be new to you, Mary Ann, but you have to understand that I’m making this decision as a father.
Again, fair enough. Harsh, but understandable. He has a point, even if his constituents might like to know whether his children attend a public or private school and, as such, what his personal experience with the school system might be.
Emanuel then stood to leave, and the cameras stopped rolling. Ahern tried to explain the context and importance of her question and that’s when, she says, Emanuel grew angry:
As I tried to explain further, Emanuel doubled back. He looked directly at my two college interns, and said, “You are my witnesses.” Then, the Mayor of Chicago positioned himself inches from my face and pointed his finger directly at my head. He raised his voice and admonished me. How dare I ask where his children would go to school! “You’ve done this before,” he said. This was the Emanuel we had heard about, and it was one of the oddest moments in my 29 years of reporting.
Later, Ahern gave Emanuel a call in an attempt to “clear the air.” When she told him she had felt bullied by his earlier actions, Emanuel responded in an Emanuelesque manner:
You are wrong and a bully. I care deeply for my family. I don’t care about you.
Take a look at the recorded interview for yourselves, courtesy of NBC Chicago:
h/t NBC Chicago
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] | 202 |
The Democratic field for Ohio governor gained its third candidate today as former state Rep. Connie Pillich declared she will seek the party’s nomination in 2018.
It will mark the second statewide run for Pillich, a lawyer and former Air Force captain who served three terms in the Ohio House. She ran for treasurer in 2014, losing to Republican Josh Mandel.
Two other Democrats -- Senate Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni, of the Youngstown area, and former U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton, of the Akron area -- also have announced their candidacies for governor.
"I learned in military you walk into every mission ready to succeed and I'm ready to win this race," Pillich told The Dispatch, stressing she is the only Democratic candidate with statewide campaign experience. "I understand how to put the race together."
Pillich said jobs and education would be her highest priorities as governor. "Everybody across Ohio is hurting and we've lost so many jobs to unfair foreign trade, automation and Wall Street greed."
"It's terribly disappointing to see our education system outsourced to corporations," she said of for-profit charter school chains. "Young people are leaving because they don't see any opportunity here. I see an Ohio where every child has a chance for a great education" and good-paying jobs, Pillich said.
"We have every tool we need in Ohio, we just need the right leadership to bring that vision to fruition."
The Republicans face an equally crowded race for governor.
Attorney General Mike DeWine, Secretary of State of Jon Husted and U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, of Wadsworth, are in the mix to join Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor as announced candidates for the Republican nomination to succeed John Kasich.
Pillich, 56, who lives in the Cincinnati suburb of Montgomery, served in Berlin and in support of Operations Desert Storm and Desert Shield as an Air Force communications specialist and then obtained her legal degree, serving as a public defender and in private practice. She served three terms in the Ohio House beginning in 2009.
Democrats could yet face another option in the gubernatorial field.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley is considered a potential candidate and some are attempting to draft former Ohio attorney general and treasurer Rich Cordray.
Cordray cannot run as long as he remains director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but President Donald Trump and Republicans have talked of seeking to oust him. | 203 |
Emergency Response Management: Changing the Paradigm of Public Safety Management
Rolta provides decision-makers with the data needed for confrontation, response, management and analysis of a wide variety of emergencies and threats, including natural disasters, terrorist attacks, crimes & criminal cases.
Today communities are exposed to increased hazards associated with industry, crime, and proximity to natural risks such as wildfires, earthquakes, flooding, and severe weather conditions. Increased exposure means emergency response requests are more frequent, complex, and dangerous. These demands for public safety require sophisticated, computerized systems to manage the volume of information needed for a safe and effective response by our law enforcement officers, fire fighters, and emergency medical personnel.
Rolta’s unique GeoCADS (Computer Aided Dispatch System) has been developed based on the concept of ‘Universal Emergency Number’ – Dial 100, for addressing the complex and dynamic needs of the society. This solution is a suite of software packages for initiating public safety calls for service, dispatch and maintaining the status of responding resources in the field – a ‘Command & Control Solution’ for modernization of a Police Control Room. The system identifies the most appropriate and available resources required to respond to the ‘100’ call and in addition manages resource status and interfaces with a records management system to capture and retain incident/event data.
Another vital requirement for an effective Emergency Response System is the provision of ‘Automatic Vehicle Location’ using GIS/GPS technologies. Rolta’s Emergency Response Solution provides an automated Distress Call Management System with real-time ability to quickly visualize activity patterns (incidents/events), map locations, and understand the multi-layered geospatial context of emergency situations with high end communication systems and ready accessibility of data.
The system also has interoperability interfaces with different emergency services like the Police, Fire, and Medical services, allowing public safety personnel to effectively plan for emergency response, by determining the manner and size of the responding incident/event. With enhanced capabilities, this solution can also be used as a Command and Control solution for Disaster Management. It can interface with:
Portable T-GeoCADS (Tetra GeoCADS)
Land and Coastal Control Room Solution
CCTV for City Surveillance and Traffic Management
CCTNS (Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems)
The industries catered to by this solution are given below, along with their relevant Rolta products. | 204 |
times appeared more in need of a miracle than a mere reorganisation. “We’ve looked at the goals we’ve conceded and we’ve got the worst defensive record in the league,” says David Moyes. “We’ve got to try and find a way of stopping that. We don’t want to stop the attacking play but we can’t get away with not running back. We can’t get away with not doing the jobs we’ve got to do.” Moyes’s public comments since his appointment by West Ham have been worryingly fatalistic – witness his statement about his role that “if it works, great. If it doesn’t I’ll see the East End of London for seven months, then go elsewhere.” He also promised to instil a new work ethic, adding that “I hope the players won’t cry if we work them harder”. He was at it again in discussing his attempted defensive reorganisation before this game, saying of his squad: “They’re telling me they want to work hard, be organised and disciplined. I hope once I’ve done that, they won’t be complaining.” It is not exactly inspiring, and one can only hope that he appears less feeble in private. SB
10) Murray must be on his game
Glenn Murray might not be the quickest or most exciting of strikers in the Premier League, but the 34-year-old’s form in the past month is proof that he still possesses the wiliness to flourish in the top division. He has four goals in his last three games for Brighton & Hove Albion, who will be hopeful of extending their four-match unbeaten run when they host Stoke City on Monday night, and a first home win since September may well depend on Murray’s nous in the penalty area. Brighton are organised, committed and tough to break down, but Chris Hughton’s team are not free-scoring and Stoke will believe they have the attacking class to steal a second successive away win. Playing in such a parsimonious side means that Murray will probably have to be as alert as he was against Southampton, Swansea and West Ham when the slightest of openings come his way. JS
• Sign up to our weekly email, The Recap, here, showcasing a selection of our sport features from the past seven days. | 205 |
gave her its Open Government Hero Award in 2015.
She’s also gotten used to dirty looks from public officials who don’t appreciate being recorded.
Her ejection from an April 2012 Cumming City Council meeting is memorialized in a photo on the back of the business card Tisdale eagerly trades when meeting someone new.
The state’s then-attorney general, Sam Olens, sued Mayor H. Ford Gravitt and the city, calling Tisdale’s expulsion a violation of open-meetings law. A federal judge agreed and in August 2014 ordered the city and mayor to pay $12,000 in penalties plus attorney fees. Tisdale also sued, and settled the case for $200,000.
Olens informed Tisdale of their victory two days later at the rally in northwest Georgia — the one that led to her indictment.
Tony Wooten, then a captain with the Dawson County Sheriff’s Office, testified in October that the owner of the private venue where the rally was held had asked him to remove Tisdale if she wouldn’t stop filming, according to a hearing transcript.
Tisdale testified that Wooten didn’t identify himself as law enforcement, and that she didn’t stop filming because she believed she had permission.
The owners of Burt’s Farm, where the rally happened, testified that Tisdale misrepresented herself as working for the governor when she arrived. Tisdale disputes that.
She was indicted in November 2015 on charges of willful obstruction of a law enforcement officer and criminal trespass.
In May, Tisdale sued Wooten and two other deputies who participated in her arrest. Her lawsuit is on hold pending the outcome of her criminal case.
If convicted on the felony obstruction charge, Tisdale faces one to five years in prison.
Attorney Bruce Harvey is defending her for free — though Tisdale rewards him with homemade blueberry pancakes and trail mix. He took the case, he said, because he found it ridiculous that someone could be arrested for filming public figures at a public event, speaking on matters of public interest.
“I happen to be a First Amendment absolutist, and I think that reporting, journalism and openness in a democratic society really stand at the core of our democratic values,” Harvey said. “Without that, society closes down.” | 206 |
President Obama will visit Cannonball, N.D., today, home of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, to celebrate increased cooperation between tribal and federal governments. One issue, not on the official agenda but likely on the minds of several Native Americans leaders, is federal regulation of resources and the Keystone Pipeline.
While North Dakota is experiencing one of the greatest oil booms in American history, several area reservations suffer from systemic poverty. In the Standing Rock Nation alone, unemployment rates hover around 80 percent. But in nearby Fort Berthold Reservation, jobless numbers have fallen below 2 percent, tribal officials report. One of the factors contributing to the wildly different unemployment rates is oil.
More than one-third of North Dakota’s oil reserves reside within the shared borders of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations at Fort Berthold. In 2008, the Three Affiliated Tribes signed an agreement with North Dakota that standardized regulation and rules, paving the way for oil development. Now, according to the Associated Press, the tribes net close to $40 million per month from that development.
Windfall oil profits have sparked debate among many in the Native American community about the development of natural resources, and specifically construction of the Keystone Pipeline. The Lakota Nations in South Dakota oppose plans to build the pipeline and fear the “black snake” would threaten sacred ground and waterways. Concerned about the environmental impact of the pipeline, Owe Aku, a matriarch of the Lakota people, told Huffington Post, “as people of the earth, our coming generations have a right to sacred water, no policy, no corporation, no politics should be more important than that.”
Tex Hall, the tribal chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes who will meet with Obama, disagrees. Hall believes that federal deregulation and tribal autonomy hold the key to tribal revitalization. “Let the tribes themselves develop their own regulations and their own rules and laws and support us so we can develop this economy without slowing it down because of bureaucratic red tape,” he told the Bemdji Pioneer.
Nick Loris, a senior energy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, believes that the tribes in support of the pipeline represent a larger majority of Americans. “These tribes join a chorus of 60 percent of the American people, unions, Democrats, Republicans and former Obama energy officials,” he writes, “who think it’s a good idea.” | 207 |
Microsoft has taken the top spot on the annual “Just 100” list of the most responsible U.S. companies, compiled by Forbes and the nonprofit Just Capital, which ranked the companies based on values that citizens want to see in corporate America.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant scored highly in a range of categories, notably:
Minimizing environmental impact (#1)
Paying workers fairly (#2)
Treating customers well (#5)
Committing to ethical and diverse leadership (#5)
Microsoft unseated last year’s No. 1 pick, Intel, which landed in second place for 2018. Google’s parent company Alphabet took third. Other Seattle-area companies to make the list were Amazon (#30), Zillow (#69) and Boeing (#72).
Forbes and Just Capital looked at 890 publicly traded U.S. companies for the ranking.
Social responsibility appeared to help, not hurt, the financial performance of most firms. Those that made the list reported 5 percent higher return-on-equity than the average of Russell 1000 companies.
Compared to peers, companies on the list paid their typical worker 26 percent more, had four times as many female directors and recycled eight times more waste.
“People are finally coming around to saying, ‘It’s not just the surplus you’ve created for yourself. What’s the state of the world around you?’” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Forbes in an interview that accompanied the rankings. “That’s where I feel like we’re at our best.”
While Microsoft earned top marks under the ranking’s methodology, it has struggled publicly with diversity in recent years. The company has been accused of gender discrimination in an ongoing lawsuit brought by female employees in 2015. Women comprise 27 percent of Microsoft’s workforce and African Americans 4 percent, according to the company.
Microsoft’s chief diversity officer told GeekWire in November that, when it comes to employing more women and minorities in leadership, “we are closer to the beginning of this journey than the end.”
“Aligning corporate behavior with the priorities of the American people is good for workers and good for business,” said Just Capital CEO Martin Whittaker in a statement. Just Capital was started by billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones. | 208 |
Equity markets roared higher Thursday and Friday as they 'knew' a deal was imminent in Greece because Tsipras appeared to backpedal. However, after someone told Merkel the truth, and "everyone knows you can't believe" the Greeks, The Eurorgoup Meeting ends with zero agreement after 9 hours of rumor-mongering and escalating tensions. Local reporters noted the leaders could not even agree on what to disagree about as an increasing number of EU member states pushed for either a Grexit or considerably tougher sanctions austerity on the Greeks.
End of #Eurogroup session. To be continued tomorrow. — Alexander Stubb (@alexstubb) July 11, 2015
From the man himself...
*DIJSSELBLOEM SAYS TALKS ARE STILL VERY DIFFICULT
*DIJSSELBLOEM SAYS ISSUE OF GREEK TRUST VERY DIFFICULT
*DIJSSELBLOEM: `WE DON'T HAVE A SOLUTION YET'
*DIJSSELBLOEM SAYS `HUGE PROBLEMS' REMAIN IN GREEK TALKS
*DIJSSELBLOEM: `FOR SURE IT WAS A DIFFICULT MEEETING'
Summing up the meeting perfectly...
"Is it a yes or a no," the Slovakian finmin @KazimirPeter is asked as he leaves. "No is the better answer," he replies #Greece — Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) July 11, 2015
As Reuters reports (rather more hopefully than many),
Euro zone finance ministers were trying to draft a joint statement on Saturday listing further measures they want Greece to take in order to launch negotiations on a bailout Athens has requested, an EU source said. The Greek government has put forward a set of reform plans to meet conditions for a three-year loan from euro zone partners but finance ministers said they did not go far enough and several sources said the other 18 euro zone states want Athens to offer additional actions and guarantees of implementation.
* * *
Don't worry though:
*MOSCOVICI SAYS THERE'S `ALWAYS HOPE' AND TALKS RESUME SUNDAY
Do these look like faces of hope?
There is no press conference and the meeting will resume tomorrow at 11am... shortly before FX markets open. | 209 |
Tourists travel to Croatia for a whole variety of reasons. They are typically looking to spend time along the Adriatic Sea, enjoying the mild temperatures. However, if you are willing to enjoy the sun while on a boat and viewing one of nature’s wonders then you should travel to Kornati National Park.
Kornati National Park
Kornati National Park is often described as a nautical paradise. Yachtsmen from around the world are drawn to the area to test their skills within the challenging waters, interweaving their boats among the multitude of islands.
The islands were made a national park in 1980 due to the exceptional beauty of the landscape, the interesting geomorphology, jagged coastline and the amazing eco-system found beneath the surface of the water.
Kornati National Park is a group of islands in the central portion of the Croatian Adriatic Sea, located between the islands of Sibenik and Zadar. It consists of 89 islands. The average area of the islands is only 0.55 square kilometres with 9 islands larger than 1 square kilometre and 76 smaller than one hectare. The total park area is 217 square kilometres with 50 of those square kilometres being on land the remaining 167 being sea areas. The total coastline, jagged and indented, measures 238 kilometres.
Getting to Kornati National Park
Kornati National Park can be reached by boat – if you do not own your own boat, there are many available for rent in the nearby areas.
An alternative is taking an organized tour of the area. Again, there are several to choose from, as individuals and tourist agencies up and down the Adriatic coast offer tours of the area. Tours typically last approximately 10 hours and include the boat ride, a drink, park entrance ticket, lunch, and a tour guide to answer any questions and point out all the interesting points along the way.
Kornati National Park is open all year. It is ideal for participating in water sports like sailing, scuba diving, and snorkelling. The traveller who is looking for a simpler way of life will also enjoy the area. Rainwater and solar energy or gas is utilized in the area, as there is no running water or electricity. You can be transported back in time or imagine yourself living on a deserted island (with a few more comforts than anyone truly living on a deserted island has).
More info: likesibenik.com | 210 |
HARRISON, N.J. (February 14, 2018) - New York Red Bulls II have signed midfielder Steven Echevarria and defender Wahab Ackwei to USL contracts, pending league and federation approval, the club announced today.
Echevarria joined the Red Bulls Academy in 2011 and signs with NYRB II after a four-year career at Wake Forest. There he appeared in 79 games, totaling seven goals and six assists.
“It’s such a great feeling to coach a player starting at the U-14 level and see him turn pro with the club,” NYRB II head coach John Wolyniec said. “Steven has strengths that really fit what we do and is a model of hard work and dedication that will translate onto the pitch.”
Echevarria also featured for the Red Bulls’ PDL side each of the past two summers.
“I’m extremely excited to be signing with the Red Bull organization and for the opportunity to win trophies with my hometown club,” said Echevarria. “When I came to this amazing academy at the age of 14, getting to the first team was and continues to be my dream. I can’t overstate the joy I’ve had in being able to put pen to paper and continue along this path with what I believe is the best organization and group of guys I could ask for.”
Ackwei, a native of Accra, Ghana, joins NYRB II on a free transfer from Inter Allies FC in the Ghanaian Premier League.
“I’m very happy to join the New York Red Bulls,” Ackwei said. “They are one of the biggest clubs in the USA and I’m filled with excitement.”
In 2017, Wahab featured in 23 games for Inter Allies FC, scoring three goals.
"Wahab brings a unique skillset that we feel can adapt to how we play,” NYRB II head coach John Wolyniec said. “We look forward to helping him integrate within the team as he continues his development here with us."
MLS players Dominic Oduro and Gershon Koffle came through the system at Inter Allies FC before signing for their respective clubs within MLS.
In another roster move, New York Red Bulls II and Noah Powder have mutually agreed to part ways. | 211 |
what it takes to purchase a gun in your state.
I don’t expect you to start putting the public welfare first. I don’t even expect you to do what’s right ahead of what’s expedient. But at least take a view and stick to it. If you want to carry the NRA’s water because you’re afraid they’ll take you out in a primary otherwise, then take those talking points they hand you about personal liberty and freedom and make that your governing philosophy. If you want to do the bidding of the casinos or hotel industry or organized labor or taxi medallion owners or the big banks and impose lots of regulations to keep startups and competition in check, fine. Do that — but at least extend it to instruments of murder while you’re at it.
Put your money where your mouth is. If you truly believe that government regulation amounts to a deprivation of individual rights and liberties, fine. I don’t agree in all cases, but I respect your right to believe it. But then act like it.
There’s no company — and certainly no startup trying to create new jobs — that should face less regulation than what it takes to purchase a gun in your state. So let’s make that the bar and either move regulation up or down the scale accordingly.
Pick a standard. Stick to it. We know you already struggle to live with yourself. It’s the least you can do.
Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist and writer. And he’s the founder and CEO of Tusk Holdings, which includes Tusk Ventures, Tusk Strategies, Kronos Archives, Ivory Gaming and Tusk Montgomery Philanthropies, which is working to bring mobile voting to U.S. elections. Tusk Ventures is the world's first venture capital fund to work with and invest solely in high-growth startups facing political and regulatory challenges. Tusk previous served as campaign manager for Michael Bloomberg, as deputy governor of Illinois, and as communications director for Sen. Charles Schumer. He writes a regular column for Inc. and The Observer, hosts a podcast called Firewall, and is working a book about his adventures in protecting disruptors from the bad guys. Reach him @BradleyTusk.
Sign up for the newsletter Recode Daily Email (required) By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice and European users agree to the data transfer policy. Subscribe | 212 |
No, it’s not an April Fool. It’s an April (caffeine) Fix! You may soon be able to order your favorite Starbucks drink directly through your email interface — as long as you’re using Outlook, that is.
Microsoft announced on Thursday at its annual Build conference in San Francisco that it is developing an email tool that will allow users to schedule meetings at a Starbucks location and order coffee ahead of time.
REUTERS
“We’re always looking for new ways to engage with our customers outside our stores,” said Starbucks CTO Gerri Martin-Flickinger at Thursday’s presentation. “Our work with Office is opening up new opportunities for us to connect with our customers and save them time when they want to combine coffee with meetings.”
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In the same way that Facebook Messenger is ramping up its third-party offerings — integrating tools to hail a Lyft, send money, or check in for a flight — it would appear that Microsoft is also looking to steer people to one particular platform for all their needs.
However, unlike Facebook — which is concentrating on the business-to-consumer model — Microsoft is banking on artificial intelligence to do the work.
"Ultimately, it's not going to be about man versus machines. It is going to be about man with machines," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told conference attendees on Wednesday.
The company unveiled a few other tricks at the three-day event, including plans for an embedded Skype app that would allow businesses to conduct web meetings from their browser or mobile device, and the integration of its Cortana virtual concierge into Outlook and Calendar to do anything from take your pizza order to plan your vacation.
Read More: Microsoft Envisions a Future of Bots, AI, That Predict Your Every Need
The Starbucks-on-demand feature has no launch date as of yet, but will undoubtedly prove useful for early morning team meetings, or weekend wind-downs with a friend. And for those awkward moments when you don’t want to meet up with a friend, you can let them down gently by using one of the tool’s other features — send them a Starbucks gift card.
Now if only there was an app that ordered a round of martinis. | 213 |
If you’re fascinated with computer viruses and happen to have $1.2 million to spare, you can buy this 2008 laptop infested with six of the most infamous computer viruses ever created.
“The Persistence of Chaos” is a unique art project by Chinese internet artist Guo O Dong in collaboration with cybersecurity company Deep Instinct. It consists of a 2008 Samsung laptop running Windows XP SP3 and infected with six of the most dangerous pieces of malware ever created – ILOVEYOU, MyDoom, SoBig, WannaCry, DarkTequila, and BlackEnergy. Together, these six online threats have caused over $95 billion in damages all around the world, over the last two decades. That didn’t stop Guo from putting it up for auction and selling it to the highest bidder.
Photo: TheDigitalArtist/Pixabay
“These pieces of software seem so abstract, almost fake with their funny, spooky names, but I think they emphasize that the web and IRL are not different spaces. Malware is one of the most tangible ways that the internet can jump out of your monitor and bite you,” the avant-garde artist said, adding that he considered his latest creation “a kind of bestiary, a catalog of historical threats”.
While certainly thought-provoking, even shocking, selling a laptop infected with six of the most infamous computer viruses in human history isn’t the wisest thing a person can do. After all, what’s to stop the buyer from purposefully or accidentally releasing those threats on the internet? That’s where Deep Instinct comes in.
The Chinese cybersecurity company was tasked with air-gapping the Samsung NC10 laptop, making sure that it can’t be connected to the internet or any other device. Although the term ‘air-gapped’ is used even in cases where a simple firewall software is used to isolate a device, this particular laptop is truly air-gapped, meaning that all of its ports are physically disabled for safe measure.
The auction for the infected laptop ends today, and the current bid is $1.2 million. Despite all the safety measures taken by Guo O Dong to stop the six viruses from spreading online, the “lucky” buyer will still need to sign a waver which states that they have “no intention of disseminating any malware”. | 214 |
Nearly two months after a Republican representative in Hawaii was ousted as the Hawaii House minority leader, she has officially announced her decision to leave the party.
In a letter to the Hawaii Republican Party on Wednesday, Rep. Beth Fukumoto wrote about the partisanship she saw from her colleagues on the right, which included criticism from her own caucus that she felt was due to her participation at the Women's March in Honolulu in January.
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"This election, I saw members of my party marginalizing and condemning minorities, ethnic or otherwise, and making demeaning comments towards women," Fukumoto wrote in her letter. "So, when I listened as our now top office holder refused to condemn the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, speaking out didn't seem like a choice."
Fukumoto, who served as the House minority leader from 2014 until this year, also wrote about her identity as a Japanese-American woman, and accused the Republican Party of allowing "elements of racism and sexism within the base" that have hurt the party and country.
Often cited as a rising star within the Republican Party, Fukumoto told NBC News previously that she felt attacked by her caucus because of her vocal stance against Trump and the extreme rhetoric coming from many Republican leaders."[The Republican Party] seems to be punishing dissent, and when you have a political party, you need dialogue," Fukumoto said in an interview with NBC News in February.
Rep. Beth Fukumoto talks with reporters in her capitol office on Wed., Feb. 1, 2017 in Honolulu. In deep-blue Hawaii, Fukumoto is considering switching parties to become a Democrat after she was pressured to resign her leadership role for criticizing President Donald Trump. Cathy Bussewitz / AP
In a media statement released Wednesday, Fukumoto added that she plans to seek membership in the Democratic Party.
"In serving my district at the Legislature, I’ve found significant common ground with my Democratic colleagues. Enough common ground that I believe that we can fit comfortably in the same tent," Fukumoto said. "For me, I think the Democratic Party of Hawaii allows enough diversity of opinion that the values and ideas that I’ve always held can find a home there. Democrats that want to change the status quo in Hawaii are still fighting to do it, and I want to help them." | 215 |
mystery of the case.
Around this time, CNN was preparing to report that the law firm involved was Alston & Bird. The Washington Post had already written that a foreign-owned bank was the company that faced the subpoena.
Alston & Bird told the judge it wanted to provide a simple "no comment" to media requests, yet Mueller said the type of disclosure the law firm proposed "would materially prejudice the due administration of justice," according to Howell's summaries. CNN published a story naming the law firm on January 9, the day before Howell heard the arguments over how the sides should approach media requests. Lawyers and employees of the law firm still have not responded to requests for comment.
Howell ultimately told the two sides they could not speak about the case beyond what was known in the public record. Since then, the District Court, Circuit Court and Supreme Court have gradually made documents available in the case.
Fines above $2 million
Fines of $50,000 a day still appear to be mounting against the company as it refuses to turn over documents. The total amount owed appears to stand at more than $2 million.
But in a late January opinion from Howell released Thursday, she articulates how the company and the prosecutors were still in a stand off. "Both [the company] and the government are maneuvering to gain the more advantageous position," Howell wrote on January 24. The company was arguing it would never have to actually pay the fines because it was owned by a foreign country and was pressing the case at the Supreme Court. Prosecutors wanted to let the fines pile up before collecting the sanctions.
Prosecutors hadn't yet even tried to seize the company's assets or properties, a necessary step before Howell would make additional rulings of consequence, she wrote. She didn't even know the property the US government would want to seize.
"The government cannot simply take the Contempt Order to a court or sheriff and demand that a lien be placed on [the company's] property. A judge must first enter a judgment for a sum certain and an order authorizing that conduct," Howell wrote. She didn't want to "resolve enforcement questions based on a hypothetical sequence of events that might never actually come to pass."
The company and federal prosecutors still appear to be in that stand off, with the company requesting Supreme Court review of the lower courts' decisions commanding it turn over the documents and face fines. The country that Mueller has so badly wanted records from is still unknown. | 216 |
Jeffery Martin
Jeffery Martin, 55, a retired Pepper Pike police officer, was sentenced Thursday to 33 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to stalking his ex-girlfriend.
(Cory Shaffer, cleveland.comr)
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A retired Pepper Pike police officer was sentenced Thursday to nearly three years in prison for stalking his ex-girlfriend for more than seven months.
Jeffery Martin, 56, pretended to be a police officer and a private investigator to find out the woman's personal information, and followed her to the Bedford Police Department in December when she reported his crimes, court records say.
Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo sentenced Martin Thursday to 33 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to menacing by stalking, aggravated trespassing, impersonating a police officer and unauthorized use of a computer charges.
A grand jury indicted Martin on charges including rape, but the charge was dropped as part of Martin's plea deal.
Martin was suspended four times during his 22-year career as a Pepper Pike police officer.
Martin also agreed to forfeit all of his police badges, certificates and weapons as part of a deal with the Ohio Attorney General's Office, which handled the prosecution.
He will be on parole for three years after his release from prison.
Martin called the Springdale Police Department on Aug. 9 and identified himself as a Pepper Pike officer, according to court records. He then asked Springdale officers to follow a car owned by the woman's brother as part of an investigation, records say.
Martin sent a letter to the woman's home in Bedford on Aug. 11, and followed her to a party in Parma on Oct. 17, according to court records.
On Nov. 15, he followed her to Whole Foods in Woodmere and to Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, according to records. Martin told campus security that he was a private investigator in order to gain access to the campus, according to court records.
Martin also followed the woman from her home to the Bedford Police Department on Dec. 7, where she accused Martin of raping her and stalking her, according to court records.
Martin followed the woman into the department's lobby, but declined to speak to detectives, records say. The next day, Martin called a Bedford detective and asked if he was going to be charged with rape, court records said.
To comment on this story, please visit our crime and courts comments section. | 217 |
Look," said Nick Roberts of the Yazoo City Citizens Council, explaining why 51 of 53 Negroes who had signed an integration petition withdrew their names, "if a man works for you, and you believe in something, and that man is working against it and undermining it, why you don't want him working for you--of course you don't."
In Yazoo City, in August 1955, the Council members fired signers of the integration petition, or prevailed upon other white employers to get them fired. But the WCC continues to deny that it uses economic force: all the Council did in Yazoo City was to provide information (a full-page ad in the local weekly listing the "offenders"); spontaneous public feeling did the rest.
At the WCC's initial meeting at Indianola, Mississippi, in the summer of 1954, it was decided to isolate and silence white dissenters. The Council organizers knew that the Negroes would need white leadership and help--ministers, editors, school-board members--and it resolved to use social ostracism to deny these to them. In Holmes County, Mississippi, a mass meeting sponsored by the WCC asked Dr. David Minter and Eugene Cox and their families to leave the county. Minter and Cox had been running a cooperative farm for Negroes under the auspices of the Presbyterian church. After the Court decision they were seen as a danger. The Cox and Minter families, however, had never been very much involved with the community, and so they stayed on--in spite of threats and the cancellation of their fire-insurance policies. Nevertheless, Negroes became afraid to come out to their farm, and the two families found themselves isolated. The neighboring minister, a conservative and one of the two men who had defended them at the mass meeting, was transferred out of his parish. (A South Carolina minister lost his church after co-authoring a resolution Which denounced economic sanctions against partisans of integration as un-Christian.)
In another Mississippi city, two doctors were told that their white patients would be denied the use of a new hospital unless they agreed not to bring Negro patients even into the segregated wing. (The Council leaders, who expect the Court eventually to abolish segregation in hospitals, believe that the best policy is to keep Negroes out altogether.) And in Clinton, Tennessee, where mob demonstrations greeted the opening of the school year last month, principal D. J. Brittain received so many threatening and abusive telephone calls that he had to change his number. | 218 |
Barcelona coach Ernesto Valverde claimed captain Lionel Messi could feature against Inter Milan in the Champions League on Tuesday, little more than two weeks after breaking his arm.
Messi was a surprise inclusion in the squad list as he was expected to be out of action for three weeks after breaking a bone in his right arm on October 20.
The Argentine forward returned to training last week and may be able to help Barcelona secure progression from Group B on Tuesday at the San Siro.
Lionel Messi trained with his Barcelona team-mates at the San Siro on Monday evening
Messi could feature against Inter Milan in the Champions League, claims Ernesto Valverde
Valverde will hope Messi is fit enough from the start as Barcelona look to secure a last-16 spot
'Leo is at the point where he might be available, but we have to wait for the training session. We have to see if he's safe to play,' Valverde told reporters on Monday.
'In terms of his play and his movements, he's fine. We have to wait. It's always better if he's there. Of course it's necessary to get Messi back as soon as possible.
'There are three or four possibilities. One is that he plays from the start, or he comes on, or he goes off. What we won't do is take any risks.'
The Argentine forward was in high spirits on the eve of the highly-anticipated European clash
Barcelona have picked up a maximum nine points in their opening three group games
Rafinha passes the ball prior to Barcelona training at the home of the historic Serie A outfit
Barcelona train on Monday night in the Italian capital, after which Messi may receive his medical clearance from Barcelona's doctors.
'I don't know if (Messi) will play tomorrow but I am happy he is back with us,' added versatile Barcelona midfielder Sergi Roberto.
'It's clear that we were worried about his absence, he's the best player in the team and in the world.'
Barcelona won the four games they have played without Messi, including beating Inter Milan 2-0 at the Nou Camp and thrashing Real Madrid 5-1 in La Liga.
Jasper Cillessen saves an effort on goal on the eve of the Champions League fixture
Valverde spoke to the media at the San Siro, where he was questioned about Messi | 219 |
To provide for Texans and help local restaurants stay open, Governor Greg Abbott is now allowing restaurants to sell groceries.
“I honestly think if we wouldn’t have adjusted, we’d be closed right now,” said Blue Baker owner David Fox.
Fox said he and other restaurant owners are facing a big challenge to try and stay open. He said selling groceries has helped keep his doors open.
“Last week, we had a lot of people coming just asking for baking basics, like flour and sugar,” said Fox. “We have about 80 items listed now, and we’re trying to figure out how to add some others as people request.”
Fox said people can order food and groceries online and then come through the drive-through to pick them up. They’re even selling toilet paper. Customer Kim Ege said she never expected to pick up groceries from one of her favorite restaurants.
“Well, we ordered lunch, but we also ordered eggs, flour and butter,” said Ege. “When I went to order our food today, I kinda checked it out and thought okay I’ll grab a few more things because it helps support this business and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Another local restaurant that is adjusting the way they operate is The Village Café. They’re selling groceries and they launched a meal subscription plan on Tuesday.
“You can also buy Aggieland Honey, which supports another local business,” said Assistant General Manager Alanna O’Connell. “You can buy farm fresh eggs by Wise Family Farm and our homemade bread.”
The subscription service is called Feed Your Village.
“It lasts for four weeks, and so you can either get one two or three meals per week,” said O’Connell. “Every Monday, you’ll just drive down the alley here and we’ll put it in your car.”
O’Connell said this plan will help them get through these hard times, and reopen their kitchen for more normal times.
“It feeds your family at home, and it feeds me personally, this is what’s paying my bills right now,” said O’Connell.
You can find links Blue Baker and The Village’s websites in the related links. | 220 |
connection between Neumont and well-connected members of the LDS community? Or, are the lines perhaps quite blurred in Utah because of LDS saturation?
It’s just Utah and LDS saturation. The Doxeys are active LDS but they NEVER brought their religion to the workplace. Unless you want to say being ethical, moral, honest, above reproach, treating others with dignity, respect, and kindness is a Mormon only thing :-)
Ned’s a Jew. And that’s not saying very much about the Jewish faith – IMHO.
From talking with you, clearly there ARE people in the for-profit industry who believe in honesty and do not support fraud (but they may not last long at some institutions). You have worked at multiple for-profit colleges, including ITT Tech. Looking back, has your opinion about for-profit higher education changed over the years? Currently, what do you believe?
Since May 2014, I now work for the Biomedical Informatics Department at the University of Utah. I am SO GLAD to be out of the rat race that is for-profit proprietary education. It’s a dog eat dog field with no winners. Not the students. Not the staff. And certainly no longer the share holders.
I’m sad to see the Gainful Employment Regulations defeated and not implemented. That would have put all the frauds out of business for good. Most of the fraudsters are now just switching to being a non-profit in order to side step the regulations.
I’ve enjoyed sharing my insights with you very much. It is helping me deal with Kristi’s abuse. I didn’t state this before but Kristi was a very large person, Alice needed major dental work, and I have strabismus (crossed eyes). These physical limitations did not impact our ability to do an outstanding job year after year. Ned has wrongfully terminated so many employees that refused to bend the rules or were old or not physically perfect. Jason Aquino was a very special student to me. I sent him job leads in CA. I really want Jason to be happy and successful. Please send him my regards if you speak to him, again.
Thank you for your time and best wishes to you always.
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“When I watch telly or a movie, it’s escapism. I just want to not think about my fucking life for a minute. I want to sit there, and be transported,” says Emilia Clarke, the 32-year-old English actor at the epicenter of one of the biggest, highest grossing, most culturally significant and revered shows on the planet: Game of Thrones.
17.4 million people around the world tuned into the final season premiere episode of the show, making it the most watched screening in HBO’s history. Memes have been flying across social feeds, passionate debates have ensued on who will take the Iron Throne, and bubbling excitement-meets-a saddened unwillingness to really, truly accept that the eight season-long fantasy epic has finally come to a close, has sunk in.
Game of Thrones, and the original Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin, is a cultural phenomenon of insurmountable proportions. It holds six Guinness World Book of Records entries, is the most awarded series in Emmy history, and has won 308 awards out of 596 nominations to date. It’s been quoted in speeches by politicians. Referenced in shows from The Simpsons to Sesame Street. Children have been born and named after its characters. Its fans are said to be the most devoted and dedicated of all, exceeding Bieber’s “Beliebers,” Gaga’s “Little Monsters,” and Star Trek’s “Trekkies.”
And now, after eight long years of the show and franchise, it’s ending. Chants of ‘Winter is Here’ float across countries, time zones, social media platform of your choice, and into the canon of entertainment history.
Escaping to fantastical worlds such as Westeros is cleary a favoured pastime of our generation. “It hit at a time when, culturally and socially, people were interested in power,” explains Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, one of the warring heirs to the epic’s Iron Throne. The original story was inspired by the War of Roses that took place in England during the 14th century. “You’ve got power, which is really fascinating, and how our world is still run to this day, then you’ve got incredibly beautifully written complex characters and sensational intrigue.” | 222 |
Left-wing HBO host Bill Maher mocked voters in middle America on Friday’s edition of Real Time, explaining that less “affluent and educated” people in red states are jealous of those living in more prosperous states that tend to vote Democrat.
Maher’s monologue was in response to the news this week that Amazon had scrapped its plan to build a new headquarters in New York, a proposal he argued was symbolic of the geographic inequality that exists in America.
“We have a problem in America called spatial geographic inequality which means the most affluent and educated people are clustered in just a few cities,” Maher explained. “We have orchestras and theaters districts and world-class shopping. We have Chef Wolfgang Puck, they have Chef Boyardee.”
“Maybe that has something to do with why Trump voters are obsessed with ‘owning the libs.’ Because the libs own everything else,” he continued. “The blue parts of America are having a big prosperity party while that big sea of red feels like their invitation got lost in the mail.”
Maher then urged Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to “take one for the team” and invest in a less prosperous state such as Mississipi, creating thousands of jobs for the local economy and preventing voters from throwing a “turd in the punch bowl” by voting for Republican politicians.
“The blue parts of America are having a big prosperity party while the big sea of red feels like their invitation got lost in the mail — and they still use the mail,” he explained. “The fly-over states have become the passed-over states, that’s why red state voters are so pissed off. They don’t hate us, they want to be us.”
“Bezos, you’re worth $130 billion. Take one for the team! Stop playing cities off against one another and help a dying one come back to life,” he said. “If we keep leaving the red states behind, they’re going to keep getting angrier and crazier, because if you’re not invited to the party, the next best thing is to throw a turd in the punch bowl.”
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at [email protected]. | 223 |
In an important editorial in Science, Andy Grove, former Chief Executive Officer of Intel Corporation, advocates restricting the FDA to safety-only trials. Instead of FDA required efficacy trials patients would be tracked using a very large, open database.
The biomedical industry spends over $50 billion per year on research and development and produces some 20 new drugs….A breakthrough in regulation is needed to create a system that does more with fewer patients. While safety-focused Phase I trials would continue under their [FDA] jurisdiction, establishing efficacy would no longer be under their purview. Once safety is proven, patients could access the medicine in question through qualified physicians. Patients’ responses to a drug would be stored in a database, along with their medical histories. Patient identity would be protected by biometric identifiers, and the database would be open to qualified medical researchers as a “commons.” The response of any patient or group of patients to a drug or treatment would be tracked and compared to those of others in the database who were treated in a different manner or not at all. These comparisons would provide insights into the factors that determine real-life efficacy: how individuals or subgroups respond to the drug. This would liberate drugs from the tyranny of the averages that characterize trial information today. The technology would facilitate such comparisons at incredible speeds and could quickly highlight negative results. As the patient population in the database grows and time passes, analysis of the data would also provide the information needed to conduct postmarketing studies and comparative effectiveness research.
Grove cites Boldin and Swamidass and especially Bartley Madden’s important book, Free to Choose Medicine, as inspiration for this proposal. By the way, I also recommend Madden’s book very highly (I am also proud to note my bias in this regard).
I have long advocated restricting the FDA to safety only trials (see, for example, FDAReview.org and my paper on off-label prescribing) and it seems that this idea, once considered outlandish, is now rapidly gathering advocates.
Addendum: Derek Lowe offers useful comments (see also Kevin Outterson below). One point that I think the critics miss is that nothing in Groves’s proposal and certainly not in Madden’s proposal which is somewhat different or in anything that I have advocated precludes randomized clinical trials for efficacy. Indeed, I strongly support such trials and have argued for greater funding so such trials can be done not by the pharmaceutical companies but by more objective third parties. | 224 |
improvisation and experimentation occurs behind the scenes.
Creative people in every line of endeavor adopt beliefs provisionally for their usefulness and elegance and consider new ones with open minds to see if they are improvements over those they currently hold. They hold beliefs not unto death, but until they find more accurate, comprehensive, useful replacements that prove their worth by leading to more precise predictions, better pies, or more beautiful dances or paintings. Welcome to the post-fundamentalist era!
Detachment from our beliefs does not imply indifference, let alone resignation. The instinct to defend our beliefs serves a higher purpose. Usually disagreements have a legitimate basis and the only way to advance toward a reconciling model is to advocate for our views as effectively as we can while others do the same for theirs. We fail to serve the search for an improved model if we don’t mount the strongest possible defense of our present ideas. Each of us helps discover the new model by holding out until our individual perspective can be absorbed into a broader public synthesis stripped of personal idiosyncrasies.
The duty to defend our beliefs to the best of our ability is one of the main themes in the Hindu holy book, The Bhagavad Gita. In a key passage, Lord Krishna counsels Prince Arjuna to do battle with his foes—even though they include relatives and former allies—impersonally, dispassionately, and unreservedly. The adversarial method, while intense, need not be personally antagonistic, even in those especially awkward situations in which we know our opponents intimately. Once we accept the inherent fallibility of beliefs, it’s easier to allow for ideas that differ from our own. From there, it’s but a small step to recognizing the individuals who hold opposing views as valid interlocutors, undeserving of contempt.
If, in the end, it’s ourown case that crumbles, we can simply admit our error without loss of face and join in welcoming the discovery of something new and better. When our beliefs go to battle and lose, we ourselves live to argue another day, just as lawyers do when a judgment goes against one of their clients. Though all models eventually come up short that doesn’t mean that, in the interim, some models are not more useful than others. The alternative to fundamentalism is not relativism, it’s model building.
Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship? Thank you for your interest in this series.] | 225 |
Pros
Free. The training is well structured and organized for beginners.
Cons
The training covers only the basics of the software, though that won’t be a problem for complete beginners.
Verdict: This is an excellent free online outlet where beginners can start learning Audacity through a text based tutorial.
Floss Manual
Floss Manual is the sixth free online outlet where beginners can start learning Audacity through a text-based tutorial, you don’t have to register to have access to the training.
Structure: The training is divided into sections, each section is divided into lessons, each of the lessons covers a certain aspect of the software.
Interface: The interface is very simple, just click on the lesson you’re interested in and you’ll be directed to the page where the lesson resides.
Now the pros and cons:
Pros
Free. The training is well organized for beginners.
Cons
The training only covers the basics of Audacity.
Verdict: This is a good online outlet where beginners can start learning Audacity through a text based tutorial.
UC Berkeley Website
UC Berkeley Website is the seventh free online outlet where beginners can start learning Audacity through a text-based tutorial, you don’t have to register to have access to the training.
Structure: This training is a single web page, it’s divided into topics, each topic covers a certain tool/technique in Audacity.
Interface: A single web page.
Now the pros and cons:
Pros
Free. The training is well-structured and organized for beginners.
Cons
The training doesn’t cover every aspect of the software, though that won’t be a problem for complete beginners.
Verdict: This is a very good free online outlet where beginners can start learning Audacity through a text based tutorial.
Bottom Line
The recipe for learning Audacity:
Udemy is the best outlet for beginners to start learning Audacity through video tutorials. Audacity Website is the best outlet for beginners to start learning Audacity through text based tutorials.
Remember that the first step is always the toughest step, and the aim of this post is to provide you with resources that will help you take your first step in learning Audacity.
Like this: Like Loading... | 226 |
robert mayerson and james callahan.JPG
Patriot Care CEO Robert Mayerson and lawyer James Callahan were among those who appeared before the Greenfield Zoning Board of Appeals on March 12, 2015.
(Mary Serreze photo)
GREENFIELD -- With local approval in hand, Patriot Care Corp. CEO Robert Mayerson said he hopes to open a downtown Greenfield medical marijuana dispensary before the end of the year.
Patriot Care on Thursday night (March 12) was unanimously granted a special permit by the town's Zoning Board of Appeals to open a dispensary at 7 Legion Ave., the site of the former Lt. John Galvin Post 81 American Legion.
Patriot Care still needs is its final Certificate of Registration from the state. The company won provisional approval from the Mass. Dept. of Public Health on Nov. 7.
At Thursday's two-hour public hearing, Mayerson and his team said they would create a secure dispensary which would protect the safety of staff and patients, ensure that no marijuana is diverted from the premises, and guarantee that only certified medical marijuana patients can purchase goods at the site.
Parking would be available at the 112-vehicle municipal lot off Wells Street.
Patriot Care on Jan. 6 signed a provisional agreement to purchase the Legion building for $219,000, pending zoning board approval. According to the terms of the agreement, the sale must be executed by April 1.
The company has also won provisional approval from the state for dispensaries in Boston and Lowell, and a grow facility in Lowell. Plans to open a dispensary in South Hadley fell through in December because of unexpected problems and delays with the real estate transaction, said Mayerson.
The Greenfield zoning board was charged with determining that the proposed use "will not adversely impact adjacent properties, the neighborhood, the town, or the environment."
While several members of the public spoke in favor of the plan, not one person showed up to voice opposition.
Seventy-two percent of Greenfield voters voted in favor of legalizing medical marijuana in a 2012 statewide ballot initiative, said James Callahan, an attorney working with Patriot Care.
Mayerson, who lives in Harvard, Mass., said he graduated from Hampshire College in the 1970s and later attended business school at UMass Amherst.
"I have a great affection for the Valley," he said.
This story will be updated with additional reporting. | 227 |
Side. Future phases may consider the implications of content adaptation elsewhere, especially the issues concerning the granting of authority to third parties to carry out adaptation, prohibiting adaptation and so on. Later phases may also address multiple adaptation - i.e. the possibility that adaptation can be applied at more than one point and that In-Network adaptation may occur more than once. It is also assumed that it is possible to create a site that is consistent with the Best Practice recommendations without carrying out adaptation at all. However it is likely that a more sophisticated and enhanced user experience will be achieved if adaptation is used.
3.5 Establishing Context Providing variations on the user experience that are appropriate in different cases requires the content provider to know a significant amount about the characteristics of the device, the properties of the browser in use and the transparency of the network connection to the device. For simple sites that present an interface which is similar across a broad range of contexts the need for such information is diminished when compared with a sophisticated site that has an optimized navigation structure, presents different size images or carries out other adaptations to suit the particular delivery context. There are several methods by which a content provider can discover information about the delivery context, such as CC/PP, UAPROF, CSS Media Queries and various outputs of the Device Independence Working Group. The companion Techniques [Techniques] document describes these methods.
3.6 Choice of User Experience In the interests of "One Web" (see 3.1 One Web) considerations, the content provider may choose to allow the user to select from broad categories such as mobile or desktop presentation, where these are distinguished in the application. If the presentation option has been determined automatically, the content provider may choose to allow the user to override the automatic determination. Where a choice of presentations is available, it is good practice to record the user's preferences and to allow them to be changed. Given an appropriate server environment, it is unlikely that the content provider will be unable to find out anything about the delivery context. However this can happen, either because details of the delivery context are not available in sufficient detail or because the server does not provide the ability to inspect and act on the information provided. In this case a "reasonable default experience" should be provided. The details of the default experience depend upon a number of factors including, but not limited to, the geographic region in which the service is offered and the primary intention of the service (e.g. considering whether the service is primarily desktop focused vs. primarily mobile focused). | 228 |
You may not have heard of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), but it’s likely that your lungs are infinitely familiar with them. VOCs are a large group of petroleum-based chemicals found in many products that Americans use every day. The list is extensive and includes cosmetics, cleaning solutions, upholstery, paints, perfumes, carpets and composite wood furniture. Basically VOCs are in products that ‘coat’ things, such as detergents, fabric protectors, lotions and varnishes.
The chemicals react in the atmosphere to create smog — just like the emissions from your car. Since cars now run cleaner, VOCs today could pollute just as much as vehicles, according to one University of Colorado study. But health officials say the real threat might be inside our homes and workspaces. Some studies suggest indoor air is 7 times more polluted than the stuff we breathe outside — you know, the air laden with all those car and smokestack emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate indoor air pollution, so there has been seemingly little pressure to reduce VOCs in household products and surprisingly few studies about their effects on our health. It’s known that the thousands of VOC chemicals stick to the dust and air molecules we breathe, and they’ve been linked to allergies, asthma, neurological and liver problems — as well as cancer. But we are lacking the data needed to truly understand the threat.
Perhaps the most studied VOC is formaldehyde, widely used in the manufacturing of building materials, but also found in glue, paper, disinfectants and other household goods. The National Cancer Institute says despite its widespread use, formaldehyde does not pose a significant risk to homeowners.
Still, health professionals recommend that consumers be mindful of chemical exposure and try to limit it when possible. What can you do? A good start may be using natural cleansers you can make yourself from vinegar, baking soda and other natural products. There are many tutorials. Or perhaps opt for chemical-free cosmetics and lotions that are flooding the marketplace. Experts also suggest you limit your use of plastics, foam containers and chemically-treated fabrics. It’s even possible to buy organic paints and carpets.
Being aware of the problem is the first step. Watch how VOCs compare to vehicle emissions, with the comforting thought that if we managed to clean up our cars, perhaps we can clean up our homes as well. | 229 |
Be a TLC Donor
Thomas Lamb Eliot Circle
Named in honor of one of our founders, the Thomas Lamb Eliot Circle (TLC) is a leadership giving group recognizing individuals, donor advised funds and family foundations contributing $1,000 or more for annual operations each year to sustain and advance the work of the Oregon Humane Society.
Join TLC or Renew Your Support
Your gift of $1,000 or more qualifies you for the Thomas Lamb Eliot Circle. As a TLC donor, you are a VIP to the animals in our care, and to us.
To become a TLC donor by gifting stocks or bonds, click here. To give a gift through a donor advised fund, click here.
If you have questions about the Thomas Lamb Eliot Circle, please contact Margaret Clement at (503) 416-7083 or via email »
TLC Benefits
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Facility Tours
Are you interested in a look behind-the-scenes at the Oregon Humane Society? We will be conducting monthly tours of the Ernest C. Swigert Animal Shelter and Animal Medical Learning Center. Tours will be held on the second Saturday and fourth Wednesday of every month at 11 a.m. and 12 p.m.
Please RSVP to Margaret Clement or call (503) 416-7083. If you have any questions, or these dates and times do not work for you, please contact Margaret.
About Thomas Lamb Eliot
In 1868, Thomas Lamb Eliot and twelve leading Oregonians founded the third humane society in the United States and named it the Oregon Humane Society.
“Must do something for horses here,” Dr. Eliot noted to himself after witnessing a much-abused carriage horse mired in the mud of a Portland street. Eliot served as OHS Board President for 23 years.
This tradition of pioneering spirit, compassion and dedication continues today, with enormous assistance from donors in the Thomas Lamb Eliot Circle. | 230 |
been more resilient. I needed to free myself from the guilt. The guilt was the pain. The guilt was depression.
I was able to climb my way out. But I have had every advantage. I have traveled the world, and attended the best schools; I was raised by wonderful, loving, wealthy parents. It’s not fair. I am the fruit of the American Dream, and the vine is dying. How do we breath new life into it?
My cousin Matt asked, “What do you think about the idea of a basic living income? What if, culturally, [the change] needs to be away from the sense that self-esteem is based on your job? What if we need to finally kill the puritan work ethic? Your sense of self worth shouldn’t be based on what you do for a living. We’re all running around, we’re pushing ourselves to work harder, and we’re being away from our kids more, marriages are falling apart… We’re not doing any of those other things that don’t have to do with work, and that maybe made us happier, or maybe gave us more self-satisfaction and a broader definition of who we are as people.”
What if, by trying to honor my Grandpop’s generation through imitation, the white working class forsakes the gift given by it? Those manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back. Those coalmines aren’t going to reopen. And even if they could, they shouldn’t. Climate change is real.
How will white working-class Americans transform their pain into something meaningful, the way my grandfather did?
It will take change from within and without, structural as well as spiritual. Maybe that will mean that we establish a basic income, with the haves giving back to the have-nots in this cruel “new” economy. Maybe it will mean that the Democrats get back to their roots, and embrace the white-working class, instead of ignoring them. Maybe it will mean better education on how to deal with pain – less pills and more mental tolerance. Maybe it will mean all of these things. Ultimately, it will take an act of imagination, both from the white working class as well as the rest of the country. Somehow we need to learn how to dream together, past our bubbles. Somehow, we need to find a way to transform our pain into hope. | 231 |
Today USL League One announced the structure of the 2019 season schedule. With the release, there was also confirmation of some of the rumored details surrounding the league’s inaugural season.
What do you need to know about the announcement? Let’s jump into the specifics of what we learned today.
10 Teams
The first piece of news that was confirmed by today’s announcement was the fact that USL League One will field 10 teams for the 2019 season. After the rebrand announcement there was some thought that there may, in fact, be 11 teams in the inaugural field but that will not be the case.
So far, we know nine of the teams that will compete in 2019:
Chattanooga Red Wolves SC
FC Tuscon
Greenville Triumph SC
Lansing Ignite
Madison Pro Soccer
Orlando City B
Richmond Kickers
South Georgia Tormenta FC
Toronto FC II
The other two rumored teams are located in Dallas, TX and Riverside, CA. One can assume that the last team will come from those two locations and, perhaps, the other team will come into the league in 2020 along with Penn FC and the Rochester Rhinos.
28 Games
We also learned that each team will play a 28 game schedule. That means that each fan base will get 14 home matches!!! From the nine other teams in the league, each team will play eight other teams three times and one team four times.
Selfishly for Greenville, my hope is that we are matched up with either Tormenta FC or Chattanooga for our four-time matchup.
The season will kickoff the weekend of March 29–31 and will conclude on October 4–6. That is exactly 28 weekends. If the league does not build in any off-weekends, that would mean that no teams have to play any midweek games.
4 Playoff Teams
The league will operate as a single table with four teams making the playoffs. The semi-finals will be held the weekend of October 11–13 and the championship game will take place somewhere between October 17–21.
If Greenville makes it to the championship game, and why wouldn’t they, consider this my official pitch to have the inaugural league championship on my 35th birthday on October 17, 2019.
We can now begin our countdown. The inaugural USL League One season is only 21 weeks away. Get your popcorn ready! | 232 |
raid, the difficulty is in sustaining the long-term legal and mental support families need as their cases make their way through immigration courts.
As one raid follows another, lawyers and nonprofit leaders say their resources are being stretched increasingly thin, with volunteers still responding in a small town in one state when ICE targets a town hundreds of miles away.
“After the initial emergency nature dies down over time, there’s still so much work that has to be done,” said Hahn, with the National Immigration Law Center.
One question many in Sumner want answered as the investigation there unfolds is whether Load Trail falsely promised undocumented workers that they would receive visas. Rojas, of Raices, said workers were told that if they agreed to have amounts totaling thousands of dollars deducted from their paychecks over the course of months, they would receive legal worker visas. He said he has seen worker pay stubs that showed $200 deductions for visas, though those workers were not eligible for visas.
"To our knowledge, that’s all been a fraud,” Rojas said.
An ICE representative declined to say whether the agency was investigating the paycheck deductions.
Load Trail did not respond to a request for comment.
The company issued a statement after the raid saying that the family-owned business "has been a pillar of the northeast Texas community for over 20 years."
"The company employs over 700 people, and has supported our community through a broad range of charitable causes," the statement continued. "Load Trail always works diligently to abide by all laws. The actions today by the Federal Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) are disappointing, as are the inaccuracies found in most reporting so far. Though we are surprised by today's developments, we intend to fully cooperate with the government's investigation — and to make sure the full and accurate Load Trail story is made known."
Like dozens of other family members of Load Trail workers who were arrested, Nancy is waiting for her husband's phone calls from a Texas detention center and following up with their family's lawyer. While her oldest children know about the immigration raid, some of the younger ones just know that their father is in some kind of trouble and repeatedly ask when they will see him again.
Soon, she tells them.
“Sometimes they don’t want to eat," she said. "They say they don’t want to eat until their father comes home and we can all eat together." | 233 |
CLINT, TEXAS — After having been separated from his parents and forced to sleep on a concrete floor with thousands of other migrant children, 2 year old migrant Filipe Diaz was relieved to hear that the detention facility he is in does not qualify as a “concentration camp”.
“That’s good,” responded the 26-month-old upon hearing that the cramped chain link enclosure where he and other migrants have been rounded up without charge is semantically different than a Nazi camp. The toddler then went back to sitting still while a nearby 8-year-old attempted to check his hair for lice.
Cliff Jergens, an ICE agent guarding the facility, clarified to a crying 3-year-old, “This is nothing like the Holocaust. If the American government were ignoring international law that mandates safe and sanitary conditions for child detainees, that would be horrible. But since 6 million people haven’t been exterminated, then obviously it must be different and therefore fine.”
“See, this tiny girl can barely speak Spanish, let alone English, and even she agrees these aren’t concentration camps,” Jergens added.
Throughout the Clint Detention Facility, hundreds of toddlers and children agreed that the Trump Administration’s aggressive ramping up of border detainment for legal asylum seekers would be cause for alarm, but only if they were actually being held in a building called a concentration camp.
As ICE agents prepared various crying and unwashed toddlers to represent themselves at their immigration hearings, Jergens responded to Democrat Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. “The children in this facility understand that when Hitler’s Nazis targeted marginalized groups and forced them into overcrowded facilities, those camps were a long time ago, in the olden days. It’s a huge difference, and when you think about it, isn’t Ocasio Cortez the one acting a bit more like a Nazi?”
ICE agent Tyler Griffiths also had harsh words for people describing the facilities as concentration camps. “That is just alarmist rhetoric. And who’s better to make that judegement – a person running the Holocaust Memorial Museum, or me, a person locking children into cages?”
At press time, President Trump had tweeted about how banning certain far right figures meant that Twitter had “COMPLETELY turned into a concentration camp”. | 234 |
The robots sent in to investigate the nuclear fallout at Fukushima just aren't good enough.
Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) head of decommissioning admitted on Thursday that more creativity was needed in developing its robots sent to the reactive zone.
The Fukushima nuclear power plant was massively damaged in 2011, when three of the six nuclear reactors suffered meltdown after being struck by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and associated tsunami waves.
More than 100,000 residents of the nearby Fukushima Prefecture had to be relocated, and the government has spent the last five years struggling with the aftermath. The incident is regarded as the world's largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
SEE ALSO: Before and After the Worst Nuclear Disasters in History
Part of the clean-up includes robots, sent in to probe the site, because radiation levels are too high for humans.
But earlier last month, a robot sent into Fukushima's No. 2 reactor was forced to abort its mission after it was blocked by deposits — believed to be a mixture of melted fuel and broken pieces of structure.
Two previous robots had also failed in its missions after one was stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after being unable to find fuel during six days of searching.
This is an example of one of the robots TEPCO had sent to probe the area in the past.
"We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out," TEPCO Head of Decommissioning Naohiro Masuda said.
Mr Masuda also added that he wants another robot sent in before deciding on methods to remove the reactor's debris.
Despite the failed probe missions, officials have added that they want to stick to their schedule of starting the site clean up in 2021.
Decommissioning the site is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars and last around 40 years.
Fukushima's No. 2 reactor was found in February to have a radiation level of 530 sieverts.
Exposure to four sieverts is enough to be lethal, according to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences.
South Korea's low-cost carrier Jeju Air also announced on Tuesday that it would not use Fukushima Airport due to fears of radiation.
Some of its customers had reportedly posted online that they would not use the airline because they didn't want to "board airplanes that flew over Fukushima." | 235 |
The tech savvy part of cryptocurrency and Blockchain often implements ideas to gain value from the main blockchain’s success. Bitcoin Hard Forks are a prominent example of it.
Now, David Hoffman, an Ethereum product developer recently expresses bullish sentiments in favor of BTC transactions on Ethereum. He tweeted,
Like Tether, BTC will also eventually migrate off Bitcoin in favor of a more functional settlement layer. Bullish on BTC on Ethereum.
However, the idea was soon met with opposing views from crypto-twitter, including Eric Connor, an Ethereum developer nonetheless. The CEO and founder of Blockstream, Adam Black, was particularly not impressed with the idea. He replied,
BTC is the best (crypto) “functional settlement later” you realize eth is struggling in that regard wrt scale, reliability, security.
While Bitcoin [BTC] holds quite a bit of value, the scalability issues remain to be a big hurdle to global adoption. Nevertheless, Ethereum faces similar issues and is shifting to PoS for the same reason. Progress has been made by the foundation w.r.t. Ethereum 2.0 but the end result is still almost a year away.
Ethereum’s network went through another unanimous hard fork which has restored the network from the impending Ice Age. The block times and network rewards are returning to levels before the large difficulty event in December.
Moreover, Hoffman would have expected support from Connor, he also turned his back on the idea stating that the real value of cryptocurrencies comes from its respective network. He stated,
The value of these assets to me comes from the network they are on. So I’m not sure why anyone would want to have BTC on Ethereum rather than just ETH on Ethereum.
Moreover, this is not the first time the idea of running Bitcoin on a second faster chain has been proposed. EOS is working on a similar idea for quite sometime. Bitcoin’s network effect growth leads the market with store of value utility, as Blockchain platforms like Ethereum, EOS and Tron are looking to leverage from it.
However, Lightning Network (LN) has been the most widely accepted solution when it comes to fast and cheap payments with Bitcoin. There are many other side chain designs that are becoming popular like the Liquid Chain for exchanges.
Do you think Bitcoin on another side chain is an acceptable solution? Please share your views with us.
To get the daily price analysis, Follow us on TradingView | 236 |
Much more than an online polls and surveys system without registration and free.
Ferendum is a the free online voting system and poll maker. Online surveys and quick straw polls to share in Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail or to embed in webs or blogs. Very useful also to plan and schedule events (for example the date or place of an event). Fast, free and without registration.
Schedule an event date
You can use the Tables of Votes of Ferendum to schedule a meeting, diner or any event. The participants can indicate in a non-anonymous way all the days that they are available for the event in order to find out quickly the most convenient day for everybody. You only have to share the poll link by e-mail, social networks, WhatsApp, Line or by any other means.
Decide a place or the activity in an event
You can use our free online voting tool not only to schedule dates but also for example to chose a restaurant to go in a group or the activity to do in a hang out. Each participant will chose his/her preferred choice.
One single survey to share in: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube etc …
You can use the Anonymous Polls of Ferendum to make an online survey and share it in the social networks, in forums or blogs.
Messenger polls
Ferendum is perfect for polls in Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, Telegram, by SMS or e-mail etc. Just share the poll link.
Surveys embedded in web pages
In addition to a link to the poll/ survey page we also provide a simple HTML code that can be inserted in any web page to embed a survey.
Anonymous online polls
With Ferendum you can create an anonymous poll about anything like for example an election of the president of an association.
Secure polls
In Ferendum we use multiple and simultaneous techniques to ensure that no one votes more than once. For an extra security you can turn on the option to require to log-in with a social network so that it is only permitted one vote per account. For small groups of known people the Table of Votes is another alternative where the name of the participants and their selection are visible to anyone.
Registration Form
The Table of Votes can be used for other purposes like for example as a registration form. People can write done their names together with the option to which they want to register | 237 |
On Thursday’s edition of Laura Ingraham‘s radio show, Congressman Ron Paul explained his skepticism that presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney would be any better than President Obama.
After describing why he thinks it’s silly to assume Romney’s election would be a cure-all, Ingraham pressed Rep. Paul on whether Romney would at least be “better” than the current president:
INGRAHAM: Would you disagree, then, with Giuliani and others when they say that there is no doubt Mitt Romney would be a better president than Barack Obama? PAUL: Yeah, I think, marginally so.
He explained that it isn’t that Romney doesn’t necessarily have better ideas, it’s that historically changing parties never seems to truly change anything about how government grows.
“I think Romney would probably be better on the tax issue,” Paul surmises, but then explains how even though George H.W. Bush was supposed to be “good” on taxes — after all, he said “Read my lips: No new taxes!” — history unfolded otherwise. Paul did concede, however, that Romney’s Supreme Court picks would be more conservative, and thus potentially better than second-term Obama’s picks.
But Dr. Paul’s assessment is largely correct. It’s no secret that the two parties – once you cut through the partisan bickering – implement policy in a very similar fashion, regardless of who is in power. Ronald Reagan, the great “conservative” president, didn’t actually make big spending cuts. Government grows under both parties, and they both generally make a mess of foreign policy and civil liberties.
Heck, just look at look at health-care. The very policy known as “Obamacare” was instituted in a similar fashion by Mitt Romney, then-Governor of Massachusetts. (And hey, remember: the policy was pretty much conceived by Newt Gingrich and the conservative stalwarts at Heritage Foundation.)
There’s no better illustration of the futility of our two-party system than the famous South Park “Vote or Die” episode, in which voters choose between a “Giant Douche” and “Turd Sandwich.”
Check out Ron Paul on The Laura Ingraham Show below:
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] | 238 |
REDONDO BEACH, CA — Voters in Redondo Beach passed the controversial Measure C on Tuesday, which would set tighter limits on the waterfront redevelopment.
With 46 percent of the precincts reporting as of midnight, voters passed the measure 57.1 percent to 42.8 percent. With the passage of the measure, which only required a majority of the vote to pass, the future of the recently approved plans for a $400 million makeover of the King Harbor-Pier area is now in jeopardy.
In other races, Mayor Steve Aspel, who was running for a second term, lost to the termed-out District 2 Councilman Bill Brand, 53 percent to 42.5 percent. Aspel had been trailing all night, and the gap continued to widen between him and Brand. In the city council races, eight hopefuls were competing for the three open seats. Nils Nehrenheim was leading against incumbent Martha Barbee, 48.2 percent to 41.8 percent, for the District 1 seat. In District 2, Todd Loewenstein was leading Doug Rodriguez, 64.2 percent to 35.7 percent.
In District 6, John F. Gran was leading Suzy Royds 55.4 percent to 35.7 percent. It appears that Nehrenheim, Barbee, Gran and Royds will face off in the May 16 runoff election. Former Councilman Matt Kilroy lost his bid to unseat one of the three incumbents — Michael Christensen, Brad Serkin and Brad Waller — on the Redondo Beach Unified School District Board of Education. Kilroy is coming in dead last for one the three seats.
In the countywide election, the fate of a proposed quarter-cent Los Angeles County sales tax to fund anti-homelessness programs remained too close to call Wednesday.
With nearly 70 percent of precincts reporting from Tuesday's election, Measure H had 65.4 percent of the vote, but it needs a two-thirds majority to pass.
The Board of Supervisors has declared homelessness a countywide emergency and chose the sales tax hike over a number of other funding alternatives, including a millionaire's tax, a parcel tax and a special tax on marijuana. The turnout for Tuesday's election was one of the lowest in recent years. As of 5 p.m., an estimated 9.16 percent of voters had cast ballots in the countywide election, according to the county registrar's office. The estimate is based on a random sampling of 30 polling places. | 239 |
GUENTER SCHIFFMANN / AFP | A top German court on Tuesday ruled that cities can impose diesel driving bans to combat air pollution
A top German court on Tuesday ruled that cities can impose diesel driving bans to combat air pollution, in a landmark decision that could shake up the auto industry and upend transport policies.
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Judges at the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig found that local authorities have the right to enforce bans on older, dirty diesels from their city centres plunging millions of drivers into uncertainty.
The court did not however impose such bans itself, leaving that up to city and municipal authorities. The judges did however urge them to “exercise proportionality” in enforcing the bans.
The case centred around the smog-clogged cities of Stuttgart and Duesseldorf, but could have nationwide repercussions.
The outcome marks a major victory for the environmentalist group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), which sued Stuttgart and Duesseldorf to force them to take action against the toxic nitrogen oxides and fine particles emitted by older diesel engines.
EN NW GRAB Q1 NICK SPICER FROM 18H **O Mkl x
Lower-level judges had already backed their demand for driving bans but the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia appealed the rulings, saying such curbs should be decided at the federal level.
That appeal has now failed, as judges at the nation’s top administrative court again sided with the environmental campaigners.
“It’s a great day for clean air in Germany,” said DUH chief Juergen Resch.
In their ruling, the judges said any diesel bans should be imposed gradually, with exceptions granted to certain vehicles.
In Stuttgart, a diesel ban could be enforced in September at the earliest.
In a nod to concerns that the bans could slash the resale value of millions of older diesels, presiding judge Andreas Korbmacher said “certain losses will have to be accepted”.
He also urged city and municipal authorities to avoid “a patchwork” of local measures.
Critics had earlier argued that the bans would be complicated to enforce and cause confusion among drivers.
(AFP)
Daily newsletterReceive essential international news every morning Subscribe | 240 |
article
A New York couple who gave birth to twins in March after traveling to Los Angeles to undergo in vitro fertilization has filed a lawsuit against the clinic claiming that a mix-up resulted in them giving birth to another couple’s children, which they then had to give up.
The Asian couple, identified in the lawsuit as A.P and Y.Z., say that they first consulted CHA Fertility Center in January 2018, and that a first attempt at in vitro fertilization in July failed. According to The New York Post, a second attempt just a month later was successful, but the couple claims that they raised alarm early on in the pregnancy after they were told they were carrying twin boys, as they had only unfrozen two female embryos.
But Dr. Joshua Berger and Simon Hong, co-owners of CHA Fertility Center, allegedly told the couple that the sonogram was “not a definitive test,” with Berger reportedly relaying a similar story involving his own wife to the expectant parents, The New York Post reported. The couple claims they were assured that they were expecting twin girls throughout the pregnancy.
But on March 31, 2019, A.P gave birth to twin boys via cesarean section. They did not share their Asian ethnicity. CHA personnel flew across the country to test the newborns. According to The Post, The genetic test showed they were not related to A.P. or Y.Z. or to each other.
"The testing also confirmed that the two male babies were not genetically related to each other," the Post said the lawsuit claims.
According to the lawsuit, the couple was forced to give custody of each child to their biological parents, who are also clients of CHA Fertility Center. They also do not know what became of their two female embryos.
"From a physician standpoint, from the actual extraction and retrieval to transfer, there are so many steps that are involved through that process," Dr. Jessica Shephard, and OB/GYN who was not involved in the case told Fox News. "Whether it's with the geneticists, whether it's with the lab technicians, we all do have a responsibility to ensure that the actual transfer is going to the right person."
The couple reportedly spent over $100,000 on fees and travel expenses associated with the clinic, and have suffered “permanent emotional injuries from which they will not recover.”
More from FOX News | 241 |
He has been in power at Queen’s Park for over six months after winning a convincing majority. But shortly before the election, for about two weeks, Doug Ford’s team thought he was going to lose.
CityNews has obtained internal polling done by the Tory campaign, which pinpoints key moments that helped Doug Ford become premier.
On June 12, Ford was basking in election victory. But just over two weeks earlier, his team was worried. Their numbers show that for about nine days, from May 23 to 31, Andrea Horwath was eclipsing him.
But a path to victory usually coincides with an opponents’ path to defeat. This last election was no exception.
The PC polling shows Horwath, who had been steadily climbing in the polls, made a series of decisions and one big fumble that led to her defeat.
On May 20, Horwath had a 24-per-cent approval rating compared to Doug Ford’s 31 per cent. This is the day she admitted she made a $1.4-billion math error in her platform.
She also defended NDP candidates with controversial views, like Laura Kaminker, who once said she refuses to wear a poppy for Remembrance Day.
On May 21, Horwath said she would close the Pickering nuclear power plant, angering voters in the 905.
And on May 22, she said she wouldn’t use back-to-work legislation to end strikes.
“What happened with Horwath, is the public looked and then she stumbled and then she fell,” pollster John Wright told CityNews.
“What’s fascinating is it was self-inflicted. Andrea Horwath was in the grasp of maybe a minority and then it was all self-inflicted.”
Despite that, Horwath was bouncing back, with many voters still unsure about Doug Ford as premier. Until May 28.
That’s when Ford introduced his bench strength, showing off his star candidates — in particular Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney. Ford’s internal polling shows that’s when his numbers started to go up, pushing him above Horwath.
“It was a really good manoeuvre,” Wright said. “It actually also gave Ford a chance to be with women — strong women — and that was also a turning point.” | 242 |
If you're wondering whether to buy an Apple Watch, consider your computing life as a hierarchy of needs:
At the bottom sits your must have device—a computer, tablet, or phone—capable of independently accessing the Internet and storing useful quantities of data. And one step above that is Internet access itself. You need a device to use it, but your device can’t do much without it.
Every tier similarly builds upon the one below it. Next comes useful apps—browsers, productivity software, whatever you need to work and play—and these all extend your device’s functionality in basic, useful ways. Services for work (Dropbox, Office 365) and entertainment (Spotify, Netflix) follow. The line between software and services is increasingly blurry (especially if we’re talking about software-as-a-service) but most of them feel more optional. Everyone needs a browser. Not everyone needs Dropbox and Netflix and Facebook.
Finally, we get to the top of most users' needs—accessories. This encompasses anything that wouldn’t work (or would be drastically less capable) without everything toward the bottom of the pyramid: standalone cameras, iPods, printers, scanners, input devices, and—yes—watches.
Make no mistake, the Apple Watch is a thoroughly optional accessory. Even if you think you want it, wait if there’s a shadow of a doubt in your mind—if not for the inevitable hardware revision, then at least for the OS and the surrounding app ecosystem to firm up. A $349-or-more pricetag is still a lot of money to spend on a question mark.
But after spending a week with an Ars-purchased 42mm space gray model (and spending a substantial amount of time with Android Wear), I can tell you that unnecessary things can still be useful. If you buy or like using your Apple Watch, you’re not an idiot who is wasting both your money and your precious time on this earth.
So the Apple Watch isn’t something you need, but does it make things “quick” and “convenient,” as Apple’s own marketing suggests? As the heir apparent to the smartwatch throne, does it live up to its advance billing? And as a version 1.0 product, what still needs to be fixed—and how?
Table of Contents
Listing image by Andrew Cunningham | 243 |
should be played in places like Target Center and Xcel Energy Center. Earlier rounds, he said, could be played in smaller, cheaper venues at Hamline University or Concordia University in St. Paul.
“The smaller teams deserve to come down for a state tournament, but that’s not going to fill up Williams Arena,” he said.
“It is a high for a student athlete to play on the ultimate floor that the [Minnesota] Timberwolves are on,” said Braziel, who played on the Marshall-University boys’ basketball championship team in the 1970s. “But, again, that should be [for] one thing — the championship.”
In hockey circles, even some coaches make a similar argument about moving the girls’ tournament to smaller Mariucci or Ridder arenas, where it could generate more energy than in a mostly empty Xcel. The tournament moved to Xcel after a Title IX lawsuit was filed that sought equal treatment with the boys’ tournament.
Others said that for all of the TV coverage and anticipation, something is lost when the biggest games of a team’s season move to a big arena. Games played to qualify for the state tournament, which usually take place in smaller, crowded high school gyms and ice arenas, are at least as intense and noisy, if not more so.
Steve Lyons, co-director of the Champlin Park band, thought about that after his high school won its first tournament game at Target Center, and would go on to play last Saturday in the boys’ basketball state championship game. Lyons said that, a week before, Champlin Park played a sectional finals game in Rogers in front of 4,500 people — and another 500 had to be turned away.
“That was electric,” said Lyons. “So, trying to create that kind of a energy level in a facility five times that big is challenging.”
Jeff Whisler sees both sides. A former state high school league president, Whisler is now Roseville’s activities director.
But standing in Target Center, with Roseville’s band loudly playing as the school took the court, Whisler said the trade-off is worth it. “You gain more than you give up,” he said. As he looked out at the crowd, he added, “The bottom bowl’s going to be full.” | 244 |
The turkey that lives to see another day
Origins
Each year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board have given a turkey to the President of the United States at a White House ceremony. Since then, presidents have been more likely to eat the turkey rather than give it a reprieve. A notable exception occurred in 1963, when President Kennedy, referring to the turkey given to him, said, "Let's just keep him." It wasn't until the first Thanksgiving of President George H.W. Bush, in 1989, that a turkey was officially pardoned for the first time.
Confusing the Practice
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald continued the pardons begun under the first Bush. Some confusion about the true origin of this practice has crept into recent presidential speeches though. One story claims that Harry Truman pardoned the turkey given to him in 1947, but the Truman Library has been unable to find any evidence of this. Another story claims the tradition dates back to Abraham Lincoln pardoning his son Tad's pet turkey.
From Frying Pan Park to Disneyland
What's certain is that since 1989 a turkey—and its alternate—have been pardoned each year. An alternate is chosen just in case the first bird is unable to perform its duties. For fifteen years through 2004, the turkeys were given to Kidwell Farm, a petting zoo at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia. The turkeys would receive a last minute pardon before arriving, and were then led to their new home at the Turkey Barn after enduring a turkey "roast" full of poultry humor and history.
In 2005 and 2006, however, the turkeys were flown to Disneyland in California where they served as honorary grand marshals for Disneyland's Thanksgiving Day parade. After that, they spent the rest of their lives at a Disneyland ranch. A spot in sunny Disneyland seems immensely preferable to a place called Frying Pan Park if you happen to be a turkey who has just escaped from becoming the main course of someone's Thanksgiving feast.
On Wednesday, November 27, 2013, President Obama gave two turkeys named Popcorn and Caramel a last-minute reprieve. Obama made light of the event. "The office of the presidency - the most powerful position in the world - brings with it many awesome and solemn responsibilities," he said. "This is not one of them."
Recent Recipients of the Presidential Pardon | 245 |
Fresh off his Republican primary win this past week, Texas senatorial candidate Ted Cruz went on Fox News Sunday to state his case that President Barack Obama’s policies are hurting the traditionally conservative Latino community.
“I’ll tell you, in my life, I have never once seen an Hispanic panhandler,” Cruz told host Chris Wallace Sunday. “In our community, it would be viewed as shameful to be out on the street begging.”
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Cruz’s remarks seem to play off of what the Encyclopedia of Homelessness called “the Latino paradox”: the belief that Hispanic immigrant communities, defined as being based more heavily around traditional family units, provide more informal ways for members to stay off the streets, even if they are in tighter economic straits compared to other populations.
However, this theory has come under question; a 2003 study for the Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences found that Hispanic homeless are actually more likely to be “hidden” because they used sleeping spaces that were underrepresented in typical surveys.
According to the U.S. Labor Department, the Hispanic unemployment rate was at 10.3 percent last month, a slight drop from June. That’s two full points higher than the national average, despite 163,000 non-farming jobs being created over the past month, which was more than had been predicted. Still, Cruz seized on that gap.
“Hispanic unemployment is higher than the national average,” Cruz said. “And when the federal government is killing small businesses and killing jobs it is hurting the future of the Hispanic community and we need to carry that message.”
Cruz’s 14-point primary victory over Texas lieutenant governor David Dewhurst virtually assures him a victory in the state general election in November, and already has people comparing him to another Latino Tea Party senator, Marco Rubio (R-FL), who told reporters he considers that link to be a compliment.
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“My goal, my hope, is that we will continue to elect people to the Republican conference in the Senate who believe and will fight for the principles of free enterprise and limited government,” said Rubio. “I think we can really being to make a difference.”
Cruz’s Aug. 5 appearance was posted on YouTube Sunday by RightSightings, and can be seen below:
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[h/t Talking Points Memo] | 246 |
Teen Shark Attack Victim Hunter Treschl Says He 'Didn't See It Coming' Hunter Treschl spoke out about the shark attack in North Carolina.
-- One of the young victims of a pair of brutal shark attacks in North Carolina spoke out from his hospital bed, calmly describing how he didn't see the shark until it chomped down on his arm and "got that off," according to videos released by the hospital Tuesday night.
Hunter Treschl, 16, lost part of his arm in the attack, this past Sunday, off the coast of Oak Island, North Carolina, but he said he won't let the traumatic incident get him down, vowing instead to "fight and live a normal life."
A 12-year-old girl, Kiersten Yow, also lost an arm in a similar attack in the area just 90 minutes before. Her family said that she was expected to be able to keep one of her legs, which was also injured in the attack.
Treschl said that he was in waist-deep water playing with his cousin when he felt a "hit" on his left leg.
"Then I felt it... one more time and it kind of hit my arm and that was the first I saw it when it was biting up my left arm kind of," he calmly recounted from his hospital bed at New Hanover Regional Medical Center NC.
"Then it got that off," he said.
After that he was able to get of the water and to the beach with the help of his cousin.
"I didn't see it coming," he said.
Throughout the ordeal, he was conscious, and recalled being surrounded by 25 people in the hospital.
The staff "fixed my arm up," he said. "Did a pretty good job of it too from what I hear.
"It feels good."
Treschl said that in the wake of the traumatic event, he was faced with a choice.
"So I kind of have two options -- I can try to live my life the way I was and make an effort to do that even though I don't have an arm or I can kind of just let this be completely debilitating," he said.
"Out of those two, there's really only one that I would choose to do and that's to try and fight and live a normal life with the cards I've been dealt," he said. | 247 |
Mutations generate genetic variation, and are a major driving force of evolution. Therefore, examining mutation rates and modes are essential to better understand the genetic basis for physiology and evolution.
One traditional method to estimate this rate is a 'phylogenetic' approach that examines the sequence divergence between two species, and the time between divergence events. However, this method entails many uncertainties, such as the extent of ancestral polymorphisms, effective population size, and generation time.
To overcome these difficulties and estimate mutation rates directly, a team of researchers including Tetsuro Matsuzawa of the Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study (KUIAS) and Yasuhiro Go of Japan's National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) conducted a study utilizing high-quality whole genome sequencing of a chimpanzee parent-offspring trio, and successfully disclosed the precise mutation rates and modes through the transmission of genomes from parents to child.
It is well known that chimpanzees are humans' closest genetic relatives. The trio of Akira, Ai, and Ayumu (father, mother, son) in this study have taken part in a wide variety of comparative cognitive research -- notably in "The Ai-Project" led by Matsuzawa -- dating back to 1978.
Due to the abundance of this previous cognitive research, the authors anticipate that these chimpanzees can facilitate an understanding of how genetic architecture influences phenotypic -- cognitive -- traits, shedding light on the development of individuality.
In this study, 574, 463, and 468 gigabases (Gb) of DNA were analyzed from the father, mother, and son. As the chimpanzee genome is roughly three-gigabases in length, the volume of this sequence data was unprecedented, enabling the scientists to decipher precise mutation trajectories occuring within one generation.
When analyzed, the rate of germline, newly-formed mutations was calculated to be 1.48 new mutations for every 100 million bases, higher than that for humans, which has been reported as 0.96 to 1.2 new mutations.
A strong, male-biased mutation spectrum was also measured, wherein three-quarters of mutations occurred in sperm thorough spermatogenesis, as well as new structural alterations, such as changes in gene conversion and copy number. This is particularly important as the precise rates and modes of new structural alterations are still poorly understood, even in humans.
To this end, the team considers their experimental and methodological framework useful for further inquiry into the complex nature of genomic changes. | 248 |
hold more than 15,000 people on 400 acres. There are, however, low-, medium- and high-security facilities on 640 acres, not 400. The total inmate population of the three prisons combined was 3,954 as of Dec. 17, a Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said. “There is no way they can house 15,000 people out there,” spokeswoman Carla Wilson said.
Popular Mechanics magazine debunked some of the FEMA camp lore last year. An aerial photo, for example, of what supposedly was a detention camp in Wyoming was shown by the magazine to be a North Korean prison camp. And the 500,000 plastic, air-tight coffins supposedly stored in Atlanta, perhaps to bury plague or biological warfare victims? That was about 50,000 polypropylene burial vaults manufactured by a company for routine use in preventing the collapse of burial plots. But facts like these have not slowed the conspiracy theorists.
Ultimately, belief in FEMA detention camps requires one to conclude that nobody has ever escaped from one and told their story. It means believing that not one camp worker has breathed a word about his or her job. It requires assuming that not one of America’s 100 senators or 435 congressmen knows of the camps or, if they do, none is alarmed enough to call for hearings. It means believing that not a single ambitious journalist connected to a national media outlet has delved into this dastardly plan. And it requires one to assume that such innocuous things as the “FEMA Trucks” signs at the Maxwell AFB — in plain view of thousands of motorists — actually betray a terrible secret.
But the Patriots and other conspiracy theorists who circulate these theories — and they have moved in recent times from that fringe into the so-called “tea parties” and other populist and nativist groups — believe all of that, and believe it with a passion. When Glenn Beck finally conceded there was no evidence of FEMA camps, Texas radio conspiracist Alex Jones angrily responded by calling the FOX host, among other things, “an operative,” a “sick bastard” and “a piece of crap.”
The narrator of the video taken outside Maxwell Air Force Base purporting to show a FEMA camp may have inadvertently summed up detention camp conspiracy theories best. As he neared the end of his faux exposé, he said, “You can come up with whatever story you want to come up with.” | 249 |
New Delhi: Flustered over the retaliatory action by the Indian Army along the Line of Control (LoC), Pakistan is preparing to buy huge amounts of ammunition from abroad. Also Read - Record 3,186 Ceasefire Violations By Pakistan Along LoC In Past Eight Months, Highest Since 2003
Zee News quoted intelligence agency reports saying that Pakistan has finalised deal with Italy for the purchase of nearly one lakh shells for its Howitzer guns. Also Read - India-China Standoff: 'No Force Can Stop Indian Troops From Patrolling Ladakh Border', Says Rajnath Singh in Rajya Sabha
It may be worth mentioning here that soon after India struck a government-to-government deal with the US in November 2017 for supply of the 145 howitzers at a cost of nearly Rs 5,000 crore, Pakistan bought 121 Howitzer from Italy, to ensure that there is no shortage in preparation against the Indian Army. Also Read - India's NSA Ajit Doval Walks Out of SCO Meet as Pakistan Presents 'Fictitious Map' Showing Jammu and Kashmir as Its Own
“Our agencies are trying to find out why Pakistan is procuring about one lakh shells from Italy and where they are planning to use it,” Zee News quoted an official poster in central security establishment as saying.
Meanwhile, defence experts are surprised over the fact that Pakistan is buying Howitzer from Italy instead of China, its all-weather ally.
“It seems that Pakistan is not much reliant on the China-made Howitzer gun, or the price of the Chinese Howitzer can be higher than that of Italy, but instead of China, buying these guns from Italy is quite astonishing,” said an official associated with the Indian security establishment.
Indian Army has been constantly giving befitting reply to the ceasefire violations by Pakistani Army. On January 16, the Indian soldiers gunned down five Pakistani troops while destroying seven of their bunkers in retaliatory action in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch sector.
The year 2018 witnessed the highest number of 2,936 ceasefire violations by Pakistan troops in the last 15 years along the Indo-Pak border.
According to sources, fearing more such retaliatory actions by the Indian troops, Pakistani Army has increased the presence of soldiers on the forward posts. Also, it has reportedly alerted 3 Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) brigades in the Kotalia area of Kashmir adjacent to Poonch. | 250 |
England's first transgender prison wing is set to open later this week.
Reports of sexual assaults in women's prisons by men prompted the government to make a change to its policies, which have allowed transgender inmates to serve time in women's prisons, the Sunday Times reported.
"Prisoner safety is our biggest concern and any decisions we take will seek to best manage the risks posed by each offender," a British Ministry of Justice spokesperson said in a statement, according to BBC News. "The wider management of transgender offenders is a highly sensitive issue which poses unique and complex challenges and we are determined to get it right. That's why we are reviewing the way we manage all transgender offenders."
Three inmates from Downview women's prison near London are expected to be the first to be housed in the new wing that's exclusively for men who now identify as women. The unit will feature 15 single cells and another cell with two beds. Transgender prisoners will be isolated from the main prison's inmates.
What are the details?
In 2016, the government issued guidance that called for the majority of transgender inmates to be held in prisons matching their preferred identity.
Last month, the government announced its revised guidance in an attempt to "strike the right balance" between the rights of transgender prisoners as well as the safety of women prisoners.
"They're going to have to have some kinds of safeguards to make sure that a Karen White event doesn't happen again," Andrea Albutt, the president of the Prison Governors Association, told the Sunday Times. "That is the No. 1 priority."
White, who was born as Stephen Wood, is a 52-year-old biological male who was sentenced to prison for raping women. He was moved from a men's prison to a women's prison after identifying as a woman.
Within days of his transfer to a women's prison, White sexually assaulted female prisoners. He was convicted last year and sentenced to life behind bars.
White has been accused of claiming to identify as a woman to get access to women in prison. His actions sparked the governments to review its transgender prisoner policy.
What else?
About 50 percent of the transgender prison population in Great Britain are sex offenders, according to the Sunday Times.
Last year, the Ministry of Justice reported that there were 139 transgender inmates in England and Wales. The data showed 15 prisons had at least one, 18 had two to four, and 11 had at least five, according to The Guardian. | 251 |
s wonderful to have this store in Portland, but I don’t think Anthropologie defines the market.”
Craig said if he were a landlord there, he’d be happy to get $14 per square foot for that basement space, although he acknowledges there can be other factors landlords consider in lease negotiations, such as whether a tenant pays its rent on time.
“They should easily be able to make a deal,” he said. “I’d take $14 all day, it’s more the market. … The other thing is everyone loves Videoport!”
Customers at Videoport on Thursday, including Craig, were not happy to hear that Videoport may not be able to stay in its current space.
Chad Jones, a Falmouth resident who has been a Videoport customer since the store opened, called it “an Old Port institution.”
He used to work at Silly’s, which at the time was on Cumberland Avenue, and remembers trading food for movies with Videoport staff in the early 1990s. While those days are long gone, he has fond memories of the store and its “oddball” assortment of films. On Thursday afternoon he was walking out with a DVD of “High Sierra,” a 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart.
“Try finding that at Best Buy!” said Jones, who acknowledged he isn’t much of an online person.
His first thought when he heard that the building owner was advertising the space to other tenants was, “Where would I go to get a movie?”
Ryan Hall, a South Portland resident and manager of Portland Dry Goods on Commercial Street, was taking a break to walk up to Videoport to return two movies, “Fury” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.” He said it would be “sad” to lose Videoport and echoed Jones’ love for the store’s selection.
“It has a really good selection and really friendly people down there,” said Hall, who has been a customer since he moved to the area seven years ago. “I’d be really disappointed if it wasn’t here. There aren’t many of these places left.”
Send questions/comments to the editors. | 252 |
in 1978, was authorised at the highest level, and that the authorities knew that the methods would cause lasting damage.
Efforts to investigate killings that took place during the Troubles have stalled. The 2014 Stormont House Agreement that created a framework for historical investigations into such deaths has yet to be put into law. But even if new laws are introduced, the investigations will not include those who were subjected to torture or ill-treatment, and who still live with the long-term physical and mental consequences, despite recommendations by a variety of UN experts for the scope of the historical investigations to be broadened.
At the same time, reports suggest that the government is intending to introduce a statute of limitations that will prevent many human rights violations being prosecuted once they are 10 years old. Giving immunity to one side fuels division and undermines peace. Torture is an international crime that doesn’t permit blanket amnesties, as courts around the world have repeatedly found.
The techniques developed in Northern Ireland were later deployed by the armed forces in Iraq in an apparently systematic way, with multiple cases of hooding and other forms of ill-treatment. While there have been some investigations, none of them have been able to find out who gave the order to deploy interrogation methods that were banned 40 years ago.
The civil society report shows how austerity and the deliberate creation of a hostile environment have contributed to an increase in ill-treatment of migrants and other vulnerable groups, including survivors of torture. Austerity is no excuse for torture and ill-treatment. Governments around the world are required to put in place policies and procedures that reduce the likelihood of such behaviour, and provide a budget for them. The UK insists as much when engaging with countries in the developing world to promote the “rule of law”.
This is a cultural problem. There is a culture of hostility, that dehumanises the individual; a culture of disbelief, which means torture survivors are not recognised as refugees; and a culture of denial, whereby serious allegations of torture overseas have not been properly addressed.
The UK has a long history of championing human rights and has long prided itself as a global leader in the fight against torture. For that to be credible, the UK must have a record that is unimpeachable. The government should revisit its 2015 decision to abandon a cross-governmental anti-torture policy, re-establish a comprehensive approach at the highest level, and introduce real reforms that can establish a culture of respect for human dignity. | 253 |
be substantially larger than the drug companies Warren focuses on. According to OpenSecrets.org, the top five military contractors — Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Raytheon—more than doubled the top five companies in the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector ($14.4 million vs. $7.7 million) in their outlays to politicos. For more, see the writings of William Hartung, such as “Corporate Patriots or War Profiteers?“
Even more critically, the U.S. establishment’s geopolitical aims frequently thrive on war. Dahlia Wasfi argued in 2015 in “Battling ISIS: Iran-Iraq war redux” that “Obama’s unofficial strategy to fight ISIS may be that of former President Ronald Reagan’s for Iran and Iraq in the 1980s: a long, drawn-out war to strengthen U.S.-Israeli hegemony in the region.” Also, see Robert Naiman’s “WikiLeaks Reveals How the U.S. Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath” and my own “Is U.S. Policy to Prolong the Syrian War?”
In 2015, Sen. Bernie Sanders was actually calling for more Saudi intervention in the Mideast. Said Sanders: The Saudis have “got to get their hands dirty.” He was criticized for this by Margaret Kimberley, David Swanson and myself.
Now, Sanders has taken the lead in Congress in criticizing the Saudi war in Yemen, opening the door to some alleviation of massive suffering. I wish he would be much better still on foreign policy, but this may be serious progress, though the ACLU has criticized the congressional resolution.
It’s imperative to criticize presumable progressive politicians and parse their words carefully. It might open the door to actual improvements in policy, as in the case of Sanders. And in the case of Elizabeth Warren, it’s simply asking her to cease obscuring war as she clarifies economic issues.
Sam Husseini is an independent journalist, senior analyst at the Institute for Public Accuracy, and founder of VotePact.org, which encourages disenchanted Democrats and Republicans to pair up. Follow him on Twitter @samhusseini.
If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. | 254 |
two primary goals. Keep your team in the fight, and stay alive. You should always utilize enough vertical space that a monster has to commit to attacking you, and always have a second vertical space planned to retreat to for when it does. AS THE MEDIC, YOU SHOULD NEVER BE ON THE SAME VERTICAL LEVEL AS THE MONSTER.
Val
Attacks:
DPS Cooldown Summary Advantages Disadvantages Sniper Rifle Abysmal ~ Garbage Nothing. Worst weapon in the game. A good Val player is a Val who has never used this weapon. Tranq dart ~ 10 Seconds A dart that will slow a monster down for a period of time when hit by it. Spammable, allows you to see the monster's location, damage mitigation through movement restriction. Great when paired with Cabot's wall banging rifle as well as Griffin's harpoons. Nothing. You pick Val because you want to limit monster mobility at the expense of healing ability. Healing Gun ~ ~ A gun which fires a beam of heals. High range Worse than Caira's healing grenades in every conceivable way. Make sure to use this in hard to reach places so that the monster has to commit to killing you. CAN'T SELF HEAL Healing Burst ~ 22 Seconds A free set of heals for anyone within the AOE. ~ ~
Summary:
Disregard your sniper rifle, right now. Seriously, never use it. If you're picking Val, it's because you want to spam the tranq dart. Her healing has recently been improved to be acceptable, but it's still far worse than Caira's. That being said her tranq dart is the most useful utility out of the medic class, and is incredible when paired with Griffin/Parnell/Cabot. When you aren't in an arena, focus on keeping your team's health topped off, as well as trying to hit the monster with tranq darts. When in the arena, focus on healing whenever tranq dart is in effect, and then switch to tranq dart when you believe the duration to be near expiration. You also need to know that you' are very easy to hunt down and kill, so keeping distance from the monster is an absolute must. Try to utilize spaces which would require the monster to have to commit solely to hunting you down, to give your team time to punish him while he does. Always have a backup location as well that you can further retreat to. | 255 |
The reason we’re not shooting other moving things with guns is because it’s not something that’s legal. It is more challenging to rely on that framework in a place like Haiti or Kenya or Mali. The risk there is higher."
But couldn't the drones get taken out when they land?
"As you pointed out, the vulnerable part of the mission is when they come down," he responded. "In our case, they do a vertical descent and then they go out again. And those locations need to be protected."
Thinking about the developing world contexts where Matternet is working, he continued. "You need to have them owned by people who use the system, and then you tap into the social dynamics. We're not planning to set up the networks in local places. We're just providing the technology. So, they have to be owned by people in the developing world that have the right social status," he said. "It would be people on the ground who understand how their location works. Those people are the experts on the ground. They know how to read the country and protect their assets."
What do you think of the regulatory hurdles in the U.S.?
"We’ve just had a public statement from a big company they want it to happen. Public acceptance goes hand in hand with regulation. There are many reasons that the public will see these as the wave of the future," he said. "But we cannot [make that case] that if we cannot guarantee to the public that this is a safe thing to be flying over our heads and our children."
So, let's say you can fly a few drone deliveries, does this actually work as a big business, the way Amazon seems to be imagining?
"Scale is a challenge in itself. For Amazon to do this, they don’t get to do 10 or 100 deliveries a day, they get to do thousands or hundreds of thousands of deliveries a day. How you resolve the scale issue is a question," Raptopoulos said. "But we’re pretty good at solving those challenges as a technical civilization."
* In our conversation, Raptopoulos used the phrase, "99.9999999—seven nines—percent reliability" to describe really high reliability. But he subsequently told me he was using the phrase as a figure of speech. In the interest of not putting a bad number out there, I've made the change to "extremely high reliability." | 256 |
What has been lacking, however, is finding out whether enough of that predation is happening to matter, says Pieter Johnson, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, who has studied the role that predators of parasites and parasite alternate hosts can play in disease dynamics, but who was not involved in this study. That was something this study directly addressed, he says, and the strength of the connection between the predators and patterns of infections surprised him.
In principle (although such a practice requires much further testing), these results point to a simple, relatively natural solution to ponds plagued with Bd: boost native micro predator populations. This could be accomplished by maintaining the natural state of pristine lakes and preventing invasive species from getting in. In other lakes it could take the form of removing introduced species such as fishes (often stocked for anglers in mountain lakes that were originally fishless) that eat micro predators. In lakes where Bd is a problem, once the conditions that suppress micro predators have been reversed or removed, ecologists could even try lake water microbial transfusions, similar to the way fecal bacterial transplants can help reestablish ecological balance to human guts ravaged by antibiotics or infection. Because a threshold of Bd density is needed to infect any particular frog, it is probably not necessary to wipe out the fungus to protect amphibians. “In most cases its either not possible or not even practical to really try to eradicate disease from a system,” Johnson says. “But if you can figure out ways to manage the system that actually keep disease levels at some desirably low level, then that could actually be a really cost-effective way to approach certain diseases.”
Andrew Blaustein, a professor of integrative biology at Oregon State University who has also studied micro predators’ effect on Bd and their possible use as a biocontrol agent (and was not involved in this study), agreed that the paper study was both well conducted and groundbreaking in its probing of complex, real-world lake communities.
In retrospect, Blaustein says, past difficulties with experimental ponds that were stocked with zooplankton (which include many micro predators) Bd and amphibians could have offered a clue to the tiny predators' surprising lethality. In these artificial environments it has traditionally been hard to build up sufficient quantities of Bd for experiments. The reason, he said, may be that the micro predators were so good at eating it. | 257 |
Major Blunder: ‘60 Minutes’ Slimed A WWII Veteran Mid-Interview In A Disastrous Attempt To Broaden The Show’s Appeal To Children
If you tuned in to 60 Minutes last night, you got to see an epic facepalm for the ages. The show’s attempt to appeal to a young audience failed miserably when Anderson Cooper dumped a 55-gallon drum of slime on a World War II vet while interviewing him.
Yikes. What a totally inappropriate and desperate move that certainly did nothing to lower the 58.2-year-old average age of the 60 Minutes viewer.
Anderson Cooper was interviewing 93-year-old marine Harvey Morrison for a piece on post-traumatic stress disorder in war vets when Harvey said the word “Normandy,” prompting Cooper to say, “Uh-oh! You said the Slimagic Word!” and pull a handle that slimed the veteran, Purple Heart medal and all. The stoic vet continued to tell his story while Cooper attempted to goad a response out of him, saying, “Tell the kids at home how it felt to get slimed!” and “Wow, bet the Germans didn’t do that to you when you were interned in a POW camp!” Desperate for a reaction, the noticeably flustered Cooper then pulled the sliming handle again, this time causing only a small amount of slime to drip onto the veteran, prompting him to wheel his wheelchair off set without saying a word.
Woof. What a major embarrassment for a show that had built up so much integrity.
Further adding to the on-air disaster, anchor Lesley Stahl followed the interview up with a promotional piece for a sweepstakes where “one lucky kid gets to take over 60 Minutes for 60 minutes, ask the guests any totally-gross questions you want, spin around in Anderson Cooper’s chair until you throw up, and even pull the slime crank when someone says the Slimagic Word!” The show then ended with an animation of an anthropomorphic 60 Minutes stopwatch with slime running down it playing an electric guitar solo and pulling down its pants to moon the camera.
Horrible. As traditional television loses audiences in droves to streaming services and mobile devices and networks scramble to find ways to reach younger viewers, let’s hope this fiasco serves as a lesson of what not to do so something like this never happens again. | 258 |
The guys respond to your tweets about Lukaku and Morata, having to take a break during a match and more. (10:21)
Romelu Lukaku did not train with the rest of the Belgium squad on Monday because of an ankle injury, sources have told ESPN FC.
Lukaku reported to the Belgian Football Centre in Brussels as normal on Monday afternoon ahead of World Cup qualifiers against Bosnia and Cyprus, despite being involved in ongoing court proceedings in Los Angeles.
However, the 24-year-old did not train with his teammates on Monday evening as was instead checked over by doctors.
Marouane Fellaini was also absent. He missed last week's trip to CSKA Moscow with an ankle problem but was fit enough to start against Crystal Palace on Saturday.
Lukaku suffered an injury in training with United on Friday, sources said, and he was a doubt to face Palace.
But after passing a fitness test on Saturday morning the striker completed 90 minutes against Roy Hodgson's side, scoring in the 4-0 win. It was Lukaku's 11th goal in 10 games since his summer move from Everton.
Romelu Lukaku is in a fitness race to play for Belgium this week. PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty Images
Belgium officials remain hopeful Lukaku will be available to face Bosnia in Sarajevo on Saturday and Cyprus in Brussels on Tuesday. Roberto Martinez's side sit top of Group H and have already qualified for next summer's World Cup in Russia.
After the international break, United face a critical run of fixtures with Premier League clashes with Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea as well as a Champions League double header against Benfica. Jose Mourinho is already without Paul Pogba, who has missed the last five games with a hamstring injury.
Meanwhile, Lukaku's lawyer, Robert Humphreys, on Monday entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf after the citation for an excessive noise complaint his client received in Los Angeles in July.
Commissioner Jane Godfrey, overseeing the case, ordered Lukaku to appear at Los Angeles Airport Courthouse on Nov. 21. Lukaku can opt not to appear in person at the hearing and can instead have a lawyer handle the misdemeanour citation on his behalf.
After the hearing, city attorney James Eckart said the striker faces both a fine and an additional sum to cover the cost of the police call-outs that occurred over five days. | 259 |
A second aide to Democrat senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) has been sentenced for her role in assisting a former staffer to break into the senator’s office to hack computers and obtain the names and personal information of Republican politicians.
The aide, Samantha DeForest-Davis, is the second Hassan staffer to be sentenced in the burglary-and-doxing case.
Her collaborator, Jackson Cosko, pleaded guilty to five federal offenses in June after hacking Senate computers to obtain similar information on Republicans, an act he said was spurred by anger at the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
DeForest-Davis has been sentenced to a suspended sentence of 180 days in prison, together with 200 hours of community service and two years of supervised probation.
According to a Justice Department spokesperson, DeForest-Davis has also been ordered to “stay away from [Hassan’s] office to include current and former staff, and to not use Tor or anonymized computer applications.”
Court House News reported that the sentence showed “leniency” from the federal judge who imposed it.
DeForest-Davis initially lied to the police, telling them that she knew nothing about Cosko’s actions.
In fact, the staffer provided Cosko with keys to the office of Sen. Hassan, allowing him to break in and hack into congressional computers. Cosko used this access to obtain and publish the home addresses of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and former Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
DeForest-Davis also admitted to wiping down Senate computers in an attempt to remove Cosko’s fingerprints.
Prosecutors recommended a sentence of six months of house arrest and five years of probation, or 600 hours of community service if the judge opted against house arrest.
Instead, the judge handed down the more lenient sentence of 200 hours of community service and 2 years supervised probation.
“This sentence really is meant to help you,” said the Reagan-appointed judge, addressing DeForest-Davis in court.
Are you an insider at Reddit or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address [email protected].
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. | 260 |
Marketing material of AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 5500 mid-range graphics cards leaked to the web, providing insights to the product's positioning in AMD's stack. The October 2019 dated document lists out the card's specification, performance relative to a competing NVIDIA product, and a provides a general guidance on what experience to expect form it. To begin with, the RX 5500 desktop graphics card is based on the 7 nm "Navi 14" silicon, and is configured with 22 RDNA compute units, amounting to 1,408 stream processors. The chip features a 128-bit wide GDDR6 memory bus, which is paired with either 4 GB or 8 GB of memory running at 14 Gbps data-rate, yielding 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Its GPU clocks are listed as 1670 MHz "gaming," and 1845 MHz boost. The company didn't mention nominal clocks. The typical board power is rated at 110 W, and a single 8-pin PCIe power input is deployed on the reference-design board.The second slide is where things get very interesting. AMD tabled its product stack, and the RX 570, RX 580, and RX 590 are missing, even as the RX 560 isn't. This is probably a sign of AMD phasing out the Polaris-based 1080p cards in the very near future, and replacing them with the RX 5500, and possibly a better endowed "RX 5500 XT," if rumors of the "Navi 14" featuring more CUs are to be believed. What is surprising about this whole presentation though is that only the "RX 5500" is listed, with the "XT" nowhere in sight. Let's hope the XT version gets released further down the road. In the product stack, the RX 5500 is interestingly still being compared to the GeForce GTX 1650, with no mention of the GTX 1660. This document was probably made when the GTX 1660 Super hadn't launched. A different slide provides some guidance on what kind of experiences to expect from the various cards, rated N/A, good, better, or excellent. According to it, the RX 5500 should provide "excellent" AAA gaming at 1080p, fairly smooth gaming at high settings (graded "better"), "excellent" e-Sports gaming, and "better" 1440p gaming. The card is also "excellent" at all non-gaming graphics, such as watching 4K video, photo/video creator work, game streaming at any resolution, and general desktop use. | 261 |
【5月25日 AFP】全仏オープンテニス（French Open 2015）は24日、男子シングルス1回戦が行われ、大会第8シードのスタン・ワウリンカ（Stan Wawrinka、スイス）は6-3、6-2、6-3でトルコのマルセル・イルハン（Marsel Ilhan）に快勝し、1時間36分で2回戦進出を決めた。
2013年の8強入りが全仏オープンの最高成績となっているワウリンカは、次戦でセルビアのドゥサン・ラヨビッチ（Dusan Lajovic）と対戦する。
そんなワウリンカだが、全仏オープンのウェブサイトが掲載した記事について不満を訴えている。
2014年の全豪オープン（Australian Open Tennis Tournament 2014）覇者は、先月離婚を発表していたが、大会のウェブサイトに掲載された自身の紹介記事の中で、その詳細について書かれたことを不快に思ったようだ。
「四大大会（グランドスラム）のウェブサイトでは、テニスについての記事が掲載されるべきだ。最悪の記事だったよ」
(c)AFP/Dave JAMES | 262 |
During a lunch break at the "New Future for Antitrust" conference at the University of Utah, Lina Khan (previously), Marshall Steinbaum (previously), and Tim Wu (previously) drafted "https://onezero.medium.com/the-utah-statement-reviving-antimonopoly-traditions-for-the-era-of-big-tech-e6be198012d7">The Utah Statement, setting out a program for fighting monopolies beyond the mere revival and exercise of antitrust law, premised on the notion "that concentrated private power has become a menace, a barrier to widespread prosperity."
The Statement sets out four credos, ten calls for reform, and thirteen principles. Despite its 27 clauses (!), the Utah Statement is an excellent articulation of how we got here, why it matters, and what we should do next.
I see this as a harbringer of the "peak indifference" moment for monopolism, which hurts everyone from eyeglass wearers to pro wrestling fans (and beyond), a unifying vision for states' relationship to concentrated industries of all kinds and their corrupting influence on regulation.
However, "anti-monopoly" is a terrible name for this movement, since it tells you what it stands against, but not what it stands for. I like "Pluralism" as an alternative, because using "pluralistic" as a modifier to other values ("pluralistic prosperity," "pluralistic self-determination," "pluralistic marketplaces of ideas") make it clear that you're not talking about a "freedom" that ends with one small slice of people dominating everyone else, but rather, about freedoms that end up with everyone having as much choice in how their lives unfold as is possible.
We believe that: (1) Subjecting concentrated private power to democratic checks is a matter of constitutional importance; (2) The protection of fair competition is a means to a thriving and democratic society and an instrument for both the creation of opportunity and the distribution of wealth and power; (3) Excessive concentration of private economic power breeds antidemocratic political pressures and undermines liberties; and (4) While antitrust is not an answer to every economic distress, it is a democratically enacted and necessary element in achieving these aims.
The Utah Statement: Reviving Antimonopoly Traditions for the Era of Big Tech [Tim Wu/Medium]
(Thanks, Bruce) | 263 |
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"Following congressional inaction, the President is determined to use existing executive branch authorities to protect our nation against cyber threats," Brennan wrote in a letter to Sen. Jay Rockefeller John (Jay) Davison RockefellerBottom Line World Health Day: It's time to fight preventable disease Lobbying World MORE (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee. "Specifically, we are exploring an Executive Order to direct executive branch departments and agencies to secure our nation's critical infrastructure by working with the private sector."
He argued that the government has worked with the private sector for decades to protect the physical security of critical assets "from airports and seaports to national broadcast systems and nuclear power plants."
"There is no reason we cannot also cooperate to protect the cyber systems of critical infrastructure on which our economic well-being, national security and daily lives depend," he wrote.
But Brennan said the president lacks the legal authority to grant legal protection to companies that choose to share cyber threat information with one another and with the government.
Information-sharing was a core piece of the Senate cybersecurity bill and the focus of the House GOP bill on the issue.
Brennan urged Congress to keep working on comprehensive legislation, including protections for information sharing.
"Comprehensive legislation remains essential to improve the cybersecurity of the nation's core critical infrastructure, to facilitate cyber information sharing between the government and the private sector, to strengthen and clarify the existing patchwork of authorities regarding federal network security, and to protect the privacy and civil liberties of American people," he wrote.
In a statement, Rockefeller agreed that Congress should not give up on passing a cybersecurity bill.
"The cyber legislation that was just debated on the Senate floor was a strong bill but Senate Republicans stood with beltway lobbyists over our military and national security officials' professional advice, and filibustered the Cybersecurity Act," said Rockefeller, who co-sponsored the bill. "The White House knows how serious the cyber threats facing our country are and I am grateful that they are working to take appropriate action, though we still should pass comprehensive reforms soon.”
In an interview on MSNBC on Monday, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) argued that an executive order would impose burdensome regulations on businesses.
"What the president is contemplating doing is a heavy regulatory environment where he is going to tell the companies that they consider critical infrastructure to go through the lens of the Department of Homeland Security," Hutchison said. | 264 |
Competition Now Closed! If you won a beta key GameTwonk has emailed you the beta key, for use with Steam. Thank you all that took the time to enter and Happy Halloween! Horrorween Competition Time!! Competition #1 Aaaaaaaargh! What can be more frightening than the thought of winning an exclusive beta key for a brand new game, developed and published by those fear-mongers over at Paradox Interactive? Not much, I know. Well, loads, actually, but never mind that.
Paradox Interactive are soon to release Defenders of Ardania - described by Paradox as tower defense with a twist. Defenders of Ardania has players placing towers to slaughter advancing enemy units, deploying their own units, and flinging powerful spells onto the battlefield to boot! - All powered by everyone's favourite resource, mana. Not only that, but GameTwonk did a bit of a wee in our Furry outfit when we discovered Defenders of Ardania runs on Steamworks and has achievements. Ooh yeah. So, now the competition bit. At GameTwonk we love Horrorween so much that we celebrate 24 hours a day during Halloweek of Fear. This non-stop partying gives us special mind powers and thanks to a process of torture and brain-washing, we have managed to extract 4 beta keys from Paradox, for use with the Steam digital version of Defenders of Ardania. These beta keys can be used immediately for online multiplayer with up to 4 players and will magically become the full game when it's released to mere mortals in December. Defenders of Ardania is set for release on the 8th of December 2011 through digital download. The PC versions will be 14.99 USD. To win one of the 4 beta keys, simply email GameTwonk and tell us why you think you should win a key. Winners will be announced this weekend. COMPETITION ENTRIES EMAIL: [email protected] www.defendersofardania.com Steam digital download service This slideshow requires JavaScript. Note from GameTwonk: Contestant's email addresses will be deleted immediately after competition close and absolutely no information will be seen by anyone outside of GameTwonk. We take your privacy and security extremely seriously. Check back for more exclusive Horrorween competitions this week!
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This entry was posted by Ian Brown. | 265 |
A new collectible card / strategy game set in the Smite universe, Hand of the Gods is coming soon to PS4.
What if your favorite collectible card game was about more than just cards?
What if dragging your creatures into play brought them to life in rich 3D? What if those creatures fought a tactical, turn-based strategy battle on a chess-like board? And what if those creatures weren’t creatures at all – they were the Gods of ancient mythology?
We’re excited to announce Hand of the Gods: Smite Tactics is that game… and it’s coming to PS4 very soon!
You can sign up for the Closed Alpha test starting today, just by clicking here. We’ll start welcoming players into the Alpha in the next few weeks!
Never heard of Hand of the Gods? It’s the perfect blend of turn-based strategy and collectible card game. We’ve been called “Hearthstone and Xcom combined” by PCGamesN, but the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.
In Hand of the Gods, it’s just not about what cards you play. It’s about where you play them, and how you can outmaneuver and outplay your opponents with tactical brilliance.
You’ll build your army around one of six mythological pantheons, featuring the characters you know and love from the hit MOBA Smite. Lead your forces into battle as Zeus, the Greek God of the Sky, Ra, the Egyptian Sun God, Odin, the Norse Allfather, or other amazing deities of myth. Now, you’ll truly command the gods on the Battleground of the Gods.
Hand of the Gods lets you get even more up-close and personal with the Gods of Smite, rendered for the first time in the rich detail made possible by Unreal Engine 4. Experience stunning effects, rich animations, and more of the Gods’ unique personalities.
And we saved the best news for last: It’s 100% free to play Hand of the Gods! Even better, we’ll help you get started on building your army with 4 Core Card Packs, free when you finish the tutorial.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up to join the Closed Alpha for free today, and become one of the first to play Hand of the Gods on PlayStation 4. | 266 |
anks went viral, as all the false IDs and dead ends indicated.
"I think there's a lot of issues with doing this, but I hope these people have a protocol," White says.
Oscar Baez, a 24-year south Florida law enforcement veteran, agrees that participants on sites such as Reddit should funnel their theories and suggestions to authorities.
"On the computer, you can do whatever you want to, as long as you don't interfere with somebody's rights," says Baez, who now heads a private firm called Executive Tactical Training. "I always say, give us the information, let us do the legwork, let us do the computer work, let us do everything."
It's not just for reasons of privacy and proper legal protocol, he adds. People can get hurt. Baez has had tipsters call who tell him they've been conducting surveillance on suspects, which makes him furious.
"What if they're following the real suspect? What if they're following a murderer? Once that person realizes there's somebody following them, the chances are pretty good they're going to get hurt," he says. And hiding behind a computer is no promise of safety, he adds: "Even contacting that person online can still be traced back to you."
Media mixups
As with past episodes -- such as the naming of the wrong suspect in the Newtown massacre -- the frantic pursuit of information can come perilously close to mob justice.
Both functioned as warnings for what could happen when gut reaction overwhelmed calm rationality.
Oops777, the redditor who set up findbostonbombers in the first place, kept trying to rein in both Reddit users and the news media.
"Media Outlets, please stop making the images of potential suspects go viral, then blaming this small subreddit for it," he titled one post. "Until the media got involved, none of the images were going anywhere but to the FBI."
But maintaining control is always going to be a challenge on such free-flowing sites, says Reddit's Martin.
"I don't think we can fix the basic problems with human behavior," he says.
But, he adds, "We can certainly mitigate it. If we can make sure to channel people's desire to help and adrenaline-fueled activity into things that are clearly positive and aren't fraught with as many dangerous (possibilities), that should be the aim for any future crisis." | 267 |
a powerful, archetypal story that has moved people for centuries.
But Johnson will also talk for hours about all the ways that Planned Parenthood compromised its (and her) principles. She’ll talk about how she was into prevention, and caring for the patients, and showing them their options, and her colleagues weren’t.
Local news report on Abby Johnson.
The problem is, when God reaches into the operating room and shows you that abortion is murder, there’s a bigger issue then these petty failings. If abortions are murder, then it doesn’t matter whether Planned Parenthood was performing them ethically.
Murder with proper informed consent is still murder.
By itself, this inconsistency in Johnson’s story is meaningless—people are capable of holding dissonant views, especially where religion is concerned. By themselves, Kaminczak and Blair’s stories are just hearsay. By itself, Johnson’s claim about the Texas Democratic Women could have been a careless error. Johnson’s claim that she was “never going to go to the media,” which contradicted what Carney told me, could have been a simple misunderstanding. Her boast about how good she was at lying for Planned Parenthood could be indicative of nothing more than how unethical that organization is.
But these things add up. Johnson can’t stop talking about the people who wronged her, about how hard she worked, about how little she was appreciated. She’ll talk about how nasty her boss was, how her co-workers sold her out, how no one cared for the women as much as she did. She’ll talk about how the progressives kicked her out of their club because she became pro-life, and how her friends dropped her, and how unfair it all is.
The more she talks, the more Abby Johnson’s issue with Planned Parenthood seems to be its treatment of Abby Johnson.
In one sense, Johnson is surely right. It really doesn’t matter if I believe her, because she isn’t talking to me. To the people who already know that abortion is incompatible with spirituality, she has become a symbol of their truth. The inconsistencies in her story won’t matter to Johnson’s future listeners. She’s going to have a long, profitable career in the pro-life movement, telling cheering audiences about the day that God reached down and showed her the truth. | 268 |
US President Donald Trump said NFL players who kneel during the national anthem should be banned (File)
U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up his fight with the National Football League on Tuesday, calling on the league to ban players from kneeling in protest at games while the national anthem is played."The NFL has all sorts of rules and regulations. The only way out for them is to set a rule that you can't kneel during our National Anthem!" Trump wrote on Twitter.For the fifth straight day the president denounced the symbolic gesture, which has been adopted by some black players in the last year to protest against racial disparities in the criminal justice system.An NFL spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.Trump praised two teams that played on Monday night and largely steered clear of the controversy. The Arizona Cardinals linked arms and stood for the "Star-Spangled Banner" along with the Dallas Cowboys, who knelt before the song.Last Friday, Trump told a political rally any protesting player was a "son of a bitch" who should be fired, and urged a boycott of NFL games, triggering protests by dozens of players, coaches and some owners before Sunday's games.Trump's verbal assault may appeal to his conservative base as the Republican president grapples with critical issues including North Korea's nuclear threats, a humanitarian crisis in hurricane-struck Puerto Rico, an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and the healthcare struggle in Congress.Paul Ryan, the most senior Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, said he also disapproved of the gesture."People are clearly within their rights to express themselves how they see fit," he told reporters. "My own view though is that we shouldn't do it on the anthem."U.S. Attorney General Jeff Session told an audience at Washington's Georgetown Law School that the protesting athletes were wrong."The players aren't subject to any prosecution, but if they take a provocative act, they can expect to be condemned," he said.Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival in the 2016 election, called Trump's comments "a huge, loud dog whistle to his supporters" in an interview with CBS.Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first kneeled during the anthem last year to protest police shootings of unarmed black men.
© Thomson Reuters 2017
His former teammate Eric Reid wrote in a New York Times opinion article that he and Kaepernick chose to kneel as a "respectful" gesture, comparing it to "a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy." | 269 |
�real problems” being neglected so they can pursue their partisan agenda. It’s a templated expression of solidarity that should please the Trump supporters within their base, while leaving plenty of daylight between them and the president should things go south. And by essentially copying and pasting their deeply held convictions, they’re guaranteed to seem unremarkable enough as to be easily forgotten in the fog.
MORE GOOFY THAN GUTSY: Representative Mike McCaul
Taking that kind of conspiracy theorizing to a whole new level of nth-dimensional chess-playing, McCaul—along with eighteen other Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee—signed an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal asking Pelosi to halt investigations because “Impeachment Is What Vladimir Putin Wants.” It’s a defense as bold as it is baffling, essentially arguing that now is not the time for nasty political infighting, because it’s exactly that kind of division that Putin was hoping to sow. The Democrats—“intentional or not”—are thus playing right into his hands, distracting everyone from Putin’s aggressive forays into Crimea and Ukraine. As a rebuttal for impeachment, “it would make Vladimir Putin happy” is pretty outside the box, bordering on irrelevant. But you can’t deny it’s provocative. Grrr, you can just see Putin’s creepy little smile now!
GUTLESS: Representative Michael Burgess
One of the key points cited in that “Putin’s watching!” op-ed is the assertion that presidents have always been able to talk to other world leaders without anyone else being privy to their conversation. It’s a line of defense that was noticeably harped on in the White House’s leaked talking points email. And it comprised nearly the whole of Burgess’s statement to the Denton Record-Chronicle, where he suggested that the worst part of this whole mess is that it infringes on the president’s privacy: “The president should be able to speak to a foreign leader candidly and not have the contents of those conversations spill out into the public domain,” Burgess argued. Well, you can’t argue with that, largely because no one wants to.
This post has been updated because of Louie Gohmert’s slightly more gutsy statements in recent hours. | 270 |
In a development that pretty much everyone in America could have foreseen except for, evidently, the President of the United States himself, Donald Trump's decision to abruptly terminate the FBI director who was leading an active investigation into the White House's potentially criminal conduct has been received, shall we say, poorly. And as more salacious details start to leak out about the decision-making process that has resulted in a sitting president casually using social media to threaten a potential witness, we've learned a decidedly grim lesson about how Donald Trump sees his role—and what to expect next time he senses a threat from within.
One of the more curious footnotes in the President's incoherent termination letter was that Trump claimed that Comey told him on "three separate occasions" that he was not under FBI investigation—an assertion that Comey associates called "literally farcical." Whatever was said during however many conversations they had, though, the New York Times has the scoop on a dinner to which Trump reportedly invited Comey in January. This meal sounds, to use a technical term, absolutely batshit.
As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.
Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not "reliable" in the conventional political sense.
Call me crazy, but I wouldn't have thought that a top law enforcement official telling a president something like, "Well, I mean, I'm not a stooge, if that's what you're asking," would be a particularly controversial take, but apparently I would not be correct.
By Mr. Comey’s account, his answer to Mr. Trump’s initial question apparently did not satisfy the president, the associates said. Later in the dinner, Mr. Trump again said to Mr. Comey that he needed his loyalty.
What is this, some kind of delusional Godfather cosplay character Trump dreamed up before walking into the dining room? If he says no, I'll just pop my knuckles and sneer and lean in intimidatingly and say it AGAIN, but in a LOWER AND MORE THREATENING VOICE this time. Hohoho, I'll have this guy quaking in his gigantic boots! | 271 |
Vikings' John Sullivan responds to Ndamukong Suh's fine
Tom Pelissero | USA TODAY Sports
Minnesota Vikings center John Sullivan said he respects the NFL's decision to issue Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh a $100,000 fine, rather than suspending him, for an illegal blow block into Sullivan's left knee on Sunday.
"I have no say in the process (despite) being a part of the situation," Sullivan told USA TODAY Sports. "The league did what they felt was appropriate and the matter is settled."
Sullivan, who had microfracture surgery on the knee in the offseason, was chasing Lions linebacker DeAndre Levy after an interception when Suh — a repeat offender who has been fined at least five other times and was suspended two games in 2011 — dived and hit Sullivan low.
The impact sent Sullivan to the ground, grabbing the knee, but he stayed in the game. He said on Tuesday he feels fine and plans to start this week's road game against the Chicago Bears.
"I'm just happy I wasn't hurt — seriously injured," said Sullivan, a first alternate for the Pro Bowl last year. "There's a reason that play is illegal. It's incredibly dangerous. I just feel fortunate that I'll be playing this week."
The illegal block drew a flag that wiped out Levy's touchdown on the play. Suh spoke with Sullivan at halftime, saying he intended to hit Sullivan in the waist but missed, and apologized to teammates in a team meeting Tuesday morning.
The $100,000 fine is the largest ever for an on-field incident, though some will feel it's not enough, considering Suh's history.
Top 5 NFL stories from Week 1 USA TODAY Sports' Jarrett Bell breaks down the major story lines from the NFL's opening week.
Asked if he wished he had a voice in the discipline process, Sullivan said, "In this situation, I think it's best not to let emotions come into it. Even though I'm kind of staying even-keeled about it, I think involving players in that would become overly emotional. I think it's best to have a third party make the decision."
If Suh appeals, it would go before Matt Birk or Ted Cottrell with the NFL office. There's no need to expedite the appeal because it doesn't involve a suspension.
Suh was not available for comment in the locker room Tuesday. | 272 |
Four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah has won the final track race of his illustrious career, clinching a dramatic 5,000 metres win after three other runners collided with each other as they approached the finish line.
Britain's Farah led down the final straight at the Diamond League final on Thursday in Zurich, Switzerland, but world champion Muktar Edris came powering through and appeared set to sneak a victory on the line.
Edris fell to the ground after being clipped from behind by Paul Chelimo. In turn, Edris tripped Yomif Kejelcha on the outside. Chelimo stumbled over the line in second, and Edris's momentum took him over in third.
Farah finished in 13 minutes and 6.05 seconds, 0.04 seconds ahead of Chelimo.
The Somali-born 34-year-old had clinched 10 consecutive global titles before Edris ended his streak at the World Championships earlier this month.
Farah will now turn his attention to marathons.
When announcing his decision to leave the track, Farah said that "everything must come to an end at some point".
"I'm a little bit sad, but at the same time I think I have some unfinished business on the road."
Farah won the gold medal in both the 5,000m and 10,000m at the London 2012 Olympics, a feat he repeated four years later in the Rio Games.
Many online congratulated the track star, calling him a "legend" and wished him well as he sets his sights on road races.
End of an era with @Mo_Farah hanging up the track spikes. What an incredible career. Well done Mo, you'll be missed. — Greg Rutherford (@GregJRutherford) August 24, 2017
WHAT. A. WIN.
The ultimate track career is over! @Mo_Farah 👏👏👏
Olympics:🥇🥇🥇🥇
World Champs: 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥈🥈
European Champs: 🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥈 pic.twitter.com/13NNqsxSgM — Eurosport UK (@Eurosport_UK) August 24, 2017 | 273 |
Taniela Tupou isn't going anywhere, putting pen to paper on a deal that will keep him at Ballymore until the end of 2020.
The boom 133kg prop, who earned his first Test cap against Scotland on the Spring Tour last year, first signed with the Reds as a YouTube sensation in 2014, when the "Tongan Thor" video took the internet by storm.
Those devastating runs and vicious palms are still there but Tupou is now an elite scrummager, too, making his signature one of the more valuable ones in Australian rugby.
He will continue to figure in Wallabies coach Michael Cheika's plans moving forward, having already made the starting tighthead job his own at Ballymore. "Ballymore is my second home and the Reds are like my second family. This is where I started my professional carer and I really want to contribute to the team," Tupou said.
"We’re learning a lot from Brad (Thorn). He knows how to win.
"We’re a young team who are working hard for each other, it feels like we are heading in the right direction and I want to be a part of that."
Queensland have also added another prop to their roster, with JP Smith's twin brother Ruan joining the squad.
The Sunwolves released Smith when the pair's mother fell ill and he has been training with the Reds over the week, with the move now made official.
He has also signed until 2020, joining his brother, who has made his mark off the bench in both Reds games so far this year.
"I’m really excited to be joining the Reds, especially considering my brother JP has already settled in and is loving it," Smith said.
"My family is here and Queensland is our home, so it is great to be back here.
"I’m very thankful to the Sunwolves for understanding my situation and making it easier for me to return home to be with my family.
"My parents made sure the family were Reds members as soon as we moved to Toowoomba more than a decade ago and they’ve had the same seats at Suncorp Stadium ever since.
"We grew up as Reds supporters, so it’s a dream for us to be playing for them. It’s actually surreal how it has all worked out." | 274 |
As the days have grown shorter and the nights colder, the warm comfort food meals have become more frequent. No one’s complaining here, though, and I wanted to share my take on lentil sloppy joes. They’re pretty tasty, if I’m allowed to say so.
Ingredients:
1 C. dry lentils
1 t. ground cumin
½ t. ground mustard
¼ t. ground coriander
¼ t. paprika
½ t. ground black pepper
½ t. or more salt (to taste)
6 T. (3 oz.) tomato paste
1 medium onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 bay leaf
2 T. olive oil
4-6 dashes liquid smoke
2-3 T. liquid aminos or soy sauce
1 T. apple cider vinegar
2 T. brown sugar
2 T. nutritional yeast
1 C. vegetable stock (recipe here) or water
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30-40 min
Yield: 4-6 servings, ~4 C.
-Rinse lentils thoroughly in a strainer.
-Fill a stock pot with water and add lentils; cook on medium-high heat for ~20 min or until lentils are softened but not mushy.
-Place a large pan over medium-high heat and add cumin, coriander, mustard, paprika, pepper and salt; brown spices, 2-3 min, stirring with a spatula or wooden spoon regularly.
-Add olive oil and chopped onions, and sauté until translucent.
-Add celery and carrot, stirring evenly to coat.
-Add lentils and remaining ingredients; stir to combine and let simmer uncovered on medium/low-medium heat for ~20 min. Stir occasionally as the liquid cooks down and the veggies soften. Taste to see if you’d like more salt or liquid smoke. It’s pretty hard to go wrong once everything is simmering, so play around a little (just save some room for dinner).
Meghan particularly likes this recipe paired with homemade cashew cream mac & cheese, and we’ve also had it over mashed potatoes and on burger buns. The sky’s the limit! | 275 |
President Donald Trump is prepared to levy more duties on Chinese goods in the absence of a trade deal, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Monday, shortly after the president announced the resumption of tariffs on Argentinian and Brazilian steel.
TARIFF TALK
Trump made the steel announcement on Twitter early Monday morning, and spoke to reporters about China before heading to London for a gathering of NATO leaders.
Now see:Trump brings back tariffs on Brazil and Argentina as deadline for China levies approaches.
In his remarks on China, Trump was noncommittal about a forthcoming agreement but said Beijing wants to find common ground. “The Chinese want to make a deal, we’ll see what happens,” he said.
The clock is ticking toward the imposition of 15% tariffs on consumer goods from China beginning Dec. 15. Speaking on Fox Business Network, Ross called that date a “logical deadline” for a phase-one deal.
“If nothing happens between now and then, the president has made quite clear he’ll put the tariffs in — the increased tariffs,” Ross said.
U.S. stock indexes DJIA, +1.33% SPX, +1.59% COMP, +2.26% fell Monday on both trade worries and data showing the U.S. manufacturing sector remaining in contraction for the fourth straight month.
Read:Dow closes down 250 points, posts worst performance in six weeks as manufacturing, trade concerns weigh.
IMPEACHMENT ATTACK
While speaking to reporters, Trump also blasted House Democrats for going ahead with their impeachment proceedings while he will be out of the country.
“The Democrats, the radical leftist Democrats, the do-nothing Democrats decided when I’m going to NATO — this was set up a year ago — that when I’m going to NATO, that was the exact time,” he said.
Democrats are preparing to approve their report Tuesday that makes the case for removing Trump from office. The White House was invited to attend a Wednesday hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, but declined. When asked why he isn’t sending his lawyers to the hearing, Trump replied, “because the whole thing is a hoax.”
See:House panel set to vote on impeachment; White House says it won’t join Wednesday hearing.
Sign up for Trump Today and more MarketWatch newsletters. | 276 |
In such cases, an epidural steroid injection (ESI) carries a very high risk of direct entry into the subarachnoid space, which can have catastrophic consequences to a patient, including the development of Adhesive Arachnoiditis, a chronic, painful and disabling inflammation of spinal nerves. I live with that condition, along with a growing number of other patients.
“The incidence of arachnoiditis has risen about 400% in the past decade,” says Forest Tennant, MD, Editor Emeritus of Practical Pain Management.
Between 2000 and 2011, there was a staggering 665% increase in the rate of lumbar and sacral epidural injections among Medicare beneficiaries. The data also show that there were enormous increases in spinal injections performed by physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists.
“We are doing too many of these, and many of those don’t meet the proper criteria,” Dr. Laxmaiah Manchikanti told The New York Times in 2012. Manchikanti runs a pain clinic in Paducah, KY and is chairman of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians – which lobbied for HR 5804 and gave campaign contributions to its sponsors. He told The Times about 20 percent of doctors who perform ESIs are not adequately trained.
The growing use of spinal injections has not resulted in better care. Dr. Richard Deyo, a professor of family medicine at Oregon Health and Science University, told the The Times that “people with back pain are reporting more functional limitations and work limitation, rather than less.”
HR 5804 is more bad policy piling on top of an already failed campaign of opioid legislation -- much of it based on misinformation provided by the CDC -- that will perpetuate the tsunami of needless pain and overdose deaths.
It needs to stop. Today.
When profit is one of the major motivating factors of those seeking new legislation, those creating the legislation and those lobbying for it need to be questioned. Profitability should never play a factor in any treatment plan. However, it now seems to dominate the American healthcare system from diagnosis to testing to medication.
This needs to change.
Medicine needs to be removed from the hands of lobbyists, PAC’s, and politicians and put back into the hands of the personal physician and his or her patient. It should be as individualized and unique as the medical needs of each patient.
It truly is that simple. | 277 |
Rodney King's beating left the Rev. Cecil “Chip” Murray stunned, and the verdict in the ensuing trial left him gutted. There were 53 deaths, thousands of injuries, and millions of broken hearts.
LA Riots Page: Archive Video, Tweeting the Riots
"We were hoping the verdict would come back to those who perpetrated the evil: GUILTY! And, when the opposite came, nothing," said Murray, with First AME Church.
As the leader of the First AME Church pulled himself back together, those in the streets surrounding the sanctuary fell apart.
"Exploded, within the matter of less than an hour," said actor Edward James Olmos. "No police department officials, no government officials, no leaders of the community were saying anything."
So, Olmos said something: taking to the airwaves to ask Angelenos to stay home.
More than 2,000 miles from the chaos, another Angeleno watched from his dorm room.
"At Harvard, I was able to get Black and Korean students to table at 13 of our dorms,” said Do Kim, who was a student in April 1992. "We were able to raise about $5,000 to help both the Korean and African American communities."
Kim grew up amid Koreatown's violence.
"I left Koreatown because of the violence,"Kim said. "But it was the violence of the LA civil unrest that made me want to come back to Koreatown to be a community bridge builder."
Back on the west coast, on the day Marshall Law was to take over, on the day Rodney King would ask “if we could all get along,” Olmos picked up a broom.
"I went to sweep the parking lot," Olmos said. "I started walking right down here, down Adams and towards Western, sweeping. I just started sweeping, and I'm not quite sure what I was thinking."
A news crew captured the moment on tape and broadcast it. By mid-morning people were swapping guns for brooms.
"Anybody that was fighting before, just grabbed a broom and walked down the street and all of a sudden they were part of the healing process," Olmos said.
Follow NBCLA for the latest LA news, events and entertainment: iPhone/iPad App | Facebook | Twitter | Google+ | Instagram | RSS | Text Alerts | Email Alerts | 278 |
‘Pre-revolutionary’ protest More than 20,000 people took to the streets of Moscow to protest against the exclusion of most opposition-minded candidates from an election for the Russian capital's legislature.
Election officials barred around 30 candidates, mostly opposition-leaning, from running for the 45-seat legislature on the grounds they failed to garner enough genuine signatures from voters to qualify. Stronger mandate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's party took a commanding lead in a snap parliamentary election, consolidating the power of the novice politician whose stunning rise has upended traditional politics in the war-scarred nation.
Exit polls showed his Servant of the People party far ahead of all other parties although possibly short of a majority. That prompted him to offer coalition talks with a pro-Western party, Voice, fronted by another political novice, rockstar Sviatoslav Vakarchuk. Epic breach Hackers have gained access to 7.5 terabytes of data from a Federal Security Service (FSB) contractor, which BBC Russia called “possibly the largest ever data leak in the history of Russian intelligence services.”
The hacking collective known as 0v1ru$ reportedly breached the SyTech contractor’s servers and shared details of projects aimed at cracking the anonymous web browser Tor, scraping social media and analyzing Russia’s segment of the internet. It reportedly did not expose Russia’s state secrets. Investment grade S&P Global Ratings affirmed Russia's "BBB-/A-3" credit rating, reiterating that the country's solid public and external balance sheets are able to offset potential international sanctions and geopolitical tension. Russia is rated investment grade by all three big international rating agencies, including Moody's and Fitch, which helped Moscow this year to borrow money in global markets by issuing Eurobonds. Blood Type: Metallica The heavy metal band Metallica performed a cover of Soviet rock legend Viktor Tsoi’s 1988 hit “Gruppa Krovi” (Blood Type) to the delight of 80,000 fans in Moscow.
The crowd at Luzhniki Stadium was filmed singing along to bassist Robert Trujillo and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett’s rendition of the Russian-language anti-war punk anthem. SUP boarding Over 1,000 paddleboard enthusiasts brightened the gray waters of St. Petersburg's canals with a flashy masquerade organized by the local Fontanka news website.
Gazprom Press Service | 279 |
S.E. and NARC beacons to players unfamiliar with MechWarrior and Battletech.
The ‘Mechs themselves are fantastic. There are about 20 different chassis types, each with several different configurations—i.e. a Raven 3L has a different weapons loadout than a Raven 4X. What’s neat is that each separate chassis feels unique. Some have more open cockpits giving you a better view of the battlefield. Others have low-slung weapons that preclude shooting over a ridge. The level of detail that goes into each new ‘Mech is awesome—it’s just a shame that it’s so hard to get new ones.
[singlepic id=16313 w=320 h=240 float=left]Combat in MechWarrior Online is a lot of fun, and it’s even more of a shame that there’s so little to do outside of that. This title has essentially zero metagame. There’s very little to compel a player to keep at it except the allure of new ‘Mech chassis and paint schemes—and those don’t come cheap. If you want to pay cash, a new ‘Mech will run you between $10 and $25! A truly dedicated player might be able to save enough C-bills—the in-game currency—to get a new chassis, but they accrue very slowly. There is a lot of grinding to be done in MechWarrior Online, and the payoff might not be worth it.
Piranha has long promised that “community warfare” will address this lack of endgame, but that feature has been delayed so often that it’s hard to be sure if it’s ever coming out. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s so little reason to keep at MechWarrior Online. The matches themselves are fun–and as it is free-to-play, there’s no barrier to entry–but without any form of metagame it’s hard to stay engaged.
Addie grew up near Detroit. After studying Cell Biology at the University of Michigan and spending a year looking into microscopes, Addie decided to volunteer--playing video games. hobbies run from gaming to music (voice, bass, guitar) to rugby. Addie is a strong supporter of indie and low-cost gaming, an area she thinks is underserved by the media. | 280 |
said that Trump “can be a little too critical of the other counterparts, and I don’t think he should be critical.”
RELATED: Here’s what you need to know about Trump’s complaints to NATO allies about defense spending »
The president continued to hammer his complaints about NATO countries’ military expenditures at the breakfast, stating that the situation is “not fair” to American taxpayers. “But we will make it fair,” he said.
Trump singled out Germany for complaint, and Merkel, in her comments upon arriving, took issue with that criticism as well.
“Germany does a lot for NATO,” she said. “Germany is the second largest provider of troops, the largest part of our military capacity is offered to NATO and until today we have a strong engagement towards Afghanistan. In that we also defend the interests of the United States.”
Trump’s repeated complaints have swayed some Americans against the alliance that has guarded the transatlantic democratic order for nearly 70 years. Backing for NATO has declined among Trump’s supporters, polls show.
While Trump spoke again of NATO countries being delinquent and owing the United States, their defense spending has nothing to do with payments to NATO or the U.S. All NATO members are current on their actual contributions to the alliance.
Staff writer Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this report.
[email protected]
@EliStokols
UPDATES:
2:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Stoltenberg, former U.S. NATO Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Pompeo, former Secretary of State John F. Kerry and former U.S. official Frank Rose, and with the House vote on a pro-NATO resolution.
10:40 a.m.: This article was updated with Trump’s proposal that allies spend 4% of their GDP for defense and reference to the summit declaration.
9 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from French President Emmanuel Macron, Sen. Orrin Hatch and professor Robert Jervis, and with additional context, including Tuesday’s Senate vote and information on the gas pipeline.
5:30 a.m.: This article was updated with German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response to Trump’s criticism.
This article was originally published at 3:35 a.m. | 281 |
P2 High Fidelity Audiophile In-Ear Headphones with Detachable Cables
Hi-Fi on the Go Building on the technology developed for the Pinnacle P1, the Pinnacle P2 makes high fidelity more accessible than ever, utilizing an advanced moving coil transducer with a new low-impedance voice coil to deliver superb audio performance across a wider range of portable audio devices while retaining the most popular features of the Pinnacle series - user-replaceable MMCX cables and an ergonomic design that can be worn cable-up or cable-down.
Tuning Philosophy Top-tier audio performance has been the primary goal of the Pinnacle range from day one. Tuned for a warmer and smoother sound, the P2 boasts a slight bass bias compared to the P1 yet is smooth, detailed, and refined enough to delight seasoned audiophiles, providing a more dynamic and engaging sound while maintaining the series’ hallmark clarity and resolution*. Handmade 10mm dynamic drivers feature a copper-clad aluminum voice coil to reduce the driver’s moving mass, allowing for faster, more controlled driver movement and raising high frequency performance and resolution.
* The superb sound quality and resolution of high-fidelity headphones are most audible when listening to recordings in CD (or better) quality. To experience the full potential of the Pinnacle range, we recommend avoiding music that has undergone excessive dynamic range compression or been digitally compressed into low-bitrate formats.
Build to Last The Pinnacle P2 utilizes a detachable, user-replaceable cable with universal MMCX (micro-coaxial) connectors. Our thickest and strongest earphone cable to date, it features a reinforced TPE jacket over oxygen-free copper (OFC) conductors and a built-in microphone and remote for use with phones and tablets.
Superior Fit & Comfort Designed for extended listening sessions, the Pinnacle series features an innovative ergonomic design that can be worn two different ways, going from a conventional cable-down fit to a more secure over-the-ear musician fit with a quick swap of the left and right cable connectors. The P2 makes this design more comfortable than ever with new super-lightweight ABS earpieces for a less bulky feel in the ear.
Headset Cable with Mic & Remote The cable incorporates a high-quality inline microphone and remote, allowing seamless control of phone calls and music playback with compatible phones and tablets. | 282 |
If you want to know what you can to do masturbate me and have a full-on orgasm then you need to check out AuntJudy. AuntJudy says to masturbate me and show her how to cum when you are in the mood for a sensual BBW. This seductive woman is 50 years of age and has a lot of fetishes and fantasies about BDSM and sex. She has dark black hair and hazel eyes and her face is very lovely and her body is full and voluptuous for those that appreciate extra curves and a little more junk in the trunk. This Dominant BBW Milf from Canada will send you her used panties after your live show, that;s right, the exact panties she came in she will mail to you in the post that you get to sniff the scent of a real woman. Her dirty, used panties will have you jacking off for weeks and when you have cam to cam with her you can smell her pussy while you both masturbate together. I found her in the Milf sluts at SluzzaChat.com where she was teasing her tight anus with a rather big buttplug.
Her fantasies are unique and she explores taboos that others won’t as she has the kinky attributes of BDSM, roleplaying, anal, deepthroat, and interactive vibrator. AuntJudy really enjoys interactive vibrator stimulation and that means you can control her vibrator and when and how often it vibrates her clit and gives her that hot stimulation right before an orgasm.
AuntJudy loves BDSM and everything that it stands for. She has got a kinky mind and a very dominant personality where she likes to be in charge of men that need a strict mistress and a firm hand to rule their world. This babe also likes to be a deepthroat whore and have a big black cock put into her mouth and gagging on cock makes her clit and ass wet and in anticipation of having balls slapping against her ass or her big thick pussy that is fat and juicy with excitement. There are a lot of fetishes and fantasies that AuntJudy like to explore and she has a very open and naughty mind. You can talk dirty to her on audio chat during your private webcam shows that are kinky and no holds barred between two consenting adults that want to explore BDSM and bondage and domination and submission and every dark part of sex that you can imagine. See her being a naughty slut at SluzzaChat.com. | 283 |
He has been in power at Queen’s Park for over six months after winning a convincing majority. But shortly before the election, for about two weeks, Doug Ford’s team thought he was going to lose.
CityNews has obtained internal polling done by the Tory campaign, which pinpoints key moments that helped Doug Ford become premier.
On June 12, Ford was basking in election victory. But just over two weeks earlier, his team was worried. Their numbers show that for about nine days, from May 23 to 31, Andrea Horwath was eclipsing him.
But a path to victory usually coincides with an opponents’ path to defeat. This last election was no exception.
The PC polling shows Horwath, who had been steadily climbing in the polls, made a series of decisions and one big fumble that led to her defeat.
On May 20, Horwath had a 24-per-cent approval rating compared to Doug Ford’s 31 per cent. This is the day she admitted she made a $1.4-billion math error in her platform.
She also defended NDP candidates with controversial views, like Laura Kaminker, who once said she refuses to wear a poppy for Remembrance Day.
On May 21, Horwath said she would close the Pickering nuclear power plant, angering voters in the 905.
And on May 22, she said she wouldn’t use back-to-work legislation to end strikes.
“What happened with Horwath, is the public looked and then she stumbled and then she fell,” pollster John Wright told CityNews.
“What’s fascinating is it was self-inflicted. Andrea Horwath was in the grasp of maybe a minority and then it was all self-inflicted.”
Despite that, Horwath was bouncing back, with many voters still unsure about Doug Ford as premier. Until May 28.
That’s when Ford introduced his bench strength, showing off his star candidates — in particular Christine Elliott and Caroline Mulroney. Ford’s internal polling shows that’s when his numbers started to go up, pushing him above Horwath.
“It was a really good manoeuvre,” Wright said. “It actually also gave Ford a chance to be with women — strong women — and that was also a turning point.” | 284 |
Henrietta Robinson was'beacon of light in the transgender movement' (Facebook/Miami Beach Pride)
A trans woman known as ‘Grand Lady of Miami Beach’ has died of coronavirus, marking yet another LGBT+ leader lost to the disease.
Henrietta Robinson, 79, was a renowned figure in the LGBT+ community and was celebrated as one of the first transgender people to live openly in Florida.
She recently underwent hernia surgery and was recovering at Mount Sinai Medical Centre in Miami Beach. It was here that she contracted COVID-19 and passed away on Friday.
Robinson was born in Akron, Ohio and grew up in Milton, Massachusetts, but would often say she was reborn in 1959 in Miami Beach.
She was a fixture in the nightlife community there and found freedom in drag queen fashion shows. The famous gay club Twist became her second home and earned her the titles ‘Grand Lady’ and ‘Mother of Miami Beach.’
She made such an impact in the community that in 2011 former Mayor Mattie Herrera Bower gave her a commendation on behalf of the city of Miami Beach for her activism.
Miami Beach Pride paid tribute to her as a “beautiful soul” who was a “mentor to so many”.
“As we continue to live through an unprecedented pandemic that affects our entire world, locally, our LGBTQ+ community has suffered heartbreaking losses of many incredible people,” they wrote. “One of those beautiful souls lost was Henrietta Robinson.
“Henrietta was a pioneer in the LGBTQ+ community. One of the first transgender individuals to live her life in Miami Beach. She was beacon of light in the transgender movement and a mentor to so many who struggled through the years.
“Being a resident of Miami Beach for over 65 years she was known as ‘The Mother of South Beach’. Henrietta was a welcoming face to many at Twist and was always there for those who needed a hug or comforting embrace.
“Rest in Peace Henrietta, your light will not be forgotten.”
Among the other great LGBT+ leaders lost to coronavirus is the pioneering transgender Latinx activist Lorena Borjas, who tragically passed away on Monday morning.
Like Henrietta Robinson, Borjas was described as a “mother” to her community, who are devastated by her death. | 285 |
Sen. Ted Cruz wants us to believe that he wasn't really trying to paint all transgendered people as sexual predators. "It's not the Caitlyn Jenners of the world," it's those other people who are going to run around dressed up as women just so they can get away with sexually assaulting "little girls" in women's bathrooms.
Sure you're not buddy.
Here's Cruz from this morning's State of the Union on CNN pretending he's not really doing his best to demonize the transgendered community just to score cheap political points with his base: Cruz takes on Caitlyn Jenner over transgender fight:
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is standing his ground in his belief that allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of their choice "opens the door for predators," dismissing criticism from Caitlyn Jenner, who mocked him over the issue last week.
"This is not a matter of right or left, or Democrat or Republican. This is common sense. It doesn't make sense for grown adult men, strangers, to be alone in a restroom with a little girl," Cruz told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."
"This is the height of political correctness," Cruz continued. "And frankly, the concern is not of the Caitlyn Jenners of the world, but if the law is such that any man, if he feels like it, can go in a woman's restroom and you can't ask him to leave, that opens the door for predators."
Jenner, a reality TV star and activist for transgender causes, posted a video to Facebook on Wednesday knocking Cruz for his support of a controversial North Carolina law that requires people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their "biological sex" stated on their birth certificate, rather than how they self-identify.
After using a women's bathroom in the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York City -- following a recent comment by Trump in which he said Jenner could use whichever bathroom she wanted at the tower -- Jenner, a Republican, quipped: "By the way, Ted, nobody got molested."
"I've spent a lot of years in law enforcement dealing with child predators that are sick individuals," Cruz told Tapper. "That doesn't mean that that is the people who are transgendered. But there are predators in the world, and just saying that you're a man, you can go in the girls' restroom if you feel like it, opens the door for criminals." | 286 |
UWP QuickCharts demo app
Back in the late 2000s I’ve led a.NET branch of amCharts. The story of that.NET branch ended with events described in my probably most read post so far. But the team continued and turned what used to be the leading Flash charts for web into the leading JavaScript charts. It is insane what they managed to do since then. Make sure to check it out.
My last act there was to create a simple open source charting library for WPF, Silverlight and Windows Phone. And now I finally managed to port this library to UWP.
What is UWP QuickCharts?
UWP QuickCharts doesn’t aspire to be the most comprehensive, powerful or customizable charting library out there. However, I believe that majority of the apps developed don’t need advanced charting capabilities, while many would improve user experience by presenting some data in a user friendly fashion. That’s who the QuickCharts are for.
QuickCharts let you add interactive Line, Area, Column and Pie charts to your UWP (XAML) apps. It automatically rearranges axes, data labels and grid lines based on control’s size. And it lets you customize colors and some other formatting. It can be used to effortlessly display real-time data via data-binding. And, back in the day, it was one of the best performing charting components, mostly due to its simplicity.
You can start using UWP QuickCharts via Nuget or get the source code and a demo app on GitHub. Refer to the readme on GitHub and the demo app for samples on how to use it.
Roadmap and help wanted
I was inspired to do this port by the release of UWP Community Toolkit. However, at the same time, I realized that if I set out to bring QuickCharts up to the UWP Community Toolkit standards and requirements right away it would never see the light of day. I was only able to dedicate a few hours to it on [some] Saturdays, so I decided that I’ll bring the charts to UWP “as is” and then let someone else to take on the challenge of bringing them into the Toolkit (provided the Toolkit leadership wants them).
So, if you are up to the task, I’ve created an issue on the UWP Community Toolkit GitHub. | 287 |
OGDEN, Utah -- A priesthood blessing was given to a woman on the side of Interstate 15 moments after she was ejected from her car in Ogden Monday afternoon.
Soon after, the ambulance arrived to take 29-year-old Jessica Bingham to an area hospital, where she remains in critical but stable condition.
“I think any prayer in any religion -- anything being sent out to the universe, whatever you believe in works,” said Denice Okey, Bingham’s mother.
Some are saying that kept a woman alive until the ambulance arrived. Now the story is going viral.
Bingham was driving northbound on I-15 when police say she lost control. Witnesses say her red SUV rolled at least six times before crashing into the median. Okey said her daughter was thrown 50 feet in the air and went across the cement barrier.
Danny Paniagua pulled up to the scene seconds after the crash.
“I felt prompted to get out of my car and park and run over and see what happened,” Paniagua explained Tuesday.
On the other side of the median, Paniagua saw Bingham’s body covered in blood.
“She wasn't moving, but her eyes were moving, people were crouched around her, and I saw a tiny bits of movement,” Paniagua said.
Several people stopped to help and call 911. After doing all they could, one man asked Bingham if she wanted a priesthood blessing. Paniagua had the oil and gave the prayer.
“We performed the blessing; it was a pretty incredible moment,” Paniagua said.
Although Bingham and her mother are not active members of the LDS Church they believe the blessing and those at Bingham’s side helped keep her alive until the ambulance got there.
“Even the doctors don't know why she doesn't have a broken neck or spine,” Okey said.
Paniagua shared the story on his Facebook page. In the past 24 hours it has received thousands of shares, comments and likes.
“It was an incredible thing to be part of, I feel really humbled and blessed to be part of the Jessica Bingham love movement,” Paniagua said.
Paniagua set up a GoFundMe account for Jessica Bingham. | 288 |
A display encouraging students to stab a “Trumpkin” at Providence College’s Office of Multicultural Student Affairs is being investigated, officials said Thursday.
A picture of the display that circulated on social media, obtained by Campus Reform, showed the words, “stab stab stab” written on a chalk board, telling students, “if you ever feel angry or stressed, feel free to stab Trumpkin!” On a table in front of the message was a mangled pumpkin with a pair of scissors plunged into it.
“Trumpkin” is often used as a derogatory description of supporters of President Trump.
Providence College issued a tweet Thursday saying it was investigating the display, which went up at the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs on Oct. 24 and was removed the next day.
PC learned of “Trumpkin” 10/24 p.m., and it was removed as of 10/25. We are completing our investigation and providing support to students. — Providence College (@providencecol) November 2, 2017
The Rev. Brian Shanley, president of the private Rhode Island university, addressed the incident in an email to the college community on Thursday, the Providence Journal reported.
“An object described as a ‘Trumpkin’ was displayed in the office of a student organization and its image was circulated on social media,” he said. “It was offensive to many members of our community, especially because of the exhortation to violence in the form of stabbing with scissors. The display was removed shortly after it was reported to College Administration, and an investigation by the Office of Public Safety is ongoing.”
Steven Maurano, the school’s associate vice president for public affairs, community and government relations, confirmed to Campus Reform that the display was not authorized by the administration.
The display first gained the attention of the Providence College Republicans, which called it “highly disturbing.”
“As your community leaders and Republican representatives,” the organization wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post, “we are deeply distressed at the implications of such a display, and we personally feel responsible to not only make you aware of the highly disturbing imagery, but also to act as a resource for you if anyone feels threatened.”
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Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission. | 289 |
California-based blockchain startup Propy is building a global peer-to-peer real estate exchange platform with decentralized title registry aimed at facilitating international real estate purchases.
Built on Ethereum, the platform promises to automate real time transaction process using smart contracts, enabling greater efficiency, lesser paperwork and lower costs for buyers and sellers in the global real estate marketplace.
“Propy is proposing a new decentralized global real estate market with a unified real-time transaction interface approaching the functionality and speed of electronic stock market exchange platforms,” said Natalia Karayaneva, CEO of Propy. “It will allow real estate assets to become liquid, while providing users with greater control and protection of their property rights.”
Propy aims to solve the current problems facing international real estate transactions by creating “a novel unified property store and asset transfer platform” for the global real estate industry. Through the Propy Registry, the startup is set to introduce a platform for electronic property rights transfers that supports international ownership transfers.
A blockchain-based property ownership recording system
The Propy Registry is powered by smart contracts to track and execute real estate transactions according to regional regulations. By using the Ethereum blockchain, Propy allows brokers, buyers, sellers, and title agents/notaries to sign off on transactions using private keys within their existing legal frameworks.
The ERC20 Propy Utility Token (PRO) is required to interact with the Propy Registry specifically when users need to change ownership of a title or register a new title.
Karayaneva, a 12-year veteran of the global real estate industry and the owner of a UK-based overseas property firm, said she expects the first transactions to be made on the Propy Registry by the end of 2017. She said that the startup is currently negotiating with several governments to accept the title deed issued by its distributed registry as legal proof-of-ownership.
Propy’s mobile app, which consists in a real estate listing platform and an online property store, is already live. It allows users to find properties and initiate the purchase process.
The company claims it is currently being used primarily by users from China, Russia, the Middle East and other regions who are looking for properties in the US, the US and the United Arab Emirates.
Earlier this month, at the CoinAgenda Europe 2017 event, Propy was awarded third place in the startup contest in recognition of the disruptive potential of its real estate marketplace. | 290 |
Fisherton Street in Salisbury, England, where CCTV picked up footage of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (now identified as Anatoliy Chepiga), who were named in connection with the conspiracy to murder former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia | Matt Cardy/Getty Images Skripal suspect was given Russia’s highest military honor: report Man who claimed he was an innocent Russian tourist was a member of elite special forces unit, according to investigation.
One of the men accused of poisoning a former spy and his daughter in the U.K. is a colonel in the Russian army who was given the country’s highest military award, according to media reports Wednesday.
An investigation by the Telegraph and Bellingcat found that the man named as Ruslan Boshirov is in fact Anatoliy Chepiga, who served in wars in Chechnya and Ukraine and was made a Hero of the Russian Federation by decree of the president in 2014.
Chepiga and a second man who gave his name as Alexander Petrov have claimed they were on holiday in the English town of Salisbury and had nothing to do with the attack on Sergei Skripal, a Russian ex-spy who passed information to the British, and his daughter Yulia.
According to the Telegraph/Bellingcat investigation, an unnamed former senior Russian military officer said Chepiga’s high rank and experience suggested that “the job [the poisoning] was ordered at the highest level.”
The reports add that Chepiga was part of an elite special forces unit called Spetsnaz, under the command of the GRU military intelligence service, for 17 years.
European arrest warrants have been issued for the Russian pair, who are accused of the murder of Dawn Sturgess, a local woman inadvertently poisoned by a discarded bottle of the deadly nerve agent Novichok, and the attempted murder of the Skripals.
Earlier this month, the Russian pair gave a much-mocked interview to Moscow-backed television station RT, in which they admitted visiting Salisbury twice in two days but having their efforts at sightseeing hampered by the British weather.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has said she believed the two men were GRU officers and employed directly by the Russian state. British police say the pair sprayed Novichok on the front door of Skripal’s home before traveling home to Russia later that day. | 291 |
"My name is Martin and I have been involved with “energy medicine” for many years. I have had the pleasure of giving and sharing my gifts with those people who are open to another method to assist their bodies natural healing rather than relying only on mainstream medicine. There is a great need for both! In June 2009, I had surgery on my left knee for torn meniscus ligaments and arthritis damage. It really hurt BEFORE the surgery! After the surgery it only seemed to get WORSE. I have a demanding job, and walk a lot throughout the day. As more time passed, things did not improve! To get through the day or to sleep at night, it was common for me to take 21 milligrams of melatonin AND 100+150 milligrams of Demerol for the pain. In Jan. 2010, my wife and I attended a presentation on Lasers in Regina, Sask. A friend of ours had invited us, and I said to myself “Ya, ok” we will go. Good Decision! The day of the presentation, I had taken nothing for the pain, and during the session my left knee started to hurt. The pain level went from a 7 to a 12. Then it really started hurting to the point where the knee went completely numb. It hurt so badly; I had tears in my eyes and almost wanted to cut it off. Yes really that did go thru my mind. One of the organizers of the session let me use one of the demo lasers. After approximately 10+15 minutes, the pain level went down to an eight! (I was willing to keep the leg at that point) I had an opportunity to have a One-hour treatment session with another friend. Going into that session I was at 7-8 pain level. Upon leaving the session the level of pain was approximately four. In Feb. 2010, Gisele and I attended a session with Paul at the Regina Inn, and I used the laser and probes for a long period of time. Going into the weekend, my pain level was at 7-8. After using and working with them, the pain level went to a two! By using the lasers, my “stress” level from the pain, etc. has dropped a lot. My wife has noticed a HUGE difference in me. There is more I could share about my knee and the lasers, but enough is enough! Try the lasers. The only thing you may lose is the pain!!!"
~ Martin C. | 292 |
dwm.vim : Tiled Window Management for Vim
script karma Rating 526/172, Downloaded by 4320 Comments, bugs, improvements Vim wiki created by Stanislas Polu script type utility description dwm.vim adds tiled window management capabilities to Vim.
It is highly inspired by dwm (Dynamic Window Manager) [http://dwm.suckless.org/] tiled layout management.
Windows are always organised as follows:
=================
| | S1 |
| |==========
| M | S2 |
| |==========
| | S3 |
=================
Use the following commands to create, close and browse windows:
- CTRL-N Creates a new window and place it in the area [M] & stacks all previous windows in the [S] areas.
- CTRL-C Close the current window if no unsaved changes
- CTRL-J Jumps to next window (clockwise)
- CTRL-K Jumps to previous window (anti-clockwise)
- CTRL-H Focus the current window, that is, place it in the [M] area & stacks all other windows in the [S] areas
There's only one tiled layout available right now, but the project is open for contribution:
PLEASE FORK: https://github.com/spolu/dwm.vim
install details - copy the dwn.vim file into $HOME/.vim/plugin directory
- start vim rate this script Life Changing Helpful Unfulfilling script versions (upload new version) Click on the package to download. package script version date Vim version user release notes dwm.vim 0.1.2 2013-01-02 7.0 Stanislas Polu - use of `hasmapto`
- various cleanup dwm.vim 0.1.1 2012-08-23 7.0 Stanislas Polu - Changed mapping from C-F to C-H for focus
- Added a sentinel for mappings to avoid conflicts
- Added a fullscreen mode (C-L) (focus to return to normal mode) dwm.vim 0.1.0 2012-08-22 7.0 Stanislas Polu Initial upload ip used for rating: 88.198.194.78 | 293 |
A Fox News reporter was drowned out during live coverage of the U.S. women’s soccer team’s World Cup win when a rowdy bar crowd in France began shouting “fuck Trump.”
“History has just been made,” senior foreign affairs correspondent Greg Palkot said from a pub in Lyon, the tournament’s host city, shortly after the U.S. victory.
Behind him, a group of spectators who appeared to be mainly Americans began hollering the chant making clear their disdain for President Donald Trump. Palkot paused as he realized the celebrants were delivering a political message. Still, he maintained composure and carried on with his coverage.
lmao @FoxNews just went live from a bar in France after the #USWNT win and people started shouting "Fuck Trump" on air😂😂 pic.twitter.com/EFstJx43BV — Sara Pearl (@skenigsberg) July 7, 2019
The U.S. women’s team beat the Netherlands 2-0, earning its fourth World Cup title. Co-captain Megan Rapinoe, who scored the game’s first goal, also was at the center of a political brouhaha that may have inspired the chant interrupting Palkot’s report.
Asked in an interview last month whether, if the squad won the cup and got an invite to the White House, she would attend, Rapinoe balked at the idea in an expletive-laden response.
“I’m not going to the fucking White House,” Rapinoe told Eight by Eight magazine, adding that she doubted the team would be invited anyway. Her comment gained wide attention when Eight by Eight released a clip of her comment during the cup tournament’s early stages.
Trump responded in a series of tweets, calling himself “a big fan of the American Team, and Women’s Soccer,” adding that “Megan should WIN first before she TALKS!”
Story continues
Trump then extended an invite to the team, win or lose.
On Saturday, Rapinoe told reporters “not many, if any” of her teammates would accept the offer.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost. | 294 |
Highways Dept. to begin construction of Madhya Kailash flyover by year-end, complete it in 18 months
The Highways Department is expediting the process of construction of a two-lane flyover at Madhya Kailash junction, which will allow motorists from Saidapet to reach Rajiv Gandhi Salai (OMR) without having to stop at the traffic signal.
The 700-metre-long flyover will take off 200 m after the IIT flyover on Sardar Patel Salai and land near the Indira Nagar foot overbridge on the IT corridor. “Presently, the design wing is on the job and that work is likely to take another three months to be completed. The detailed project report for the flyover is ready and the estimate will be ready after the design is done,” explained an official source.
The process of land acquisition has been kick-started with the inspection of the site by the Revenue Department. The government order sanctioning funds for the land acquisition has also been issued. It is estimated that around 5000 sq m of land would be required for the formation of service lanes on either side.
G. Ramakrishnan, a resident of Besant Nagar, who welcomed the construction of a flyover, said that traffic jams are not uncommon on that road. “Even on Saturday afternoons, we have traffic jams on that road and they extend beyond Raj Bhavan. The same issue persists on both directions. A two-directional flyover or even an extension of the IIT flyover would be great,” he said. Since construction of a two-way flyover would involve more land acquisition, that is not being considered.
An Adyar resident Mithun Narayanan, who takes the MRTS regularly, said that pedestrians were at a great risk at the junction.
Violations galore
“Many people take the wrong side causing a headache for people like me who want to cross the road. And though there is enough police presence at the junction, most times they don’t seem to mind such wrong side driving,” he said. On completion of the facility, a foot overbridge has been planned. The department aims to commence construction by the end of this year and it would take around 18 months to complete the project. During construction some traffic diversions would have to be made. The junction witnesses traffic of over 1.25 lakh vehicles a day. | 295 |
of the large number of ribosomal proteins present in both species’ lifespan-altering orthologs, we asked whether they alone were responsible for the significance of the overlap we observed, and found that the remaining list still exhibited a significant overlap (p < 2.0E-6) with ribosomal proteins omitted.
We note that the genes affecting both yeast and C. elegans lifespan contain a similar proportion of genes from our functionally overrepresented pathways as the screen as a whole. Specifically, 0.255 of the overall screen results fall into the functionally overrepresented groups such as the ribosome, TCA cycle, SAGA, etc., while 0.423 of the conserved genes do so, a higher proportion by gene. Nevertheless, not all five functionally overrepresented pathways we describe here in yeast are represented among the conserved genes; only two (ribosome and TCA cycle) are. We propose at least two possible factors that may contribute to the absence of the other pathways. First, although we here quantify the false negative rate of our screen with high precision, our list of C. elegans genes is generated by consideration of aggregate data from multiple studies, most of which are not whole-genome studies, whose aggregate false negative rate cannot be easily estimated. We suspect that some absences from our list of conserved genes may be because the phenotype has not been observed in C. elegans although it may exist. Further, interspecies ortholog prediction is an imperfect science. In the example of the SAGA group, although both the individual genes and the overall protein complexes are conserved at the sequence and functional level between yeast, mice, and humans, we were not able to identify putative C. elegans orthologs for any of the RLS-extending SAGA deletions. We do not know whether this is due to sequence divergence, complete loss of this functionality from C. elegans, or other reasons, but it may offer an additional explanation for the fact that not every pathway we have uncovered in yeast is represented in the smaller subset of identified conserved genes.
Taken in context, the highly significant overlap between the final results of our screen of viable yeast deletions and published C. elegans genes suggests a high degree of general conservation in lifespan genotype-phenotype relationships between very distantly related species. This leaves open the possibility that these genes may be enriched for orthologs that can alter lifespan and aging in other organisms, such as humans. | 296 |
My Students
Picture a classroom overflowing with energy, enthusiasm, and desire to learn. Now picture that same classroom without any copy paper for making copies of handouts for students. Is a learning experience the same in a classroom without paper as it is in one that has copy paper? Of course not.
My students are some of the best and brightest around.
They come from very diverse backgrounds and have equally diverse interests and personal ambitions. Our school is a magnet school for international studies, so we have students from over 30 countries. Some students have been in the United States for the majority of their lives, but others have been in the United States for less than 2 years and know very little English. Handing out copies of notes, assignments, labs, etc. is an extremely effective way to differentiate for my students. Following instructions orally can be very difficult for an English as a Second Language (ESL) student. Similarly, copying down all notes from a PowerPoint onto paper can be very challenging as well for ESL students because rather than reading the words and attempting to understand the information, they spend so much time copying.
My Project
All of my students are incredibly hard working. Our school district was hit badly by the economic downturn and has had a difficult time recovering. Our allocation of resources is limited, but no one wants the students' education to suffer. My students are bright, talented, and extremely driven. Just like students in the district a zip code over, my students want to excel academically. Just like students in the district a zip code over, my students have interests and personal ambitions. Just like the students in the district a zip code over, my students have desires and goals that go far beyond high school. Just like the students in the district a zip code over, my students fully deserve access to a quality education. Paper may seem like a trivial request rather than a great lab kit or piece of equipment; however, a great lab is difficult to run if you don't have paper to print the procedures and materials lists.
I make a big effort to teach my students transferable skills that will help them in the long term.
Instead of simply memorizing trends in the periodic table, my students write a resume for a chemical element and then also for themselves. I weave professional skills into our daily lesson content so that upon graduating high school, my students have skills beyond the ability to pass a state test. Copy paper enables me to provide a quality education for deserving students who want to work hard. | 297 |
ambcrypto.com Reading time: ~2 m
One of the most common notions in the cryptocurrency space is that Bitcoin [BTC], the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, would be the one cryptocurrency which would benefit the most during the next financial crisis. This is mainly because normal citizens would lose faith in large financial institutions and place their faith in something that is completely under their control, without the need of a third party.
Bitcoin was touted as the coin that would liberate people of the shackles of the centralized systems and Erik Voorhees, the CEO of Shapeshift, a leading cryptocurrency exchange platform, spoke about this on his social media handle.
Recently, Narayana Kocherlakota, the Former President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, published an article titled ‘The Fed Needs to Fight the Next Recession Now’ on Bloomberg. Here, Kocherlakota stated that the “Fed would have arguably less firepower than in any previous recession”, taking into consideration its ability to increase growth was by decreasing interest rates.
The Former President explained that during the dot-com bubble burst in the 2000s, the Fed had to decrease their interest rate by over 5 percent in order to ensure that the unemployment rate stayed below 6 percent. However, the cut of over 5 percent during the housing bubble did not have the same effect, with the unemployment level rising in double digits, he stated. He further added,
“Now, it looks like the neutral interest rate over the next few years – the central bank’s starting point when the next downturn comes – could be as low as 2.5 percent. So unless it takes rates into negative territory, which seems unlikely, its response can be only about half as large as in the last two recessions.”
Further, Kocherlakota asserted that this was not the only option the Feds could opt for and added that there were other options such as buying bonds and mortgage-backed securities in order to “push down longer-term interest rates”. However, he stated that “many economists [including me] remain unconvinced that these actions had, or will have, much effect”.
To this, Erik Voorhees said on Twitter,
“There has never been a global recession since Bitcoin was created. Next time it happens, there is an escape hatch.”
Adrian Bye, a Twitter user, said, | 298 |
CHICKASHA, Okla. – Lunch meat, a couple of crackers, a slice of cheese and two pieces of cauliflower qualified as lunch in Chickasha Public Schools Monday.
Student Kaytlin Shelton took a photo of the skimpy lunch and showed it to her parents.
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“It makes me want to take that and take it to the Superintendent and tell him to eat it for lunch,” the girl tells Fox 25.
“I can go pay a dollar for a Lunchable and get more food in it,” her father, Vince Holton, says.
Shelton is pregnant and eating for two, complicating the problem.
Chickasha superintendent David Cash agrees the skimpy lunches need to be addressed.
“You’ve got in some cases little kids that their only two meals are breakfast and lunch at school and they’re getting you know a grand total of 1100 calories. That’s not enough,” Cash says.
The new lunch complies with lunch regulations championed by First Lady Michelle Obama and implemented by the USDA.
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“We have a meat-meat alternate, we have a bread grain, we have vegetable,” Asst. State Superintendent for Child Nutrition Joanie Hildenbrand tells the news station after looking at the photo.
RELATED: Kids go hungry as lunch rules force schools to toss leftover food
“It’s the student’s choice of what they want to take.”
Hildenbrand adds, “These regulations were put into effect two years ago and were still struggling with them.”
The superintendent has seen the consequences of the federal regulations first-hand.
“My own kid comes home and the first thing he does is raid the refrigerator,” he says.
The regulations are one-size-fits-all and don’t provide wiggle room for athletes or those that are pregnant.
“Schools are responsible for children while they’re at school,” the student’s father says.
“They’re responsible for feeding the children.” | 299 |
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