diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore index 84bbaa92c3926d3045d5399c57c023e9c2b59473..125224038650d04263343130ed9a3eeff6c013aa 100644 --- a/.gitignore +++ b/.gitignore @@ -3,8 +3,6 @@ __pycache__/ *.py[cod] *$py.class -# C extensions -*.so # MACOS .DS_Store diff --git a/amp_C.py b/amp_C.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391 diff --git a/ci/access_control_test.py b/ci/access_control_test.py new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..a0c356d27c7c3b4df811a37bc5c9fc77e037d1dc --- /dev/null +++ b/ci/access_control_test.py @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +import os +import sys +from pathlib import Path + +#============================= +# ST test, run with shell +#============================= +def success_check(res): + if res != 0: + sys.exit(1) + +class ST_Test: + def __init__(self): + BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).absolute().parent.parent + TEST_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'tests') + + gpt_shell_file = os.path.join(TEST_DIR, "st", "test_gpt", "test_gpt_ptd.sh") + llama_shell_file = os.path.join(TEST_DIR, "st", "test_llama", "test_llama_ptd.sh") + + self.shell_file_list = [gpt_shell_file, llama_shell_file] + + def run_shell(self): + for shell_file in self.shell_file_list: + success_check(os.system("sh {}".format(shell_file))) + +#=============================================== +# UT test, run with pytest, waiting for more ... +#=============================================== + +if __name__ == "__main__": + st_test = ST_Test() + st_test.run_shell() diff --git a/ci/build.sh b/ci/build.sh new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..4eb9705c55da131352df851f30e16ac0c2957388 --- /dev/null +++ b/ci/build.sh @@ -0,0 +1,137 @@ +#!/bin/bash + +# Copyright (c) 2020 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd +# Copyright (c) 2019, Facebook CORPORATION. +# All rights reserved. +# +# Licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License (the "License"); +# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. +# You may obtain a copy of the License at +# +# https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause +# +# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software +# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, +# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. +# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and +# limitations under the License. + +CUR_DIR=$(dirname $(readlink -f $0)) +SUPPORTED_PY_VERSION=(3.7 3.8 3.9) +PY_VERSION='3.7' # Default supported python version is 3.7 +DEFAULT_SCRIPT_ARGS_NUM=1 # Default supported input parameters + +# Parse arguments inside script +function parse_script_args() { + local args_num=0 + if [[ "x${1}" = "x" ]]; then + # default: bash build.sh (python3.7) + return 0 + fi + + while true; do + if [[ "x${1}" = "x" ]]; then + break + fi + if [[ "$(echo "${1}"|cut -b1-|cut -b-2)" == "--" ]]; then + args_num=$((args_num+1)) + fi + if [[ ${args_num} -eq ${DEFAULT_SCRIPT_ARGS_NUM} ]]; then + break + fi + shift + done + + # if num of args are not fully parsed, throw an error. + if [[ ${args_num} -lt ${DEFAULT_SCRIPT_ARGS_NUM} ]]; then + return 1 + fi + + while true; do + case "${1}" in + --python=*) + PY_VERSION=$(echo "${1}"|cut -d"=" -f2) + args_num=$((args_num-1)) + shift + ;; + --tocpu=*) + export 'NPU_TOCPU'=${1:8} + args_num=$((args_num-1)) + shift + ;; + -*) + echo "ERROR Unsupported parameters: ${1}" + return 1 + ;; + *) + if [ "x${1}" != "x" ]; then + echo "ERROR Unsupported parameters: ${1}" + return 1 + fi + break + ;; + esac + done + + # if some "--param=value" are not parsed correctly, throw an error. + if [[ ${args_num} -ne 0 ]]; then + return 1 + fi +} + +function check_python_version() { + matched_py_version='false' + for ver in ${SUPPORTED_PY_VERSION[*]}; do + if [ "${PY_VERSION}" = "${ver}" ]; then + matched_py_version='true' + return 0 + fi + done + if [ "${matched_py_version}" = 'false' ]; then + echo "${PY_VERSION} is an unsupported python version, we suggest ${SUPPORTED_PY_VERSION[*]}" + exit 1 + fi +} + +function main() +{ + if ! parse_script_args "$@"; then + echo "Failed to parse script args. Please check your inputs." + exit 1 + fi + check_python_version + + # Find matched dependent Python libraries to current Python version in HCCL compiling + hccl_file=${CUR_DIR}/../third_party/acl/libs/build_stub.sh + cmake_file=${CUR_DIR}/../CMakeLists.txt + if [[ ${PY_VERSION} = '3.7' ]]; then + dst_py_ver='3.7m' + else + dst_py_ver=${PY_VERSION} + fi + for src_py_ver in ${SUPPORTED_PY_VERSION[*]}; do + if [[ ${src_py_ver} = '3.7' ]]; then + src_py_ver='3.7m' + fi + if [[ $(grep -c "${src_py_ver}" ${hccl_file}) -ne 0 && ${src_py_ver} != ${dst_py_ver} ]]; then + sed -i "s/libpython${src_py_ver}/libpython${dst_py_ver}/g" ${hccl_file} + fi + if [[ $(grep -c "${src_py_ver}" ${cmake_file}) -ne 0 && ${src_py_ver} != ${dst_py_ver} ]]; then + sed -i "s/python${src_py_ver}/python${dst_py_ver}/g" ${cmake_file} + fi + done + + cd ${CUR_DIR}/.. + # if you add or delete file/files in the project, you need to remove the following comment + # make clean + + python"${PY_VERSION}" setup.py build bdist_wheel + if [ $? != 0 ]; then + echo "Failed to compile the wheel file. Please check the source code by yourself." + exit 1 + fi + + exit 0 +} + +main "$@" diff --git a/examples/README.md b/examples/README.md deleted file mode 100644 index bc88287b93277fc0218ff677d38f4951bedbbddc..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/README.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3 +0,0 @@ -## Recipes and Scripts - -Please note that some of the script examples (e.g., pretrain_*.sh directly under ```AscendSpeed/examples/``` folder) are from the original NVIDIA's Megatron-LM and does not have DeepSpeed integration (scripts with DeepSpeed integration should include the ```deepspeed``` keyword). Below we list various examples that do have DeepSpeed integration. diff --git a/examples/evaluate_zeroshot_gpt.sh b/examples/evaluate_zeroshot_gpt.sh deleted file mode 100755 index 96fd28f3a7b490e5fe4d9390ff7f775d2442cf03..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/evaluate_zeroshot_gpt.sh +++ /dev/null @@ -1,38 +0,0 @@ -#!/bin/bash - -WORLD_SIZE=8 - -DISTRIBUTED_ARGS="--nproc_per_node $WORLD_SIZE \ - --nnodes 1 \ - --node_rank 0 \ - --master_addr localhost \ - --master_port 6000" - -TASK="LAMBADA" - -VALID_DATA= -VOCAB_FILE=gpt2-vocab.json -MERGE_FILE=gpt2-merges.txt -CHECKPOINT=checkpoints/gpt2_345m - - -python -m torch.distributed.launch $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS ./tasks/main.py \ - --task $TASK \ - --valid-data $VALID_DATA \ - --tokenizer-type GPT2BPETokenizer \ - --strict-lambada \ - --vocab-file $VOCAB_FILE \ - --merge-file $MERGE_FILE \ - --load $CHECKPOINT \ - --tensor-model-parallel-size 1 \ - --num-layers 24 \ - --hidden-size 1024 \ - --num-attention-heads 16 \ - --batch-size 8 \ - --checkpoint-activations \ - --seq-length 1024 \ - --max-position-embeddings 1024 \ - --log-interval 10 \ - --fp16 \ - --no-load-optim \ - --no-load-rng diff --git a/examples/generate_text.sh b/examples/generate_text.sh deleted file mode 100755 index 7e330ab8d06cf25f6fe7d2a956ec0fae866e31a3..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/generate_text.sh +++ /dev/null @@ -1,49 +0,0 @@ -#!/bin/bash -export TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST=8.6+PTX -CHECKPOINT_PATH=checkpoints/gpt2_345m -VOCAB_FILE=gpt2-vocab.json -MERGE_FILE=gpt2-merges.txt -b=8 -mp=1 -experts=1 -nodes=1 -gpus=1 - - -use_tutel="" -#use_tutel="--use-tutel" - - -#ds_inference="" -ds_inference="--ds-inference" - -launch_cmd="deepspeed --num_nodes $nodes --num_gpus $gpus" -L=24 -H=1024 -A=16 -#experts1=${experts[$k]} -program_cmd="tools/generate_samples_gpt.py \ - --tensor-model-parallel-size $mp \ - --num-layers $L \ - --hidden-size $H \ - --num-attention-heads $A \ - --max-position-embeddings 1024 \ - --tokenizer-type GPT2BPETokenizer \ - --fp16 \ - --num-experts ${experts} \ - --mlp-type standard \ - --micro-batch-size $b \ - --seq-length 1024 \ - --out-seq-length 1024 \ - --temperature 1.0 \ - --vocab-file $VOCAB_FILE \ - --merge-file $MERGE_FILE \ - --genfile unconditional_samples.json \ - --top_p 0.9 \ - --log-interval 1 \ - --num-samples 0 \ - --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ - $use_tutel $ds_inference" - -echo $launch_cmd $program_cmd -$launch_cmd $program_cmd diff --git a/examples/pretrain_gpt.sh b/examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_1p.sh old mode 100755 new mode 100644 similarity index 47% rename from examples/pretrain_gpt.sh rename to examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_1p.sh index ed070861f1b98189d11e6532a87491354a759c57..a15c047bf00c27a32e8cd60368f2aea6f8416986 --- a/examples/pretrain_gpt.sh +++ b/examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_1p.sh @@ -1,29 +1,34 @@ -#! /bin/bash - -# Runs the "345M" parameter model +# This is an example: basic gpt +# without parameter specific and any parallel technologies +export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/root/miniconda3/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH +export HCCL_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=1200 +source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh RANK=0 WORLD_SIZE=1 -DATA_PATH=_text_document -CHECKPOINT_PATH= +DATA_PATH=./dataset/enwiki-gpt/gpt_text_sentence +CHECKPOINT_PATH=./ckpt +export LOCAL_RANK=0 python pretrain_gpt.py \ - --num-layers 24 \ - --hidden-size 1024 \ - --num-attention-heads 16 \ + --DDP-impl local \ + --use-contiguous-buffers-in-ddp \ + --num-layers 1 \ + --hidden-size 4096 \ + --num-attention-heads 32 \ --micro-batch-size 4 \ --global-batch-size 8 \ - --seq-length 1024 \ - --max-position-embeddings 1024 \ + --seq-length 2048 \ + --max-position-embeddings 2048 \ --train-iters 500000 \ --lr-decay-iters 320000 \ --save $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ --data-path $DATA_PATH \ - --vocab-file gpt2-vocab.json \ - --merge-file gpt2-merges.txt \ + --vocab-file ./dataset/gpt2-vocab.json \ + --merge-file ./dataset/gpt2-merges.txt \ --data-impl mmap \ --split 949,50,1 \ --distributed-backend nccl \ @@ -34,8 +39,8 @@ python pretrain_gpt.py \ --clip-grad 1.0 \ --lr-warmup-fraction .01 \ --checkpoint-activations \ - --log-interval 100 \ + --log-interval 10 \ --save-interval 10000 \ --eval-interval 1000 \ --eval-iters 10 \ - --fp16 + --fp16 | tee logs/train.log diff --git a/examples/pretrain_gpt_distributed_with_mp.sh b/examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_ptd_8p.sh old mode 100755 new mode 100644 similarity index 57% rename from examples/pretrain_gpt_distributed_with_mp.sh rename to examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_ptd_8p.sh index c67db4c4548660d0ec5c11662335d81675926dde..9c123cb5fb3cf3481a7ac9e61559171c83526135 --- a/examples/pretrain_gpt_distributed_with_mp.sh +++ b/examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_ptd_8p.sh @@ -1,38 +1,42 @@ -#! /bin/bash - -# Runs the "345M" parameter model +# This is an example: train gpt using PTD, +# the number of parameters is not aligned +export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/root/miniconda3/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH +export HCCL_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=1200 +source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh GPUS_PER_NODE=8 # Change for multinode config MASTER_ADDR=localhost -MASTER_PORT=6000 +MASTER_PORT=6001 NNODES=1 NODE_RANK=0 WORLD_SIZE=$(($GPUS_PER_NODE*$NNODES)) -DATA_PATH=_text_document -CHECKPOINT_PATH= +DATA_PATH=./dataset/enwiki-gpt/gpt_text_sentence +CHECKPOINT_PATH=./ckpt DISTRIBUTED_ARGS="--nproc_per_node $GPUS_PER_NODE --nnodes $NNODES --node_rank $NODE_RANK --master_addr $MASTER_ADDR --master_port $MASTER_PORT" python -m torch.distributed.launch $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS \ pretrain_gpt.py \ + --DDP-impl local \ + --use-contiguous-buffers-in-ddp \ --tensor-model-parallel-size 2 \ --pipeline-model-parallel-size 2 \ - --num-layers 24 \ - --hidden-size 1024 \ - --num-attention-heads 16 \ - --micro-batch-size 4 \ + --num-layers 8 \ + --hidden-size 4096 \ + --num-attention-heads 32 \ + --micro-batch-size 2 \ --global-batch-size 16 \ - --seq-length 1024 \ - --max-position-embeddings 1024 \ + --seq-length 2048 \ + --max-position-embeddings 2048 \ --train-iters 500000 \ --lr-decay-iters 320000 \ --save $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ --data-path $DATA_PATH \ - --vocab-file gpt2-vocab.json \ - --merge-file gpt2-merges.txt \ + --vocab-file ./dataset/gpt2-vocab.json \ + --merge-file ./dataset/gpt2-merges.txt \ --data-impl mmap \ --split 949,50,1 \ --distributed-backend nccl \ @@ -43,8 +47,8 @@ python -m torch.distributed.launch $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS \ --clip-grad 1.0 \ --lr-warmup-fraction .01 \ --checkpoint-activations \ - --log-interval 100 \ + --log-interval 10 \ --save-interval 10000 \ --eval-interval 1000 \ --eval-iters 10 \ - --fp16 + --fp16 | tee logs/train.log diff --git a/examples/pretrain_gpt_distributed.sh b/examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_td_8p.sh old mode 100755 new mode 100644 similarity index 53% rename from examples/pretrain_gpt_distributed.sh rename to examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_td_8p.sh index 1b4518604ea1258afac2e89cd2ff6a46aa747315..a965a80e1d4388f987b2685482d616eaa4e4e135 --- a/examples/pretrain_gpt_distributed.sh +++ b/examples/gpt_task/pretrain_gpt_td_8p.sh @@ -1,7 +1,9 @@ -#! /bin/bash - -# Runs the "345M" parameter model +# This is an example: train gpt using TD, +# the number of parameters is not aligned +export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/root/miniconda3/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH +export HCCL_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=1200 +source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh GPUS_PER_NODE=8 # Change for multinode config MASTER_ADDR=localhost @@ -10,27 +12,30 @@ NNODES=1 NODE_RANK=0 WORLD_SIZE=$(($GPUS_PER_NODE*$NNODES)) -DATA_PATH=_text_document -CHECKPOINT_PATH= +DATA_PATH=./dataset/enwiki-gpt/gpt_text_sentence +CHECKPOINT_PATH=./ckpt DISTRIBUTED_ARGS="--nproc_per_node $GPUS_PER_NODE --nnodes $NNODES --node_rank $NODE_RANK --master_addr $MASTER_ADDR --master_port $MASTER_PORT" python -m torch.distributed.launch $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS \ pretrain_gpt.py \ - --num-layers 24 \ - --hidden-size 1024 \ - --num-attention-heads 16 \ - --micro-batch-size 8 \ - --global-batch-size 64 \ - --seq-length 1024 \ - --max-position-embeddings 1024 \ + --DDP-impl local \ + --use-contiguous-buffers-in-ddp \ + --tensor-model-parallel-size 4 \ + --num-layers 8 \ + --hidden-size 4096 \ + --num-attention-heads 32 \ + --micro-batch-size 2 \ + --global-batch-size 16 \ + --seq-length 2048 \ + --max-position-embeddings 2048 \ --train-iters 500000 \ --lr-decay-iters 320000 \ --save $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ --data-path $DATA_PATH \ - --vocab-file gpt2-vocab.json \ - --merge-file gpt2-merges.txt \ + --vocab-file ./dataset/gpt2-vocab.json \ + --merge-file ./dataset/gpt2-merges.txt \ --data-impl mmap \ --split 949,50,1 \ --distributed-backend nccl \ @@ -41,8 +46,8 @@ python -m torch.distributed.launch $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS \ --clip-grad 1.0 \ --lr-warmup-fraction .01 \ --checkpoint-activations \ - --log-interval 100 \ + --log-interval 10 \ --save-interval 10000 \ --eval-interval 1000 \ --eval-iters 10 \ - --fp16 + --fp16 | tee logs/train.log diff --git a/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_1p.sh b/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_1p.sh new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..9d03d74129d59279df97cf6262d3743c3d128bcf --- /dev/null +++ b/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_1p.sh @@ -0,0 +1,46 @@ +# This is an example: basic llama +# without parameter specific and any parallel technologies + +export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/root/miniconda3/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH +export HCCL_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=1200 +source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh +RANK=0 +WORLD_SIZE=1 + +DATA_PATH=./dataset/enwiki-gpt/gpt_text_sentence +CHECKPOINT_PATH=./ckpt + +export LOCAL_RANK=0 + +python pretrain_llama.py \ + --DDP-impl local \ + --use-contiguous-buffers-in-ddp \ + --num-layers 1 \ + --hidden-size 4096 \ + --num-attention-heads 32 \ + --micro-batch-size 4 \ + --global-batch-size 8 \ + --seq-length 2048 \ + --max-position-embeddings 2048 \ + --train-iters 500000 \ + --lr-decay-iters 320000 \ + --save $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ + --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ + --data-path $DATA_PATH \ + --vocab-file ./dataset/gpt2-vocab.json \ + --merge-file ./dataset/gpt2-merges.txt \ + --data-impl mmap \ + --split 949,50,1 \ + --distributed-backend nccl \ + --lr 0.00015 \ + --min-lr 1.0e-5 \ + --lr-decay-style cosine \ + --weight-decay 1e-2 \ + --clip-grad 1.0 \ + --lr-warmup-fraction .01 \ + --checkpoint-activations \ + --log-interval 10 \ + --save-interval 10000 \ + --eval-interval 1000 \ + --eval-iters 10 \ + --fp16 | tee logs/train.log diff --git a/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_ptd_8p.sh b/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_ptd_8p.sh new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..4924f730c7acaea8dfb1b6c21e18d2a2955a03bd --- /dev/null +++ b/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_ptd_8p.sh @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +# This is an example: train llama using PTD, +# the number of parameters is not aligned + +export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/usr/local/lib:/root/miniconda3/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH +export HCCL_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=1200 +source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh +GPUS_PER_NODE=8 +# Change for multinode config +MASTER_ADDR=localhost +MASTER_PORT=6001 +NNODES=1 +NODE_RANK=0 +WORLD_SIZE=$(($GPUS_PER_NODE*$NNODES)) + +DATA_PATH=./dataset/enwiki-gpt/gpt_text_sentence +CHECKPOINT_PATH=./ckpt + +DISTRIBUTED_ARGS="--nproc_per_node $GPUS_PER_NODE --nnodes $NNODES --node_rank $NODE_RANK --master_addr $MASTER_ADDR --master_port $MASTER_PORT" + +python -m torch.distributed.launch $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS \ + pretrain_llama.py \ + --DDP-impl local \ + --use-contiguous-buffers-in-ddp \ + --tensor-model-parallel-size 2 \ + --pipeline-model-parallel-size 2 \ + --num-layers 8 \ + --hidden-size 4096 \ + --num-attention-heads 32 \ + --micro-batch-size 2 \ + --global-batch-size 16 \ + --seq-length 2048 \ + --max-position-embeddings 2048 \ + --train-iters 500000 \ + --lr-decay-iters 320000 \ + --save $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ + --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ + --data-path $DATA_PATH \ + --vocab-file ./dataset/gpt2-vocab.json \ + --merge-file ./dataset/gpt2-merges.txt \ + --data-impl mmap \ + --split 949,50,1 \ + --distributed-backend nccl \ + --lr 0.00015 \ + --lr-decay-style cosine \ + --min-lr 1.0e-5 \ + --weight-decay 1e-2 \ + --clip-grad 1.0 \ + --lr-warmup-fraction .01 \ + --checkpoint-activations \ + --log-interval 10 \ + --save-interval 10000 \ + --eval-interval 1000 \ + --eval-iters 10 \ + --fp16 | tee logs/train.log diff --git a/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_td_8p.sh b/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_td_8p.sh new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..fe1545e60f584e1076b26da92d58f05c42242654 --- /dev/null +++ b/examples/llama_task/pretrain_llama_td_8p.sh @@ -0,0 +1,53 @@ +# This is an example: train llama using TD, +# the number of parameters is not aligned + +export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:/root/miniconda3/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH +export HCCL_CONNECT_TIMEOUT=1200 +source /usr/local/Ascend/ascend-toolkit/set_env.sh +GPUS_PER_NODE=8 +# Change for multinode config +MASTER_ADDR=localhost +MASTER_PORT=6000 +NNODES=1 +NODE_RANK=0 +WORLD_SIZE=$(($GPUS_PER_NODE*$NNODES)) + +DATA_PATH=./dataset/enwiki-gpt/gpt_text_sentence +CHECKPOINT_PATH=./ckpt + +DISTRIBUTED_ARGS="--nproc_per_node $GPUS_PER_NODE --nnodes $NNODES --node_rank $NODE_RANK --master_addr $MASTER_ADDR --master_port $MASTER_PORT" + +python -m torch.distributed.launch $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS \ + pretrain_llama.py \ + --DDP-impl local \ + --use-contiguous-buffers-in-ddp \ + --tensor-model-parallel-size 4 \ + --num-layers 8 \ + --hidden-size 4096 \ + --num-attention-heads 32 \ + --micro-batch-size 2 \ + --global-batch-size 16 \ + --seq-length 2048 \ + --max-position-embeddings 2048 \ + --train-iters 500000 \ + --lr-decay-iters 320000 \ + --save $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ + --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ + --data-path $DATA_PATH \ + --vocab-file ./dataset/gpt2-vocab.json \ + --merge-file ./dataset/gpt2-merges.txt \ + --data-impl mmap \ + --split 949,50,1 \ + --distributed-backend nccl \ + --lr 0.00015 \ + --lr-decay-style cosine \ + --min-lr 1.0e-5 \ + --weight-decay 1e-2 \ + --clip-grad 1.0 \ + --lr-warmup-fraction .01 \ + --checkpoint-activations \ + --log-interval 10 \ + --save-interval 10000 \ + --eval-interval 1000 \ + --eval-iters 10 \ + --fp16 | tee logs/train.log diff --git a/examples/modelarts/README.md b/examples/modelarts/README.md deleted file mode 100644 index 6ad8895eeb43647d269ac7d562cf61eaf274f4fb..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/modelarts/README.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7 +0,0 @@ -## Recipes for experimentation on ModelArts - -The recipes have been tested on command line on a cluster setup using ModelArts VMs and VMSS as well as inside Docker based environments. - -To run any of the examples in this folder, please go to the base directory of AscendSpeed and run as follows - -```bash xxx.sh``` diff --git a/examples/pretrain_bloom_7b1.sh b/examples/pretrain_bloom_7b1.sh deleted file mode 100644 index 4662be74fbd454867f820b4aa1d8bdbfe90ada62..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/pretrain_bloom_7b1.sh +++ /dev/null @@ -1,136 +0,0 @@ -#!/bin/bash - -source env_npu.sh -#export CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7 - -six_ALL_CCFRWORK=$(pwd) -out_path=$six_ALL_CCFRWORK/data/ -variant=main - -# 保存相关配置 -DATA_OUTPUT_PATH=$out_path/checkpoints/tr11d-7B1-ml -CHECKPOINT_PATH=$DATA_OUTPUT_PATH/checkpoints/$variant -REPO_PATH=$DATA_OUTPUT_PATH/tr11d-7B1-ml-logs -TENSORBOARD_PATH=$REPO_PATH/tensorboard/$variant -LOGS_PATH=$REPO_PATH/logs/$variant -mkdir -p $LOGS_PATH - -# 训练数据文件配置 -MEGATRON_DEEPSPEED_REPO=$six_ALL_CCFRWORK/Megatron-DeepSpeed -#cd $MEGATRON_DEEPSPEED_REPO - -BIGSCIENCE_REPO=$six_ALL_CCFRWORK/bigscience -TRAIN_DATA_PATH=$MEGATRON_DEEPSPEED_REPO/data/train_data.txt -VALID_DATA_PATH=$MEGATRON_DEEPSPEED_REPO/data/valid_data.txt -CATALOGUE_JSON_PATH=$BIGSCIENCE_REPO/data/catalogue/training_dataset_ratios_merged_nigercongo_v3.json -LOAD_RATIOS_SCRIPT=$BIGSCIENCE_REPO/data/catalogue/load_ratios_meg_ds_format.py -# python $LOAD_RATIOS_SCRIPT --dataset-ratios-path $CATALOGUE_JSON_PATH --split train --output-meg-ds-ratio-file $TRAIN_DATA_PATH -# python $LOAD_RATIOS_SCRIPT --dataset-ratios-path $CATALOGUE_JSON_PATH --split valid --output-meg-ds-ratio-file $VALID_DATA_PATH - -# 训练参数配置 -MASTER_ADDR=localhost -MASTER_PORT=8082 -GPUS_PER_NODE=8 -NNODES=1 -PP_SIZE=1 -TP_SIZE=8 -DP_SIZE=$((NNODES*GPUS_PER_NODE/(PP_SIZE*TP_SIZE))) - -MICRO_BATCH_SIZE=1 -GLOBAL_BATCH_SIZE=512 - -NLAYERS=30 -NHIDDEN=4096 -NHEADS=32 -SEQ_LEN=2048 - -SAVE_INTERVAL=250 - -TRAIN_SAMPLES=220_000_000 # 450B tokens -LR_DECAY_SAMPLES=200_000_000 # Decay for the first 410B tokens then continue at fixed --min-lr -LR_WARMUP_SAMPLES=183_105 # 375M tokens - -TOKENIZER_NAME_OR_PATH=/home/wangyixian/data/vocab_file -DATA_PATH=/home/wangyixian/oscar_data_1g/my-gpt2_text_document - -ZERO_STAGE=0 # important: bf16 must use z0! it implements its own zero stage 1 equivalent -config_json="./ds_config.json" - -cat < $config_json -{ - "train_micro_batch_size_per_gpu": $MICRO_BATCH_SIZE, - "train_batch_size": $GLOBAL_BATCH_SIZE, - "gradient_clipping": 1.0, - "zero_optimization": { - "stage": $ZERO_STAGE - }, - "fp16": { - "enabled": true, - "loss_scale": 0, - "loss_scale_window": 500, - "hysteresis": 2, - "min_loss_scale": 1, - "initial_scale_power": 12 - }, - "steps_per_print": 2000, - "wall_clock_breakdown": false -} -EOT - -DISTRIBUTED_ARGS="--nproc_per_node $GPUS_PER_NODE --nnodes $NNODES --rdzv_endpoint $MASTER_ADDR:$MASTER_PORT --rdzv_backend c10d --max_restarts 0 --tee 3" - - #--abort-on-unmet-fused-kernel-constraints \ - #--train-weighted-split-paths-path $TRAIN_DATA_PATH \ - #--valid-weighted-split-paths-path $VALID_DATA_PATH \ - # --embed-layernorm \ - #--deepspeed \ - #--deepspeed_config ${config_json} \ - #--zero-stage ${ZERO_STAGE} \ - #--deepspeed-activation-checkpointing -TRANSFORMERS_OFFLINE=1 \ - python -m torch.distributed.run $DISTRIBUTED_ARGS \ - pretrain_gpt.py \ - --tokenizer-type PretrainedFromHF \ - --tokenizer-name-or-path $TOKENIZER_NAME_OR_PATH \ - --data-path $DATA_PATH \ - --pad-vocab-size-to 250880 \ - --tensor-model-parallel-size $TP_SIZE \ - --pipeline-model-parallel-size $PP_SIZE \ - --num-layers $NLAYERS \ - --hidden-size $NHIDDEN \ - --num-attention-heads $NHEADS \ - --seq-length $SEQ_LEN \ - --max-position-embeddings $SEQ_LEN \ - --micro-batch-size $MICRO_BATCH_SIZE \ - --rampup-batch-size 192 16 9_765_625 \ - --global-batch-size $GLOBAL_BATCH_SIZE \ - --train-samples $TRAIN_SAMPLES \ - --init-method-std 0.0048 \ - --fp16 \ - --seed 42 \ - --position-embedding-type alibi \ - --optimizer adam \ - --adam-beta1 0.9 \ - --adam-beta2 0.95 \ - --adam-eps 1e-8 \ - --lr 1.2e-4 \ - --min-lr 6e-6 \ - --lr-decay-style cosine \ - --lr-decay-samples $LR_DECAY_SAMPLES \ - --lr-warmup-samples $LR_WARMUP_SAMPLES \ - --clip-grad 1.0 \ - --weight-decay 1e-1 \ - --exit-duration-in-mins 5990 \ - --log-interval 1 \ - --save-interval $SAVE_INTERVAL \ - --eval-interval 1000 \ - --eval-iters 1 \ - --tensorboard-dir $TENSORBOARD_PATH \ - --tensorboard-queue-size 5 \ - --log-timers-to-tensorboard \ - --log-batch-size-to-tensorboard \ - --log-validation-ppl-to-tensorboard \ - --save $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ - --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ - --data-impl mmap \ - --distributed-backend nccl \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/examples/pretrain_gpt3_175B.sh b/examples/pretrain_gpt3_175B.sh deleted file mode 100755 index ad0d244d7b9502d34875fbb2b59b975b34e476af..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/pretrain_gpt3_175B.sh +++ /dev/null @@ -1,65 +0,0 @@ -#!/bin/bash - - -#SBATCH --nodes=128 --exclusive --ntasks-per-node=8 --job-name=megatron_gpt3_175b - - -DIR=`pwd` -DATETIME=`date +'date_%y-%m-%d_time_%H-%M-%S'` -mkdir -p $DIR/logs - - -DATASET_1="" -DATASET_2="" -DATASET_3="" -DATASET="0.2 ${DATASET_1} 0.3 ${DATASET_2} 0.5 ${DATASET_3}" - - -options=" \ - --tensor-model-parallel-size 8 \ - --pipeline-model-parallel-size 16 \ - --num-layers 96 \ - --hidden-size 12288 \ - --num-attention-heads 96 \ - --seq-length 2048 \ - --max-position-embeddings 2048 \ - --micro-batch-size 1 \ - --global-batch-size 1536 \ - --rampup-batch-size 16 16 5859375 \ - --train-samples 146484375 \ - --lr-decay-samples 126953125 \ - --lr-warmup-samples 183105 \ - --lr 6.0e-5 \ - --min-lr 6.0e-6 \ - --lr-decay-style cosine \ - --log-interval 10 \ - --eval-iters 40 \ - --eval-interval 1000 \ - --data-path ${DATASET} \ - --vocab-file \ - --merge-file \ - --save-interval 1000 \ - --save \ - --load \ - --split 98,2,0 \ - --clip-grad 1.0 \ - --weight-decay 0.1 \ - --adam-beta1 0.9 \ - --adam-beta2 0.95 \ - --init-method-std 0.006 \ - --tensorboard-dir \ - --fp16 \ - --checkpoint-activations " - - -run_cmd="python -u ${DIR}/pretrain_gpt.py $@ ${options}" - - -srun -l \ - --container-image "nvcr.io/nvidia/pytorch:20.12-py3" \ - --container-mounts "" \ - --output=$DIR/logs/%x_%j_$DATETIME.log sh -c "${run_cmd}" - - -set +x - diff --git a/examples/run_deepspeed_example.sh b/examples/run_deepspeed_example.sh deleted file mode 100644 index 909cdf671387090e40097c9ace8b606fc9f5a948..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/run_deepspeed_example.sh +++ /dev/null @@ -1,84 +0,0 @@ -#!/bin/bash -set -ex - -BASE_PATH=/vc_data/Megatron-LM/data -DATA_PATH=${BASE_PATH}/indexed_datasets/megatron -DS_CONFIG=ds_config.json - -TP=1 -PP=1 -NLAYERS=24 -HIDDEN=512 - -GLOBAL_BATCH=64 -MICRO_BATCH=4 - -ZERO_STAGE=2 - -OUTPUT_DIR=ds_z${ZERO_STAGE}_nl${NLAYERS}_hs${HIDDEN}_gb${GLOBAL_BATCH}_mb${MICRO_BATCH} -#OUTPUT_DIR=baseline_nl${NLAYERS}_hs${HIDDEN}_gb${GLOBAL_BATCH}_mb${MICRO_BATCH} -mkdir -p $OUTPUT_DIR - -cat < $DS_CONFIG -{ - "train_batch_size" : $GLOBAL_BATCH, - "train_micro_batch_size_per_gpu": $MICRO_BATCH, - "steps_per_print": 1, - - "zero_optimization": { - "stage": $ZERO_STAGE - }, - - "fp16": { - "enabled": true, - "initial_scale_power": 12 - }, - - "wall_clock_breakdown" : true -} -EOT - -export NCCL_DEBUG=warn - -ds_args="" -ds_args=" --deepspeed ${ds_args}" -ds_args=" --no-pipeline-parallel ${ds_args}" -ds_args=" --deepspeed_config=$DS_CONFIG ${ds_args}" -ds_args=" --zero-stage=$ZERO_STAGE ${ds_args}" -ds_args=" --deepspeed-activation-checkpointing ${ds_args}" - - -deepspeed pretrain_gpt.py \ - --tensor-model-parallel-size $TP \ - --pipeline-model-parallel-size $PP \ - --num-layers $NLAYERS \ - --hidden-size $HIDDEN \ - --num-attention-heads 16 \ - --seq-length 256 \ - --loss-scale 12 \ - --max-position-embeddings 1024 \ - --micro-batch-size 4 \ - --global-batch-size 1024 \ - --train-iters 1000 \ - --lr 6.0e-5 \ - --min-lr 6.0e-6 \ - --lr-decay-style cosine \ - --log-interval 1 \ - --eval-iters 40 \ - --eval-interval 1000 \ - --data-path $DATA_PATH \ - --vocab-file $BASE_PATH/gpt2-vocab.json \ - --merge-file $BASE_PATH/gpt2-merges.txt \ - --save-interval 1000 \ - --split 98,2,0 \ - --clip-grad 1.0 \ - --weight-decay 0.1 \ - --adam-beta1 0.9 \ - --adam-beta2 0.95 \ - --init-method-std 0.006 \ - --fp16 \ - --checkpoint-activations \ - --tensorboard-dir $OUTPUT_DIR \ - $ds_args \ - --exit-interval 5000 | tee ${OUTPUT_DIR}/output.log - diff --git a/examples/run_evalharness_tr11-176b-ml.slurm b/examples/run_evalharness_tr11-176b-ml.slurm deleted file mode 100644 index 6d4849461b351adebd2ed49ea9af486f9e0ad7bd..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/examples/run_evalharness_tr11-176b-ml.slurm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,121 +0,0 @@ -#!/bin/bash -#SBATCH --job-name=run_evalharness-tr11-176b-ml -#SBATCH --partition=gpu_p5 -#SBATCH --constraint=a100 -#SBATCH --nodes=1 -#SBATCH --ntasks-per-node=1 # crucial - only 1 task per dist per node! -#SBATCH --cpus-per-task=64 # number of cores per tasks -#SBATCH --hint=nomultithread # we get physical cores not logical -#SBATCH --gres=gpu:8 # number of gpus -#SBATCH --time 20:00:00 # maximum execution time (HH:MM:SS) -#SBATCH --output=%x-%j.out # output file name -#SBATCH --account=six@a100 - - -set -x -e - -source $six_ALL_CCFRWORK/start-py38-pt111 - -echo "START TIME: $(date)" - -# a unique identifier for the current eval ideally correspnding to the modelname -VARIANT="tr11-176b-ml" - - -CHECKPOINT_PATH=$six_ALL_CCFRSCRATCH/checkpoints/tr11-176B-ml/checkpoints/main/global_step50000 -MEGATRON_DEEPSPEED_REPO=/gpfsssd/worksf/projects/rech/six/commun/code/eval/Megatron-DeepSpeed -export HF_DATASETS_OFFLINE=1 -export TRANSFORMERS_OFFLINE=1 - -export TRANSFORMERS_CACHE=$six_ALL_CCFRWORK/models -export HF_DATASETS_CACHE=$six_ALL_CCFRWORK/datasets -export HF_MODULES_CACHE=$six_ALL_CCFRWORK/modules -export HF_METRICS_CACHE=$six_ALL_CCFRWORK/metrics - -cd $MEGATRON_DEEPSPEED_REPO - -TOKENIZER_NAME_OR_PATH=bigscience-catalogue-data-dev/byte-level-bpe-tokenizer-no-norm-250k-whitespace-and-eos-regex-alpha-v3-dedup-lines-articles - -PP_SIZE=8 -TP_SIZE=1 -SEQ_LEN=2048 - -# different from the training MICRO_BATCH_SIZE - no optim memory, so can do bigger BS -# make as big as it can fit into gpu w/o OOM, but not too close to 100% -EVAL_MICRO_BATCH_SIZE=1 - -#dummy arguments to make megatron happy. -MEGATRON_REQUIRED_ARGS=" \ - --num-layers -1 \ - --hidden-size -1 \ - --num-attention-heads -1 \ - --seq-length -1 \ - --max-position-embeddings -1 \ -" - - -ZERO_STAGE=0 - -config_json="./ds_config.json" - -# Deepspeed figures out GAS dynamically from dynamic GBS via set_train_batch_size() -cat < $config_json -{ - "train_micro_batch_size_per_gpu": 1, - "train_batch_size": 1, - "gradient_clipping": 1.0, - "zero_optimization": { - "stage": $ZERO_STAGE - }, - "bf16": { - "enabled": true - }, - "steps_per_print": 2000, - "wall_clock_breakdown": false -} -EOT - - -CMD="./tasks/eval_harness/evaluate.py \ - --load $CHECKPOINT_PATH \ - --results_path $VARIANT-results.json \ - --tensor-model-parallel-size $TP_SIZE \ - --pipeline-model-parallel-size $PP_SIZE \ - --tokenizer-type PretrainedFromHF \ - --tokenizer-name-or-path $TOKENIZER_NAME_OR_PATH \ - --micro-batch-size $EVAL_MICRO_BATCH_SIZE \ - --no-load-optim \ - --no-load-rng \ - --bf16 \ - --inference \ - --seq-length $SEQ_LEN \ - --task_list arc_challenge,arc_easy,boolq,copa,headqa,hellaswag,lambada,logiqa,mathqa,mc_taco,mrpc,multirc,openbookqa,piqa,prost,pubmedqa,qnli,qqp,race,rte,sciq,sst,triviaqa,webqs,wic,winogrande,wnli,wsc \ - --deepspeed \ - --deepspeed_config ds_config.json \ - --bootstrap_iters 2 \ - --intermed_results \ - --adaptive_seq_len \ - --micro_bs_multiplier 4 \ - $MEGATRON_REQUIRED_ARGS \ - " - -GPUS_PER_NODE=8 -NNODES=$SLURM_NNODES -MASTER_ADDR=$(scontrol show hostnames $SLURM_JOB_NODELIST | head -n 1) -MASTER_PORT=6000 -export LAUNCHER="python -u -m torch.distributed.run \ - --nproc_per_node $GPUS_PER_NODE \ - --nnodes $NNODES \ - --rdzv_endpoint $MASTER_ADDR:$MASTER_PORT \ - --rdzv_backend c10d \ - --max_restarts 0 \ - --tee 3 \ - " - -export CUDA_LAUNCH_BLOCKING=1 - -echo $LAUNCHER $CMD - -export PYTHONPATH=$MEGATRON_DEEPSPEED_REPO - -$LAUNCHER $CMD 2>&1 | tee $VARIANT-eval-harness.log diff --git a/megatron/__init__.py b/megatron/__init__.py index 93894cd3f3364724e830e52fbf1f7d58fbdcbc72..3d247c581ea228e7bb9fcf6c9f0f4a263636fdbc 100644 --- a/megatron/__init__.py +++ b/megatron/__init__.py @@ -13,7 +13,11 @@ # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and # limitations under the License. import os +import copy +from functools import wraps + import torch +from torch import distributed as dist from deepspeed.accelerator import get_accelerator from .package_info import ( __description__, @@ -36,6 +40,39 @@ from .global_vars import get_adlr_autoresume from .global_vars import get_timers from .initialize import initialize_megatron +def wrapper_type(fn): + @wraps(fn) + def decorated(*args, **kwargs): + output = fn(*args, **kwargs) + if isinstance(output, str): + if output == 'torch.npu.FloatTensor': + output = 'torch.cuda.FloatTensor' + elif output == 'torch.npu.HalfTensor': + output = 'torch.cuda.HalfTensor' + return output + + return decorated + +torch.Tensor.type = wrapper_type(torch.Tensor.type) # fix for torch.Tensor.type() + +def wrapper_dist_long2int(fn): + @wraps(fn) + def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): + if args[0].dtype == torch.long and not kwargs.get('async_op', False): + new_args = list(copy.deepcopy(args)) + new_args[0] = new_args[0].int() + fn(*new_args, **kwargs) + args[0].copy_(new_args[0].long()) + return None + return fn(*args, **kwargs) + + return wrapper + +dist.all_reduce = wrapper_dist_long2int(dist.all_reduce) +dist.broadcast = wrapper_dist_long2int(dist.broadcast) +dist.send = wrapper_dist_long2int(dist.send) +dist.recv = wrapper_dist_long2int(dist.recv) # fix for torch.distributed + def print_rank_0(message): """If distributed is initialized, print only on rank 0.""" if torch.distributed.is_initialized(): diff --git a/megatron/arguments.py b/megatron/arguments.py index 7290c7e72be657ebdfbf4a373ad76b624bc150d5..bdd17450bfd0a34f584058bbb8f8daaea9aed907 100644 --- a/megatron/arguments.py +++ b/megatron/arguments.py @@ -20,7 +20,6 @@ import os import torch import deepspeed -from megatron.enums import PositionEmbeddingType def parse_args(extra_args_provider=None, defaults={}, ignore_unknown_args=False): @@ -229,15 +228,10 @@ def parse_args(extra_args_provider=None, defaults={}, assert args.encoder_seq_length is not None args.seq_length = args.encoder_seq_length - if args.position_embedding_type == PositionEmbeddingType.absolute or args.position_embedding_type == PositionEmbeddingType.alibi: - assert args.max_position_embeddings is not None - if args.seq_length is not None: - assert args.max_position_embeddings >= args.seq_length - if args.decoder_seq_length is not None: - assert args.max_position_embeddings >= args.decoder_seq_length - else: - assert args.max_position_embeddings is None - + if args.seq_length is not None: + assert args.max_position_embeddings >= args.seq_length + if args.decoder_seq_length is not None: + assert args.max_position_embeddings >= args.decoder_seq_length if args.lr is not None: assert args.min_lr <= args.lr if args.save is not None: @@ -315,16 +309,9 @@ def _add_network_size_args(parser): group.add_argument('--max-position-embeddings', type=int, default=None, help='Maximum number of position embeddings to use. ' 'This is the size of position embedding.') - group.add_argument('--position-embedding-type', type=lambda x: PositionEmbeddingType[x], - choices=list(PositionEmbeddingType), default=PositionEmbeddingType.absolute, - help='Define position embedding type ("absolute" | "rotary" | "alibi"). "absolute" by default.') group.add_argument('--make-vocab-size-divisible-by', type=int, default=128, help='Pad the vocab size to be divisible by this value.' 'This is added for computational efficieny reasons.') - group.add_argument('--pad-vocab-size-to', type=int, default=None, - help='Pad the vocab size to this value.' - 'This value must be greater than the initial size of the tokenizer,' - 'needs to be divisible by TP size and `make-vocab-size-divisible-by`.') group.add_argument('--layernorm-epsilon', type=float, default=1e-5, help='Layer norm epsilon.') group.add_argument('--apply-residual-connection-post-layernorm', @@ -352,24 +339,6 @@ def _add_logging_args(parser): help='If set, calculate and log parameters norm.') group.add_argument('--log-num-zeros-in-grad', action='store_true', help='If set, calculate and log the number of zeros in gradient.') - group.add_argument('--timing-log-level', type=int, - default=0, choices=range(0,3), - help='Granularity level to measure and report timing. ' - ' 0: report only iteration time and make sure timing ' - ' does not introduce extra overhead.' - ' 1: report timing for operations that are executed ' - ' very limited times (basically once) during ' - ' each iteration (such as gradient all-reduce) ' - ' 2: report timing for operations that migh be ' - ' executed numerous times during each iteration. ' - 'Note that setting the level to 1 or 2 might ' - 'cause increase in iteration time.') - group.add_argument('--timing-log-option', type=str, default='minmax', - choices=['max', 'minmax', 'all'], - help='Options for logging timing:' - ' max: report the max timing across all ranks' - ' minmax: report min and max timings across all ranks' - ' all: report timings of all ranks.') group.add_argument('--tensorboard-log-interval', type=int, default=1, help='Report to tensorboard interval.') group.add_argument('--tensorboard-queue-size', type=int, default=1000, @@ -403,9 +372,9 @@ def _add_logging_args(parser): def _add_regularization_args(parser): group = parser.add_argument_group(title='regularization') - group.add_argument('--attention-dropout', type=float, default=0.0, + group.add_argument('--attention-dropout', type=float, default=0.1, help='Post attention dropout probability.') - group.add_argument('--hidden-dropout', type=float, default=0.0, + group.add_argument('--hidden-dropout', type=float, default=0.1, help='Dropout probability for hidden state transformer.') group.add_argument('--weight-decay', type=float, default=0.01, help='Weight decay coefficient for L2 regularization.') @@ -770,12 +739,8 @@ def _add_data_args(parser): default=None, choices=['BertWordPieceLowerCase', 'BertWordPieceCase', - 'GPT2BPETokenizer', - 'PretrainedFromHF'], + 'GPT2BPETokenizer'], help='What type of tokenizer to use.') - group.add_argument("--tokenizer-name-or-path", type=str, default=None, - help="Name or path of the huggingface tokenizer.") - group.add_argument('--data-impl', type=str, default='infer', choices=['lazy', 'cached', 'mmap', 'infer'], help='Implementation of indexed datasets.') diff --git a/megatron/checkpointing.py b/megatron/checkpointing.py index 2154228099e18da7d657d6b3f38eadeaf999d5b2..fbef9da003be33c95fbca63e0a444e429c21e9ca 100644 --- a/megatron/checkpointing.py +++ b/megatron/checkpointing.py @@ -21,7 +21,6 @@ import sys import numpy as np from deepspeed.accelerator import get_accelerator import torch -from megatron.enums import PositionEmbeddingType from megatron import (get_args, is_rank_0, @@ -63,12 +62,7 @@ def check_checkpoint_args(checkpoint_args): _compare('num_layers') _compare('hidden_size') _compare('num_attention_heads') - - _compare('position_embedding_type') - # with alibi we can change `max_position_embeddings` - if args.position_embedding_type != PositionEmbeddingType.alibi: - _compare('max_position_embeddings') - + _compare('max_position_embeddings') if args.vocab_file: _compare('make_vocab_size_divisible_by') _compare('padded_vocab_size') diff --git a/megatron/data/helpers.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so b/megatron/data/helpers.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so new file mode 100644 index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..7eb10b41b2a115e49a84eb8a47e769e7468535cb Binary files /dev/null and b/megatron/data/helpers.cpython-37m-x86_64-linux-gnu.so differ diff --git a/megatron/data/indexed_dataset.py b/megatron/data/indexed_dataset.py index 28ec14762b1cebf57f08227d70354ee9d1fb5798..380fe4e23546a229300dbddeb7fead4a3b411772 100644 --- a/megatron/data/indexed_dataset.py +++ b/megatron/data/indexed_dataset.py @@ -11,7 +11,6 @@ # An empty sentence no longer separates documents. # Some of the fixes/improvements are adopted from -# https://github.com/bigscience-workshop/AscendSpeed/blob/main/megatron/data/indexed_dataset.py from functools import lru_cache import os diff --git a/megatron/global_vars.py b/megatron/global_vars.py index 023097af7e4be2b02526a4c3bfcc1820fb952b3d..21b647dac1c30f7d90142ba1b9d30a938b97a5d7 100644 --- a/megatron/global_vars.py +++ b/megatron/global_vars.py @@ -17,14 +17,14 @@ import os import sys +import time + import torch from megatron.tokenizer import build_tokenizer from .arguments import parse_args from .microbatches import build_num_microbatches_calculator from deepspeed.accelerator import get_accelerator -from .timers import Timers - _GLOBAL_ARGS = None _GLOBAL_NUM_MICROBATCHES_CALCULATOR = None _GLOBAL_TOKENIZER = None @@ -83,11 +83,11 @@ def set_global_variables(extra_args_provider=None, args_defaults={}, defaults=args_defaults, ignore_unknown_args=ignore_unknown_args) _build_num_microbatches_calculator(args) - if args.vocab_file or args.tokenizer_name_or_path: + if args.vocab_file: _ = _build_tokenizer(args) _set_tensorboard_writer(args) _set_adlr_autoresume(args) - _set_timers(args) + _set_timers() def _parse_args(extra_args_provider=None, defaults={}, @@ -163,11 +163,11 @@ def _set_adlr_autoresume(args): _GLOBAL_ADLR_AUTORESUME = AutoResume -def _set_timers(args): +def _set_timers(): """Initialize timers.""" global _GLOBAL_TIMERS _ensure_var_is_not_initialized(_GLOBAL_TIMERS, 'timers') - _GLOBAL_TIMERS = Timers(args.timing_log_level, args.timing_log_option) + _GLOBAL_TIMERS = Timers() def _ensure_var_is_initialized(var, name): @@ -178,3 +178,85 @@ def _ensure_var_is_initialized(var, name): def _ensure_var_is_not_initialized(var, name): """Make sure the input variable is not None.""" assert var is None, '{} is already initialized.'.format(name) + + +class _Timer: + """Timer.""" + + def __init__(self, name): + self.name_ = name + self.elapsed_ = 0.0 + self.started_ = False + self.start_time = time.time() + + def start(self): + """Start the timer.""" + assert not self.started_, 'timer has already been started' + get_accelerator().synchronize() + self.start_time = time.time() + self.started_ = True + + def stop(self): + """Stop the timer.""" + assert self.started_, 'timer is not started' + get_accelerator().synchronize() + self.elapsed_ += (time.time() - self.start_time) + self.started_ = False + + def reset(self): + """Reset timer.""" + self.elapsed_ = 0.0 + self.started_ = False + + def elapsed(self, reset=True): + """Calculate the elapsed time.""" + started_ = self.started_ + # If the timing in progress, end it first. + if self.started_: + self.stop() + # Get the elapsed time. + elapsed_ = self.elapsed_ + # Reset the elapsed time + if reset: + self.reset() + # If timing was in progress, set it back. + if started_: + self.start() + return elapsed_ + + +class Timers: + """Group of timers.""" + + def __init__(self): + self.timers = {} + + def __call__(self, name): + if name not in self.timers: + self.timers[name] = _Timer(name) + return self.timers[name] + + def write(self, names, writer, iteration, normalizer=1.0, reset=False): + """Write timers to a tensorboard writer""" + # currently when using add_scalars, + # torch.utils.add_scalars makes each timer its own run, which + # polutes the runs list, so we just add each as a scalar + assert normalizer > 0.0 + for name in names: + value = self.timers[name].elapsed(reset=reset) / normalizer + writer.add_scalar(name + '-time', value, iteration) + + def log(self, names, normalizer=1.0, reset=True): + """Log a group of timers.""" + assert normalizer > 0.0 + string = 'time (ms)' + for name in names: + elapsed_time = self.timers[name].elapsed( + reset=reset) * 1000.0 / normalizer + string += ' | {}: {:.2f}'.format(name, elapsed_time) + if torch.distributed.is_initialized(): + if torch.distributed.get_rank() == ( + torch.distributed.get_world_size() - 1): + print(string, flush=True) + else: + print(string, flush=True) diff --git a/megatron/initialize.py b/megatron/initialize.py index 6987d2e9a4cba3b3d1e5438edd7b86329e68b959..e83717e941ecce0d77f55646d562e4711ca8de1c 100644 --- a/megatron/initialize.py +++ b/megatron/initialize.py @@ -21,7 +21,7 @@ import time import numpy as np import torch -from megatron import fused_kernels + from megatron import get_adlr_autoresume from megatron import get_args from megatron import get_tensorboard_writer @@ -31,9 +31,8 @@ from megatron.mpu import (set_tensor_model_parallel_rank, set_tensor_model_parallel_world_size) from deepspeed.accelerator import get_accelerator import deepspeed -import deepspeed.utils.groups as groups -def initialize_megatron(extra_args_provider=None, args_defaults={}, +def initialize_megatron(extra_args_provider=None, args_defaults=None, ignore_unknown_args=False, allow_no_cuda=False): """Set global variables, initialize distributed, and set autoresume and random seeds. @@ -43,6 +42,9 @@ def initialize_megatron(extra_args_provider=None, args_defaults={}, Returns a function to finalize distributed env initialization (optionally, only when args.lazy_mpu_init == True) """ + if not args_defaults: + args_defaults = {} + if not allow_no_cuda: # Make sure cuda is available. assert get_accelerator().is_available(), 'Megatron requires accelerator.' @@ -92,66 +94,13 @@ def initialize_megatron(extra_args_provider=None, args_defaults={}, def _compile_dependencies(): - - args = get_args() - - # ========================= - # Compile dataset C++ code. - # ========================= - # TODO: move this to ninja - if _is_rank_0(): + if torch.distributed.get_rank() == 0: start_time = time.time() print('> compiling dataset index builder ...') from megatron.data.dataset_utils import compile_helper compile_helper() print('>>> done with dataset index builder. Compilation time: {:.3f} ' 'seconds'.format(time.time() - start_time), flush=True) - - if not get_accelerator().device_name() == 'cuda': - print(">fused kernel is only supported in cuda, skip loading fused kernel") - return - # ================== - # Load fused kernels - # ================== - - # Custom kernel constraints check. - seq_len = args.seq_length - attn_batch_size = \ - (args.num_attention_heads / args.tensor_model_parallel_size) * \ - args.micro_batch_size - # Constraints on sequence length and attn_batch_size to enable warp based - # optimization and upper triangular optimization (for causal mask) - custom_kernel_constraint = seq_len > 16 and seq_len <=2048 and \ - seq_len % 4 == 0 and attn_batch_size % 4 == 0 - # Print a warning. - if not ((args.fp16 or args.bf16) and - custom_kernel_constraint and - args.masked_softmax_fusion): - if args.rank == 0: - print('WARNING: constraints for invoking optimized' - ' fused softmax kernel are not met. We default' - ' back to unfused kernel invocations.', flush=True) - - # Always build on rank zero first. - if _is_rank_0(): - start_time = time.time() - print('> compiling and loading fused kernels ...', flush=True) - if get_accelerator().device_count() > 0: # Skip when CPU-only - fused_kernels.load(args) - torch.distributed.barrier() - else: - torch.distributed.barrier() - fused_kernels.load(args) - # Simple barrier to make sure all ranks have passed the - # compilation phase successfully before moving on to the - # rest of the program. We think this might ensure that - # the lock is released. - torch.distributed.barrier() - if _is_rank_0(): - print('>>> done with compiling and loading fused kernels. ' - 'Compilation time: {:.3f} seconds'.format( - time.time() - start_time), flush=True) - def setup_deepspeed_random_and_activation_checkpointing(args): '''Optional DeepSpeed Activation Checkpointing features. @@ -293,73 +242,3 @@ def _is_rank_0(): return False else: return True - -def set_jit_fusion_options(): - """Set PyTorch JIT layer fusion options.""" - # flags required to enable jit fusion kernels - TORCH_MAJOR = int(torch.__version__.split('.')[0]) - TORCH_MINOR = int(torch.__version__.split('.')[1]) - if (TORCH_MAJOR > 1) or (TORCH_MAJOR == 1 and TORCH_MINOR >= 10): - # nvfuser - torch._C._jit_set_profiling_executor(True) - torch._C._jit_set_profiling_mode(True) - torch._C._jit_override_can_fuse_on_cpu(False) - torch._C._jit_override_can_fuse_on_gpu(False) - torch._C._jit_set_texpr_fuser_enabled(False) - torch._C._jit_set_nvfuser_enabled(True) - torch._C._debug_set_autodiff_subgraph_inlining(False) - else: - # legacy pytorch fuser - torch._C._jit_set_profiling_mode(False) - torch._C._jit_set_profiling_executor(False) - torch._C._jit_override_can_fuse_on_cpu(True) - torch._C._jit_override_can_fuse_on_gpu(True) - - _warmup_jit_function() - - -def _warmup_jit_function(): - """ Compilie JIT functions before the main training steps """ - args = get_args() - if args.bf16: - dtype = torch.bfloat16 - elif args.fp16: - dtype = torch.float16 - else: - dtype = torch.float32 - - # Warmup fused bias+gelu - bias = torch.rand(args.ffn_hidden_size // args.tensor_model_parallel_size, - dtype=dtype, device='cuda') - input = torch.rand((args.seq_length, args.micro_batch_size, - args.ffn_hidden_size // args.tensor_model_parallel_size), - dtype=dtype, device='cuda') - # Warmup JIT fusions with the input grad_enable state of both forward - # prop and recomputation - for bias_grad, input_grad in zip([True, True], [False, True]): - bias.requires_grad, input.requires_grad = bias_grad, input_grad - for _ in range(5): - output = bias_gelu(bias, input) - del bias, input, output - - # Warmup fused bias+dropout+add - if args.sequence_parallel: - seq_length = args.seq_length // mpu.get_tensor_model_parallel_world_size() - else: - seq_length = args.seq_length - input = torch.rand((seq_length, args.micro_batch_size, args.hidden_size), - dtype=dtype, device='cuda') - residual = torch.rand((seq_length, args.micro_batch_size, args.hidden_size), - dtype=dtype, device='cuda') - bias = torch.rand((args.hidden_size), dtype=dtype, device='cuda').expand_as(residual) - dropout_rate = 0.1 - # Warmup JIT fusions with the input grad_enable state of both forward - # prop and recomputation - for input_grad, bias_grad, residual_grad in zip([False, True], [True, True], [True, True]): - input.requires_grad = input_grad - bias.requires_grad = bias_grad - residual.requires_grad = residual_grad - for _ in range(5): - output = bias_dropout_add_fused_train(input, bias, residual, dropout_rate) - del bias, input, residual, output - torch.cuda.empty_cache() diff --git a/megatron/model/__init__.py b/megatron/model/__init__.py index a0e27addb4ec82b33591b1209a8eea8fc2e26b62..3033f6a4865376f14a35fb91b3fd0bd381c513bc 100644 --- a/megatron/model/__init__.py +++ b/megatron/model/__init__.py @@ -18,10 +18,7 @@ if get_accelerator().device_name() == 'cuda': else: from torch.nn import LayerNorm from .distributed import DistributedDataParallel -#from .bert_model import BertModel from .gpt_model import GPTModel, GPTModelPipe from .llama_model import LlamaModel, LlamaModelPipe -#from .t5_model import T5Model from .language_model import get_language_model from .module import Float16Module -from .enums import ModelType diff --git a/megatron/model/distributed.py b/megatron/model/distributed.py index ad86345c7ea0c4a9f5126ca8594a4b4fe894136f..320261fee5defba1c1f8aa1447fbcf96d91d8f47 100644 --- a/megatron/model/distributed.py +++ b/megatron/model/distributed.py @@ -188,6 +188,7 @@ class DistributedDataParallel(DistributedDataParallelBase): def allreduce_gradients(self): """Reduce gradients across data parallel ranks.""" # If we have buffers, simply reduce the data in the buffer. + if self._grad_buffers is not None: for _, buffer_ in self._grad_buffers.items(): buffer_.data /= mpu.get_data_parallel_world_size() diff --git a/megatron/model/enums.py b/megatron/model/enums.py index 492d2c0c6ca8cc4c6b9e2f8dbdfe5424439d4912..b6992fefafeda2fc15be0f61c08924385a7c0933 100644 --- a/megatron/model/enums.py +++ b/megatron/model/enums.py @@ -15,10 +15,6 @@ import enum -class ModelType(enum.Enum): - encoder_or_decoder = 1 - encoder_and_decoder = 2 - class LayerType(enum.Enum): encoder = 1 decoder = 2 diff --git a/megatron/model/fused_layer_norm.py b/megatron/model/fused_layer_norm.py index 0102be2fc63cc2debc608bdeef9f88f199b615a4..c7af4df47dd8918579a22fa9beb27c035770f826 100644 --- a/megatron/model/fused_layer_norm.py +++ b/megatron/model/fused_layer_norm.py @@ -24,12 +24,6 @@ from torch.nn import init import importlib from torch.nn import functional as F -try: - from apex.contrib.layer_norm.layer_norm import FastLayerNormFN - HAVE_PERSIST_LAYER_NORM = True -except: - HAVE_PERSIST_LAYER_NORM = False - global fused_mix_prec_layer_norm_cuda fused_mix_prec_layer_norm_cuda = None @@ -71,10 +65,6 @@ class MixedFusedLayerNorm(torch.nn.Module): def __init__(self, normalized_shape, eps=1e-5): super(MixedFusedLayerNorm, self).__init__() - global fused_mix_prec_layer_norm_cuda - fused_mix_prec_layer_norm_cuda = importlib.import_module( - "fused_mix_prec_layer_norm_cuda") - if isinstance(normalized_shape, numbers.Integral): normalized_shape = (normalized_shape,) self.normalized_shape = torch.Size(normalized_shape) @@ -85,17 +75,8 @@ class MixedFusedLayerNorm(torch.nn.Module): def reset_parameters(self): - init.ones_(self.weight) init.zeros_(self.bias) - def forward(self, input): - # CPU path is here for unittest sake. - if not input.is_cuda: - print("WARNING! The input of FusedLayerNorm should be on the GPU." - "This warning should only be triggered in the FusedLayerNorm unit tests.") - return F.layer_norm(input, self.normalized_shape, self.weight, self.bias, self.eps) - return FusedLayerNormAffineFunction.apply( - input, self.weight, self.bias, self.normalized_shape,self.eps) - + return torch.nn.functional.layer_norm(input, self.normalized_shape, self.weight, self.bias, self.eps) diff --git a/megatron/model/fused_softmax.py b/megatron/model/fused_softmax.py index 8d52967d95be2605a29f8ea208844b5fce1fe000..3ef745ee3fd5e67758af7e366dd05fb7aa0058ad 100644 --- a/megatron/model/fused_softmax.py +++ b/megatron/model/fused_softmax.py @@ -14,150 +14,81 @@ # limitations under the License. import torch +import torch_npu from megatron.model.enums import AttnMaskType -class ScaledUpperTriangMaskedSoftmax(torch.autograd.Function): - """ - Fused operation which performs following three operations in sequence - 1. Scale the tensor. - 2. Apply upper triangular mask (typically used in gpt models). - 3. Perform softmax. - """ - - @staticmethod - def forward(ctx, inputs, scale): - import scaled_upper_triang_masked_softmax_cuda - - scale_t = torch.tensor([scale]) - - softmax_results = scaled_upper_triang_masked_softmax_cuda.forward( - inputs, scale_t[0] - ) - ctx.save_for_backward(softmax_results, scale_t) - return softmax_results - - @staticmethod - def backward(ctx, output_grads): - import scaled_upper_triang_masked_softmax_cuda - - softmax_results, scale_t = ctx.saved_tensors - - input_grads = scaled_upper_triang_masked_softmax_cuda.backward( - output_grads, softmax_results, scale_t[0] - ) - return input_grads, None - - -class ScaledMaskedSoftmax(torch.autograd.Function): - """ - Fused operation which performs following three operations in sequence - 1. Scale the tensor. - 2. Apply the mask. - 3. Perform softmax. - """ - - @staticmethod - def forward(ctx, inputs, mask, scale): - import scaled_masked_softmax_cuda - - scale_t = torch.tensor([scale]) - - softmax_results = scaled_masked_softmax_cuda.forward( - inputs, mask, scale_t[0] - ) - ctx.save_for_backward(softmax_results, scale_t) - return softmax_results - - @staticmethod - def backward(ctx, output_grads): - import scaled_masked_softmax_cuda - - softmax_results, scale_t = ctx.saved_tensors - - input_grads = scaled_masked_softmax_cuda.backward( - output_grads, softmax_results, scale_t[0] - ) - return input_grads, None, None - - -class FusedScaleMaskSoftmax(torch.nn.Module): - """ - fused operation: scaling + mask + softmax - Arguments: - input_in_fp16: flag to indicate if input in fp16 data format. - attn_mask_type: attention mask type (pad or causal) - mask_func: mask function to be applied. - softmax_in_fp32: if true, softmax in performed at fp32 precision. - scale: scaling factor used in input tensor scaling. - - """ - +class NPUFusedScaleMaskSoftmax(torch.nn.Module): def __init__( - self, - input_in_fp16, - input_in_bf16, - attn_mask_type, - scaled_masked_softmax_fusion, - mask_func, - softmax_in_fp32, - scale, + self, + input_in_fp16, + input_in_bf16, + attn_mask_type, + scaled_masked_softmax_fusion, + mask_func, + softmax_in_fp32, + scale, ): - super(FusedScaleMaskSoftmax, self).__init__() + super(NPUFusedScaleMaskSoftmax, self).__init__() self.input_in_fp16 = input_in_fp16 self.input_in_bf16 = input_in_bf16 - assert not (self.input_in_fp16 and self.input_in_bf16),\ - 'both fp16 and bf16 flags cannot be active at the same time.' + assert not ( + self.input_in_fp16 and self.input_in_bf16 + ), "both fp16 and bf16 flags cannot be active at the same time." self.input_in_float16 = self.input_in_fp16 or self.input_in_bf16 self.attn_mask_type = attn_mask_type self.scaled_masked_softmax_fusion = scaled_masked_softmax_fusion self.mask_func = mask_func self.softmax_in_fp32 = softmax_in_fp32 self.scale = scale + self.mask_tri = None + p = torch.npu.get_device_properties(0) if torch.npu.is_available() else None assert ( - self.scale is None or softmax_in_fp32 + self.scale is None or softmax_in_fp32 ), "softmax should be in fp32 when scaled" - - def forward(self, input, mask): + + def forward(self, input_, mask): # [b, np, sq, sk] - assert input.dim() == 4 - data_size = input.size() - query_seq_len = data_size[-2] - key_seq_len = data_size[-1] - attn_batch_size = data_size[0] * data_size[1] - - # constraints on various tensor dimensions to enable warp based - # optimization and upper triangular optimization (for causal mask) - custom_kernel_constraint = key_seq_len > 16 and key_seq_len <= 2048 and \ - query_seq_len % 4 == 0 and attn_batch_size % 4 == 0 - - # invoke custom kernel - if self.input_in_float16 and mask is not None and \ - custom_kernel_constraint and self.scaled_masked_softmax_fusion: - scale = self.scale if self.scale is not None else 1.0 - - if self.attn_mask_type == AttnMaskType.causal: - assert query_seq_len == key_seq_len, \ - "causal mask is only for self attention" - input = input.view(-1, query_seq_len, key_seq_len) - probs = ScaledUpperTriangMaskedSoftmax.apply(input, scale) - probs = probs.view(*data_size) - else: - assert self.attn_mask_type == AttnMaskType.padding - probs = ScaledMaskedSoftmax.apply(input, mask, scale) + assert input_.dim() == 4 + + if torch.npu.is_available(): + return self.npu_forward_fused_softmax(input_, mask) + + return self.npu_forward_torch_softmax(input_, mask) + + def npu_forward_fused_softmax(self, input_, mask): + if self.softmax_in_fp32: + input_ = input_.float() + + if self.scale is None: + self.scale = 1.0 + + if self.attn_mask_type == AttnMaskType.causal: + if self.mask_tri is None: + self.mask_tri = torch.triu(torch.ones(input_.shape, device=input_.device), diagonal=1).bool() + probs = torch_npu.npu_scaled_masked_softmax(input_, self.mask_tri, self.scale, False) + else: + probs = torch_npu.npu_scaled_masked_softmax(input_, mask, self.scale, False) + + probs = probs.half() + + return probs + + def npu_forward_torch_softmax(self, input_, mask): + if self.input_in_float16 and self.softmax_in_fp32: + input_ = input_.float() + + if self.scale is not None: + input_ = input_ * self.scale + + if self.attn_mask_type == AttnMaskType.causal: + mask_tri = torch.triu(torch.ones(input_.shape, device=input_.device), diagonal=1).bool() + mask_output = self.mask_func(input_, mask_tri) else: - if self.input_in_float16 and self.softmax_in_fp32: - input = input.float() - - if self.scale is not None: - input = input * self.scale - mask_output = self.mask_func(input, mask) if mask is not None else input - probs = torch.nn.Softmax(dim=-1)(mask_output) - if self.input_in_float16 and self.softmax_in_fp32: - if self.input_in_fp16: - probs = probs.half() - else: - probs = probs.bfloat16() + mask_output = self.mask_func(input_, mask) if mask is not None else input_ + probs = torch.nn.Softmax(dim=-1)(mask_output) + if self.input_in_float16 and self.softmax_in_fp32: + probs = probs.half() if self.input_in_fp16 else probs.bfloat16() return probs diff --git a/megatron/model/language_model.py b/megatron/model/language_model.py index 6d34c50ad5bc3a80336ed14e3c0f46fd4cac5415..2c6802a74afbd15332439c91688152b682fa7d95 100644 --- a/megatron/model/language_model.py +++ b/megatron/model/language_model.py @@ -25,8 +25,6 @@ from megatron.model.enums import LayerType, AttnMaskType from megatron.model.transformer import ParallelTransformer from megatron.model.utils import get_linear_layer from megatron.model.utils import init_method_normal, scaled_init_method_normal -from ..enums import PositionEmbeddingType - def parallel_lm_logits(input_, word_embeddings_weight, parallel_output, bias=None): @@ -139,17 +137,11 @@ class Embedding(MegatronModule): self._word_embeddings_key = 'word_embeddings' # Position embedding (serial). - self.position_embedding_type = args.position_embedding_type - if self.position_embedding_type == PositionEmbeddingType.absolute: - max_position_embeddings = args.max_position_embeddings - assert max_position_embeddings is not None - self.position_embeddings = torch.nn.Embedding( - max_position_embeddings, self.hidden_size) - self._position_embeddings_key = 'position_embeddings' - # Initialize the position embeddings. - self.init_method(self.position_embeddings.weight) - else: - self.position_embeddings = None + self.position_embeddings = torch.nn.Embedding( + max_sequence_length, self.hidden_size) + self._position_embeddings_key = 'position_embeddings' + # Initialize the position embeddings. + self.init_method(self.position_embeddings.weight) # Token type embedding. # Add this as an optional field that can be added through @@ -187,14 +179,8 @@ class Embedding(MegatronModule): def forward(self, input_ids, position_ids, tokentype_ids=None): # Embeddings. words_embeddings = self.word_embeddings(input_ids) - embeddings = words_embeddings - - if self.position_embedding_type == PositionEmbeddingType.absolute: - assert self.position_embeddings is not None - embeddings = embeddings + self.position_embeddings(position_ids) - else: - assert self.position_embeddings is None - + position_embeddings = self.position_embeddings(position_ids) + embeddings = words_embeddings + position_embeddings if tokentype_ids is not None: assert self.tokentype_embeddings is not None embeddings = embeddings + self.tokentype_embeddings(tokentype_ids) @@ -213,10 +199,9 @@ class Embedding(MegatronModule): state_dict_ = {} state_dict_[self._word_embeddings_key] \ = self.word_embeddings.state_dict(destination, prefix, keep_vars) - if self.position_embeddings == PositionEmbeddingType.absolute: - state_dict_[self._position_embeddings_key] \ - = self.position_embeddings.state_dict( - destination, prefix, keep_vars) + state_dict_[self._position_embeddings_key] \ + = self.position_embeddings.state_dict( + destination, prefix, keep_vars) if self.num_tokentypes > 0: state_dict_[self._tokentype_embeddings_key] \ = self.tokentype_embeddings.state_dict( @@ -240,17 +225,16 @@ class Embedding(MegatronModule): self.word_embeddings.load_state_dict(state_dict_, strict=strict) # Position embedding. - if self.position_embedding_type == PositionEmbeddingType.absolute: - if self._position_embeddings_key in state_dict: - state_dict_ = state_dict[self._position_embeddings_key] - else: - # for backward compatibility. - state_dict_ = {} - for key in state_dict.keys(): - if 'position_embeddings' in key: - state_dict_[key.split('position_embeddings.')[1]] \ - = state_dict[key] - self.position_embeddings.load_state_dict(state_dict_, strict=strict) + if self._position_embeddings_key in state_dict: + state_dict_ = state_dict[self._position_embeddings_key] + else: + # for backward compatibility. + state_dict_ = {} + for key in state_dict.keys(): + if 'position_embeddings' in key: + state_dict_[key.split('position_embeddings.')[1]] \ + = state_dict[key] + self.position_embeddings.load_state_dict(state_dict_, strict=strict) # Tokentype embedding. if self.num_tokentypes > 0: diff --git a/megatron/model/llama_model.py b/megatron/model/llama_model.py index b523c79cbeb614f06c86db679c50399bc17edfa2..b07954abea8215964af2aecb6c5f1bcbfbf3904e 100644 --- a/megatron/model/llama_model.py +++ b/megatron/model/llama_model.py @@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ from megatron.model.module import MegatronModule, float16_to_fp32, fp32_to_float from megatron.model.enums import AttnMaskType, LayerType, AttnType from megatron.model.utils import get_linear_layer, init_method_normal, scaled_init_method_normal, attention_mask_func, \ openai_gelu, erf_gelu -from megatron.model.fused_softmax import FusedScaleMaskSoftmax +from megatron.model.fused_softmax import NPUFusedScaleMaskSoftmax from megatron.model.language_model import Pooler import deepspeed @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ from deepspeed.pipe import PipelineModule, LayerSpec class RotaryEmbedding(torch.nn.Module): def __init__(self, dim, max_position_embeddings=2048, base=10000, device=None): super().__init__() - inv_freq = 1.0 / (base ** (torch.arange(0, dim, 2).float().to(device) / dim)) + inv_freq = 1.0 / (torch.tensor(base).double() ** (torch.arange(0, dim, 2).float().to(device) / dim).double()) self.register_buffer("inv_freq", inv_freq) # Build here to make `torch.jit.trace` work. @@ -86,9 +86,6 @@ def apply_rotary_pos_emb(q, k, cos, sin, offset: int = 0): # TODO not able to build apex cpp extention for Fused cuda kernel RMSNorm -# Steps performed, 1. copy https://github.com/NVIDIA/apex/blob/master/apex/normalization/fused_layer_norm.py, https://github.com/NVIDIA/apex/blob/master/csrc/layer_norm_cuda.cpp, https://github.com/NVIDIA/apex/blob/master/csrc/layer_norm_cuda_kernel.cu to ./megatron/model/fused_layer_norm.py, ./megatron/fused_kernels/layer_norm_cuda.cpp, ./megatron/fused_kernels/layer_norm_cuda_kernel.cu, and update ./megatron/fused_kernels/__init__.py accordingly 2. use below line to import MixedFusedRMSNorm -# torch.nn.LayerNorm is slower than apex.FusedLayerNorm for shapes typical in NLP models. For example: (512, 16, 1024) with normalization over the last dimension is slower using torch.nn.LayerNorm -# from megatron.model.fused_layer_norm import MixedFusedRMSNorm as RMSNorm # for cuda class RMSNorm(torch.nn.Module): # for cpu def __init__(self, hidden_size, eps=1e-6): """ @@ -271,9 +268,7 @@ class LlamaParallelMLP(MegatronModule): enable_expert_tensor_parallelism=enable_expert_tensor_parallelism) def forward(self, hidden_states): - intermediate_parallel = self.gate_proj(hidden_states)[0] * self.up_proj(hidden_states)[0] - - intermediate_parallel = self.activation_func(intermediate_parallel) + intermediate_parallel = self.activation_func(self.gate_proj(hidden_states)[0]) * self.up_proj(hidden_states)[0] output, _ = self.down_proj(intermediate_parallel) return output @@ -335,7 +330,7 @@ class LlamaParallelAttention(MegatronModule): coeff = self.layer_number self.norm_factor *= coeff - self.scale_mask_softmax = FusedScaleMaskSoftmax( + self.scale_mask_softmax = NPUFusedScaleMaskSoftmax( self.fp16, self.bf16, self.attn_mask_type, args.masked_softmax_fusion, @@ -854,7 +849,7 @@ class LlamaModelPipe(PipelineModule, MegatronModule): self.specs.append(LayerSpec(RMSNorm, args.hidden_size, eps=args.layernorm_epsilon)) self.specs.append( - LayerSpec(LlamaLMHeadPipe, hidden_size=args.hidden_size, vocab_size=padded_vocab_size, + LayerSpec(LlamaLMHeadPipe, hidden_size=args.hidden_size, vocab_size=args.padded_vocab_size, init_method=self.init_method, parallel_output=self.parallel_output) ) @@ -883,7 +878,7 @@ class LlamaModel(MegatronModule): """llama Language model.""" def __init__(self, pre_process, post_process, parallel_output=True, add_pooler=False): - super(LlamaModel, self).__init__() + super(LlamaModel, self).__init__(share_word_embeddings=False) args = get_args() self.fp16_lm_cross_entropy = args.fp16_lm_cross_entropy self.hidden_size = args.hidden_size @@ -902,7 +897,7 @@ class LlamaModel(MegatronModule): vocab_size=self.padded_vocab_size) # Transformer. - self.transformer = LlamaParallelTransformer( + self.language_model = LlamaParallelTransformer( self.init_method, self.output_layer_init_method, self_attn_mask_type=self.self_attn_mask_type, @@ -922,7 +917,7 @@ class LlamaModel(MegatronModule): def set_input_tensor(self, input_tensor): """See megatron.model.transformer.set_input_tensor()""" - self.transformer.set_input_tensor(input_tensor) + self.language_model.set_input_tensor(input_tensor) def forward(self, input_ids, attention_mask, labels=None, layer_past=None, get_key_value=False): args = get_args() @@ -933,7 +928,7 @@ class LlamaModel(MegatronModule): hidden_states = input_ids # decoder - hidden_states = self.transformer(hidden_states, attention_mask, layer_past=layer_past, + hidden_states = self.language_model(hidden_states, attention_mask, layer_past=layer_past, get_key_value=get_key_value) if self.post_process: @@ -958,4 +953,4 @@ class LlamaModel(MegatronModule): loss = mpu.vocab_parallel_cross_entropy(hidden_states.float(), labels) return loss - return hidden_states \ No newline at end of file + return hidden_states diff --git a/megatron/model/module.py b/megatron/model/module.py index 9f91c8bd1d949a672e8486a0430d7aa2b74136a2..0124cd309afbdcd0d0efed7de7a45ce11fdf2e42 100644 --- a/megatron/model/module.py +++ b/megatron/model/module.py @@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ from megatron import mpu _FLOAT_TYPES = (torch.FloatTensor, get_accelerator().FloatTensor) _HALF_TYPES = (torch.HalfTensor, get_accelerator().HalfTensor) -_BF16_TYPES = (torch.BFloat16Tensor, get_accelerator().BFloat16Tensor) +_BF16_TYPES = (torch.BFloat16Tensor) @@ -121,30 +121,28 @@ def conversion_helper(val, conversion): rtn = tuple(rtn) return rtn - def fp32_to_float16(val, float16_convertor): - """Convert fp32 `val` to fp16/bf16""" def half_conversion(val): val_typecheck = val - if isinstance(val_typecheck, (Parameter, Variable)): + if isinstance(val_typecheck, (torch.nn.parameter.Parameter, torch.autograd.Variable)): val_typecheck = val.data - if isinstance(val_typecheck, _FLOAT_TYPES): + if val_typecheck.dtype == torch.float32: val = float16_convertor(val) return val + return conversion_helper(val, half_conversion) def float16_to_fp32(val): - """Convert fp16/bf16 `val` to fp32""" def float_conversion(val): val_typecheck = val - if isinstance(val_typecheck, (Parameter, Variable)): + if isinstance(val_typecheck, (torch.nn.parameter.Parameter, torch.autograd.Variable)): val_typecheck = val.data - if isinstance(val_typecheck, (_BF16_TYPES, _HALF_TYPES)): + if val_typecheck.dtype in [torch.float16, torch.bfloat16]: val = val.float() return val - return conversion_helper(val, float_conversion) + return conversion_helper(val, float_conversion) class Float16Module(MegatronModule): diff --git a/megatron/model/transformer.py b/megatron/model/transformer.py index 345c74c44e9b9676f782249622cbe4ebb982e6ef..97fa030438e210c050f99b81479a2beeeaaef137 100644 --- a/megatron/model/transformer.py +++ b/megatron/model/transformer.py @@ -20,18 +20,16 @@ import torch.nn.functional as F from megatron import get_args from megatron import mpu -from .module import MegatronModule -from megatron.model.enums import AttnMaskType, LayerType, AttnType from megatron.model import LayerNorm -from megatron.model.fused_softmax import FusedScaleMaskSoftmax +from megatron.model.fused_softmax import NPUFusedScaleMaskSoftmax +from megatron.model.enums import AttnMaskType, LayerType, AttnType from megatron.model.fused_bias_gelu import bias_gelu_impl from megatron.model.utils import attention_mask_func, openai_gelu, erf_gelu +from megatron.model.module import MegatronModule from torch import distributed as dist import deepspeed from deepspeed.moe.layer import MoE from deepspeed.accelerator import get_accelerator -from ..enums import PositionEmbeddingType - # flags required to enable jit fusion kernels torch._C._jit_set_profiling_mode(False) torch._C._jit_set_profiling_executor(False) @@ -125,7 +123,6 @@ class ParallelAttention(MegatronModule): args = get_args() self.fp16 = args.fp16 self.bf16 = args.bf16 - self.position_embedding_type = args.position_embedding_type self.apply_query_key_layer_scaling = args.apply_query_key_layer_scaling self.attention_softmax_in_fp32 = args.attention_softmax_in_fp32 @@ -173,7 +170,7 @@ class ParallelAttention(MegatronModule): coeff = self.layer_number self.norm_factor *= coeff - self.scale_mask_softmax = FusedScaleMaskSoftmax( + self.scale_mask_softmax = NPUFusedScaleMaskSoftmax( self.fp16, self.bf16, self.attn_mask_type, args.masked_softmax_fusion, @@ -466,19 +463,7 @@ class ParallelTransformerLayer(MegatronModule): eval_capacity_factor=args.moe_eval_capacity_factor, min_capacity=args.moe_min_capacity, drop_tokens=args.moe_token_dropping, use_tutel=args.use_tutel, - enable_expert_tensor_parallelism=enable_expert_tensor_parallelism) - - # Alibi - # if args.position_embedding_type == PositionEmbeddingType.alibi: - # self.alibi = self._build_alibi_tensor(args.seq_length, args.num_attention_heads, - # args.micro_batch_size).to(torch.cuda.current_device()) - # if args.params_dtype == torch.float16: - # self.alibi = self.alibi.to(torch.float16) - # elif args.params_dtype == torch.bfloat16: - # self.alibi = self.alibi.to(torch.bfloat16) - # else: - # self.alibi = None - self.alibi = None + enable_expert_tensor_parallelism=enable_expert_tensor_parallelism) def forward(self, hidden_states, attention_mask=None, encoder_output=None, enc_dec_attn_mask=None, @@ -579,36 +564,6 @@ class ParallelTransformerLayer(MegatronModule): return output, moe_loss - @staticmethod - def _build_alibi_tensor(max_seq_len, num_attention_heads, batch_size): - # Based on https://github.com/ofirpress/attention_with_linear_biases/blob/a35aaca144e0eb6b789dfcb46784c4b8e31b7983/fairseq/models/transformer.py#L742 - """Returns tensor shaped (batch_size * num_attention_heads, 1, max_seq_len)""" - - def get_slopes(n): - def get_slopes_power_of_2(n): - start = (2 ** (-2 ** -(math.log2(n) - 3))) - ratio = start - return [start * ratio ** i for i in range(n)] - - if math.log2(n).is_integer(): - return get_slopes_power_of_2(n) - else: - closest_power_of_2 = 2 ** math.floor(math.log2(n)) - return get_slopes_power_of_2(closest_power_of_2) + get_slopes(2 * closest_power_of_2)[0::2][ - :n - closest_power_of_2] - - slopes = torch.Tensor(get_slopes(num_attention_heads)) - alibi = slopes.unsqueeze(1).unsqueeze(1) * torch.arange(max_seq_len).unsqueeze(0).unsqueeze(0).expand( - num_attention_heads, -1, -1) - - # Select the part of the tensor that corresponds to our tensor parallel index. - tp_world_size = mpu.get_tensor_model_parallel_world_size() - tp_index = mpu.get_tensor_model_parallel_rank() - alibi = alibi.reshape((tp_world_size, -1, *alibi.shape[1:]))[tp_index] - - alibi = alibi.repeat(batch_size, 1, 1) - return alibi - class ParallelTransformerLayerPipe(ParallelTransformerLayer): """Extends ParallelTransformerLayer to forward attention_mask through the pipeline. diff --git a/megatron/mpu/__init__.py b/megatron/mpu/__init__.py index e4d06bb155df647cbe46195d6719d06429976d55..32bb5fc3dd6ec916a65cd773bc577c71bf348583 100644 --- a/megatron/mpu/__init__.py +++ b/megatron/mpu/__init__.py @@ -42,7 +42,6 @@ from .initialize import get_virtual_pipeline_model_parallel_rank, set_virtual_pi from .initialize import initialize_model_parallel from .initialize import model_parallel_is_initialized from .initialize import get_model_parallel_world_size, get_model_parallel_rank -from .initialize import is_pipeline_stage_after_split from .layers import ColumnParallelLinear from .layers import RowParallelLinear diff --git a/megatron/mpu/cross_entropy.py b/megatron/mpu/cross_entropy.py index 36e8807290b63c73699a4b1acc7615d381dfaa02..8c790cd3e1a2e7fd6f108e1e719b01e53f651aff 100644 --- a/megatron/mpu/cross_entropy.py +++ b/megatron/mpu/cross_entropy.py @@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ class _VocabParallelCrossEntropy(torch.autograd.Function): masked_target_1d = masked_target.view(-1) arange_1d = torch.arange(start=0, end=logits_2d.size()[0], device=logits_2d.device) - predicted_logits_1d = logits_2d[arange_1d, masked_target_1d.long()] + predicted_logits_1d = logits_2d[arange_1d, masked_target_1d] predicted_logits_1d = predicted_logits_1d.clone().contiguous() predicted_logits = predicted_logits_1d.view_as(target) predicted_logits[target_mask] = 0.0 @@ -96,7 +96,7 @@ class _VocabParallelCrossEntropy(torch.autograd.Function): # Add the gradient from matching classes. arange_1d = torch.arange(start=0, end=grad_2d.size()[0], device=grad_2d.device) - grad_2d[arange_1d, masked_target_1d.long()] -= ( + grad_2d[arange_1d, masked_target_1d] -= ( 1.0 - target_mask.view(-1).float()) # Finally elementwise multiplication with the output gradients. diff --git a/megatron/mpu/initialize.py b/megatron/mpu/initialize.py index 6bc4b8514fb6e9110447a514df56f88a020ef8f1..c24d1179ada7587f2d96ebdaabc5e3b2d86c8ddd 100644 --- a/megatron/mpu/initialize.py +++ b/megatron/mpu/initialize.py @@ -372,19 +372,3 @@ def destroy_model_parallel(): _PIPELINE_MODEL_PARALLEL_GROUP = None global _DATA_PARALLEL_GROUP _DATA_PARALLEL_GROUP = None - - -def is_pipeline_stage_after_split(rank=None): - """Return True if pipeline stage executes decoder block for a model - with both encoder and decoder.""" - if get_pipeline_model_parallel_world_size() == 1: - return True - if rank is None: - rank = get_pipeline_model_parallel_rank() - global _PIPELINE_MODEL_PARALLEL_SPLIT_RANK - if _PIPELINE_MODEL_PARALLEL_SPLIT_RANK is None: - return True - if rank >= _PIPELINE_MODEL_PARALLEL_SPLIT_RANK: - return True - return False - diff --git a/megatron/mpu/layers.py b/megatron/mpu/layers.py index 5d168c67282ab46676ec4f91725a34236e053844..c08168340bb6a63ebdd20bdb7b4991438d52974b 100644 --- a/megatron/mpu/layers.py +++ b/megatron/mpu/layers.py @@ -43,7 +43,6 @@ _MODEL_PARALLEL_ATTRIBUTE_DEFAULTS = {'tensor_model_parallel': False, 'partition_dim': -1, 'partition_stride': 1} - def param_is_not_tensor_parallel_duplicate(param): return (hasattr(param, 'tensor_model_parallel') and param.tensor_model_parallel) or ( diff --git a/megatron/mpu/random.py b/megatron/mpu/random.py index beea791b56882a863f162ccec21f770740d75df3..8d54867f978f31fe95c9e43051873eb8426e65ea 100644 --- a/megatron/mpu/random.py +++ b/megatron/mpu/random.py @@ -168,33 +168,13 @@ class CudaRNGStatesTracker: if name in self.states_: raise Exception('cuda rng state {} already exists'.format(name)) # Get the current rng state. - orig_rng_state = get_accelerator().get_rng_state() # Set the new state and store it. - get_accelerator().manual_seed(seed) - self.states_[name] = get_accelerator().get_rng_state() + torch.cuda.manual_seed(seed) # Reset rng state to what it was. - _set_cuda_rng_state(orig_rng_state) @contextlib.contextmanager def fork(self, name=_MODEL_PARALLEL_RNG_TRACKER_NAME): - """Fork the cuda rng state, perform operations, and exit with - the original state.""" - # Check if we have added the state - if name not in self.states_: - print(name, self.states_) - raise Exception('cuda rng state {} is not added'.format(name)) - # Store current rng state. - orig_cuda_rng_state = get_accelerator().get_rng_state() - # Set rng state to the desired one - _set_cuda_rng_state(self.states_[name]) - # Do the stuff we wanted to do. - try: - yield - finally: - # Update the current rng state for later use. - self.states_[name] = get_accelerator().get_rng_state() - # And set the state to the original state we started with. - _set_cuda_rng_state(orig_cuda_rng_state) + yield # RNG tracker object. @@ -310,7 +290,7 @@ class CheckpointFunction(torch.autograd.Function): if isinstance(outputs, torch.Tensor): outputs = (outputs,) elif len(outputs) == 2 and isinstance(outputs[1], torch.Tensor) and \ - torch.equal(outputs[1], torch.tensor(0).to(get_accelerator().device_name())): + torch.equal(outputs[1], torch.tensor(0, dtype=outputs[1].dtype).to(get_accelerator().device_name())): # a hacky solution to overcome issue when running old script examples/pretrain_gpt_distributed.sh outputs = (outputs[0],) torch.autograd.backward(outputs, args) diff --git a/megatron/optimizer/__init__.py b/megatron/optimizer/__init__.py index 659d680bec9c9225a9eb514e10f1b2bbff92c428..67968efe53dfeda550f6551c3d2bf36592172d31 100644 --- a/megatron/optimizer/__init__.py +++ b/megatron/optimizer/__init__.py @@ -12,14 +12,11 @@ # WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. # See the License for the specific language governing permissions and # limitations under the License. -from deepspeed.accelerator import get_accelerator -if get_accelerator().device_name() == 'cuda': - from apex.optimizers import FusedAdam as Adam - from apex.optimizers import FusedSGD as SGD -else: - from torch.optim import Adam - from torch.optim import SGD +import math +import apex +import torch +from deepspeed.accelerator import get_accelerator from megatron import get_args from megatron.model import LayerNorm @@ -27,6 +24,129 @@ from megatron.model import LayerNorm from .grad_scaler import ConstantGradScaler, DynamicGradScaler from .optimizer import Float16OptimizerWithFloat16Params, FP32Optimizer + +class AdamW(torch.optim.Optimizer): + r"""Implements AdamW algorithm. + + The original Adam algorithm was proposed in `Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization`_. + The AdamW variant was proposed in `Decoupled Weight Decay Regularization`_. + + Arguments: + params (iterable): iterable of parameters to optimize or dicts defining + parameter groups + lr (float, optional): learning rate (default: 1e-3) + betas (Tuple[float, float], optional): coefficients used for computing + running averages of gradient and its square (default: (0.9, 0.999)) + eps (float, optional): term added to the denominator to improve + numerical stability (default: 1e-8) + weight_decay (float, optional): weight decay coefficient (default: 1e-2) + amsgrad (boolean, optional): whether to use the AMSGrad variant of this + algorithm from the paper `On the Convergence of Adam and Beyond`_ + (default: False) + + .. _Adam\: A Method for Stochastic Optimization: + https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6980 + .. _Decoupled Weight Decay Regularization: + https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.05101 + .. _On the Convergence of Adam and Beyond: + https://openreview.net/forum?id=ryQu7f-RZ + """ + + def __init__(self, params, lr=1e-3, betas=(0.9, 0.999), eps=1e-8, + weight_decay=1e-2, amsgrad=False): + if not 0.0 <= lr: + raise ValueError("Invalid learning rate: {}".format(lr)) + if not 0.0 <= eps: + raise ValueError("Invalid epsilon value: {}".format(eps)) + if not 0.0 <= betas[0] < 1.0: + raise ValueError("Invalid beta parameter at index 0: {}".format(betas[0])) + if not 0.0 <= betas[1] < 1.0: + raise ValueError("Invalid beta parameter at index 1: {}".format(betas[1])) + defaults = dict(lr=lr, betas=betas, eps=eps, + weight_decay=weight_decay, amsgrad=amsgrad) + super(AdamW, self).__init__(params, defaults) + + def __setstate__(self, state): + super(AdamW, self).__setstate__(state) + for group in self.param_groups: + group.setdefault('amsgrad', False) + + @torch.no_grad() + def step(self, closure=None): + """Performs a single optimization step. + + Arguments: + closure (callable, optional): A closure that reevaluates the model + and returns the loss. + """ + loss = None + if closure is not None: + with torch.enable_grad(): + loss = closure() + + for group in self.param_groups: + for p in group['params']: + if p.grad is None: + continue + + # Perform stepweight decay + p.data.mul_(1 - group['lr'] * group['weight_decay']) + + # Perform optimization step + grad = p.grad + if grad.is_sparse: + raise RuntimeError('Adam does not support sparse gradients, please consider SparseAdam instead') + amsgrad = group['amsgrad'] + + state = self.state[p] + + # State initialization + if len(state) == 0: + state['step'] = 0 + # Exponential moving average of gradient values + state['exp_avg'] = torch.zeros_like(p) + # Exponential moving average of squared gradient values + state['exp_avg_sq'] = torch.zeros_like(p) + if amsgrad: + # Maintains max of all exp. moving avg. of sq. grad. values + state['max_exp_avg_sq'] = torch.zeros_like(p) + + exp_avg, exp_avg_sq = state['exp_avg'], state['exp_avg_sq'] + if amsgrad: + max_exp_avg_sq = state['max_exp_avg_sq'] + beta1, beta2 = group['betas'] + + state['step'] += 1 + bias_correction1 = 1 - beta1 ** state['step'] + bias_correction2 = 1 - beta2 ** state['step'] + + # Decay the first and second moment running average coefficient + exp_avg.mul_(beta1).add_(grad, alpha=1 - beta1) + exp_avg_sq.mul_(beta2).addcmul_(grad, grad, value=1 - beta2) + if amsgrad: + # Maintains the maximum of all 2nd moment running avg. till now + torch.max(max_exp_avg_sq, exp_avg_sq, out=max_exp_avg_sq) + # Use the max. for normalizing running avg. of gradient + denom = (max_exp_avg_sq.sqrt() / math.sqrt(bias_correction2)).add_(group['eps']) + else: + denom = (exp_avg_sq.sqrt() / math.sqrt(bias_correction2)).add_(group['eps']) + + step_size = group['lr'] / bias_correction1 + + p.addcdiv_(exp_avg, denom, value=-step_size) + + return loss + +apex.optimizers.FusedAdam = AdamW +apex.optimizers.FusedSGD = torch.optim.SGD + +if get_accelerator().device_name() == 'cuda': + from apex.optimizers import FusedAdam as Adam + from apex.optimizers import FusedSGD as SGD +else: + from torch.optim import Adam + from torch.optim import SGD + def _get_params_for_weight_decay_optimization(modules): """Divide params into with-weight-decay and without-weight-decay groups. Layernorms and baises will have no weight decay but the rest will. diff --git a/megatron/optimizer/clip_grads.py b/megatron/optimizer/clip_grads.py index fdec6ff806bea943ef676dde46d6b733ccbc1049..e125fddb9b00db31bbfa0ed85cad00a4ee8b59a5 100644 --- a/megatron/optimizer/clip_grads.py +++ b/megatron/optimizer/clip_grads.py @@ -45,9 +45,13 @@ def clip_grad_norm_fp32(parameters, max_norm, norm_type=2): Arguments: parameters (Iterable[Tensor] or Tensor): an iterable of Tensors or a single Tensor that will have gradients normalized + grads_for_norm (Iterable[Tensor]): an iterable of Tensors or a single + Tensor that will be used for calculating the grad norm. max_norm (float or int): max norm of the gradients norm_type (float or int): type of the used p-norm. Can be ``'inf'`` for infinity norm. + model_parallel_group (group): given the nature of the distributed + optimizer, this is passed as an argument. Returns: Total norm of the parameters (viewed as a single vector). @@ -56,10 +60,7 @@ def clip_grad_norm_fp32(parameters, max_norm, norm_type=2): if isinstance(parameters, torch.Tensor): parameters = [parameters] - # Filter parameters based on: - # - grad should not be none - # - parameter should not be shared - # - should not be a replica due to tensor model parallelism + # Grads. grads = [] grads_for_norm = [] for param in parameters: @@ -69,11 +70,11 @@ def clip_grad_norm_fp32(parameters, max_norm, norm_type=2): grad = param.grad.detach() if grad_not_none: # Make sure the grads are in fp32 - assert param.grad.type() == 'torch.{}.FloatTensor'.format(get_accelerator().device_name()) grads.append(grad) if grad_not_none and is_not_shared and is_not_tp_duplicate: grads_for_norm.append(grad) + # Norm parameters. max_norm = float(max_norm) norm_type = float(norm_type) @@ -82,35 +83,16 @@ def clip_grad_norm_fp32(parameters, max_norm, norm_type=2): # Calculate norm. if norm_type == inf: total_norm = max(grad.abs().max() for grad in grads_for_norm) - total_norm_cuda = get_accelerator().FloatTensor([float(total_norm)]) + total_norm_cuda = torch.cuda.FloatTensor([float(total_norm)]) # Take max across all model-parallel GPUs. torch.distributed.all_reduce(total_norm_cuda, op=torch.distributed.ReduceOp.MAX, group=mpu.get_model_parallel_group()) total_norm = total_norm_cuda[0].item() - else: - if norm_type == 2.0: - if get_accelerator().device_name() == 'cuda': - dummy_overflow_buf = get_accelerator().IntTensor([0]) - # Use apex's multi-tensor applier for efficiency reasons. - # Multi-tensor applier takes a function and a list of list - # and performs the operation on that list all in one kernel. - grad_norm, _ = multi_tensor_applier( - amp_C.multi_tensor_l2norm, - dummy_overflow_buf, - [grads_for_norm], - False # no per-parameter norm - ) - else: - grad_norm = torch.norm(grads_for_norm,p=2.0) - # Since we will be summing across data parallel groups, - # we need the pow(norm-type). - total_norm = grad_norm ** norm_type - else: - for grad in grads_for_norm: - grad_norm = torch.norm(grad, norm_type) - total_norm += grad_norm ** norm_type + for grad in grads_for_norm: + grad_norm = torch.norm(grad, norm_type) + total_norm += grad_norm ** norm_type # Sum across all model-parallel GPUs. torch.distributed.all_reduce(total_norm, @@ -121,15 +103,8 @@ def clip_grad_norm_fp32(parameters, max_norm, norm_type=2): # Scale. clip_coeff = max_norm / (total_norm + 1.0e-6) if clip_coeff < 1.0: - if get_accelerator().device_name() == 'cuda': - dummy_overflow_buf = get_accelerator().IntTensor([0]) - multi_tensor_applier(amp_C.multi_tensor_scale, - dummy_overflow_buf, - [grads, grads], - clip_coeff) - else: - for g in grads: - g.detach().mul_(clip_coeff.to(g.device)) + for p in parameters: + p.grad.detach().mul_(clip_coeff) return total_norm diff --git a/megatron/optimizer/optimizer.py b/megatron/optimizer/optimizer.py index 6568bf10a7fa8b6d2846d4fff29bc13de0d185d0..8c5f7a7db744e03336a9816b41bbd368706d974d 100644 --- a/megatron/optimizer/optimizer.py +++ b/megatron/optimizer/optimizer.py @@ -239,11 +239,15 @@ class Float16OptimizerWithFloat16Params(MegatronOptimizer): # For all the parameters in this group: for i, param in enumerate(param_group['params']): if param.requires_grad: + if param.type() == "torch.cuda.HalfTensor": + param_type = "torch.npu.HalfTensor" + elif param.type() == "torch.cuda.BFloat16Tensor": + param_type = "torch.npu.BFloat16Tensor" + elif param.type() == "torch.cuda.FloatTensor": + param_type = "torch.npu.FloatTensor" # float16 params: - - - if param.type() in ['torch.{}.HalfTensor'.format(get_accelerator().device_name()), + if param_type in ['torch.{}.HalfTensor'.format(get_accelerator().device_name()), 'torch.{}.BFloat16Tensor'.format(get_accelerator().device_name())]: float16_params_this_group.append(param) # Create a copy @@ -262,7 +266,7 @@ class Float16OptimizerWithFloat16Params(MegatronOptimizer): = self.optimizer.state.pop(param) # fp32 params. - elif param.type() == 'torch.{}.FloatTensor'.format(format(get_accelerator().device_name())): + elif param_type == 'torch.{}.FloatTensor'.format(format(get_accelerator().device_name())): fp32_params_this_group.append(param) param_group['params'][i] = param @@ -304,6 +308,7 @@ class Float16OptimizerWithFloat16Params(MegatronOptimizer): for model_group, main_group in zip(self.float16_groups, self.fp32_from_float16_groups): for model_param, main_param in zip(model_group, main_group): + # if self.params_have_main_grad: if self.params_have_main_grad: main_param.grad = model_param.main_grad.float() else: diff --git a/megatron/p2p_communication.py b/megatron/p2p_communication.py index ed38f94542a05600f644d698b5b6b139c6374696..07e66c8019d2355e27f5afec03b483887aa219b0 100644 --- a/megatron/p2p_communication.py +++ b/megatron/p2p_communication.py @@ -21,97 +21,6 @@ from megatron import get_args from megatron import mpu -def _communicate_shapes(tensor_send_next, tensor_send_prev, - recv_prev, recv_next): - """Communicate tensor shapes between stages. Used to communicate - tensor shapes before the actual tensor communication happens. - This is required when the sequence lengths across micro batches - are not uniform. - - Takes the following arguments: - tensor_send_next: tensor to send to next rank (no tensor sent if - set to None). - tensor_send_prev: tensor to send to prev rank (no tensor sent if - set to None). - recv_prev: boolean for whether tensor should be received from - previous rank. - recv_next: boolean for whether tensor should be received from - next rank. - Returns: - (recv_prev_shape, recv_next_shape) - """ - - args = get_args() - recv_prev_shape_tensor = None - recv_next_shape_tensor = None - send_prev_shape_tensor = None - send_next_shape_tensor = None - if recv_prev: - recv_prev_shape_tensor = torch.empty((3), - device=torch.cuda.current_device(), - dtype=torch.int64) - if recv_next: - recv_next_shape_tensor = torch.empty((3), - device=torch.cuda.current_device(), - dtype=torch.int64) - if tensor_send_prev is not None: - send_prev_shape_tensor = torch.tensor(tensor_send_prev.size(), - device=torch.cuda.current_device(), - dtype=torch.int64) - if tensor_send_next is not None: - send_next_shape_tensor = torch.tensor(tensor_send_next.size(), - device=torch.cuda.current_device(), - dtype=torch.int64) - - if args.use_ring_exchange_p2p: - torch.distributed.ring_exchange(tensor_send_prev=send_prev_shape_tensor, - tensor_recv_prev=recv_prev_shape_tensor, - tensor_send_next=send_next_shape_tensor, - tensor_recv_next=recv_next_shape_tensor, - group=mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_group()) - else: - ops = [] - if send_prev_shape_tensor is not None: - send_prev_op = torch.distributed.P2POp( - torch.distributed.isend, send_prev_shape_tensor, - mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_prev_rank()) - ops.append(send_prev_op) - if recv_prev_shape_tensor is not None: - recv_prev_op = torch.distributed.P2POp( - torch.distributed.irecv, recv_prev_shape_tensor, - mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_prev_rank()) - ops.append(recv_prev_op) - if send_next_shape_tensor is not None: - send_next_op = torch.distributed.P2POp( - torch.distributed.isend, send_next_shape_tensor, - mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_next_rank()) - ops.append(send_next_op) - if recv_next_shape_tensor is not None: - recv_next_op = torch.distributed.P2POp( - torch.distributed.irecv, recv_next_shape_tensor, - mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_next_rank()) - ops.append(recv_next_op) - if len(ops) > 0: - reqs = torch.distributed.batch_isend_irecv(ops) - for req in reqs: - req.wait() - - # To protect against race condition when using batch_isend_irecv(). - # should take this out once the bug with batch_isend_irecv is resolved. - torch.cuda.synchronize() - - recv_prev_shape = [0, 0, 0] - if recv_prev_shape_tensor is not None: - recv_prev_shape = recv_prev_shape_tensor.tolist() - - recv_next_shape = [0, 0, 0] - if recv_next_shape_tensor is not None: - recv_next_shape = recv_next_shape_tensor.tolist() - - return recv_prev_shape, recv_next_shape - - - def _communicate(tensor_send_next, tensor_send_prev, recv_prev, recv_next, use_ring_exchange=False): """Communicate tensors between stages. Used as helper method in other @@ -185,16 +94,16 @@ def _communicate(tensor_send_next, tensor_send_prev, recv_prev, recv_next, torch.distributed.irecv, tensor_recv_prev, mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_prev_rank()) ops.append(recv_prev_op) - if tensor_send_next is not None: - send_next_op = torch.distributed.P2POp( - torch.distributed.isend, tensor_send_next, - mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_next_rank()) - ops.append(send_next_op) if tensor_recv_next is not None: recv_next_op = torch.distributed.P2POp( torch.distributed.irecv, tensor_recv_next, mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_next_rank()) ops.append(recv_next_op) + if tensor_send_next is not None: + send_next_op = torch.distributed.P2POp( + torch.distributed.isend, tensor_send_next, + mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_next_rank()) + ops.append(send_next_op) if len(ops) > 0: reqs = torch.distributed.batch_isend_irecv(ops) for req in reqs: diff --git a/megatron/schedules.py b/megatron/schedules.py index 01e7be480b3c442a9c0bda47e801126d8f8daee2..97dbdae3812f55d38fa5e512c70bc7aedb84c6bf 100644 --- a/megatron/schedules.py +++ b/megatron/schedules.py @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ from contextlib import contextmanager import torch -from torch.autograd.variable import Variable +import torch_npu from torch.nn.parallel.distributed import DistributedDataParallel as torchDDP from megatron import get_args @@ -28,6 +28,25 @@ from megatron.utils import unwrap_model from megatron.model import DistributedDataParallel as LocalDDP from megatron.model import Float16Module + +def clear_npu_overflow_flag(): + float_status = torch.zeros(8).npu() # 8 bit for overflow + result = torch_npu.npu_clear_float_status(float_status) + + +def get_npu_overflow_flag(): + float_status = torch.zeros(8).npu() # 8 bit for overflow + result = torch_npu.npu_get_float_status(float_status) + if float_status.cpu()[0] != 0: + return True + else: + return False + + +def set_npu_overflow_flag(): + torch.tensor([65504]).half().npu() + 100 # fp16 overflow flag + + def get_forward_backward_func(): args = get_args() if mpu.get_pipeline_model_parallel_world_size() > 1: @@ -39,94 +58,43 @@ def get_forward_backward_func(): forward_backward_func = forward_backward_no_pipelining return forward_backward_func -def custom_backward(output, grad_output): - '''Directly call C++ autograd engine. - - To make the 'deallocate_output_tensor' (above) optimization work, the C++ - autograd engine must be called directly, bypassing Pytorch's - torch.autograd.backward. Pytorch's 'backward' checks that the output and - grad have the same shape, while C++'s 'backward' does not. - ''' - - assert output.numel() == 1, \ - "output should be pseudo-'freed' in schedule, to optimize memory" - assert isinstance(output, torch.Tensor), \ - "output == '%s'." % type(output).__name__ - assert isinstance(grad_output, (torch.Tensor, type(None))), \ - "grad_output == '%s'." % type(grad_output).__name__ - - # Handle scalar output - if grad_output is None: - assert output.numel() == 1, "implicit grad requires scalar output." - grad_output = torch.ones_like( - output, - memory_format = torch.preserve_format, - ) - - # Call c++ engine [ see torch/csrc/autograd/python_engine.cpp ] - Variable._execution_engine.run_backward( - tensors = (output,), - grad_tensors = (grad_output,), - keep_graph = False, - create_graph = False, - inputs = tuple(), - allow_unreachable=True, - accumulate_grad=True, - ) - - - - -def forward_step(forward_step_func, - data_iterator, - model, - input_tensor, - forward_data_store, - timers, - collect_non_loss_data=False): + +def forward_step(forward_step_func, data_iterator, model, input_tensor, losses_reduced): """Forward step for passed-in model. If first stage, input tensor is obtained from data_iterator, otherwise passed-in input_tensor is used. - Returns output tensor.""" + Returns output tensor. + """ + timers = get_timers() + args = get_args() - if timers is not None: - timers('forward-compute', log_level=2).start() + timers('forward-compute').start() unwrapped_model = unwrap_model( model, (torchDDP, LocalDDP, Float16Module)) + if not args.deepspeed: + unwrapped_model.set_input_tensor(input_tensor) + else: + unwrapped_model.module.set_input_tensor(input_tensor) - unwrap_output_tensor = False - if not isinstance(input_tensor, list): - input_tensor = [input_tensor] - unwrap_output_tensor = True - - unwrapped_model.set_input_tensor(input_tensor) + # Note: it's recommended to NOT add any new argument to forward_step_func() + # because it is an abstract API used by many different models and tasks. + # Changing this API requires changing it in all models/tasks. Instead, + # it's recommended to use args to pass additional arguments. output_tensor, loss_func = forward_step_func(data_iterator, model) if mpu.is_pipeline_last_stage(): - if not collect_non_loss_data: - output_tensor = loss_func(output_tensor) - loss, loss_reduced = output_tensor + output_tensor = loss_func(output_tensor) + loss, loss_reduced = output_tensor + if not args.no_pipeline_parallel: output_tensor = loss / get_num_microbatches() - forward_data_store.append(loss_reduced) else: - data = loss_func(output_tensor, non_loss_data=True) - forward_data_store.append(data) - - if timers is not None: - timers('forward-compute').stop() - - # If T5 model (or other model with encoder and decoder) - # and in decoder stack, then send encoder_hidden_state - # downstream as well. - # remove for bloom - # if mpu.is_pipeline_stage_after_split() and \ - # args.model_type == ModelType.encoder_and_decoder: - # return [output_tensor, input_tensor[-1]] - if unwrap_output_tensor: - return output_tensor - return [output_tensor] + output_tensor = loss + losses_reduced.append(loss_reduced) + timers('forward-compute').stop() + + return output_tensor def backward_step(optimizer, input_tensor, output_tensor, output_tensor_grad, model=None): @@ -149,6 +117,7 @@ def backward_step(optimizer, input_tensor, output_tensor, output_tensor_grad, mo if input_tensor is not None: input_tensor.retain_grad() + clear_npu_overflow_flag() if args.deepspeed: model.backward(output_tensor) else: @@ -166,7 +135,6 @@ def backward_step(optimizer, input_tensor, output_tensor, output_tensor_grad, mo return input_tensor_grad - @contextmanager def dummy_handler(): try: @@ -184,35 +152,33 @@ def forward_backward_no_pipelining(forward_step_func, data_iterator, model, assert len(model) == 1 model = model[0] - args = get_args() - context_handler = dummy_handler if isinstance(model, torchDDP): context_handler = model.no_sync - if args.deepspeed: - model.set_gradient_accumulation_boundary(False) - losses_reduced = [] input_tensor, output_tensor_grad = None, None + overflow_flag_all = False with context_handler(): for i in range(get_num_microbatches() - 1): output_tensor = forward_step(forward_step_func, data_iterator, model, input_tensor, losses_reduced) if not forward_only: backward_step(optimizer, input_tensor, output_tensor, - output_tensor_grad, model) + output_tensor_grad) - if args.deepspeed: - model.set_gradient_accumulation_boundary(True) - - # Run computation for last microbatch out of context handler (want to - # synchronize gradients). + overflow_flag = get_npu_overflow_flag() + overflow_flag_all = overflow_flag or overflow_flag_all output_tensor = forward_step(forward_step_func, data_iterator, model, input_tensor, losses_reduced) if not forward_only: - backward_step(optimizer, input_tensor, output_tensor, output_tensor_grad, model) + backward_step(optimizer, input_tensor, output_tensor, output_tensor_grad) + + overflow_flag = get_npu_overflow_flag() + overflow_flag_all = overflow_flag or overflow_flag_all + if overflow_flag_all: + set_npu_overflow_flag() return losses_reduced diff --git a/megatron/training.py b/megatron/training.py index 7d0aa5dc24ece601c1f659aa22994a0da4bd7371..36c76ec252676a2e621da5c092c30fc0ca9f29c4 100644 --- a/megatron/training.py +++ b/megatron/training.py @@ -69,7 +69,6 @@ def print_datetime(string): def pretrain(train_valid_test_dataset_provider, model_provider, - model_type, forward_step_func, extra_args_provider=None, args_defaults={}, @@ -137,6 +136,7 @@ def pretrain(train_valid_test_dataset_provider, model, optimizer, lr_scheduler = setup_model_and_optimizer( model_provider, teacher=False, data_post_process=data_post_process, build_train_valid_test_datasets_provider=train_valid_test_dataset_provider) + timers('model-and-optimizer-setup').stop() print_datetime('after model, optimizer, and learning rate ' 'scheduler are built') @@ -184,8 +184,6 @@ def pretrain(train_valid_test_dataset_provider, print_rank_0('training ...') iteration = 0 - save_checkpoint(iteration, model, optimizer, lr_scheduler) - if args.do_train and args.train_iters > 0: iteration = train(forward_step_func, model, optimizer, lr_scheduler, @@ -491,7 +489,6 @@ def setup_model_and_optimizer(model_provider_func, teacher=False, # Number of train/valid/test samples. if args.train_samples: train_samples = args.train_samples - update_train_iters(args) else: train_samples = args.train_iters * args.global_batch_size # eval_iters and test_iters here are not actually used, only for @@ -731,7 +728,7 @@ def training_log(loss_dict, total_loss_dict, learning_rate, iteration, timers_to_log = [] def add_to_logging(name): - if name in timers._timers: + if name in timers.timers: timers_to_log.append(name) add_to_logging('forward-compute') add_to_logging('forward-recv') @@ -850,7 +847,7 @@ def training_log(loss_dict, total_loss_dict, learning_rate, iteration, opt_stats_2[1] = max(opt_stats_2[1], optimizer.state[param]['exp_avg_sq'].sqrt().abs_().max().item()) opt_stats_2[2] = max(opt_stats_2[2], abs(optimizer.state[param]['exp_avg'].max().item()), abs(optimizer.state[param]['exp_avg'].min().item())) opt_stats_2[3] = max(opt_stats_2[3], abs(param.max().item()), abs(param.min().item())) - # print('step {} rank {} before sync opt_stats {}, {}'.format(iteration, torch.distributed.get_rank(), opt_stats_2, opt_stats)) + if args.zero_stage > 0: # ZeRO partiions optimizer states opt_stats = get_accelerator().FloatTensor(opt_stats) @@ -1276,7 +1273,6 @@ def build_train_valid_test_data_iterators( # Number of train/valid/test samples. if args.train_samples: train_samples = args.train_samples - update_train_iters(args) else: train_samples = args.train_iters * args.global_batch_size eval_iters = (args.train_iters // args.eval_interval + 1) * \ diff --git a/pretrain_gpt.py b/pretrain_gpt.py index 35009892733546ef74f667eebcd3458eab4b7ab2..128a39de8d5a5b158909416788af3429501192b0 100644 --- a/pretrain_gpt.py +++ b/pretrain_gpt.py @@ -15,31 +15,78 @@ """Pretrain GPT""" +import math +from functools import partial + import torch import torch_npu -import megatron_npu -from functools import partial +from torch_npu.contrib import transfer_to_npu +import deepspeed_npu + from megatron import get_args from megatron import print_rank_0 from megatron import get_timers from megatron import get_tokenizer -from megatron import mpu +from megatron import mpu from megatron.data.gpt_dataset import build_train_valid_test_datasets -from megatron.model import GPTModel, ModelType +from megatron.model import GPTModel, GPTModelPipe from megatron.training import pretrain from megatron.utils import get_ltor_masks_and_position_ids from megatron.utils import average_losses_across_data_parallel_group +import deepspeed +from deepspeed.runtime.utils import see_memory_usage +from deepspeed.accelerator.real_accelerator import get_accelerator + +from torch import nn +import torch.nn.functional as F + def model_provider(pre_process=True, post_process=True): """Build the model.""" print_rank_0('building GPT model ...') - model = GPTModel( - num_tokentypes=0, - parallel_output=True, - pre_process=pre_process, - post_process=post_process - ) + see_memory_usage(f"Before Building Model", force=True) + + args = get_args() + with deepspeed.zero.Init(data_parallel_group=mpu.get_data_parallel_group(), + remote_device=None if args.remote_device == 'none' else args.remote_device, + config_dict_or_path=args.deepspeed_config, + enabled=args.zero_stage == 3, + mpu=mpu): + if args.deepspeed and not args.no_pipeline_parallel: + model = GPTModelPipe( + num_tokentypes=0, + parallel_output=True + ) + # This is a hack to give us a reference to get_batch_pipe from within training.py + # We need to call model.set_batch_fn after deepspeed.initialize + model._megatron_batch_fn = get_batch_pipe + + # Predompute the attention mask and store it in args. This avoids having to + # pipeline it as an activation during training. The mask is constant, and thus + # we can reuse it. + attention_mask = torch.tril(torch.ones( + (1, args.seq_length, args.seq_length), device=get_accelerator().current_device_name())).view( + 1, 1, args.seq_length, args.seq_length) + + # Convert attention mask to binary: + attention_mask = (attention_mask < 0.5) + if args.fp16: + attention_mask = attention_mask.half() + elif args.bf16: + attention_mask = attention_mask.bfloat16() + + # Attention mask must be bool. + args.attn_mask = attention_mask.to(torch.bool) + + else: + model = GPTModel( + num_tokentypes=0, + parallel_output=True, + pre_process=pre_process, + post_process=post_process + ) + see_memory_usage(f"After Building Model", force=True) return model @@ -60,7 +107,7 @@ def get_batch(data_iterator): data_b = mpu.broadcast_data(keys, data, datatype) # Unpack. - tokens_ = data_b['text'].int() + tokens_ = data_b['text'].long() labels = tokens_[:, 1:].contiguous() tokens = tokens_[:, :-1].contiguous() @@ -74,15 +121,120 @@ def get_batch(data_iterator): return tokens, labels, loss_mask, attention_mask, position_ids -def loss_func(loss_mask, output_tensor): +def data_post_process(data, data_sampler_state_dict): + args = get_args() + if args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning: + if 'seqlen_truncate' in data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']: + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type = 'seqlen_truncate' + current_seqlen = data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']['seqlen_truncate'] + if current_seqlen < args.seq_length: + data['text'] = data['text'][:, :(current_seqlen+1)].contiguous() + elif 'seqlen_reshape' in data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']: + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type = 'seqlen_reshape' + current_seqlen = data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']['seqlen_reshape'] + if current_seqlen < args.seq_length: + orig_num_token = torch.numel(data['text']) + reshape_len = (data['text'].size()[1] // (current_seqlen+1)) * (current_seqlen+1) + data['text'] = torch.cat((data['text'][:, :reshape_len].contiguous().view(-1, current_seqlen+1), + data['text'][:, -(current_seqlen+1):]), 0).contiguous() + num_row = math.ceil(orig_num_token / (current_seqlen+1)) + num_row = min(num_row, data['text'].size()[0]) + if num_row > 1 and num_row % 2 != 0: + num_row -= 1 + data['text'] = data['text'][:num_row, :].contiguous() + else: + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type = None + return data + +def get_batch_pipe(data): + """Modification of `get_batch` to work on `next(data_iterator)` instead of `data_iterator`""" + args = get_args() + tokenizer = get_tokenizer() + + # Items and their type. + keys = ['text'] + datatype = torch.int64 + + # Broadcast data. + data_b = mpu.broadcast_data(keys, data, datatype) + + # Unpack. + tokens_ = data_b['text'].long() + labels = tokens_[:, 1:].contiguous() + tokens = tokens_[:, :-1].contiguous() + + # Get the masks and postition ids. + attention_mask, loss_mask, position_ids = get_ltor_masks_and_position_ids( + tokens, + tokenizer.eod, + args.reset_position_ids, + args.reset_attention_mask, + args.eod_mask_loss) + if args.curriculum_learning_legacy and args.curriculum_seqlen < tokens.size()[1]: + # seqlen-based curriculum learning + # tokens, position_ids, labels, loss_mask have size [batch size, seqlen] + tokens = tokens[:, :args.curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + position_ids = position_ids[:, :args.curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + if labels is not None: + labels = labels[:, :args.curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + loss_mask = loss_mask[:, :args.curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + + return (tokens, position_ids, attention_mask), (labels, loss_mask) + + +def loss_func(loss_mask, moe_loss, mos_loss, output_tensor): + args = get_args() losses = output_tensor.float() loss_mask = loss_mask.view(-1).float() loss = torch.sum(losses.view(-1) * loss_mask) / loss_mask.sum() - + # Reduce loss for logging. averaged_loss = average_losses_across_data_parallel_group([loss]) - return loss, {'lm loss': averaged_loss[0]} + if args.mos or args.kd: + loss = loss + moe_loss + mos_loss + if args.mos: + return loss, {'total loss': loss, 'lm loss': averaged_loss[0], 'moe loss': moe_loss, 'mos loss': mos_loss} + elif args.kd: + return loss, {'total loss': loss, 'lm loss': averaged_loss[0], 'moe loss': moe_loss, 'kd loss': mos_loss} + else: + print_rank_0('>>> total loss: {}, lm loss {}, kd loss {}'.format(loss, averaged_loss[0], mos_loss)) + return None + else: + if max(args.num_experts) <= 1: + return loss, {'lm loss': averaged_loss[0]} + else: + loss = loss + moe_loss + return loss, {'lm loss': averaged_loss[0], 'moe loss': moe_loss} + +def calculate_mos_loss(args, stu_output, teacher_model, tokens, position_ids, attention_mask): + mos_loss = 0 + alpha = args.kd_alpha_ce + beta = args.kd_beta_ce + kd_temp = args.kd_temp + + if teacher_model: + with torch.no_grad(): + if args.curriculum_learning_legacy and args.curriculum_seqlen < args.seq_length: + assert args.curriculum_seqlen is not None + curriculum_seqlen = args.curriculum_seqlen + tokens = tokens[:, :curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + position_ids = position_ids[:, :curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + attention_mask = attention_mask[:, :, :curriculum_seqlen, :curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + # No need to truncate labels as we do not need it for the teacher logits + tea_output, *tea_other_losses = teacher_model(tokens, position_ids, attention_mask) + assert stu_output.size() == tea_output.size(), \ + 'teacher and student output should match in size. Student: {},' \ + ' Teacher: {}, CL seq length {}'.format(stu_output.size(), tea_output.size(), args.curriculum_seqlen) + student_logits = F.log_softmax(stu_output / kd_temp, dim=2) + tea_logits = F.softmax(tea_output / kd_temp, dim=2) + # The target logits is expected to be probabilities. + # If we use log_softmax, then we need to set target_log to true when initializing the KLDivLoss. + + mos_loss = kd_temp * kd_temp * nn.KLDivLoss(reduction='batchmean')(student_logits, tea_logits) + + mos_loss = mos_loss.div(args.seq_length) * beta + return mos_loss def forward_step(data_iterator, model): """Forward step.""" @@ -90,15 +242,45 @@ def forward_step(data_iterator, model): timers = get_timers() # Get the batch. - timers('batch-generator', log_level=2).start() + timers('batch-generator').start() tokens, labels, loss_mask, attention_mask, position_ids = get_batch( data_iterator) timers('batch-generator').stop() - output_tensor = model(tokens, position_ids, attention_mask, - labels=labels) + if args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning: + args.curriculum_seqlen = tokens.size()[1] + if hasattr(args, 'data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type') and \ + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type == 'seqlen_reshape': + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_numel = torch.numel(tokens) + + if args.mos or args.kd: + # The forward func can return either the loss or the logits, depending on whether passing in the labels or not. + stu_output, *other_losses = model(tokens, position_ids, attention_mask) + if args.curriculum_learning_legacy and args.curriculum_seqlen < args.seq_length: + assert args.curriculum_seqlen is not None + labels = labels[:, :args.curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + output_tensor = mpu.vocab_parallel_cross_entropy(stu_output.contiguous().float(), labels) + else: + output_tensor, *other_losses = model(tokens, position_ids, attention_mask, + labels=labels) + if args.curriculum_learning_legacy and args.curriculum_seqlen < args.seq_length: + loss_mask = loss_mask[:, :args.curriculum_seqlen].contiguous() + + moe_losses = [] + for moe_loss in other_losses: + if moe_loss is not None: + moe_losses.append(moe_loss) + moe_loss = sum(moe_losses) * args.moe_loss_coeff - return output_tensor, partial(loss_func, loss_mask) + mos_loss = 0 + if args.mos or args.kd: + assert model.training + if args.teacher_forward and args.teacher_model is not None: + mos_loss = calculate_mos_loss(args, stu_output, + args.teacher_model[0], tokens, position_ids, attention_mask) + + # Output_tensor stores the standard loss, loos_func calculates the total loss. + return output_tensor, partial(loss_func, loss_mask, moe_loss, mos_loss) def train_valid_test_datasets_provider(train_val_test_num_samples): @@ -121,10 +303,6 @@ def train_valid_test_datasets_provider(train_val_test_num_samples): if __name__ == "__main__": - torch_npu.npu.set_compile_mode(jit_compile=True) - - pretrain(train_valid_test_datasets_provider, model_provider, - ModelType.encoder_or_decoder, - forward_step, - args_defaults={'tokenizer_type': 'GPT2BPETokenizer'} - ) + pretrain(train_valid_test_datasets_provider, model_provider, forward_step, + args_defaults={'tokenizer_type': 'GPT2BPETokenizer'}, + data_post_process=data_post_process) diff --git a/pretrain_llama.py b/pretrain_llama.py index e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391..bbbf10f095b2150659035d59d93cbbd87695b30a 100644 --- a/pretrain_llama.py +++ b/pretrain_llama.py @@ -0,0 +1,217 @@ +# coding=utf-8 +# Copyright (c) 2020, NVIDIA CORPORATION. All rights reserved. +# +# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); +# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. +# You may obtain a copy of the License at +# +# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 +# +# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software +# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, +# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. +# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and +# limitations under the License. + +"""Pretrain Llama""" +import math +from functools import partial + +import torch +import torch_npu +from torch_npu.contrib import transfer_to_npu +import deepspeed_npu + +from megatron import get_args +from megatron import print_rank_0 +from megatron import get_timers +from megatron import get_tokenizer +from megatron import mpu +from megatron.data.gpt_dataset import build_train_valid_test_datasets +from megatron.model import LlamaModel, LlamaModelPipe +from megatron.training import pretrain +from megatron.utils import get_ltor_masks_and_position_ids +from megatron.utils import average_losses_across_data_parallel_group + +import deepspeed +from deepspeed.runtime.utils import see_memory_usage +from deepspeed.accelerator.real_accelerator import get_accelerator + + +def model_provider(pre_process=True, post_process=True): + """Build the model.""" + + print_rank_0('building llama model ...') + see_memory_usage(f"Before Building Model", force=True) + + args = get_args() + with deepspeed.zero.Init(data_parallel_group=mpu.get_data_parallel_group(), + remote_device=None if args.remote_device == 'none' else args.remote_device, + config_dict_or_path=args.deepspeed_config, + enabled=args.zero_stage == 3, + mpu=mpu): + if args.deepspeed and not args.no_pipeline_parallel: + model = LlamaModelPipe(parallel_output=True) + # This is a hack to give us a reference to get_batch_pipe from within training.py + # We need to call model.set_batch_fn after deepspeed.initialize + model._megatron_batch_fn = get_batch_pipe + + # Predompute the attention mask and store it in args. This avoids having to + # pipeline it as an activation during training. The mask is constant, and thus + # we can reuse it. + attention_mask = torch.tril(torch.ones( + (1, args.seq_length, args.seq_length), device=get_accelerator().current_device_name())).view( + 1, 1, args.seq_length, args.seq_length) + + # Convert attention mask to binary: + attention_mask = (attention_mask < 0.5) + if args.fp16: + attention_mask = attention_mask.half() + elif args.bf16: + attention_mask = attention_mask.bfloat16() + + # Attention mask must be bool. + args.attn_mask = attention_mask.to(torch.bool) + + else: + model = LlamaModel( + parallel_output=True, + add_pooler=False, + pre_process=pre_process, + post_process=post_process + ) + see_memory_usage(f"After Building Model", force=True) + return model + + +def get_batch(data_iterator): + """Generate a batch""" + args = get_args() + tokenizer = get_tokenizer() + + # Items and their type. + keys = ['text'] + data_type = torch.int64 + + # Broadcast data. + if data_iterator is not None: + data = next(data_iterator) + else: + data = None + data_b = mpu.broadcast_data(keys, data, data_type) + + # Unpack. + tokens_ = data_b['text'].long() + labels = tokens_[:, 1:].contiguous() + tokens = tokens_[:, :-1].contiguous() + + # Get the masks and postition ids. + attention_mask, loss_mask, _ = get_ltor_masks_and_position_ids( + tokens, + tokenizer.eod, + args.reset_position_ids, + args.reset_attention_mask, + args.eod_mask_loss) + + return tokens, labels, loss_mask, attention_mask + + +def data_post_process(data, data_sampler_state_dict): + args = get_args() + if args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning: + if 'seqlen_truncate' in data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']: + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type = 'seqlen_truncate' + current_seqlen = data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']['seqlen_truncate'] + if current_seqlen < args.seq_length: + data['text'] = data['text'][:, :(current_seqlen + 1)].contiguous() + elif 'seqlen_reshape' in data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']: + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type = 'seqlen_reshape' + current_seqlen = data_sampler_state_dict['current_difficulties']['seqlen_reshape'] + if current_seqlen < args.seq_length: + orig_num_token = torch.numel(data['text']) + reshape_len = (data['text'].size()[1] // (current_seqlen + 1)) * (current_seqlen + 1) + data['text'] = torch.cat((data['text'][:, :reshape_len].contiguous().view(-1, current_seqlen + 1), + data['text'][:, -(current_seqlen + 1):]), 0).contiguous() + num_row = math.ceil(orig_num_token / (current_seqlen + 1)) + num_row = min(num_row, data['text'].size()[0]) + if num_row > 1 and num_row % 2 != 0: + num_row -= 1 + data['text'] = data['text'][:num_row, :].contiguous() + else: + args.data_efficiency_curriculum_learning_seqlen_type = None + return data + + +def get_batch_pipe(data): + """Modification of `get_batch` to work on `next(data_iterator)` instead of `data_iterator`""" + args = get_args() + tokenizer = get_tokenizer() + + # Items and their type. + keys = ['text'] + data_type = torch.int64 + + # Broadcast data. + data_b = mpu.broadcast_data(keys, data, data_type) + + # Unpack. + tokens_ = data_b['text'].long() + labels = tokens_[:, 1:].contiguous() + tokens = tokens_[:, :-1].contiguous() + + # Get the masks and postition ids. + attention_mask, loss_mask, _ = get_ltor_masks_and_position_ids( + tokens, + tokenizer.eod, + args.reset_position_ids, + args.reset_attention_mask, + args.eod_mask_loss) + return (tokens, attention_mask), (labels, loss_mask) + +def loss_func(loss_mask, output_tensor): + args = get_args() + losses = output_tensor.float() + loss_mask = loss_mask.view(-1).float() + loss = torch.sum(losses.view(-1) * loss_mask) / loss_mask.sum() + + # Reduce loss for logging. + averaged_loss = average_losses_across_data_parallel_group([loss]) + return loss, {'lm loss': averaged_loss[0]} + + +def forward_step(data_iterator, model): + """Forward step.""" + args = get_args() + timers = get_timers() + # Get the batch. + timers('batch-generator').start() + tokens, labels, loss_mask, attention_mask = get_batch(data_iterator) + timers('batch-generator').stop() + + output_tensor = model(tokens, attention_mask, labels=labels) + # Output_tensor stores the standard loss, loos_func calculates the total loss. + return output_tensor, partial(loss_func, loss_mask) + + +def train_valid_test_datasets_provider(train_val_test_num_samples): + """Build train, valid, and test datasets.""" + args = get_args() + + print_rank_0('> building train, validation, and test datasets ' + 'for llama ...') + train_ds, valid_ds, test_ds = build_train_valid_test_datasets( + data_prefix=args.data_path, + data_impl=args.data_impl, + splits_string=args.split, + train_valid_test_num_samples=train_val_test_num_samples, + seq_length=args.seq_length, + seed=args.seed, + skip_warmup=(not args.mmap_warmup)) + print_rank_0("> finished creating llama datasets ...") + + return train_ds, valid_ds, test_ds + +if __name__ == "__main__": + pretrain(train_valid_test_datasets_provider, model_provider, forward_step, + args_defaults={'tokenizer_type': 'GPT2BPETokenizer'}, + data_post_process=data_post_process) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt index 47631b1523a52f4d49fa2e71e86447b3c10d0464..03e58aec232b95957e6e335ff5cc6bebf643ec81 100644 --- a/requirements.txt +++ b/requirements.txt @@ -2,5 +2,10 @@ pybind11 six regex numpy -megatron -deepspeed \ No newline at end of file +sympy +decorator +scipy +attrs +expecttest +pytest +wrapt_timeout_decorator \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py index 668a6b6ccead4824d48929f80698a024efbd2484..61de121acfe325ad2dfccd8b0464886bf3942402 100644 --- a/setup.py +++ b/setup.py @@ -22,16 +22,17 @@ import setuptools if sys.version_info < (3,): raise Exception("Python 2 is not supported by Megatron.") -from megatron.package_info import ( - __description__, - __contact_names__, - __url__, - __download_url__, - __keywords__, - __license__, - __package_name__, - __version__, -) +__description__ = 'AscendSpeed for LLMs of Ascend' +__version__ = '0.0.1' +__author__ = 'Ascend' +__long_description__ = 'AscendSpeed for LLMs of Ascend' +__url__ = 'https://gitee.com/ascend/AscendSpeed' +__download_url__ = 'https://gitee.com/ascend/AscendSpeed/release' +__keywords__ = 'Ascend, langauge, deep learning, NLP' +__license__ = 'See https://gitee.com/ascend/AscendSpeed' +__package_name__ = 'ascendspeed' +__contact_names__ = 'Ascend' + with open("README.md", "r") as fh: long_description = fh.read() @@ -50,6 +51,7 @@ def req_file(filename): install_requires = req_file("requirements.txt") setuptools.setup( + package_data={'ascendspeed':['megatron/data/Makefile']}, name=__package_name__, # Versions should comply with PEP440. For a discussion on single-sourcing # the version across setup.py and the project code, see diff --git a/tests/README.md b/tests/README.md deleted file mode 100644 index 3d099bc508674b660f5833eeab567cac6342fe57..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/tests/README.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,26 +0,0 @@ -# Testing - -This test suite heavily borrows from [HF Transformers](https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/), therefore you can refer to the its [testing docs](https://huggingface.co/transformers/testing.html) for in-depth details. In particular wrt writing new tests, as we have access a lot of helper classes and functions, so you can write tests very quickly and not need to reinvent the wheel. - -The foundation is `pytest`, which allows you to write normal `pytest` tests, but we also use a lot of unit tests in particular via `TestCasePlus` which extends `unittest` and provides additional rich functionality. - -## Running testing - -``` -make test -``` -or: - -``` -pytest tests -``` - -Important: the first time you run this it can take some minutes to build all the Megatron cuda kernels and deepspeed kernels if you haven't pre-built the latter. - -For various other options please see the doc mentioned at the very top. - -You will want to have at least 1 gpu available, best 2 to run the tests. - -## CI - -The CI setup is documented [here](../.github/workflows/ci.md). diff --git a/tests/conftest.py b/tests/conftest.py deleted file mode 100644 index 38bfe9feea13f116ce17cd64cbc94b35285ece1a..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/tests/conftest.py +++ /dev/null @@ -1,36 +0,0 @@ -# Copyright 2020 The HuggingFace Team. All rights reserved. -# -# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); -# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. -# You may obtain a copy of the License at -# -# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 -# -# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software -# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, -# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. -# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and -# limitations under the License. - -# tests directory-specific settings - this file is run automatically -# by pytest before any tests are run - -import sys -import warnings -from os.path import abspath, dirname, join - - -# allow having multiple repository checkouts and not needing to remember to rerun -# 'pip install -e .[dev]' when switching between checkouts and running tests. -git_repo_path = abspath(join(dirname(dirname(__file__)))) -sys.path.insert(1, git_repo_path) - -# silence FutureWarning warnings in tests since often we can't act on them until -# they become normal warnings - i.e. the tests still need to test the current functionality -warnings.simplefilter(action="ignore", category=FutureWarning) - - -def pytest_sessionfinish(session, exitstatus): - # If no tests are collected, pytest exists with code 5, which makes the CI fail. - if exitstatus == 5: - session.exitstatus = 0 diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/README.md b/tests/data/gpt2/README.md deleted file mode 100644 index ad8eed839fc75efcebaa5d01169e4cea7910c053..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/tests/data/gpt2/README.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3 +0,0 @@ -Dataset used for testing. - -`ag_news_prompt*`: manually generated from dataset available at https://huggingface.co/datasets/TimeRobber/ag_news_classify_question_first_100 \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_inputs_document.bin b/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_inputs_document.bin deleted file mode 100644 index 4a7f085deedafe2758c154f0f317258fe8af4869..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Binary files a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_inputs_document.bin and /dev/null differ diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_inputs_document.idx b/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_inputs_document.idx deleted file mode 100644 index 8af1e38977853c4c79e4c92842c613a4d10b259e..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Binary files a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_inputs_document.idx and /dev/null differ diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_targets_document.bin b/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_targets_document.bin deleted file mode 100644 index ac2ba952c82bd65ef4e38a63246a3219b11ab1c2..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Binary files a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_targets_document.bin and /dev/null differ diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_targets_document.idx b/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_targets_document.idx deleted file mode 100644 index b0e7d3eaeede748d1a159dfac6b20def10e6a530..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Binary files a/tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt_targets_document.idx and /dev/null differ diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/generate_ag_news_mtf_dataset.sh b/tests/data/gpt2/generate_ag_news_mtf_dataset.sh deleted file mode 100644 index e6ec6ef75bd8a1731a690171571837b693f03752..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/tests/data/gpt2/generate_ag_news_mtf_dataset.sh +++ /dev/null @@ -1,22 +0,0 @@ -python -c "from datasets import load_dataset; load_dataset('TimeRobber/ag_news_classify_question_first_100', split='train').to_json('ag_news_classify_question_first_100.jsonl')" - -python tools/preprocess_data.py \ - --input ag_news_classify_question_first_100.jsonl \ - --output-prefix tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt \ - --dataset-impl mmap \ - --json-key targets \ - --tokenizer-type PretrainedFromHF \ - --tokenizer-name-or-path bigscience/tokenizer \ - --append-eod \ - --workers 8 - -python tools/preprocess_data.py \ - --input ag_news_classify_question_first_100.jsonl \ - --output-prefix tests/data/gpt2/ag_news_prompt \ - --dataset-impl mmap \ - --json-key inputs \ - --tokenizer-type PretrainedFromHF \ - --tokenizer-name-or-path bigscience/tokenizer \ - --workers 8 - -rm ag_news_classify_question_first_100.jsonl diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/gpt2-tiny-merges.txt b/tests/data/gpt2/gpt2-tiny-merges.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 64bc5dc657713d9501f8ffff91b0334ad86f9157..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/tests/data/gpt2/gpt2-tiny-merges.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4744 +0,0 @@ -#version: 0.2 - Trained by `huggingface/tokenizers` -Ġ t -Ġ a -h e -i n -r e -o n -Ġt he -e r -Ġ s -a t -Ġ w -Ġ o -e n -Ġ c -i t -i s -a n -o r -e s -Ġ b -e d -Ġ f -in g -Ġ p -o u -Ġa n -a l -a r -Ġt o -Ġ m -Ġo f -Ġ in -Ġ d -Ġ h -Ġan d -i c -a s -l e -Ġt h -i on -o m -l l -en t -Ġ n -Ġ l -s t -Ġ re -v e -Ġ e -r o -l y -Ġb e -Ġ g -Ġ T -c t -Ġ S -i d -o t -Ġ I -u t -e t -Ġ A -Ġ is -Ġ on -i m -a m -o w -a y -a d -s e -Ġth at -Ġ C -i g -Ġf or -a c -Ġ y -v er -u r -Ġ u -l d -Ġs t -Ġ M -' s -Ġ he -Ġ it -at ion -it h -i r -c e -Ġy ou -i l -Ġ B -Ġw h -o l -Ġ P -Ġw ith -Ġ 1 -t er -c h -Ġa s -Ġw e -Ġ ( -n d -i ll -Ġ D -i f -Ġ 2 -a g -er s -k e -Ġ " -Ġ H -e m -Ġc on -Ġ W -Ġ R -he r -Ġw as -Ġ r -o d -Ġ F -u l -at e -Ġa t -r i -p p -o re -ĠT he -Ġs e -u s -Ġp ro -Ġh a -u m -Ġa re -Ġd e -a in -an d -Ġo r -ig h -es t -is t -a b -r om -Ġ N -t h -Ġc om -Ġ G -u n -o p -0 0 -Ġ L -Ġn ot -es s -Ġe x -Ġ v -re s -Ġ E -e w -it y -an t -Ġb y -e l -o s -or t -o c -q u -Ġf rom -Ġha ve -Ġs u -i ve -ou ld -Ġs h -Ġth is -n t -r a -p e -igh t -ar t -m ent -Ġa l -u st -en d -- - -al l -Ġ O -ac k -Ġc h -Ġ le -i es -re d -ar d -â Ģ -ou t -Ġ J -Ġa b -e ar -i v -al ly -ou r -o st -g h -p t -Ġp l -as t -Ġc an -a k -om e -u d -T he -Ġh is -Ġd o -Ġg o -Ġh as -g e -' t -Ġ U -r ou -Ġs a -Ġ j -Ġb ut -Ġw or -Ġa ll -e ct -Ġ k -am e -Ġw ill -o k -Ġw he -Ġthe y -id e -0 1 -f f -ic h -p l -t her -Ġt r -. . -Ġin t -i e -u re -ag e -Ġn e -i al -a p -in e -ic e -Ġm e -Ġo ut -an s -on e -on g -ion s -Ġwh o -Ġ K -Ġu p -Ġthe ir -Ġa d -Ġ 3 -Ġu s -at ed -ou s -Ġm ore -u e -o g -ĠS t -in d -i ke -Ġs o -im e -p er -. " -b er -i z -a ct -Ġon e -Ġsa id -Ġ - -a re -Ġyou r -c c -ĠT h -Ġc l -e p -a ke -ab le -i p -Ġcon t -Ġwh ich -i a -Ġ im -Ġab out -Ġwe re -ver y -u b -Ġh ad -Ġ en -Ġcom p -, " -ĠI n -Ġu n -Ġa g -i re -ac e -a u -ar y -Ġw ould -as s -r y -Ġ âĢ -c l -o ok -e re -s o -Ġ V -ig n -i b -Ġof f -Ġt e -v en -Ġ Y -i le -o se -it e -or m -Ġ2 01 -Ġre s -Ġm an -Ġp er -Ġo ther -or d -ul t -Ġbe en -Ġl ike -as e -an ce -k s -ay s -ow n -en ce -Ġd is -ct ion -Ġan y -Ġa pp -Ġs p -in t -res s -ation s -a il -Ġ 4 -ic al -Ġthe m -Ġhe r -ou nt -ĠC h -Ġa r -Ġ if -Ġthe re -Ġp e -Ġy ear -a v -Ġm y -Ġs ome -Ġwhe n -ou gh -ac h -Ġth an -r u -on d -ic k -Ġo ver -ve l -Ġ qu -Ċ Ċ -Ġs c -re at -re e -ĠI t -ou nd -p ort -Ġal so -Ġp art -f ter -Ġk n -Ġbe c -Ġt ime -en s -Ġ 5 -op le -Ġwh at -Ġn o -d u -m er -an g -Ġn ew --- -- -Ġg et -or y -it ion -ing s -Ġj ust -Ġint o -Ġ 0 -ent s -o ve -t e -Ġpe ople -Ġp re -Ġit s -Ġre c -Ġt w -i an -ir st -ar k -or s -Ġwor k -ad e -o b -Ġs he -Ġo ur -w n -in k -l ic -Ġ1 9 -ĠH e -is h -nd er -au se -Ġh im -on s -Ġ [ -Ġ ro -f orm -i ld -at es -ver s -Ġon ly -o ll -Ġs pe -c k -e ll -am p -Ġa cc -Ġb l -i ous -ur n -f t -o od -Ġh ow -he d -Ġ ' -Ġa fter -a w -Ġat t -o v -n e -Ġpl ay -er v -ic t -Ġc ould -it t -Ġa m -Ġf irst -Ġ 6 -Ġa ct -Ġ $ -e c -h ing -u al -u ll -Ġcom m -o y -o ld -c es -at er -Ġf e -Ġbe t -w e -if f -Ġtw o -oc k -Ġb ack -) . -id ent -Ġu nder -rou gh -se l -x t -Ġm ay -rou nd -Ġp o -p h -is s -Ġd es -Ġm ost -Ġd id -Ġad d -j ect -Ġin c -f ore -Ġp ol -on t -Ġag ain -cl ud -ter n -Ġkn ow -Ġne ed -Ġcon s -Ġc o -Ġ . -Ġw ant -Ġse e -Ġ 7 -n ing -i ew -ĠTh is -c ed -Ġe ven -Ġin d -t y -ĠW e -at h -Ġthe se -Ġp r -Ġu se -Ġbec ause -Ġf l -n g -Ġn ow -ĠâĢ ĵ -c om -is e -Ġm ake -Ġthe n -ow er -Ġe very -ĠU n -Ġse c -os s -u ch -Ġe m -Ġ = -ĠR e -i ed -r it -Ġin v -le ct -Ġsu pp -at ing -Ġl ook -m an -pe ct -Ġ 8 -ro w -Ġb u -Ġwhe re -if ic -Ġyear s -i ly -Ġd iff -Ġsh ould -Ġre m -T h -I n -Ġe v -d ay -' re -ri b -Ġre l -s s -Ġde f -Ġr ight -Ġs y -) , -l es -00 0 -he n -Ġth rough -ĠT r -_ _ -Ġw ay -Ġd on -Ġ , -Ġ1 0 -as ed -Ġas s -ub lic -Ġre g -ĠA nd -i x -Ġ very -Ġin clud -ot her -Ġim p -ot h -Ġsu b -ĠâĢ Ķ -Ġbe ing -ar g -ĠW h -= = -ib le -Ġdo es -an ge -r am -Ġ 9 -er t -p s -it ed -ation al -Ġb r -Ġd own -Ġman y -ak ing -Ġc all -ur ing -it ies -Ġp h -ic s -al s -Ġde c -at ive -en er -Ġbe fore -il ity -Ġwe ll -Ġm uch -ers on -Ġth ose -Ġsu ch -Ġ ke -Ġ end -ĠB ut -as on -t ing -Ġl ong -e f -Ġth ink -y s -Ġbe l -Ġs m -it s -a x -Ġo wn -Ġpro v -Ġs et -if e -ment s -b le -w ard -Ġsh ow -Ġp res -m s -om et -Ġo b -Ġs ay -ĠS h -t s -f ul -Ġe ff -Ġg u -Ġin st -u nd -re n -c ess -Ġ ent -ĠY ou -Ġgo od -Ġst art -in ce -Ġm ade -t t -st em -ol og -u p -Ġ | -um p -Ġhe l -ver n -ul ar -u ally -Ġa c -Ġm on -Ġl ast -Ġ2 00 -1 0 -Ġst ud -u res -ĠA r -sel f -ar s -mer ic -u es -c y -Ġm in -oll ow -Ġc ol -i o -Ġm od -Ġc ount -ĠC om -he s -Ġf in -a ir -i er -âĢ Ķ -re ad -an k -at ch -e ver -Ġst r -Ġpo int -or k -ĠN ew -Ġs ur -o ol -al k -em ent -Ġus ed -ra ct -we en -Ġs ame -ou n -ĠA l -c i -Ġdiff ere -Ġwh ile ----- ---- -Ġg ame -ce pt -Ġs im -.. . -Ġin ter -e k -Ġre port -Ġpro du -Ġst ill -l ed -a h -Ġhe re -Ġwor ld -Ġth ough -Ġn um -ar ch -im es -al e -ĠS e -ĠI f -/ / -ĠL e -Ġre t -Ġre f -Ġtr ans -n er -ut ion -ter s -Ġt ake -ĠC l -Ġcon f -w ay -a ve -Ġgo ing -Ġs l -u g -ĠA meric -Ġspe c -Ġh and -Ġbet ween -ist s -ĠD e -o ot -I t -Ġe ar -Ġagain st -Ġh igh -g an -a z -at her -Ġex p -Ġo p -Ġin s -Ġg r -Ġhel p -Ġre qu -et s -in s -ĠP ro -is m -Ġf ound -l and -at a -us s -am es -Ġp erson -Ġg reat -p r -Ġs ign -ĠA n -' ve -Ġs omet -Ġs er -h ip -Ġr un -Ġ : -Ġt er -ire ct -Ġf ollow -Ġd et -ic es -Ġf ind -1 2 -Ġm em -Ġc r -e red -e x -Ġex t -ut h -en se -c o -Ġte am -v ing -ou se -as h -at t -v ed -Ġsy stem -ĠA s -d er -iv es -m in -Ġle ad -ĠB l -c ent -Ġa round -Ġgo vern -Ġc ur -vel op -an y -Ġc our -al th -ag es -iz e -Ġc ar -od e -Ġl aw -Ġre ad -' m -c on -Ġre al -Ġsupp ort -Ġ1 2 -.. .. -Ġre ally -n ess -Ġf act -Ġd ay -Ġb oth -y ing -Ġs erv -ĠF or -Ġth ree -Ġw om -Ġm ed -od y -ĠThe y -5 0 -Ġex per -t on -Ġe ach -ak es -Ġc he -Ġc re -in es -Ġre p -1 9 -g g -ill ion -Ġg rou -ut e -i k -W e -g et -E R -Ġm et -Ġs ays -o x -Ġd uring -er n -iz ed -a red -Ġf am -ic ally -Ġha pp -ĠI s -Ġch ar -m ed -v ent -Ġg ener -i ent -p le -i et -re nt -1 1 -v es -pt ion -Ġ2 0 -form ation -Ġc or -Ġoff ic -ie ld -Ġto o -is ion -Ġin f -Ġ Z -t he -o ad -Ġp ublic -Ġpro g -r ic -* * -Ġw ar -Ġp ower -v iew -Ġf ew -Ġl oc -Ġdiffere nt -Ġst ate -Ġhe ad -' ll -Ġp oss -Ġst at -re t -ant s -Ġv al -Ġis s -Ġc le -i vers -an c -Ġex pl -Ġan other -Ġ Q -Ġa v -th ing -n ce -W h -Ġch ild -Ġs ince -i red -l ess -Ġl ife -Ġde velop -itt le -Ġde p -Ġp ass -ã ĥ -Ġt urn -or n -Th is -b ers -ro ss -ĠA d -Ġf r -Ġres p -Ġsec ond -o h -Ġ / -Ġdis c -Ġ & -Ġsomet hing -Ġcomp le -Ġ ed -Ġf il -Ġmon th -a j -u c -Ġgovern ment -Ġwith out -Ġle g -Ġd ist -Ġp ut -Ġqu est -an n -Ġpro t -2 0 -Ġne ver -i ence -Ġle vel -Ġar t -Ġth ings -Ġm ight -Ġeff ect -Ġcont ro -Ġc ent -Ġ1 8 -Ġall ow -Ġbel ie -ch ool -ot t -Ġinc re -Ġfe el -Ġres ult -Ġl ot -Ġf un -ot e -Ġt y -ere st -Ġcont in -Ġus ing -Ġb ig -2 01 -Ġas k -Ġb est -Ġ ) -I N -Ġo pp -3 0 -Ġnum ber -in ess -S t -le ase -Ġc a -Ġm ust -Ġd irect -Ġg l -Ġ < -Ġop en -Ġp ost -Ġcom e -Ġse em -ord ing -Ġwe ek -ate ly -it al -Ġe l -ri end -Ġf ar -Ġt ra -in al -Ġp ri -ĠU S -Ġpl ace -Ġfor m -Ġto ld -" : -ain s -at ure -ĠTr ump -Ġst and -Ġ # -id er -ĠF r -Ġne xt -Ġs oc -Ġp ur -Ġle t -Ġl ittle -Ġh um -Ġ i -r on -1 5 -Ġ1 5 -Ġcomm un -Ġm ark -ĠThe re -Ġw r -ĠTh at -Ġin formation -w ays -Ġb us -a pp -Ġinv est -m e -Ġh ard -ain ed -e ad -Ġim port -Ġapp ro -Ġt est -Ġt ri -Ġre st -os ed -Ġf ull -Ġc are -ĠS p -Ġc ase -O N -Ġs k -Ġl ess -Ġ + -Ġpart ic -ĠP l -ab ly -u ck -is hed -ch n -b e -Ġl ist -at or -Ġto p -Ġad v -ĠB e -ru ct -Ġd em -r ation -l ing -g y -re en -g er -Ġh ome -Ġle ft -Ġbet ter -Ġd ata -Ġ1 1 -Ġatt ack -Ġpro ble -l ine -ard s -Ġbe h -r al -ĠH ow -ĠS he -ar ge -Ġ -- -: // -Ġb ro -ĠP h -at s -Ġbu ild -w w -id ed -a im -as es -en cy -Ġm ain -in ed -Ġinclud ing -Ġ { -Ġg ot -Ġint erest -Ġke ep -Ġ X -Ġe as -ain ing -Ġcl ass -âĢ ¦ -ĠN o -Ġv ar -Ġsm all -amp le -A T -Ġ ide -ĠS o -Ġre ce -Ġpol it -Ġm ov -Ġpl an -Ġper cent -iv ing -Ġc amp -Ġp ay -1 4 -s c -is ed -Ġu nt -one y -pl oy -== == -Ġdid n -ĠI nd -el s -ert ain -Ġp os -__ __ -i ver -Ġpro cess -Ġprog ram -if ied -ĠR ep -1 6 -u ro -olog y -at ter -in a -Ġn ame -ĠA ll -Ġf our -Ġret urn -v ious -b s -Ġcall ed -Ġm ove -ĠS c -ir d -Ġgrou p -Ġb re -Ġm en -Ġc ap -t en -e e -Ġd ri -le g -he re -uth or -Ġp at -Ġcur rent -id es -Ġp op -t o -ent ion -Ġal ways -Ġm il -Ġwom en -Ġ1 6 -Ġo ld -iv en -ra ph -ĠO r -r or -ent ly -Ġn ear -ĠE x -re am -s h -Ġ1 4 -Ġf ree -iss ion -st and -ĠC on -al ity -us ed -1 3 -Ġdes ign -Ġch ange -Ġch ang -Ġb o -Ġv is -em ber -Ġb ook -read y -Ġk ill -2 5 -pp ed -Ġa way -Ġab le -Ġcount ry -Ġcon st -ar n -Ġor der -A R -i or -i um -or th -1 8 -ail able -Ġs w -Ġm illion -Ġ1 3 -at ic -t ed -ĠG o -Ġo per -en g -Ġth ing -aj or -con om -ĠCom m -Ġwh y -u red -ur al -Ġs chool -b y -ĠM ar -Ġa ff -Ġd ays -Ġan n -us h -an e -I f -e g -Ġpro f -Ġhe alth -ou th -B ut -ion al -. , -Ġs ol -Ġal ready -Ġ3 0 -Ġchar act -H e -Ġf riend -E S -i ans -ic le -' d -ĠO n -Ġle ast -Ġp rom -Ġd r -Ġh ist -it her -Ġ est -i qu -1 7 -s on -Ġte ll -Ġt alk -oh n -o int -le ction -A N -Ġunt il -au gh -Ġl ater -Ġ ve -Ġv iew -end ing -iv ed -Ġwor d -w are -Ġc ost -Ġen ough -Ġg ive -ĠUn ited -Ġte chn -are nt -O R -Ġp ar -ĠD r -Ġ201 6 -r ist -er ing -Ġ  -Ġl arge -s ide -ac y -cc ess -Ġw in -Ġimport ant -Ġ19 9 -Ġdoes n -Ġ1 7 -Ġbus iness -Ġcle ar -Ġre se -" , -ur y -Ġe qu -as ter -al f -ĠAmeric an -n ect -Ġex pect -ivers ity -Ġo cc -ĠF l -Ġk ind -Ġme an -Ġp ast -Ġde v -Ġb as -le t -ra ft -Ġor gan -Ġde l -Ġper form -Ġst ory -Ġse ason -ĠC ol -Ġcl aim -Ġc ame -Ġwith in -Ġl ine -Ġpro ject -ĠA t -Ġcontro l -end ed -ĠS y -Ġa ir -iz ation -Ġ * -le y -Ġm oney -id d -Y ou -f or -Ġfam ily -Ġm aking -Ġb it -Ġpol ice -Ġhapp en -Ġ vers -on y -u ff -ĠW hen -Ġs it -ide o -l f -is on -Ġsu re -g in -Ġapp ear -Ġl ight -Ġ es -o f -Ġw ater -Ġt imes -n ot -Ġg row -Ġcomp any -ĠT e -ow s -Ġm ar -our ce -i ol -ar m -b r -Ġex ample -Ġcon c -Ġf ore -ĠT o -p ro -E N -ri es -Ġ2 5 -ĠC an -ne y -Ġact ually -Ġe ver -ur ity -ak en -ap s -Ġt ax -Ġm ajor -am a -Ġof ten -er al -Ġhum an -Ġj ob -is ter -Ġav ailable -oc r -en n -a id -iv id -Ġrec ord -? " -Ġs ing -ĠA m -id ence -Ġnew s -st er -Ġe conom -Ġfollow ing -ĠB r -is ing -Ġh our -m ost -um ent -Ġse x -Ġdes c -Ġbec ome -ĠE d -Ġto ok -Ġha ving -Ġprodu ct -a ult -A s -ar ing -Ġme ans -Ġh op -un e -Ġch o -Ġc ertain -Ġn on -Ġde al -2 4 -le ment -oc i -en e -Ġs ide -ĠP r -ĠM ay -Ġre ason -u ed -c hed -ul ation -Ġe lect -Ġoffic ial -Ġposs ible -Ġh old -and s -ot s -Ġc ity -or ies -Ġse ver -Ġchild ren -Ġon ce -Ġact iv -l er -Ġn ight -it ions -ĠJ ohn -a pe -pl ay -Ġd one -Ġl im -Ġwork ing -ĠP res -or ld -e b -ĠC o -Ġb ody -ail s -ut es -ĠM r -Ġwhe ther -Ġa uthor -ro p -Ġpro per -Ġse en -) ; -Ġf ac -ĠS u -Ġcon d -it ing -Ġcour se -Ġ } --------- -------- -a ign -Ġev ent -Ġen g -Ġp ot -Ġin tern -i am -Ġsh ort -em pt -ã Ĥ -ĠG od -il ar -8 0 -Ġor ig -I S -our n -ab ility -it ive -Ġd am -Ġ1 00 -Ġp ress -Ġdo ing -Ġprot ect -r ing -Ġthough t -Ġquest ion -re w -ĠW ar -Ġsever al -ĠSt ate -Ġg iven -Ġf und -ĠT w -Ġw ent -an ces -w ork -p or -m y -4 0 -Ġar g -art ment -ust om -Ġpol ic -Ġme et -Ġc reat -2 2 -ĠSt ates -Ġg ames -ra w -ut ure -Ġunder stand -ur s -ĠO b -l ish -s y -Ġm akes -Ġw on -ag on -Ġh tt -Ġl ove -ent ial -Ġcomple te -p ar -ĠI m -A L -Ġacc ount - ł -ore d -ver t -Ġ ident -Ġ201 5 -Ġother s -ĠM in -i ber -ver age -The re -ition al -d d -Ġpro b -Ġyou ng -Ġal ong -Ġacc ording -Ġy et -Ġmem bers -ĠWh at -o id -ĠM an -A nd -Ġam ong -a i -Ġem ploy -ĠR es -Ġ > -Ġinv ol -Ġl ow -a f -ĠC ar -Ġh ig -ĠO ne -ĠS ec -in ation -Ġlike ly -Ġan t -ag ed -ĠR uss -Ġb en -Ġre le -F or -b ack -ĠN ot -Ġpres ident -b all -Ġacc ess -ivid ual -ĠD em -ĠE uro -6 0 -Ġkn own -ir l -ĠG r -Ġear ly -u se -iet y -âĢ ĵ -Ġf ight -Ġs ent -Ġto day -Ġmark et -" . -Ġb ased -Ġstr ong -ur ther -Ġde b -m ber -Ġproble m -Ġde ath -Ġsoc ial -im ate -A S -ort un -Ġcamp aign -er y -C h -Ġe y -i ally -Ġm us -w h -p os -Ġ er -Ġsa f -Ġmonth s -ir on -Ġv iol -Ġf ive -Ġst re -Ġplay ers -in c -al d -y ear -a un -Ġsu ccess -Ġpres ent -ere nce -Ġ201 4 -Ġsu gg -Ġpartic ular -Ġtr y -Ġsugg est -ĠCh rist -on es -Ġpri v -2 3 -Ġc rit -Ġl and -Ġloc al -if y -2 9 -Ġa ut -E D -ĠG u -Ġm ult -Ġpolit ical -Ġask ed -Ġfor mer -it ter -ri pt -Ġcl ose -Ġp ract -ĠY ork -Ġget ting -Ġac ross -Ġcom b -Ġbelie ve -Ġ z -Ġto get -Ġtoget her -ĠC ent -ir c -Ġind ividual -ĠM c -2 7 -is k -ĠE ng -Ġf ace -Ġ2 4 -Ġval ue -Ġare a -e v -Ġw rit -ĠPres ident -Ġv ot -Ġke y -Ġm om -p ut -Ġany thing -Ġexper ience -att le -Ġm ind -a ff -om m -Ġf uture -g ed -Ġc ut -Ġto t -it ch -Ġv ideo -Ġinvest ig -Ġn et -ĠM y -r ict -i en -. ) -Ġimp ro -th ough -ward s -Ġcon nect -ĠM ed -sel ves -ens ive -m b -o ber -at ors -A n -Ġ5 0 -Ġre du -res ent -Ġab ove -Ġf re -ĠEuro pe -s w -Ġam ount -ĠA pp -Ġe ither -Ġmil it -Ġan al -Ġf ail -ĠE n -al es -Ġspec ial -Ġbl ack -I T -c her -Ġlook ing -Ġf ire -y n -Ġal most -o on -Ġstud y -Ġm iss -c hes -ro wn -Ġt re -Ġcommun ity -Ġmed ia -Ġf ood -Ġcom es -ĠUn iversity -Ġsing le -Wh at -u ly -Ġh alf -ag ue -h od -ĠRep ublic -Ġstart ed -Ġqu ick -ot o -b ook -Ġiss ue -it or -Ġel se -Ġcons ider -2 6 -ro du -Ġt aken -2 8 -9 9 -ĠW ith -Ġtr ue -Ġw a -Ġtr ad -Ġag o -Ġm ess -ie f -Ġadd ed -o ke -Ġb ad -Ġf av -3 3 -Ġsim ilar -as k -ĠD on -Ġcharact er -ort s -ĠH ouse -Ġreport ed -Ġty pe -v al -i od -ĠHow ever -Ġt arg -Ġent ire -pp ing -Ġhist ory -Ġl ive -ff ic -.... .... -ed eral -Ġtr ying -Ġdisc uss -ĠH ar -ac es -l ished -Ġse lf -os p -re st -Ġro om -el t -Ġf all -ol ution -Ġe t -Ġ x -Ġis n -Ġide a -b o -Ġs ound -ĠD ep -Ġsome one -ci ally -ull y -Ġf oc -Ġob ject -if t -ap er -Ġplay er -Ġr ather -Ġserv ice -as hing -ĠD o -ĠP art -ru g -m on -p ly -Ġm or -Ġnot hing -Ġprov ide -I C -un g -Ġpart y -Ġex ist -Ġm ag -7 0 -Ġr ul -Ġh ouse -Ġbeh ind -Ġhow ever -ĠW orld -Ġs um -Ġapp lic -Ġ ; -Ġfun ction -g r -ĠP ol -Ġfr ont -2 00 -Ġser ies -Ġt em -Ġty p -ill s -Ġo pt -Ġpoint s -Ġbel ow -itt ed -Ġspec ific -Ġ201 7 -um b -Ġr a -Ġpre vious -Ġpre t -re me -Ġc ustom -Ġcour t -ĠM e -Ġre pl -Ġwho le -g o -c er -Ġt reat -ĠA ct -Ġprob ably -Ġle arn -end er -ĠA ss -Ġvers ion -n ow -Ġche ck -ĠC al -R E -min ist -O n -our ces -Ġben ef -Ġd oc -Ġdet er -Ġen c -Ġsu per -Ġadd ress -Ġv ict -Ġ201 3 -Ġme as -t r -Ġf ield -W hen -Ġsign ific -u ge -Ġfe at -Ġcomm on -l oad -Ġbe gin -Ġbr ing -Ġa ction -er man -Ġdesc rib -Ġind ust -Ġwant ed -ri ed -m ing -Ġatt empt -4 5 -f er -Ġd ue -ress ion -# # -Ġsh all -Ġs ix -o o -Ġst ep -Ġp ub -Ġhim self -Ġ2 3 -Ġc op -Ġd est -Ġst op -A C -ib ility -Ġl ab -ic ult -Ġhour s -Ġcre ate -Ġf urther -ĠAmeric a -ĠC ity -Ġd ou -he ad -S T -ĠN orth -c ing -Ġn ational -u le -ĠIn st -Ġt aking -ĠQ u -ir t -Ġre d -Ġrese arch -v iron -ĠG e -Ġbre ak -an a -Ġsp ace -ater ial -Ġrec ent -ĠA b -Ġgener al -Ġh it -Ġper iod -Ġevery thing -ive ly -Ġph ys -Ġsay ing -an ks -Ġc ou -Ġc ult -ac ed -e al -u ation -Ġc oun -l u -Ġinclud e -Ġpos ition -ĠA fter -ĠCan ad -ĠE m -Ġim m -ĠR ed -Ġp ick -Ġcom pl -Ġm atter -re g -e xt -ang u -is c -o le -a ut -Ġcomp et -e ed -f ect -Ġ2 1 -ĠS en -ĠThe se -as ing -Ġcan not -Ġin it -Ġrel ations -ac hed -Ġb ar -Ġ4 0 -ĠT H -Ġ201 2 -Ġv ol -Ġg round -Ġsec urity -Ġup d -il t -3 5 -Ġconc ern -ĠJ ust -Ġwh ite -Ġseem s -ĠH er -pe cially -i ents -Ġann oun -Ġf ig -ight s -Ġst ri -l ike -id s -Ġs us -Ġw atch -Ġ â -Ġw ind -ĠC ont -Ġit self -Ġm ass -A l -y le -iqu e -ĠN ational -Ġab s -Ġp ack -Ġout side -Ġan im -Ġp ain -et er -Ġman ag -du ct -og n -Ġ ] -ĠSe pt -se c -o ff -ĠJ an -Ġf oot -ad es -Ġth ird -Ġm ot -Ġev idence -int on -Ġth reat -a pt -pl es -c le -Ġl o -Ġde cl -Ġit em -med i -Ġrep resent -om b -am er -Ġsignific ant -og raph -s u -Ġc al -i res -00 00 -I D -A M -Ġsim ply -Ġlong er -Ġf ile -O T -c he -S o -ate g -or g -ĠH is -Ġen er -Ġd om -Ġup on -il i -": " -Ġthem selves -Ġcom ing -Ġqu ite -Ġdiff icult -ĠB ar -il ities -re l -end s -c ial -6 4 -Ġwom an -ra p -y r -Ġne cess -ip s -Ġte xt -Ġrequ ire -Ġmilit ary -Ġre view -Ġresp ons -7 5 -Ġsub ject -Ġinst ead -Ġiss ues -Ġg en -" ," -Ġmin utes -Ġwe ap -r ay -am ed -t ime -b l -H ow -Ġc ode -ĠS m -Ġhig her -ĠSt e -r is -Ġp age -Ġstud ents -ĠIn tern -Ġmet hod -ĠA ug -ĠP er -ĠA g -Ġpolic y -ĠS w -Ġex ec -Ġac cept -um e -rib ut -Ġword s -Ġfin al -Ġchang es -ĠDem ocr -Ġfriend s -Ġres pect -Ġe p -Ġcomp an -iv il -Ġdam age -** ** -og le -viron ment -Ġne g -ent al -Ġa p -Ġtot al -iv al -! " -l im -Ġneed s -Ġag re -Ġdevelop ment -Ġa ge -ip le -2 1 -Ġresult s -ĠA f -S h -Ġg un -ĠOb ama -ro ll -Ġ @ -Ġright s -ĠB rit -Ġrun ning -Ġwas n -Ġp ort -Ġr ate -Ġpret ty -Ġtarg et -Ġsa w -Ġc irc -Ġwor ks -ic ro -al t -o ver -ww w -Th at -l ier -Ġevery one -ud e -Ġp ie -idd le -ra el -Ġr ad -Ġbl ock -Ġw alk -T o -ã ģ -n es -ĠA ust -a ul -ro te -ĠS outh -ess ion -op h -Ġshow s -Ġs ite -Ġj o -Ġr isk -cl us -l t -Ġin j -id ing -ĠS pe -Ġch all -ir m -Ġ2 2 -itt ing -st r -Ġh y -L E -ke y -Ġbe gan -at ur -ashing ton -l am -ĠD av -b it -Ġs ize -ĠP ar -3 8 -ourn al -f ace -Ġdec ision -Ġl arg -Ġj ud -re ct -Ġcontin ue -ĠO ct -ove red -ĠI nt -==== ==== -Ġp arent -ĠW ill -Ġeas y -Ġd rug -ang er -Ġs ense -Ġd i -id ay -Ġener gy -ist ic -Ġass oci -ar ter -ob al -e ks -ĠE l -ur ch -Ġg irl -o e -it le -Ġ2 8 -ĠC he -Ġrequ est -Ġso on -Ġh ost -k y -Ġst ates -om es -Ġm aterial -le x -Ġmom ent -Ġan sw -on se -Ġes pecially -Ġn orm -Ġserv ices -p ite -r an -Ġro le -4 4 -) : -Ġc red -C l -____ ____ -Ġm at -Ġl og -ĠCl inton -O U -Ġoff ice -Ġ2 6 -Ġch arg -Ġtr ack -m a -Ġhe art -Ġb all -Ġperson al -Ġbuild ing -n a -s et -b ody -ĠBl ack -Ġincre ase -itt en -Ġneed ed -3 6 -3 2 -= " -Ġl ost -Ġbec ame -Ġgrou ps -ĠM us -Ġw rote -ĠP e -Ġpro p -j oy -à © -ĠWh ite -Ġde ad -. ' -Ġhtt p -Ġwe bs -O S -Ġins ide -Ġwr ong -Ġstat ement -Ġ ... -y l -Ġfil m -Ġmus ic -Ġsh are -ific ation -Ġre lease -Ġfor ward -Ġst ay -Ġcomp ut -it te -s er -Ġorig inal -Ġc ard -Ġc and -Ġd iv -at ural -Ġfav or -O M -Ġc ases -us es -Ġse ction -Ġle ave -g ing -ov ed -ĠW ashington -3 9 -ĠG l -Ġrequ ired -act ion -ap an -o or -it er -ĠK ing -Ġcount ries -ĠG erman -ll ing -Ġ2 7 -3 4 -Ġquest ions -Ġpr im -Ġc ell -Ġsh oot -Ġany one -ĠW est -Ġaff ect -ep end -Ġon line -ĠIs rael -ĠSept ember -Ġab ility -Ġcont ent -is es -Ġre ve -Ġl aun -Ġind ic -Ġfor ce -c ast -Ġso ld -av ing -f l -Ġso ft -Ġcompan ies -ce ed -Ġart icle -Ġa ud -Ġre v -Ġed uc -Ġplay ing -0 5 -Ġhe ld -ct or -Ġrele ased -Ġf ederal -3 7 -Ġad minist -Ġinter view -Ġinst all -Ġrece ived -Ġs ource -u k -P h -Ġser ious -Ġcre ated -Ġc ause -Ġim medi -Ġdef in -u el -ĠDep artment -ct ions -ĠC our -ĠN ow -z e -it es -it ution -Ġl ate -Ġspe ak -n ers -Ġleg al -ar i -ĠC or -Ġwe eks -Ġmod el -Ġp red -Ġex act -B C -ĠB y -IN G -os ing -Ġt akes -Ġreg ard -Ġopp ortun -Ġpr ice -Ġ19 8 -ĠA pr -f ully -Ġor d -Ġproble ms -ru ction -h am -ĠC ount -le ge -Ġlead ers -E T -le v -Ġde ep -olog ical -es e -h aps -ĠS ome -Ġp ers -Ġcont ract -Ġrelations hip -s p -ou d -Ġb ase -4 8 -m it -A d -anc ial -Ġcons um -Ġpot ential -Ġl angu -re m -et h -Ġrel ig -ress ed -6 6 -Ġl ink -Ġl ower -ay er -ĠJ une -Ġf em -un t -er c -ur d -Ġcont act -Ġ ill -Ġm other -Ġest ab -h tt -ĠM arch -ĠB ro -ĠCh ina -Ġ2 9 -Ġs qu -Ġprov ided -Ġa verage -as ons -Ġ201 1 -Ġex am -l in -5 5 -n ed -Ġper fect -Ġt ou -al se -u x -Ġbu y -Ġsh ot -Ġcol lect -Ġph ot -Ġplay ed -Ġsur pr -Ġofficial s -Ġsim ple -av y -Ġindust ry -Ġhand s -g round -Ġp ull -Ġr ound -Ġus er -Ġr ange -u ary -Ġpriv ate -op s -e es -Ġw ays -ĠM ich -Ġve h -Ġex cept -Ġter ms -im um -pp er -I ON -ore s -ĠDr agon -ou l -Ġd en -Ġperform ance -Ġb ill -c il -4 7 -Ġen vironment -Ġex c -ad d -Ġwor th -Ġp ict -Ġch ance -Ġ201 8 -b or -Ġspe ed -ict ion -Ġal leg -ĠJ apan -at ory -re et -Ġm atch -ĠI I -Ġst ru -ord er -Ġst e -Ġl iving -Ġst ruct -in o -Ġse par -her n -Ġresp onse -Ġen joy -Ġv ia -A D -um ents -ace book -Ġmem ber -ib r -iz ing -Ġto ol -ĠM on -ĠWh ile -h ood -ĠA ng -ĠD ef -Ġoff er -T r -a ur -Ġturn ed -ĠJ uly -d own -an ced -Ġrec ently -ĠE ar -Ġc e -ĠSt ar -ĠC ong -rough t -Ġbl ood -Ġhop e -Ġcom ment -ain t -Ġar ri -il es -Ġpartic ip -ough t -ri ption -0 8 -4 9 -Ġg ave -Ġse lect -Ġkill ed -sy ch -Ġgo es -i j -Ġc oll -Ġimp act -at ives -ĠS er -0 9 -ĠAug ust -Ġb oy -d e -ĠD es -Ġf elt -U S -Ġexpect ed -Ġim age -ĠM ark -cc ording -o ice -E C -ĠM ag -en ed -h old -ĠP ost -Ġpre vent -N o -Ġinvol ved -Ġey es -Ġquick ly -A t -un k -Ġbeh av -Ġ ur -Ġl ed -c ome -e y -Ġcand id -Ġear lier -Ġfoc us -et y -P ro -led ge -ix ed -ill ed -Ġpop ular -A P -Ġset t -l ight -Ġvar ious -in ks -Ġlevel s -Ġro ad -ell ig -ab les -he l -itte e -ĠG ener -y pe -Ġhe ard -ic les -Ġm is -Ġus ers -ĠS an -Ġimpro ve -Ġf ather -Ġse arch -The y -v il -Ġprof ess -Ġkn ew -Ġl oss -Ġev ents -6 5 -Ġb illion -0 7 -0 2 -ĠNew s -ĠA M -Ġco ver -w here -ens ion -Ġb ott -Ġare as -en ces -op e -ĠTw itter -a el -Ġget s -ĠGo ogle -Ġs n -i ant -Ġv ote -Ġnear ly -Ġinclud ed -Ġrec ogn -z z -m m -al ed -Ġhappen ed -0 4 -Ġh ot -Ġwho se -Ġc ivil -Ġsu ff -o es -it iz -ĠSy ri -Ġresp ond -Ġh on -Ġfeat ures -Ġeconom ic -ĠApr il -r im -Ġtechn ology -Ġo ption -ag ing -Ġpur ch -R e -Ġl at -ch ie -is l -Ġrec omm -u f -Ġtr aining -Ġeffect s -Ġf ast -Ġ201 0 -Ġocc ur -Ġwebs ite -Ġem ail -Ġs ens -e ch -Ġo il -Ġinf lu -Ġcurrent ly -ĠS ch -ĠAd d -Ġgo al -Ġsc ient -Ġcon v -1 00 -em y -Ġdec ided -Ġtra vel -Ġm ention -L L -0 3 -Ġe lection -Ġph one -Ġlook s -Ġsit uation -Ġc y -Ġh or -b ed -ĠCour t -a ily -av es -Ġqu ality -ĠCom p -w ise -Ġt able -Ġst aff -ĠW ind -et t -Ġtri ed -ide red -Ġadd ition -Ġb ox -Ġl ack -ar ily -Ġw ide -Ġm id -Ġbo ard -ys is -Ġant i -h a -Ġd ig -en ing -Ġd ro -C on -6 8 -Ġsl ow -b ased -se qu -Ġp ath -E x -ak er -Ġwork ed -Ġp en -Ġeng ine -Ġlook ed -ĠSu per -ĠS erv -Ġvict im -U n -Ġproper ty -Ġint rodu -Ġexec ut -ĠP M -L e -Ġcol or -ĠM ore -Ġ6 0 -Ġnet work -Ġd ate -c ul -id ge -Ġext ra -3 1 -Ġs le -6 7 -Ġw ond -Ġreport s -j ust -ĠAust ral -Ġcap ital -Ġen s -Ġcomm and -Ġallow ed -Ġpre p -Ġca pt -h ib -Ġnum bers -ch an -Ġf air -m p -om s -Ġre ach -W ith -t ain -Ġbro ad -Ġcou ple -ec ause -ly ing -ĠF eb -Ġsc reen -Ġl ives -Ġpri or -ĠCong ress -A r -Ġappro ach -Ġe mer -ar ies -ĠD is -s erv -ĠN e -Ġbu ilt -c ies -Ġre pe -Ġrul es -for ce -ĠP al -Ġfin ancial -Ġcons idered -ĠCh ar -n ces -ĠI S -Ġb rought -Ġb i -i ers -ĠS im -O P -Ġproduct s -Ġvis it -Ġdoc ument -Ġcon duct -Ġcomplete ly -in ing -ĠCal if -ib ly -Ġwr itten -ĠT V -em ents -Ġd raw -O ne -Ġpub lished -Ġsec ret -r ain -he t -ĠF acebook -ond ay -ĠU p -Ġsex ual -Ġth ous -ĠP at -Ġ ess -Ġstand ard -Ġar m -g es -ect ion -Ġf ell -Ġfore ign -an i -ĠFr iday -Ġreg ular -in ary -Ġincre ased -Ġus ually -Ġdem on -Ġd ark -Ġadd itional -ro l -ĠO f -Ġprodu ction -! ! -und red -Ġintern ational -id ents -ĠF ree -rou p -Ġr ace -Ġm ach -Ġh uge -A ll -le ar -ove mber -Ġto wn -Ġatt ention -ĠO ff -y ond -ĠThe n -f ield -Ġter ror -ra z -ĠB o -Ġmeet ing -ĠP ark -Ġar rest -Ġf ear -Ġa w -ĠV al -or ing -' , -Ġext reme -ar r -Ġwork ers -A fter -Ġ3 1 -n et -am ent -Ġdirect ly -Ġpop ulation -ub e -ĠOct ober -ĠI N -ĠJan uary -5 9 -ĠDav id -Ġc ross -ce mber -ĠF irst -Ġmess age -ir it -Ġn ation -Ġp oll -is ions -Ġansw er -n y -is ode -Ġcar ry -ĠRuss ia -Ġhe ar -eng th -ro y -Ġn atural -in ally -Ġdo g -m itted -Ġtr ade -Ġsub st -Ġmult iple -ĠAf ric -Ġf ans -Ġs ort -Ġgl obal -ic ation -ĠW ed -ar a -Ġa chie -Ġlangu age -ve y -Ġt al -Ġnecess ary -Ġdet ails -Ġs en -ĠS und -ĠRe g -ĠR ec -0 6 -Ġs il -ress ive -Ġmed ical -un ch -orn ia -Ġu nd -f ort -oc ks -ĠM onday -ues day -c raft -7 7 -ur t -Ġ ver -ĠH ill -Ġrece ive -Ġmor ning -es tern -Ġb ank -Ġs at -ir th -ĠH igh -Ġdev ice -ĠTH E -ĠCent er -Ġsaf e -Ġp le -ĠCanad a -Ġsystem s -Ġass ist -Ġsur v -Ġb attle -ĠS oc -vert is -S he -Ġp aper -Ġgrow th -Ġc ast -S c -Ġpl ans -ll ed -Ġpart s -Ġw all -Ġmove ment -Ġpract ice -im ately -Ġdis play -Ġsomet imes -om p -ĠP aul -ĠY es -k ing -5 8 -o ly -Ġs on -Ġav oid -ok es -ĠJ ew -Ġto wards -as c -Ġ // -ĠK ore -Ġtalk ing -Ġcor rect -Ġsp ent -ic ks -i able -e ared -Ġter m -Ġwant s -om ing -Ġ ut -Ġdou b -Ġfor ces -Ġp lease -6 9 -ĠN ovember -at form -ond on -Ġon es -Ġimmedi ately -ĠRuss ian -ĠM et -Ġde g -Ġparent s -C H -ĠAmeric ans -al y -ĠM od -Ġsh own -Ġcond itions -Ġst uff -Ġre b -ĠY our -Ġinclud es -n own -ĠS am -Ġexper ien -m ission -ĠE ven -augh t -Ġannoun ced -ĠRepublic an -Ġdeter min -Ġdescrib ed -ĠCount y -( ) -Ġdo or -Ġchang ed -Ġne igh -ĠH ere -Ġcle an -Ġp an -ĠDe cember -ĠEurope an -ir ing -ap ter -Ġcl ub -ĠT uesday -Ġp aid -ĠN et -Ġattack s -Ġcharact ers -Ġal one -Ġdirect or -d om -Ġ3 5 -Ġl oad -Ġr out -ĠCalif ornia -Ġfin ally -Ġr ac -Ġcont r -Ġexact ly -res h -p ri -ĠIs lam -Ġn ature -Ġcare er -Ġlat est -Ġcon vers -ĠS l -p ose -ci ent -ĠIn c -iv ity -8 8 -ĠA tt -ĠM or -nes day -Ġwe ight -k en -Ġnot e -Ġteam s -Ġ \ -air s -ĠG reen -Ġh undred -on ent -Ġstre ng -Ġcons ist -ic ated -Ġreg ul -Ġl ic -ast ic -Ġt en -urs day -ellig ence -ous ly -ĠU K -B I -Ġcost s -Ġind epend -ĠA P -Ġnorm al -Ġh om -Ġob vious -Ġs we -Ġst ar -Ġread y -ac her -Ġimp lement -g est -Ġs ong -ĠG et -ĠL ab -Ġinterest ing -us ing -Ġg iving -ĠSund ay -Ġet c -Ġm iddle -Ġrem ember -r ight -os ition -ut ions -Ġm ax -4 6 -Ġyour self -Ġdem and -Ġtreat ment -Ġd anger -ĠC ons -Ġgu y -ĠBrit ish -Ġphys ical -Ġrel ated -Ġrem ain -Ġcould n -Ġref er -Ġc itiz -b ox -EN T -bo ard -Ġin n -I G -er o -ĠSt reet -osp ital -ren ch -cher s -Ġst ra -O L -ag er -ĠA N -Ġeas ily -I A -en ge -in y -Ġcl os -ock ed -Ġus es -ĠC oun -I m -u ild -? ? -m ore -Ġan g -Ġwr ite -ol ute -5 7 -Ġlead er -Ġread ing -< / -Ġaut om -est s -4 3 -Ġleg isl -ĠG old -Ġdesign ed -ĠS T -ĠLe g -a res -Ġbe aut -ĠT ex -Ġappear s -Ġstru gg -ĠR om -Ġ 00 -Ġcho ice -Ġparticular ly -ĠF rom -op er -ĠL ondon -ann ed -Ġallow s -ob ile -Ġdiffere nce -âĢ ¢ -ĠV iew -ĠWed nesday -Ġal though -Ġrel ative -Ġapplic ation -ate ver -Ġare n -Ġmy self -Ġim ag -Ġdis e -Ġsoc iety -Ġfre qu -ĠEng lish -Ġpo or -ĠD ay -Ġwrit ing -Ġse ven -Ġstart ing -Ġb ud -Ġpr int -ĠTr ans -uf act -ĠSt ud -n ew -Ġcr im -Ġg ives -Ġco ol -a e -i ance -ĠGener al -Ġthink ing -Ġsa ve -Ġlim ited -ĠPart y -Ġmean ing -p en -ow ers -ĠJ ack -E M -Ġn ice -ru pt -Ġg as -Ġe ight -Ġfe et -Ġeff ort -Ġ ign -ic it -B l -co in -Ġop in -Ġbr ain -Wh ile -he st -ĠTh ursday -Ġwould n -augh ter -Ġtou ch -le ments -Ġstud ies -Ġcent er -c ont -or ge -Ġcomput er -Ġinvestig ation -P l -or ks -Ġ200 8 -Ġincre asing -Ġst ore -Ġcom ments -Ġb al -m en -Ġdo ll -Ġl iber -Ġw ife -Ġlaw s -atur day -it ness -Ġmod ern -ĠS k -Ġadminist ration -Ġopportun ity -Ġs al -Ġpower ful -M y -Ġclaim s -ĠEar th -ord s -Ġt itle -Ġes c -n ame -N ot -om en -Ġbe yond -Ġc amer -Ġse ll -it ute -ear ch -Ġapp l -im ent -4 2 -ĠAr t -Ġun f -Ġviol ence -ur g -ĠE ast -Ġcomp ared -Ġopt ions -Ġthrough out -Ġv s -ig r -. [ -ac hes -7 8 -Ġfil es -F L -E L -ar ian -ĠJ ames -ĠA ir -an ch -Ġdet ail -Ġpie ce -P S -Ġn amed -Ġeduc ation -Ġdri ve -Ġitem s -Ġstud ent -ic ed -: : -ic o -Ġth row -Ġsc ene -Ġcomple x -Ġ200 9 -Ġpre c -ĠB re -7 9 -Ġcon cept -Ġstat us -am ing -Ġd ied -Ġknow ledge -Ġbegin ning -O D -ru ary -Ġcertain ly -Ġgu ys -Ġsl ight -in n -ound s -Ġf ine -Ġf at -ic ations -Ġper haps -ĠA nt -Ġinc ome -Ġhtt ps -Ġmajor ity -port s -st on -Ġgreat er -Ġfe ed -ent ially -Ġsaf ety -Ġun ique -and om -Ġg one -Ġshow ed -Ġhist or -Ġcoun ter -i us -id a -Ġlead ing -i pe -Ġs end -ĠDon ald -er ve -Ġdef ense -ines e -Ġy es -ĠF ire -ĠMus lim -ra q -Ġcontin ued -os h -Ġprov ides -Ġpr ison -ĠP re -Ġhapp y -Ġeconom y -Ġtr ust -ag s -ĠG ame -Ġweap ons -um an -ĠC le -it ation -Ġanal ysis -ĠT imes -Ġsc ience -- > -Ġfig ure -Ġdis app -ent y -Ġsoft ware -Ġu lt -Ġoffic ers -N ew -I s -Ġrem ains -ĠInd ia -Ġp sych -ri ef -Ġc at -es c -Ġob serv -Ġst age -ĠD ark -Ġent er -ch ange -Ġpass ed -Ġdes pite -ĠO ut -Ġmov ie -r s -Ġv oice -m ine -ĠPl ay -Ġto ward -ĠT er -Ġreg ion -Ġval ues -or ters -Ġm ount -Ġoffic er -ĠO ther -b an -Ġh ous -w ood -ro om -I V -ĠS un -se e -ĠO ver -ro g -9 0 -Ġl ay -ĠT ur -a wn -Ġpress ure -ĠS ub -Ġbook s -ed om -ĠS and -A A -ag o -Ġre asons -f ord -Ġactiv ity -U T -N ow -ĠSen ate -ce ll -n ight -Ġcall s -in ter -Ġlet ter -ĠR ob -ĠJ e -Ġcho ose -ĠL aw -G et -B e -Ġro b -Ġtyp es -Ġpl atform -Ġqu arter -R A -ĠT ime -Ġmay be -ĠC r -9 5 -p re -Ġmov ing -Ġl if -Ġgo ld -Ġs om -Ġpat ients -Ġtr uth -ĠK e -ur ance -ant ly -m ar -Ġchar ge -ĠG reat -Ġce le ----------------- ---------------- -Ġro ck -ro id -an cy -Ġcred it -a ud -B y -ĠE very -Ġmov ed -ing er -rib ution -Ġn ames -Ġstra ight -ĠHe alth -ĠW ell -Ġfe ature -Ġr ule -Ġsc he -in ated -ĠMich ael -ber g -4 1 -il ed -b and -Ġcl ick -ĠAng el -on ents -Â Ń -ĠI raq -ĠS aturday -Ġa ware -p art -Ġpat tern -O W -ĠL et -Ġgr ad -ign ed -Ġassoci ated -Ġst yle -n o -i ation -a ith -il ies -Ġst ories -ur ation -Ġindividual s -ĠâĢ ¦ -m iss -ĠAss oci -ish ing -ab y -Ġsum mer -ĠB en -Ġ3 2 -Ġar ch -ut y -ĠTex as -h ol -Ġfull y -Ġm ill -Ġfollow ed -ĠB ill -ĠInd ian -ĠSec ret -ĠB el -ĠFeb ruary -Ġjob s -Ġseem ed -ĠGo vern -i pped -Ġreal ity -Ġl ines -Ġp ark -Ġmeas ure -ĠO ur -I M -Ġbro ther -Ġgrow ing -Ġb an -Ġest im -Ġc ry -ĠS chool -Ġme chan -ĠO F -ĠWind ows -Ġr ates -ĠO h -Ġpos itive -Ġcult ure -ist ics -ic a -Ġh ar -y a -ite ly -i pp -Ġm ap -en cies -ĠWill iam -I I -ak ers -5 6 -ĠM art -ĠR em -Ġal tern -it ude -Ġco ach -row d -D on -Ġk ids -Ġj ournal -Ġcor por -Ġf alse -Ġwe b -Ġsle ep -Ġcont ain -Ġst o -Ġb ed -iver se -ĠR ich -ĠCh inese -Ġp un -Ġme ant -k nown -Ġnot ice -Ġfavor ite -a ven -Ġcond ition -Ġpur pose -) ) -Ġorgan ization -Ġchall eng -Ġman ufact -Ġsus p -ĠA c -Ġcrit ic -un es -uc lear -Ġm er -vent ion -Ġ8 0 -Ġm ist -ĠU s -ĠT or -htt p -ol f -Ġlarg er -Ġadv ant -Ġrese ar -Ġact ions -m l -Ġke pt -Ġa im -, ' -c ol -Ġbenef its -if ying -Ġact ual -ĠIntern ational -Ġveh icle -Ġch ief -Ġeff orts -ĠLe ague -ĠM ost -Ġwa it -Ġad ult -Ġover all -Ġspe ech -Ġhigh ly -Ġfem ale -Ġer ror -Ġeffect ive -5 4 -Ġenc our -w ell -Ġfail ed -Ġcons erv -Ġprogram s -Ġt rou -Ġa head -5 00 -vertis ement -I P -ĠF ound -p ir -Ġ % -Ġcr ime -and er -Ġloc ation -ĠI ran -Ġbehav ior -az ing -Ġr are -Ġem b -Ġca used -Ġsh ip -Ġact ive -Ġcont ribut -Ġg reen -Ġac qu -Ġref lect -ven ue -Ġf irm -Ġb irth -] . -Ġclear ly -Ġem ot -Ġag ency -ri age -Ġmem ory -9 8 -S A -ĠSe e -ac ing -C C -Ġbig gest -Ġr ap -Ġbas ic -Ġb and -e at -Ġsus pect -ĠM ac -Ġ9 0 -m ark -ist an -Ġsp read -am s -k i -as y -ra v -ĠR ober -Ġdemon str -r ated -Ġabs olute -Ġpl aces -Ġim pl -ibr ary -Ġc ards -Ġdest roy -Ġv irt -ve re -Ġapp eared -y an -p oint -Ġbe g -Ġtem per -s pe -ant ed -ear s -ĠD irect -Ġl ength -Ġbl og -am b -Ġint eg -Ġres ources -ac c -if ul -Ġsp ot -Ġfor ced -Ġthous ands -ĠMin ister -Ġqu al -ĠF rench -at ically -Ġgener ally -Ġdr ink -Ġth us -I L -od es -Ġappro pri -ĠRe ad -Ġwh om -Ġey e -Ġcol lege -Ġ4 5 -ire ction -Ġens ure -Ġapp arent -id ers -Ġrelig ious -Ġmin or -ol ic -Ġt ro -ĠWh y -rib ute -m et -Ġprim ary -Ġdevelop ed -Ġpe ace -Ġsk in -st e -av a -Ġbl ue -Ġfam ilies -Ġ ir -Ġapp ly -Ġin form -ĠSm ith -C T -i i -Ġlim it -Ġres ist -........ ........ -um n -Ġconf lic -Ġtw e -ud d -ĠT om -Ġl iter -qu e -b on -Ġha ir -Ġevent ually -Ġp us -Ġhelp ed -Ġag g -or ney -ĠApp le -Ġf it -ĠS ur -Ġpre m -Ġs ales -Ġsecond s -Ġstreng th -Ġfeel ing -¿ ½ -Ġt our -Ġknow s -o om -Ġex erc -Ġsom ew -ï ¿½ -> > -Ġsp okes -Ġide as -Ġreg ist -so ft -ĠD el -ĠP C -Ġpro pos -Ġlaun ch -Ġbott om -T H -ĠP lease -v est -it z -ĠIn ter -Ġsc ript -Ġr at -ar ning -Ġ il -ĠJ er -ĠA re -Ġwh atever -ok en -ci ence -Ġmod e -Ġag ree -Ġs ources -Ġinit ial -Ġrest rict -Ġwond er -us ion -## ## -ĠS il -vil le -Ġb urn -t w -as ion -Ġ £ -Ġn or -u ing -Ġre ached -Ġs un -Ġc ateg -ig ration -Ġc ook -Ġprom ot -Ġm ale -Ġcl imate -Ġf ix -Ġalleg ed -U R -all ed -Ġim ages -C ont -ot a -Ġschool s -i os -Ġd rop -Ġst ream -ĠM o -Ġprevious ly -al ing -Ġp et -Ġdou ble -Ġ( @ -ann el -Ġdef ault -t ies -Ġr ank -ĠD ec -ĠCoun cil -Ġweap on -Ġst ock -Ġanal y -ĠSt r -Ġpict ure -ĠPol ice -f erence -Ġcent ury -Ġcitiz ens -Ġon to -Ġexp and -Ġhe ro -ĠS ol -Ġw ild -Ġupd ate -Ġcustom ers -r ont -d ef -Ġl ik -Ġcrim inal -ĠChrist ian -S P -7 6 -Ġle aving -Ġother wise -ĠD ist -Ġbas is -5 2 -5 3 -ic ip -ĠB er -Ġrecomm end -Ġfl oor -Ġc rowd -ol es -Ġ7 0 -Ġcent ral -ĠE v -Ġd ream -Ġdown load -Ġconf ir -ĠTh om -Ġwind ow -Ġhapp ens -Ġun it -Ġt end -Ġs pl -Ġbec omes -Ġfight ing -Ġpred ict -ĠP ress -ĠP ower -Ġhe avy -ak ed -Ġf an -or ter -ate gy -B A -iz es -Ġsp end -H ere -Ġ200 7 -Ġad op -ĠH am -Ġfoot ball -ĠP ort -od ay -5 1 -amp ions -Ġtrans fer -h t -Ġ3 8 -ter m -ac ity -Ġb ur -] , -tern al -r ig -b ut -Ġthere fore -ĠB ecause -res p -re y -Ġm ission -S ome -Ġnot ed -Ġass um -Ġdise ase -Ġed it -Ġprog ress -r d -ĠB rown -oc al -Ġadd ing -Ġra ised -ĠAn y -Ġt ick -Ġsee ing -ĠPe ople -Ġagre ement -Ġser ver -Ġw at -Ġdeb ate -Ġsupp osed -il ing -Ġlarg est -Ġsuccess ful -ĠP ri -ĠDemocr atic -Ġj ump -ĠSyri a -Ġown ers -Ġoff ers -Ġshoot ing -Ġeff ic -se y -Ġha ven -ver se -te red -ĠL ight -im al -ĠB ig -Ġdef end -Ġbe at -Ġrecord s -% ) -Ġsc en -Ġemploy ees -Ġdev ices -he m -Ġcom mer -ĠM ex -Ġbenef it -ĠPro f -Ġil leg -Ġsur face -ĠAl so -Ġh arm -ing ly -w ide -ĠA lex -Ġsh ut -ĠC ur -Ġl ose -p m -Ġchall enge -se mb -Ġst ation -Ġint elligence -Ġacc ur -ĠFl or -Ġrequ ires -ĠM al -b um -Ġh ospital -Ġsp irit -Ġoff ered -Ġprodu ce -ĠComm un -Ġcreat ing -Ġcr is -s pect -Ġend ed -Ġd aily -Ġvot ers -land s -i as -i h -on a -Ġsm art -ĠOff ice -ĠL ord -ri al -ĠIntern et -Ġcirc um -Ġextreme ly -' . -Ġopin ion -ĠM il -Ġg ain -B S -ĠF in -y p -Ġuse ful -Ġbud get -Ġcom fort -is f -Ġback ground -el ine -Ġep isode -Ġen emy -Ġtri al -Ġestab lish -d ate -ĠC ap -Ġcontin ues -Ġshow ing -ĠUn ion -w ith -Ġpost ed -ĠSy stem -Ġe at -ri an -Ġr ise -ĠGerman y -il s -Ġsign ed -Ġv ill -Ġgr and -m or -ĠEng land -Ġproject s -um ber -Ġconf erence -z a -Ġrespons ible -ĠAr ab -Ġlearn ed -âĢĶ âĢĶ -i pping -ĠGe orge -O C -Ġreturn ed -ĠAustral ia -Ġb rief -Q u -Ġbr and -ill ing -ab led -Ġhig hest -Ġtr ain -ĠComm ission -wh ile -Ġn om -cept ion -Ġm ut -ĠBl ue -Ġinc ident -v ant -8 6 -ĠI D -Ġn uclear -7 4 -ĠL ike -ĠR E -ĠM icro -l i -m ail -Ġcharg es -8 9 -Ġad just -ad o -Ġear th -N A -Ġpr ices -P A -Ġd raft -Ġrun s -Ġcandid ate -ens es -Ġmanag ement -ĠPh il -ĠM iss -Ġte ach -g ram -Ġunderstand ing -a it -ic ago -A dd -ĠE p -sec ut -Ġsepar ate -Ġinst ance -Ġe th -Ġun less -**** **** -ĠF ore -in ate -Ġoper ations -S p -Ġf aith -g ar -ĠCh urch -ron ic -Ġconf ig -os ure -Ġactiv ities -Ġtrad itional -Ġ3 6 -Ġd irection -Ġmach ine -Ġsur round -Ġp ush -un ction -ĠE U -Ġeas ier -Ġarg ument -G B -Ġm icro -Ġsp ending -iz ations -Ġthe ory -ad ow -Ġcall ing -ĠL ast -Ġd er -Ġinflu ence -Ġcomm it -Ġph oto -Ġun c -ist ry -g n -ast e -ack s -Ġdis p -ad y -d o -ĠG ood -Ġ ` -Ġw ish -Ġreve aled -Âł Âł -l ig -Ġen force -ĠComm ittee -Ġche m -Ġmil es -Ġinterest ed -Ġsol ution -ic y -in ct -Ġ- > -ĠD et -Ġrem oved -Ġcomp ar -e ah -Ġpl ant -ĠS ince -Ġachie ve -Ġadvant age -Ġslight ly -b ing -Ġpl aced -u nder -201 5 -ĠM ad -Ġt im -os es -Ġc ru -ĠR ock -Ġmost ly -Ġneg ative -Ġset ting -Ġprodu ced -Ġm ur -Ġconnect ion -ĠM er -Ġdri ver -Ġexecut ive -Ġass ault -Ġb orn -ĠV er -t ained -Ġstruct ure -Ġredu ce -Ġdec ades -Ġd ed -u ke -ĠM any -idd en -Ġle ague -S e -Ġjo in -Ġdis co -Ġd ie -c ks -act ions -Ġass ess -ag n -Ġgo als -our s -I R -Ġsen ior -ill er -m od -ip ment -oc ol -u y -ĠQ ue -Ġpart ies -ir gin -Ġle arning -it able -Ġstre et -Ġcamer a -A pp -Ġsk ills -b re -c ious -Ġcele br -ĠFr anc -Ġexist ing -Ġwill ing -l or -Ġ id -ĠSp ace -Ġcrit ical -ĠL a -ortun ately -Ġser ve -Ġc old -Ġspec ies -T S -Ġanim als -ĠB ay -Ġold er -ĠU nder -est ic -ĠT re -Ġte acher -Ġpre fer -v is -Ġth read -ĠM att -Ġmanag er -ãĥ » -Ġprofess ional -ĠV ol -Ġnot es -The se -ul a -Ġf resh -ent ed -u zz -ed y -clus ion -ĠR el -Ġdoub t -E O -Ġopen ed -ĠB it -Ad vertisement -Ġgu ess -ĠU N -Ġse qu -Ġexpl ain -ott en -Ġatt ract -ak s -Ġstr ing -Ġcont ext -oss ible -ĠRepublic ans -Ġsol id -Ġc ities -Ġask ing -Ġr andom -u ps -ur ies -ar ant -dd en -g l -ĠFlor ida -Ġdep end -ĠSc ott -Ġ3 3 -Ġi T -ic on -Ġmention ed -Ġ2 000 -Ġclaim ed -Ġdefin itely -ul f -Ġc ore -Ġopen ing -ĠCon st -wh ich -ĠT ra -A G -7 2 -Ġbelie ved -ad a -Ġ4 8 -ĠSec urity -yr ight -ĠP et -ĠL ou -Ġhold ing -======== ======== -Ġ ice -Ġb row -Ġauthor ities -h ost -w ord -Ġsc ore -ĠD iv -Ġcell s -Ġtrans l -Ġneigh bor -Ġrem ove -u ct -Ġdist rict -ĠA ccording -Ġwor se -Ġconcern s -Ġpresident ial -Ġpolic ies -ĠH all -7 3 -Ġh us -A Y -Ġ200 6 -ĠJ ud -Ġindepend ent -ĠJust ice -ili ar -pr int -igh ter -Ġprotect ion -z en -Ġsu dden -h ouse -ĠJ es -P R -ĠIn f -Ġb ul -Ġ _ -ĠServ ice -ĠP R -Ġstr ategy -ff ect -Ġgirl s -Ġmiss ing -oy al -ĠTe am -ul ated -Ġd at -Ġpolit ics -ab or -A ccording -Ġspe ll -Ġg raph -ort hern -T C -A b -Ġlab or -is her -Ġk ick -ĠiT unes -Ġstep s -pos es -Ġsmall er -E n -ber t -Ġro ll -Ġresear chers -Ġcl osed -Ġtrans port -Ġlaw y -________ ________ -ĠCh icago -Ġas pect -Ġn one -Ġmar riage -9 6 -Ġe lements -ĠF re -ĠS al -Ġd ram -F C -t op -e qu -Ġhe aring -Ġsupport ed -Ġtest ing -co hol -Ġmass ive -Ġst ick -Ġgu ard -is co -ph one -F rom -How ever -Ġb order -Ġcop y -ograph y -l ist -7 1 -Ġown er -cl ass -ru it -r ate -ĠO nce -Ġdig ital -Ġt ask -ER S -Ġinc red -t es -+ + -ĠFr ance -Ġb reat -ow l -Ġiss ued -ĠW estern -Ġdet ect -Ġpart ners -Ġsh ared -ĠC all -Ġcan cer -ac he -rib e -Ġexpl ained -Ġhe at -{ " -Ġinvest ment -ĠB ook -Ġw ood -Ġtool s -ĠAl though -Ġbelie f -Ġcris is -Ġg e -ĠM P -Ġoper ation -ty pe -~ ~ -g a -Ġcont ains -ant a -Ġexp ress -ĠG roup -ĠJ ournal -k a -Ġam b -ĠUS A -Ġfind ing -Ġfund ing -h ow -Ġestab lished -ide os -Ġdeg ree -Ġdanger ous -ang ing -Ġfre edom -pp ort -out hern -Ġch urch -Ġc atch -ĠTw o -Ġpres ence -ĠGu ard -U p -Ġauthor ity -ĠPro ject -Ġbut ton -Ġcon sequ -Ġval id -Ġwe ak -Ġstart s -Ġref erence -ĠM em -" ) -U N -or age -ĠO pen -Ġcol lection -y m -g ency -Ġbeaut iful -ro s -Ġtell s -Ġwa iting -n el -Ġprov iding -ĠDemocr ats -Ġd aughter -Ġm aster -Ġpur poses -ĠJapan ese -Ġequ al -Ġturn s -Ġdoc uments -Ġwatch ing -R es -Ġr an -201 4 -Ġre ject -ĠKore a -Ġvictim s -Le vel -ere nces -Ġw itness -Ġ3 4 -Ġre form -com ing -Ġocc up -Ġc aught -Ġtra ffic -ad ing -Ġmod els -ar io -Ġserv ed -Ġb atter -u ate -ĠSecret ary -Ġagre ed -Ġtr uly -yn am -ĠR et -Ġun its -ĠRes earch -h and -az ine -ĠM ike -Ġvar iety -ot al -Ġam azing diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/gpt2-tiny-vocab.json b/tests/data/gpt2/gpt2-tiny-vocab.json deleted file mode 100644 index f83c21b0188bc4833e71692cd56828e923817da8..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/tests/data/gpt2/gpt2-tiny-vocab.json +++ /dev/null @@ -1 +0,0 @@ -{"!":0,"\"":1,"#":2,"$":3,"%":4,"&":5,"'":6,"(":7,")":8,"*":9,"+":10,",":11,"-":12,".":13,"/":14,"0":15,"1":16,"2":17,"3":18,"4":19,"5":20,"6":21,"7":22,"8":23,"9":24,":":25,";":26,"<":27,"=":28,">":29,"?":30,"@":31,"A":32,"B":33,"C":34,"D":35,"E":36,"F":37,"G":38,"H":39,"I":40,"J":41,"K":42,"L":43,"M":44,"N":45,"O":46,"P":47,"Q":48,"R":49,"S":50,"T":51,"U":52,"V":53,"W":54,"X":55,"Y":56,"Z":57,"[":58,"\\":59,"]":60,"^":61,"_":62,"`":63,"a":64,"b":65,"c":66,"d":67,"e":68,"f":69,"g":70,"h":71,"i":72,"j":73,"k":74,"l":75,"m":76,"n":77,"o":78,"p":79,"q":80,"r":81,"s":82,"t":83,"u":84,"v":85,"w":86,"x":87,"y":88,"z":89,"{":90,"|":91,"}":92,"~":93,"¡":94,"¢":95,"£":96,"¤":97,"¥":98,"¦":99,"§":100,"¨":101,"©":102,"ª":103,"«":104,"¬":105,"®":106,"¯":107,"°":108,"±":109,"²":110,"³":111,"´":112,"µ":113,"¶":114,"·":115,"¸":116,"¹":117,"º":118,"»":119,"¼":120,"½":121,"¾":122,"¿":123,"À":124,"Á":125,"Â":126,"Ã":127,"Ä":128,"Å":129,"Æ":130,"Ç":131,"È":132,"É":133,"Ê":134,"Ë":135,"Ì":136,"Í":137,"Î":138,"Ï":139,"Ð":140,"Ñ":141,"Ò":142,"Ó":143,"Ô":144,"Õ":145,"Ö":146,"×":147,"Ø":148,"Ù":149,"Ú":150,"Û":151,"Ü":152,"Ý":153,"Þ":154,"ß":155,"à":156,"á":157,"â":158,"ã":159,"ä":160,"å":161,"æ":162,"ç":163,"è":164,"é":165,"ê":166,"ë":167,"ì":168,"í":169,"î":170,"ï":171,"ð":172,"ñ":173,"ò":174,"ó":175,"ô":176,"õ":177,"ö":178,"÷":179,"ø":180,"ù":181,"ú":182,"û":183,"ü":184,"ý":185,"þ":186,"ÿ":187,"Ā":188,"ā":189,"Ă":190,"ă":191,"Ą":192,"ą":193,"Ć":194,"ć":195,"Ĉ":196,"ĉ":197,"Ċ":198,"ċ":199,"Č":200,"č":201,"Ď":202,"ď":203,"Đ":204,"đ":205,"Ē":206,"ē":207,"Ĕ":208,"ĕ":209,"Ė":210,"ė":211,"Ę":212,"ę":213,"Ě":214,"ě":215,"Ĝ":216,"ĝ":217,"Ğ":218,"ğ":219,"Ġ":220,"ġ":221,"Ģ":222,"ģ":223,"Ĥ":224,"ĥ":225,"Ħ":226,"ħ":227,"Ĩ":228,"ĩ":229,"Ī":230,"ī":231,"Ĭ":232,"ĭ":233,"Į":234,"į":235,"İ":236,"ı":237,"IJ":238,"ij":239,"Ĵ":240,"ĵ":241,"Ķ":242,"ķ":243,"ĸ":244,"Ĺ":245,"ĺ":246,"Ļ":247,"ļ":248,"Ľ":249,"ľ":250,"Ŀ":251,"ŀ":252,"Ł":253,"ł":254,"Ń":255,"Ġt":256,"Ġa":257,"he":258,"in":259,"re":260,"on":261,"Ġthe":262,"er":263,"Ġs":264,"at":265,"Ġw":266,"Ġo":267,"en":268,"Ġc":269,"it":270,"is":271,"an":272,"or":273,"es":274,"Ġb":275,"ed":276,"Ġf":277,"ing":278,"Ġp":279,"ou":280,"Ġan":281,"al":282,"ar":283,"Ġto":284,"Ġm":285,"Ġof":286,"Ġin":287,"Ġd":288,"Ġh":289,"Ġand":290,"ic":291,"as":292,"le":293,"Ġth":294,"ion":295,"om":296,"ll":297,"ent":298,"Ġn":299,"Ġl":300,"st":301,"Ġre":302,"ve":303,"Ġe":304,"ro":305,"ly":306,"Ġbe":307,"Ġg":308,"ĠT":309,"ct":310,"ĠS":311,"id":312,"ot":313,"ĠI":314,"ut":315,"et":316,"ĠA":317,"Ġis":318,"Ġon":319,"im":320,"am":321,"ow":322,"ay":323,"ad":324,"se":325,"Ġthat":326,"ĠC":327,"ig":328,"Ġfor":329,"ac":330,"Ġy":331,"ver":332,"ur":333,"Ġu":334,"ld":335,"Ġst":336,"ĠM":337,"'s":338,"Ġhe":339,"Ġit":340,"ation":341,"ith":342,"ir":343,"ce":344,"Ġyou":345,"il":346,"ĠB":347,"Ġwh":348,"ol":349,"ĠP":350,"Ġwith":351,"Ġ1":352,"ter":353,"ch":354,"Ġas":355,"Ġwe":356,"Ġ(":357,"nd":358,"ill":359,"ĠD":360,"if":361,"Ġ2":362,"ag":363,"ers":364,"ke":365,"Ġ\"":366,"ĠH":367,"em":368,"Ġcon":369,"ĠW":370,"ĠR":371,"her":372,"Ġwas":373,"Ġr":374,"od":375,"ĠF":376,"ul":377,"ate":378,"Ġat":379,"ri":380,"pp":381,"ore":382,"ĠThe":383,"Ġse":384,"us":385,"Ġpro":386,"Ġha":387,"um":388,"Ġare":389,"Ġde":390,"ain":391,"and":392,"Ġor":393,"igh":394,"est":395,"ist":396,"ab":397,"rom":398,"ĠN":399,"th":400,"Ġcom":401,"ĠG":402,"un":403,"op":404,"00":405,"ĠL":406,"Ġnot":407,"ess":408,"Ġex":409,"Ġv":410,"res":411,"ĠE":412,"ew":413,"ity":414,"ant":415,"Ġby":416,"el":417,"os":418,"ort":419,"oc":420,"qu":421,"Ġfrom":422,"Ġhave":423,"Ġsu":424,"ive":425,"ould":426,"Ġsh":427,"Ġthis":428,"nt":429,"ra":430,"pe":431,"ight":432,"art":433,"ment":434,"Ġal":435,"ust":436,"end":437,"--":438,"all":439,"ĠO":440,"ack":441,"Ġch":442,"Ġle":443,"ies":444,"red":445,"ard":446,"âĢ":447,"out":448,"ĠJ":449,"Ġab":450,"ear":451,"iv":452,"ally":453,"our":454,"ost":455,"gh":456,"pt":457,"Ġpl":458,"ast":459,"Ġcan":460,"ak":461,"ome":462,"ud":463,"The":464,"Ġhis":465,"Ġdo":466,"Ġgo":467,"Ġhas":468,"ge":469,"'t":470,"ĠU":471,"rou":472,"Ġsa":473,"Ġj":474,"Ġbut":475,"Ġwor":476,"Ġall":477,"ect":478,"Ġk":479,"ame":480,"Ġwill":481,"ok":482,"Ġwhe":483,"Ġthey":484,"ide":485,"01":486,"ff":487,"ich":488,"pl":489,"ther":490,"Ġtr":491,"..":492,"Ġint":493,"ie":494,"ure":495,"age":496,"Ġne":497,"ial":498,"ap":499,"ine":500,"ice":501,"Ġme":502,"Ġout":503,"ans":504,"one":505,"ong":506,"ions":507,"Ġwho":508,"ĠK":509,"Ġup":510,"Ġtheir":511,"Ġad":512,"Ġ3":513,"Ġus":514,"ated":515,"ous":516,"Ġmore":517,"ue":518,"og":519,"ĠSt":520,"ind":521,"ike":522,"Ġso":523,"ime":524,"per":525,".\"":526,"ber":527,"iz":528,"act":529,"Ġone":530,"Ġsaid":531,"Ġ-":532,"are":533,"Ġyour":534,"cc":535,"ĠTh":536,"Ġcl":537,"ep":538,"ake":539,"able":540,"ip":541,"Ġcont":542,"Ġwhich":543,"ia":544,"Ġim":545,"Ġabout":546,"Ġwere":547,"very":548,"ub":549,"Ġhad":550,"Ġen":551,"Ġcomp":552,",\"":553,"ĠIn":554,"Ġun":555,"Ġag":556,"ire":557,"ace":558,"au":559,"ary":560,"Ġwould":561,"ass":562,"ry":563,"ĠâĢ":564,"cl":565,"ook":566,"ere":567,"so":568,"ĠV":569,"ign":570,"ib":571,"Ġoff":572,"Ġte":573,"ven":574,"ĠY":575,"ile":576,"ose":577,"ite":578,"orm":579,"Ġ201":580,"Ġres":581,"Ġman":582,"Ġper":583,"Ġother":584,"ord":585,"ult":586,"Ġbeen":587,"Ġlike":588,"ase":589,"ance":590,"ks":591,"ays":592,"own":593,"ence":594,"Ġdis":595,"ction":596,"Ġany":597,"Ġapp":598,"Ġsp":599,"int":600,"ress":601,"ations":602,"ail":603,"Ġ4":604,"ical":605,"Ġthem":606,"Ġher":607,"ount":608,"ĠCh":609,"Ġar":610,"Ġif":611,"Ġthere":612,"Ġpe":613,"Ġyear":614,"av":615,"Ġmy":616,"Ġsome":617,"Ġwhen":618,"ough":619,"ach":620,"Ġthan":621,"ru":622,"ond":623,"ick":624,"Ġover":625,"vel":626,"Ġqu":627,"ĊĊ":628,"Ġsc":629,"reat":630,"ree":631,"ĠIt":632,"ound":633,"port":634,"Ġalso":635,"Ġpart":636,"fter":637,"Ġkn":638,"Ġbec":639,"Ġtime":640,"ens":641,"Ġ5":642,"ople":643,"Ġwhat":644,"Ġno":645,"du":646,"mer":647,"ang":648,"Ġnew":649,"----":650,"Ġget":651,"ory":652,"ition":653,"ings":654,"Ġjust":655,"Ġinto":656,"Ġ0":657,"ents":658,"ove":659,"te":660,"Ġpeople":661,"Ġpre":662,"Ġits":663,"Ġrec":664,"Ġtw":665,"ian":666,"irst":667,"ark":668,"ors":669,"Ġwork":670,"ade":671,"ob":672,"Ġshe":673,"Ġour":674,"wn":675,"ink":676,"lic":677,"Ġ19":678,"ĠHe":679,"ish":680,"nder":681,"ause":682,"Ġhim":683,"ons":684,"Ġ[":685,"Ġro":686,"form":687,"ild":688,"ates":689,"vers":690,"Ġonly":691,"oll":692,"Ġspe":693,"ck":694,"ell":695,"amp":696,"Ġacc":697,"Ġbl":698,"ious":699,"urn":700,"ft":701,"ood":702,"Ġhow":703,"hed":704,"Ġ'":705,"Ġafter":706,"aw":707,"Ġatt":708,"ov":709,"ne":710,"Ġplay":711,"erv":712,"ict":713,"Ġcould":714,"itt":715,"Ġam":716,"Ġfirst":717,"Ġ6":718,"Ġact":719,"Ġ$":720,"ec":721,"hing":722,"ual":723,"ull":724,"Ġcomm":725,"oy":726,"old":727,"ces":728,"ater":729,"Ġfe":730,"Ġbet":731,"we":732,"iff":733,"Ġtwo":734,"ock":735,"Ġback":736,").":737,"ident":738,"Ġunder":739,"rough":740,"sel":741,"xt":742,"Ġmay":743,"round":744,"Ġpo":745,"ph":746,"iss":747,"Ġdes":748,"Ġmost":749,"Ġdid":750,"Ġadd":751,"ject":752,"Ġinc":753,"fore":754,"Ġpol":755,"ont":756,"Ġagain":757,"clud":758,"tern":759,"Ġknow":760,"Ġneed":761,"Ġcons":762,"Ġco":763,"Ġ.":764,"Ġwant":765,"Ġsee":766,"Ġ7":767,"ning":768,"iew":769,"ĠThis":770,"ced":771,"Ġeven":772,"Ġind":773,"ty":774,"ĠWe":775,"ath":776,"Ġthese":777,"Ġpr":778,"Ġuse":779,"Ġbecause":780,"Ġfl":781,"ng":782,"Ġnow":783,"ĠâĢĵ":784,"com":785,"ise":786,"Ġmake":787,"Ġthen":788,"ower":789,"Ġevery":790,"ĠUn":791,"Ġsec":792,"oss":793,"uch":794,"Ġem":795,"Ġ=":796,"ĠRe":797,"ied":798,"rit":799,"Ġinv":800,"lect":801,"Ġsupp":802,"ating":803,"Ġlook":804,"man":805,"pect":806,"Ġ8":807,"row":808,"Ġbu":809,"Ġwhere":810,"ific":811,"Ġyears":812,"ily":813,"Ġdiff":814,"Ġshould":815,"Ġrem":816,"Th":817,"In":818,"Ġev":819,"day":820,"'re":821,"rib":822,"Ġrel":823,"ss":824,"Ġdef":825,"Ġright":826,"Ġsy":827,"),":828,"les":829,"000":830,"hen":831,"Ġthrough":832,"ĠTr":833,"__":834,"Ġway":835,"Ġdon":836,"Ġ,":837,"Ġ10":838,"ased":839,"Ġass":840,"ublic":841,"Ġreg":842,"ĠAnd":843,"ix":844,"Ġvery":845,"Ġinclud":846,"other":847,"Ġimp":848,"oth":849,"Ġsub":850,"ĠâĢĶ":851,"Ġbeing":852,"arg":853,"ĠWh":854,"==":855,"ible":856,"Ġdoes":857,"ange":858,"ram":859,"Ġ9":860,"ert":861,"ps":862,"ited":863,"ational":864,"Ġbr":865,"Ġdown":866,"Ġmany":867,"aking":868,"Ġcall":869,"uring":870,"ities":871,"Ġph":872,"ics":873,"als":874,"Ġdec":875,"ative":876,"ener":877,"Ġbefore":878,"ility":879,"Ġwell":880,"Ġmuch":881,"erson":882,"Ġthose":883,"Ġsuch":884,"Ġke":885,"Ġend":886,"ĠBut":887,"ason":888,"ting":889,"Ġlong":890,"ef":891,"Ġthink":892,"ys":893,"Ġbel":894,"Ġsm":895,"its":896,"ax":897,"Ġown":898,"Ġprov":899,"Ġset":900,"ife":901,"ments":902,"ble":903,"ward":904,"Ġshow":905,"Ġpres":906,"ms":907,"omet":908,"Ġob":909,"Ġsay":910,"ĠSh":911,"ts":912,"ful":913,"Ġeff":914,"Ġgu":915,"Ġinst":916,"und":917,"ren":918,"cess":919,"Ġent":920,"ĠYou":921,"Ġgood":922,"Ġstart":923,"ince":924,"Ġmade":925,"tt":926,"stem":927,"olog":928,"up":929,"Ġ|":930,"ump":931,"Ġhel":932,"vern":933,"ular":934,"ually":935,"Ġac":936,"Ġmon":937,"Ġlast":938,"Ġ200":939,"10":940,"Ġstud":941,"ures":942,"ĠAr":943,"self":944,"ars":945,"meric":946,"ues":947,"cy":948,"Ġmin":949,"ollow":950,"Ġcol":951,"io":952,"Ġmod":953,"Ġcount":954,"ĠCom":955,"hes":956,"Ġfin":957,"air":958,"ier":959,"âĢĶ":960,"read":961,"ank":962,"atch":963,"ever":964,"Ġstr":965,"Ġpoint":966,"ork":967,"ĠNew":968,"Ġsur":969,"ool":970,"alk":971,"ement":972,"Ġused":973,"ract":974,"ween":975,"Ġsame":976,"oun":977,"ĠAl":978,"ci":979,"Ġdiffere":980,"Ġwhile":981,"--------":982,"Ġgame":983,"cept":984,"Ġsim":985,"...":986,"Ġinter":987,"ek":988,"Ġreport":989,"Ġprodu":990,"Ġstill":991,"led":992,"ah":993,"Ġhere":994,"Ġworld":995,"Ġthough":996,"Ġnum":997,"arch":998,"imes":999,"ale":1000,"ĠSe":1001,"ĠIf":1002,"//":1003,"ĠLe":1004,"Ġret":1005,"Ġref":1006,"Ġtrans":1007,"ner":1008,"ution":1009,"ters":1010,"Ġtake":1011,"ĠCl":1012,"Ġconf":1013,"way":1014,"ave":1015,"Ġgoing":1016,"Ġsl":1017,"ug":1018,"ĠAmeric":1019,"Ġspec":1020,"Ġhand":1021,"Ġbetween":1022,"ists":1023,"ĠDe":1024,"oot":1025,"It":1026,"Ġear":1027,"Ġagainst":1028,"Ġhigh":1029,"gan":1030,"az":1031,"ather":1032,"Ġexp":1033,"Ġop":1034,"Ġins":1035,"Ġgr":1036,"Ġhelp":1037,"Ġrequ":1038,"ets":1039,"ins":1040,"ĠPro":1041,"ism":1042,"Ġfound":1043,"land":1044,"ata":1045,"uss":1046,"ames":1047,"Ġperson":1048,"Ġgreat":1049,"pr":1050,"Ġsign":1051,"ĠAn":1052,"'ve":1053,"Ġsomet":1054,"Ġser":1055,"hip":1056,"Ġrun":1057,"Ġ:":1058,"Ġter":1059,"irect":1060,"Ġfollow":1061,"Ġdet":1062,"ices":1063,"Ġfind":1064,"12":1065,"Ġmem":1066,"Ġcr":1067,"ered":1068,"ex":1069,"Ġext":1070,"uth":1071,"ense":1072,"co":1073,"Ġteam":1074,"ving":1075,"ouse":1076,"ash":1077,"att":1078,"ved":1079,"Ġsystem":1080,"ĠAs":1081,"der":1082,"ives":1083,"min":1084,"Ġlead":1085,"ĠBl":1086,"cent":1087,"Ġaround":1088,"Ġgovern":1089,"Ġcur":1090,"velop":1091,"any":1092,"Ġcour":1093,"alth":1094,"ages":1095,"ize":1096,"Ġcar":1097,"ode":1098,"Ġlaw":1099,"Ġread":1100,"'m":1101,"con":1102,"Ġreal":1103,"Ġsupport":1104,"Ġ12":1105,"....":1106,"Ġreally":1107,"ness":1108,"Ġfact":1109,"Ġday":1110,"Ġboth":1111,"ying":1112,"Ġserv":1113,"ĠFor":1114,"Ġthree":1115,"Ġwom":1116,"Ġmed":1117,"ody":1118,"ĠThey":1119,"50":1120,"Ġexper":1121,"ton":1122,"Ġeach":1123,"akes":1124,"Ġche":1125,"Ġcre":1126,"ines":1127,"Ġrep":1128,"19":1129,"gg":1130,"illion":1131,"Ġgrou":1132,"ute":1133,"ik":1134,"We":1135,"get":1136,"ER":1137,"Ġmet":1138,"Ġsays":1139,"ox":1140,"Ġduring":1141,"ern":1142,"ized":1143,"ared":1144,"Ġfam":1145,"ically":1146,"Ġhapp":1147,"ĠIs":1148,"Ġchar":1149,"med":1150,"vent":1151,"Ġgener":1152,"ient":1153,"ple":1154,"iet":1155,"rent":1156,"11":1157,"ves":1158,"ption":1159,"Ġ20":1160,"formation":1161,"Ġcor":1162,"Ġoffic":1163,"ield":1164,"Ġtoo":1165,"ision":1166,"Ġinf":1167,"ĠZ":1168,"the":1169,"oad":1170,"Ġpublic":1171,"Ġprog":1172,"ric":1173,"**":1174,"Ġwar":1175,"Ġpower":1176,"view":1177,"Ġfew":1178,"Ġloc":1179,"Ġdifferent":1180,"Ġstate":1181,"Ġhead":1182,"'ll":1183,"Ġposs":1184,"Ġstat":1185,"ret":1186,"ants":1187,"Ġval":1188,"Ġiss":1189,"Ġcle":1190,"ivers":1191,"anc":1192,"Ġexpl":1193,"Ġanother":1194,"ĠQ":1195,"Ġav":1196,"thing":1197,"nce":1198,"Wh":1199,"Ġchild":1200,"Ġsince":1201,"ired":1202,"less":1203,"Ġlife":1204,"Ġdevelop":1205,"ittle":1206,"Ġdep":1207,"Ġpass":1208,"ãĥ":1209,"Ġturn":1210,"orn":1211,"This":1212,"bers":1213,"ross":1214,"ĠAd":1215,"Ġfr":1216,"Ġresp":1217,"Ġsecond":1218,"oh":1219,"Ġ/":1220,"Ġdisc":1221,"Ġ&":1222,"Ġsomething":1223,"Ġcomple":1224,"Ġed":1225,"Ġfil":1226,"Ġmonth":1227,"aj":1228,"uc":1229,"Ġgovernment":1230,"Ġwithout":1231,"Ġleg":1232,"Ġdist":1233,"Ġput":1234,"Ġquest":1235,"ann":1236,"Ġprot":1237,"20":1238,"Ġnever":1239,"ience":1240,"Ġlevel":1241,"Ġart":1242,"Ġthings":1243,"Ġmight":1244,"Ġeffect":1245,"Ġcontro":1246,"Ġcent":1247,"Ġ18":1248,"Ġallow":1249,"Ġbelie":1250,"chool":1251,"ott":1252,"Ġincre":1253,"Ġfeel":1254,"Ġresult":1255,"Ġlot":1256,"Ġfun":1257,"ote":1258,"Ġty":1259,"erest":1260,"Ġcontin":1261,"Ġusing":1262,"Ġbig":1263,"201":1264,"Ġask":1265,"Ġbest":1266,"Ġ)":1267,"IN":1268,"Ġopp":1269,"30":1270,"Ġnumber":1271,"iness":1272,"St":1273,"lease":1274,"Ġca":1275,"Ġmust":1276,"Ġdirect":1277,"Ġgl":1278,"Ġ<":1279,"Ġopen":1280,"Ġpost":1281,"Ġcome":1282,"Ġseem":1283,"ording":1284,"Ġweek":1285,"ately":1286,"ital":1287,"Ġel":1288,"riend":1289,"Ġfar":1290,"Ġtra":1291,"inal":1292,"Ġpri":1293,"ĠUS":1294,"Ġplace":1295,"Ġform":1296,"Ġtold":1297,"\":":1298,"ains":1299,"ature":1300,"ĠTrump":1301,"Ġstand":1302,"Ġ#":1303,"ider":1304,"ĠFr":1305,"Ġnext":1306,"Ġsoc":1307,"Ġpur":1308,"Ġlet":1309,"Ġlittle":1310,"Ġhum":1311,"Ġi":1312,"ron":1313,"15":1314,"Ġ15":1315,"Ġcommun":1316,"Ġmark":1317,"ĠThere":1318,"Ġwr":1319,"ĠThat":1320,"Ġinformation":1321,"ways":1322,"Ġbus":1323,"app":1324,"Ġinvest":1325,"me":1326,"Ġhard":1327,"ained":1328,"ead":1329,"Ġimport":1330,"Ġappro":1331,"Ġtest":1332,"Ġtri":1333,"Ġrest":1334,"osed":1335,"Ġfull":1336,"Ġcare":1337,"ĠSp":1338,"Ġcase":1339,"ON":1340,"Ġsk":1341,"Ġless":1342,"Ġ+":1343,"Ġpartic":1344,"ĠPl":1345,"ably":1346,"uck":1347,"ished":1348,"chn":1349,"be":1350,"Ġlist":1351,"ator":1352,"Ġtop":1353,"Ġadv":1354,"ĠBe":1355,"ruct":1356,"Ġdem":1357,"ration":1358,"ling":1359,"gy":1360,"reen":1361,"ger":1362,"Ġhome":1363,"Ġleft":1364,"Ġbetter":1365,"Ġdata":1366,"Ġ11":1367,"Ġattack":1368,"Ġproble":1369,"line":1370,"ards":1371,"Ġbeh":1372,"ral":1373,"ĠHow":1374,"ĠShe":1375,"arge":1376,"Ġ--":1377,"://":1378,"Ġbro":1379,"ĠPh":1380,"ats":1381,"Ġbuild":1382,"ww":1383,"ided":1384,"aim":1385,"ases":1386,"ency":1387,"Ġmain":1388,"ined":1389,"Ġincluding":1390,"Ġ{":1391,"Ġgot":1392,"Ġinterest":1393,"Ġkeep":1394,"ĠX":1395,"Ġeas":1396,"aining":1397,"Ġclass":1398,"âĢ¦":1399,"ĠNo":1400,"Ġvar":1401,"Ġsmall":1402,"ample":1403,"AT":1404,"Ġide":1405,"ĠSo":1406,"Ġrece":1407,"Ġpolit":1408,"Ġmov":1409,"Ġplan":1410,"Ġpercent":1411,"iving":1412,"Ġcamp":1413,"Ġpay":1414,"14":1415,"sc":1416,"ised":1417,"Ġunt":1418,"oney":1419,"ploy":1420,"====":1421,"Ġdidn":1422,"ĠInd":1423,"els":1424,"ertain":1425,"Ġpos":1426,"____":1427,"iver":1428,"Ġprocess":1429,"Ġprogram":1430,"ified":1431,"ĠRep":1432,"16":1433,"uro":1434,"ology":1435,"atter":1436,"ina":1437,"Ġname":1438,"ĠAll":1439,"Ġfour":1440,"Ġreturn":1441,"vious":1442,"bs":1443,"Ġcalled":1444,"Ġmove":1445,"ĠSc":1446,"ird":1447,"Ġgroup":1448,"Ġbre":1449,"Ġmen":1450,"Ġcap":1451,"ten":1452,"ee":1453,"Ġdri":1454,"leg":1455,"here":1456,"uthor":1457,"Ġpat":1458,"Ġcurrent":1459,"ides":1460,"Ġpop":1461,"to":1462,"ention":1463,"Ġalways":1464,"Ġmil":1465,"Ġwomen":1466,"Ġ16":1467,"Ġold":1468,"iven":1469,"raph":1470,"ĠOr":1471,"ror":1472,"ently":1473,"Ġnear":1474,"ĠEx":1475,"ream":1476,"sh":1477,"Ġ14":1478,"Ġfree":1479,"ission":1480,"stand":1481,"ĠCon":1482,"ality":1483,"used":1484,"13":1485,"Ġdesign":1486,"Ġchange":1487,"Ġchang":1488,"Ġbo":1489,"Ġvis":1490,"ember":1491,"Ġbook":1492,"ready":1493,"Ġkill":1494,"25":1495,"pped":1496,"Ġaway":1497,"Ġable":1498,"Ġcountry":1499,"Ġconst":1500,"arn":1501,"Ġorder":1502,"AR":1503,"ior":1504,"ium":1505,"orth":1506,"18":1507,"ailable":1508,"Ġsw":1509,"Ġmillion":1510,"Ġ13":1511,"atic":1512,"ted":1513,"ĠGo":1514,"Ġoper":1515,"eng":1516,"Ġthing":1517,"ajor":1518,"conom":1519,"ĠComm":1520,"Ġwhy":1521,"ured":1522,"ural":1523,"Ġschool":1524,"by":1525,"ĠMar":1526,"Ġaff":1527,"Ġdays":1528,"Ġann":1529,"ush":1530,"ane":1531,"If":1532,"eg":1533,"Ġprof":1534,"Ġhealth":1535,"outh":1536,"But":1537,"ional":1538,".,":1539,"Ġsol":1540,"Ġalready":1541,"Ġ30":1542,"Ġcharact":1543,"He":1544,"Ġfriend":1545,"ES":1546,"ians":1547,"icle":1548,"'d":1549,"ĠOn":1550,"Ġleast":1551,"Ġprom":1552,"Ġdr":1553,"Ġhist":1554,"ither":1555,"Ġest":1556,"iqu":1557,"17":1558,"son":1559,"Ġtell":1560,"Ġtalk":1561,"ohn":1562,"oint":1563,"lection":1564,"AN":1565,"Ġuntil":1566,"augh":1567,"Ġlater":1568,"Ġve":1569,"Ġview":1570,"ending":1571,"ived":1572,"Ġword":1573,"ware":1574,"Ġcost":1575,"Ġenough":1576,"Ġgive":1577,"ĠUnited":1578,"Ġtechn":1579,"arent":1580,"OR":1581,"Ġpar":1582,"ĠDr":1583,"Ġ2016":1584,"rist":1585,"ering":1586,"ĠÂ":1587,"Ġlarge":1588,"side":1589,"acy":1590,"ccess":1591,"Ġwin":1592,"Ġimportant":1593,"Ġ199":1594,"Ġdoesn":1595,"Ġ17":1596,"Ġbusiness":1597,"Ġclear":1598,"Ġrese":1599,"\",":1600,"ury":1601,"Ġequ":1602,"aster":1603,"alf":1604,"ĠAmerican":1605,"nect":1606,"Ġexpect":1607,"iversity":1608,"Ġocc":1609,"ĠFl":1610,"Ġkind":1611,"Ġmean":1612,"Ġpast":1613,"Ġdev":1614,"Ġbas":1615,"let":1616,"raft":1617,"Ġorgan":1618,"Ġdel":1619,"Ġperform":1620,"Ġstory":1621,"Ġseason":1622,"ĠCol":1623,"Ġclaim":1624,"Ġcame":1625,"Ġwithin":1626,"Ġline":1627,"Ġproject":1628,"ĠAt":1629,"Ġcontrol":1630,"ended":1631,"ĠSy":1632,"Ġair":1633,"ization":1634,"Ġ*":1635,"ley":1636,"Ġmoney":1637,"idd":1638,"You":1639,"for":1640,"Ġfamily":1641,"Ġmaking":1642,"Ġbit":1643,"Ġpolice":1644,"Ġhappen":1645,"Ġvers":1646,"ony":1647,"uff":1648,"ĠWhen":1649,"Ġsit":1650,"ideo":1651,"lf":1652,"ison":1653,"Ġsure":1654,"gin":1655,"Ġappear":1656,"Ġlight":1657,"Ġes":1658,"of":1659,"Ġwater":1660,"Ġtimes":1661,"not":1662,"Ġgrow":1663,"Ġcompany":1664,"ĠTe":1665,"ows":1666,"Ġmar":1667,"ource":1668,"iol":1669,"arm":1670,"br":1671,"Ġexample":1672,"Ġconc":1673,"Ġfore":1674,"ĠTo":1675,"pro":1676,"EN":1677,"ries":1678,"Ġ25":1679,"ĠCan":1680,"ney":1681,"Ġactually":1682,"Ġever":1683,"urity":1684,"aken":1685,"aps":1686,"Ġtax":1687,"Ġmajor":1688,"ama":1689,"Ġoften":1690,"eral":1691,"Ġhuman":1692,"Ġjob":1693,"ister":1694,"Ġavailable":1695,"ocr":1696,"enn":1697,"aid":1698,"ivid":1699,"Ġrecord":1700,"?\"":1701,"Ġsing":1702,"ĠAm":1703,"idence":1704,"Ġnews":1705,"ster":1706,"Ġeconom":1707,"Ġfollowing":1708,"ĠBr":1709,"ising":1710,"Ġhour":1711,"most":1712,"ument":1713,"Ġsex":1714,"Ġdesc":1715,"Ġbecome":1716,"ĠEd":1717,"Ġtook":1718,"Ġhaving":1719,"Ġproduct":1720,"ault":1721,"As":1722,"aring":1723,"Ġmeans":1724,"Ġhop":1725,"une":1726,"Ġcho":1727,"Ġcertain":1728,"Ġnon":1729,"Ġdeal":1730,"24":1731,"lement":1732,"oci":1733,"ene":1734,"Ġside":1735,"ĠPr":1736,"ĠMay":1737,"Ġreason":1738,"ued":1739,"ched":1740,"ulation":1741,"Ġelect":1742,"Ġofficial":1743,"Ġpossible":1744,"Ġhold":1745,"ands":1746,"ots":1747,"Ġcity":1748,"ories":1749,"Ġsever":1750,"Ġchildren":1751,"Ġonce":1752,"Ġactiv":1753,"ler":1754,"Ġnight":1755,"itions":1756,"ĠJohn":1757,"ape":1758,"play":1759,"Ġdone":1760,"Ġlim":1761,"Ġworking":1762,"ĠPres":1763,"orld":1764,"eb":1765,"ĠCo":1766,"Ġbody":1767,"ails":1768,"utes":1769,"ĠMr":1770,"Ġwhether":1771,"Ġauthor":1772,"rop":1773,"Ġproper":1774,"Ġseen":1775,");":1776,"Ġfac":1777,"ĠSu":1778,"Ġcond":1779,"iting":1780,"Ġcourse":1781,"Ġ}":1782,"----------------":1783,"aign":1784,"Ġevent":1785,"Ġeng":1786,"Ġpot":1787,"Ġintern":1788,"iam":1789,"Ġshort":1790,"empt":1791,"ãĤ":1792,"ĠGod":1793,"ilar":1794,"80":1795,"Ġorig":1796,"IS":1797,"ourn":1798,"ability":1799,"itive":1800,"Ġdam":1801,"Ġ100":1802,"Ġpress":1803,"Ġdoing":1804,"Ġprotect":1805,"ring":1806,"Ġthought":1807,"Ġquestion":1808,"rew":1809,"ĠWar":1810,"Ġseveral":1811,"ĠState":1812,"Ġgiven":1813,"Ġfund":1814,"ĠTw":1815,"Ġwent":1816,"ances":1817,"work":1818,"por":1819,"my":1820,"40":1821,"Ġarg":1822,"artment":1823,"ustom":1824,"Ġpolic":1825,"Ġmeet":1826,"Ġcreat":1827,"22":1828,"ĠStates":1829,"Ġgames":1830,"raw":1831,"uture":1832,"Ġunderstand":1833,"urs":1834,"ĠOb":1835,"lish":1836,"sy":1837,"Ġmakes":1838,"Ġwon":1839,"agon":1840,"Ġhtt":1841,"Ġlove":1842,"ential":1843,"Ġcomplete":1844,"par":1845,"ĠIm":1846,"AL":1847,"Ġaccount":1848,"Âł":1849,"ored":1850,"vert":1851,"Ġident":1852,"Ġ2015":1853,"Ġothers":1854,"ĠMin":1855,"iber":1856,"verage":1857,"There":1858,"itional":1859,"dd":1860,"Ġprob":1861,"Ġyoung":1862,"Ġalong":1863,"Ġaccording":1864,"Ġyet":1865,"Ġmembers":1866,"ĠWhat":1867,"oid":1868,"ĠMan":1869,"And":1870,"Ġamong":1871,"ai":1872,"Ġemploy":1873,"ĠRes":1874,"Ġ>":1875,"Ġinvol":1876,"Ġlow":1877,"af":1878,"ĠCar":1879,"Ġhig":1880,"ĠOne":1881,"ĠSec":1882,"ination":1883,"Ġlikely":1884,"Ġant":1885,"aged":1886,"ĠRuss":1887,"Ġben":1888,"Ġrele":1889,"For":1890,"back":1891,"ĠNot":1892,"Ġpresident":1893,"ball":1894,"Ġaccess":1895,"ividual":1896,"ĠDem":1897,"ĠEuro":1898,"60":1899,"Ġknown":1900,"irl":1901,"ĠGr":1902,"Ġearly":1903,"use":1904,"iety":1905,"âĢĵ":1906,"Ġfight":1907,"Ġsent":1908,"Ġtoday":1909,"Ġmarket":1910,"\".":1911,"Ġbased":1912,"Ġstrong":1913,"urther":1914,"Ġdeb":1915,"mber":1916,"Ġproblem":1917,"Ġdeath":1918,"Ġsocial":1919,"imate":1920,"AS":1921,"ortun":1922,"Ġcampaign":1923,"ery":1924,"Ch":1925,"Ġey":1926,"ially":1927,"Ġmus":1928,"wh":1929,"pos":1930,"Ġer":1931,"Ġsaf":1932,"Ġmonths":1933,"iron":1934,"Ġviol":1935,"Ġfive":1936,"Ġstre":1937,"Ġplayers":1938,"inc":1939,"ald":1940,"year":1941,"aun":1942,"Ġsuccess":1943,"Ġpresent":1944,"erence":1945,"Ġ2014":1946,"Ġsugg":1947,"Ġparticular":1948,"Ġtry":1949,"Ġsuggest":1950,"ĠChrist":1951,"ones":1952,"Ġpriv":1953,"23":1954,"Ġcrit":1955,"Ġland":1956,"Ġlocal":1957,"ify":1958,"29":1959,"Ġaut":1960,"ED":1961,"ĠGu":1962,"Ġmult":1963,"Ġpolitical":1964,"Ġasked":1965,"Ġformer":1966,"itter":1967,"ript":1968,"Ġclose":1969,"Ġpract":1970,"ĠYork":1971,"Ġgetting":1972,"Ġacross":1973,"Ġcomb":1974,"Ġbelieve":1975,"Ġz":1976,"Ġtoget":1977,"Ġtogether":1978,"ĠCent":1979,"irc":1980,"Ġindividual":1981,"ĠMc":1982,"27":1983,"isk":1984,"ĠEng":1985,"Ġface":1986,"Ġ24":1987,"Ġvalue":1988,"Ġarea":1989,"ev":1990,"Ġwrit":1991,"ĠPresident":1992,"Ġvot":1993,"Ġkey":1994,"Ġmom":1995,"put":1996,"Ġanything":1997,"Ġexperience":1998,"attle":1999,"Ġmind":2000,"aff":2001,"omm":2002,"Ġfuture":2003,"ged":2004,"Ġcut":2005,"Ġtot":2006,"itch":2007,"Ġvideo":2008,"Ġinvestig":2009,"Ġnet":2010,"ĠMy":2011,"rict":2012,"ien":2013,".)":2014,"Ġimpro":2015,"though":2016,"wards":2017,"Ġconnect":2018,"ĠMed":2019,"selves":2020,"ensive":2021,"mb":2022,"ober":2023,"ators":2024,"An":2025,"Ġ50":2026,"Ġredu":2027,"resent":2028,"Ġabove":2029,"Ġfre":2030,"ĠEurope":2031,"sw":2032,"Ġamount":2033,"ĠApp":2034,"Ġeither":2035,"Ġmilit":2036,"Ġanal":2037,"Ġfail":2038,"ĠEn":2039,"ales":2040,"Ġspecial":2041,"Ġblack":2042,"IT":2043,"cher":2044,"Ġlooking":2045,"Ġfire":2046,"yn":2047,"Ġalmost":2048,"oon":2049,"Ġstudy":2050,"Ġmiss":2051,"ches":2052,"rown":2053,"Ġtre":2054,"Ġcommunity":2055,"Ġmedia":2056,"Ġfood":2057,"Ġcomes":2058,"ĠUniversity":2059,"Ġsingle":2060,"What":2061,"uly":2062,"Ġhalf":2063,"ague":2064,"hod":2065,"ĠRepublic":2066,"Ġstarted":2067,"Ġquick":2068,"oto":2069,"book":2070,"Ġissue":2071,"itor":2072,"Ġelse":2073,"Ġconsider":2074,"26":2075,"rodu":2076,"Ġtaken":2077,"28":2078,"99":2079,"ĠWith":2080,"Ġtrue":2081,"Ġwa":2082,"Ġtrad":2083,"Ġago":2084,"Ġmess":2085,"ief":2086,"Ġadded":2087,"oke":2088,"Ġbad":2089,"Ġfav":2090,"33":2091,"Ġsimilar":2092,"ask":2093,"ĠDon":2094,"Ġcharacter":2095,"orts":2096,"ĠHouse":2097,"Ġreported":2098,"Ġtype":2099,"val":2100,"iod":2101,"ĠHowever":2102,"Ġtarg":2103,"Ġentire":2104,"pping":2105,"Ġhistory":2106,"Ġlive":2107,"ffic":2108,"........":2109,"ederal":2110,"Ġtrying":2111,"Ġdiscuss":2112,"ĠHar":2113,"aces":2114,"lished":2115,"Ġself":2116,"osp":2117,"rest":2118,"Ġroom":2119,"elt":2120,"Ġfall":2121,"olution":2122,"Ġet":2123,"Ġx":2124,"Ġisn":2125,"Ġidea":2126,"bo":2127,"Ġsound":2128,"ĠDep":2129,"Ġsomeone":2130,"cially":2131,"ully":2132,"Ġfoc":2133,"Ġobject":2134,"ift":2135,"aper":2136,"Ġplayer":2137,"Ġrather":2138,"Ġservice":2139,"ashing":2140,"ĠDo":2141,"ĠPart":2142,"rug":2143,"mon":2144,"ply":2145,"Ġmor":2146,"Ġnothing":2147,"Ġprovide":2148,"IC":2149,"ung":2150,"Ġparty":2151,"Ġexist":2152,"Ġmag":2153,"70":2154,"Ġrul":2155,"Ġhouse":2156,"Ġbehind":2157,"Ġhowever":2158,"ĠWorld":2159,"Ġsum":2160,"Ġapplic":2161,"Ġ;":2162,"Ġfunction":2163,"gr":2164,"ĠPol":2165,"Ġfront":2166,"200":2167,"Ġseries":2168,"Ġtem":2169,"Ġtyp":2170,"ills":2171,"Ġopt":2172,"Ġpoints":2173,"Ġbelow":2174,"itted":2175,"Ġspecific":2176,"Ġ2017":2177,"umb":2178,"Ġra":2179,"Ġprevious":2180,"Ġpret":2181,"reme":2182,"Ġcustom":2183,"Ġcourt":2184,"ĠMe":2185,"Ġrepl":2186,"Ġwhole":2187,"go":2188,"cer":2189,"Ġtreat":2190,"ĠAct":2191,"Ġprobably":2192,"Ġlearn":2193,"ender":2194,"ĠAss":2195,"Ġversion":2196,"now":2197,"Ġcheck":2198,"ĠCal":2199,"RE":2200,"minist":2201,"On":2202,"ources":2203,"Ġbenef":2204,"Ġdoc":2205,"Ġdeter":2206,"Ġenc":2207,"Ġsuper":2208,"Ġaddress":2209,"Ġvict":2210,"Ġ2013":2211,"Ġmeas":2212,"tr":2213,"Ġfield":2214,"When":2215,"Ġsignific":2216,"uge":2217,"Ġfeat":2218,"Ġcommon":2219,"load":2220,"Ġbegin":2221,"Ġbring":2222,"Ġaction":2223,"erman":2224,"Ġdescrib":2225,"Ġindust":2226,"Ġwanted":2227,"ried":2228,"ming":2229,"Ġattempt":2230,"45":2231,"fer":2232,"Ġdue":2233,"ression":2234,"##":2235,"Ġshall":2236,"Ġsix":2237,"oo":2238,"Ġstep":2239,"Ġpub":2240,"Ġhimself":2241,"Ġ23":2242,"Ġcop":2243,"Ġdest":2244,"Ġstop":2245,"AC":2246,"ibility":2247,"Ġlab":2248,"icult":2249,"Ġhours":2250,"Ġcreate":2251,"Ġfurther":2252,"ĠAmerica":2253,"ĠCity":2254,"Ġdou":2255,"head":2256,"ST":2257,"ĠNorth":2258,"cing":2259,"Ġnational":2260,"ule":2261,"ĠInst":2262,"Ġtaking":2263,"ĠQu":2264,"irt":2265,"Ġred":2266,"Ġresearch":2267,"viron":2268,"ĠGe":2269,"Ġbreak":2270,"ana":2271,"Ġspace":2272,"aterial":2273,"Ġrecent":2274,"ĠAb":2275,"Ġgeneral":2276,"Ġhit":2277,"Ġperiod":2278,"Ġeverything":2279,"ively":2280,"Ġphys":2281,"Ġsaying":2282,"anks":2283,"Ġcou":2284,"Ġcult":2285,"aced":2286,"eal":2287,"uation":2288,"Ġcoun":2289,"lu":2290,"Ġinclude":2291,"Ġposition":2292,"ĠAfter":2293,"ĠCanad":2294,"ĠEm":2295,"Ġimm":2296,"ĠRed":2297,"Ġpick":2298,"Ġcompl":2299,"Ġmatter":2300,"reg":2301,"ext":2302,"angu":2303,"isc":2304,"ole":2305,"aut":2306,"Ġcompet":2307,"eed":2308,"fect":2309,"Ġ21":2310,"ĠSen":2311,"ĠThese":2312,"asing":2313,"Ġcannot":2314,"Ġinit":2315,"Ġrelations":2316,"ached":2317,"Ġbar":2318,"Ġ40":2319,"ĠTH":2320,"Ġ2012":2321,"Ġvol":2322,"Ġground":2323,"Ġsecurity":2324,"Ġupd":2325,"ilt":2326,"35":2327,"Ġconcern":2328,"ĠJust":2329,"Ġwhite":2330,"Ġseems":2331,"ĠHer":2332,"pecially":2333,"ients":2334,"Ġannoun":2335,"Ġfig":2336,"ights":2337,"Ġstri":2338,"like":2339,"ids":2340,"Ġsus":2341,"Ġwatch":2342,"Ġâ":2343,"Ġwind":2344,"ĠCont":2345,"Ġitself":2346,"Ġmass":2347,"Al":2348,"yle":2349,"ique":2350,"ĠNational":2351,"Ġabs":2352,"Ġpack":2353,"Ġoutside":2354,"Ġanim":2355,"Ġpain":2356,"eter":2357,"Ġmanag":2358,"duct":2359,"ogn":2360,"Ġ]":2361,"ĠSept":2362,"sec":2363,"off":2364,"ĠJan":2365,"Ġfoot":2366,"ades":2367,"Ġthird":2368,"Ġmot":2369,"Ġevidence":2370,"inton":2371,"Ġthreat":2372,"apt":2373,"ples":2374,"cle":2375,"Ġlo":2376,"Ġdecl":2377,"Ġitem":2378,"medi":2379,"Ġrepresent":2380,"omb":2381,"amer":2382,"Ġsignificant":2383,"ograph":2384,"su":2385,"Ġcal":2386,"ires":2387,"0000":2388,"ID":2389,"AM":2390,"Ġsimply":2391,"Ġlonger":2392,"Ġfile":2393,"OT":2394,"che":2395,"So":2396,"ateg":2397,"org":2398,"ĠHis":2399,"Ġener":2400,"Ġdom":2401,"Ġupon":2402,"ili":2403,"\":\"":2404,"Ġthemselves":2405,"Ġcoming":2406,"Ġquite":2407,"Ġdifficult":2408,"ĠBar":2409,"ilities":2410,"rel":2411,"ends":2412,"cial":2413,"64":2414,"Ġwoman":2415,"rap":2416,"yr":2417,"Ġnecess":2418,"ips":2419,"Ġtext":2420,"Ġrequire":2421,"Ġmilitary":2422,"Ġreview":2423,"Ġrespons":2424,"75":2425,"Ġsubject":2426,"Ġinstead":2427,"Ġissues":2428,"Ġgen":2429,"\",\"":2430,"Ġminutes":2431,"Ġweap":2432,"ray":2433,"amed":2434,"time":2435,"bl":2436,"How":2437,"Ġcode":2438,"ĠSm":2439,"Ġhigher":2440,"ĠSte":2441,"ris":2442,"Ġpage":2443,"Ġstudents":2444,"ĠIntern":2445,"Ġmethod":2446,"ĠAug":2447,"ĠPer":2448,"ĠAg":2449,"Ġpolicy":2450,"ĠSw":2451,"Ġexec":2452,"Ġaccept":2453,"ume":2454,"ribut":2455,"Ġwords":2456,"Ġfinal":2457,"Ġchanges":2458,"ĠDemocr":2459,"Ġfriends":2460,"Ġrespect":2461,"Ġep":2462,"Ġcompan":2463,"ivil":2464,"Ġdamage":2465,"****":2466,"ogle":2467,"vironment":2468,"Ġneg":2469,"ental":2470,"Ġap":2471,"Ġtotal":2472,"ival":2473,"!\"":2474,"lim":2475,"Ġneeds":2476,"Ġagre":2477,"Ġdevelopment":2478,"Ġage":2479,"iple":2480,"21":2481,"Ġresults":2482,"ĠAf":2483,"Sh":2484,"Ġgun":2485,"ĠObama":2486,"roll":2487,"Ġ@":2488,"Ġrights":2489,"ĠBrit":2490,"Ġrunning":2491,"Ġwasn":2492,"Ġport":2493,"Ġrate":2494,"Ġpretty":2495,"Ġtarget":2496,"Ġsaw":2497,"Ġcirc":2498,"Ġworks":2499,"icro":2500,"alt":2501,"over":2502,"www":2503,"That":2504,"lier":2505,"Ġeveryone":2506,"ude":2507,"Ġpie":2508,"iddle":2509,"rael":2510,"Ġrad":2511,"Ġblock":2512,"Ġwalk":2513,"To":2514,"ãģ":2515,"nes":2516,"ĠAust":2517,"aul":2518,"rote":2519,"ĠSouth":2520,"ession":2521,"oph":2522,"Ġshows":2523,"Ġsite":2524,"Ġjo":2525,"Ġrisk":2526,"clus":2527,"lt":2528,"Ġinj":2529,"iding":2530,"ĠSpe":2531,"Ġchall":2532,"irm":2533,"Ġ22":2534,"itting":2535,"str":2536,"Ġhy":2537,"LE":2538,"key":2539,"Ġbegan":2540,"atur":2541,"ashington":2542,"lam":2543,"ĠDav":2544,"bit":2545,"Ġsize":2546,"ĠPar":2547,"38":2548,"ournal":2549,"face":2550,"Ġdecision":2551,"Ġlarg":2552,"Ġjud":2553,"rect":2554,"Ġcontinue":2555,"ĠOct":2556,"overed":2557,"ĠInt":2558,"========":2559,"Ġparent":2560,"ĠWill":2561,"Ġeasy":2562,"Ġdrug":2563,"anger":2564,"Ġsense":2565,"Ġdi":2566,"iday":2567,"Ġenergy":2568,"istic":2569,"Ġassoci":2570,"arter":2571,"obal":2572,"eks":2573,"ĠEl":2574,"urch":2575,"Ġgirl":2576,"oe":2577,"itle":2578,"Ġ28":2579,"ĠChe":2580,"Ġrequest":2581,"Ġsoon":2582,"Ġhost":2583,"ky":2584,"Ġstates":2585,"omes":2586,"Ġmaterial":2587,"lex":2588,"Ġmoment":2589,"Ġansw":2590,"onse":2591,"Ġespecially":2592,"Ġnorm":2593,"Ġservices":2594,"pite":2595,"ran":2596,"Ġrole":2597,"44":2598,"):":2599,"Ġcred":2600,"Cl":2601,"________":2602,"Ġmat":2603,"Ġlog":2604,"ĠClinton":2605,"OU":2606,"Ġoffice":2607,"Ġ26":2608,"Ġcharg":2609,"Ġtrack":2610,"ma":2611,"Ġheart":2612,"Ġball":2613,"Ġpersonal":2614,"Ġbuilding":2615,"na":2616,"set":2617,"body":2618,"ĠBlack":2619,"Ġincrease":2620,"itten":2621,"Ġneeded":2622,"36":2623,"32":2624,"=\"":2625,"Ġlost":2626,"Ġbecame":2627,"Ġgroups":2628,"ĠMus":2629,"Ġwrote":2630,"ĠPe":2631,"Ġprop":2632,"joy":2633,"é":2634,"ĠWhite":2635,"Ġdead":2636,".'":2637,"Ġhttp":2638,"Ġwebs":2639,"OS":2640,"Ġinside":2641,"Ġwrong":2642,"Ġstatement":2643,"Ġ...":2644,"yl":2645,"Ġfilm":2646,"Ġmusic":2647,"Ġshare":2648,"ification":2649,"Ġrelease":2650,"Ġforward":2651,"Ġstay":2652,"Ġcomput":2653,"itte":2654,"ser":2655,"Ġoriginal":2656,"Ġcard":2657,"Ġcand":2658,"Ġdiv":2659,"atural":2660,"Ġfavor":2661,"OM":2662,"Ġcases":2663,"uses":2664,"Ġsection":2665,"Ġleave":2666,"ging":2667,"oved":2668,"ĠWashington":2669,"39":2670,"ĠGl":2671,"Ġrequired":2672,"action":2673,"apan":2674,"oor":2675,"iter":2676,"ĠKing":2677,"Ġcountries":2678,"ĠGerman":2679,"lling":2680,"Ġ27":2681,"34":2682,"Ġquestions":2683,"Ġprim":2684,"Ġcell":2685,"Ġshoot":2686,"Ġanyone":2687,"ĠWest":2688,"Ġaffect":2689,"epend":2690,"Ġonline":2691,"ĠIsrael":2692,"ĠSeptember":2693,"Ġability":2694,"Ġcontent":2695,"ises":2696,"Ġreve":2697,"Ġlaun":2698,"Ġindic":2699,"Ġforce":2700,"cast":2701,"Ġsold":2702,"aving":2703,"fl":2704,"Ġsoft":2705,"Ġcompanies":2706,"ceed":2707,"Ġarticle":2708,"Ġaud":2709,"Ġrev":2710,"Ġeduc":2711,"Ġplaying":2712,"05":2713,"Ġheld":2714,"ctor":2715,"Ġreleased":2716,"Ġfederal":2717,"37":2718,"Ġadminist":2719,"Ġinterview":2720,"Ġinstall":2721,"Ġreceived":2722,"Ġsource":2723,"uk":2724,"Ph":2725,"Ġserious":2726,"Ġcreated":2727,"Ġcause":2728,"Ġimmedi":2729,"Ġdefin":2730,"uel":2731,"ĠDepartment":2732,"ctions":2733,"ĠCour":2734,"ĠNow":2735,"ze":2736,"ites":2737,"itution":2738,"Ġlate":2739,"Ġspeak":2740,"ners":2741,"Ġlegal":2742,"ari":2743,"ĠCor":2744,"Ġweeks":2745,"Ġmodel":2746,"Ġpred":2747,"Ġexact":2748,"BC":2749,"ĠBy":2750,"ING":2751,"osing":2752,"Ġtakes":2753,"Ġregard":2754,"Ġopportun":2755,"Ġprice":2756,"Ġ198":2757,"ĠApr":2758,"fully":2759,"Ġord":2760,"Ġproblems":2761,"ruction":2762,"ham":2763,"ĠCount":2764,"lege":2765,"Ġleaders":2766,"ET":2767,"lev":2768,"Ġdeep":2769,"ological":2770,"ese":2771,"haps":2772,"ĠSome":2773,"Ġpers":2774,"Ġcontract":2775,"Ġrelationship":2776,"sp":2777,"oud":2778,"Ġbase":2779,"48":2780,"mit":2781,"Ad":2782,"ancial":2783,"Ġconsum":2784,"Ġpotential":2785,"Ġlangu":2786,"rem":2787,"eth":2788,"Ġrelig":2789,"ressed":2790,"66":2791,"Ġlink":2792,"Ġlower":2793,"ayer":2794,"ĠJune":2795,"Ġfem":2796,"unt":2797,"erc":2798,"urd":2799,"Ġcontact":2800,"Ġill":2801,"Ġmother":2802,"Ġestab":2803,"htt":2804,"ĠMarch":2805,"ĠBro":2806,"ĠChina":2807,"Ġ29":2808,"Ġsqu":2809,"Ġprovided":2810,"Ġaverage":2811,"asons":2812,"Ġ2011":2813,"Ġexam":2814,"lin":2815,"55":2816,"ned":2817,"Ġperfect":2818,"Ġtou":2819,"alse":2820,"ux":2821,"Ġbuy":2822,"Ġshot":2823,"Ġcollect":2824,"Ġphot":2825,"Ġplayed":2826,"Ġsurpr":2827,"Ġofficials":2828,"Ġsimple":2829,"avy":2830,"Ġindustry":2831,"Ġhands":2832,"ground":2833,"Ġpull":2834,"Ġround":2835,"Ġuser":2836,"Ġrange":2837,"uary":2838,"Ġprivate":2839,"ops":2840,"ees":2841,"Ġways":2842,"ĠMich":2843,"Ġveh":2844,"Ġexcept":2845,"Ġterms":2846,"imum":2847,"pper":2848,"ION":2849,"ores":2850,"ĠDragon":2851,"oul":2852,"Ġden":2853,"Ġperformance":2854,"Ġbill":2855,"cil":2856,"47":2857,"Ġenvironment":2858,"Ġexc":2859,"add":2860,"Ġworth":2861,"Ġpict":2862,"Ġchance":2863,"Ġ2018":2864,"bor":2865,"Ġspeed":2866,"iction":2867,"Ġalleg":2868,"ĠJapan":2869,"atory":2870,"reet":2871,"Ġmatch":2872,"ĠII":2873,"Ġstru":2874,"order":2875,"Ġste":2876,"Ġliving":2877,"Ġstruct":2878,"ino":2879,"Ġsepar":2880,"hern":2881,"Ġresponse":2882,"Ġenjoy":2883,"Ġvia":2884,"AD":2885,"uments":2886,"acebook":2887,"Ġmember":2888,"ibr":2889,"izing":2890,"Ġtool":2891,"ĠMon":2892,"ĠWhile":2893,"hood":2894,"ĠAng":2895,"ĠDef":2896,"Ġoffer":2897,"Tr":2898,"aur":2899,"Ġturned":2900,"ĠJuly":2901,"down":2902,"anced":2903,"Ġrecently":2904,"ĠEar":2905,"Ġce":2906,"ĠStar":2907,"ĠCong":2908,"rought":2909,"Ġblood":2910,"Ġhope":2911,"Ġcomment":2912,"aint":2913,"Ġarri":2914,"iles":2915,"Ġparticip":2916,"ought":2917,"ription":2918,"08":2919,"49":2920,"Ġgave":2921,"Ġselect":2922,"Ġkilled":2923,"sych":2924,"Ġgoes":2925,"ij":2926,"Ġcoll":2927,"Ġimpact":2928,"atives":2929,"ĠSer":2930,"09":2931,"ĠAugust":2932,"Ġboy":2933,"de":2934,"ĠDes":2935,"Ġfelt":2936,"US":2937,"Ġexpected":2938,"Ġimage":2939,"ĠMark":2940,"ccording":2941,"oice":2942,"EC":2943,"ĠMag":2944,"ened":2945,"hold":2946,"ĠPost":2947,"Ġprevent":2948,"No":2949,"Ġinvolved":2950,"Ġeyes":2951,"Ġquickly":2952,"At":2953,"unk":2954,"Ġbehav":2955,"Ġur":2956,"Ġled":2957,"come":2958,"ey":2959,"Ġcandid":2960,"Ġearlier":2961,"Ġfocus":2962,"ety":2963,"Pro":2964,"ledge":2965,"ixed":2966,"illed":2967,"Ġpopular":2968,"AP":2969,"Ġsett":2970,"light":2971,"Ġvarious":2972,"inks":2973,"Ġlevels":2974,"Ġroad":2975,"ellig":2976,"ables":2977,"hel":2978,"ittee":2979,"ĠGener":2980,"ype":2981,"Ġheard":2982,"icles":2983,"Ġmis":2984,"Ġusers":2985,"ĠSan":2986,"Ġimprove":2987,"Ġfather":2988,"Ġsearch":2989,"They":2990,"vil":2991,"Ġprofess":2992,"Ġknew":2993,"Ġloss":2994,"Ġevents":2995,"65":2996,"Ġbillion":2997,"07":2998,"02":2999,"ĠNews":3000,"ĠAM":3001,"Ġcover":3002,"where":3003,"ension":3004,"Ġbott":3005,"Ġareas":3006,"ences":3007,"ope":3008,"ĠTwitter":3009,"ael":3010,"Ġgets":3011,"ĠGoogle":3012,"Ġsn":3013,"iant":3014,"Ġvote":3015,"Ġnearly":3016,"Ġincluded":3017,"Ġrecogn":3018,"zz":3019,"mm":3020,"aled":3021,"Ġhappened":3022,"04":3023,"Ġhot":3024,"Ġwhose":3025,"Ġcivil":3026,"Ġsuff":3027,"oes":3028,"itiz":3029,"ĠSyri":3030,"Ġrespond":3031,"Ġhon":3032,"Ġfeatures":3033,"Ġeconomic":3034,"ĠApril":3035,"rim":3036,"Ġtechnology":3037,"Ġoption":3038,"aging":3039,"Ġpurch":3040,"Re":3041,"Ġlat":3042,"chie":3043,"isl":3044,"Ġrecomm":3045,"uf":3046,"Ġtraining":3047,"Ġeffects":3048,"Ġfast":3049,"Ġ2010":3050,"Ġoccur":3051,"Ġwebsite":3052,"Ġemail":3053,"Ġsens":3054,"ech":3055,"Ġoil":3056,"Ġinflu":3057,"Ġcurrently":3058,"ĠSch":3059,"ĠAdd":3060,"Ġgoal":3061,"Ġscient":3062,"Ġconv":3063,"100":3064,"emy":3065,"Ġdecided":3066,"Ġtravel":3067,"Ġmention":3068,"LL":3069,"03":3070,"Ġelection":3071,"Ġphone":3072,"Ġlooks":3073,"Ġsituation":3074,"Ġcy":3075,"Ġhor":3076,"bed":3077,"ĠCourt":3078,"aily":3079,"aves":3080,"Ġquality":3081,"ĠComp":3082,"wise":3083,"Ġtable":3084,"Ġstaff":3085,"ĠWind":3086,"ett":3087,"Ġtried":3088,"idered":3089,"Ġaddition":3090,"Ġbox":3091,"Ġlack":3092,"arily":3093,"Ġwide":3094,"Ġmid":3095,"Ġboard":3096,"ysis":3097,"Ġanti":3098,"ha":3099,"Ġdig":3100,"ening":3101,"Ġdro":3102,"Con":3103,"68":3104,"Ġslow":3105,"based":3106,"sequ":3107,"Ġpath":3108,"Ex":3109,"aker":3110,"Ġworked":3111,"Ġpen":3112,"Ġengine":3113,"Ġlooked":3114,"ĠSuper":3115,"ĠServ":3116,"Ġvictim":3117,"Un":3118,"Ġproperty":3119,"Ġintrodu":3120,"Ġexecut":3121,"ĠPM":3122,"Le":3123,"Ġcolor":3124,"ĠMore":3125,"Ġ60":3126,"Ġnetwork":3127,"Ġdate":3128,"cul":3129,"idge":3130,"Ġextra":3131,"31":3132,"Ġsle":3133,"67":3134,"Ġwond":3135,"Ġreports":3136,"just":3137,"ĠAustral":3138,"Ġcapital":3139,"Ġens":3140,"Ġcommand":3141,"Ġallowed":3142,"Ġprep":3143,"Ġcapt":3144,"hib":3145,"Ġnumbers":3146,"chan":3147,"Ġfair":3148,"mp":3149,"oms":3150,"Ġreach":3151,"With":3152,"tain":3153,"Ġbroad":3154,"Ġcouple":3155,"ecause":3156,"lying":3157,"ĠFeb":3158,"Ġscreen":3159,"Ġlives":3160,"Ġprior":3161,"ĠCongress":3162,"Ar":3163,"Ġapproach":3164,"Ġemer":3165,"aries":3166,"ĠDis":3167,"serv":3168,"ĠNe":3169,"Ġbuilt":3170,"cies":3171,"Ġrepe":3172,"Ġrules":3173,"force":3174,"ĠPal":3175,"Ġfinancial":3176,"Ġconsidered":3177,"ĠChar":3178,"nces":3179,"ĠIS":3180,"Ġbrought":3181,"Ġbi":3182,"iers":3183,"ĠSim":3184,"OP":3185,"Ġproducts":3186,"Ġvisit":3187,"Ġdocument":3188,"Ġconduct":3189,"Ġcompletely":3190,"ining":3191,"ĠCalif":3192,"ibly":3193,"Ġwritten":3194,"ĠTV":3195,"ements":3196,"Ġdraw":3197,"One":3198,"Ġpublished":3199,"Ġsecret":3200,"rain":3201,"het":3202,"ĠFacebook":3203,"onday":3204,"ĠUp":3205,"Ġsexual":3206,"Ġthous":3207,"ĠPat":3208,"Ġess":3209,"Ġstandard":3210,"Ġarm":3211,"ges":3212,"ection":3213,"Ġfell":3214,"Ġforeign":3215,"ani":3216,"ĠFriday":3217,"Ġregular":3218,"inary":3219,"Ġincreased":3220,"Ġusually":3221,"Ġdemon":3222,"Ġdark":3223,"Ġadditional":3224,"rol":3225,"ĠOf":3226,"Ġproduction":3227,"!!":3228,"undred":3229,"Ġinternational":3230,"idents":3231,"ĠFree":3232,"roup":3233,"Ġrace":3234,"Ġmach":3235,"Ġhuge":3236,"All":3237,"lear":3238,"ovember":3239,"Ġtown":3240,"Ġattention":3241,"ĠOff":3242,"yond":3243,"ĠThen":3244,"field":3245,"Ġterror":3246,"raz":3247,"ĠBo":3248,"Ġmeeting":3249,"ĠPark":3250,"Ġarrest":3251,"Ġfear":3252,"Ġaw":3253,"ĠVal":3254,"oring":3255,"',":3256,"Ġextreme":3257,"arr":3258,"Ġworkers":3259,"After":3260,"Ġ31":3261,"net":3262,"ament":3263,"Ġdirectly":3264,"Ġpopulation":3265,"ube":3266,"ĠOctober":3267,"ĠIN":3268,"ĠJanuary":3269,"59":3270,"ĠDavid":3271,"Ġcross":3272,"cember":3273,"ĠFirst":3274,"Ġmessage":3275,"irit":3276,"Ġnation":3277,"Ġpoll":3278,"isions":3279,"Ġanswer":3280,"ny":3281,"isode":3282,"Ġcarry":3283,"ĠRussia":3284,"Ġhear":3285,"ength":3286,"roy":3287,"Ġnatural":3288,"inally":3289,"Ġdog":3290,"mitted":3291,"Ġtrade":3292,"Ġsubst":3293,"Ġmultiple":3294,"ĠAfric":3295,"Ġfans":3296,"Ġsort":3297,"Ġglobal":3298,"ication":3299,"ĠWed":3300,"ara":3301,"Ġachie":3302,"Ġlanguage":3303,"vey":3304,"Ġtal":3305,"Ġnecessary":3306,"Ġdetails":3307,"Ġsen":3308,"ĠSund":3309,"ĠReg":3310,"ĠRec":3311,"06":3312,"Ġsil":3313,"ressive":3314,"Ġmedical":3315,"unch":3316,"ornia":3317,"Ġund":3318,"fort":3319,"ocks":3320,"ĠMonday":3321,"uesday":3322,"craft":3323,"77":3324,"urt":3325,"Ġver":3326,"ĠHill":3327,"Ġreceive":3328,"Ġmorning":3329,"estern":3330,"Ġbank":3331,"Ġsat":3332,"irth":3333,"ĠHigh":3334,"Ġdevice":3335,"ĠTHE":3336,"ĠCenter":3337,"Ġsafe":3338,"Ġple":3339,"ĠCanada":3340,"Ġsystems":3341,"Ġassist":3342,"Ġsurv":3343,"Ġbattle":3344,"ĠSoc":3345,"vertis":3346,"She":3347,"Ġpaper":3348,"Ġgrowth":3349,"Ġcast":3350,"Sc":3351,"Ġplans":3352,"lled":3353,"Ġparts":3354,"Ġwall":3355,"Ġmovement":3356,"Ġpractice":3357,"imately":3358,"Ġdisplay":3359,"Ġsometimes":3360,"omp":3361,"ĠPaul":3362,"ĠYes":3363,"king":3364,"58":3365,"oly":3366,"Ġson":3367,"Ġavoid":3368,"okes":3369,"ĠJew":3370,"Ġtowards":3371,"asc":3372,"Ġ//":3373,"ĠKore":3374,"Ġtalking":3375,"Ġcorrect":3376,"Ġspent":3377,"icks":3378,"iable":3379,"eared":3380,"Ġterm":3381,"Ġwants":3382,"oming":3383,"Ġut":3384,"Ġdoub":3385,"Ġforces":3386,"Ġplease":3387,"69":3388,"ĠNovember":3389,"atform":3390,"ondon":3391,"Ġones":3392,"Ġimmediately":3393,"ĠRussian":3394,"ĠMet":3395,"Ġdeg":3396,"Ġparents":3397,"CH":3398,"ĠAmericans":3399,"aly":3400,"ĠMod":3401,"Ġshown":3402,"Ġconditions":3403,"Ġstuff":3404,"Ġreb":3405,"ĠYour":3406,"Ġincludes":3407,"nown":3408,"ĠSam":3409,"Ġexperien":3410,"mission":3411,"ĠEven":3412,"aught":3413,"Ġannounced":3414,"ĠRepublican":3415,"Ġdetermin":3416,"Ġdescribed":3417,"ĠCounty":3418,"()":3419,"Ġdoor":3420,"Ġchanged":3421,"Ġneigh":3422,"ĠHere":3423,"Ġclean":3424,"Ġpan":3425,"ĠDecember":3426,"ĠEuropean":3427,"iring":3428,"apter":3429,"Ġclub":3430,"ĠTuesday":3431,"Ġpaid":3432,"ĠNet":3433,"Ġattacks":3434,"Ġcharacters":3435,"Ġalone":3436,"Ġdirector":3437,"dom":3438,"Ġ35":3439,"Ġload":3440,"Ġrout":3441,"ĠCalifornia":3442,"Ġfinally":3443,"Ġrac":3444,"Ġcontr":3445,"Ġexactly":3446,"resh":3447,"pri":3448,"ĠIslam":3449,"Ġnature":3450,"Ġcareer":3451,"Ġlatest":3452,"Ġconvers":3453,"ĠSl":3454,"pose":3455,"cient":3456,"ĠInc":3457,"ivity":3458,"88":3459,"ĠAtt":3460,"ĠMor":3461,"nesday":3462,"Ġweight":3463,"ken":3464,"Ġnote":3465,"Ġteams":3466,"Ġ\\":3467,"airs":3468,"ĠGreen":3469,"Ġhundred":3470,"onent":3471,"Ġstreng":3472,"Ġconsist":3473,"icated":3474,"Ġregul":3475,"Ġlic":3476,"astic":3477,"Ġten":3478,"ursday":3479,"elligence":3480,"ously":3481,"ĠUK":3482,"BI":3483,"Ġcosts":3484,"Ġindepend":3485,"ĠAP":3486,"Ġnormal":3487,"Ġhom":3488,"Ġobvious":3489,"Ġswe":3490,"Ġstar":3491,"Ġready":3492,"acher":3493,"Ġimplement":3494,"gest":3495,"Ġsong":3496,"ĠGet":3497,"ĠLab":3498,"Ġinteresting":3499,"using":3500,"Ġgiving":3501,"ĠSunday":3502,"Ġetc":3503,"Ġmiddle":3504,"Ġremember":3505,"right":3506,"osition":3507,"utions":3508,"Ġmax":3509,"46":3510,"Ġyourself":3511,"Ġdemand":3512,"Ġtreatment":3513,"Ġdanger":3514,"ĠCons":3515,"Ġguy":3516,"ĠBritish":3517,"Ġphysical":3518,"Ġrelated":3519,"Ġremain":3520,"Ġcouldn":3521,"Ġrefer":3522,"Ġcitiz":3523,"box":3524,"ENT":3525,"board":3526,"Ġinn":3527,"IG":3528,"ero":3529,"ĠStreet":3530,"ospital":3531,"rench":3532,"chers":3533,"Ġstra":3534,"OL":3535,"ager":3536,"ĠAN":3537,"Ġeasily":3538,"IA":3539,"enge":3540,"iny":3541,"Ġclos":3542,"ocked":3543,"Ġuses":3544,"ĠCoun":3545,"Im":3546,"uild":3547,"??":3548,"more":3549,"Ġang":3550,"Ġwrite":3551,"olute":3552,"57":3553,"Ġleader":3554,"Ġreading":3555,"":3784,"Ġfigure":3785,"Ġdisapp":3786,"enty":3787,"Ġsoftware":3788,"Ġult":3789,"Ġofficers":3790,"New":3791,"Is":3792,"Ġremains":3793,"ĠIndia":3794,"Ġpsych":3795,"rief":3796,"Ġcat":3797,"esc":3798,"Ġobserv":3799,"Ġstage":3800,"ĠDark":3801,"Ġenter":3802,"change":3803,"Ġpassed":3804,"Ġdespite":3805,"ĠOut":3806,"Ġmovie":3807,"rs":3808,"Ġvoice":3809,"mine":3810,"ĠPlay":3811,"Ġtoward":3812,"ĠTer":3813,"Ġregion":3814,"Ġvalues":3815,"orters":3816,"Ġmount":3817,"Ġofficer":3818,"ĠOther":3819,"ban":3820,"Ġhous":3821,"wood":3822,"room":3823,"IV":3824,"ĠSun":3825,"see":3826,"ĠOver":3827,"rog":3828,"90":3829,"Ġlay":3830,"ĠTur":3831,"awn":3832,"Ġpressure":3833,"ĠSub":3834,"Ġbooks":3835,"edom":3836,"ĠSand":3837,"AA":3838,"ago":3839,"Ġreasons":3840,"ford":3841,"Ġactivity":3842,"UT":3843,"Now":3844,"ĠSenate":3845,"cell":3846,"night":3847,"Ġcalls":3848,"inter":3849,"Ġletter":3850,"ĠRob":3851,"ĠJe":3852,"Ġchoose":3853,"ĠLaw":3854,"Get":3855,"Be":3856,"Ġrob":3857,"Ġtypes":3858,"Ġplatform":3859,"Ġquarter":3860,"RA":3861,"ĠTime":3862,"Ġmaybe":3863,"ĠCr":3864,"95":3865,"pre":3866,"Ġmoving":3867,"Ġlif":3868,"Ġgold":3869,"Ġsom":3870,"Ġpatients":3871,"Ġtruth":3872,"ĠKe":3873,"urance":3874,"antly":3875,"mar":3876,"Ġcharge":3877,"ĠGreat":3878,"Ġcele":3879,"--------------------------------":3880,"Ġrock":3881,"roid":3882,"ancy":3883,"Ġcredit":3884,"aud":3885,"By":3886,"ĠEvery":3887,"Ġmoved":3888,"inger":3889,"ribution":3890,"Ġnames":3891,"Ġstraight":3892,"ĠHealth":3893,"ĠWell":3894,"Ġfeature":3895,"Ġrule":3896,"Ġsche":3897,"inated":3898,"ĠMichael":3899,"berg":3900,"41":3901,"iled":3902,"band":3903,"Ġclick":3904,"ĠAngel":3905,"onents":3906,"ÂŃ":3907,"ĠIraq":3908,"ĠSaturday":3909,"Ġaware":3910,"part":3911,"Ġpattern":3912,"OW":3913,"ĠLet":3914,"Ġgrad":3915,"igned":3916,"Ġassociated":3917,"Ġstyle":3918,"no":3919,"iation":3920,"aith":3921,"ilies":3922,"Ġstories":3923,"uration":3924,"Ġindividuals":3925,"ĠâĢ¦":3926,"miss":3927,"ĠAssoci":3928,"ishing":3929,"aby":3930,"Ġsummer":3931,"ĠBen":3932,"Ġ32":3933,"Ġarch":3934,"uty":3935,"ĠTexas":3936,"hol":3937,"Ġfully":3938,"Ġmill":3939,"Ġfollowed":3940,"ĠBill":3941,"ĠIndian":3942,"ĠSecret":3943,"ĠBel":3944,"ĠFebruary":3945,"Ġjobs":3946,"Ġseemed":3947,"ĠGovern":3948,"ipped":3949,"Ġreality":3950,"Ġlines":3951,"Ġpark":3952,"Ġmeasure":3953,"ĠOur":3954,"IM":3955,"Ġbrother":3956,"Ġgrowing":3957,"Ġban":3958,"Ġestim":3959,"Ġcry":3960,"ĠSchool":3961,"Ġmechan":3962,"ĠOF":3963,"ĠWindows":3964,"Ġrates":3965,"ĠOh":3966,"Ġpositive":3967,"Ġculture":3968,"istics":3969,"ica":3970,"Ġhar":3971,"ya":3972,"itely":3973,"ipp":3974,"Ġmap":3975,"encies":3976,"ĠWilliam":3977,"II":3978,"akers":3979,"56":3980,"ĠMart":3981,"ĠRem":3982,"Ġaltern":3983,"itude":3984,"Ġcoach":3985,"rowd":3986,"Don":3987,"Ġkids":3988,"Ġjournal":3989,"Ġcorpor":3990,"Ġfalse":3991,"Ġweb":3992,"Ġsleep":3993,"Ġcontain":3994,"Ġsto":3995,"Ġbed":3996,"iverse":3997,"ĠRich":3998,"ĠChinese":3999,"Ġpun":4000,"Ġmeant":4001,"known":4002,"Ġnotice":4003,"Ġfavorite":4004,"aven":4005,"Ġcondition":4006,"Ġpurpose":4007,"))":4008,"Ġorganization":4009,"Ġchalleng":4010,"Ġmanufact":4011,"Ġsusp":4012,"ĠAc":4013,"Ġcritic":4014,"unes":4015,"uclear":4016,"Ġmer":4017,"vention":4018,"Ġ80":4019,"Ġmist":4020,"ĠUs":4021,"ĠTor":4022,"http":4023,"olf":4024,"Ġlarger":4025,"Ġadvant":4026,"Ġresear":4027,"Ġactions":4028,"ml":4029,"Ġkept":4030,"Ġaim":4031,",'":4032,"col":4033,"Ġbenefits":4034,"ifying":4035,"Ġactual":4036,"ĠInternational":4037,"Ġvehicle":4038,"Ġchief":4039,"Ġefforts":4040,"ĠLeague":4041,"ĠMost":4042,"Ġwait":4043,"Ġadult":4044,"Ġoverall":4045,"Ġspeech":4046,"Ġhighly":4047,"Ġfemale":4048,"Ġerror":4049,"Ġeffective":4050,"54":4051,"Ġencour":4052,"well":4053,"Ġfailed":4054,"Ġconserv":4055,"Ġprograms":4056,"Ġtrou":4057,"Ġahead":4058,"500":4059,"vertisement":4060,"IP":4061,"ĠFound":4062,"pir":4063,"Ġ%":4064,"Ġcrime":4065,"ander":4066,"Ġlocation":4067,"ĠIran":4068,"Ġbehavior":4069,"azing":4070,"Ġrare":4071,"Ġemb":4072,"Ġcaused":4073,"Ġship":4074,"Ġactive":4075,"Ġcontribut":4076,"Ġgreen":4077,"Ġacqu":4078,"Ġreflect":4079,"venue":4080,"Ġfirm":4081,"Ġbirth":4082,"].":4083,"Ġclearly":4084,"Ġemot":4085,"Ġagency":4086,"riage":4087,"Ġmemory":4088,"98":4089,"SA":4090,"ĠSee":4091,"acing":4092,"CC":4093,"Ġbiggest":4094,"Ġrap":4095,"Ġbasic":4096,"Ġband":4097,"eat":4098,"Ġsuspect":4099,"ĠMac":4100,"Ġ90":4101,"mark":4102,"istan":4103,"Ġspread":4104,"ams":4105,"ki":4106,"asy":4107,"rav":4108,"ĠRober":4109,"Ġdemonstr":4110,"rated":4111,"Ġabsolute":4112,"Ġplaces":4113,"Ġimpl":4114,"ibrary":4115,"Ġcards":4116,"Ġdestroy":4117,"Ġvirt":4118,"vere":4119,"Ġappeared":4120,"yan":4121,"point":4122,"Ġbeg":4123,"Ġtemper":4124,"spe":4125,"anted":4126,"ears":4127,"ĠDirect":4128,"Ġlength":4129,"Ġblog":4130,"amb":4131,"Ġinteg":4132,"Ġresources":4133,"acc":4134,"iful":4135,"Ġspot":4136,"Ġforced":4137,"Ġthousands":4138,"ĠMinister":4139,"Ġqual":4140,"ĠFrench":4141,"atically":4142,"Ġgenerally":4143,"Ġdrink":4144,"Ġthus":4145,"IL":4146,"odes":4147,"Ġappropri":4148,"ĠRead":4149,"Ġwhom":4150,"Ġeye":4151,"Ġcollege":4152,"Ġ45":4153,"irection":4154,"Ġensure":4155,"Ġapparent":4156,"iders":4157,"Ġreligious":4158,"Ġminor":4159,"olic":4160,"Ġtro":4161,"ĠWhy":4162,"ribute":4163,"met":4164,"Ġprimary":4165,"Ġdeveloped":4166,"Ġpeace":4167,"Ġskin":4168,"ste":4169,"ava":4170,"Ġblue":4171,"Ġfamilies":4172,"Ġir":4173,"Ġapply":4174,"Ġinform":4175,"ĠSmith":4176,"CT":4177,"ii":4178,"Ġlimit":4179,"Ġresist":4180,"................":4181,"umn":4182,"Ġconflic":4183,"Ġtwe":4184,"udd":4185,"ĠTom":4186,"Ġliter":4187,"que":4188,"bon":4189,"Ġhair":4190,"Ġeventually":4191,"Ġpus":4192,"Ġhelped":4193,"Ġagg":4194,"orney":4195,"ĠApple":4196,"Ġfit":4197,"ĠSur":4198,"Ġprem":4199,"Ġsales":4200,"Ġseconds":4201,"Ġstrength":4202,"Ġfeeling":4203,"¿½":4204,"Ġtour":4205,"Ġknows":4206,"oom":4207,"Ġexerc":4208,"Ġsomew":4209,"�":4210,">>":4211,"Ġspokes":4212,"Ġideas":4213,"Ġregist":4214,"soft":4215,"ĠDel":4216,"ĠPC":4217,"Ġpropos":4218,"Ġlaunch":4219,"Ġbottom":4220,"TH":4221,"ĠPlease":4222,"vest":4223,"itz":4224,"ĠInter":4225,"Ġscript":4226,"Ġrat":4227,"arning":4228,"Ġil":4229,"ĠJer":4230,"ĠAre":4231,"Ġwhatever":4232,"oken":4233,"cience":4234,"Ġmode":4235,"Ġagree":4236,"Ġsources":4237,"Ġinitial":4238,"Ġrestrict":4239,"Ġwonder":4240,"usion":4241,"####":4242,"ĠSil":4243,"ville":4244,"Ġburn":4245,"tw":4246,"asion":4247,"Ġ£":4248,"Ġnor":4249,"uing":4250,"Ġreached":4251,"Ġsun":4252,"Ġcateg":4253,"igration":4254,"Ġcook":4255,"Ġpromot":4256,"Ġmale":4257,"Ġclimate":4258,"Ġfix":4259,"Ġalleged":4260,"UR":4261,"alled":4262,"Ġimages":4263,"Cont":4264,"ota":4265,"Ġschools":4266,"ios":4267,"Ġdrop":4268,"Ġstream":4269,"ĠMo":4270,"Ġpreviously":4271,"aling":4272,"Ġpet":4273,"Ġdouble":4274,"Ġ(@":4275,"annel":4276,"Ġdefault":4277,"ties":4278,"Ġrank":4279,"ĠDec":4280,"ĠCouncil":4281,"Ġweapon":4282,"Ġstock":4283,"Ġanaly":4284,"ĠStr":4285,"Ġpicture":4286,"ĠPolice":4287,"ference":4288,"Ġcentury":4289,"Ġcitizens":4290,"Ġonto":4291,"Ġexpand":4292,"Ġhero":4293,"ĠSol":4294,"Ġwild":4295,"Ġupdate":4296,"Ġcustomers":4297,"ront":4298,"def":4299,"Ġlik":4300,"Ġcriminal":4301,"ĠChristian":4302,"SP":4303,"76":4304,"Ġleaving":4305,"Ġotherwise":4306,"ĠDist":4307,"Ġbasis":4308,"52":4309,"53":4310,"icip":4311,"ĠBer":4312,"Ġrecommend":4313,"Ġfloor":4314,"Ġcrowd":4315,"oles":4316,"Ġ70":4317,"Ġcentral":4318,"ĠEv":4319,"Ġdream":4320,"Ġdownload":4321,"Ġconfir":4322,"ĠThom":4323,"Ġwindow":4324,"Ġhappens":4325,"Ġunit":4326,"Ġtend":4327,"Ġspl":4328,"Ġbecomes":4329,"Ġfighting":4330,"Ġpredict":4331,"ĠPress":4332,"ĠPower":4333,"Ġheavy":4334,"aked":4335,"Ġfan":4336,"orter":4337,"ategy":4338,"BA":4339,"izes":4340,"Ġspend":4341,"Here":4342,"Ġ2007":4343,"Ġadop":4344,"ĠHam":4345,"Ġfootball":4346,"ĠPort":4347,"oday":4348,"51":4349,"ampions":4350,"Ġtransfer":4351,"ht":4352,"Ġ38":4353,"term":4354,"acity":4355,"Ġbur":4356,"],":4357,"ternal":4358,"rig":4359,"but":4360,"Ġtherefore":4361,"ĠBecause":4362,"resp":4363,"rey":4364,"Ġmission":4365,"Some":4366,"Ġnoted":4367,"Ġassum":4368,"Ġdisease":4369,"Ġedit":4370,"Ġprogress":4371,"rd":4372,"ĠBrown":4373,"ocal":4374,"Ġadding":4375,"Ġraised":4376,"ĠAny":4377,"Ġtick":4378,"Ġseeing":4379,"ĠPeople":4380,"Ġagreement":4381,"Ġserver":4382,"Ġwat":4383,"Ġdebate":4384,"Ġsupposed":4385,"iling":4386,"Ġlargest":4387,"Ġsuccessful":4388,"ĠPri":4389,"ĠDemocratic":4390,"Ġjump":4391,"ĠSyria":4392,"Ġowners":4393,"Ġoffers":4394,"Ġshooting":4395,"Ġeffic":4396,"sey":4397,"Ġhaven":4398,"verse":4399,"tered":4400,"ĠLight":4401,"imal":4402,"ĠBig":4403,"Ġdefend":4404,"Ġbeat":4405,"Ġrecords":4406,"%)":4407,"Ġscen":4408,"Ġemployees":4409,"Ġdevices":4410,"hem":4411,"Ġcommer":4412,"ĠMex":4413,"Ġbenefit":4414,"ĠProf":4415,"Ġilleg":4416,"Ġsurface":4417,"ĠAlso":4418,"Ġharm":4419,"ingly":4420,"wide":4421,"ĠAlex":4422,"Ġshut":4423,"ĠCur":4424,"Ġlose":4425,"pm":4426,"Ġchallenge":4427,"semb":4428,"Ġstation":4429,"Ġintelligence":4430,"Ġaccur":4431,"ĠFlor":4432,"Ġrequires":4433,"ĠMal":4434,"bum":4435,"Ġhospital":4436,"Ġspirit":4437,"Ġoffered":4438,"Ġproduce":4439,"ĠCommun":4440,"Ġcreating":4441,"Ġcris":4442,"spect":4443,"Ġended":4444,"Ġdaily":4445,"Ġvoters":4446,"lands":4447,"ias":4448,"ih":4449,"ona":4450,"Ġsmart":4451,"ĠOffice":4452,"ĠLord":4453,"rial":4454,"ĠInternet":4455,"Ġcircum":4456,"Ġextremely":4457,"'.":4458,"Ġopinion":4459,"ĠMil":4460,"Ġgain":4461,"BS":4462,"ĠFin":4463,"yp":4464,"Ġuseful":4465,"Ġbudget":4466,"Ġcomfort":4467,"isf":4468,"Ġbackground":4469,"eline":4470,"Ġepisode":4471,"Ġenemy":4472,"Ġtrial":4473,"Ġestablish":4474,"date":4475,"ĠCap":4476,"Ġcontinues":4477,"Ġshowing":4478,"ĠUnion":4479,"with":4480,"Ġposted":4481,"ĠSystem":4482,"Ġeat":4483,"rian":4484,"Ġrise":4485,"ĠGermany":4486,"ils":4487,"Ġsigned":4488,"Ġvill":4489,"Ġgrand":4490,"mor":4491,"ĠEngland":4492,"Ġprojects":4493,"umber":4494,"Ġconference":4495,"za":4496,"Ġresponsible":4497,"ĠArab":4498,"Ġlearned":4499,"âĢĶâĢĶ":4500,"ipping":4501,"ĠGeorge":4502,"OC":4503,"Ġreturned":4504,"ĠAustralia":4505,"Ġbrief":4506,"Qu":4507,"Ġbrand":4508,"illing":4509,"abled":4510,"Ġhighest":4511,"Ġtrain":4512,"ĠCommission":4513,"while":4514,"Ġnom":4515,"ception":4516,"Ġmut":4517,"ĠBlue":4518,"Ġincident":4519,"vant":4520,"86":4521,"ĠID":4522,"Ġnuclear":4523,"74":4524,"ĠLike":4525,"ĠRE":4526,"ĠMicro":4527,"li":4528,"mail":4529,"Ġcharges":4530,"89":4531,"Ġadjust":4532,"ado":4533,"Ġearth":4534,"NA":4535,"Ġprices":4536,"PA":4537,"Ġdraft":4538,"Ġruns":4539,"Ġcandidate":4540,"enses":4541,"Ġmanagement":4542,"ĠPhil":4543,"ĠMiss":4544,"Ġteach":4545,"gram":4546,"Ġunderstanding":4547,"ait":4548,"icago":4549,"Add":4550,"ĠEp":4551,"secut":4552,"Ġseparate":4553,"Ġinstance":4554,"Ġeth":4555,"Ġunless":4556,"********":4557,"ĠFore":4558,"inate":4559,"Ġoperations":4560,"Sp":4561,"Ġfaith":4562,"gar":4563,"ĠChurch":4564,"ronic":4565,"Ġconfig":4566,"osure":4567,"Ġactivities":4568,"Ġtraditional":4569,"Ġ36":4570,"Ġdirection":4571,"Ġmachine":4572,"Ġsurround":4573,"Ġpush":4574,"unction":4575,"ĠEU":4576,"Ġeasier":4577,"Ġargument":4578,"GB":4579,"Ġmicro":4580,"Ġspending":4581,"izations":4582,"Ġtheory":4583,"adow":4584,"Ġcalling":4585,"ĠLast":4586,"Ġder":4587,"Ġinfluence":4588,"Ġcommit":4589,"Ġphoto":4590,"Ġunc":4591,"istry":4592,"gn":4593,"aste":4594,"acks":4595,"Ġdisp":4596,"ady":4597,"do":4598,"ĠGood":4599,"Ġ`":4600,"Ġwish":4601,"Ġrevealed":4602,"³³":4603,"lig":4604,"Ġenforce":4605,"ĠCommittee":4606,"Ġchem":4607,"Ġmiles":4608,"Ġinterested":4609,"Ġsolution":4610,"icy":4611,"inct":4612,"Ġ->":4613,"ĠDet":4614,"Ġremoved":4615,"Ġcompar":4616,"eah":4617,"Ġplant":4618,"ĠSince":4619,"Ġachieve":4620,"Ġadvantage":4621,"Ġslightly":4622,"bing":4623,"Ġplaced":4624,"under":4625,"2015":4626,"ĠMad":4627,"Ġtim":4628,"oses":4629,"Ġcru":4630,"ĠRock":4631,"Ġmostly":4632,"Ġnegative":4633,"Ġsetting":4634,"Ġproduced":4635,"Ġmur":4636,"Ġconnection":4637,"ĠMer":4638,"Ġdriver":4639,"Ġexecutive":4640,"Ġassault":4641,"Ġborn":4642,"ĠVer":4643,"tained":4644,"Ġstructure":4645,"Ġreduce":4646,"Ġdecades":4647,"Ġded":4648,"uke":4649,"ĠMany":4650,"idden":4651,"Ġleague":4652,"Se":4653,"Ġjoin":4654,"Ġdisco":4655,"Ġdie":4656,"cks":4657,"actions":4658,"Ġassess":4659,"agn":4660,"Ġgoals":4661,"ours":4662,"IR":4663,"Ġsenior":4664,"iller":4665,"mod":4666,"ipment":4667,"ocol":4668,"uy":4669,"ĠQue":4670,"Ġparties":4671,"irgin":4672,"Ġlearning":4673,"itable":4674,"Ġstreet":4675,"Ġcamera":4676,"App":4677,"Ġskills":4678,"bre":4679,"cious":4680,"Ġcelebr":4681,"ĠFranc":4682,"Ġexisting":4683,"Ġwilling":4684,"lor":4685,"Ġid":4686,"ĠSpace":4687,"Ġcritical":4688,"ĠLa":4689,"ortunately":4690,"Ġserve":4691,"Ġcold":4692,"Ġspecies":4693,"TS":4694,"Ġanimals":4695,"ĠBay":4696,"Ġolder":4697,"ĠUnder":4698,"estic":4699,"ĠTre":4700,"Ġteacher":4701,"Ġprefer":4702,"vis":4703,"Ġthread":4704,"ĠMatt":4705,"Ġmanager":4706,"ãĥ»":4707,"Ġprofessional":4708,"ĠVol":4709,"Ġnotes":4710,"These":4711,"ula":4712,"Ġfresh":4713,"ented":4714,"uzz":4715,"edy":4716,"clusion":4717,"ĠRel":4718,"Ġdoubt":4719,"EO":4720,"Ġopened":4721,"ĠBit":4722,"Advertisement":4723,"Ġguess":4724,"ĠUN":4725,"Ġsequ":4726,"Ġexplain":4727,"otten":4728,"Ġattract":4729,"aks":4730,"Ġstring":4731,"Ġcontext":4732,"ossible":4733,"ĠRepublicans":4734,"Ġsolid":4735,"Ġcities":4736,"Ġasking":4737,"Ġrandom":4738,"ups":4739,"uries":4740,"arant":4741,"dden":4742,"gl":4743,"ĠFlorida":4744,"Ġdepend":4745,"ĠScott":4746,"Ġ33":4747,"ĠiT":4748,"icon":4749,"Ġmentioned":4750,"Ġ2000":4751,"Ġclaimed":4752,"Ġdefinitely":4753,"ulf":4754,"Ġcore":4755,"Ġopening":4756,"ĠConst":4757,"which":4758,"ĠTra":4759,"AG":4760,"72":4761,"Ġbelieved":4762,"ada":4763,"Ġ48":4764,"ĠSecurity":4765,"yright":4766,"ĠPet":4767,"ĠLou":4768,"Ġholding":4769,"================":4770,"Ġice":4771,"Ġbrow":4772,"Ġauthorities":4773,"host":4774,"word":4775,"Ġscore":4776,"ĠDiv":4777,"Ġcells":4778,"Ġtransl":4779,"Ġneighbor":4780,"Ġremove":4781,"uct":4782,"Ġdistrict":4783,"ĠAccording":4784,"Ġworse":4785,"Ġconcerns":4786,"Ġpresidential":4787,"Ġpolicies":4788,"ĠHall":4789,"73":4790,"Ġhus":4791,"AY":4792,"Ġ2006":4793,"ĠJud":4794,"Ġindependent":4795,"ĠJustice":4796,"iliar":4797,"print":4798,"ighter":4799,"Ġprotection":4800,"zen":4801,"Ġsudden":4802,"house":4803,"ĠJes":4804,"PR":4805,"ĠInf":4806,"Ġbul":4807,"Ġ_":4808,"ĠService":4809,"ĠPR":4810,"Ġstrategy":4811,"ffect":4812,"Ġgirls":4813,"Ġmissing":4814,"oyal":4815,"ĠTeam":4816,"ulated":4817,"Ġdat":4818,"Ġpolitics":4819,"abor":4820,"According":4821,"Ġspell":4822,"Ġgraph":4823,"orthern":4824,"TC":4825,"Ab":4826,"Ġlabor":4827,"isher":4828,"Ġkick":4829,"ĠiTunes":4830,"Ġsteps":4831,"poses":4832,"Ġsmaller":4833,"En":4834,"bert":4835,"Ġroll":4836,"Ġresearchers":4837,"Ġclosed":4838,"Ġtransport":4839,"Ġlawy":4840,"________________":4841,"ĠChicago":4842,"Ġaspect":4843,"Ġnone":4844,"Ġmarriage":4845,"96":4846,"Ġelements":4847,"ĠFre":4848,"ĠSal":4849,"Ġdram":4850,"FC":4851,"top":4852,"equ":4853,"Ġhearing":4854,"Ġsupported":4855,"Ġtesting":4856,"cohol":4857,"Ġmassive":4858,"Ġstick":4859,"Ġguard":4860,"isco":4861,"phone":4862,"From":4863,"However":4864,"Ġborder":4865,"Ġcopy":4866,"ography":4867,"list":4868,"71":4869,"Ġowner":4870,"class":4871,"ruit":4872,"rate":4873,"ĠOnce":4874,"Ġdigital":4875,"Ġtask":4876,"ERS":4877,"Ġincred":4878,"tes":4879,"++":4880,"ĠFrance":4881,"Ġbreat":4882,"owl":4883,"Ġissued":4884,"ĠWestern":4885,"Ġdetect":4886,"Ġpartners":4887,"Ġshared":4888,"ĠCall":4889,"Ġcancer":4890,"ache":4891,"ribe":4892,"Ġexplained":4893,"Ġheat":4894,"{\"":4895,"Ġinvestment":4896,"ĠBook":4897,"Ġwood":4898,"Ġtools":4899,"ĠAlthough":4900,"Ġbelief":4901,"Ġcrisis":4902,"Ġge":4903,"ĠMP":4904,"Ġoperation":4905,"type":4906,"~~":4907,"ga":4908,"Ġcontains":4909,"anta":4910,"Ġexpress":4911,"ĠGroup":4912,"ĠJournal":4913,"ka":4914,"Ġamb":4915,"ĠUSA":4916,"Ġfinding":4917,"Ġfunding":4918,"how":4919,"Ġestablished":4920,"ideos":4921,"Ġdegree":4922,"Ġdangerous":4923,"anging":4924,"Ġfreedom":4925,"pport":4926,"outhern":4927,"Ġchurch":4928,"Ġcatch":4929,"ĠTwo":4930,"Ġpresence":4931,"ĠGuard":4932,"Up":4933,"Ġauthority":4934,"ĠProject":4935,"Ġbutton":4936,"Ġconsequ":4937,"Ġvalid":4938,"Ġweak":4939,"Ġstarts":4940,"Ġreference":4941,"ĠMem":4942,"\")":4943,"UN":4944,"orage":4945,"ĠOpen":4946,"Ġcollection":4947,"ym":4948,"gency":4949,"Ġbeautiful":4950,"ros":4951,"Ġtells":4952,"Ġwaiting":4953,"nel":4954,"Ġproviding":4955,"ĠDemocrats":4956,"Ġdaughter":4957,"Ġmaster":4958,"Ġpurposes":4959,"ĠJapanese":4960,"Ġequal":4961,"Ġturns":4962,"Ġdocuments":4963,"Ġwatching":4964,"Res":4965,"Ġran":4966,"2014":4967,"Ġreject":4968,"ĠKorea":4969,"Ġvictims":4970,"Level":4971,"erences":4972,"Ġwitness":4973,"Ġ34":4974,"Ġreform":4975,"coming":4976,"Ġoccup":4977,"Ġcaught":4978,"Ġtraffic":4979,"ading":4980,"Ġmodels":4981,"ario":4982,"Ġserved":4983,"Ġbatter":4984,"uate":4985,"ĠSecretary":4986,"Ġagreed":4987,"Ġtruly":4988,"ynam":4989,"ĠRet":4990,"Ġunits":4991,"ĠResearch":4992,"hand":4993,"azine":4994,"ĠMike":4995,"Ġvariety":4996,"otal":4997,"Ġamazing":4998,"<|endoftext|>":4999} \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/meg-gpt2-openwebtext_text_document.bin b/tests/data/gpt2/meg-gpt2-openwebtext_text_document.bin deleted file mode 100644 index b5cf163cdb54c90c075aacb839e4449467ebad4d..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Binary files a/tests/data/gpt2/meg-gpt2-openwebtext_text_document.bin and /dev/null differ diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/meg-gpt2-openwebtext_text_document.idx b/tests/data/gpt2/meg-gpt2-openwebtext_text_document.idx deleted file mode 100644 index 8ac79cd1ad822f4fd186b45243dec53fc4c77c92..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Binary files a/tests/data/gpt2/meg-gpt2-openwebtext_text_document.idx and /dev/null differ diff --git a/tests/data/gpt2/openwebtext-1000.jsonl b/tests/data/gpt2/openwebtext-1000.jsonl deleted file mode 100644 index 93ed84da1062cd77a0ec5055f2d35bd3b1563149..0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 --- a/tests/data/gpt2/openwebtext-1000.jsonl +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1000 +0,0 @@ -{"text":"A magazine supplement with an image of Adolf Hitler and the title 'The Unreadable Book' is pictured in Berlin. No law bans \u201cMein Kampf\u201d in Germany, but the government of Bavaria, holds the copyright and guards it ferociously. (Thomas Peter\/REUTERS)\n\nThe city that was the center of Adolf Hitler\u2019s empire is littered with reminders of the Nazi past, from the bullet holes that pit the fronts of many buildings to the hulking Luftwaffe headquarters that now house the Finance Ministry.\n\nWhat it doesn\u2019t have, nor has it since 1945, are copies of Hitler\u2019s autobiography and political manifesto, \u201cMein Kampf,\u201d in its bookstores. The latest attempt to publish excerpts fizzled this week after the Bavarian government challenged it in court, although an expurgated copy appeared at newspaper kiosks around the country.\n\nBut in Germany \u2014 where keeping a tight lid on Hitler\u2019s writings has become a rich tradition in itself \u2014 attitudes toward his book are slowly changing, and fewer people are objecting to its becoming more widely available.\n\nNo law bans \u201cMein Kampf\u201d in Germany, but the government of Bavaria, where Hitler officially resided at the time of his 1945 suicide, holds the copyright and guards it ferociously. German-language copies that were printed before 1945 are legal, although they command a premium price, and the book is available in translation elsewhere in the world.\n\nBut the question of whether to publish it in the country where Hitler plotted his empire has lost some of its edge in the Google era, when a complete German-language copy of the book pops up as the second result on the local version of the search engine.\n\n\u201cTo say this is a very dangerous book, we must ban it, this is ridiculous,\u201d said Wolfgang Wippermann, a professor of modern history at the Free University of Berlin. \u201cMaybe it was necessary once, but now it\u2019s over, it makes no sense. You can find it so easily.\u201d\n\nThe publisher of the excerpts, London-based Albertus, has said it will appeal the Bavarian government\u2019s injunction. In 2009, the publisher beat charges of copyright violation and the illegal use of Nazi symbols after the Bavarian government seized reprinted copies of the Nazi Party\u2019s in-house newspaper.\n\nThe attempt to publish portions of \u201cMein Kampf\u201d on Thursday was scuttled at the last moment, although the publisher, ready to capitalize on the publicity, had printed two versions of the pamphlet. The version propped on top of a heap of celebrity magazines at a newsstand in Berlin\u2019s central Friedrichstrasse station was a slender, blue, 16-page leaflet that has historical commentary in one column and an image of blurred text stamped with \u201cUnreadable\u201d in the other, accompanied by two reproductions of Nazi-era newspapers.\n\n\u201cMein Kampf\u201d \u201cis an awful book, and the whole thinking is absolutely not ours, but we have another view on it regarding the idea of packing it away. This idea is just naive,\u201d said Alexander Luckow, a spokesman for the publisher. \u201cIn a free country, you need to discuss these very bad parts of German history.\u201d\n\nStill, he said, there are limits, and using Hitler\u2019s words as inspiration, not as historical artifact, is where it crosses the line.\n\n\u201cThe danger is allowing right-wing people to sell it in bookshops with their modern commentary,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is forbidden and it\u2019s good . . . not only in Germany, this should be equal in other countries in Europe. Anti-Semitism is not confined to Germany. You look and it\u2019s all around Europe, dating back to the Middle Ages.\u201d\n\nThe debate will soon be over, whether or not the latest excerpts make it to newsstands. German law extends copyright 70 years after the author\u2019s death; after 2015, \u201cMein Kampf\u201d will be fair game. Some in Bavaria\u2019s government worry that neo-Nazis will publish their own version of the book shortly thereafter, and to counter that, they are encouraging a scholarly edition. A group of historians is preparing it.\n\nGermany\u2019s Jewish organizations have approached the publication with mixed emotions, sensitive that their country still has problems with neo-Nazis and anti-Semitism. The German government released a study this week that found that one in five Germans has anti-Semitic attitudes. And a neo-Nazi ring that has been linked to at least nine killings before it was shut down in November shocked Germans who thought they had done a thorough job working through their past.\n\n\u201cI do very well without any publishing of \u2018Mein Kampf,\u2019 \u201d said Dieter Graumann, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. \u201cIn a few years, it will be free, and I have every trust in the democratic maturity of the German people. . . . But for the moment, I am glad it is not.\u201d"} -{"text":"For today\u2019s post, I\u2019d like to take a look at California\u2019s voter initiative to legalize pot. If the measure passes, and the sky doesn\u2019t fall, many other states will probably be looking at similar law changes in the near future. Our drug policy of the last century has simply not worked, and it\u2019s heartening to see a state attempting to legalize marijuana.\n\nThe statistics on marijuana arrests are really shocking. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, which is in favor of legalization, blacks are arrested for marijuana possession between four and twelve times more than whites in California, even though studies have consistently shown that whites smoke more pot than blacks. In the last ten years, around 500,000 people have been arrested for possession. That\u2019s absurd! Think about how expensive that is for the criminal justice system. California spends $216,000 for each juvenile inmate in its prison system, yet it spends only $8,000 per student in the Oakland school system. It seems to me that if you really want to limit drug use, it\u2019d make more sense to spend more money keeping kids in school, helping them achieve.\n\nThe economic benefits of legalizing marijuana are mind blowing. If marijuana was legalized and taxed at the same rate of tobacco, the money we would save on law enforcement and gain in tax revenue equals about $17 billion. As Nicholas Kristof notes, that is enough money to send every three and four year old in a poor neighborhood to pre-school. Or we could spend that money improving public school education. Or we could use the money to shore up border defense. Whatever we do, $17 billion is not exactly a trivial amount.\n\nFor me, the biggest reason to legalize marijuana is to hurt the cartels. Immigration has emerged as a hot button issue recently, with Arizona passing a draconian immigration law and many similar propositions being considered by other states. People are worried about violence, and understandably so. No one wants to have foreign drug dealers operating in their back yard. But no matter how many laws we pass, or how much money we spend, marijuana from Mexico and other Latin American countries will always find a way across the border. Drug importers are smart, and the demand is so high that increased patrols by border agents and harsher prison sentences will not act as an effective deterrent. America will always have a demand for marijuana, and that means as long as the drug stays illegal, violent drug cartels will operate in our borders.\n\nBut what if the drug that the cartels are pushing is suddenly legal? No one in their right mind would buy pot off the street if they could instead walk into a dispensary and buy high quality marijuana legally, and probably for less money than the cartels are charging. Very few people actually want to have to hide their drug use. If given a choice, marijuana smokers would absolutely buy legal drugs. This would severely weaken the cartels, and decrease deaths related to drug trafficking.\n\nI\u2019m not advocating drug use here. I know people who have ruined their lives from excess drug use. But it\u2019s not true that marijuana is the gateway drug that people have been demonizing for years. Just because someone smokes pot every once in a while doesn\u2019t mean that person will turn around and become a heroin addict. Yes, marijuana intoxicates you, but so do legal drugs like alcohol. As long as sensible restrictions are built into the law, such as making it illegal to drive under the influence, then there is no reason that marijuana should not be legalized."} -{"text":"Anarchists in solidarity with the purged immigrants of Agios Panteleimonas ventured once again to open the public playground which is kept locked by fascists in favor of segregation, leading to battle with riot police and five arrests.\n\nOn Tuesday 9\/06 anarchists in solidarity to immigrants who are being daily terrorised by fascist thugs of the Golden Dawn neonazi party and their local allies in the area of Agios Panteleimonas, moved to unblock the entrance of the local children playground which the fascists want to keep locked in an effort to impose segregation between greeks and immigrants, and \"to preserve the blood purity of the white race\"...While unblocking the playground the anarchists were attacked by fascists who were soon routed before the arrival of riot police forces who engaged the anarchists in battle with the aim of protecting the fascists. During the clashes one policeman was injured and five protesters were arrested on criminal charges. After the end of the clashes, a local greek father, Mr Tasoulas, defying the reign of terror in the area, took his son to play in the coveted playground. Soon they were surrounded by fascists who blocked the exit of the playground and threatened to linch the father calling him a traitor. After he managed to handle the child to a sympathetic neighbor, the fascists beat the father in full presence of the chief of the local police station. The strong police forces present at the scene then arrested the father and took him to the local police station, where his solicitor, a leading figure of the legal world and human rights activist, was piled with eggs by fascists who threatened her life.\n\nThe new tension in the area comes after the euroelection ascent of LAOS, the fascist Popular Orthodox Alarm Party, to the 4th position with 7% of the vote. This in combination with the governing party's landslide defeat, has led the government to endorse the core of the extreme-right wing policies of LAOS, and pledge a mass sweeping operation against illegal immigrants and their greek supporters within the summer. As the concentration camp planned to be built in the old NATO airbase of Aspropyrgos is now deemed impractical, the government has committed several old military camps of disgraceful humanitarian standards around the capital for the purpose of \"cleaning the city of foreigners\". The measures and discourse comes as little surprise as it comes from a political party famous for wanting to displace homosexuals in desert islands in the late 1970s. Furthermore the \"Law and Order\" operation of the coming summer is said to also include a mass attack against anarchist squats, and solidarity actions to immigrants by the movement as a whole. This the government hopes to achieve via a virtual military occupation of the center of Athens for the summer months modeled on Olympics 2004, as well as the introduction of a disputed legislation that would eventually render protest marches illegal. Due to the lack of a legislative majority by one MP, the government has resorted to yet another legal trick by increasing the total number of MPs by one, non-elected member of its own liking for the summer session of the Parliament.\n\nThe dictatorial rule of the right-wing and the ruthless employment of its parastate agents is increasing the tension across the country. Last week one police station in Athens was attacked and a central tax office was bombed by a Marxist guerrilla group, while a series of luxury brothels frequented by the ruling class were destroyed. At the same time, the movement is on its guard in expectation of next Saturday's Gay Pride parade which last year was attacked by parastate fascist thugs, as well as in expectation of an evacuation of the old courts in down-town Athens which are occupied by immigrants and are a constant target by the bourgeois media who waste no time in supporting the fascists in a most unambiguous manner."} -{"text":"The 45-year-old \u201chighway shooter\u201d who engaged in a 12-minute shootout with California Highway Patrol officers earlier this year now says Fox News host Glenn Beck has been an inspiration for his activity.\n\nIn a several thousand word expose for MediaMatters, Pacifica journalist John Hamilton interviewed the so-called highway shooter, Byron Williams, from prison.\n\nIn the interview, Williams details what he saw as an elaborate global conspiracy and tells the journalist \u2014 whom he sees as his \u201cmedia advocate\u201d \u2014 to look to specific broadcasts of Beck\u2019s show for information on the conspiracy he describes. (MediaMatters says Beck\u2019s show provided \u201cinformation on the conspiracy theory that drove him over the edge: an intricate plot involving Barack Obama, philanthropist George Soros, a Brazilian oil company, and the BP disaster.\u201d)\n\nThe release on Hamilton\u2019s story explains that \u201cWilliams also points to other media figures \u2014 right-wing propagandist David Horowitz, and Internet conspiracist and repeated Fox News guest Alex Jones \u2014 as key sources of information to inspire his \u2018revolution.'\u201d\n\nWilliams is quoted as saying that \u201cBeck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence. He\u2019ll never do anything \u2026 of this nature. But he\u2019ll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need.\u201d\n\n\u201cI collect information on corruption,\u201d Williams says, \u201cI\u2019ve been at it for some time.\u201d\n\nBeck, in particular, he says, is \u201clike a schoolteacher on TV.\u201d Williams reportedly told Hamilton, \u201cYou need to go back to June \u2014 June of this year, 2010 \u2014 and look at all his programs from June, and you\u2019ll see he\u2019s been breaking open some of the most hideous corruption.\u201d\n\nHamilton notes that extremism linked to anti-progressive propaganda is nothing new:\n\nConspiracy theory-fueled extremism has long been a reaction to progressive government in the United States. Half a century ago, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote that right-wing thought had come to be dominated by the belief that Communist agents had infiltrated all levels of American government and society. The right, he explained, had identified a \u201csustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism.\u201d In a 2009 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the anti-government militia movement \u2014 which had risen to prominence during the Clinton administration and faded away during the Bush years \u2014 has returned. According to the SPLC, the anti-government resurgence has been buttressed by paranoid rhetoric from public officials like Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and media figures like Fox News\u2019 Glenn Beck. Just last month, Gregory Giusti pleaded guilty to repeatedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi \u2014 including threatening to destroy her California home \u2014 because he was \u201cupset with her passing the health care law.\u201d His mother told a local news station that he \u201cfrequently gets in with a group of people that have really radical ideas,\u201d adding, \u201cI\u2019d say Fox News or all of those that are really radical, and he \u2014 that\u2019s where he comes from.\u201d After the 2008 election, Fox News personalities filled the airwaves with increasingly violent rhetoric and apocalyptic language. On his Fox News show, Beck talked about \u201cput[ting] poison\u201d in Pelosi\u2019s wine.\n\nObservers of this most recent act were mystified by one of Byron Williams\u2019 reported targets: the Tides Foundation, a low-profile charitable organization known for funding environmentalists, community groups, and other organizations. Beck, it turned out, had attacked Tides 29 times on his Fox News show in the year-and-a-half leading up to the shooting.\n\nIn their writeup, The Huffington Post provided a video that detailed Williams\u2019 attack, as posted on YouTube. It follows."} -{"text":"New drunk-driving law cracks down on 3rd DUI LEGISLATURE\n\nDrivers who are repeatedly caught drunk behind the wheel could lose their license for up to a decade under legislation signed by the governor Monday.\n\nThe measure by Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, allows judges to revoke a person's driver's license for up to 10 years if they have three or more convictions for driving under the influence within the prior decade. Currently, courts may only take away a repeat offender's driver's license for three years.\n\nThe law will take effect on Jan. 1, 2012.\n\nHill estimated that the measure could help take more than 10,000 repeat DUI offenders off the road each year. Nearly 188,000 DUI convictions were handed down around the state in 2008, he noted, with 9,164 of those drivers on their third conviction and 3,200 with four or more DUI offenses, Hill said.\n\n\"I urge judges across the state to use this new authority and take repeat DUI offenders off the road,\" Hill said in a statement.\n\nAccording to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are 1.5 million DUI arrests in California each year, and one-third of those arrested are repeat offenders. In total, more than 310,000 Californians have three or more DUI convictions, according to the agency.\n\n\"This legislation is an important step toward making California's roads safer,\" Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement. \"Those who have multiple DUI convictions should not be on the road threatening lives.\""} -{"text":"While it\u2019s good to see that number of obese and overweight children has (slightly) fallen for those starting school, one in 10 children is still entering reception obese or overweight, rising to one in five at the start of secondary school.\n\nMore startlingly, the figures from the Health & Social Care Information Centre show that 25% of children in poorer areas are obese, compared to about 11% in more affluent areas. Let\u2019s absorb that disturbing fact \u2013 right now, Britain\u2019s poor children are more than twice as likely to be obese or overweight.\n\nResponses to these statistics have included calls for a ban on junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed, but is this really the most productive way forward?\n\nWhat if it\u2019s not so much about \u201cjunk food\u201d, as we define it, but, rather, that all too often these days the junk is the food and the food is the junk \u2013 and that sometimes, for people on tight budgets, this is all that\u2019s reasonably achievable?\n\nOnce poverty enters the equation, it\u2019s simply not about junk food as we understand it anymore. Say junk food and an image springs to mind of people allowing their children to scarf down crisps, sweets, and the now notorious fizzy drinks, or burgers, pizzas and fried chicken from overflowing buckets. The implication is that the problem lies with the treats and extras, consumed on top of real meals and that children are being overindulged, to the detriment of their health.\n\nHowever, this image of feckless, uncaring, underprivileged Britons encouraging their fat children to over-snack simply doesn\u2019t ring true, especially considering that these are households where, by definition, money is tight.\n\nOn the contrary, it seems obvious that the actual meals are contributing hugely to the problem \u2013 and that this is where austerity is having a terrifying and sustained impact.\n\nWhile healthy food is often prohibitively expensive, less healthy options are relatively as cheap as, well, chips. When parents have to find the cheapest food available for their family, it\u2019s nearly always going to be less likely to be fresh; more likely to be highly calorific (therefore \u201cfilling\u201d), as well as packed with additives whose addictive and metabolism-skewing properties should not be discounted.\n\nYou also have to factor in how exhausting poverty is. Often the last thing that stressed, skint parents need at the end of the day is to start a meal from scratch.\n\nThis is why, however well meant, the \u201cwhy not buy some veg from the local market and make a lovely stew?\u201d rationale so often takes on the shrill ring of Marie Antoinette\u2019s fabled suggestion about the poor eating cake.\n\nThat\u2019s the cruel thing about cooking. It\u2019s not all about \u201clazy proles\u201d and their lost culinary skills. Something that\u2019s a hobby, a stress release, in an affluent household, too easily becomes an extra source of tension in an impoverished one. Moreover, \u201creal\u201d cooking can be expensive \u2013 from the ingredients, and the herbs and spices, to the equipment, even the gas or electricity. Hence the microwave, the ripping open of the packet, the easier solution. Who\u2019s to judge? Plenty of people do.\n\nPerhaps it could be acknowledged that the very concept of junk food has become absurdly dated and misleading. That shifts in fundamental food culture (the creep of junk into normal meals) appear to be a much more profound problem than merely overindulging in signposted treats. Kids eating rubbish has always been with us but it is only now that the staples, the dietary cornerstones, are also unhealthy, that their weight problems are escalating. Nor is the problem confined to junk food advertising \u2013 if only it were that simple. Like with most things that become uncontrollable in life, money lies at the core. Poverty isn\u2019t only exhausting and limiting, it\u2019s also highly fattening.\n\nCoe did the right thing. But why did it take so long?\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Better late than never. Sebastian Coe has walked away from his Nike contract. Photograph: Lionel Cironneau\/AP\n\nEven though Sebastian Coe has finally resigned from his \u00a3100,000-a-year role as Nike ambassador, he still insists that there was no conflict of interest with his position as president of the IAAF. Is he on another planet or am I?\n\nCoe\u2019s resignation doesn\u2019t prove that there was any wrongdoing, even with the email that surfaced relating to Eugene (birthplace of Nike) winning the right to stage the 2012 World Athletics Championships without others being allowed to bid. As things stand, Coe\u2019s conduct appears to have been above board. Nevertheless he has to stop this ludicrous sulking as if a big fuss is being made about nothing.\n\nThis is a prime example of a big fuss being made about\u2026 something. Obviously, it is not feasible for the president of IAAF simultaneously to be signed up as an ambassador to a major international sportswear company. Likewise, Coe\u2019s main argument concerning the longevity of his association with Nike (38 years) is resentful, entitled nonsense.\n\nIt\u2019s time for Coe to be philosophical. This was a blatant conflict of interest and the only mystery is how it wasn\u2019t dealt with when he became president earlier this year.\n\nLet Katie Hopkins damn herself\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Katie Hopkins: the face of unreason. Photograph: Dan Kennedy\/Discovery Communications\/Dan Ken\n\nIt seems as though every week now there is a terrible darkening of the skies as a giant candlesnuffer slams down over the flickering wick of free speech.\n\nThis time, it happened at Brunel University, where Katie Hopkins was spouting her usual informed, enlightened views on welfare. (Oh sorry, I went a bit funny there.)\n\nHopkins wasn\u2019t banned from speaking. Instead, just as she began to talk, a large bunch of students stood up, turned their backs on her and walked out of the hall. It was an action that was widely billed as a wonderful compromise protest, but it wasn\u2019t really.\n\nOf course it was better than banning \u2013 but only because anything is better than banning. It wasn\u2019t spontaneous, and therefore looked staged and just a little pompous. Nor, crucially, did it respect one of the foremost principles of free speech.\n\nFree speech is not just about someone being allowed to talk, it is also about them being properly heard and debated, and this holds true, even when that someone is as idiotic and offensive as Hopkins. Especially then.\n\nFor free speech to work, you have to let people speak first, and then challenge them via debate, which means no bans or, indeed, back-turnings and walk-outs.\n\nOtherwise, all that happens is that people such as Hopkins remain wedded to the delusion that they\u2019re fearless speakers of truth. Ideally, they should have their arguments brusquely shredded in a public forum.\n\nThe Brunel University walk-out was not a compromise protest, it was just a way of banning without actually banning. Everyone has to stop panicking and just allow people to be annoying bigots. Last time that I checked, the good people of Britain could cope."} -{"text":"The Reds announced that they signed free agent outfielder Ryan Ludwick to a two-year deal with a mutual option for 2015 (Twitter link). The BHSC client obtains a $15MM guarantee following his best offensive season since he was a member of the Cardinals.\n\nThe Reds made the free agent outfielder a two-year two-year offer earlier in the week, but John Fay of the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that at least one other club was being more aggressive on Ludwick. The 34-year-old posted a .275\/.346\/.531 batting line with 26 home runs in 472 plate appearances for the Reds this past season, a marked improvement from 2010-11 when he didn't hit more than 17 home runs or post an OPS above .750.\n\nLudwick ranked 26th on MLBTR's list of top 50 free agents with MLBTR's Tim Dierkes correctly predicting that he would re-sign with the Reds.\n\nJon Heyman of CBSSports.com first reported the agreement and the dollar amount. Fay first reported the option year and that the Reds were making progress toward a deal. Photo courtesy of US Presswire."} -{"text":"What if I want to build everything in ClojureScript\n\nJiyinYiyong Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 31, 2017\n\nMany things have changed since I wrote this post, check out updates on shadow-cljs. That\u2019s might be promising.\n\nJavaScript is becoming more and more mature. For front-end, React\/Anguar\/Vue are capable of building middle-size or even large apps, with help of all kinds of components and libraries. Deploying webapps is never easier, Webpack has almost all the features we need. For backend, Node.js ecosystem has been evolving since 2009, we have Express and Koa, with all kinds of middlewares. No mention how many developers are participating in \u201crewriting everything in JavaScript\u201d.\n\nJavaScript is a messy world. Mixed language paradigms, inconsistent languages features, lots of innovations toward different and sometimes opposite directions. It\u2019s hard to get well with such an inconsistent programming language. However, it turned out people like to use it thanks to its successful ecosystem.\n\nClojureScript is in a different situation. We have faith in functional programming but there\u2019s not a large community to support it. Here\u2019s the problem in me. I want to build websites with only ClojureScript. How can I achieve that?\n\nFor front-end, ClojureScript libraries and components are relatively rare(or at least hard to find many of them on Google). Yes we can use use JavaScript libraries and components. However it\u2019s not always true. Take an example from React and Vue, which are both in JavaScript, but it\u2019s impractical to share components from each other. I saw people using React components in Reagent or Rum many times. I was convinced it\u2019s possible. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s easy since we may need so many components.\n\nFor backend it\u2019s worse. People are using Clojure to build web servers. Being a JavaScript developer there are lots of barriers if I want to pick up the whole Java ecosystem. Developing and debugging Clojure is a lot different from ClojureScript. And for web servers, the JavaScript community is throwing away expressing and going toward Koa with async\/await support, while in ClojureScript it\u2019s core.async , a lot different. We can still Google and find blogs and projects on using React components in ClojureScript, but it\u2019s fewer results for Node.js, besides, how about the framework and libraries? And I\u2019m not sure about the database part either.\n\nIt\u2019s not easy to believe in ClojureScript. To see JavaScript developers using create-react-app, using Koa, although slowly but most aspects of developing are covered by people who went ahead. In using ClojureScript, I have to take every step very carefully, sometimes in debugging without SourceMaps on variables, sometimes worried about where to find guides and docs, sometimes anxious about people misunderstanding my work.\n\nI will still pick ClojureScript as the primary language for my personal projects. Also I\u2019m fully aware that it adds limits to me so someday I still need to pick up some other languages to finish my work. It will be my big problem in the near future. I already see it and it made me feel sad that I can only write fast in ClojureScript. ClojureScript has some unique features that help me finished Stack Editor and Cumulo, but also trapped me here. I do hope that I learnt ClojureScript I can program all things I need, it\u2019s always not true for any language.\n\nNow I have to consider what to do next. In the past years I built many toy apps, none of them reached the complexity of real-world products. I have to learn such ability. Bet on ClojureScript or another?"} -{"text":"Ben White writing in the Independent:\n\nThis is Israel in 2012 according to a top UN body. Using unprecedented strong language, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) criticised Israeli policies in terms of \u201capartheid\u201d, as part of their published observations following a regular review.\n\nAffirming the kind of analysis that Israel\u2019s advocates try to dismiss as lies or rhetorical excess, the Committee slammed Israel for violating the right to equality in numerous policy areas. CERD described \u201csegregation between Jewish and non-Jewish communities\u201d, a lack of \u201cequal access to land and property\u201d, and \u201cthe ongoing policy of home demolitions and forced displacement of the indigenous Bedouin communities\u201d in the Negev.\n\nThe lack of a \u201cprohibition of racial discrimination\u201d in Israel\u2019s Basic Law was highlighted, and more recent developments, such as the restrictions on family unification affecting Palestinian citizens were also part of CERD\u2019s wide-ranging criticisms.\n\nThe Committee\u2019s observations also covered Israel\u2019s policies in the Occupied Territories, showing how the same discriminatory patterns are found on both sides of the Green Line. Israeli settlements in the West Bank form part of a regime of \u201cde facto segregation\u201d severe enough to cause the Committee to remind Israel of the \u201cprohibition\u201d of policies of \u201capartheid\u201d.\n\nAccording to Dr David Keane, senior lecturer in law at Middlesex University and author of \u2018Caste-based Discrimination in International Human Rights Law\u2019, this is \u201cthe most cutting CERD recognition and condemnation of a legal system of segregation since apartheid South Africa\u201d."} -{"text":"RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson says the OPP's much-anticipated report into the RCMP's response to the Parliament Hill shootings will be released this week or next.\n\nPaulson told the Senate's national security committee Monday his force are on the verge of releasing the report.\n\nThe report was commissioned by House Speaker Andrew Scheer after he asked for an independent police investigation following the Parliament Hill shootings.\n\nThe OPP led the investigation and submitted the report to the House of Commons in early April. When it was delivered, there were initial concerns whether the report would be made public or not.\n\nPaulson told senators the report examines the RCMP's response to the Oct. 22, 2014 shooting, both outside Parliament Hill and inside Centre Block. That's where shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was finally shot and killed.\n\nPaulson also told senators the Mounties will release the remaining 18 seconds of the Zehaf-Bibeau cellphone video in the coming weeks. Zehaf-Bibeau recorded the video immediately before the fatal shooting.\n\nThe RCMP already released 55 seconds of the video at a Commons public safety committee meeting in March.\n\n\"This is in retaliation for Afghanistan and because [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] wants to send his troops to Iraq,\" Zehaf-Bibeau, says in the video.\n\n\"Canada's officially become one of our enemies by fighting and bombing us and creating a lot of terror in our countries and killing us and killing our innocents. So, just aiming to hit some soldiers just to show that you're not even safe in your own land, and you gotta be careful.\u200b\"\n\nIn March, Paulson told reporters the remaining 18 seconds was edited for \"sound operational\" reasons. Thirteen seconds were cut from the beginning of the video and five seconds were edited from the end."} -{"text":"The way forward for autoworkers: An online interview with Jerry White\n\n15 October 2015\n\nThis Sunday, October 18, at 3:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (conversions here), the World Socialist Web Site will host an online interview with WSWS Autoworker Newsletter editor Jerry White to review the political lessons of the contract fight. White will be joined by WSWS reporter Eric London, who will conduct the interview and field questions from autoworkers across the country. The interview will be broadcast at wsws.org\/autoworkers\/interview.\n\nThe battle by autoworkers in the United States has reached a critical juncture. After Fiat Chrysler workers overwhelmingly defeated the contract pushed by the United Auto Workers earlier this month, the UAW has brought back another deal crafted to meet the strategic aims of the auto corporations and Wall Street.\n\nNo matter what the spin the UAW\u2019s PR firm puts on it, the new deal, like the first, would accelerate the descent of autoworkers\u2014once among the highest-paid industrial workers in the world\u2014into the ranks of the working poor.\n\nThe challenges autoworkers face are immense, but the forces they can mobilize among workers and youth in the US and around the world are more powerful. To carry out a successful struggle, however, autoworkers who are leading this fight have to have a clear understanding of the economic and political forces that they confront.\n\nTo submit a question in advance of the interview, please register below. We urge our readers to make a donation to help the WSWS broaden the campaign amongst US autoworkers."} -{"text":"Don\u2019t raise your voice here.\n\nAngela Kabari Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 20, 2017\n\nMy name is Angela. I am the woman in the centre of the current Ushahidi sexual harassment scandal.\n\nThe past six months have been some of the most bizarre in my life and, on the balance, I think there is benefit in sharing my experience with the world so that lessons may be learned from it. It is my hope that, my story shall prompt a change in company policies, both in the Kenyan tech space and in other fields.\n\nI joined Ushahidi in September 2015 as a Capacity Development Officer for Making All Voices Count. My time there was mostly enjoyable: the work was challenging, the team was great, and the environment was liberal and progressive. All in all, a good place to be. Of course, everything was not perfect, but what organisation does not have issues and day-to-day frictions?\n\nThis changed on the morning of January 19th 2017, when Daudi Were, the Executive Director at Ushahidi asked me to have sex with a colleague, presumably for his own titillation. The events of that night left me troubled and confused. I knew that what had happened to me was not right, but I thought it was an isolated incident and decided to forget it and attempted to move on. (For details of this, see here my statement on the events of the night as well as a transcript of the audio. Some of the names in the transcript have been altered to protect the identities of my former colleagues. Aside from this, no other alterations have been made to it).\n\nI managed to do this for precisely one week after which I began to lose focus on my work. Over the next two weeks, I started to experience migraines whenever I went to the office. I did not want to leave my bed, yet I was sleeping poorly. I had experienced some periodic stomach upsets prior to and during the team retreat. However, after the retreat, these became worse and more frequent. At first, I thought that this was due to the upheaval that the Making All Voices Count programme was experiencing at the time due to international politics (it was negatively impacted by Brexit and changes in US presidency).\n\nI also thought that I might be physically ill so I sought professional advice from my doctor. I was diagnosed with a bacterial infection of the gut, but my doctor could not account for all my other symptoms. Upon his advice, I went to see a therapist who suggested some exercises to help me figure out what was wrong. I also took 3 weeks off from work from late February to mid-March as I thought I might be suffering from ordinary stress and burnout.\n\nIt was during this time off that I did the exercises prescribed by the therapist and I realised that my problem was psychosomatic. The distress from the incident in January had caught up with me, almost a month later. I had tried to pass off Daudi\u2019s remarks as drunkenness or joking but my body wasn\u2019t buying it. It was at this point that I decided to quietly resign; I still wasn\u2019t convinced that it was something I could or should raise with my employers.\n\nOnce I had made this decision in early March, I separately confided in two close friends that I was looking for a new job because I was uncomfortable with continuing to work at Ushahidi. When they asked why I was leaving, I shared with them some details of what had happened with Daudi. In the course of our conversations, I was stunned to learn that Daudi\u2019s comments were not the isolated incident I had assumed but rather that he had a years\u2019 long, widely-known reputation for sexually inappropriate conduct, socially and at work.\n\nAfter my leave was over, I began predominantly working from home, which thankfully was possible as Ushahidi allows remote working. I was going to the office only thrice a month on average and I timed my visits to the office to ensure that I would not have to run into Daudi. It was in early April, after a month of soul searching and conversations with three other women who had been on the receiving end of unwelcome attention from Daudi, that I came to the conclusion that something needed to be done. Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only person with both tangible evidence of his misconduct, as well as an employer-employee relationship. It is then that I sought legal advice and learned that, based on the provisions of Ushahidi\u2019s HR Manual, as well as Kenyan and Florida Law, Daudi\u2019s comments qualified as sexual harassment by creating a hostile environment. I was advised that I could file a court case but that it would be prudent to first give the company an opportunity to address the issue internally as the court should be a last resort.\n\nWith this in mind, I began to reach out to some of the women I had spoken to earlier. At this stage, I had been able to identify over five women who had also had inappropriate encounters with Daudi. Only one woman was willing to come forward if the Board could guarantee that she would remain anonymous. Some of the other women had no evidence of their allegations and thus did not expect to be believed. Others did not want to be associated with something so potentially scandalous or to rehash past traumatic events. It therefore took about three more weeks to get my ducks in a row and submit the complaint to the board; I did that on 4th May 2017.\n\nSee this timeline for what transpired since.\n\nSince then, I have heard terrible stories from a total of eleven women who have told me about having similar unpleasant encounters with Daudi, in addition to another ten or so stories that I\u2019ve been unable to verify. The behaviour told of in these stories varies from inappropriate and\/or suggestive text messages to sending of pictures of male genitalia and pornography. In one incident Daudi allegedly exposed his genitals to a woman in the middle of a conversation about her work.\n\nViewed against this grim picture, I feel as if I got off lightly. And, in the larger spectrum of harassment that encompasses physical assault and even sexual assault, it is easy to dismiss what happened to me as trivial. Except that it is not. I\u2019ve actually had people tell me \u201cIt was only words so it\u2019s not a big deal \u2014 at least he didn\u2019t rape you.\u201d However, in my view, verbal harassment is not inconsequential; in addition to being traumatic, it is often the gateway to more grievous offences and thus should not be treated lightly or ignored.\n\nThe reason I did not come forward with my story earlier is because, under Kenyan law, it is not permitted to comment on matters currently before a court. In this case, I was advised that as a show of good faith I should uphold this convention and extend its application to the internal Ushahidi process, even though the convention does not apply because the internal process was not judicial. But now that the Ushahidi Board has suspended Daudi after finding him guilty of gross misconduct, and will issue him with a notice to show cause why his employment should not be terminated, I am of the view that I am finally free to speak and comment on this entire debacle.\n\nI have two main bones of contention. The first is Daudi\u2019s behaviour. Based on the additional allegations made via tweets and offline discussions that have occurred since the news of my complaint came to light on 9th July, it would not be a stretch to call Daudi\u2019s alleged behaviour predatory. Such predation is enabled by a culture of silence and secrecy that encourages victims of harassment to \u201cnot make a fuss\u201d or \u201cpersevere\u201d or \u201cjust ignore him until he gets tired or bored and goes away.\u201d This culture leads many, many victims to not call out predatory behaviour and report it as the violence it actually is. This culture feeds into the victims\u2019 fears that there is no point in speaking out against the harassment they face and leads them to feel like they have no option but to suffer in silence. This must stop! We cannot expect victims of harassment to speak up if they are (rightly) afraid that public opprobrium will follow.\n\nMy second bone of contention is the Board\u2019s response. I have been deeply let down by the actions and inaction of David Kobia, Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and Jenny Stefanotti. Ever since I lodged my complaint on 4th May, I have been subjected to all the negative repercussions that make victims of harassment afraid to speak out:\n\nLack of support: Over the 74 days of this ordeal, not a single board member has reached out to inquire about my well being in any way, shape or form. Not a phone call, not an email, not through a third party. I shall repeat this again: nobody from Ushahidi leadership or the board has at any point bothered to ask if I\u2019m okay or sought to alleviate the adverse impact this has had on my work and health. The only person in management who displayed any concern is my supervisor who, even though he is my direct line manager, only found out about this when I informed him of my intention to leave Ushahidi on 19th June. The Board have claimed on several occasions that they refrained from enquiring about my well-being because they feared incurring legal liability. To the best of my knowledge, no laws prohibit a person from asking \u201chow are you?\u201d Anyone possessing some basic human decency should know \u2014 and do \u2014 better. Victim shaming: All through this process, I have been subtly censured by the Board for seeking and retaining legal counsel. The rationale is that I \u201cmade this legal and complicated\u201d by involving a lawyer which forced everyone else to lawyer up and thus led to the delays in handling the matter. This has been said to me personally by Erik Hersman and is a sentiment that has been repeated several times by other Board members, and their counsel in both private and public conversations. Slander: I have been reliably informed of more than one instance where Daudi has made comments to the effect that I am the one who pursued him for the purposes of establishing a sexual relationship and that I only filed a complaint when he rejected me. These comments were made to both colleagues and at project meetings with Ushahidi partners. I have tried to bring this up at least twice: once in the 24th May letter to the Board and subsequently at the internal hearing on 5th July. In the first instance, I received no response while in the second I was not even allowed to complete my question and was told that \u201cmy question is not relevant\u201d as these events occurred after my complaint was made and thus were not covered by the inquiry. Delays: It took 74 days to get a decision from the Board. Nothing except enthusiastic letter writing was done for the first 60 days. And even the letters from the Board\u2019s counsel seemed to be sent by literal snail mail \u2014 there was always a delay of 1 to 4 working days, and unlike the other lawyers they did not send advance copies of their letters via e-mail. The Board only seemed to act once the matter became public \u2014 first with Making All Voices Count followed then in various Kenyan WhatsApp groups, blogs and media. More happened in days 60\u201374 (15 days) than in the initial 60 days combined. An opaque process: Throughout the 74 days, and until now, I have had no clarity on how the board would handle this issue, save for the letter issued by the Board\u2019s advocates after the meeting of 20 June 2017 where the terms of engagement of the hearing were set out. At no point did the Board provide me with the timelines within which they intended to conclude this matter. They could have chosen to do this any way they wanted as the Ushahidi whistleblower policy is vague and only states \u201cThe Ushahidi\u2019s Compliance Officer will notify the person who submitted a complaint and acknowledge receipt of the reported violation or suspected violation. All reports will be promptly investigated and appropriate corrective action will be taken if warranted by the investigation.\u201d And even when a process was outlined, it was not as advertised. For instance, the inquiry that the board held was framed as a \u201cconversation to try and establish what happened and seek clarification\u201d but in my view, the \u201cconversation\u201d quickly degenerated to my being subjected to over 2.5 hours of brutal questioning designed not to get at the truth but to create an alternative narrative where the perpetrator became the victim. Even the 27-page Inquiry Report on this process ends with a Notice To Show Cause that once again has no timelines or clarity on when the process will end. Character attacks: During the inquiry, I had several harmless and not so harmless personality flaws used against me. Because I have a potty mouth and used the word \u201cfuck\u201d during the incident, it was suggested that I am the one who turned the conversation to sex and thus invited Daudi\u2019s sexual overtures. This was despite the fact that I did not use the word in a sexual context (see this video for various uses of the word \u201cfuck\u201d). It was also implied that I actively welcomed Daudi\u2019s sexual proposition because I did not vociferously voice my protest at his inappropriate remarks but instead tried to change the subject. The refusal to listen to, let alone address my concerns: Throughout this process, I have been provided with no opportunity to openly air my concerns to the board or receive a response to them. The issues I raised in my letters, such as Erik asking Ushahidi staff to report any sexual harassment to management, including Daudi, were not addressed. Even at the hearing, I was not permitted to ask any questions \u2014 I was not even allowed to explain why I resigned!\n\nThe blame for what is arguably the mismanagement of this entire issue lies squarely with the Board. David Kobia, Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and Jenny Stefanotti need to jointly and severally take responsibility for this. Their failure to properly manage my complaint is the sole reason I resigned from a job I was very fond of and was very good at. Their failure to set out crystal clear parameters for the hearing allowed Daudi\u2019s counsel to turn it from an inquiry to a \u2018courtroom\u2019 with him as the prosecutor and the judge. Their failure to speak up or intervene as I was harangued for over 2.5 hours \u2014 even when my counsel objected \u2014 indicates that they found this acceptable.\n\nThey also lacked the independence to properly investigate and take action in this matter. This is evidenced by the following:\n\nPrevious knowledge of similar allegations: Daudi has a long history of allegations of sexually harassing women from his days in the Kenya Blogger Webring (KBW), which was active in the mid to late 2000s. What is even more horrifying is that at least three of the Board members have known about Daudi\u2019s alleged penchant for harassing women for a significant period of time. Juliana was an administrator at Kenya Unlimited as this was going on, while David Kobia was a co-founder and forum administrator at Mashada. Erik was also active online during this period and presumably was aware of these accusations. Even if he might not have heard of these allegations in the aughts, Erik Hersman was explicitly informed about allegations of sexual harassment against Daudi in late 2015 when a prominent Kenyan tech entrepreneur told him about them in November 2015. The allegations this time included sending unsolicited \u201cdick pics\u201d to women via DM on Twitter and making unwanted sexual advances to women within the Bishop Magua building (where Ushahidi, BRCK, GearBox and iHub were then located) and in the wider tech ecosystem. At this time Daudi was the acting Executive Director of Ushahidi Kenya. Despite all this knowledge, the Ushahidi Board made Daudi\u2019s Executive Director position permanent in January 2016. Furthermore, even when presented with unequivocal proof of gross misconduct, as I did when I made my complaint on May 4th 2017, the board had to be subjected to intense public pressure before they did anything meaningful. For over nine weeks after I lodged this complaint, Daudi continued to act in his capacity as Executive Director: he participated in project meetings, strategy sessions and even international travel as the face of the organisation, including attending the 2017 Advancing Good Governance seminar and the 6th Annual Luxembourg Peace Prize Awards. He was only sent on compulsory leave on the same day that Quartz Africa ran a story (12th July). All through this \u2018investigation\u2019, the Board has bent over backwards to accommodate the requests of Daudi and his lawyer. Initially, they asked for the same level of procedure as a criminal court (e.g. witness lists and sworn statements) without having the authority to do so. Later, they turned around and insisted that it was an internal investigation and thus should exclude evidence from sources outside the company. The Board acceded to Daudi\u2019s lawyer\u2019s demands, apparently because they were afraid of a wrongful termination suit being filed by Daudi. This is at best disingenuous and at worst malicious. A company with the ethos Ushahidi purports to have should not shy away from doing what is right for fear of a lawsuit. Besides, had Daudi sued Ushahidi, he\u2019d have effectively turned a private matter public as he would have had to declare why he was terminated. Court documents in Kenya are public documents: having my complaint and particularly that audio recording in the public domain logically went directly against his own best interests. Daudi\u2019s explanation for the events of the evening was that he lost an earpiece of his hearing aid and Erik, as well as the Aberdare staff, were helping him look for it. I then allegedly joined them without invitation and refused to leave him so all his statements were made in an effort to get rid of me. However, at the time of our conversation, Erik had already retired to bed for the night. This can be attested to by any of the Ushahidi Team Members who were still at the bonfire. During the hearing, Erik did not correct Daudi on this point and in so doing, indirectly corroborated that untruth. Even if Erik had been awake, the fact that he was called upon as part of Daudi\u2019s \u201calibi\u201d should have clearly demonstrated his lack of independence. Erik should not have been a part of the panel that the Board constituted to investigate and make a decision. One cannot be a witness and judge in the same case! To date, Daudi still has his job: From the board\u2019s latest update, Daudi has only been suspended. It is entirely possible that he may be reinstated in the company. This is despite the Board possessing audio evidence of him sexually harassing his junior as well as allegations from a plurality of victims which relate to multiple occurrences. Even with this, it still took public pressure for the Board to first send him on leave then suspend him. This is unacceptable. How are victims supposed to come forward if this is how a company with the reputation of Ushahidi handles these incidences?\n\nI\u2019ve received several explanations for the delay: The Board claims that this was a complex matter because Ushahidi is domiciled in the US, yet the employees are Kenyan and the incident occurred in Kenya. It really wasn\u2019t that complicated. Florida and Kenyan law are in sync when it comes to sexual harassment laws: we checked this before we submitted my complaint and even attached excerpts from both countries\u2019 laws.\n\nThe Board has also claimed that they were not able to action my complaint as quickly as they would have liked because they were trying to avoid a wrongful termination suit. As explained above this is insincere. Based on the speed of events from the 3rd of July, this could have been handled in 2 weeks. So why did it take 74 days? It seems clear that the board was looking for reasons not to act despite their verbal and written assurances to the contrary. In such a case, the will to act is all that matters. Not assumed best intentions. And based on their findings, Daudi is guilty of misconduct on several fronts. None of that was news and was obvious even before the 5th July Inquiry was held. This should not have taken as long as it did.\n\nAs detailed extensively above, for some mysterious reason the Ushahidi board and leadership has been reluctant to take action even when presented with clear evidence about Daudi\u2019s misconduct. This completely boggles the mind because this scandal poses an existential risk to Ushahidi as an organisation. The Nairobi grapevine was already buzzing with rumours of this complaint after it was made on 4th May. The board just seems to have gone out of its way to avoid dealing with my complaint.\n\nThe board has also been less than forthright in the following ways:\n\nClay Shirky left the Board of Ushahidi in October 2015. This was not announced internally nor externally. Up until 15th July, Clay was still listed on the website as a Board Member. The summary of the proceedings at the inquiry is dubiously interpreted, contains some outright misrepresentations as well as the omission of relevant sections. This can be borne out by the recording of said proceedings which the Board possesses and I invite them to share this recording in its entirety with the public. Internally, Ushahidi has an open door policy. However, it seems that this openness exists in spite of, and not because of the Board. Erik has invited the staff to report any incident of harassment assuring them that the Board will handle it swiftly. This assurance is solidly contradicted by how the Board has thus far treated the two staff members who were sexually propositioned on 19th January 2017, one of whom had evidence (myself) and one who did not. The Chronology of Events provided by the Board on 17th July is economical with the truth. Specific examples that demonstrate this are:\n\nThe failure to mention that I was travelling for work when I was unavailable on 31st May. This is information the Board had easy access to and should have taken into consideration when they proposed a date for the hearing.\n\nThe inaccurate description of the process of the giving of the evidence (5th to 15th June). See the timeline for what actually transpired, with an explanation for the delays.\n\nThe inaccurate description of the process of agreeing upon the terms of engagement to be used at the inquiry (20th and 27th June)\n\n5th July: At the hearing, the Board stated they needed a week to make their decision. This has now been revised to \u201c7 working days to communicate its decision\u201d\n\n\u201c5th July: The Board communicates its decision to send the Respondent on leave until a decision is made.\u201d It is not clear who they communicated that with. It certainly was not to me in the course of the hearing nor to the staff as I had access to e-mails until 10th July and this had definitely not been communicated to the team by then. Daudi was first sent on leave on 12th July after significant community and public pressure.\n\nAll in all, this complaint has been completely and utterly mismanaged from Day 1. Both the tech community and Kenyan society at large need to reject the terrible precedent that the Board of Ushahidi has set. Their process has been deeply flawed and this should not be ignored just because they have ostensibly come to the correct conclusion. In cases such as these, the means matter just as much as the end.\n\nHaving been on the wrong end of a poorly managed process, I would suggest that all organisations revisit their sexual harassment procedures and evaluate them in light of best practices. Specifically, they need to ensure that the following issues have been addressed:\n\nA well-articulated process should be described that covers:\n\nTimelines: The time taken for the entire process should be as short as possible. A maximum of 14 calendar days seems to be an acceptable global standard. The process to be followed: In what form and way should employees submit complaints or raise concerns? Are there alternate persons to whom employees can submit such complaints when the complaints are against the very person they are normally supposed to submit them to? Is evidence of a claim required? If yes, what kind? What each stage of the process will do, when it will be done and why. What form communication during the process will take and what each party should expect to hear \/ receive at each stage. Notification of other staff: Be explicit on what staff will be notified, when and in what form. Channel to raise concerns: A means should be created to allow all parties to raise any issues they have as the process is ongoing. Appeal process: if the outcome is not satisfactory to the parties, what if any avenues for recourse do they have?\n\nSupport to the parties: what, if any, psychological support are the victim and perpetrator entitled to? When and where is this support available, and for how long?\n\nLeave of absence during the investigation: If and for how long the victim and perpetrator should be sent on compulsory (paid) leave as the investigation process is undertaken.\n\nCommunication with the rest of the company and the outside world: A policy should exist on what is revealed, when and how to other staff as well as to parties outside the organisation.\n\nIt should go without saying it seems that it must be said: Sexual harassment is not a harmless or victimless crime. Because of it, I\u2019ve had to resign from a job I liked and was very good at. This has been detrimental to both the Programme, and the organisation as a whole. I know of people who have been forced to resign due to harassment and are subsequently unable to find new jobs and new sources of income. This is because at its core sexual harassment is about an abuse of power. The person in a position of power leaves the victim in a position where they either remain silent or lose their livelihood. We cannot be speaking of building inclusive workplaces for women (who bear the brunt of the majority of sexual harassment cases) when we are still contending with such rudimentary issues as ensuring that offices are free of harassment.\n\nBased on how effectively my complaint was bungled, Ushahidi\u2019s reputation has taken a massive hit. This need never have happened and is completely unfair to the majority of the staff of the organisation who have played absolutely no part in this series of unfortunate events, and to this day remain mostly in the dark about exactly what transpired. It breaks my heart that the good people who work at Ushahidi have been damaged by the actions of David Kobia, Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and Jenny Stefanotti. The good work that Ushahidi has done over the past 10 years, and continues to do should not be tarnished by the actions and lack thereof of this Board.\n\nIn order to begin the healing process within the company, and for the world to begin to regain confidence in Ushahidi, the Board should resign in its entirety. Only new management can begin to repair the damage done. There is a Swahili saying: \u201cMwenzako akinyolewa, na wewe tia maji\u201d. Current employees who have witnessed first hand how poorly I have been treated have very real fears about how their issues and concerns will be handled in the future. Only a fresh and independent Board and Executive Director can provide the assurances that the staff, the Kenyan tech community and the world at large need, as we all move on from here. A good first step would be to set up a Kenya HarassMap deployment and put aside some resources to pay for any legal and counselling support services to other victims of Daudi and other sexual predators.\n\nUshahidi is a great company with a valuable product. I hope the Board can put their egos aside and do what\u2019s best for the company, which is stepping aside to give Ushahidi a chance to rebuild its reputation.\n\nUpdate: Timeline updated on 21 July to correct typos and add a missing link"} -{"text":"The decision Monday, the Roberts court\u2019s first direct look at public campaign financing, concerned only systems that use matching funds, as opposed to lump-sum grants. About a third of the states have some form of public financing, as does the federal government for presidential elections.\n\n\u201cWe do not today call into question the wisdom of public financing as a means of funding political candidacy,\u201d Chief Justice Roberts wrote. \u201cThat is not our business.\u201d\n\nSupporters of the law said the decision could have been worse. \u201cChief Justice Roberts at least recognized that public financing is a valid constitutional option,\u201d said Monica Youn, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice, which represented one of the defendants in the case.\n\nAs a consequence of the decision, states and municipalities are now blocked from using a method of public financing that is simultaneously likely to attract candidates fearful that they will be vastly outspent and sensitive to avoiding needless government expense.\n\n\u201cThe government can still use taxpayer funds to subsidize political campaigns, but it can only do that in a manner that provides an alternative to private financing\u201d said William R. Maurer, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice, which represented several challengers of the law. \u201cIt cannot create disincentives.\u201d\n\nChief Justice Roberts said that all escalating matching funds placed an unconstitutional burden on politicians who chose not to participate. But he added that Arizona\u2019s system also created problematic asymmetries and anomalies. Candidates with several opponents could generate multiple subsidies every time they spent money, and spending from unaffiliated supporters could do the same.\n\nJustice Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the majority opinion.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nThree years ago, in Davis v. Federal Election Commission, another 5-to-4 decision with the same justices in the majority, the court struck down a superficially similar federal law known as the \u201cmillionaire\u2019s amendment.\u201d That law allowed candidates to raise amounts over the usual contribution limits when rich opponents spent more than a given amount of their own money.\n\nJustice Alito, writing for the majority, said the law imposed \u201can unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises\u201d free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.\n\nChief Justice Roberts said the logic of the Davis decision required the court to strike down the Arizona law. Indeed, he said, it is one thing for the government to allow candidates to seek additional contributions and another for the government to send a check.\n\nNewsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.\n\n\u201cThe cash subsidy, conferred in response to political speech, penalizes speech to a greater extent and more directly than the millionaire\u2019s amendment in Davis,\u201d Chief Justice Roberts wrote.\n\nThe decision concerned two consolidated cases, Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett, No. 10-238, and McComish v. Bennett, No. 10-239. It was the fifth ruling from the Roberts court cutting back on the government\u2019s ability to regulate campaign finance.\n\nIn a dissent summarized from the bench, Justice Elena Kagan said the Arizona law advanced First Amendment values.\n\n\u201cWhat the law does \u2014 all the law does \u2014 is fund more speech,\u201d she wrote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.\n\n\u201cArizona, remember, offers to support any person running for state office,\u201d Justice Kagan wrote. The candidates who challenged the law declined to accept that help, she said.\n\n\u201cSo they are making a novel argument: that Arizona violated their First Amendment rights by disbursing funds to other speakers even though they could have received (but chose to spurn) the same financial assistance,\u201d Justice Kagan wrote. \u201cSome people might call that chutzpah.\u201d\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nThe Davis decision, Justice Kagan wrote, involved a different issue, as it concerned a law that raised contribution limits disproportionately.\n\nThe majority and dissent disagreed about whether the Arizona law was supported by a permissible government rationale.\n\nChief Justice Roberts wrote that its main purpose was to level the playing field for political speech, which several earlier decisions have said is an improper goal.\n\n\u201cIt is not legitimate for the government to attempt to equalize electoral opportunities in this manner,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAnd such basic intrusion by the government into the debate over who should govern goes to the heart of First Amendment values.\u201d\n\n\u201c \u2018Leveling the playing field,\u2019 \u201d Chief Justice Roberts wrote, \u201ccan sound like a good thing. But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game.\u201d\n\nJustice Kagan countered that the main purpose of the law was to root out corruption and the appearance of corruption by encouraging candidates to participate in public financing systems, a goal the Supreme Court has endorsed.\n\n\u201cLike citizens across this country, Arizonans deserve a government that represents and serves them all,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAnd no less, Arizonans deserve the chance to reform their electoral system so as to attain that most American of goals. Truly, democracy is not a game.\u201d"} -{"text":"FILE- In this Friday, May 18, 2012, file photo, a child looks at a laptop displaying Facebook logos in Hyderabad, India. Facebook said Monday, June 4, 2012, it is testing out ways to allow younger kids on its site without needing to lie. (AP Photo\/Mahesh Kumar A., File)\n\nFacebook has finally forgotten about that drunken night in college when you vomited on that one friend who never talked to you again. Any deleted photo from that episode, or any photo deleted by users for whatever reason, has finally been removed from the social network's servers, it appears.\n\n(Now if only your friend could permanently forget about the incidence too.)\n\nSince 2009, Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng has doggedly tracked how long it takes big photo-sharing sites to permanently delete photos after a user hits \"Delete.\" Her method was simple: save a photo's URL, delete the photo and wait to see how long it takes for the link to die. For Twitter and Flickr, it took seconds. For MySpace (remember that?), it took months. But for Facebook, Cheng found it could take years.\n\nIn some cases, photos deleted in 2009 were still on Facebook servers in 2012. In February, Facebook explained to Cheng \"[w]e have been working hard to move our photo storage to newer systems which do ensure photos are fully deleted.\" Now, Cheng is happy to report that she has \"tested this with two photos while saving their direct URLs, and both photos became inaccessible within two days of deletion.\" Her readers got similar results.\n\nFirst, let us say, Good job, Facebook. Like how we train a dog, we ought to reward good behavior as well as punish bad. The media, rolling up its newspaper, has knocked Facebook on the nose for many no-nos: swapping users' listed email addresses for Facebook addresses, accidentally showing people's private chats to the public, to name a few snafus. We're glad to finally give Facebook a treat.\n\nBut why did this take so long to implement?\n\n\"The systems we used for photo storage a few years ago did not always delete images from content delivery networks in a reasonable period of time even though they were immediately removed from the site,\" Facebook told Ars Technica on Thursday. During its period of massive growth, Facebook apparently found it difficult to expand its servers and delete photos in a timely fashion. But now that new photo storage, installed in February, apparently deletes photos within 30 days, according to Facebook.\n\nPerhaps what this tells us several months later is that Facebook wanted to get serious about privacy -- including making sure that unwanted photos weren't being stored after users tried to delete them -- as it hurtled toward its initial public offering in May. As a publicly traded company, it's reasonable to expect Facebook to be more sensitive to privacy concerns."} -{"text":"Several states voted to legalize marijuana this past Election Day but the pot business still has a gripe\u2014regulations.\n\nThough decriminalized on some level in 19 states and the District of Columbia (it remains illegal under federal law), marijuana is still subject to regulations that strike some in the industry as micromanagement.\n\nOne company that tracks regulations is Cannabiz Media, which publishes the \u201cMarijuana Licensing Reference Guide.\u201d It recently posted a list of what it describes as the \u201c10 weirdest marijuana laws.\u201d For example, in Nevada and Oregon, signage for businesses that sell pot is regulated down to the font size and even font style. Connecticut bans the uses of illuminated signs while Washington, DC, makes it a point to outlaw the sale of pot at gasoline stations or auto repair shops.\n\nEd Keating, the person who compiled the list, sees such regulations as more than just a nuisance, particularly for medical marijuana dispensaries.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s really hard to comply with these regulations because they are so particular and, in some cases, they just don\u2019t seem to make a lot of sense,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019re a business trying to get medicine to your patients\u2026 some of these regulations are very expensive to comply with.\u201d\n\nHowever, Keating isn\u2019t entirely against regulations and argues that some control would be in the industry\u2019s best interests.\n\n\u201cIn a lot of states now, they\u2019re starting to put what an appropriate dosage or amount is to consume,\u201d he said, noting that Maureen Dowd\u2019s 2014 New York Times piece on her overdose of marijuana-infused chocolates showed the dangers of no labeling. \u201cThat makes a lot of sense for safety.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe other area that has seen a lot of regulatory scrutiny is testing because they want to make sure that if people are consuming this as medicine\u2014or even recreationally\u2014they\u2019re given a safe product,\u201d he continued. \u201cWhere it gets dangerous is when people concentrate that product into a liquid, an oil. You\u2019re raising the concentration of everything. So if there are bad chemicals in there, they get much more concentrated and it could be a danger to people. So I think we\u2019ll be seeing even more regulations there.\u201d"} -{"text":"The movement is not going away \u2014 most Republicans in the House have more to fear from primary challengers on their right than from Democratic challengers. An unpopular budget deal could reignite the Tea Party, as the antitax crusader Grover Norquist predicts.\n\nBut surveys of voters leaving the polls last month showed that support for the Tea Party had dropped precipitously from 2010, when a wave of recession-fueled anger over bailouts, federal spending and the health care overhaul won the Republicans a majority in the House.\n\nThe House members elected with Tea Party backing in 2010 forced onto the national agenda their goals of deep cuts to spending and changes to entitlement programs, embodied by the budget blueprints of Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, who became Mitt Romney\u2019s running mate. And some of those lawmakers led the revolt last week that prompted Speaker John A. Boehner to cancel a House vote on a plan to avert a year-end fiscal crisis by raising tax rates on household income above $1 million.\n\n\u201cThe Tea Party put a lot of steel in the spine of the Republican Party,\u201d said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma.\n\nBut the Tea Party activists have not been front and center in the fiscal fight. And Mr. Cole added that Tea Party leaders now excoriating Mr. Boehner for offering higher taxes in a budget deal did not recognize political reality.\n\n\u201cThese guys want instant success,\u201d said Mr. Cole, a member of the House Republican leadership. \u201cIf they want to see a better result, they\u2019ve got to help us win the United States Senate. We\u2019ve thrown away some seats out of political immaturity.\u201d\n\nBut a number of Republican leaders said the Tea Party seemed headed toward becoming just another political faction, not a broad movement. It may rally purists, but it will continue to alienate realists and centrists, they said.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\n\u201cI think the Tea Party movement is to the Republicans in 2013 what the McGovernites were to the Democrats in 1971 and 1972,\u201d said Don Gaetz, a Republican who is the president of the Florida Senate. \u201cThey will cost Republicans seats in Congress and in state legislatures. But they will also help Republicans win seats.\u201d\n\nPhoto\n\nBecause the Tea Party comprises thousands of local groups, it is impossible to determine whether its ranks shrank after the many electoral defeats last month, which activists said caused grief and deep frustration.\n\nGreg Cummings, the leader of the We the People Tea Party in rural Decatur County, Iowa, said his group had picked up 12 members since the election, for a total of about 50. \u201cIf you were in a fight and someone gave you a good left hook, it doesn\u2019t mean the fight is over,\u201d he said.\n\nBut Everett Wilkinson, the chairman of the Florida Tea Party in Palm Beach County, said the number of active Tea Party groups statewide \u201chas diminished significantly in the last year or so, certainly in the last couple of months,\u201d with only a third of what there once was.\n\nNewsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.\n\n\u201cA lot of people gave their heart and soul to trying to get Obama out; they\u2019re frustrated,\u201d he added. \u201cThey don\u2019t know what to do. They got involved with the electoral process, and that didn\u2019t work out.\u201d\n\nFreedomWorks, a national group that has played a crucial role in organizing Tea Party activists and backing insurgent candidates, has been riven by turmoil, leading to the departure last month of its chairman, Dick Armey, a former Republican majority leader in the House.\n\nMr. Armey said in news accounts that he questioned the ethical behavior of senior officials in the group, though others told of a power struggle. He was eased out with an $8 million consulting contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.\n\nFreedomWorks spent nearly $40 million on the 2012 elections but backed a string of losing Senate candidates, including Richard E. Mourdock of Indiana, Josh Mandel of Ohio and Connie Mack of Florida. Some Tea Party firebrands lost their House seats, including Allen B. West of Florida and Joe Walsh of Illinois.\n\nOne notable success for the Tea Party was the Senate victory by Ted Cruz of Texas.\n\nMr. Cummings, who is the Midwest coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, a national group, said a major issue he would be focusing on now was Agenda 21, a United Nations resolution that encourages sustainable development. It has no force of law in the United States, but a passionate element of the Tea Party sees it as a plot against American property rights.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nBillie Tucker, an activist with the First Coast Tea Party in Florida, said she and others suspected that corruption on local election boards had led to Mr. Obama\u2019s victory in the state. Activists want to investigate.\n\n\u201cSome people say it\u2019s just a conspiracy theory, but there\u2019s rumbling all around,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s all kinds of data, and no one\u2019s talking about it, including, hello, the mainstream media.\u201d\n\nAnother issue boiling is the \u201cnullification\u201d of the Affordable Care Act. Angry that Mr. Obama\u2019s re-election means that the health care law will not be repealed, some activists claim that states can deny the authority of the federal government and refuse to carry it out.\n\nAt a Florida State Senate meeting this month, two dozen Tea Party activists called the law \u201ctyrannical\u201d and said the state had the right to nullify it.\n\nMr. Gaetz, the Senate president, a conservative Republican, said in an interview that he, too, disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law. But he called nullification \u201ckooky.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re not a banana republic,\u201d he said. It is \u201cdangerous to the foundation of the republic when we pick and choose which laws we will obey.\u201d"} -{"text":"Former Bush administration official Stephen Hadley, a forceful advocate for a military strike against Syria, owns about $875,000 worth of stock in Raytheon, which manufactures Tomahawk cruise missiles . (Alex Brandon\/ASSOCIATED PRESS)\n\nMilitary analysts who made frequent media appearances during the recent debate over a possible U.S. strike on Syria have ties to defense contractors and other firms with stakes in the outcome, according to a new study, but those links were rarely disclosed.\n\nThe report by the Public Accountability Initiative, a nonprofit watchdog, details appearances by 22 commentators who spoke out during this summer\u2019s Syria debate in large media outlets and currently have industry connections that the group says can pose conflicts of interest.\n\nIn some cases, the potential conflicts were clear-cut \u2014 such as board positions and shares in companies that make weapons that probably would have been used in any U.S. action. In other instances, including work for private investment and consulting firms whose clients are not disclosed, it was not possible to know whether those speaking had an interest in the debate.\n\nThe report also notes the prominent role of seven think tanks during the debate and their close links to defense companies.\n\n\u201cWe found lots of industry ties. Some of them are stronger than others. Some really rise to the level of clear conflicts of interest,\u201d said Kevin Connor, the group\u2019s director and a co-author of the report. \u201cThese networks and these commentators should err on the side of disclosure.\u201d\n\nIn several media appearances in September, Stephen Hadley, a former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, was a forceful advocate for strikes. He told Bloomberg TV that Republicans should back the president\u2019s use-of-force resolution and argued in a Washington Post op-ed that failure to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people would damage U.S. credibility if military action were threatened over Iran\u2019s nuclear program.\n\nWhile Hadley\u2019s role in the Bush administration was always noted, there was no mention of his ties to Raytheon, manufacturer of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which likely would have been fired from Navy destroyers stationed in the eastern Mediterranean in strikes against Syria. Hadley has been on the board of directors of Raytheon since 2009 and, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from June included in the new report, owned 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, now worth about $875,000. Hadley was also paid $128,500 in cash compensation by the company last year, according to a filing with the SEC.\n\nIn one appearance, CNN noted that Hadley is a principal at RiceHadleyGates, an international strategic consulting firm based in Silicon Valley and Washington.\n\nFred Hiatt, editorial page editor at The Post, said Hadley\u2019s opinions in the newspaper\u2019s op-ed commentary were not colored by his association with Raytheon.\n\n\u201cMore disclosure is generally better than less, but I\u2019m confident that Hadley\u2019s opinion piece, which was consistent with the worldview he has espoused for many years, was not influenced by any hypothetical, certainly marginal, impact to Raytheon\u2019s bottom line,\u201d Hiatt said in a statement.\n\nA spokesperson said Hadley was traveling in China and unavailable for comment.\n\nRetired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, a former commander of the U.S. Central Command, also made several media appearances to discuss the Syrian situation and cautioned that the kind of limited intervention that was being proposed has in the past been difficult to accomplish. But in the five appearances covered by the study, his ties to the defense industry were not disclosed.\n\nZinni has been on the board of directors of BAE Systems, a top defense contractor, since 2002 and was board chairman from 2009 to 2012. The company specializes in cybersecurity, intelligence analysis and several weapons systems. Zinni, in addition, sits on the board of advisers of DC Capital Partners, a private equity firm that focuses on investments in intelligence, homeland security and other sectors.\n\nReached by e-mail, Zinni said his board memberships are public. \u201cThe media who contact me for comment should post any relevant info re my background including my board positions if they desire,\u201d he wrote.\n\nRetired Gen. Jack Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff, made frequent appearances as well, including as a Fox News military analyst, during which he supported U.S. action against Syria. His military career and his affiliation with the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank where he is board chairman, were regularly cited.\n\nBut there was no disclosure of Keane\u2019s ties to General Dynamics, where he has been on the board since 2004, and to SCP Partners, a venture capital firm focused in part on investments in defense and security, where he is a venture partner. General Dynamics\u2019 Bath Iron Works is the lead designer and builder of the destroyers from which the Tomahawk missiles would have been launched. Keane\u2019s office said he was not available to comment.\n\nAsked about the report\u2019s findings, Michael Clemente, executive vice president of news at Fox News, said in a statement, \u201cWe generally disclose contacts when our judgment is that it\u2019s journalistically germane to the story.\u201d\n\nTwo other networks where analysts covered by the report made frequent appearances, CNN and NBC, did not respond to requests for comment."} -{"text":"Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain was our game of the year in 2015, however the foundations for it were laid by standalone introductory chapter Ground Zeroes. Today, Konami has announced Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience which gathers both games and a bunch of DLC under one banner.\n\nDue to launch via Steam on October 13, players can expect \u201cadditional Mother Base currency\u201d, as well as a slew of items, including Rasp Short-Barrelled Shotguns, the Adam-ska Special handgun, a range of Personal Ballistic Shields, and a number of costumes for The Phantom Pain. Previously console-exclusive Ground Zeroes missions\u2014D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu and Jamais Vu\u2014are also included, as are a number of DLC packs and weapons for Metal Gear Online.\n\n\u201cMetal Gear Solid V has received collectively over 60 industry accolades and awards thus far,\u201d says Konami president Tomotada Tashiro in a statement. \u201cThe Definitive Experience will give players an opportunity to play the complete MGSV experience, without interruption. Additionally, with Metal Gear Online, players also get access to a completely unique multi-player setting that is designed for a truly engrossing gaming experience as well.\u201d\n\nMetal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience is due October 13. Console versions will cost \u00a334.99\/$39.99, however Steam pricing is yet to be confirmed. Read Sam\u2019s review of The Phantom Pain over here."} -{"text":"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain\u2019s campaign said on Monday a McCain opinion article about Iraq offered to The New York Times as a rebuttal to Democrat Barack Obama had been rejected.\n\nRepublican presidential candidate Senator John McCain (R-AZ) speaks at a campaign picnic outside the Maine Military Museum in South Portland, Maine July 21, 2008. REUTERS\/Brian Snyder\n\nThe McCain camp had submitted the article to The Times as a response to a piece by Obama published by the newspaper last week.\n\n\u201cMy Plan for Iraq\u201d had detailed Obama\u2019s goal of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in 16 months if he is elected on November 4.\n\nThe McCain article was largely a critique of Obama\u2019s position, arguing against establishing a set timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq.\n\nMcCain is attempting to make sure his voice is heard while Obama picks up headlines with a visit this week to Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and Europe.\n\n\u201cDuring the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be \u2018very dangerous,\u2019\u201d McCain wrote.\n\nAn e-mail sent to the McCain staff by a Times editor said it would be terrific to have an article from McCain but that the one sent in was not acceptable as currently written and that a new draft should articulate how McCain defines victory in Iraq.\n\nThe McCain campaign, which does not feel McCain gets equal treatment in the U.S. news media, expressed dismay at the Times\u2019 decision and suspected it was because the Times did not agree with McCain\u2019s policy.\n\n\u201cJohn McCain believes that victory in Iraq must be based on conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables. Unlike Barack Obama, that position will not change based on politics or the demands of The New York Times,\u201d said McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.\n\nThe New York Times said it was standard procedure to have a \u201cback and forth with an author about his or her submission\u201d and looked forward to publishing McCain\u2019s views.\n\n\u201cWe have published at least seven Op-ed pieces by Senator McCain since 1996. The New York Times endorsed Senator McCain as the Republican candidate in the presidential primaries. We take his views very seriously,\u201d said the statement from Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis."} -{"text":"North Korea has detained another U.S. citizen, a Korean American professor, bringing to three the number of Americans being held in Pyongyang.\n\nThe Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang, which represents U.S. interests there because the United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea, confirmed to The Washington Post that a U.S. national had been detained. In Washington, the State Department said it was aware of the report.\n\nMedia in South Korea identified the man as Kim Sang-duk, a former professor at the Yanbian University of Science and Technology (YUST) in the northeastern Chinese city of Yanji, near the border with North Korea.\n\nKim was arrested at Pyongyang\u2019s international airport Friday as he was waiting to board a flight, South Korea\u2019s Yonhap News Agency reported.\n\nKim had been teaching a class in international finance and management at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a sister institution, for a month and was leaving the country with his wife when he was arrested, the specialist website NK News quoted the chancellor of PUST, Park Chan-mo, as saying.\n\n[What it\u2019s like to be an American held in North Korea]\n\nNorth Korea has taken a slew of Americans hostage in recent years and used them as bargaining chips in negotiations with the United States.\n\nIt is holding two other Americans.\n\nOtto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student who went on a tour in North Korea while on his way to a study-abroad program in Hong Kong, was detained for allegedly trying to steal a propaganda sign from a Pyongyang hotel on New Year\u2019s Day last year.\n\nHe was convicted of subversion in March after a court found that he had committed a crime \u201cpursuant to the U.S. government\u2019s hostile policy\u201d toward North Korea and was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.\n\n[North Korea sentences college student to 15 years of hard labor]\n\nHe has not been seen since March 2016, when he was convicted, and when Swedish diplomats were last allowed to meet with him.\n\nAnother American, former Virginia man Kim Dong-chul, was charged with spying last April and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Kim, who is in his early 60s, was born in South Korea but became a U.S. citizen in 1987, although he is thought to have been living in northeastern China in recent years.\n\nPrevious American detainees have been released after a few months following visits from high-profile Americans, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.\n\nBut so far, the North Korean regime has not used Warmbier and Kim as leverage.\n\nRead more:\n\nNorth Korea sentences former Va. man to 10 years of hard labor\n\nNorth Korea sentences U-Va. student to 15 years of hard labor in prison\n\nU-Va. student held in North Korea \u2018confesses\u2019 to \u2018severe\u2019 crime\n\nToday\u2019s coverage from Post correspondents around the world\n\nLike Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news"} -{"text":"Animals are dying in unnecessary agony because of a lack of understanding over how stunning stops them feeling pain when their throats are cut, research shows.\n\nIn conventional slaughterhouses, cows, sheep and chicken are stunned, usually with an electric shock, to ensure they are unconscious before their throats are cut.\n\nThis minimises suffering but in a number of Muslim abattoirs the animals are not stunned over fears it is not permissible, or 'halal'.\n\nIn a number of Muslim abattoirs animals are not stunned before slaughter over fears it is not permissible, or 'halal' but research suggests this is due to ignorance of the process (file image)\n\nA study by researchers at the University of Bristol suggests some Islamic scholars are ignorant about the humaneness of stunning, leading to animals dying in pain,The Times reported.\n\nWidespread research shows the welfare benefits of pre-slaughter stunning. The electric shocks lessen the pain felt by animals when their throats are cut.\n\nA number of industry bodies have spoken out against the slaughtering of animals without pre-stunning, with the British Veterinary Association saying there is an 'unacceptable time lapse between slaughter and the onset of permanent insensibility [loss of feeling] when animals are not stunned'.\n\nAnimals must also be stunned before slaughter under EU regulations.\n\nHowever Britain allows an exemption for those who oppose because of religious beliefs and the number of animals killed without stunning appears to be on the rise.\n\nRITUAL KILLING OF ANIMALS FOR RELIGIOUS REASONS HALAL Halal slaughtering involves cutting through the large arteries in the neck with one swipe of a blade, while a Muslim butcher recites a religious verse. All blood is then drained away since the consumption of blood is forbidden under Islamic law. Under Islamic law, an animal must be slaughtered by having its throat cut while it is conscious. KOSHER According to the laws, in order for a meat to kosher it must come from an animal that meets the kosher rules. These are the animal must be ruminant and have split hooves. Ruminant animals chew food once and swallow, before regurgitating it and chewing again. Animals that Jews can eat include cows, sheep, goats and deer. They cannot eat pigs despite the fact it has split hooves because it is not a ruminant animal. Before slaughtering, the animal must be healthy and uninjured and a sharp knife is used to slice through the main arteries and windpipe, causing a drop in blood pressure that causes the animal to lose consciousness. Jews believe this is a way of killing that shows 'respect and compassion' as set out in Jewish law.\n\nSome 2.4 million sheep and goats were put to death using the religious method in halal and kosher abattoirs in 2013 \u2013 a rise of 60 per cent on 2011.\n\nAccording to analysis by the Food Standards Agency, some 37 per cent of sheep and goats, 25 per cent of cattle and 16 per cent of poultry were killed in this way in halal premises.\n\nResearchers from the University of Bristol School of Veterinary Science questioned Islamic scholars and Halal consumers on the use of pre-slaughter stunning.\n\nThe study is published in the journal Meat Science.\n\nSome 69 per cent of scholars said they did not agree that stunning prior to slaughter had been showed to reduce the pain felt by animals, according to The Times.\n\nHowever more than 95 per cent of the scholars and 53 per cent of consumers agreed that if stunning did not result in death, cause physical injury or obstruct bleed-out, the meat would be considered Halal.\n\nThe study said: ' The lack of understanding of stunning among some scholars has resulted in the issuance of confusing fatwas on the suitability of stunned meat for consumption by Muslims.\n\n'There is an urgent need for these scholars to be given theoretical and practical education on stunning and other modern slaughter techniques such as mechanical slaughter.\n\n'This will help them make informed decisions about the suitability of these techniques for Halal production.'\n\nGudrun Ravetz, president of the British Veterinary Association said: 'Our view is that all animals should be stunned before slaughter, based on peer reviewed evidence that indicates an unacceptable time lapse between slaughter and the onset of permanent insensibility when animals are not stunned.\n\nBritain allows an exemption for those who oppose because of religious beliefs and the number of animals killed without stunning appears to be on the rise. File image\n\n'A number of notable bodies including the Farm Animal Welfare Committee and the EU Food Safety Authority all agree that there is a high probability that the cutting of sensitive tissues at the neck will trigger a significant pain response in a conscious animal.\n\n'Given the barrage of evidence about the humaneness of stunning before slaughter the veterinary profession is persuaded that animals must be stunned."} -{"text":"Photo\n\nFifteen years ago, bemoaning the high cost of higher education, the governors of 19 Western states decided to start a nonprofit online institution to help meet their need for a trained work force. The result, Western Governors University, offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in education, business, the health professions and information technology. Everything is online except for student teaching and some nursing requirements.\n\nMost of its 25,000 students are over 25, and have previously earned some college credits.\n\nInstead of being required to spend a certain number of hours to earn a certain sequence of credits, students at Western Governors must show \u201ccompetency\u201d through assignments and proctored exams.\n\nMarie Hermetz, who paid Western Governors about $9,000 to earn her master\u2019s degree in health care management, said she heard about the program on the news and switched from one that would have cost up to $40,000.\n\n\u201cDoing it one class at a time, I would have graduated maybe never,\u201d said Ms. Hermetz, 43, who had a bachelor\u2019s degree in math. \u201cThis way, it took just under 18 months. And whenever I ran into trouble, my professors would make arrangements, whether it was through a webinar or a phone call or an e-mail, to help me.\u201d\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nActually, Western Governors does not have \u201cprofessors\u201d in the usual sense: the online curriculum is not developed by the university, but chosen by outside experts, and students have \u201ccourse mentors\u201d with graduate degrees."} -{"text":"The BBC has been ordered to disclose the names and details of 150 senior managers who received severance payouts after MPs invoked a rare parliamentary custom.\n\nThe Commons public accounts committee is to invoke the power of a standing order to force the broadcaster to release information about 150 redundancy payments to senior managers between 2010 and 2012.\n\nCiting data protection issues, the BBC has previously fought attempts to divulge the names, but has now written to the former managers alerting them that the nature of their severance arrangements may now be made public.\n\nThe development came on Friday amid further fallout in the BBC payoffs controversy, with a statement challenging former director general Mark Thompson's claim that the BBC Trust was fully informed about a \u00a31m severence settlement with a senior executive in 2010 issued by five trustees.\n\nOne ex-senior BBC manager, who received the letter warning that details of his severance arrangement may be published, told MediaGuardian: \"I am not prepared to have details of what was meant to be a confidential matter released into the public domain without any kind of assurance of how it will be presented.\n\n\"My redundancy was totally in order, but there is no guidance from the BBC as to how the information will be presented. The concern I would have is that a senior manager such as myself \u2013 whose redundancy settlement was perfectly in order \u2013 will be lumped together with the very small number of senior managers whose deals seem to have been rather more generous. I cannot see myself giving consent for my name and details to be released.\"\n\nIn the letter sent to all 150 former bosses to give them the opportunity to raise any concerns, the corporation said: \"PAC has recently confirmed in writing to the BBC that it is applying its Standing Order power to call for the 150 names and details of the 150 recipients of severance payments cited in the [National Audit Office] report, which includes you.\n\n\"PAC has informed us that on receipt of this information, it will then decide whether or not to make this information public taking into account the public interest in doing so. PAC further states that it will consider any representations concerning individual cases, that it takes the needs of confidentiality seriously and has chosen not to publish information regarding individuals on previous occasions.\"\n\nOn Friday the BBC Trust issued a statement from five trustees who were in post when the payoff for former deputy director general Mark Byford was being discussed in late 2010 \u2013 Richard Ayre, Diane Coyle, Anthony Fry, Alison Hastings and David Liddiment.\n\n\"We were not asked for approval of the financial package \u2013 formally or informally \u2013 nor did we give it. The Trust was assured that the package was within contractual terms and that the chairman of the BBC's executive remuneration committee had agreed to it being approved,\" they said.\n\nThompson, in his PAC evidence submission published on Friday, said he took \"all reasonable steps to ensure that the BBC Trust was properly informed in advance\" about the proposed redundancy settlements with Byford and Sharon Baylay, the former director of marketing who left with a \u00a3390,000 payoff.\n\n\"The timetable and the urgency of the email traffic between the Trust and various BBC managers supports the view that the Trust wanted to be able to express its view about the proposed settlements before the [executive remuneration committee] was asked to formally approve them,\" he added.\n\n\"The only non-automatic part of the proposed settlement with Mark Byford was the intention to delay the issuing of formal notice and to make a payment in lieu of notice: there is clear evidence that the trust was aware of both those points.\"\n\nEarlier on Friday, it emerged that Lucy Adams, the BBC's HR director, has written to MPs to correct her evidence to parliament about her involvement in agreeing the \u00a31m severance payment for a former senior executive.\n\nAdams admitted in fresh evidence released by the PAC on Friday that she was involved in drafting a key memo to the BBC Trust that detailed the controversial \u00a31m severance payment to Byford.\n\nThompson described Adams in evidence also published by the committee on Friday as \"one of the main authors\" of the memo \u2013 dubbed the 7 October note \u2013 which she claimed not to have seen when she appeared before MPs on the PAC on 10 July. In a letter made public on Friday, Adams said it was not clear which document the committee was referring to at the time.\n\nThe 7 October note, drafted in 2010, has become central to the BBC payoffs saga because it was drawn up to inform the BBC Trust of two controversial payoffs \u2013 to Byford and Baylay. The BBC Trust has since claimed not to have been fully briefed on these redundancy deals.\n\n\u2022 To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly \"for publication\".\n\n\u2022 To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook"} -{"text":"SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email\n\nAustrians elected a Green Party-backed economics professor as their next president, spurning the appeal of an anti-immigration nationalist who campaigned to weaken ties to the European Union.\n\nWith all regular votes counted, Alexander Van der Bellen defeated Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party by 51.7 percent to 48.3 percent after Sunday\u2019s repeat run-off election to the mainly ceremonial presidency. While mail-in ballots will only be counted on Monday, Van der Bellen\u2019s margin of victory was too great to change the outcome, and Hofer conceded defeat.\n\nVan der Bellen, 72, said that he stood for the \u201cold values\u201d of freedom, equality and solidarity. He also signaled that he wanted to preside over a more active presidency, urging a focus on policies such as efforts to tackle unemployment.\n\nAustria sent a \u201cgood signal\u201d today \u201cto the capitals of the European Union,\u201d Van der Bellen, who ran as an independent, said in an interview with public broadcaster ORF. \u201cYou can actually win elections with a pro-European position.\u201d\n\nTogether with a referendum in Italy also being held on Sunday, the Austrian vote was seen as a bellwether for populist sentiment in Europe after the U.K.\u2019s Brexit vote and Donald Trump\u2019s election to the U.S. presidency. Geert Wilders, the anti-Islam Dutch politician, offered Hofer his commiserations on Twitter, as did French National Front leader Marine Le Pen. Nigel Farage, the former head of the U.K. Independence Party, had cited Hofer\u2019s EU-skeptic stance as further evidence of the pressures buffeting the EU \u201cconstruction.\u201d\n\nGerman Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, who heads the Social Democratic Party, hailed Van der Bellen\u2019s win as a \u201cvictory of reason against right-wing populism,\u201d according to an interview with Bild newspaper. EU President Donald Tusk extended his \u201cwholehearted congratulations\u201d to Van der Bellen in an e-mailed statement.\n\nYear of Acrimony\n\nThe result defied projections of a razor-tight finish and ends an acrimonious year of campaign politics that polarized Austria. Van der Bellen, who pledged to prevent anti-EU forces from forming a government, now has to heal the rifts exposed over immigration and economic inequality.\n\nIt\u2019s the first time in 70 years the country has elected a presidential candidate outside the Social Democratic or Austrian People\u2019s Party, after both the established parties were eliminated in earlier rounds of voting. It\u2019s also the first time that a Green Party leader has won a popular election in Europe to become head of state since the global environmental movement began.\n\nVan der Bellen narrowly squeezed out Hofer in the first presidential runoff on May 22, but the result was overturned by the Constitutional Court because of irregularities in counting mail-in ballots. Austria\u2019s Interior Ministry showed Van der Bellen won more rural support in Sunday\u2019s repeat vote, and also took key regions in the industrial heartland of Upper Austria as well as in the mountains of Tirol.\n\nOpening Doors\n\nThe result is a rebuff to some analysts who predicted Hofer would benefit from the same nationalist forces that propelled Trump to the presidency last month. Hofer campaigned on his ability to court favor inside a Trump White House as well as with Russian President Vladimir Putin.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m asking my voters to accept that in a democracy, the voter is always right,\u201d said Hofer. He added that he\u2019s looking forward to the next round of national elections where he\u2019ll stand by Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache, who accused Van der Bellen of orchestrating Sunday\u2019s victory with a \u201cmassive campaign of fear.\u201d\n\nAustrian Chancellor Christian Kern, a Social Democrat who warned last week that the EU must reform or slip into the abyss, struck a more conciliatory tone.\n\n\u201cAlexander Van der Bellen will be a good partner for an open-minded, future-oriented policy of chances and hopes,\u201d Kern said. \u201cTo the voters of Norbert Hofer, I say nobody should feel like a loser today. We\u2019re all Austria.\u201d\n\n\u2014 With assistance by Rainer Buergin, and Matthias Wabl"} -{"text":"The views may be pleasantly apocalyptic, and the second act may feature a motorbike duel with a robot B52, but it's the little things that really sell me on Gears of War 4 - the surprisingly delicate way it both harkens back to and departs from Epic's original cover-shooters. The fact that Swarm footsoldiers rush you when they're close to death, for example, where their Locust predecessors would often dig in till the bitter end. The presence of branching path sections that ask teams of two to support one another across a gulf, a classic Gears device enlivened by the addition of flying enemies and eccentric new flavours of sniper rifle.\n\nAnd then there's the Overkill shotgun, which perhaps encapsulates how well the Coalition understands the series it has inherited. On the surface it's a quad-barrelled monster worthy of Painkiller, but in practice the Overkill is a flexible instrument that, much like the famous Active Reload mechanic, challenges you to keep a cool head under pressure.\n\nSimply pull the trigger and you'll fire all four barrels at once to shattering effect. But if you hold the trigger, pause and release, you'll fire each pair of barrels separately for a tighter spread, allowing you to dent targets at range and really make the most of your ammo. Shotguns have always been Gears of War's principal skill weapons, the roaring Sphinxes that gate access to the upper echelons of competitive multiplayer. With the Overkill, the Coalition has crafted both an elegant tool for returning Gnasher pros and a bloodthirsty treat for the rest of us.\n\nEverywhere you look in Gears of War 4, you'll find a studio engaged in careful dialogue with the past. This is literally the case in the story, which takes place a few decades after the destruction of the Locust, and sees two generations of the Fenix clan fighting side by side. In a bid to shore up what remains of civilisation, the Coalition of Organised Governments has herded Sera's surviving humans into gigantic walled cities, defended by robots, but not everybody is content to trade their freedom for security. Amongst the rag-tag Outsiders who scrape a living in the wilderness is the one and only Marcus Fenix, he of the thousand yard scowl. As the game's second act begins, the COG is holding the Outsiders responsible for a spate of abductions, and new leading man JD Fenix has returned to his father's estate in hopes of guidance and a little covering fire, if not a hug.\n\nWhat follows is essentially a license handover reimagined as a family squabble, a clash between epochs in video game characterisation. JD is a blond and blue-eyed graduate of Nathan Drake High, accompanied by glib sidekick Delmont Walker and token ladybro Kait Diaz, whose parents are among the missing. Marcus remains a potty-mouthed crank, cut from the rock of the WW2 shooter and pickled to perfection by years of isolation. The script isn't exactly captivating so far - in opting for a more presentable college age cast, the Coalition has sacrificed a certain vivacity - but the reinvention of Marcus as a grouchy hermit, bellowing about his greenhouse in the midst of a COG bombing run, is worth a few laughs. I'm looking forward to finding out who else is back from Gears 3. With any luck, the Cole Train still operates somewhere deep in the wilds.\n\nThe art direction is also something of a generational mash-up. The Coalition has come up with its own spin on the original's \"destroyed beauty\" aesthetic - \"reclaimed beauty\", an admittedly clunky buzzword which pays into an unexpected riff on fossil fuel politics. By the time of Gears 4, Sera's reserves of underground immulsion are long gone, Mother Nature has taken back much of the surface, and the population now depends on a hodgepodge of renewable energy resources.\n\nThe game's plunging rural fastness is littered with the vestiges of the old world and ramshackle stabs at revival - windmills idling against a baleful sunset, enormous flywheels canted against cliff-faces, hydroelectric dams torn open by the \"windflares\" that now rake the planet's crust. In the course of the campaign's five acts (an estimated 10 hours) you'll take a ride in a deteriorating funicular and do battle inside a memorial to the Pendulum Wars, Sera's darkest hour prior to the emergence of the Locust. A hint: some of the antique weapons on display are functional.\n\nInspired by the landscape of north Italy, the game's palette is quietly enchanting - wiry underbrush and purple leafpile, mildew-spotted signage and ground-down masonry, flowing together in a way that makes the cover layouts less obvious to the eye, if no less tangible under the thumb. Gears of War's world has always been uniquely textured, and the Coalition has done a fine job of weaving its own vision into the tapestry, aided no end by some fancy bells and whistles - screen-space reflections on puddles, physically based shaders for a more tactile look, and a persistent dynamic weather system which, at its most severe, actually affects how you play.\n\nWhen the winds are raging, movement becomes a chore, certain terrain fixtures can be shot loose to create tumbling hazards, and slower projectiles such as the Boomshot's rounds may be blown off course, allowing you to sneak the odd shot around cover. If all this sounds transformative, however, the wind was seldom this much of a presence during my few hours with the campaign. For the most part, Gears of War 4's cover combat follows on from that of Gears 3, its AI behaviours, animations and even exploits painstakingly rebuilt to take advantage of Unreal Engine 4.\n\nThe basic rhythms are much as in any Gears game: you'll enter an area, slam your back against a pillar and work your way gradually around to flanking positions, overlooks and weapon drops, relying on AI comrades to revive you as and when you overreach yourself. The Coalition has added a few new tricks - you can reach across cover to haul a foe onto your combat knife, which adds an extra element of risk and reward to close-quarters gunplay - but any longtime Gears detractors hoping for a change of tune will come away disappointed.\n\nThere are, of course, new weapons to spice up the familiar double act of rifles versus shotguns. The Embar rifle handles like a mix of Torque Bow and Longshot - you must hold the trigger to charge up a slug, but if you hold it a second too long the weapon will vent, a blunder that's sure to rouse the scorn of Twitch chatboxes. The Buzzkill and Dropshot, meanwhile, are ways of cheating the game's cover logic. The former coughs up sawblades that ricochet around objects, while the latter spits out a flying drillhead that slams to earth explosively when you release the trigger.\n\nMore important than the new firearms, though, are the creatures you'll wield them against. Gears of War 4 introduces two new factions, the crusty Swarm and the COG's army of automatons or \"Dee Bees\". They share a number of familiar combat archetypes - units that pin you down, skirmishers that flush you out, and the odd towering bullet sponge equipped with a power weapon. But each faction boasts a few oddballs that may throw veteran players off-balance. The Dee Bees occasionally field Guardians, slippery UAVs that sport a chaingun or a rocket launcher (detachable, once you've shot the vehicle down) plus a recharging energy shield. Their rolling Tracker units are Kamikaze terrain denial weapons, exploding at your feet to create a brief but deadly puddle of static electricity.\n\nThe Swarm feel indistinguishable from the Locust at first, their rank and file emerging from sinkholes that can be sealed with a frag grenade, but just wait till you meet the Juvies - Swarm infants caught mid-gestation, fatty tissues dripping from their muscles as they hop and flail towards you. The original game's Wretches are the obvious comparison, but Juvies are much nimbler around objects and harder to hit - I was reminded a little of the Doom reboot's fidgety reinvention of the Imp, which is an encouraging parallel indeed. They also represent something of a terrain variable: you'll encounter Juvie egg sacks that can be used as cover, or shot down from the ceiling to squish anything beneath, but woe betide the player who rouses the occupant in the process.\n\nWeirder and deadlier still are the Swarm elites, especially the prancing Snatchers - they'll actually ingest you if they get the chance, carrying the hapless victim around in their bellies till blasted into submission. Carriers are the Swarm's artillery, their enormous torsos cracking open to release a cloud of toxic spores as they stomp slowly into melee range, and then there are the Pouncers, catlike, dart-tossing fiends with soft pink bellies that hop from surface to surface. As the name implies, Pouncers may try to pin you, but if you're alert to the warning signs you can usually catch the descending beast on the blade of a Lancer.\n\nBeyond the campaign, Gears 4 offers up a brace of familiar modes - Warzone, TDM, King of the Hill, and Guardian - plus the already discussed Dodgeball, a co-op bots mode and Arms Race, a team-based version of the Gun Game mod for Counter-Strike. In the latter, all team members get a different weapon after every third kill, which good news in that a struggling player won't be left behind, and less good news in that allies may accidentally sabotage each other. Finding that your Gnasher has become a Longshot after cornering an opponent is every bit as exhilarating as you'd imagine.\n\nThere's also Escalation, a three ring objective capture mode with a metagame element that is aimed squarely at the eSports community. The idea is to win seven rounds, the twist being that losing teams can activate a weapon spawn between rounds, whether to give themselves an edge or bait the other team into taking a risk. Backed up by LAN support and a robust suite of commentator options, it seems a good pitch for the tournament crowd.\n\nBut the star attraction in multiplayer is, of course, the new take on Horde, Gears of War's influential wave survival mode, which again follows on from Gears 3 but retains a few ideas from the underrated Gears of War: Judgment. The battle now revolves around a movable fabricator, where you'll construct fortifications such as turrets, fences and decoys using globs of power that must be manually collected from the bodies of the slain.\n\nThis creates more of a frantic, push-pull rhythm, as players scurry out to gather energy at the risk of being caught trousers-down when the next round begins. It accompanies a set of loose player classes - Heavy, Soldier, Engineer, Scout and Sniper - which determine your starting layout and are geared towards certain roles, but flexible enough that you can change tactics on the fly.\n\nEach class has a selection of abilities, largely passive, that can be levelled up - the Scout can equip a skill that awards bonus Power when harvesting under fire, for instance, while the Soldier might plump for the ability to plant up to five grenade mines at once. The class system doesn't quite feel essential yet, and there's the suspicion that it exists to justify the sale of ability cards, though all abilities can be earned and upgraded in-game. But having to factor in the fabricator's location and resource gathering on top of the usual Horde strategies is a fun complication, and you needn't give those cards a second thought once you've left the lobby screen behind.\n\nThe truly disarming thing about Gears of War's return is that it no longer has an obvious rival. The original's mechanics have been imitated by every blockbuster under the sun, from Killzone through Tomb Raider to the Tom Clancy franchise, but most of its disciples have either died off or evolved beyond recognition. If the Coalition's debut is a fairly conservative work at heart, one that is content to tinker ingeniously within sturdy parameters, it nonetheless feels strangely exotic. There is no game out there right now that plays like this one, that uses quite these variables in quite this way, and while the revisions aren't mind-blowing individually, they're gripping as a whole. Marcus Fenix may have aged disgracefully, but Gears of War 4 has the wind in its sails.\n\nThis article is based on a press trip to The Coalition's headquarters. Microsoft paid for travel and accommodation."} -{"text":"(1) Existing law generally prohibits the possession or transfer of assault weapons, except for the sale, purchase, importation, or possession of assault weapons by specified individuals, including law enforcement officers. Under existing law, \u201cassault weapon\u201d means, among other things, a semiautomatic centerfire rifle or a semiautomatic pistol that has the capacity to accept a detachable magazine and has any one of specified attributes, including, for rifles, a thumbhole stock, and for pistols, a second handgrip.\n\nThis bill would revise this definition of \u201cassault weapon\u201d to mean a semiautomatic centerfire rifle, or a semiautomatic pistol that does not have a fixed magazine but has any one of those specified attributes. The bill would also define \u201cfixed magazine\u201d to mean an ammunition feeding device contained in, or permanently attached to, a firearm in such a manner that the device cannot be removed without disassembly of the firearm action.\n\nBy expanding the definition of an existing crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program.\n\n(2) Existing law requires that any person who, within this state, possesses an assault weapon, except as otherwise provided, be punished as a felony or for a period not to exceed one year in a county jail.\n\nThis bill would exempt from punishment under that provision a person who possessed an assault weapon prior to January 1, 2017, if specified requirements are met.\n\n(3) Existing law requires that, with specified exceptions, any person who, prior to January 1, 2001, lawfully possessed an assault weapon prior to the date it was defined as an assault weapon, and which was not specified as an assault weapon at the time of lawful possession, register the firearm with the Department of Justice. Existing law permits the Department of Justice to charge a fee for registration of up to $20 per person but not to exceed the actual processing costs of the department. Existing law, after the department establishes fees sufficient to reimburse the department for processing costs, requires fees charged to increase at a rate not to exceed the legislatively approved annual cost-of-living adjustment for the department\u2019s budget or as otherwise increased through the Budget Act. Existing law requires those fees to be deposited into the Dealers\u2019 Record of Sale Special Account. Existing law, the Administrative Procedure Act, establishes the requirements for the adoption, publication, review, and implementation of regulations by state agencies.\n\nThis bill would require that any person who, from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2016, inclusive, lawfully possessed an assault weapon that does not have a fixed magazine, as defined, and including those weapons with an ammunition feeding device that can be removed readily from the firearm with the use of a tool, register the firearm with the Department of Justice before January 1, 2018, but not before the effective date of specified regulations. The bill would permit the department to increase the $20 registration fee as long as it does not exceed the reasonable processing costs of the department. The bill would also require registrations to be submitted electronically via the Internet utilizing a public-facing application made available by the department. The bill would require the registration to contain specified information, including, but not limited to, a description of the firearm that identifies it uniquely and specified information about the registrant. The bill would permit the department to charge a fee of up to $15 per person for registration through the Internet, not to exceed the reasonable processing costs of the department to be paid and deposited, as specified, for purposes of the registration program. The bill would require the department to adopt regulations for the purpose of implementing those provisions and would exempt those regulations from the Administrative Procedure Act. The bill would also make technical and conforming changes.\n\n(4) The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement.\n\nThis bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason."} -{"text":"The Marijuana Policy Project, a grassroots organization supportive of marijuana legalization, has named Colorado Senate President John Morse as the worst state legislator with a stance on marijuana issues in the country.\n\nMorse was included on the list primarily due to his role in attempting to repeal Amendment 64 in the last few days of the 2013 legislative session.\n\nAmendment 64 was authorized via a statewide people\u2019s ballot last year with a majority vote in all CO counties, and in May the Colorado legislature moved forward with a regulatory framework to support recreational sales.\n\nMorse has received considerable push-back from voters due to his stance on marijuana and other issues since the 2013 legislative session.\n\nCurrently, over 10,000 petition signatures have been collected to support the recall, nearly 50% more than the required amount to initiate a recall.\n\nNext Tuesday, September 10th, voters will be given the opportunity to decide whether or not Morse and fellow anti-legalization legislator Senator Angel Giron will be allowed to maintain their office.\n\nSen. Giron, of Pueblo County, was responsible for a separate anti-legalization bill, which would had criminalized marijuana if voters do not pass new taxes to support regulation."} -{"text":"Noah McCall (Albany Police Department Facebook page) Noah McCall (Albany Police Department Facebook page) Image 1 of \/ 3 Caption Close Partygoer accused of urinating on police officer 1 \/ 3 Back to Gallery\n\nAlbany\n\nCity police officers who went to the site of a loud party early Sunday said one of the partygoers urinated from a staircase onto an officer.\n\nAt 3:20 a.m., officers went to 470 Hudson Ave., where they say several people inside and out were drinking alcohol and causing a disturbance.\n\nNoah McCall, 19, urinated on an officer, police said. McCall was charged with reckless assault, police said.\n\nA resident was found with metal knuckles, police said. Luca Quinn, a 19-year-old State University at Albany student, was charged with criminal possession of a weapon.\n\nBoth men were arraigned in Albany City Court and released.\n\nPolice also requested a building and codes inspection of the house. The inspection found the building to be unsafe and uninhabitable.\n\nPolice were called to the home at least two other times in the last 15 months.\n\nAt about 12:15 a.m. on Aug. 30, police received a report of a loud party and found a group of people drinking alcohol. Police noted safety hazards on that visit and requested a building and codes inspection. The site was deemed uninhabitable.\n\nOn 1:15 a.m. Nov. 9, 2012, police found 14 people in the basement for what appeared to be an initiation for membership in a group or fraternity.\n\nOfficers said they saw several people face down on the basement floor with their faces submerged in water. They were being struck with wooden paddles and rubber hoses while being told to \"beg for mercy\" and having cold water from a garden hose sprayed on their heads.\n\nNine people were arrested on charges of hazing, criminal nuisance, unlawful assembly, obstruction of governmental administration and resisting arrest."} -{"text":"To many parents, it may be confirmation of something they have long suspected. A new study suggests that children pose a greater distraction to drivers than using a mobile telephone at the wheel.\n\nThe research involved an analysis of 12 families over a period of three weeks, in which all their car journeys were monitored by four cameras installed in their vehicle.\n\nThe families taking part had an average of two children, between 1-8 years of age. In total, 92 trips were analysed by the researchers, looking for any evidence of potentially distracting activity undertaken by the driver, such as looking away from the road for more than two seconds.\n\nIn 90 of the 92 trips studied, the team detected distracting activity on the part of the motorist, with the average parent taking their eyes off the road for three minutes and 22 seconds, during a 16 minute trip.\n\nThe video recordings showed that children travelling in the rear seats accounted for 12 per cent of all potentially distracting activity, compared to mobile phones, which were responsible for one per cent.\n\nFathers were more likely to engage in distracting activities with their children and were distracted for longer periods than their mothers.\n\nThe most frequent types of distractions included turning to look at the child in the rear seat or watching them in a rear-view mirror (76.4 per cent), engaging in conversation with the child (16 per cent), assisting the child in some way, such as handing them food or drinks, (seven per cent) or playing with the child (1 per cent).\n\nThe study found that the presence of a front seat passenger did not significantly affect the way in which drivers engaged in potentially distracting child-related activities.\n\nThe research was conducted by the Monash University Accident Research Centre, in Melbourne, Australia, where rules regarding the use of mobile phones while driving are similar to those in the UK, with hands free phones permitted.\n\nThe team say the results suggest that children are 12 times more distracting to motorists than talking on a mobile phone.\n\nDr Judith Charlton, an associate director of the centre, said: \u201cThe costs of distracted driving are undeniable. One major and previously unrecognised distraction is kids in the back seat.\u201d\n\nThe research comes just days after Brake, the road safety campaigners, supported by the Association of Chief Police Officers, called for tougher rules on mobile phones in cars, with a ban on hands-free devices, as well as hand-held ones. The charity also called for the penalty for calling or texting behind the wheel to be increased from \u00a3100 to somewhere between \u00a3500 and \u00a31,000.\n\nBut Dr Charlton suggested that while the risks of distraction during driving are becoming increasingly well known, motorists often overlooked children as a source of the problem. She added that her research indicated there was a need for more education on the issue. Her team have now launched a larger study, involving 50 families.\n\nThe research comes just months after Norland College, the British nanny school, was involved in the launch of Nanny Drive iQ, a specialist driving school to teach childcare professionals techniques about driving with children.\n\nSarah Rowley, from the driving school, said: \u201cParents expect those who care for their children to have relevant qualifications, but often let a carer or nanny drive off with their children without knowing how skilled and confident they are behind the wheel.\u201d"} -{"text":"Hannity: GOP's Failure 'Pushed Trump Into Arms of Chuck & Nancy'\n\nTucker: Trump Signing Dems' DACA Deal Would Be 'Massive Amnesty,' 'Collapse' of GOP\n\nPresident Donald Trump has been criticized by some on the right for striking a deal with Democrats on raising the debt ceiling and then meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to discuss a plan to preserve the DACA program while increasing border security.\n\nOn \"Fox & Friends,\" former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Trump made it clear during the campaign that he's a deal-maker and he's going to do what's in the best interests of the U.S.\n\n\"I think Washington needs to wake up and understand that this is a guy who is going to make the best deal for the country when he can,\" Spicer said. \"If that's with Republicans, it's going to be with Republicans. If that's with Democrats, it's going to be with Democrats. If that's with a bipartisan group of individuals, it'll be them.\"\n\nHe said that Trump has a big heart and wants to find a way to protect so-called \"Dreamers\" from deportation, but he also knows the importance of border security and is committed to building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.\n\n\"So like it or not, I don't see how you get a deal done that doesn't include the wall, because that's been a major priority of this president,\" Spicer said. \"When you see what the final product is, I guarantee it's going to be on Donald Trump's terms.\"\n\nWatch more above.\n\nCoulter: 'If We're Not Getting a Wall, I'd Prefer President Pence'\n\nTomi Lahren: 'ESPN Values Diversity, But Maybe Not Diversity of Opinion'\n\nGorka: Trump Won on 'Make America Great Again,' Not 'Make the GOP Great Again'"} -{"text":"Doug, Mr. Hennigan & Chaille discuss starting a Bisbee gossip column, Bingo's new book, Doug's dad on tour and a couple of travel tips. Hey, they all can't be gems.\n\nRecorded Oct 10th, 2017 at the FunHouse in Bisbee, AZ with Doug Stanhope (@DougStanhope), Brian Hennigan (@MrHennigan), & Ggreg Chaille (@gregchaille). Produced & Edited by Chaille.\n\nPre-Order a SIGNED copy of Doug's NEW book, \" This Is Not Fame: A \"From What I Re-Memoir\"\" at - http:\/\/bit.ly\/2z4dmBg\n\nThis episode is sponsored by BlueApron.com - Get $30 OFF YOUR FIRST MEAL - WITH FREE SHIPPING - by going to BlueApron.com\/STANHOPE\n\nDRAFT.com \u2013 New players get a FREE entry into a draft when you make your first deposit! Use promo code DOUG and play a real money game for FREE!\n\nALL THINGS COMEDY Comedy Festival (OCT 26-29) presents The Doug Stanhope Podcast LIVE with Doug Stanhope, Chad Shank, Greg Chaille and Special Guests @ The Orpheum Theater Thu - 10\/26 8:00pm in Phoenix, AZ. Tickets at https:\/\/phoenix.ticketforce.com\/eventperformances.asp?evt=371\n\nMore Stanhope 2017 Tour Dates at http:\/\/www.dougstanhope.com\/tour-dates\/. Get on the Mailing List.\n\nLINKS: Amy Dresner's book,\u201cMy Fair Junkie\u201d - http:\/\/amzn.to\/2gBVaZ9 Justin's Peanut Butter Packs - http:\/\/amzn.to\/2zk0fNr Chad Shank Voice Over info at AudioShank.com Support the Innocence Project - http:\/\/www.innocenceproject.org\/\n\nThe comedy clip is from Todd Barry's DVD \u201cFrom Heaven\u201d (2008 Comedy Central Records) and is available on Amazon.com - http:\/\/amzn.to\/2xBXb1Y"} -{"text":"Oh, space. You're so hard to explore. Sometimes you bombard spacecrafts with hurtling rocks and deadly cosmic rays, and other times you're so empty you don't give astronauts a darn thing to hold on to. But while scientists haven't quite figured out how to keep radiation at bay, the scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory\u2014specifically, its Planetary Robotics Laboratory\u2014are building machines that can get a grip on the most difficult surfaces astronauts will find out there.\n\nAdhesion-wise, space presents a couple problems. First, robots typically struggle with uneven surfaces, let alone the kind of cliffs and crags you see on Mars. Second, space is kind of gravity challenged. \"Out in zero gravity, even pushing tape against surfaces is difficult,\" say Jaakko Karras, a robotics electrical engineer at JPL. Without gravity to anchor your feet to the ground, it's easy to run afoul of Newton's third law. (For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So you'll be pushed away from the wall with the same amount of force you applied to it. Physics!)\n\nAnd that's not just a problem in microgravity. Low gravity environments, like asteroids or comets, can be uncooperative too. (Just ask the European Space Agency's Philae lander.) \"If you got out there and wanted to do some sort of sampling and just started drilling, you\u2019re more likely to spin about the drill bit than the drill bit into the surface,\" Karras says.\n\nSo what's a robot to do? \"Nature solves the problems around us all the time,\" says Karras. \"A fairly common path for us is the biomimicry approach.\" When Karras and his team would test climbing robots out on vertical rock walls, lizards would blaze right past them. But rather than getting annoyed at the speedy little reptiles, Karras decided to take his cues from evolution instead. His team's adhesive makes use of van der Waals forces, which geckos use to climb smooth surfaces. For bumpy ones, his team built claw-inspired microspine grippers that can bend and flex. (You can see them in action in the video up top.)\n\nBoth gecko adhesive and microspine grippers are well on their way to scoring a ticket to deep space. Gecko adhesive is already being tested on the International Space Station. Right now, astronauts are using it to anchor things to interior panels, but NASA is considering using it as a replacement for Velcro, which kicks off a lot of dust and bristles\u2014particulates aren't all that welcome in the fragile environment of the ISS. And microspines are a crucial part of NASA's asteroid redirect mission: The little spikes will cover robotic arms used to snatch up an asteroid's boulder and deposit it in orbit around our moon.\n\nKarras also hopes that future missions will use microspines' vertical climbing skills to explore Mars' caves and lava tubes. \"They haven't been explored yet because they're difficult from a mobility standpoint,\" Karras says. \"But they may once have been collection points for liquid water, and they're sheltered, low-radiation areas. They're of interest for investigating the possibility of past and present life.\" So if we find any Martians in the next couple of decades, you have lizards to thank."} -{"text":"HANOI (Reuters) - Abuses by Vietnam\u2019s powerful police force are occurring at an alarming rate, a rights group said on Tuesday, and it urged the government to rein in offenders and create agencies to investigate complaints of beatings, torture and killings.\n\nTracking four years of alleged abuse of suspects in custody, the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Vietnam\u2019s Communist government needed to recognize the scale of the problem and urgently initiate police reforms.\n\n\u201cWhat we have uncovered is a human rights crisis in the daily operations of the Vietnam police,\u201d Phil Robertson, HRW\u2019s deputy Asia director, told a news conference in Bangkok.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re convinced that what we\u2019re presenting today is the tip of a much larger iceberg,\u201d Robertson said, according to a transcript provided by HRW.\n\nThe group said many victims of police brutality were accused only of minor crimes like speeding or petty theft. It cited 14 deaths in custody - four unexplained, six alleged suicides and four from illness - and documented 31 cases of police beatings, among whose victims were eight children.\n\nRobertson said the report was far from a quantitative survey and \u201cmore a snapshot of a serious situation\u201d. The rights group did not interview witnesses or suspects itself for fear it could put them in danger.\n\nIt drew largely on what it described as patchy coverage of the issue in by Vietnam\u2019s state-controlled media and from bloggers keen to document cases of police brutality.\n\nReforming the police force could, however, be a tall order in Vietnam. The force is overseen by the Ministry of Public Security, which has a big stake in politics and numerous areas of society and administration.\n\nSeveral ministers, current and former, are politburo members and the remit of the ministry is far-reaching.\n\n\u201cSTRONG COMMITMENT\u201d\n\nThe rights group recommended that the government establish an independent police complaints commission, local-level internal affairs units, a tracking system to address allegations of abuse and ensure interrogations of suspects were videotaped.\n\nVietnam\u2019s government rejected what it said were \u201cfalse allegations\u201d in the report, citing its signing of the U.N. treaty against torture and inhumane acts as evidence of strong commitment to preventing abuses of suspects in police custody.\n\n\u201cEvery act of torture and corporal punishment during investigation and trial processes will be strictly handled in accordance with Vietnamese law,\u201d deputy Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Tran Thi Bich, said in a statement.\n\nMinister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang last week said during a hearing of the justice committee of Vietnam\u2019s parliament that action was being taken against policemen accused of abuses and cases had risen from 2011 to the end of last year.\n\nQuang said that of the 828 police accused of \u201cinfringing upon judicial activities\u201d, 23 were charged with using corporal punishment. Quang did not disclose if any had been jailed. Robertson described the hearing as remarkable but said far more needed to be done.\n\n\u201cFor now, it\u2019s clear that the Vietnam police are mostly getting away with these abuses,\u201d he said."} -{"text":"Germany coach Joachim Low will explore his options against Azerbaijan as he attempts to identify a pecking order behind injured goalkeeper Manuel Neuer.\n\nThe world champions secured their place at Russia 2018 with a 3-1 win away to Northern Ireland on Thursday, extending their 100 per cent record in qualifying to nine matches.\n\nBut their preparations suffered a setback with news that Neuer could be sidelined for a further six months due to a metatarsal injury.\n\nBarcelona shot-stopper Marc-Andre ter Stegen is the current replacement, but Bayer Leverkusen's Bernd Leno will be given another chance to impress on Sunday after an underwhelming display against Australia at the Confederations Cup.\n\n\"When Neuer is fit, he starts. We must see how [his injury] develops,\" Low said at his pre-match press conference.\n\n\"Marc-Andre has shown himself to be very capable. He has developed well with us.\n\n\"If you can speak of a goalkeeper behind Manuel Neuer, it is Marc-Andre ter Stegen. We also have confidence in him, just as in Bernd Leno and Kevin Trapp.\"\n\nLow also confirmed the in-form Leroy Sane will earn his eighth international cap at the Fritz-Walter Stadion and will be joined in the starting XI by Liverpool midfielder Emre Can.\n\nManchester City attacker Sane, a member of Germany's Euro 2016 squad, pulled out of the Confederations Cup to undergo nasal surgery."} -{"text":"Tricks of the trade: The world's best make-up artists reveal their secrets\n\nFrom primer to eyeshadow, these are the products we use every day - but do we know how to use them? We asked international make-up artists Laura Mercier, Jackie Tyson and Gucci Westman to give us their inside tips.\n\nLaura is known for her successful make-up range - her primer is a beauty icon. Gucci is a New York-based celebrity make-up artist who works with all the stars, including Demi Moore and Jennifer Garner. And Jackie is the make-up artist on The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.\n\nHere, they select the products we really need and give their differing views on how to use them...\n\nDebating the truth: Make-up artists Laura Mercier (left), Gucci Westman (centre), and Jackie Tyson (right)\n\nShould you apply primer on top of freshly cleansed skin or on top of moisturiser?\n\nLAURA: Primer is a protective layer that seals in moisturiser and provides a smooth surface for foundation.\n\nIf you have an oily complexion, you may feel that the primer without moisturiser is enough.\n\nGUCCI: My routine is more about colour- correcting, treating and highlighting the skin. A product that gives you an immaculate canvas is a pore minimiser, which would be my equivalent to a primer.\n\nI use it only around the T-zone, where pores need to be made to look smooth and match the rest of the skin. Apply after moisturiser, and before you apply your foundation.\n\nJACKIE: A primer provides a base for your foundation, which will ensure it will stay put longer, but will also help give the illusion of flawless, radiant skin.\n\nTry Avon MagiX Face Perfector, \u00a37 (avonshop. co.uk) or Beauty Flash Balm by Clarins, \u00a326.50 (from Boots), which is a cult classic.\n\nThe X Factor: Jackie Tyson cannot live without her eyelash curlers and disposable mascara wands\n\nWhich make-up tools can\u2019t you live without?\n\nLAURA: My camouflage brush to apply concealer - it allows me to pinpoint areas where I need more coverage.\n\nGUCCI: My sponges - they are amazingly soft.\n\nJACKIE: My Shu Uemura Eyelash Curlers, \u00a319.50 (020 240 7635). I also get through lots of disposable mascara wands - \u00a36.25 for a set of nine (thepromakeupshop.com).\n\nProfessional tools: Invest in a set of brushes to get that flawless finish\n\nWhat\u2019s the best way to apply foundation to get a smooth, even coverage?\n\nLAURA: Fingers for a cream foundation, a sponge for liquids and a brush for mineral powder.\n\nGUCCI: Using a brush, start from under the eyes working out and up. Then apply highlighter to cheekbones, bridge of the nose and cupid's bow, pat it in with your fingers, and smooth out with a brush. Revlon brushes from \u00a36.99 (Superdrug).\n\nJACKIE: Use foundation only where you need it: around the eyes, nose and mouth. Blend well with a brush or fingers.\n\nHow can you get a lovely, healthy glow using bronzer without looking unnatural?\n\nLAURA: Never overload your brush, and match texture to texture. A cream or gel is perfect over liquid foundation, for example.\n\nIf you don't want a powdery look, use a blusher with a hint of pearl to lift the texture and add a glow.\n\nGUCCI: For mature skin, the more cream textures you can use, the better. Avoid powders as much as possible. It's easy to get a natural look with blusher - it's all in the blending.\n\nAfter applying cream or powder blush, simply dust over the area with a clean powder brush.\n\nJACKIE: Avoid powder bronzers for a more mature skin. POP Beauty has a fabulously easy-to-apply cheek stain called Apples Of The Cheeks, \u00a312 (popbeauty.co.uk), that looks great on any skin tone and can be applied with fingertips.\n\nBreak out of your eyeshadow rut: Bellapierre has a good range of shimmer powders\n\nHow can you break out of a colour rut with eye shadow?\n\nLAURA: Seek the advice of an in-store make-up artist - they'll give an objective opinion. When applying eye shadow, use a little at a time; it's easier to add more than take some off.\n\nGUCCI: Go for a eye make-up palette that combines a few of your safer, familiar tones with a range of new colours.\n\nJACKIE: Try to complement your outfit with make-up rather than match it. Bella Pierre has a good range of shimmer powders - individual pots cost \u00a312.99 or a stack of nine is \u00a359.99 (bellapierre.co.uk).\n\nCan you define your mouth and get long-lasting colour that doesn't look too fake?\n\nLAURA: Apply lipstick by dabbing with your finger to create the shape. The colour will look far more natural, and the pressing action will grind its pigment onto your lips.\n\nGUCCI: Apply lip colour using your fingers, pat it on and clean up the edges with a small concealer brush. Revlon's new Colorburst lipstick, \u00a37.99 (Superdrug and Boots) has a great lip balm feeling and provides a huge amount of colour.\n\nJACKIE: Colour is best applied sparingly over the top of a good lip primer to fill in fine lines around the lip line. Blend gently with the ring finger. When buying lipstick, get exactly the same colour lip liner.\n\nAfter applying a primer, such as Elizabeth Arden Advanced Lip-Fix Cream, \u00a318 (Boots and department stores; 020 7574 2714 for stockists), apply the liner all over the lips to provide a colour base and give the lipstick something to cling to. Blot with a tissue and repeat two to three times for extralasting power.\n\nBobbi Brown's Lip Liner pencils, \u00a314 (bobbibrown. co.uk), are long-lasting and the shades are all wearable. After applying, blend gently with the fingertips to remove any excess colour.\n\nNearly here: Yes To Tomatoes Totally Tranquil Facial Hydrating Lotion, \u00a311.99, victoriahealth.com COMING SOON\u2026 Tomatoes in your face cream The Yes To Tomatoes range is rich in vitamin C and lypocene.\n\nTotally Tranquil Facial Hydrating Lotion, \u00a311.99 (victoriahealth.com) combines 26 minerals from the Dead Sea with tomatoes, rosemary and red pepper.\n\nNivea's Protect & Bronze, \u00a312.55 (nivea.co.uk) is a dual-purpose suncream that protects the skin and enhances tanning.\n\nIt uses a plant extract called GA that helps increase the skin's melanin production.\n\nBenefit Confessions Of A Concealaholic, \u00a328.50 (benefitcosmetics. co.uk) has everything to hide blemishes in one handy kit, including eyelid brightener, primer and concealer brushes.\n\nWE LOVE... For anyone who's ever had a disastrous home hair colour, Colour B4, \u00a39.99, Boots, is a must.\n\nBritain's first home hair colour remover erases blunders with one application. Launched in association with hair, image and style expert Scott Cornwall, Colour B4 is available in regular (to reverse an undesirable hair colour) and extra strength (for hair with multiple colour applications).\n\nPedicure perfect: Comfys have been designed to stretch, flex and rejuvenate your feet\n\nHEAD TO THE BEECH!\n\nThese sandals may look scary, but are as comfy as slippers. There are four toe separators that flex and rejuvenate your feet.\n\nBeauty addicts have discovered that they're the perfect footwear for polished toes after pedicures. Available in leather or velour.\n\nBeech Sandals, \u00a329 (victoriahealth.com).\n\nWHERE CAN I FIND... ULTRAGLOW?\n\nCreated in the Seventies, Ultraglow was a must-have, along with shaggy perms and Sun-In hair lightener.\n\nBut the product was wise before its time because it contained minerals long before the rest of the cosmetics world had realised their benefits.\n\nWise before its time: Ultraglow Mineral Shimmer Powders, \u00a34.21 (ultraglowshop.co.uk)\n\nThe original formula hasn't changed, but it now comes with a Kabuki brush for application, and is available in loose or pressed textured.\n\nComplexsun is a matte version with a four-star UV rating.\n\nThe famous Ultraglow Magic Lips, \u00a320.42, are also still around (remember the lip stains that came in black, red and green and changed to your personal shade of pink when applied?) and sell like hot cakes on the internet.\n\nAnd there's also a great range of Ultraglow Mineral Shimmer Powders, \u00a34.21, and a Magic Mascara, \u00a39.95, which gives impressive coverage.\n\nUltraglow Original Pressed Bronzing Powder, \u00a315.99 (ultra glowshop.co.uk)."} -{"text":"Okay, are y\u2019all ready for the longest sex question I\u2019ve ever answered? Because this one\u2019s a doozy. Normally we edit the questions down to a nice size, but there\u2019s a lot going on here and I think all of it\u2019s valuable. So we\u2019re publishing most of this question, almost intact:\n\nI have been in a relationship with a bisexual girl for more than 10 months. We have a pretty okay relationship, we have our strong differences but there are things about her that I do adore. However, we are having some bedroom issues.\n\nIn February 2013, she went for an operation to remove a couple of cysts in her womb and she has been put on the mini-pill ever since. And since after that, our sex life has gone from hero to zero. We have had many chats (both peaceful and heated) about the lack thereof and she has said on many occasions that she will decide when we have sex. She said it\u2019s her body and she has a right to decide what someone else can do with it.\n\nI definitely have a higher libido than she does and here, I\u2019m not sure if it is because she has had sex with men or women (I\u2019m not her first girl) who have been demanding and have forced themselves on her. But all this is making me afraid to initiate sex in fear of rejection and yet I feel that it\u2019s unfair that sex should solely be on her terms. She sees penetration as an \u201cinvasion\u201d of her body and it is getting increasingly frustrating for me.\n\nI do not want to jeopardize the relationship\u2014I know sex isn\u2019t everything but I don\u2019t feel the intimacy with her. She says that I always want instant gratification that I get from sex and I always want it when I want it, which is not true. It seems that she only wants sex when she\u2019s drunk or when she feels like it. Please help. I don\u2019t know what else to do.\n\nAlrighty, dear reader. This is going to be a multipart opus, because you\u2019ve actually asked a lot of questions here, not just one.\n\nI want to start, though, by commending you for not calling this lesbian bed death. I feel like that term gets bandied about a lot and it implies that a difference in libido is somehow a lesbian-specific phenomenon. It\u2019s not. Any couple, no matter how they identify, can face this issue.\n\nSo now let\u2019s start by picking apart these questions, one by one, and see if we can\u2019t unwind this tangled ball of string into a more manageable spool.\n\nMedications Make A Difference\n\nYou\u2019ve acknowledged that there might be an external cause for the gap between your libidos. Medication, hormones, stress\u2014these are all things that can make a difference in one\u2019s desire to have sex. So it could be that this is a storm that you can weather\u2014is she on this medication temporarily? Or it could be that she\u2019s on the wrong medication for her. I don\u2019t know enough about her medical condition (or about medical conditions in general) to tell you if that\u2019s the case, but it\u2019s something about which she can certainly talk to her doctor. However, some medications are long-term and have unavoidable libido side-effects\u2014which might mean that this is the new normal. So what could that mean for you?\n\nHer Body Is, In Fact, Hers\n\nShe says that her body is hers and she can decide who does what with it when, and that\u2019s 100% correct. Even in your horniest state, it would be super ultra mega no-good to pressure her into having sex. Remember that consent counts only when it\u2019s enthusiastic. You have the right to pursue a sexually fulfilling relationship, but that doesn\u2019t mean that your girlfriend is personally obligated to sexually fulfill you even when she doesn\u2019t want to.\n\nBut there is another side to that equation\u2014your body is yours, and you are allowed to want things done to it. And you\u2019re allowed to seek out those things. It\u2019s normal and wonderful to want sex and to seek it out. So let\u2019s talk about the ways you can do that within the parameters you\u2019ve described.\n\nThe Price Of Admission\n\nBefore everyone gets on my case for using an idea that Dan Savage popularized, let me be clear. Dan Savage has said some VERY problematic things in his career, as many have. But he has helped normalize talking about sex and has contributed to the culture of being open and honest about our wants and needs. And this particular idea of his, despite so many problems with his other ideas, is a real winner.\n\nBasically, think of your partner as a ride (while still thinking of them as a person! I\u2019m not suggesting you objectify your partner!). There is a price you pay to ride the ride, and that price is often a compromise. I\u2019ll give you an example from my own life: my girlfriend is wicked smart. Like, the kind of smart you cannot even believe exists. But she does have this weakness. And that weakness is Say Yes To The Dress. Sure, most of the time we\u2019re watching thought-provoking documentaries or really excellent foreign films or any number of other things that are WAY MORE INTELLIGENT than Say Yes To The Dress. But the price of admission for my girlfriend is that sometimes we are gonna marathon this show and there\u2019s nothing I can do about it. If there is a Say Yes To The F*cking Dress marathon, that is what we are watching. Instead of fighting against it, I go with it and we have fun critiquing the wedding industrial complex together. I\u2019ve even come to grudgingly love it and find my inner Monte.\n\n(My girlfriend\u2019s note here: YOU DID NOT SPECIFY SAY YES TO THE DRESS ATLANTA! SAY ATLANTA! I HAVE MY STANDARDS.)\n\nYou can apply this idea to sex as well. I\u2019ll give you another example from my own life: I cannot keep my mouth shut during sex. I dunno, I just let forth a torrent of filthy talk every time I get naked. That\u2019s the price of admission for me\u2014I don\u2019t necessarily need someone to reciprocate it, I just need someone who\u2019s okay with me doing that. Because I like it and I really don\u2019t want to not do it.\n\nSometimes price of admission can change \u2014 it sounds like her boundaries about sex and penetration might be more recent, and may not have been there when you began this relationship, but that doesn\u2019t make them less valid.\n\nIn your case, it sounds like you both have different prices of admission when it comes to having sex at all. Your price of admission is frequent sex. Her price of admission is no penetration, or only when she\u2019s completely into it. Thus the apparent libido gap. Which brings me to my next point:\n\nSex Can Be More Than Penetration\u2026\n\nIn your question, you state \u201cshe sees penetration as an \u2018invasion\u2019 of her body.\u201d But if penetration is your criterion for sex, I\u2019d challenge you to broaden your definition. Sex is a huge category that covers a bunch of different acts. Here are a few suggestions for things that could be considered sex that are not you penetrating her.\n\nUsing a vibrator on her.\n\nHer using a vibrator on you.\n\nMutual masturbation!\n\nNon-mutual masturbation\/watching each other masturbate!\n\nHer penetrating you (fingers, dildo, back door or front door if ya catch my drift).\n\nOral sex!\n\nBDSM acts without penetration. (Yes, you can just flog someone and leave it there! Totally a thing!)\n\nAnd much much more!\n\nWhenever someone, a couple of someones, or multiple someones talk to me about a perceived libido gap, I always have to check and make sure they\u2019re on the same page when it comes to defining sex for themselves as an individual, couple or group. Everyone has certain things they\u2019re into, and when you\u2019re having sex with someone else, you\u2019re going to do the things that you\u2019re both into, the acts where your interests intersect. Think of it as a Venn diagram.\n\nIt could be you\u2019re both thinking you\u2019ve got a huge libido gap because you\u2019re both defining sex as acts totally on the opposite sides of your circles, but actually there are certain things you\u2019re both into doing together that fall smack in the middle and are totally still sex acts. The only way to find out about that is to talk about it. For a more complete list of sex acts to peruse, I recommend this list on Scarleteen (yes, yes, I know, I am always talking about it, but that\u2019s because the yes\/no\/maybe list is so good!) or this (admittedly a bit cheesy) interactive sex questionnaire. Your libido gap may not be as large as you think, you might just be looking in the wrong place on the diagram.\n\nOr you discover that no, in fact, your libido gap (the difference between your respective prices of sexytime admission) is exactly as large as you think it is and it is truly a difference in how often you want to be having the sex in the intersection. You still have other options.\n\n\u2026And Relationships Can Be More Than Monogamous\n\nAnother valid way of addressing a libido gap is to consider sleeping with other people. If you\u2019re both into it and you want to keep the non-sexual parts of your relationship going, you can always negotiate a less traditional relationship structure. You know, one that allows you to take your yayas outside the two of you and get your rocks off with someone else. Or many someone elses.\n\nNow there\u2019s a bit of a misconception I hear often\u2014a non-monogamous relationship doesn\u2019t mean you both have to be sleeping with other people to make it equal. It sounds like that wouldn\u2019t be really happening for her if you all decide to go this route. No, what makes this kind of relationship egalitarian is that both partners\u2019 needs are being met and both of you are happy. That means that, if you both agree on it, you could sleep with other people and she could sleep only with you, when she feels like it. Totally cool.\n\nOr perhaps she really likes her nonsexual relationship with you, but would like to also have a sexual relationship with someone else.\n\nOr! Maybe she finds that her libido increases when she gets her yayas yaya-ed by someone else and you are also bumping hoo-has with another human and then you come together for a sextravaganza. Some couples find that INCREDIBLY SEXY!\n\nOr! OR! She might want to watch you fuck someone else. Some couples find THAT incredibly sexy.\n\nThe point is that there are options for bridging a libido gap. And those options can safely and respectfully include non-monogamy. For more thoughts on this subject, I highly recommend The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy and Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino.\n\nRegardless of what you decide, you should still feel okay talking about sex with your partner and asking for sex from your partner (if you both agree that you still wanna be having sex). So\u2014\n\nThere Are Ways of Bringing Up Sex Without Pressure\n\nI\u2019ve actually written about this before, but let me do a reader\u2019s digest version.\n\nAlways talk about sex at a time and in a place where you\u2019re not having sex, or intending to immediately have sex after the conversation. Noisy coffee shops are my favorite. Driving in the car is my second favorite, though some have told me that location doesn\u2019t work for them because it distracts them from driving. Regardless, pick a place that your partner won\u2019t feel like you\u2019re pressuring her to have sex right this second.\n\nAsk permission to talk about sex and give that other person a chance to reschedule the conversation. If they say they don\u2019t want to talk about it right now, say something along the lines of \u201cthat\u2019s totally cool, no pressure. But this is a really important conversation to me. Can we work out another time to talk about it?\u201d\n\nAssume positive intent. Assume your girlfriend wants to make you happy. Assume that she is not mismatching y\u2019all\u2019s libidos on purpose. Because unless you\u2019re dating a mustache-twirling cartoon villain, she\u2019s not. If you are dating a mustache- twirling cartoon villain, pics please.\n\nBe prepared to compromise on one of those above solutions. Be prepared to make an actual change in the way you\u2019re doing things, and not expecting her to be the only one changing.\n\nAnd I\u2019m going to add another bullet point here, specific to you. Your partner seems to be not super into the way you\u2019ve asked for sex in the past. So make sure to include this question: \u201cHow would you prefer me to express my want for sex in the future?\u201d And again, really listen to what she says here, and be prepared to do what she asks.\n\nAlways Be Masturbating\n\nWell, not always. You\u2019ve got to eat, sleep and go to work. But yeah, masturbation is included in every You Need Help I answer because it\u2019s important. And in this case, it can be an important tool for filling the libido gap with some spectacular orgasms. It can also be a sex initiator\u2014many people get turned on when their partner starts touching themselves, and not wanting sex can turn into wanting sex totally organically.\n\nHowever.\n\nMay I speak frankly?\n\nI generally try not to give really specific advice because even though I answer the You Need Helps on Autostraddle sometimes, my relationship isn\u2019t your relationship and the way I have sex isn\u2019t the way you have sex. Things are different for everyone. But I want to point out a few things I read in your question:\n\n\u201cI have been in a relationship with a bisexual girl for more than 10 months. We have a pretty okay relationship, we have our strong differences but there are things about her that I do adore.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not want to jeopardize the relationship\u2014I know sex isn\u2019t everything but I don\u2019t feel the intimacy with her.\u201d\n\nFirst off, you\u2019ve only been in a relationship with this woman ballpark ten months. That\u2019s not a very long time and already you\u2019re experiencing problems\u2014I want you to think about spending the next year this way. How about the next five? You also describe the relationship as only \u201cpretty okay\u201d and you don\u2019t say you adore her, but rather you say there are things about her that you do adore. That sounds like a pretty ambivalent way to talk about what should be a fairly new relationship. It sounds like you\u2019re compromising pretty hard here, and not just in the bedroom but outside it as well.\n\nYou also state that it\u2019s not really about the sex, it\u2019s about the intimacy that you\u2019re not feeling. Which brings up yet another reason for a libido gap: that there are deeper problems with the relationship. Problems like not truly having feelings for each other, or not trusting each other. Or perhaps more personal problems for one or both of you (think depression or anxiety). And it\u2019s these issues that are the problem\u2014the mismatched libido is merely a symptom, not the cause. It\u2019s up to you whether or not you want to work through those problems. But I need to be honest with you\u2014if I were in the relationship that you have described here, I would end the relationship. I would be breaking up with my partner.\n\nWhich brings me to my last point. Sometimes a libido gap isn\u2019t a libido gap. It\u2019s just a gap, plain and simple. An everything gap. And that gap can be too big to bridge. We need to reframe breaking up in our community\u2014everyone talks about it like the worst thing that could happen to a relationship. It can actually be the best thing. It means both of you get to be honest about what you\u2019re truly feeling, instead of keeping up a charade and wasting time y\u2019all could be out courting people who are fulfilling your needs. It could mean that you remain friends because you haven\u2019t ventured into the place where your relationship (not the romantic kind) is irreparable. It could mean that you never speak to each other again, and that\u2019s okay too! But whatever the case, we don\u2019t have to look at it as a thing that has to get ugly. Or a moment that has to be entirely sad. Endings are beginnings too, and I recommend you end this era and begin something new and different.\n\nGood luck, dear reader. I\u2019m rooting for both of you."} -{"text":"A number of the recent improvements made to Dropbox have focused around greater integration with Microsoft Office. The companies announced a partnership last fall, and you can now do things like open Office files in your Dropbox directly in Office Online, with changes being automatically synced back to the original file through Dropbox. Today, yet another new Office-related feature is being announced: the Dropbox app for iOS will soon let you create Office documents right inside it, without having to jump to another app.\n\nPresumably, the files are then saved to your Dropbox folder and can be accessed through Office Online or the traditional desktop apps. We haven't had a chance to try it out yet and see if it truly offers the same features you'd find creating files through Microsoft's apps, but it's certainly an intriguing way for Dropbox to take on the Google Drive \/ Docs combo. Dropbox says the feature will be available \"later this month.\"\n\nOffice document creation is the standout new feature here\n\nDropbox is also building on the commenting feature added last week. The feature lets users leave remarks on shared files that all other collaborators could see; you can now make and view those comments in the iOS app as well as through the web. Today's update also includes a slight navigation change. Rather than seeing simply an alphabetical list of your files and folders, the default Dropbox app view will instead show your most recently used files \u2014 that's anything you've uploaded, viewed, renamed, or edited on any device. While all these features are useful enough, the most intriguing feature here is definitely the upcoming Office document creation \u2014 we'll be keeping our eyes peeled to see exactly how that works.\n\nUpdate, May 5th 11:34 AM ET: This article has been updated to reflect that comments are now available on iOS as well as the web."} -{"text":"A Texas woman has filed a lawsuit against three police officers in Victoria, claiming that they brutally beat her and broke her ribs without a good reason.\n\nMary Frances Jones told the Victoria Advocate that the three police officers woke her up early in the morning on Dec. 22, 2013 over reports that a truck that she had purchased the day before had been seen driving in a local creek.\n\nJones said that she had been unaware at the time that her sons borrowed the truck while she was sleeping. After officers claimed that she was lying about owning the truck, Jones said she tried to go back inside her home, and that\u2019s when they forced her to the ground.\n\n\u201cOne of them had his foot on my arm, and the other kicked me and broke my ribs,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThey hurt me. They hurt me bad, and they know they did.\u201d\n\nAccording to Jones, she had to plead no contest to a charge of disorderly conduct-vulgar language so that she could go to the hospital. Her fiance, 50-year-old Mathew Milberger and two sons, William and Danny Wallace, were also arrested and charged with disorderly conduct-vulgar language.\n\nA police report filed by Officer D. Stone accused Jones and her family of yelling, \u201cF*ck the police, f*ck yall, and various other profanities.\u201d The report noted that Jones\u2019 son was shocked with a Taser, but it did not mention that she suffered broken ribs, black eyes and other injuries.\n\nJones said the broken ribs eventually resulted in pneumonia, which left her on a ventilator. In all, she had been in the hospital six times because of the beating, she said.\n\nAttorney Christopher J. Gale, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of Jones, said that police had made her pay for showing \u201cdisrespect.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think the police, while they\u2019re trained in the concepts of law enforcement, they are not trained in regards to the application of them,\u201d Gale explained. \u201cWhen you express your opinion in any form or fashion with any kind of words and walk away from them, that\u2019s a sign of disrespect.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s completely and utterly constitutional to walk away from somebody,\u201d he added. \u201cThey\u2019re just going to make you pay the price. That\u2019s concerning. This is not a police state.\u201d\n\nThe lawsuit accuses the officers of false arrest and imprisonment. And it asserts that Jones\u2019 constitutional rights were violated because officers went beyond the \u201creasonableness\u201d standard set by the Fourth Amendment. Jones is seeking $1 million in damages.\n\nThe Texas Rangers recently launched an investigation after another officer with the Victoria Police Department used a Taser on a 76-year-old man while he was already on the ground."} -{"text":"LANSING, MI -- Enbridge directors say there are no areas where bare Line 5 metal is exposed to Great Lakes water but admitted during a Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board meeting the outer coating layer has failed in places and the company doesn't usually repair that kind of protection system. Kurt Baraniecki, Enbridge director of pipeline integrity, told the state board on Monday, March 13 that anticorrosion protections on the controversial pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac are \"working as designed,\" but there are 18 places where there is coating \"\n\n.\"\n\nBaraniecki said a federal work plan incorrectly identified the delamination spots along the pipeline as \"holidays,\" where the multi-layered coating has been completely lost and bare pipe metal is exposed. Baraniecki said \"the consultants had generalized this\" language in a\n\nto assess the impact of invasive quagga and zebra mussels on the twin underwater pipeline segment, a required part of a civil\n\nEnbridge reached with the U.S. Justice Department last year following the 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill. \"These are locations we've identified that could potentially have coating holidays,\" he said. Divers \"are going to each of those locations to take samples of the biota and visually inspect the coating to see if it is still intact.\" He said Enbridge is \"confident it is still intact\" because of constant monitoring. Baraniecki's presentation was the main event at a rowdy pipeline board meeting on Monday that featured several busloads of protestors who packed the hearing room at the Michigan Public Service Commission building on W. Saginaw Highway. Security estimated there were about 260 attending, not including media, board members and state staff. Board co-chair Valerie Brader admonished the hostile audience several times during Baraniecki's presentation, reminding them that shouted questions, jeers and other interruptions only ate time away from the public comment period. At one point, a Petoskey man and his grandson sitting in the front row briefly left the meeting for the bathroom, where they undressed and coated themselves in chocolate cake batter to make a visual statement about the threat of a spill.\n\nMan and grandson cover themselves in cake batter at rowdy Line 5 meeting \"We wanted show you what the birds will look like... if the line breaks.\"\n\nThe packed meeting followed confusion related to Enbridge's biota investigation plan, which pipeline board member Jennifer McKay of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council stumbled across on the company website in February. The plan\n\nwith the pipeline board because it referred to numerous holidays in the pipeline coating that had been identified during a June 2016 inspection of the pipeline. Enbridge called the holidays \"\n\n,\" but agreed to give a detailed presentation. In a March 8 letter, Attorney General Bill Schuette, Department of Natural Resources director Keith Creagh and Department of Environmental Quality director Heidi Grether called Enbridge's characterization of the holidays as merely hypothetical \"confusing in light of the terms of the plan itself,\" which clearly identified them in maps and diagrams. Using a series of slides, Baraniecki said the pipeline has a coal tar enamel coating layer under two layers of outer fiberglass wrap, and cathodic protection inspections show the enamel layer is \"still intact,\" although photographs show the outer wrap layer is missing, or \"delaminated,\" in spots. He said a consultant that created the biota work plan, Gulf Interstate Engineering (GIE), used data from Ballard Marine and identified places where they believed bare pipe was exposed to the water, but Enbridge concluded it was a \"mistake.\"\n\nEnbridge director of pipeline integrity Kurt Baraniecki explains why Line 5 has delaminated outer coating during the Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board meeting on March 13.\n\nHe said in-line inspection tools have not detected any holidays, but the delamination areas were discovered by visual inspection last year. \"We're not certain what is causing the delamination\" but they hope to figure that out. This year, Enbridge plans to hydrostatic test the original pipeline pressure used in 1953 when the line was installed to demonstrate the lines are as \"good as they were when they were brand new.\" The maximum pressure allowed on the line is 600 pounds-per-square-inch and Baraniecki said the company will test the line at double that level. As part of the biota survey, divers will look at delamination areas and \"if there are holidays, we will assess whether we need to do any repairs.\" Baraniecki said the purpose of the outer layers is to protect the pipe during construction and to prevent abrasion from soil or sediment during the line's lifespan, so it being compromised shouldn't diminish the coating system. \"The outer wrap is not something we'd typically repair.\" That statement got the attention of Michigan State Police Captain Chris Kelenske, the state's emergency management coordinator. \"If the outer wrap was necessary when it was put in, why would we not repair it, regardless of whatever the testing is?\" he asked. Brad Shamla, Enbridge vice president of U.S. operations, jumped in. \"We don't believe that going in and doing a repair is going to change the corrosion protections at all, but it's certainly something to look at,\" Shamla said, adding that the delamination spots amounted to \"less than 0.1 percent of the system.\" Kelenske replied that, \"from where I sit, any percent above zero is not good.\"\n\nEnbridge Line 5 may be 'one peak current event' from failure, says scientist Meanwhile, state officials seek info about 'hypothetical' defects in pipeline coating.\n\nAfter the meeting, McKay said the presentation left her with more questions. \"I think Enbridge needs to do a full analysis on the coating and look at the outer wrap, inner wrap, coal tar enamel and determine what is the extent of loss and what does it ultimately mean for the fitness of service for this pipeline,\" she said. Board member Mike Shriberg, regional director for the National Wildlife Federation, said he had a hard time squaring Baraniecki's assertion that the line was as good as new when there's delamination in the outer wrap. \"A pipeline that's in 'like new' condition isn't missing part of its coating,' he said. Shriberg, who represents an organization that is active in opposition to the pipeline in the public realm and in the court system, said Enbridge appears not to really know the depth of coating loss at certain points on its pipeline. \"They're assuming it's just the outer wrap -- which is bad in and of itself -- but it could be much deeper,\" he said. \"It left me with more questions than I started with.\" After the meeting, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the company is satisfied that Baraniecki showed there's no exposed metal on the pipeline. As for the outer wrap delamination, Duffy said it \"doesn't play a role in preventing corrosion, necessarily. It's just the outer thin wrap on the line. Bottom line: There's no exposed metal anywhere along the line. There's no holidays.\""} -{"text":"An ancient Roman merchant vessel has been discovered off the Italian coastline, reportedly in such good condition that much of the food it was carrying might still be intact in its storage jars.\n\n'There are some broken jars around the wreck, but we believe that most of the amphorae inside the ship are still sealed and food-filled,\" Lt. Col. Francesco Schilardi of the police divers' group told the BBC of the containers.\n\nLocal fisherman first became aware of the wreck when pieces of pottery began turning up in their nets. They notified police divers who used a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to locate the 2,000-year-old ship in the sea off the town of Varazze.\n\n\"We believe it dates to sometime between the 1st Century BC and the 1st Century AD,\" Schilardi said.\n\nTests on some of the roughly 200 pots, or amphorae, that the ship holds reveal that they contain pickled fish, grain, wine and oil, which were most likely en route to Spain to be traded for other goods when the ship sank.\n\nThe ship's remarkable state of preservation has been attributed to the layers of mud on the seabed, which covered the wreck and protected it from harm.\n\nThe vessel will remain on the ocean floor until Italian authorities decide whether to raise it.\n\n\"Right now, the area of the finding has been secured,\" Schilardi said, \"and no fishing or water traffic is allowed.\""} -{"text":"Political action committees with silly names are a dime a dozen \u2014 \"Americans for Real Good Coffee\" and \"Americans for Crushing It\" both actually exist \u2014 and most of them never end up with a dime to their name. But the Americans Against Insecure Billionaires With Tiny Hands PAC is standing out from the pack with a political ad demanding that Donald Trump release the exact measurements of his hands.\n\nIt's a spot-on parody of political ads, from the regular people expressing their dire fears about the future while engaged in everyday activities (setting the table, doing chin-ups, working at a construction site) to the swelling, ominous background music. There are some good hand puns: America, the ad declares, needs \"a president who can grasp the complexity of the world and hold off the decline of a great nation.\"\n\n\"If the White House phone rings at 3 am, will his little hands even pick up the receiver?\" one woman asks worriedly.\n\nThe video is tapping into a rich vein of criticism that Trump has historically found very difficult to tolerate: Call him a racist or a bully or a xenophobe if you must, but do not, under any circumstances, insult the length of his fingers.\n\nDuring the primaries, Sen. Marco Rubio was the first to pick up on it: \"I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5-foot-2,\" Rubio said during his brief insult comic phase: \"And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can't trust them.\" (That isn't actually what they say about men with small hands, but we'll get to that in a minute.)\n\nJokes about Trump's small hands \u2014 or, in the phrasing more commonly used before 2016, his short fingers \u2014 have a long, entertaining, very Trump-like backstory. His sensitivity to the insult dates back decades.\n\nWhy Trump really hates the insult \"short-fingered vulgarian\"\n\nAccusations of below-average finger size have dogged Trump for nearly 30 years. In 1988, Spy, a satirical magazine based in New York, coined an epithet for Trump that it would gleefully repeat for eight years: \"short-fingered vulgarian.\"\n\nSpy, which was published from 1986 to 1998, was busy skewering celebrities and public figures as Trump was building his national profile. Proudly avaricious and braggadocious, Trump embodied the spirit of the '80s. And Spy made him a frequent target of not just insults but also elaborate practical jokes.\n\n\"Donald Trump was our clickbait,\" Bruce Feirstein, a contributing editor for Spy, wrote for Vanity Fair in 2015:\n\nHe brought us word-of-mouth recognition, and more readers\u2014just the same way he is now bringing eyeballs to newscasts, and page views to Web sites\u2026 Over the course of our years at Spy, we fact-checked his books and his finances (with predictable results), trolled him by sending miniscule checks \u2014 as low as 13 cents \u2014to see if he\u2019d cash them (he did), and wrote up his all-but-forgotten business debacles. (Remember the \"Trump Castle World Power Boat Championship\"?)\n\n\"Two-month anniversary of the publication of short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal,\" Spy noted in January 1988, its first use of the phrase. \"Reader \u2026 is rushed to the hospital with hubris shock.\" (The same issue, presciently, floated the possibility of a Trump presidential bid, citing a survey that found 4 percent of Americans were sad he wasn't in the running.)\n\nSpy would call Trump a \"short-fingered vulgarian\" 12 times in the next eight years, including once reprinting a correction from the Stanford student newspaper, which had written the phrase as \"short-fingered Bulgarian\" and had to apologize for insulting Bulgarians.\n\nTrump, an expert troll, was getting trolled. He rose to the bait, responding in characteristic fashion: scribbling on the article in Sharpie marker and sending it to its writers. (\"Face of a dog!\" he once wrote over a photo of New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who had committed the other ultimate infraction: downplaying Trump's wealth by calling him a \"thousandaire.\")\n\nWhat upset Trump wasn't being called a \"vulgarian,\" a rich person with bad manners. It was the slur on his finger length.\n\n\"To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump,\" Graydon Carter, a founder of Spy and now the editor of Vanity Fair, wrote in 2015.\n\n\"There is always a photo of him \u2014 generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers. I almost feel sorry for the poor fellow because, to me, the fingers still look abnormally stubby.\"\n\nRubio's \"small hands\" joke was probably a slur on Trump's penis size\n\nBefore we get any further into the saga of Trump's hands, here's one important note: It is not at all clear that Trump's fingers are, in fact, unusually short. But what matters is that Trump himself seems to believe short-fingeredness is a terrible accusation that must be refuted.\n\nThe Washington Post's Philip Bump conducted a thorough investigation that included, among other things, the photographic concept of foreshortening, a 1902 study of the finger lengths of imprisoned criminals, and a comparison of the size of Trump's hands with the size of a sheet of paper.\n\nBump's conclusion: \"Trump is not a 'short-fingered vulgarian,' for the sole reason that he is not short-fingered.\"\n\nStill, Trump seems to take a slur on his fingers as a terrible insult, for reasons that Spy was far too arch to make explicit.\n\nPalm readers, for one, have a host of stereotypes about short-fingered people: They're impulsive, stubborn, unconcerned with detail, prone to jumping to conclusions, and interested above all in doing big things. (\"They build enormous buildings,\" the Benham Book of Palmistry even notes.) But while that's a scarily accurate description of Trump, it's unlikely this is what Spy meant.\n\nFinger size also could be linked to testosterone, and has been cited as a predictor of everything from athletic prowess to ruthlessness on a trading floor. But that research \u2014 which, in any case, was conducted long after Spy first called Trump short-fingered \u2014 deals with the ratio of the length of a man's ring finger to the length of his index finger, not how long or short the fingers in question are.\n\nTrump was probably drawing a much less obscure conclusion: He thought Spy was implying he had a small penis. \"My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body,\" he told the New York Post's Page Six in 2006. \"From what I hear, the same cannot be said of editors of the failed Spy.\"\n\nTrump, as Trump does, was making the subtext text. While there are some superstitions linking hand size to strength of character, a far more common association is that small hands are an indication of, um, smallness elsewhere. (Urban Dictionary was on the case in 2008: \"If you say someone has small hands it means that they have a small penis.\")\n\nAnd Rubio's remark has put the old jokes about Trump's hand size back into circulation, from funny tweets in March to the PAC today.\n\nHastily-Arranged News Conference Just Excuse for Trump to Show Off New Hands pic.twitter.com\/CNJxNpLQV0 \u2014 Daniel Lin (@DLin71) March 2, 2016\n\nIt might set Trump's mind to rest if it were more widely known that the connection between hand size and penis size is spurious at best. The connection has been studied twice, once finding only a weak correlation and once finding no relationship at all.\n\nBut the feud over whether Trump is a \"short-fingered vulgarian\" has now lasted nearly 30 years. It would be a shame to stop it now."} -{"text":"This video is no longer available\n\nThis video was hosted on Vidme, which is no longer in operation. However, you might find this video at one of these links:\n\nVideo title:\n\nA Man Called Gaddafi: (His Life & Death) (Why Gaddafi had to die?)\n\nUpload date:\n\nApril 4 2017\n\nUploaded by:\n\namericanpatriot\n\nVideo description:\n\nMuammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (c. 1942 \u2013 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi, was a Libyan revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then as the \"Brotherly Leader\" of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, he came to rule according to his own Third International Theory before embracing Pan-Africanism. The son of an impoverished Bedouin goat herder, Gaddafi became involved in politics while at school in Sabha, subsequently enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. Founding a revolutionary cell within the military, in 1969 they seized power from the absolute monarchy of King Idris in a bloodless coup. Becoming Chairman of the governing Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), Gaddafi abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the Republic. Ruling by decree, he implemented measures to remove what he viewed as foreign imperialist influence from Libya, and strengthened ties to Arab nationalist governments. Intent on pushing Libya towards \"Islamic socialism\", he introduced sharia as the basis for the legal system and nationalized the oil industry, using the increased revenues to bolster the military, implement social programs and fund revolutionary militants across the world. In 1973 he initiated a \"Popular Revolution\" with the formation of General People's Committees (GPCs), purported to be a system of direct democracy, but retained personal control over major decisions. He outlined his Third International Theory that year, publishing these ideas in The Green Book. In 1977, Gaddafi dissolved the Republic and created a new socialist state, the Jamahiriya (\"state of the masses\"). Officially adopting a symbolic role in governance, he retained power as military commander-in-chief and head of the Revolutionary Committees responsible for policing and suppressing opponents. Overseeing unsuccessful border conflicts with Egypt and Chad, Gaddafi's support for foreign militants and alleged responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing led to Libya's label of \"international pariah\". A particularly hostile relationship developed with the United States and United Kingdom, resulting in the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya and United Nations-imposed economic sanctions. Rejecting his earlier ideological commitments, from 1999 Gaddafi encouraged economic privatization and sought rapprochement with Western nations, also embracing Pan-Africanism and serving as Chairperson of the African Union from 2009\u201310. Amid the Arab Spring, in 2011 an anti-Gaddafist uprising led by the National Transitional Council (NTC) broke out, resulting in the Libyan Civil War. NATO intervened militarily on the side of the NTC, bringing about the government's downfall. Retreating to Sirte, Gaddafi was captured and killed by NTC militants. Gaddafi was a controversial and highly divisive world figure. Supporters lauded his anti-imperialist stance and his support for Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism, and he was decorated with various awards. Conversely, he was internationally condemned as a dictator and autocrat whose authoritarian administration violated the human rights of Libyan citizens, and supported irredentist movements, tribal warfare and terrorism in many other nations.\n\nTotal views:\n\n408"} -{"text":"That is the same thinking that got Europe into such deep trouble\u2014the idea that one must welcome hordes of diversity in order to, what? still have enough people to buy cars or rent apartments, or require teachers\u2014to fuel the economy. And, they pretty much say it in this article at a small town newspaper in Maine, to wipe our old white butts in nursing homes!\n\nWatch, I\u2019ll be accused of being a white nationalist (oh wait! I already am labeled as such!) just for writing about this story.\n\nBut, it isn\u2019t me saying this, it is an immigration lawyer whose livelihood depends on more immigration just as a used car salesman looking for refugees to sell to (not disparaging used car salesmen!) does, or a nursing home owner who is trying to get workers at the cheapest hourly wage he can get!\n\nHere is the story from Maine. \u2018Lawyer, employer encourage hiring more refugees\u2018 which reports that refugees are now being spread out further from the normal resettlement sites in Maine (thanks to Catholic Charities).\n\n\u201cWhy are we so old?\u201d immigration attorney Jennifer Atkinson asked a small crowd gathered Nov. 16 for a talk about her work, hosted by the Camden Conference at Rockport Opera House.\n\n\u201cLook around\u2026\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re white. We\u2019re so old because we\u2019re so white.\u201d\n\nShe put the area\u2019s demographics bluntly, calling the Midcoast \u201ca bastion of whiteness\u201d within the oldest and whitest state in the country.\n\n[\u2026.]\n\nWhile some residents might be content with this, Atkinson said it doesn\u2019t bode well for Maine\u2019s economy or its future.\n\nWhen you read these next lines consider this: I\u2019m white and old enough to remember when the pressure on all of us college grads was to have ONLY two children or risk killing the planet. Guess who didn\u2019t listen to that\u2014the rest of the brown world didn\u2019t listen! Heck we have 9\/11 mastermind KSM telling interrogators that they are going to take us over by outbreeding us!\n\nStatistically speaking, there is a correlation between whiteness, oldness and slow population growth.\n\n[\u2026.]\n\nMaine\u2019s aging and decreasing population (the state had a net loss of 928 people last year) leads to cascading problems: low school enrollment, pressures on budgets, strains on services \u2014 especially health care \u2014 and declines in the working-age labor force. [928 doesn\u2019t sound like a lot to me!\u2014ed]\n\n[\u2026.]\n\n\u201cTo grow we have to be willing to become more racially diverse,\u201d Atkinson said, \u201cbecause that\u2019s where the growth is, in non-white communities.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s always the option to reach out to refugees and asylum-seekers,\u201d she added, fully disclosing that doing so would be good for her Friendship-based practice, but also would benefit employers and the community as a whole.\n\nWho is taking care of the old white people in nursing homes?\n\nI don\u2019t have time to discuss the next section, but you should read it, here. It is about a nursing home owner who has figured out that he can hire refugee labor probably much cheaper than a Mainer. When making arguments about why they hire refugees they NEVER admit it is about the hourly wage. They could probably find Americans for this work if they paid a decent wage! But, that would mess up their bottomlines!\n\n(Your tax dollars subsidize the family\u2019s needs when wages are too low.)\n\nLOL! Big business owners are always pretending they are doing God\u2019s work by hiring refugees!\n\nHaving had some experience with nursing homes in recent years, any one of you considering finding one for your elderly family member, especially one with some form of dementia, make sure that all those caring for your loved one (no matter their skin color) SPEAK ENGLISH WELL. It is hard enough for the mentally impaired as it is, and they need to be able to communicate well with a nursing aid. Something as benign seeming as a urinary tract infection can kill if not detected in time.\n\nQuestions I want answered:\n\nWhy is that Leftwingers are always pushing for more population growth (to fuel the economy) when they must know that growth of that sort will necessarily bring some degradation of the environment\u2014more cars, more roads, more houses, more school construction, less open space, etc? I don\u2019t get it! If there is some Open Borders Leftwinger who would like to explain it to me and our readers, I would very much welcome a guest column.\n\nAnd this too? Why all the yammering at whites to have only 2 kids, I don\u2019t see any of you nagging the Arabs or the Africans to do the same thing.\n\nSee our Maine archive by clicking here."} -{"text":"Michigan State coach Tom Izzo's Spartans are coming off their most spectacular and dominating win of the season, a 75-52 rout of rival Michigan, the best win Izzo said he's seen from his team in three years. (Photo11: Mike Carter, USA TODAY Sports) Story Highlights Izzo thinks people stopped talking about\/thinking about the Spartans after the UConn loss\n\nIzzo says going through the Big Ten's top teams might be tougher than the NCAA tournament\n\nIzzo says Draymond Green is one of those great players that rarely comes along\n\nEach Friday leading up to the NCAA tournament, USA TODAY Sports' Nicole Auerbach catches up with a premier college basketball coach:\n\nEAST LANSING, Mich. \u2013 This week, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo is happy \u2013 or as happy as he can be when he says he still can't tell how good his team is. (Here's my hint: Pretty good.) Izzo's Spartans are coming off their most spectacular and dominating win of the season, a 75-52 rout of rival Michigan, the best win Izzo said he's seen from his team in three years.\n\nOnce again, Michigan State is being touted as a Big Ten title contender (and is sitting atop the conference standings with Indiana at the moment) and a national championship contender, too. If there's one thing we've learned about college basketball this season, it's we should never count out a coach like Izzo and a balanced, talented team like the Spartans.\n\nSitting in his office Thursday morning, Izzo caught up with USA TODAY Sports about his team flying under the radar for much of the season, the brutal Big Ten schedule and what every great college basketball team needs \u2013 a fantastic leader.\n\nIzzo on why people haven't been talking much about the Spartans until recently:\n\nBUBBLE TRACKER: Who's in and who's out\n\nWe had some question marks coming in. You have to remember the (Branden) Dawson (torn ACL). He didn't start shooting the ball again until September, so that's seven months. Most people say you aren't any good until the year after. Adrian Peterson kind of screwed up that theory. That was a key thing. Our point guard \u2013 would he come into his own? He was a 2 guard playing the point. Would he grow? We had a couple of freshmen we knew we'd have to rely on, especially (Denzel) Valentine and (Gary) Harris. Those are unknowns.\n\nThat, along with you take Michigan \u2013 they had (Trey) Burke and (Tim) Hardaway coming back. They had some things to plug, too, but usually a team is going to have a chance to go far with its guards. It's like if you have a great quarterback, you're going to have a better chance to go somewhere.\n\nUsually, most years, we lose a couple of games early and we go from top five, top seven, top 12 to 20th and we're kind of off the radar. Most of the time, we play a schedule that's different than most people. This year, we lose to UConn and lose at Miami before Miami's anything.\n\nMAILBAG: Duke-UNC, Izzo and more\n\nIzzo on the challenge of Michigan State's upcoming Big Ten schedule:\n\n(In a 17-day stretch starting Feb. 19), ours is Indiana here, at Ohio State, at Michigan and Wisconsin here. That's concentrated. If you threw something in there, like Penn State, then you at least have some breathing room. You have to get up for every game. That's harder than the NCAA tournament. In the NCAA tournament, there's more space in between. We just came off three games in six days. When you're traveling and going to school, that's hard. When everybody tries to compare these conferences, there is no comparison. I've been in this 30 years. There's no comparison to what the top teams in our league are going through.\n\nIzzo on the importance of great leadership, like he had in recent years with Draymond Green:\n\nHe is rare. You know what happens with rare guys? You go to Final Fours. \u2026 That was another Jud (Heathcote) line when we won the national championship. He calls me four days later, and he always tells me I work too much. \u2026 He says, 'Take some time off. You better enjoy this.' I said, 'Yeah, I'll enjoy it.' He says, 'You really better enjoy it.' He says, 'You don't understand, this comes around every 20 years.' I say, 'Oh, I have to wait 20 more years to get to a Final Four, this or that?' Nope, he says, having that kind of leader. It was Magic (Johnson). It was Mateen (Cleaves). ... Thirteen years later, Draymond came around, and he's not far off.\n\nThat's what's missing at a lot of programs.\n\n(Izzo then mentioned Indiana's Victor Oladipo and Michigan's Trey Burke and Tim Hardaway Jr. as guys, like Draymond Green, who weren't really, really hyped or highly rated coming out of high school but have developed into their teams' leaders. He also discussed how programs like Duke, UNC and Kansas have talented upperclassmen who could have gone pro stay, and then they in turn teach underclassmen how to grow into leaders. Interesting stuff about what makes these teams successful.)"} -{"text":"Competition to feed humans has grown difficult enough that a Seattle couple, Dawn and Ben Ford, opened a food truck for humanity's best friend.\n\nVia Life with Dogs:\n\nThe popularity of food trucks in the United States has exploded recently, and in almost every major city there are a few that specialize in a particular style or flavor profile. This is great because it gives people options to eat foods that they may not have before. This is great for humans, but what about dogs? Is there a food truck for them somewhere? In Washington, the answer is YES!\n\nThe Seattle Barkery is a new mobile caf\u00e9 for dogs. Everything they make and serve is aimed towards giving dogs a similar freedom of choice like we as humans have. For their furry, four legged customers, they have everything from bacon cupcakes and peanut butter pumpkin pretzels, to chicken feet and duck necks."} -{"text":"Another day, another batch of mostly redundant and anonymously sourced stories about whether Vice President Joe Biden will run for president. Some of those stories, however, are getting ridiculous. So FiveThirtyEight\u2019s politics writers met in Slack to pick over the latest Biden coverage, our own assumptions and the state of the 2016 Democratic primary. This is an edited transcript of the conversation.\n\nmicah (Micah Cohen, senior editor): So, the will he\/won\u2019t he speculation about Joe Biden hasn\u2019t slowed down, but do either of you buy the argument that a Biden run could actually help Hillary Clinton?\n\nhjenten-heynawl (Harry Enten, senior political writer): I don\u2019t think it would be particularly helpful to Clinton. Forget about all the BS about whether Clinton runs better when she\u2019s in trouble. Personally, I never got that. If she were so good at running when she was in trouble, then why did she lose in 2008?\n\nRather, why would Biden run? Sure, he\u2019s in his 70s and this is his last shot, but he also has a family to take care of. He\u2019d likely only run if he concludes he has a better than nominal chance of winning. And that conclusion would be quite different from what the current metrics, such as endorsements, suggest. Biden may have an insight on the invisible primary that isn\u2019t visible to the rest of us.\n\nnatesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): The irony is that the media has exaggerated all sorts of threats to Clinton, who remains in good shape for the nomination. But then you have the one thing that would be a tangibly bad sign for her campaign \u2014 the vice president of the United States running for the nomination against her! \u2014 and there are lots of \u201csmart takes\u201d about how it could help Clinton.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: What we\u2019ve argued this entire time is that Sen. Bernie Sanders has a weakness among the party actors (i.e., he doesn\u2019t have any endorsements), and that he has no longtime connections to the Democratic Party (remember, he\u2019s not a Democrat). Biden, on the other hand, has been in major federal office in Washington since 1973. He\u2019s someone who could conceivably reach out to all members of the party. He\u2019s already polling better among African-Americans than Sanders, for instance.\n\nmicah: Let\u2019s break this down a little: Both of you seem to think Biden entering the race is inherently bad for Clinton \u2014 he\u2019d be the most serious competition for the nomination she\u2019s faced. But would there be a couple side benefits, like that by giving the media a horse race to cover, there would be less focus on Clinton\u2019s scandals?\n\nnatesilver: Well, first of all, it\u2019s not just that Biden would be a more formidable competitor to Clinton than Sanders. I don\u2019t know that Biden would be all that great a candidate, in fact. But Biden running would signal that concern about Clinton among Democratic Party elites had gone from the bedwetting stage to something more serious.\n\nmicah: Is bedwetting not serious?\n\nhjenten-heynawl: I mean, it depends how old you are.\n\nnatesilver: But the other big problem (as we and others have pointed out before) is that Biden doesn\u2019t have much rationale to run other than if Clinton has \u201ctrust\u201d\/scandal problems. He might never come out and say it, but that would be the whole basis for his campaign. They don\u2019t really differ in any meaningful way on policy.\n\nmicah: But your logic seems circular: \u201cBiden will only enter the race if Clinton is in big trouble, and therefore if Biden enters the race it means Clinton is in trouble.\u201d What if all the party actors are telling Biden that he shouldn\u2019t run, that they\u2019re backing Clinton, and Biden just wants to run? It\u2019s his last chance. And he enters the race.\n\nnatesilver: What I\u2019m saying is that there\u2019s a lot of information we\u2019re not privy to, about what Democratic elites are thinking. Sure, there\u2019s some reporting on it, but a lot of that reporting needs to be looked at skeptically \u2014 like because it relies on anonymous sourcing, or cherry-picked information from a media that would like to make the race seem competitive. The one tangible sign we have about what Democratic elites are thinking \u2014 endorsements \u2014 looks really good for Clinton. But Biden running would be a tangible sign too.\n\nContra Maureen Dowd or whatever, this isn\u2019t necessarily a personal decision for Biden, or at least not entirely one. He\u2019s a party guy. He\u2019s the vice president. He\u2019s not likely to run unless he thinks it\u2019s in Democrats\u2019 best interest.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: Endorsements are merely a proxy for intra-party support. And proxies are wrong from time to time. They\u2019re imperfect. And I don\u2019t buy Biden is desperate to run. He reportedly indicated this week in a phone call with Democratic National Committee members that he and his family are grieving. The man lost his best friend and son. He wants to be there for his family. If I lost my father (my best friend), I don\u2019t take off running for president just because I feel like it. I run because I think I can help my party, and because I think I can win.\n\nnatesilver: Right. It\u2019s possible that Biden assesses the problem and miscalculates. But running for president would be a calculated decision on his behalf.\n\nAnd, by the way, if you read the reporting on Biden carefully, it suggests that the decision is very, very calculated. He\u2019s taking as long as possible to decide whether to enter \u2014 and at a time when it\u2019s already pretty darn late to begin a campaign \u2014 because he wants to collect more information on whether Clinton\u2019s in trouble or not.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: BINGO. He\u2019s meeting with a ton of people who represent different wings of the party, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Trumka (head of the AFL-CIO). He\u2019s doing that, one would think, because he wants to understand what they are seeing. What are their people, their constituents, telling them.\n\nmicah: OK, so let\u2019s say Biden gets in. The night before he announces, he\u2019s sitting with his family and some advisers and they\u2019re talking about why they can beat Clinton (based on everything they hear during these weeks of meetings). What are they saying? Does it all come down to email\/scandal? Or would they be pointing to something else in the Clinton campaign or electorate? (I want data.)\n\nnatesilver: If you want data, and Biden\u2019s camp is looking at the same data, then they shouldn\u2019t be running in the first place. Unless they think the scandal will be Clinton\u2019s undoing.\n\nClinton remains extremely popular with Democrats, and that popularity is pretty broad-based. White liberals might not like her as much as white moderates, Hispanics, or African-Americans, but as we\u2019ve argued before, their support for Sanders is more an indication that they like him than that they dislike Clinton.\n\nSome of the reporting around what Biden\u2019s coalition would be doesn\u2019t make any sense. See, for example, from Politico:\n\nBiden\u2019s circle has identified what they see as their potential voting blocs: Reagan Democrats, Jews, an LGBT base that largely credits him with pushing President Barack Obama into supporting gay marriage, and Rust Belt voters. They believe he\u2019ll benefit from better stump skills than any of the other candidates running.\n\nThere\u2019s no evidence that any of these groups are weaknesses for Clinton. Nor are they all that large, nor do they have very much in common.\n\nmicah: What about the Quinnipiac poll out this week showing Biden running better than Clinton against Republicans in general election matchups? And that voters don\u2019t think Clinton is trustworthy or honest?\n\nnatesilver: I don\u2019t think you can compare a declared candidate in Clinton \u2014 who\u2019s been getting a ton of scrutiny from the press, some deserved and some not \u2014 against a hypothetical candidate who has a halo around him because the press would love to see a huge fight for the nomination.\n\nOver the long run, Clinton\u2019s favorability numbers have been no worse than Biden\u2019s. Often a little better.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: General election polls of candidates who aren\u2019t running in the primary are ridiculous. Once he enters, all of Biden\u2019s faults will be put on the table. And there are a lot to play with. If there weren\u2019t, he\u2019d have done better when he ran in past elections.\n\nmicah: From the WSJ writeup of the Quinnipiac poll:\n\nThe Quinnipiac poll found that 51% of voters have an unfavorable impression of her, her worst score ever on that measure. The poll also found that 61% of voters say she is not honest and trustworthy, another record low. On the honest and trustworthy question, that is up from 57% in a July Quinnipiac poll.\n\nnatesilver: Here\u2019s the problem, Micah. Lots of people, political reporters especially, believe in momentum. If something goes from 50 to 45 percent, they assume it will keep going down, until it hits 40, 35, etc.\n\nBut empirically, the opposite is closer to being true. At least when it comes to polling.\n\nIf something goes from 50 to 45, it\u2019s more likely to bounce back to 50 than to continue declining. Mean-reversion tends to be stronger than momentum. At least over the long term \u2014 the short term is sometimes a different story. But it\u2019s the long term we should be concerned with, given that it\u2019s still only August.\n\nThe Clinton who has a 42 percent favorability rating today isn\u2019t really all that different than the one who had, I dunno, a 52 percent favorability rating at the start of the campaign, or a 48 percent favorability rating when she was running in 2008, or whatever. She is different than Clinton as secretary of state or first lady, because those are closer to being nonpartisan positions. So she can\u2019t expect to see those numbers again, at least not while she\u2019s a presidential candidate. But the odds are that her favorability ratings would revert to the mean by Election Day next year, which in her case means about 50\/50.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: Remember when there was talk about whether Chris Christie would get into the 2012 race? Or whether Fred Thompson would get into the 2008 race? Or Wesley Clark into the 2004 race? Those guys were tied or leading in the primary polling at the time. Biden\u2019s best percentage so far has been 18 percent. He\u2019s down nearly 30 percentage points to Clinton. Clinton is still in a ridiculously strong position.\n\nnatesilver: Yeah, I saw some article that offhandedly asserted Biden was polling exceptionally well given that he wasn\u2019t in the race yet. Polling at 12 percent or 15 percent or 18 percent among members of his own party doesn\u2019t seem that great to me for a guy who is vice president of the United States.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: But we don\u2019t have all the information. We believe Clinton is strong based on polling, money and support from party actors. If Biden were to enter, though, it says to us that he has a piece of information that we aren\u2019t privy to. And this information is that Clinton is weak \u2014 for whatever reason. If he doesn\u2019t enter, it\u2019s a confirmation that she is strong within the party.\n\nnatesilver: Part of this is looking for verifiable evidence in an environment where the media has an interest in overrating how competitive the Democratic race is.\n\nBy most objective measures, Clinton is doing really well in the nomination hunt. About as well as any non-incumbent candidate has been doing up to this point in time. So, on the one hand, we look at that data and it makes us skeptical that Biden will convince himself to run. On the other hand, it means we have more reassessment to do if Biden in fact does run.\n\nmicah: OK, let\u2019s say Biden gets in. How does he win? Does he come in guns blazing on email and trustworthiness? Does he claim the Obama mantle?\n\nnatesilver: How does he run or how does he win? I\u2019d guess that his messaging would be rather cryptic at first. Because the way he wins is basically if Democrats decide that Clinton is too much of a liability because of her scandals. But Biden doesn\u2019t want to come right out and say that. Debating Clinton on policy is also awkward, though, given that they have few real differences. And that, to the extent they do, one of them is going to be criticizing the Obama administration\u2019s policy, which is an odd look for an incumbent party trying to win another term in office.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: Let\u2019s start with this: Clinton must perform disappointingly in the Iowa caucuses. If Clinton wins in Iowa by a convincing margin, this thing is going to take off. I don\u2019t know how Clinton loses in Iowa, necessarily, but that\u2019s where it needs to begin. Biden cannot wait until later states to take her on. Her money and momentum will be too great. So it\u2019s Iowa or bust. Now, it could be that Sanders comes close in Iowa \u2014 it doesn\u2019t have to be Biden, but he\u2019s gotta do reasonably well.\n\nnatesilver: Yeah, I agree. I mean, one way Biden wins is if there\u2019s some new scandal (or some new wrinkle to the email scandal) that\u2019s so bad Clinton drops out. That\u2019s sort of obvious, I suppose.\n\nShort of that, it might come down to the timing. Say there\u2019s some bad news for Clinton that drops a couple of weeks before Iowa. Iowa is taken as a referendum on her campaign, and she fails that referendum.\n\nmicah: And what happens to #feelthebern if Biden jumps in?\n\nhjenten-heynawl: I think he continues on the path it was on. He\u2019ll continue to get white liberals and that\u2019s about it. I guess you could argue one way or another whether this slightly boosts his odds, but I think it doesn\u2019t help him. If anything it could steal attention away from him as the anti-Clinton.\n\nnatesilver: Yeah, I don\u2019t think Sanders\u2019s support will be affected that much. At the margin, it might make it easier for him to win the plurality in a caucus state here or there. But Bernie will keep on Bernin\u2019.\n\nWhat I don\u2019t think we\u2019re likely to see is a case where the Clinton-Biden fight drags out for months and months, and then we\u2019re all doing a bunch of delegate math, involving Clinton and Biden and Sanders, in May. As Harry said earlier, a Biden candidacy would either gain traction or collapse pretty quickly based on how it did in Iowa and New Hampshire.\n\nhjenten-heynawl: Support for an anti-Clinton is either there or not.\n\nmicah: So on our initial question \u2014 \u201cCould a Biden run help Hillary Clinton?\u201d \u2014 we think the answer is: \u201cNo. And also, it probably wouldn\u2019t affect Sanders much either.\u201d\n\nIs that right?\n\nnatesilver: A Biden run would be the worst news Clinton has had so far in the campaign. She\u2019d still probably be the favorite, however.\n\nRead More: Joe Biden Made the Right Call"} -{"text":"REGINA \u2014 The Saskatchewan government has introduced a climate-change strategy that inches toward a price on carbon emissions, but leaves large parts of its economy untouched.\n\nAnd it doesn't include a carbon tax, which Environment Minister Dustin Duncan was happy to point out Monday.\n\n\"I believe it will achieve as much, if not more than, a carbon tax ever would,\" Duncan said after introducing the plan.\n\nIt calls for performance standards on facilities that emit more than 25,000 tonnes annually of carbon dioxide equivalent. Facilities that exceed their limit will have to pay.\n\nI believe it will achieve as much, if not more than, a carbon tax ever would. Dustin Duncan\n\nThey will be able to buy carbon offsets from farmers or foresters, a carbon credit from another company with emissions under its allotment or pay into a provincial fund.\n\nThe standards are to be developed next year, Duncan said.\n\n\"We want to see the economy continue to grow and, for some industries, that means that their emissions will grow. It's not a cap-and-trade program where we're capping absolutely the amount of emissions.\"\n\nDuncan said standards will recognize investments companies have already made to reduce their emissions, something the energy industry has been lobbying for.\n\nNo goals or targets\n\nThe document contains no goals or targets and doesn't include estimates of how much greenhouse gas emissions are expected to be reduced. There is an undated pledge to have SaskPower, a Crown-owned utility, generate half its electricity from renewables.\n\n\"They're going to great pains to say they're not doing carbon pricing and then implementing a policy which, everywhere else it's implemented, is called carbon pricing,\" said University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach.\n\nThe biggest hole in Saskatchewan's plan is its limited scope, said Leach.\n\n\"They're not touching their transportation, home heating, commercial and industrial energy use at all with this policy.\"\n\nAlberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec all have more inclusive plans, he said.\n\nLeach also noted the government hasn't specified how high the emissions standards will be. Too high, he said, and carbon becomes worthless and few emissions will be cut.\n\nChris Wattie\/Reuters Environment Minister Catherine McKenna takes part in a news conference in Ottawa on Dec. 9, 2016.\n\nFederal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said the plan is a good step toward carbon pricing.\n\n\"Saskatchewan's new plan proposes a performance standard for heavy industry that includes a carbon market. Momentum for carbon pricing is growing.\"\n\nBut she said it will have to be wider to satisfy Ottawa.\n\n\"Based on what's in today's plan, Saskatchewan's price likely wouldn't hit our standard, because it applies only to heavy industry instead of being economy-wide.\"\n\nBrad Herald of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers welcomed Saskatchewan's plan.\n\nBased on what's in today's plan, Saskatchewan's price likely wouldn't hit our standard. Catherine McKenna\n\n\"There's a great range of compliance options for us there.\"\n\nHe declined to say whether Saskatchewan's plan is more favourable to industry than Alberta's, which includes a carbon tax.\n\n\"Both are legitimate,\" he said.\n\nThe Agricultural Producers of Saskatchewan also praised the plan. It leaves agriculture, the source of about one-quarter of the province's emissions, largely exempt.\n\n\"We also strongly reject the imposition of a carbon tax on our sector,\" said association president Todd Lewis.\n\n'They are last to the party'\n\nErin Flanagan of the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think-tank, said Saskatchewan's plan is an improvement over previous positions.\n\n\"It's still not a credible approach to climate change,\" she said. \"They are last to the party, but it's good they are moving forward with some pieces of an approach.\"\n\nFlanagan said it's tough to know how much difference the plan will make.\n\n\"The fact they haven't said what these (carbon) prices will be makes it difficult to know what kind of impact this is going to have. Saskatchewan doesn't have an economy-wide (reduction) target.\n\nSaskatchewan has remained opposed to the federal government's insistence that all provinces must have a price on carbon in place by 2018.\n\nDuncan said Monday's plan doesn't change that.\n\n\"We're prepared to defend our position. If that means go to court, so be it.\"\n\nPreviously On HuffPost:"} -{"text":"I\u2019m still trying to find my place as a pray-er among the residents at the women\u2019s care facility. As an introvert and hermit, and with what little social skills I possess, the challenge is large.\n\nI had been given a list of names of the women who are Catholic and ambled to each room to introduce myself. Awkwardly I\u2019d pause to greet those in the corridors and sitting areas.\n\nIn the first room, the woman sat on the side of her bed, a wheeled oxygen tank between her knees and tubes under her nose. She was confused by my presence but not my purpose, and accepted my offer to pray with her. She\u2019d scurried to the administrator\u2019s office when I left her room. I learned later she had asked if I were real\u2014and convinced that I was\u2014asked if I would come again.\n\nMy next stop was with a very joyous developmentally-impaired woman. I\u2019m not a touchy-feely kind of person and found her advances to hug and touch off-putting. I struggled to hold my ground against the urge to back away. She could not understand that I was offering prayer, telling me instead of her upcoming birthday and of many other happy things.\n\nI knocked on two more doors, shamefully relieved that there were no responses, and headed upstairs. In the stairwell I stopped, overwhelmed. I was ill-prepared for the emotions that flooded my heart.\n\nI was upset because of the confusion I felt in the presence of these women, and questioned if I lacked genuine love in my actions. I wanted to feel that my presence gave validation to Jesus\u2019 love, and to feel pleasing to our Lord. I felt none of this. What I felt was the little love I had was barely enough to keep me moving to the next floor, let alone sufficient to be a presence to these ladies.\n\nLeaning against the banister I steadied my resolve to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit felt months ago. I prayed for those I had just encountered and for perseverance and the confidence to move on.\n\nLater at home in my oratory I thought about my shortcomings of truly being the hands of Christ. I felt that the spiritual food I had to offer was not enough for the enormity of the summons set before me.\n\nAs I sat in silence, the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000\u2014more than that counting women and children\u2014came to mind. When I read the Bible passages (Mt 14:13-16, Mk 6:30-37, Jn 6:1-13) something struck me. Consistent in all three, Jesus did not say to the apostles that he would feed them\u2014he said you feed them.\n\nThe apostles begged Jesus, for the good of all, to quickly send them away. There were too many in need for only a dozen hands to feed.\n\nJesus knew that with what little they possessed there was enough for him to work with. He didn\u2019t change the venue of the challenge; he multiplied the bits and pieces that they had to meet the need at hand.\n\nI only have a small amount to share\u2014of confidence, courage, and love. But in the hands of Jesus, what little I have is multiplied enough to feed those standing beside me, and he gives me enough for another day.\n\nThere\u2019s a miracle in here, somewhere. I\u2019m just too startled to see it."} -{"text":"Italian airport is letting travellers take as much as 500g of the sauce in their carry-on luggage, exempting them from the 100ml rule for liquids\n\nThe Italian port city of Genoa has taken pride in its famed pesto sauce to new heights by granting special airport waivers for those who can\u2019t get enough of the basil and pine nut pasta sauce.\n\nTrevi levy: Rome imposes fines for frolicking at famous fountains Read more\n\nGenoa\u2019s airport is letting travellers take as much as 500g of pesto in their carry-on luggage, exempting them from the 100ml rule for liquids in carry-on baggage.\n\nThe catch: passengers must make a donation of 50 cents or more to a charity that airlifts sick children to hospitals.\n\nThe airport said this week that \u20ac500 had been raised in the first 20 days of the initiative, which was inspired by the anguish of so many foodies having their pesto confiscated when trying to get through security."} -{"text":"The United Nations doesn\u2019t really give a shit that most of the rest of the world suppresses freedom and violates human rights. No, they are more concerned with what\u2019s going on in the most free and most civil country on the planet. In their newest most ridiculous demand, the UN is warning the United States that we must abolish the 1st Amendment right to free speech to combat white supremacy, or else. I think I speak for all Americans on all sides of every issue when I say the UN can go f*ck itself.\n\nThe UN threw The UN threw this shit out there in response to Charlottesville:\n\n\uf122 The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has called on the Government of the United States of America, as well as high-level politicians and public officials, to unequivocally and unconditionally reject and condemn racist hate speech and crimes in Charlottesville and throughout the country. In a decision issued under its \u2018early warning and urgent action\u2019 procedure, the Committee \u2014 which monitors implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination* \u2014 stated \u201cthere should be no place in the world for racist white supremacist ideas or any similar ideologies that reject the core human rights principles of human dignity and equality.\u201d\n\nEarly warning and urgent action procedure? This peculiar wording makes me think that if we don\u2019t comply, the UN is going to issue some kind of sanctions against the US. I double-dog dare them to do this. I\u2019m almost certain President Trump will react by pulling all funding to the UN and as I\u2019m sure they know, we pay most of their bills.\n\n\u201cWe are alarmed by the racist demonstrations, with overtly racist slogans, chants and salutes by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan, promoting white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination and hatred\u201d, said UN nitwit Anastasia Crickley.\n\nGosh, what about the daily radical Islamic acts of terror around the globe? Don\u2019t those cowardly acts of violence that result in the deaths of hundreds of innocent people seem like a bigger concern? Apparently not. The death of one person in an isolated incident in the US is a way bigger deal.\n\n\u201cWe call on the US Government to investigate thoroughly the phenomenon of racial discrimination targeting, in particular, people of African descent, ethnic or ethno-religious minorities, and migrants,\u201d said Crinkly.\n\nIn case this isn\u2019t crazy enough for you, check this out:\n\n\uf122 Acting under its early warning procedure, CERD also called on the US to ensure that the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly are not exercised with the aim of destroying or denying the rights and freedoms of others. It also asked US to provide the necessary guarantees so that such rights are not misused to promote racist hate speech and racist crimes.\n\nThe UN wants America to get rid of the 1st Amendment rights of free speech and assembly to address white supremacy, which is only an issue with hysterical liberals. I guess they don\u2019t quite get how freedom works or that unpopular speech is exactly the kind of speech that the 1st Amendment protects.\n\nA better idea would be for the UN to condemn 99% of the rest of the world that has some kind of free speech restrictions. In half the countries having a opinion is a jailable offense and in the other half speaking one\u2019s mind is a death sentence.\n\nPutting up with a handful of racist knuckleheads is a small price to pay for liberty. America\u2019s freedom is the least pressing issue facing the globe."} -{"text":"Bedrock presented preliminary design and plans for the site of the former J.L. Hudson\u2019s Department Store Wednesday, February 22, 2017, at a meeting of the DDA (Photo: Bedrock Detroit)\n\nIn an era of a downtown Detroit renaissance, plans for the tallest building in the city were unveiled Wednesday.\n\nThe building is part of an estimated $775 million development proposed by an entity linked to billionaire Dan Gilbert. The project for the empty Woodward Avenue block where the J.L. Hudson department store once stood is one of the most expensive and ambitious plans introduced in a decade that has seen many blockbuster deals.\n\nThe shimmering, futuristic 734-foot tower aims to be a centerpiece for the city and state, officials for Gilbert\u2019s Bedrock Detroit said as they rolled out the proposed project to the board of the Downtown Development Authority. That\u2019s one of the city agencies that would need to approve the deal.\n\nThe tower would have 250 residential units and 700-plus underground parking spaces. A connected nine-story base structure would house retail, office, technology and arts and culture space. The development looks like nothing in Detroit now, with a glass and steel exterior that sweeps upward.\n\nBedrock officials showed images of Smithsonian exhibits and TED Talks as examples of the kind of events that could be held in conference and exhibit space. There were images of a market and hip retailers in the floor beneath street level. The mixed-use development would have 1.2 million square feet of space.\n\n\u201cWe believe this project is so unique that it can help put Detroit back on the national, and even global, map for world-class architecture, talent attraction, technology innovation and job creation,\u201d Gilbert said in a written statement Wednesday.\n\nThe DDA board quickly approved a new time frame for the yet-unnamed development. An entity linked to Gilbert has had development rights for the former Hudson\u2019s site since 2010; the DDA has granted extensions for the project several times. Early designs released in 2015 showed a swooping glass-and-metal structure.\n\nIf things go as intended \u2014 and it\u2019s too soon to tell \u2014 the new schedule would see construction start in December of this year and be finished by the end of 2020.\n\nA spokesman for Mayor Mike Duggan did not respond to an email asking for comment on Wednesday\u2019s announcement.\n\nPlans for the project could change because Gilbert is counting on tax breaks that don\u2019t yet exist to make the financing work on the project. Those potential tax incentives are currently in the state Legislature. On Wednesday, the package of bills was approved by the state Senate and the bills now go to the state House of Representatives. Last year, similar legislation died in the House.\n\nIf the tax incentives are not passed, \u201cIt certainly will impact what happens,\u201dsaid Joe Guziewicz, vice president of construction for Bedrock Detroit. \u201cWe would end up coming back to the DDA with revised renderings and a revised timeline,\u201d for the project, he said.\n\nBeyond the tax incentives, it\u2019s unknown whether other tax breaks may be sought for the development.\n\nEntities linked to Gilbert and Bedrock Detroit are major forces downtown, controlling more than 90 properties, which amounts to a $2 billion-plus investment.\n\nThe proposed tower would make the structure Detroit\u2019s tallest \u2014 by 7 feet. The 70-story center tower of the General Motors Renaissance Center stands 727 feet tall. The development plans were designed by SHoP Architects of New York in conjunction with Detroit-based Hamilton Anderson Associates.\n\nFor decades, the Hudson\u2019s store was the jewel of a bustling downtown filled with stores, offices and people. The store was demolished in 1998 and the site has been empty ever since, serving as a reminder of Detroit\u2019s decades-long decline.\n\nThe scope of the Hudson\u2019s development was praised by John Mogk, a Wayne State University law professor who follows downtown development. \u201cHudson\u2019s was a magical place that was really the catalyst for the downtown. This could be that, too. The Renaissance Center failed to do that.\u201d\n\nThe estimated $775 million price tag rivals the cost of Little Caesars Arena, the still-under-construction venue that will be the home ice to the Detroit Red Wings. The current estimate for the arena is $732.6 million, but that will increase if the arena also becomes home to the Detroit Pistons, which would result in millions of dollars in modifications to the venue.\n\nlaguilar@detroitnews.com\n\nTwitter: @LouisAguilar_DN\n\nHigher ground\n\nThese are the tallest buildings in Detroit. The planned building on the Hudson\u2019s site \u2014 at 734 feet and 52 floors\u2014 would eclipse them all.\n\n1. The Detroit Marriot at the Renaissance Center: 727 feet tall, 70 floors\n\n2. One Detroit Center: 619 feet tall, 43 floors\n\n3. Penobscot Building: 565 feet tall, 47 floors\n\n4. Renaissance Center Towers 100, 200, 300, 400 (Satellite Towers): 522 feet tall, 39 floors\n\n5. The Guardian Building: 496 feet tall, 40 floors\n\nSources: Emporis, historicdetroit.org\n\nRead or Share this story: http:\/\/detne.ws\/2lwdlQU"} -{"text":"FBI Handout Gunman who killed a security agent at LAX was carrying a note expressing 'disappointment in the government', reports claim.\n\nIn pictures: Shooting at Los Angeles Airport\n\nThe gunman who opened fire inside Los Angeles International Airport, killing a security agent and injuring several others, was carrying a note describing himself as a \"pissed off patriot\" who wanted to shoot \"pigs\", it has been reported.\n\nIn the hours after Friday's deadly attack, suggestions began to emerge that the shooter - identified as Paul Ciancia, 23 - was motivated by extremist anti-government views as well as emotional problems that had pushed him towards thoughts of suicide.\n\nAuthorities have declined to address his motivation publicly but a law enforcement official told the Los Angeles Times that a note was found on Ciancia expressing \"disappointment in the government\" and claiming he had no interest in harming \"innocent people\".\n\nInstead, he wanted to \"kill TSA\", the note reportedly stated, a reference to the Transport Security Administration created in the wake of the September 11 attacks to increase safety on US transportation. The written rant was said to detail Ciancia's belief that his constitutional rights were being violated by TSA searches and his anger at former Department of Homleand Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.\n\nAs he embarked on his shooting spree, dressed in fatigues and carrying a high-powered rifle, Ciancia asked several cowering members of the public if they were TSA, witnesses claimed. He found his target, shooting dead 39-year-old agent Gerardo Hernandez, the first TSA officer to be killed in the line of duty since the agency's creation.\n\nA number of other agents suffered gunshot wounds.\n\nThe deadly attack threw one of the world's busiest airports into chaos as terrified passengers fled Terminal 3, some gathering on the airside tarmac under the wings of waiting planes. Others locked themselves in bathrooms as security officers sought to fell the shooter, ultimately engaging him in gunfire which resulted in shots to his mouth and leg, and taking him into custody.\n\nCiancia, originally from New Jersey, reportedly began his assault at a check-in counter where he pulled an assault rifle out of a bag and opened fire. Witnesses heard several \"popping\" sounds before the gunman moved up an escalator, and through a security screening area to where passengers were waiting for their flights outside boarding gates.\n\nHe was then shot and wounded by police, reportedly near a Burger King stand. Up to a dozen shots were heard by passengers as they scrambled away.\n\nCiancia had at least five full 30-round magazines with him, police said. He was shot in the mouth and leg by two airport police officers.\n\nCiancia had earlier that day sent a text message to his brother saying that he intended to take his own life. This led his father to contact police in the family's home state of New Jersey expressing concern for his state of mind and asking for help in locating him. They in turn contacted police in Los Angeles who sent a patrol car to Ciancia's apartment in the city. There, his two roommates said they had seen him the previous day and that he appeared to be fine.\n\nA former classmate of Ciancia's told the LA Times that the suspected shooter was a loner and suffered bullying at their private school.\n\n\"In four years, I never heard a word out of his mouth,\" said David Hamilton, who graduated with Ciancia from Salesianum School in Wilmington, Delaware, in 2008. \"He kept to himself and ate lunch alone a lot. I really don't remember any one person who was close to him.\"\n\nWitnesses said Ciancia appeared calm and composed as he picked his way through the terminal seeking targets. But passengers, who included a number of TV and film celebrities, told of their terror during the ordeal.\n\nEmmy-nominated actor Tim Daly, who appeared in The Sopranos, was in the Virgin first class lounge on the other side of a wall from the shooting.\n\n\"Less than a minute after the shots the LAPD burst into the lounge with weapons drawn to make sure there were no bad guys in the lounge,\" he said. \"That was pretty frightening.\"\n\nDaly said when he was evacuated he saw a gun that looked like an AR-15 assault rifle with three clips on the floor outside Gates 35 and 36.\n\nHe said: \"It was right in the middle of where everyone waits to get on their planes. We were told not to step on any blood or bags because it was evidence.\"\n\nTV presenter Tory Belleci, from the show Mythbusters, tweeted:\n\nTwitter: Tory Belleci - Heard gun shots then everyone starting running for the door. Not sure if anyone was hurt. #LAX\n\nThe airport, known as LAX, serves about 64 million people a year, with more than 1,500 flights taking off and landing every day. Terminal 3 is home to Virgin America and other airlines. All flights were grounded and President Barack Obama was being kept informed.\n\nPassenger Sarah Richardson said: \"We heard a lot of loud gunshots. My colleague threw me to the ground and we were scrambling. Somebody told us to make a run for it. We got into a room and they pulled a coffee machine in front of the door. We could hear gunshots outside.\n\n\"The sound was so loud we thought a bomb had gone off. Some people hid in a bathroom. It was pure and utter mayhem, people tripping over each other crying and screaming, bags everywhere.\"\n\nEyewitness Brian Adamick, 43, told the Los Angeles Times he saw a wounded TSA agent with a bloody leg on the tarmac.\n\n\"It looked like it was straight out of the movies,\" he said. The agent told him \"I got shot, I'm fine,\" adding that he had been shot before.\n\nLos Angeles chef Vernon Cardenas, who was en route to Philadelphia to audition for the MasterChef TV programme, said the gunman looked at him but didn't shoot.\n\nHe described a white man in his 20s with \"dirty blonde hair\". Mr Cardenas said: \"He was dressed in navy blue clothes, he almost looked like an employee of the airport. He was walking around in sort of a daze.\"\n\nThe television channel AMC confirmed that scenes for its award-winning drama Mad Men were being filmed at the airport at the time of the shooting.\n\nProduction on Mad Men was taking place at nearby Terminal 4 and a member of the crew said on Twitter: \"We are filming at LAX. Gun fire. Locked down. Evacuating. Terminal 4. Forced back inside for safety.\"\n\nIt was not clear which members of the cast were present at the airport at the time.\n\nMythbusters presenter Tory Belleci told CNN: \"People were running towards me screaming 'There's a shooter, there's a shooter.' I heard the shots. Everybody was jumping over each other and trying to stay low. It was blowing my mind how he could get a weapon that far into the airport.\"\n\nFellow Mythbusters star Grant Imahara said: \"To be there was surreal and you went into survival mode. It was like the whole airport was holding its breath for an hour.\"\n\nPassenger Leon Saryan, who was walking from the security check carrying his shoes and belt, told ABC News: \"I was cowering in a corner. He (the gunman) looked at me and he said, 'TSA?' I shook my head no, and he kept on going. I just prayed to God. That's all I did. I just prayed.\""} -{"text":"Despite years of painful austerity, the UK\u2019s level of public spending is today no lower as a share of national income than it was after 11 years of a Labour government in 2008, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.\n\nThe major report from the UK\u2019s leading economic think tank shows that deep cuts have left the NHS, schools and prisons in a \u201cfragile state\u201d, and have merely returned public spending to pre-financial crisis levels.\n\nThe document presents a challenge to claims that Conservative-driven austerity saved the public finances following years of Labour overspending.\n\nWe\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s true. You can form your own view. From 15p \u20ac0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.\n\nThe think tank\u2019s report goes on to conclude that in the light of the data, Chancellor Philip Hammond\u2019s plan to abolish the UK\u2019s deficit by the mid-2020s is \u201cno longer sensible\u201d.\n\nWith his critical Budget approaching in November, it challenges him to admit the target looks \u201cincreasingly unlikely\u201d in the light of a worsening economic outlook, exacerbated by Britain\u2019s \u201cterrible\u201d productivity and uncertainty over Brexit.\n\nThe IFS analysis of public spending levels appears in its pre-Budget look at the Chancellor\u2019s options published on Monday.\n\nIt found public spending as a share of national income was at a similar level both now and shortly before the financial crash, an event David Cameron and George Osborne claimed Labour overspending left the country ill-prepared for.\n\nIn 2007-08, public spending as a share of GDP was 39 per cent, it peaked in 2009-10 at 45.1 per cent and is forecast to be 39.6 per cent this year, according to the IFS.\n\nThe main justification for austerity has been the need to reduce and eventually abolish the deficit, a target that the IFS refers to as \u201cever-receding\u201d.\n\nThe IFS argues Mr Hammond\u2019s critical budget speech next month, will be given against a backdrop of a worsening economic outlook that demands austerity goals are rethought.\n\nThe key to the \u201csignificantly worsened\u201d fiscal forecasts expected in November, leaving the Government less money to play with, is the UK\u2019s \u201clower productivity growth\u201d coming off the back of seven years of \u201cterrible\u201d growth.\n\nThe report argues Mr Hammond will also find it difficult to raise new money from taxes given the \u201cpolitical arithmetic\u201d that exists following an election which left the Tories without a solid Commons majority.\n\nThe Chancellor also faces huge pressure to ease the Treasury\u2019s purse strings, including demands to boost universal credit welfare payments, increase public sector pay and spend more on defence.\n\nThe IFS report said: \u201cIt looks like [Mr Hammond] will face a substantial deterioration in the projected state of the public finances.\n\n\u201cHe will know that seven years of \u2018austerity\u2019 have left many public services in a fragile state. And, in the known unknowns surrounding both the shape and impact of Brexit, he faces even greater than usual levels of economic uncertainty.\u201d\n\nIt goes on: \u201cGiven all the current pressures and uncertainties \u2013 and the policy action that these might require \u2013 it is perhaps time to admit that a firm commitment to running a budget surplus from the mid-2020s onwards is no longer sensible.\u201d\n\nThe body sets out areas where continuing austerity is having its greatest impact on services, citing \u201cclear signs of strain\u201d in the NHS.\n\nIt adds: \u201cBoth the four-hour A&E target and the 18-week waiting period target are being missed nationally.\n\n\u201cThe indicators paint a worrying picture for prisons, which, unlike the NHS, have seen large real-terms cuts (over 20 per cent) since 2009-10.\n\n\u201cStatistics compiled by the Institute for Government show that while the prison population is at roughly its 2009 level, staffing is down and violence (both against fellow prisoners and prison staff) and prisoner self-harm rates are on an alarmingly steep upwards trajectory.\u201d\n\nThe report goes on to note how the Chancellor has already abandoned the blanket public sector pay cap and may decide to give more people a pay rise.\n\nThe Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said: \u201cThe IFS have today confirmed seven years of Tory austerity policies have failed to drive up investment and productivity, with serious potential consequences for the public finances.\n\n\u201cTory economic failure means wages and salaries are lower today than when they came to power, and still falling, whilst their mishandling of Brexit is now also adding to the uncertainty around future borrowing plans.\u201d\n\nThe Independent contacted the Treasury for comment.\n\nWe\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s true. You can form your own view.\n\nAt The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That\u2019s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks \u2013 all with no ads.\n\nSubscribe now."} -{"text":"Michael Garb\/Gravity Glue (Facebook)\n\nMichael Grab, a Boulder artist who goes by the name Gravity Glue, said that police threatened to ticket or jail him for creating stacked river rock sculptures that the community has been enjoying for years.\n\nIn a Monday Facebook post, Grab explained that a Boulder police officer had informed him that there would be stiff penalties for continuing his art.\n\n\u201cFor the past 7 years i have been creating this art in and around Boulder, Colorado, USA. nearly every day!\u201d he wrote. \u201c[J]ust this weekend, one police officer has decided that balancing rocks in Boulder, Colorado is now illegal, obscurely referencing two city codes [5-4-8 and 5-4-2] about \u2018destruction of public property\u2019 in relation to rocks.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo now the police have belligerently taken it upon themselves to write tickets and\/or arrest ANYONE balancing rocks in Boulder, CO. and specifically threatened to ticket me and\/or arrest me if they catch me in the future,\u201d the artist lamented. \u201c[I] encourage as many people as possible (especially locals) to contact the city council here in Boulder and voice your support for this long standing tradition in Boulder. [I]t is something that an overwhelming portion of the community supports.\u201d\n\nGrab said that he would be forced to leave Boulder if the city council did not step in to clarify the city ordinances.\n\nRooster Magazine wondered why Boulder police felt the need to focus on \u201cDraconian rock art witch hunt\u201d instead of higher-than-average rates of rape and theft.\n\n\u201cWhy is any of this important? Because if we ban every bizzaro Boulder character that causes a stir (see: nude gardening woman), we\u2019re left with nothing more than a college town with a Target that\u2019s about to become Google\u2019s new headquarters,\u201d the magazine noted. \u201cAt a time like this, we need less kid gloves in the form of overzealous legislation, and more attention paid to retaining the city\u2019s core personality. And if you don\u2019t like that, f*cking move to Westminster.\u201d\n\n\u201cKeep Boulder weird, and keep Gravity Glue making weird ass rock art.\u201d\n\nIn the end, the call to action worked. Grab said that the city attorney personally called to let him know that rock stacking was not illegal in Boulder.\n\n\u201cUPDATE: holy shit! maybe the support was more than i anticipated!!\u201d he exclaimed. \u201c[J]ust got a call from the city attorney personally here in Boulder telling me that he has ordered the police to NOT cite rock balancing under the city codes [I] mentioned below!!!\u201d\n\n\u201cTHANK YOU everyone for the overwhelming support!!!! [T]hey must have gotten lots of calls!! haha :))\u201d\n\nWatch a video below of Gravity Glue doing his thing."} -{"text":"Kirsten Dunst earns millions for a film. But what about the actor who dubs her into Spanish? The world's top voice artists tell all - in their own words\n\nMexico's Kirsten Dunst: Claudia Motta\n\nI began dreaming of acting as a little girl, watching Japanese cartoons. I fell in love with the voices. Later I got into radio and then into dubbing - and I love it. After I spoke Kirsten Dunst's lines in Spider-Man, they asked me to do Mona Lisa Smile, Wimbledon, and others. She's a favourite in my stable of characters now, and I'm so pleased things are going well for her in Hollywood. I don't imitate the actor, I get into the personality of the role. I focus on the gestures and reflect that in my voice, even if there was no sound in the original. I add to the drama because to dub well you have to be as good an actor, or better. They paid me 10,000 pesos (\u00a3500) for Mary Jane in Spider-Man. The problem is that distributors don't put us in the credits. Suppose Kirsten Dunst thought, \"Gosh, how nice I sound in Spanish.\" She wouldn't have known who the voice belonged to.\n\nMuch of my work is for television. I'm best known for playing Bart Simpson for 10 years. When different actors were brought in because of a contract dispute, the public demanded we be brought back. Mexican dubbers mostly use a kind of neutral Spanish without accents or regional expressions so all Latin America can understand. We have the best dubbing industry, and the competition in Argentina and Venezuela just doesn't have our finesse or tradition. Top Cat in Spanish has a personality and feeling that is missing in English - and I take my hat off to the woman who voiced the witch in Snow White.\n\nFrance's Angelina Jolie: Fran\u00e7oise Cadol\n\nSometimes my home phone will ring and when I say \"hello\" there will be a sharp intake of breath at the other end. I know immediately it's a dubbing fan who has got hold of my number. Once a woman rang me and started gasping. Then after a silence, she said: \"Sorry, I'm just so emotional at hearing you, I can't speak, I'll have to call back.\"\n\nThere are people in Paris who keep scrapbooks on dubbing, who collect signed photos, who know what you've dubbed despite your name rarely appearing on the credits. I respect people's reasons for wanting to contact me, but I don't send out photos. People feel they know the voice and they want to know you. A voice is a very moving thing. Dubbing is taken seriously in France, and people get very upset if an actor who has dubbed a star for a long time suddenly changes. Audiences want continuity.\n\nI get invited on to TV shows to discuss dubbing - people are interested in the process. I have been Angelina Jolie since Tomb Raider because I was the voice of Lara Croft in the video games. I thought Jolie was very good in Mr and Mrs Smith - you could tell she and Brad Pitt were having a good time making that film. I don't seek out information on her in the celebrity mags, or follow her life at all, but I get on very well with the French actor who dubs Brad Pitt - a well-known actor in his own right. I'm also Gong Li, Sandra Bullock, Patricia Arquette and the voice of Mary Alice in Desperate Housewives.\n\nI dub films because I enjoy it, it's artistic - and it is a skill that teaches you a lot about acting. I'm currently writing my fourth play for my theatre company and dubbing allows me to keep on doing the work for theatre. I've acted in theatres all over Paris, I've been on the TV, but the greatest irony is that I've never actually appeared on the cinema screen.\n\nItaly's Ren\u00e9e Zellweger: Giuppy Izzo\n\nI was born into the business. My teacher was my father. He had four daughters and most evenings at dinner he would try to teach us something about intonation. He had a saying: \"Your voice is the soundtrack of your life.\" One of my sisters also entered the business and is now a dubbing director as well as a dubbing artist. It was a bit like growing up as a circus child, really.\n\nMy first job was as the 10-year-old daughter in The Goodbye Girl. I've no idea how many other films I've dubbed since then. I've voiced Ren\u00e9e Zellweger in both her Bridget Jones movies and several others. I've studied her diction, her movements and her breathing so much that I feel I know her. We've not met, though - the only actor I've both dubbed and met is Ellen Pompeo, the star of Grey's Anatomy. She came up and hugged me at a conference in Milan in the summer.\n\nThe key to this profession is obsession with detail. To get the same effects as in the original, I try, as far as I can, to imitate the actor's movements as I say her lines. Anyone who saw me working would think I was nuts. I lay down on the floor for the bedroom scenes in the Bridget Jones films. At the end of one of them, there's a scene in which Bridget is badly out of breath.\n\nI ran twice around the block before we recorded it.\n\nChina's Tom Cruise: Ren Wei\n\nTom Cruise was my latest voice acting role, but I have played hundreds of parts since I joined the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio in 1986. I was Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge, John Travolta in Broken Arrow, Joseph Fiennes in Enemy at the Gates, Hugh Jackman in Kate and Leopold and Vincent Perez in Fanfan la Tulipe.\n\nBut my real dream is to become a tenor. Luciano Pavarotti is my idol and I haven't given up trying to get a role in a musical. I have a good voice, dancing skills, and acting experience. I just need a chance.\n\nI guess I was chosen to voice the Tom Cruise role in Mission: Impossible III because my age and physique are similar to his. Some people say I even look like him from a certain angle. It was a tough job. While Atang [the Cantonese nickname for Tom Cruise] had months to make the film, I had to do the whole thing - from learning the script to dubbing all the lines - in four days. We always have to rush because of the piracy problem in China. If we don't get the translation and dubbing done quickly, an unauthorised version will be out on the streets before ours.\n\nEvery day I worked for at least 12 hours. I studied Atang's voice and tried to imitate his style of talking. It was an action movie, so there was lots of running about and shouting, which was hard to emulate in a studio. It was very intense and I had to cover a big range of emotions. In the fighting scenes, it was all \"Get down, get down! Go, go!\" Then there were romantic moments when his voice breaks up as he tells his wife how much he loves her. I had to watch the original English version time and time again to get the feeling right.\n\nWhen it was all over I was so hoarse that the director told me to go home and take a rest. The crew cracked jokes: \"Tom Cruise runs so fast he breaks his legs, Ren Wei shouts so loud he breaks his voice.\"\n\nI have never used the fact that I am Atang's voice actor to chat up women, but I have received letters from fans who say they really like my delivery. But that is not what is most important. My main aim is to satisfy the original actor as much as the audience.\n\nGermany's Julia Roberts: Daniella Hoffmann\n\nIt all started out with the casting for Pretty Woman back in 1990. Back then I didn't expect it to be a big deal - more like a B-movie. I was among the finalists and I think it was my laugh that clinched it. I can do a good, really filthy laugh just like Julia Roberts -I love it when she laughs. Since Pretty Woman I've played her in every film. My vocal range is very like hers, so it all comes pretty naturally. With Ally McBeal, whom I also dub, I put on a very different voice, much higher.\n\nI don't often get recognised as being the voice of Julia Roberts. I think women's voices are much harder to identify than men's. But being Julia has definitely brought work my way. Some adverts want the sound of \"Julia Roberts\" and I have also done Charlotte's Web because it was originally Julia who did the voiceover.\n\nWhen I come in to record I generally haven't seen the film I'm going to dub. It used to be different: we used to get the videos to take home beforehand. But these days they are amazingly strict about new releases. When I did a voice for Star Wars, I wasn't even told in advance what film we were doing - just to turn up.\n\nBut when I play Julia Roberts I don't need to prepare or anything. I follow her lead. I mean, the woman is a great actress, an Oscar-winning actress - why should I change anything about her work?\n\nIndia's Arnold : Schwarzenegger: Pawan Kalra\n\nI've done most of the big names: I was Arnold in The Terminator and True Lies; I voiced Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights; and Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing. A number of people say I look like Bruce Willis and I did Bruce as the cop in Sin City. I think Brad Pitt is one of the finest. I have just done him in Spy Games - a great film. Pitt is a very fine actor who can both overplay and underplay a role. You really have to watch how he speaks, it is fantastic.\n\nDubbing is an art requiring a voice of many textures and tones. Not everybody can do it just because they have a good voice. Voiceover artists are cast and we have writers who make the scripts fit the lip movements of the actors on screen so that it runs as smoothly as possible. There are sometimes arguments over how to translate a single phrase.\n\nIt is hardest with black actors like Eddie Murphy and Will Smith. They are not only very funny but they speak very, very fast. Trying to street talk quickly in Hindi is extremely tough. After two days your mouth gets really tired.\n\nMy brother was in the film business. I was running my father's transport company in Bihar, out there in the sticks. But I had done some performances, so my brother said: come out and try. So I did. And here I am, eight years later.\n\nA film for TV takes two days. I will make 20,000 rupees (\u00a3250). For theatre release it is more like 50,000 rupees (\u00a3625). It's really exploding. I do films, commercials and TV shows now. There are a lot more people saying \"I heard you on television\" these days. But it's a really competitive industry. When I started there were just a few people - now everybody thinks they can voice movies.\n\n\u00b7 Interviews by Jo Tuckman, Angelique Chrisafis, John Hooper, Jonathan Watts, Jess Smee and Randeep Ramesh"} -{"text":"ALLEN PARK -- There was some fear that Ndamukong Suh had opened himself to possible retaliation hits following his latest questionable football act. Seems he had to wait only one week for the first blow, after Arizona right guard Paul Fanaika dove at Suh's knees behind a play during Sunday's game. But there's been little media coverage of the hit, and no public backlash.\n\nNdamukong Suh was on the other side of a questionable block Sunday against Arizona, but isn't making a big deal about it.\n\nAnd the Detroit Lions defensive tackle isn't angry at the possible double-standard. \"(That kind of hit) happens all the time,\" Suh said during a news conference Wednesday \"It's not going to stop. Look forward to it -- look forward to keep making plays down the field. That's my job. \"To me, it's just gnats that are in the air that keep going after you. You swat at 'em, and sometimes you hit 'em, sometimes you don't. Sometimes they run away, sometimes they come back again. But ultimately, I'm just that bee going to find that honey hole. That's what I do.\" Suh was excoriated by various players, past and present, as well as coaches and some media for blocking Minnesota center John Sullivan in the knees in the opener. He drew a record $100,000 fine. Fanaika, conversely, wasn't whistled for a penalty -- in fact, the block was legal because Fanaika's an offensive lineman -- and the country hasn't rallied to Suh's defense. Suh said he \"doesn't care\" about being treated differently in the media. \"That's not my job,\" he said. Coach Jim Schwartz shrugged off the play as well, and wouldn't disclose whether Detroit has or plans to file a grievance with the league. \"That whole turning plays in and saying the league called and said this, I honestly think that's a little unbecoming,\" Schwartz said. \"We try to keep our conversations with the league just to that. If they tell us they blew a call ... I mean, how many times have I come up here and said that? \"Probably never, because we don't make excuses. We don't want to make excuses for stuff like that.\" Schwartz did seem to have some issue with the rule itself though, which allows for offensive lineman to block below the waist as long as it's from the front. \"Is it less of an injury risk (than if a defensive lineman does it)? No, but it's a legal play as opposed to a play that's penalized, so it is what it is,\" he said. Suh also denied a Fox Sports report that he's stomped on teammates in practice, deferring to previous statements from Schwartz and center Dominic Raiola that it never happened."} -{"text":"Humanoid robots are a vanity project: an attempt to create artificial life in our own image \u2013 essentially trying to play God. The problem is, we\u2019re not very good at it. Ask someone on the street to name a robot and you might hear \u201cTerminator\u201d, \u201cthe Cybermen\u201d or \u201cthat gold one from Star Wars\u201d. What you\u2019re not going to be given are names like Tesla Model X, Cassini or DJI Inspire 2. These are all robots, but they don\u2019t follow the sci-fi narrative of what robots should be like. The fact is, the robots of the near future won\u2019t be going about on two legs like the shuffling C3PO. And they\u2019ll be much more efficient than us bipeds.\n\nOur impression of what a robot is has been tainted by science fiction and popular culture. The term \u201crobot\u201d was first used in 1920 by Karel and Josef \u010capek in a play called R.U.R. to describe an artificial automaton. Since then, our narcissistic desires have seen the word become synonymous with humanoid robots, or androids.\n\nWe like to think that we\u2019re the dominant creatures on the planet, so mobile robots should look like us. But the fact is, they shouldn\u2019t. We can\u2019t fly, we\u2019re not very good swimmers, we can\u2019t live in a vacuum and if we want to travel more than a mile, most of us will get on some type of wheeled vehicles. Bipedal locomotion has served us well but it is limited and requires a huge amount of brain power and years of learning to perfect. The computer versions of our brain are nowhere near our level and are unlikely to be so for decades to come. After nearly 100 years of development, our most advanced humanoid robots can only just open a door without falling over (too often).\n\nIs a plane a robot?\n\nSo what is the future of robotics? Well, it comes down to what you define a robot as. Unfortunately there isn\u2019t a unified definition of what a robot is, but the general consensus is that it\u2019s a physical device which can sense its surroundings and interact with the environment with limited human intervention. This could either be automation, where tasks are pre-programmed, or autonomy, where the robot makes decisions on its own.\n\nLet\u2019s say that I build a little four-wheeled robot that can move from point A to point B without crashing into anything. I can give it a map and tell it where to go and it will do so without any further instructions. This sounds quite nifty, but what\u2019s the point of it? Well now let\u2019s scale it up so you can sit in it. Now suddenly it\u2019s not a robot, it\u2019s a driverless car. But all that\u2019s changed is the size.\n\nI now want to fly off on my holidays. I quite happily get on the plane and see the two pilots in the cockpit. When I land, they\u2019re still there and I think what a great job they did. More than likely though, the pilots didn\u2019t actually fly the plane. They will have inputted commands to the autopilot and the computer will have flown the plane. The plane, for all intents and purposes, is a robot with human supervisors to take over if anything goes drastically wrong, just like a driverless car.\n\nPlanes, trains automobiles \u2026 and robots\n\nThe future of nearly all transport is mobile robots. We\u2019re already there with robotic aircraft and within the next decade, we\u2019ll have robot cars. Robots already fly through space and scour the bottom of the ocean. It won\u2019t be too long before we have driverless trains and trams too. Drones will become a bigger part of society. All these things are robots, but they\u2019ve had to be called something else due to societal impression of what a robot is.\n\nWhat this highlights is that we adapt the technology to fit the environment. Rather than building robots that look like us so that they can be a direct replacement, you\u2019ll start to see things being built to suit a problem. Why do you need a robot with complex hands to pick up a pair of scissors or a hammer, when it can be built into their arms? Why build a robot to climb over debris in an earthquake on two legs, when four or six legs \u2013 or a wheeled track \u2013 would be much more stable?\n\nThere is no doubt that eventually androids will be walking around and talking with us. You\u2019ll pass them wandering down the street or hold a conversation with one as you do your shopping. But for now, the robots of the near future won\u2019t walk like us. Instead they\u2019ll drive, they\u2019ll fly, they\u2019ll swim or they\u2019ll walk on any number of legs \u2013 except two."} -{"text":"Russia today announced the beginning of a significant military drawdown in Syria, with the nation\u2019s lone aircraft carrier group being withdrawn from the Syrian coast, and a number of troops apparently set to follow as the ceasefire in the country continues to hold.\n\nExact details of the drawdown are unclear, but reports suggest a drawdown of some sort was actually always meant to be part of the deal which led to the ceasefire, which began a week ago and continues to mostly hold. There is considerable skepticism, however.\n\nThat\u2019s because Russia already announced a drawdown back in 2016, shortly after the February ceasefire began, only to eventually send a number of reinforcements when that collapsed. Until a peace deal is negotiated, these drawdowns are always going to be seen as temporary.\n\nPeace talks are coming though, with plans for negotiations in Kazakhstan some time later in January. Exact dates are not set, and the rebels have largely not committed to take part in the negotiations.\n\nLast 5 posts by Jason Ditz"} -{"text":"Emma M\u00e6rsk is the first container ship in the E-class of eight owned by the A. P. Moller-Maersk Group. When launched in 2006 she was the largest container ship ever built, and in 2010 she and her seven sister ships were among the longest container ships. Officially, she is able to carry around 11,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) or 14,770 TEU depending on definition. In May 2010, her sister ship Ebba M\u00e6rsk set a record of 15,011 TEU in Tanger-Med, Tangiers.[3]\n\nHistory [ edit ]\n\nEmma M\u00e6rsk was built at the Odense Steel Shipyard in Denmark. In June 2006, during construction, welding work caused a fire within the superstructure.[4] It spread rapidly through the accommodation section and bridge, which delayed her completion by six to seven weeks.\n\nShe was named in a ceremony on 12 August 2006, after M\u00e6rsk Mc-Kinney M\u00f8ller's late wife, Emma. She set sail on her maiden voyage on 8 September 2006 at 02:00 hours from Aarhus, calling at Gothenburg, Bremerhaven, Rotterdam, Algeciras, the Suez Canal, and arrived in Singapore on 1 October 2006 at 20:05 hours. She sailed the next day for Yantian in Shenzhen, then Kobe, Nagoya, arriving at Yokohama on 10 October 2006, and returning via Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Tanjung Pelepas, the Suez Canal, Felixstowe, Rotterdam, Bremerhaven, Gothenburg to Aarhus, arriving on 11 November 2006 at 16:00 hours.[5]\n\nShe appeared in headlines prior to Christmas 2006, when she was dubbed SS Santa because she was bound for the United Kingdom from China loaded with Christmas goods. The return journey to southern China was loaded with UK waste for recycling.[6]\n\nHer appearance in the news prompted the State Environmental Protection Administration in China to promise to \"closely watch the progress of investigation into the dumping of garbage in south China by Britain\". Ministry officials added that no official approval had been given to any company in the area to import waste.[7]\n\nIn 2008, the ship was featured on an episode of the television documentary series Mighty Ships, during a voyage between Malaysia and Spain.[8]\n\nIn 2011, the National Bank of Denmark issued a 20 DKK commemorative coin for her.[9]\n\nGoing eastwards on 1 February 2013, she suffered a damaged stern thruster and took on so much water in the Suez Canal that she became unmaneuvrable. Tugs, anchors and the wind[10] took her to Port Said to offload 13,500 containers, drain her and be investigated by divers. She had not been in danger of sinking.[11][12][13][14][15]\n\nOn 15 February 2013, Maersk Line confirmed that she was about to leave Port Said under tow to a yard for further assessment and repair.[16] On 25 February she reached the yard of Palermo, Sicily, where she was scheduled to stay for four months.[17] In August 2013, she was in service again[18] after a DKK 250 million (roughly US$44.5m) repair.[19]\n\nCapacity [ edit ]\n\nOriginally Maersk reported a capacity of 11,000 TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) as the maximum capacity of fully loaded 14 ton containers, according to Maersk company's then method of calculating capacity,[20] which, at her introduction into service, was about 1,400 more containers than any other ship.[21] However, Maersk also acknowledges the standard method of defining capacity, stating 14,770 TEU.[22]\n\nBy normal calculations, she has a capacity significantly greater than reported\u2014between 13,500 and 15,200 TEU.[23][24] The difference between the official and estimated numbers is because Maersk calculates the capacity of a container ship by weight (in this case, 14 tons\/container), i.e. 11,000+ containers,[25] of which 1,000 can be refrigerated containers.[26]\n\nOther companies calculate capacity according to the maximum number of containers that can be carried irrespective of weight, always greater than the number calculated by the Maersk method.[citation needed] As of 2012, the E-class is still the largest by full-weight 14-tonne capacity. The Marco Polo can carry 10,000 14-t containers, 16,020 if not fully loaded.[27][28]\n\nOn 21 February 2011, Maersk ordered a family of ten even larger ships from Daewoo, the Maersk Triple E class, with a capacity of 18,000 containers. A further ten ships were ordered in June 2011. The first was delivered in 2013.[29][30]\n\nEngine and hull [ edit ]\n\nShe is powered by a W\u00e4rtsil\u00e4-Sulzer 14RTFLEX96-C engine, the world's largest single diesel unit, weighing 2,300 tonnes and capable of 81 MW (109,000 hp) when burning 14,000 litres (3,600 US gal)[31] of heavy fuel oil per hour. At economical speed, fuel consumption is 0.260 bs\/hp\u00b7hour (1,660 gal\/hour).[32] She has features to lower environmental damage, including exhaust heat recovery and cogeneration.[33] Some of the exhaust gases are returned to the engine to improve economy and lower emissions,[34] and some are passed through a steam generator which then powers a Peter Brotherhood steam turbine and electrical generators. This creates an electrical output of 8.5 MW,[35] equivalent to about 12% of the main engine power output. Some of this steam is used directly as shipboard heat.[36] Five diesel generators together produce 20.8 MW,[35] giving a total electric output of 29 MW.[26] Two 9 MW electric motors augment the power on the main propeller shaft.[35]\n\nTwo bow and two stern thrusters provide port manoeuvrability, and two pairs of stabilizer fins reduce rolling.[35] A special silicone-based paint, instead of biocides used by much of the industry, keeps barnacles off of the hull.[21] This increases her efficiency by reducing drag while also protecting the ocean from biocides that may leak. The paint is credited with lowering the water drag enough to save 1,200 tonnes of fuel per year.[37] The ship has a bulbous bow, a standard feature for cargo ships.\n\nThe turning diameter at 44 km\/h (24 knots) is 1.50 km (0.81 nmi). The engine is near midship to make best use of the rigidity of the hull and to maximize capacity. When banking 20 degrees, the bridge sways 35 metres.[38]\n\nSailing schedules [ edit ]\n\nHer regular round trip is between northern Europe and the far east via the English Channel, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, calling at Ningbo, Xiamen, Hong Kong (westbound), Yantian (westbound), Algeciras (westbound), Rotterdam, Bremerhaven, Algeciras (eastbound), Yantian (eastbound), Hong Kong (eastbound), and Ningbo.[5][39][40]\n\nAs of April 2011 , the schedule included Gda\u0144sk, Aarhus, and Gothenburg.[41]\n\nCriticism [ edit ]\n\nShe and similar ships have been criticised for burning bunker fuel, which has a high sulphur content,[42] 2.5 to 4.5%, over 2,000 times more than allowed in automotive fuel.[42]\n\nIn Europe, new rules regarding the operation of marine shipping will require ships to burn cleaner fuel. MARPOL Regulation 14 will limit global sulphur content to 0.5% in 2020. However, a review of global fuel availability due to conclude in 2018 may delay the new regulations by five years, until 2025.[43]\n\nSee also [ edit ]"} -{"text":"Now in its 11th year, the annual Race to Wrigley will feature a new course this year, giving participants their first chance to experiencing running through the new bleacher concourse that opened last year.\n\nThe race, which starts at Addison and Racine, takes runners through the Wrigleyville and Lakeview areas, heading west to Ravenswood and east on Irving Park. This year, runners will continue on Irving Park all the way to Sheridan, which will eventually lead them to the center outfield of Wrigley Field for a final stretch through the field\u2019s concourse before ending at Clark and Addison.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s always been a race that reflects the fact that we are in a neighborhood and yet a major league ballpark,\u201d Mike Lufrano, executive vice president of community affairs and chief legal officer for the Chicago Cubs, says. \u201cIt\u2019s the third largest tourist attraction in Illinois. We started a race that would combine the two, [allowing runners] to see a bit of the neighborhood and community and reflect the fact that we are part of the community as well.\u201d\n\nThe 5K race, which will start at 8 a.m. on April 23, also serves as a crucial fundraiser for Cubs Charities. Runners can also choose to individually raise money for Advocate Children\u2019s Hospital, with the first 100 who raise $500 receiving an autographed baseball from a current Cubs player.\n\n\u201c[The money raised] all goes back into the community here,\u201d Lufrano says. \u201cIt supports youth sports, building baseball fields, health and fitness programs for kids, provides scholarships for kids to go to college. Last year, we donated about $3.4 million total and the race is part of that.\u201d\n\nRegistration for the race will remain open online through April 22. To sign up, visit either cubscharities.org or racetowrigley.com."} -{"text":"Mid Canterbury's mysterious big black cat is back.\n\nAnge Montgomery reckons she spotted it prowling down an Eiffelton hedge line 150 metres away from where she was sitting having a coffee early one frosty August morning.\n\nShe knows some people might think she is crazy, but she knows she's not. She knows what she saw, and that other people have seen it too.\n\nErin Tasker\/FairfaxNZ Angela Montgomery, with two-year-old daughter Isabel Purton, believes she saw Mid Canterbury's mysterious black panther walking along the hedge in the background.\n\nIt's been about three years since the last reported sighting of the cat, which some people believe is a black panther or puma.\n\nIts story dates to 2001 when it was first spotted near Alford Forest. In 2003, Ashburton truck driver Chad Stewart saw a large black animal sitting at the foot of a hill near stockyards on the Mayfield farm of Blair and Sarah Gallagher.\n\nREAD MORE:\n\n* High-country trap for mystery black panther\n\n* Editorial: Mystery of the panther\n\nErin Tasker\/FairfaxNZ Angela Montgomery, with two-year-old daughter Isabel Purton, believes she saw Mid Canterbury's mysterious black panther walking along the hedge in the background.\n\nExtensive searching from air and on land found no trace of the mysterious animal. In the years that followed numerous people reported seeing a similar creature lurking on Mid Canterbury farm land.\n\nMontgomery admits that before she saw it for herself she would have been skeptical.\n\nMontgomery \u2013 who moved from Christchurch to an Eiffelton dairy farm with her partner and two-year-old daughter Isabel only a couple of months ago \u2013 knows what she saw was a big cat. It walked along the hedge and then disappeared into it. It was the way it walked that convinced her it was a big cat. She has been keeping her eyes peeled since, but has not seen it again.\n\n\"It was exciting for me, I know what I saw and it wasn't anything explainable,\" she said.\n\n\"It wasn't a cow, or a dog, or anything like that.\"\n\nShe called out to her partner, but he was not quick enough to see it. When he told her it might have been a black panther, she thought he was kidding, until she remembered seeing something on the news a few years ago about a panther sighting in the area.\n\nNow, she is a believer, but she held off going public until she had researched the other sightings and the habits of big cats.\n\n\"I've told a few people about it and they kind of think I'm nuts and it was probably something else, but I know what I saw,\" Montgomery said.\n\nIt was bigger than a labrador dog and smaller than a cow, but was not a feral cat, she said.\n\n\"I know my animals and I know what they look like, and it wasn't that far away.\"\n\nThere have been rumours in the past that it is a black panther that escaped from a private zoo, or possibly from a boat, but no physical trace has been found.\n\nIn 2005, Timaru man Mark Brosnahan reported seeing a large black feline in the Mid Canterbury high country. He got two pictures of it from a distance.\n\nIf it was the same big black cat first seen in 2001, it was getting on in years now. Black panthers have an average life expectancy of 12 to 17 years.\n\n* Comments have been closed."} -{"text":"The warnings on Europe sound extra-apocalyptic this week. \u201cThe eurozone really only has days to avoid collapse,\u201d blares the headline on Wolfgang M\u00fcnchau\u2019s column. And, while European leaders are frantically thrashing out plans for further fiscal union to save the euro, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is still resisting sweeping reform measures. As my colleagues Michael Birnbaum and Anthony Faiola report, \u201cinvestors and world leaders alike hang on Merkel\u2019s every word, searching for a hint that her resistance is simply a bluff to scare countries into behaving more like hers.\u201d\n\nNot so easy, going it alone. (Michael Sohn\/AP)\n\nThese sorts of scenarios are no longer unthinkable. But a recent report suggests that either move would be far more painful than most people seem to realize. Indeed, a crack-up could prove far more costly to Germany than a bailout of its neighbors.\n\nIn September, economists at UBS Investment Research tried to tally up the costs of seceding from the euro. If a \u201cweak\u201d country like Greece tried to leave the euro, it would almost certainly have to default on its national debt, watch its domestic banking system collapse \u2014 every halfway-sentient depositor would rush to withdraw euros before they got converted to new, less-valuable drachmas \u2014 and the country would get rocked by big trade disruptions and unrest. UBS estimates that a \u201cweak\u201d country like Greece or Ireland leaving the euro would take a hit of up to 50 percent of its GDP in the first year alone, and then a 15 percent hit per year for the next few years. That\u2019s a crushing blow.\n\nNow, what would happen if a financially sound country like Germany decided to leave the euro, in order to maintain its own currency? Even that would hurt. A lot. Germany wouldn\u2019t default on its national debt \u2014 in fact, its new currency would likely be worth more than the old euro \u2014 but its banks would suddenly have assets in the old, devalued currency. Balance sheets would be thrown out of whack, and Germany would have to pour an enormous amount of money into bailing out its banks. What\u2019s more, the country\u2019s exports would likely collapse. All told, UBS estimates, the cost of secession to a country like Germany would likely reach 20 percent to 25 percent of GDP, and remain at about half that for a few years thereafter.\n\nOne thing UBS notes is that it would be much, much cheaper for Germany to simply bail out Greece, Ireland, and Portugal outright (that would cost about 1,000 euros for every German man, woman and child in one swoop) than it would be for Germany to exit the euro zone (which would cost the average German 8,000 euros the first year and 4,500 euros thereafter). Bailouts are deeply unpopular in Germany, and for good reason, but they look like the cheaper path. Even Bernard Connolly\u2019s estimate that it would cost Germany 7 percent of its GDP for several years to bail out all troubled euro zone countries, up to and including France, looks like a less-painful option at this point.\n\nIndeed, that\u2019s why the UBS report suggests that it would be insane for Germany to let the euro fracture, and argues that there\u2019s \u201can overwhelming probability\u201d that the euro zone moves toward some sort of fiscal integration \u2014 which partly means German taxpayers bailing out the Mediterranean neighbors it deems irresponsible. Of course, even if that\u2019s the more rational approach, that doesn\u2019t mean that will be the end result."} -{"text":"Arabic is the fastest-growing language in American households \u2014 and that\u2019s leading the US Census Bureau to explore the tricky task of adjusting its questionnaires to \u00adaccommodate the language\u2019s right-to-left script.\n\nThe bureau is using focus groups to explore possible changes to the 2020 census questionnaires for Arabic speakers who are not English-proficient, the Pew Research Center reported Friday.\n\nArabic is now the seventh-most commonly spoken non-English language in US households. An estimated 1.1 million people ages 5 and older speak Arabic at home, an increase of 29 percent between 2010 and 2014.\n\nThe number who speak Spanish at home has grown only 6 percent during the same period.\n\nOf those who speak Arabic at home, 38 percent are not proficient in English, according to census estimates.\n\nThat\u2019s just below the 42 percent English proficiency rate among the 39.3 million US residents who speak Spanish at home.\n\nThe growth in Arabic is linked to continued immigration from Middle Eastern and North African countries, according to the Pew Research Center.\n\nPossible changes to the census questionnaire include replacing the blocks for individual printed letters with a single open-field rectangle, so that answers can be written in connected Arabic script, the center said.\n\nOne major challenge facing census officials is whether to require a response in English and when to allow an Arabic response.\n\nA focus-group study recommended that the address fields require people to use English, because an American address might not be accurately translated into Arabic, according to the Pew Research Center.\n\nArabic names present another complication \u2014 as they can be transliterated into English in different ways because the letters of the Arabic \u00adalphabet don\u2019t necessarily have direct English equivalents.\n\nFor example, the Arabic name Hussein can be transliterated into English at least five additional ways: Hussain, Husein, Husain, Houssain and Houssein."} -{"text":"Img Project Descripton Backers Pledge \/ Goal \/ % +1 Button CoMo Booster Board for Rpi Module with: wifi, oled screen, digital audio, RTC, 6-36v power input. 55 $6,834 \/ $40,000 \/ %17\n\nZIR EL-200 \"ZIR EL-200 is connected to your computer, smartphone or tablet using Wi-Fi wireless network, and from there we set or directly assign instructions using the browser. However, one of its most interesting features is the ability to also be controlled by voice, using for that purpose applications on iOS and Android.\" 60 $5,012 \/ $90,000 \/ %5.6\n\n1080Pi 10\" 1080p Screen that mounts to the Rpi GPIO with 16 extra GPIO, 4 with 3A sinking current. 189 \u00a320,451 \/ \u00a3100,000 \/ 20%\n\nRFberryPi A 433Mhz Radio Shield used to communication with several peripherals such as relays & sensors. 14 \u00a3321 \/ \u00a34,850 \/ 6.6%\n\nSerialPi5 Board giving the Rpi the ability to have 5 RS-232 serial ports. 5 \u00a3261 \/ \u00a311,000 \/ 2%\n\nJilia Iot Dev Kit \"Add ZigBee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi to your Raspberry Pi with on-board sensors and an easy cloud API.\" 119 $6,256 \/ $50,000 \/ 12.5%\n\nRF Breakout Kit Breakout kit to build your own radio using the Rpi's built in clock generator. Frequencies up to 250Mhz 126 \u00a31,330 \/ \u00a31,800 \/ 72%\n\nBridge Shield Bridge an Arduino with:\n\nRTC, Motor drivers, Temp Sensor, IR Sensor, USB-UART converter, 5V 3A Reg, header for ESP8266, header for HC-05, level shifting between Rpi and Arduino, 8 Servo Motor Driver (I2C) 45 $2,696 \/ $4,100 \/ 65.8%\n\nPi UpTime \"GPIO connections, analog ports, UPS, RTC & battery power enabling Raspberry Pi to be mobile.\" 17 hours of uptime on full battery, 2 analog input, RTC, and 25 $4,020 \/ $15,000 \/ 26.8%\n\nHatlogico \"Open-source 16 PWMs, 8 ADCs and dual-voltage communications to sit on your Raspberry Pi to drive your quadcopter, robot, 3D printer etc\" 42 \u00a31,352 \/ \u00a34,800 \/ 48.3%\n\nBattPi \"BattPi is a Case for Raspberry Pi with integrated Battery and Real Time Clock. Built in UPS offering up to 8 hours of battery life.\" 34 \u00a31,973 \/ \u00a320,000 \/ 9.9%\n\nProtoPLC Industrial add-on board. 6 inputs, 6 outputs, 1 analog input, 1 analog output, programmable leds. 28 $3,653 \/ $20,000 \/ 18.3%\n\nRaspitab Hackable tablet built from the Rpi Module with 3400mah battery, 7\" screen, wifi usb, 5MP camera module. 87 \u00a39,981 \/ \u00a3125,000 \/ 8%\n\nPi-Home Add-on board with the ability to control: Zwave, Infra-red devices (TV\/DVD..), RF Device (315\/433 Mhz Plugs), and Zigbee devices. 80 $10,001 \/ $15,000 \/ 66.7%\n\nTX-1 GSM Cellular phone w\/GPS add-on module. 5 $641 \/ $14,000 \/ 4.6%\n\nHDMI Input Module \"Add an HDMI input interface to your Raspberry Pi and record or stream high quality video from your HD camcorder with clean HDMI output.\" 63 $6,907 \/ $15,000 \/ 34.5%\n\neasyPio GPIO breakout module for prototyping. 45 \u00a3329 \/ \u00a31,200 \/ 27%\n\nRasPoE Raspberry Pi PoE Shield. 28 \u20ac3,310 \/ \u20ac12,500 \/ 26.5%\n\nIf you're looking to crowdfund your Raspberry Pi project maybe you can learn what didn't go right for these projects. Here is a list of hardware projects that didn't get funded. This list was pulled from the two top crowdfunding sites Indiegogo and Kickstarter . This isn't all of the projects that I had found but some of the more interesting ones.*Note items in the list may have been re-listed later and funded. Some projects may have been ahead of their time as the Pi wasn't popular enough."} -{"text":"This article is about the motion picture of a fictional story of a character whose name is a homonym of a famous American automobile. For the article on the automobile, see Ford Fairlane (Americas)\n\nThe Adventures of Ford Fairlane is a 1990 American action comedy mystery film directed by Renny Harlin and written by David Arnott, James Cappe, and Daniel Waters based on a story by Arnott and Cappe. The film stars comedian Andrew Dice Clay as the title character, Ford Fairlane, a \"Rock n' Roll Detective\", whose beat is the music industry in Los Angeles. True to his name, Ford drives a 1957 Ford Fairlane 500 Skyliner in the film.\n\nThe film's main character was created by writer Rex Weiner in a series of stories that were published as weekly serials in 1979\u201380 by the New York Rocker and the LA Weekly. The stories were published as a book by Rare Bird Books in July 2018.[3]\n\nThe film was both a commercial and critical failure, grossing a little more than half its budget and being awarded the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture, tying with Bo Derek's Ghosts Can't Do It. However, it has since developed a cult following.\n\nPlot [ edit ]\n\nFord Fairlane (Andrew Dice Clay) is seen sitting on a beach smoking as the film opens. A flashback initiates, showing a roaring crowd at a concert given by fictional popular heavy metal band The Black Plague. Lead singer Bobby Black (Vince Neil) makes an eccentric entrance down a zip-line onto the stage and begins performing. Shortly into one of the band's songs, Bobby Black collapses on stage and dies.\n\nAfter the lead singer of The Black Plague is murdered onstage, shock-jock Johnny Crunch (Gilbert Gottfried), an old friend who came west with Fairlane, hires Ford to track down a mysterious teenage groupie named Zuzu Petals, who may have a connection to Black's death.\n\nSoon after hiring Fairlane, Crunch is electrocuted on the air. The world's hippest detective soon finds himself trading insults with ruthless record executive Julian Grendel (Wayne Newton), a clueless cop and former disco star, Lt. Amos (Ed O'Neill), a merciless hit man named Smiley (Robert Englund) and countless ex-girlfriends out for his blood. Aiding and abetting Fairlane is loyal assistant Jazz (Lauren Holly) and a hip record producer (Morris Day) at the head of a bizarre lineup of suspects, victims, beautiful women and a koala as he finds himself hip-deep in the case of his life.\n\nThe Macguffin of the film is three data CDs which, when read simultaneously, detail the illegal dealings of Julian Grendel, who was getting rich from bootlegging his record company's music and murdered Bobby Black when he found out Black had acquired the CDs with the incriminating evidence. Both of Fairlane's beloved possessions, his house and his car, are blown to bits, courtesy of Grendel.\n\nThe first disc was with Colleen Sutton, the second with Zuzu Petals, and the third disc was hidden under the star for Art Mooney on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.\n\nIt is later revealed that Grendel killed Bobby Black and Johnny Crunch, as he considered them both greedy and stupid because they wanted more money for their involvement in pirating CD's to sell to the highest bidder, making the music industry corrupt. However, Fairlane kills Grendel by setting him on fire with a flammable milk shake. Jazz leaves Fairlane, knowing how ungrateful he is for everything that has happened. Smiley shows up and plans to kill Ford, but not before revealing that he killed his young neighbor's [the Kid's] father. Ford distracts him and kills Smiley with a sleeve pistol. Jazz and Ford decide to reconcile, while the Kid decides to join their detective agency. Ford wins a million dollar lottery and buys a yacht, ending the film.\n\nCast [ edit ]\n\nSoundtrack [ edit ]\n\nMusic being central to the plot of a film about a private detective who specializes in cases arising from the music industry, the soundtrack featured a diverse group of artists. The official soundtrack release featured:\n\nThe film's soundtrack includes Idol's \"Cradle of Love\", the video for which was shown often on MTV in 1990. The song also appeared on Idol's 1990 album Charmed Life. In the video, a young woman, played by Betsy Lynn George, taunts an uptight neighbor with her advances as she dances to the music. The video also featured footage from the film playing on a television in the neighbor's home, although none of the footage features Clay (at least not his face). This may be due to the infamous ban of Clay from appearing on the music network. Alternate versions of the \"Cradle of Love\" video eliminates the film footage when the video is usually aired on MTV.\n\nRichie Sambora's contribution to the soundtrack was a cover of the Jimi Hendrix song. Yello's \"Unbelievable\" samples bits of dialogue from the film, with one notable dialog switch - where in the film, a phone number is said as \"1-800-Unbelivable\" and in the song, the phone number is said as \"1-800-Perfect\". A number of the musicians featured on the soundtrack also appeared in the film itself, including Morris Day, Sheila E., Tone Loc (as Slam the Rapper), former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Phil Soussan, and drummer Randy Castillo appear playing the Black Plague concert during the flashback at the beginning of the film and Vince Neil, the lead singer of M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce (who appeared as Bobby Black, the lead singer of the fictitious band, Black Plague). Black Plague's lead guitarist was played by Quiet Riot's axeman Carlos Cavazzo. Not appearing on the soundtrack is \"Booty Time\", the song that Ed O'Neill's character performs during the film.\n\nYello is also credited with the film's \"music score\", and an early cut of their album Baby is used as the film's incidental soundtrack. The film's score was composed and conducted by Cliff Eidelman.\n\nRelease [ edit ]\n\nBilly Idol's recording of \"Cradle of Love\" was named one of the \"Most Performed Songs from Motion Pictures\" by the ASCAP.[4]\n\nCritical response [ edit ]\n\nThe film received generally negative reviews upon release. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 29% rating based on 28 reviews.[5] On Metacritic, the film has a 24 out of 100 rating based on 13 critics, indicating \"generally unfavorable reviews\".[6] Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 1 star out of a possible 4, and called the film \"loud, ugly and mean-spirited\" but he also suggested that Clay had the confidence and screen presence for a successful acting career if he could move beyond his shtick.[7]\n\nBox office [ edit ]\n\nThe film was not a financial success during its original theatrical release, making just over $21 million in the U.S.[2] Clay has claimed in interviews that the film had a successful first week before being pulled from theaters under pressure from the politically correct.[8] In fact, the film played on more screens during its second week than its first, but still suffered a 53.5% drop in box office gross.[9]\n\nAccolades [ edit ]\n\nThe film \"won\" numerous Razzies at the 1990 Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Actor (Andrew Dice Clay), Worst Picture (Joel Silver & Steve Perry \u2014 tied with Ghosts Can't Do It), and Worst Screenplay (Daniel Waters, James Cappe and David Arnott). It was also nominated for Worst Director and twice for Worst Supporting Actor (for both Gilbert Gottfried and Wayne Newton).[10]\n\nInternational reception [ edit ]\n\nDespite negative reviews in the US, the film enjoyed tremendous success in post-communist Hungary, where copies of a pirated, dubbed version were widely circulated in the burgeoning VHS market. The film's popularity in Hungary has been attributed to a high-quality dub starring iconic eccentric musician and actor Fer\u00f3 Nagy, which contains gratuitous use of profanity not found in the original English version of the film. Several lines of dialogue from the film became ingrained in the slang of Hungarian urban youth culture throughout the 90s.\n\nIn Norway, after its 1992 VHS release, Ford Fairlane soon became a phenomenon. The catchphrases became hugely popular and the movie received cult status during the 90s. After huge demand from Norwegian audiences, the film was released on DVD in the early 2000s.\n\nIt also became quite popular in Spain, especially due to the dub by the popular singer, actor and comedian Pablo Carbonell.\n\nSee also [ edit ]"} -{"text":"Suspect Antwan James, 27, was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans and black boots. He is believed to be armed with a gun and is considered dangerous. (Photo11: Prince George's County Police Dept.) Story Highlights Police: Stepson of a D.C. police officer shot the officer during a dispute over yard work\n\nPrince George's County police are searching for 27-year-old Antwan James\n\nJames is considered armed and dangerous\n\nUPPER MARLBORO, Md. (AP) \u2014 Police say the stepson of a D.C. police officer shot and killed the officer during a dispute over yard work at their Maryland home.\n\nPrince George's County police said Tuesday that they are searching for 27-year-old Antwan James. He's been charged in a warrant with murder in the fatal shooting of his stepfather, 46-year-old Joseph Newell.\n\nPolice were called to Newell's Upper Marlboro home Monday night and found him shot to death. The officer was off duty at the time of the shooting. Police say Newell and James had been arguing over yard work before the shooting.\n\nNewell had been with the Metropolitan Police Department since 1989.\n\nPolice are searching for James with K-9 units and other specialized officers. He is considered armed and dangerous.\n\nCopyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.\n\nRead or Share this story: http:\/\/usat.ly\/ZLEjAh"} -{"text":"DO the Republicans owe their current congressional majority to gerrymandering? At first glance, it seems self-evident that they do. In the 2012 election, the Democrats won the popular votes for the presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives. But somehow in the House \u2014 for whose seats Republicans controlled the redistricting process in many crucial states \u2014 the Republicans managed to end up with a 16-seat majority despite losing the popular vote.\n\nThe presumption among many reformers is that the Democrats would control Congress today if the 2012 election had been contested in districts drawn by nonpartisan commissioners rather than politicians.\n\nBut is this true? Another possibility is that Democrats receive more votes than seats because so many of their voters reside in dense cities that Democratic candidates win with overwhelming majorities, while Republican voters are more evenly distributed across exurbs and the rural periphery. Perhaps even a nonpartisan redistricting process would still have delivered the House to the Republicans.\n\nTo examine this hypothesis, we adapted a computer algorithm that we recently introduced in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. It allows us to draw thousands of alternative, nonpartisan redistricting plans and assess the partisan advantage built into each plan. First we created a large number of districting plans (as many as 1,000) for each of 49 states. Then we predicted the probability that a Democrat or Republican would win each simulated district based on the results of the 2008 presidential election and tallied the expected Republican seats associated with each simulated plan."} -{"text":"Image copyright Reg Haslett Image caption Not a great day to be under canvas in Glenarm, County Antrim\n\nNorthern Ireland was the wettest region of the UK in July with 128mm of rain, according to Met Office figures.\n\nThat is 57% above average for the summer month, making it also the wettest July on record since 2010.\n\nThe UK as a whole saw 107mm of rain, or 37% more than normal, with all areas receiving more rain than average.\n\nAccording to the Republic of Ireland's weather service, Met \u00c9ireann, most areas across Ireland were also wetter than normal.\n\nImage copyright Mervyn Robb Image caption When the clouds parted there was some beautiful weather in Portrush, County Antrim\n\nShannon Airport had its wettest July since 1946 when more than double the average rain fell at the County Clare site.\n\nHowever, it was also the sunniest July in Northern Ireland since 2013 with 170.5 hours of sunshine, or 21% more than normal.\n\nImage copyright James Carlisle Image caption Another \"soft day\" for these hill-dwellers\n\nThis reflects the fact that we enjoyed some warm and sunny weather during the first 18 days of the month.\n\nImage copyright Mervyn Robb Image caption July in Cushendun - not a complete washout\n\nThe figure for the UK as a whole was 171 hours - which is normal for the time of year.\n\nTemperature-wise, July was fairly unremarkable with an average temperature of 14.4 celsius, just 0.2 celsius below normal."} -{"text":"A cop killed a dog and something else happened. Baltimore police officer Alec Taylor was off duty when, via the Baltimore Sun:\n\nTaylor's girlfriend told police she received a text from Taylor on February 26 telling her that he killed... [her] seven-month-old dog, named Rocko, after it defecated on the carpet. He then sent her a picture, according to a news release.\n\nShe told police Taylor said he was tired of cleaning up the dog's mess and that he had beaten it with a mop before throwing its body in a parking lot dumpster. Police said he later told investigators he used a mop to force Rocko from behind the dryer and then used his hands to choke the dog.\n\nWho the fuck is in charge of hiring at the Baltimore police department? The arrest was made by the Montgomery County police department, who charged Taylor with animal cruelty and abuse. The Baltimore police department insisted in a statement that it took animal cruelty seriously, although Taylor was merely suspended without pay and not fired right away for being the kind of sociopath who kills a girlfriend\u2019s pet and then sends her a picture (because his job is like a right!).\n\nh\/t CPA\n\nAs a sad sign of the times, the Sun\u2019s sidebar included this related story from just a month ago, where a cop in nearby Arundel shot a dog while canvassing a neighborhood and was put on \u201cadministrative duty\u201d while the department promised a \u201cthorough\u201d investigation. Our own related stories, below."} -{"text":"Derby County will renew acquaintances with Benfica this summer after final details to take part in the Algarve Football Cup this summer were completed.\n\nNigel Pearson\u2019s side will head to Portugal for a week-long training camp \u2013 between Wednesday 13 July and Wednesday 20 July \u2013 as part of their 2016\/17 preparations and during their stay in the southern part of the country the club will compete in two games.\n\nAs part of the Rams' week-long training camp, they will face Benfica and fellow Primeira Liga outfit Vitoria Setubal in the Algarve Football Cup.\n\nThe first fixture will see Derby take on Vitoria Setubal on Friday 15 July, kick-off: 8:30pm.\n\nThe following day will see Pearson\u2019s side take on Benfica, who reached the Quarter-Finals of the 2015\/16 UEFA Champions League competition and lifted the Primeira Liga title, on Saturday 16 July, kick-off also 8:30pm.\n\nBoth of Derby\u2019s fixtures will be played at the state-of-the-art Est\u00e1dio Algarve \u2013 a purpose built-stadium for the 2004 European Championship Finals.\n\nBoasting a capacity of around 30,000, the Est\u00e1dio Algarve hosted three Euro 2004 fixtures and has since been occupied by the Portugal and Gibraltar national teams.\n\nAbout Vitoria Setubal:\n\nManaged by Quim Machado, Vitoria Setubal finished 15th in this season\u2019s Primeira Liga \u2013 finishing just a point above the relegation zone.\n\nIn the history of the club, they have lifted the league title on one occasion as well as the Portuguese Cup three times.\n\nFounded in 1910, Vitoria Setubal play their games at the Est\u00e1dio do Bonfim, which has a capacity of 18,694.\n\nAbout Benfica:\n\nChampions of Portugal for a third consecutive year, Benfica are classed as one of the biggest club\u2019s in the European game.\n\nDuring the 2015\/16 season, they reached the Quarter-Finals of the Champions League, where they were beaten by Bayern Munich over two-legs.\n\nBenfica, however, have the second most participations in the European Cup\/ UEFA Champions League \u2013 second only to Real Madrid.\n\nHistorically, Derby defeated the \u00c1guias (Eagles) over two legs in the 1972 European Cup \u2013 winning the first leg at the Baseball Ground 3-0 courtesy of goals from John McGovern, Kevin Hector and Roy McFarland.\n\nJTA are offering an exclusive package for this summer's tour to Portugal. For more information, email JTA at: [email protected] to register for details which they will then contact once the details are confirmed.\n\nDerby County 2016\/17 pre-season so far\u2026\n\nWednesday 13 July \u2013 Portugal training camp\n\nFriday 15 July \u2013 Vitoria Setubal (Est\u00e1dio Algarve) 8:30pm KO\n\nSaturday 16 July \u2013 Benfica (Est\u00e1dio Algarve) 8:30pm KO\n\nSaturday 23 July \u2013 Walsall (Banks\u2019s Stadium) 3pm KO\n\nTuesday 26 July \u2013 Chesterfield (Proact Stadium) 7:30pm KO\n\nWednesday 27 July \u2013 Sheffield United (Bramall Lane) 7:45pm KO\n\nTweets by @ dcfcofficial"} -{"text":"* Dept of Homeland Security: Java vulnerable to hackers\n\n* Could be used to steal identity, form malicious networks\n\n* Applies to browsers on all major operating systems\n\nBy Jim Finkle\n\nJan 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security urged computer users to disable Oracle Corp\u2019s Java software, amplifying security experts\u2019 prior warnings to the hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses that use it to surf the Web.\n\nHackers have figured out a way to exploit Java to install malicious software enabling them to commit crimes ranging from identity theft to making an infected computer part of an ad-hoc network of computers that can be used to attack websites.\n\n\u201cWe are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem,\u201d the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in a posting on its website late on Thursday.\n\n\u201cThis and previous Java vulnerabilities have been widely targeted by attackers, and new Java vulnerabilities are likely to be discovered,\u201d the agency said. \u201cTo defend against this and future Java vulnerabilities, disable Java in Web browsers.\u201d\n\nJava is a computer language that enables programmers to write software utilizing just one set of code that will run on virtually any type of computer, including ones that use Microsoft Corp\u2019s Windows, Apple Inc\u2019s OS X and Linux, an operating system widely employed by corporations.\n\nComputer users access Java programs through modules, or plug-ins, that run Java software on top of browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox.\n\nThe U.S. government\u2019s warning on Java came after security experts earlier on Thursday warned of the newly discovered flaw.\n\nIt is relatively rare for government agencies to advise computer users to completely disable software due to a security bug, particularly in the case of widely used programs such as Java. They typically recommend taking steps to mitigate the risk of attack while manufacturers prepare an update, or hold off on publicizing the problem until an update is prepared.\n\nIn September, the German government advised the public to temporarily stop using Microsoft\u2019s Internet Explorer browser to give it time to patch a security vulnerability that opened it to attacks.\n\nThe Department of Homeland Security said that attackers could trick targets into visiting malicious websites that would infect their PCs with software capable of exploiting the bug in Java.\n\nIt said that an attacker could also infect a legitimate website by uploading malicious software that would infect machines of computer users who trust that site because they have previously visited it without experiencing any problems.\n\nThey said developers of several popular tools known as exploit kits, which criminal hackers use to attack PCs, have added software that allows hackers to exploit the newly discovered bug in Java to attack computers.\n\nSecurity experts have been scrutinizing the safety of Java since a similar security scare in August, which prompted some of them to advise using the software only on an as-needed basis.\n\nAt the time they advised businesses to only allow their workers to use Java browser plug-ins when prompted for permission by trusted programs such as GoToMeeting, a Web-based collaboration tool from Citrix Systems Inc.\n\nAdam Gowdiak, a researcher with Polish security firm Security Explorations, subsequently said that he had found other security bugs in Java that continued to make computers vulnerable to attack.\n\nJava suffered another setback in October when Apple began removing old versions of the software from Internet browsers of Mac computers when its customers installed new versions of its OS X operating system. Apple did not provide a reason for the change and both companies declined comment at the time."} -{"text":"Japan might have only minutes to prepare for nuclear attacks, said officials in the island nation as they face down threats from demented North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.\n\nTokyo is asking for all its regional governments to sharpen alert plans should Pyongyang\u2019s tubby tyrant press the button and send nukes flying over the Sea of Japan.\n\nOfficials in Tokyo \u2014 Japan\u2019s largest city with 13.5 million citizens \u2014 said their residents might have as little as 10 minutes to act.\n\nAnd even more concerning, Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura said the 2.6 million residents of Japan\u2019s third-largest city might have as little as four minutes to run for their lives and take shelter.\n\n\u201cA missile may not be detected as soon as it leaves the launch pad \u2026 and that could take several minutes,\u201d Yoshimura told the Japan Times.\n\n\u201cThe warning and alarms might only sound four or five minutes before a missile arrives.\u201d\n\nAs North Korea continues to make nuclear threats, Japanese citizens are becoming increasingly fearful that they \u2014 and not Pyongyang\u2019s sworn enemies in Seoul and Washington, DC \u2014 could be Kim\u2019s first targets.\n\nJapan\u2019s civil defense website received 5.7 million visitors in the first 23 days of this month \u2014 a massive hike from its usual monthly traffic of less than 400,000 hits, the Washington Post reported.\n\nThe prime minister\u2019s office issued new \u201cactions to protect yourself\u201d guidelines this week \u2014 which pretty much amount to taking cover inside well-constructed buildings.\n\nUnder the site\u2019s FAQs, Japanese officials said citizens will have only minutes to act.\n\n\u201cWhen a missile is launched from North Korea, it will not take long to reach Japan,\u201d it answered. \u201cFor example, the ballistic missile launched from (North Korea) on February 7 last year took 10 minutes to fly over Okinawa.\u201d\n\nUS Vice President Mike Pence last week reaffirmed the Trump administration\u2019s alliance with Japan amid the recent provocations from the hermit kingdom."} -{"text":"The Lure of Radicalism Amongst Muslim Youth\n\n10\/18\/2010\n\nWhy is it that a few militant clerics are so popular among some American Muslims? I was asked by an academic at a recent luncheon.\n\nAfter all, besides being so extreme in their message, don\u2019t most of them lack the scholarly credentials of the many mainstream clerics who oppose their militancy?\n\nThe questioner was a highly educated person, someone who had a deep understanding of Islamic theology. He also understood quite well the existence of significant variations in the interpretation and understanding of religious texts. He was one of those who had no problem looking past the right-wing Islamophobic rhetoric of Fox News and Robert Spencer et al., yet was still confused as to why second-generation American and British Muslims would find a message of extremism and militancy so appealing.\n\nHe correctly pointed out that the clerics espousing militancy were not only in the minority, but were also not as well-trained in the classical sciences as were clerics belonging to the opposing camp. Why then, were their voices so influential?\n\nThis academic at the luncheon was not the only one struggling with the question. A recent congressional hearing also tackled this same issue. And of course, this was not the first time that I, myself, had to confront this very question. It was especially driven home after someone with whom I had only briefly interacted Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the now infamous \u201cunderwear bomber\u201d turned radical and tried to blow up innocent men, women and children.\n\nLike this? Get more of our great articles. Get more of our great articles.\n\nUmar\u2019s transformation provides an excellent case-study that can and should be studied further to shed light on the question of radicalism, and this short essay makes a first, humble attempt at doing just that.\n\nI remember Umar as a shy introvert who attended an intensive retreat, the IlmSummit sponsored by Al-Maghrib Institute in Houston, TX, in the summer of 2008. I was among ten instructors at that retreat.\n\nUmar was in fact so quiet and shy that I almost felt obliged to engage him in small talk, asking him mundane questions about where he lived and what he was studying. And that was about the extent of my interaction with him. Never once did he raise his hand in class to ask a question, or seek any advice, or share any concerns, or confront me on any subject.\n\nIt appears that the lack of communication or socializing was not limited to the two of us. Rather, it seems that other students at the retreat had the same experience; they didn\u2019t remember anything significant about him except his nonchalant, quiet presence.\n\nIn fact, my encounter with him had been so brief and dull, that when I saw his pictures being paraded on every website and news magazine cover in December of 2009, I didn\u2019t even recognize him until someone alerted me via email that this was the same Umar who had been at the AlMaghrib retreat. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that someone as shy and socially introverted as Umar would have attempted to blow up a plane by stuffing his underwear with explosives!\n\nSo, what happened?\n\nFrom news accounts and our own documentation, we know that the AlMaghrib retreat was his last AlMaghrib course or seminar. We also know that he left England for a Middle Eastern country (where he remained for a few months), and eventually made his way to Yemen, where he interacted with an American-born cleric whose vision of Islam was completely at odds with our own. It was this cleric who apparently inspired him to open a new chapter in his life, and who brainwashed this 19-year old introvert into believing that murdering two hundred innocent people, including many women and children (some of them even fellow Muslims), would somehow bring him closer to his Lord and earn him reward on Judgment Day.\n\nWhy did Umar AbdulMutallab, a college-educated young man with a bright future ahead of him, reject the authority and guidance of authentic orthodox Islam, and allow himself to be lured into performing such a destructive and na\u00efve act in the process destroying his own life and possibly that of many others? After all, hadn\u2019t he interacted with us (instructors and students of knowledge) and lived with us for two full weeks? Hadn\u2019t he observed our level of scholarship, our academic grasp of the religion, and our emphatic opposition to irrational and counterproductive militancy?\n\nUmar might have been a social introvert, but he was clearly not unintelligent. What was it in the message of this Yemeni-American that had caused him to ignore the message and methodology of the many teachers that he interacted with at the AlMaghrib retreat?\n\nSome of what you are about to read might not be ground-breaking, but other points that I mention will raise a few eyebrows and perhaps even anger some. That is to be expected, and I do not expect everyone to agree with everything that I write. The point of this article (as is typically my main intention when writing such pieces) is to jump-start the discussion, and to allow for frank dialogue among all parties.\n\nLet\u2019s get to the answer then. It is not rocket science, nor does it require expertise in human psychology. Rather, it is quite simple. There is an external factor, and an internal factor, and when these two factors are coupled together, the result is fertile breeding ground for extremist ideas.\n\nThe external factor is an almost total absence of voices from within mainstream Islam (of all varieties: Sufis, Salafis, Deobandis, etc.) that speak to and address the concerns and issues that resonate with the Muslims most prone to extremism. When the only voices that address issues of concern are the voices of radical militant jihadis, it is only natural that young and impressionable minds will gravitate to these voices. From the perspective of these disaffected youth, since the mainstream clerics aren\u2019t discussing relevant issues, or involved in the discourses that concern them, how then can they be turned to for guidance?\n\nThe internal factor is a very warped understanding of Islamic texts and doctrines, and a romanticized view of Islamic history. It is only with such a skewed and idealistic vision that a Muslim can allow radical voices to bypass simple common sense and a pure Islamic heart, filtering all the way to his inner psyche.\n\nLet us discuss both of these issues in more detail:\n\nThe External Factor\n\nThe issues and concerns that are fogging the minds of many Muslims (and all those who turn to radicalism) center around the present state of the Ummah, and in particular the political and social struggles that many Muslims around the world are facing. These struggles are significantly complicated (directly or indirectly) by policies put into place by our own American government (and, to a lesser extent, other Western countries). Before 9\/11, most of the grievances were solely linked to the Palestinian question, and it was for this reason that radicalization and militant tendencies during that time-frame amongst Western Muslims were almost non-existent (it is not a coincidence that all those who planned and aided in the 9\/11 attacks were foreigners).\n\nPost 9\/11, our government reacted in ways that has added infinitely more fuel to the fire of extremism (and hence, the rise in radicalism amongst our own Western youth). From the illegal invasion of Iraq to the foolish military endeavors in Afghanistan, from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo, from Aafia Siddiqui to Ali al-Timimi, from the \u2018War on Terror\u2018 to the \u2018Patriot Act\u2019, it became easier to convince an impressionable mind into accepting the West versus Islam paradigm (as if these two entities can be surgically and neatly delineated, separated and defined).\n\nAnd instead of such incidents abating with time, every few days a new headline in some newspaper conveys yet another story proving the false paradigm: an American drone missile strike kills a few dozen anonymous, faceless tribe-members in Pakistan, or ever-expanding Israeli settlements steal more land from Palestinians, or a new torture scandal involving Muslim prisoners is leaked, or another military scandal involving the killing of innocent Muslim civilians is exposed. These incidents are a direct or indirect result of either our own American military operations, or our tax-supported military aid, or our turning a blind eye to specific actions of our allies via the use of our veto power in the UN Security Council.\n\nAs if such misguided foreign action was not sufficient to enrage a proud young Muslim man, he must also face the constant media onslaught that seeks to portray him and his faith as inherently evil and dangerous. He hears of his friends and families or other Muslims being routinely harassed, humiliated and intimidated at airports and border-crossings, and \u201crandomly\u201d selected for additional screening and questioning. Of course, he too has his own first-hand discriminatory experiences.\n\nHis faith attacked on national airwaves, his religiosity treated with suspicion, his co-religionists around the world killed, and his activist brothers and sisters in Western lands jailed, it is no surprise that our young and impressionable Muslim teenager struggles to make sense of all of this.\n\nHe wants someone to defend his faith and speak up on behalf of the oppressed. He wishes to hear fiery and angry rhetoric, charging the \u201cfree and democratic\u201dnations with hypocrisy, double standards, and the flouting of human rights. It is obvious to him that his government is primarily concerned with acquisition of oil and the control of natural resources, even if that results in the loss of Muslim blood. He clearly sees our politicians pandering more to the interests of corporate sponsors and special-interest donors than to the interests of their own fellow citizens. So, naturally, as a lay-Muslim, he looks to the scholars of his religion, seeking to find solace in angry tirades and verbal lashings against our politicians, leaders, media pundits, and law enforcement agencies who are, in his view, the root cause of all of this anger and terror in the first place.\n\nInstead, all he hears at his local mosque, assuming he is fortunate enough to live in an area where the Imam speaks English, are khutbahs that have no political relevance whatsoever. Finding nothing of significance at a local level, he then looks to more influential scholars: famous national clerics and da`ees, staple invitees to any major Islamic conference. Alas, all he hears them do is to regularly criticize his side: the victims in his eyes. Those who stand up to defend the innocent and fight against the real terrorists \u201cfrom his perspective\u201d are described as \u201cMuslim terrorists.\u201d Instead of supporting the cause of the weak and oppressed, these clerics side with the oppressors, routinely dissociating themselves from their own, giving spectacle fatwas against violence even as they ignore state-sponsored terrorism and what he perceives as the \u201cgreater violence.\u201d\n\nOver time, as acts of violence and terror increase in Muslims lands, and as local scholars only increase in their denunciation of \u201cMuslim extremism,\u201d this young man becomes even more disillusioned with these clerics. In his eyes, these Western scholars, no matter how popular among the masses, are nothing more than sell-outs: government-appeasing servile acquiescing cowards who are more concerned about their own safety and popularity than the safety and comfort of their persecuted brothers and sisters around the world.\n\n\u201cEnough of criticizing us! Who speaks up to defend them?\u201d he demands. \u201cWhere is the condemnation of our own Western nations, our own policies and our own governments, when they engage in acts of violence, drone bombings, mass-killings, torture, secret renditions and sham trials? Why is such activity not described as terroris, is it not also targeting the innocent? Or is \u2018terrorism\u2019 only when a Muslim commits such acts?\u201d\n\nAlas, the token condemnation against foreign policy that does occasionally come from the mouths of these \u2018mainstream\u2019 clerics is too shallow for his liking, too weak to satiate his own anger, too lost in the convoluted language and footnotes of their larger message. He is always reminded of the words of Malcolm X and the distinction that Malcolm drew between the \u2018house Negro\u2019 and the \u2018field Negro\u2019 and he cannot help but feel that these mainstream scholars are far too entrenched with the powers-that-be to stand up against them.\n\nNot hearing anything from his local or national scholars in the physical world around him, he scours the virtual world instead, looking on the net for voices that will speak to his concerns and address his anger. And in this virtual world, he stumbles across chat-rooms and forums where, for the first time, he finds people who see the world his way. These people, aided by the anonymity of the internet and empowered by the false bravado that only a fake alias can give, finally make our young man feel home, and that he was right all along in his assessment.\n\nIt is on these forums that he finds people who list nothing but the political faults of the Western world. It is on these forums where little children pretend to be brave men who can take on the \u2018big bad wolf.\u2019 And it is on these forums that he is introduced to \u2018clerics who speak the truth\u2019 and \u2018fear none amongst men\u2019, of legendary giants that even America fears and will do anything to silence (even if that means sending squads of assassins to murder one of their own citizens without trial). Whereas previously he had trouble finding anyone who would voice his view of the world, here, all the voices on these forums seem to be echoing the same message, spoken from the mouths of militants and circulated online by their testosterone-filled teenage cheerleaders.\n\nAnd in this worldview espoused by these militants, our young man finds great comfort and solace. According to the militants, every fault in the whole world emanates not from within, but from without. The Muslims are never to blame for anything. It is always the \u2018West,\u2019 and in particular \u2018Amrika\u2019.\n\nLocal persecution of scholars in Muslim lands? \u2018Amrika,\u2019 because they were the ones who propped up the kings, presidents and emirs in the Muslim world in the first place. Bombings that kill innocent Muslims in the streets of Baghdad, or the mosques of Karachi, or the shrines of Najaf? \u2018Amrika,\u2019 through the use of false-flag operations conducted by American agents, or as a result of the wider chaos originally caused by once again, \u2018Amrik\u2019. The awful state of the economy in Muslim lands? You guessed it, \u2018Amrika\u2019, via the use of loans that the American-controlled IMF gave out and the economic policies that America put in place.\n\nIt is a comforting vision, especially for a young teenager: a simple and self-serving view that reclaims the honor of his faith while laying blame on the feet of others. \u201cIt\u2019s not our fault at all! We are always oppressed, always victimized, it\u2019s all America\u2019s fault,\u201d he says to himself over and over again. And on the forums that he frequents, the constant interactions with twenty other kids from around the world, some writing secretly from their parent\u2019s basement, some from their own \u2018Star-Wars\u2019 posters-lined bedrooms, this chatter begins to sound like the representative voice of the entire Muslim world.\n\nThis young \u2018victim\u2019 does not realize that the \u2018victim-mentality\u2019 is not a motif of the Quran, nor do we find it ever verbalized in the seerah of our beloved Prophet. It is not a dignified mentality, and even if there are elements of truth in some portions of it, such an attitude does not befit a believer who believes in an All-Mighty Being who Hears and Sees all. Our Prophet suffered more at the hands of his detractors than any Muslim in our time, yet he maintained a moral dignity and an internal courage that would put to shame the entire paradigm of victim-mentality that these radicals espouse.\n\nThe Internal Factors\n\nWith regards to the internal factors, it is not likely that a mind well-grounded in authentic texts and traditions will gravitate towards acts of terrorism. Thus, it is no coincidence that one will be hard-pressed to find senior clerics, of any theological persuasion, who justify flying planes into building or strapping bombs onto one\u2019s body in order to blow up innocent civilians.\n\nA radical\u2019s mind could only have been exposed to cherry-picked religious texts along with their misinterpretations; typically verses from Surah al-Anfal and Surah al-Tawba (both of which were revealed in specific historic situations very different from our own). Such a mind is only versed in Prophetic traditions of a military nature, sheered of their context and shown in isolation from many other traditions that would help paint a more nuanced view.\n\nHowever, these are not the only verses and ahadith (the Prophetic traditions) pertaining to the topic of jihad. Many other verses, especially those that seem to conflict with their warped understanding of Surah al-Anfal and Tawba, are simply dismissed as belonging to the \u2018Makkan\u2019 phase of revelation. Many Prophetic traditions which would show that military action is not the only way to fight for the truth are simply bypassed or ignored. For every evidence that they quote, there is an almost surreal attempt to isolate that one verse or hadith from the entire corpus of Islamic texts and law. For these militants, it is as if each verse they cherry-pick was actually revealed for their immediate benefit. For them, it is as if every hadith that they quote was stated by the Prophet directly to them and in support of their world-view. Only a mind completely bereft from the necessary hermeneutical tools of usul al-fiqh (the procedure of deriving laws) and maqasid al-Shariah (understanding the goals of Islamic Law) can be so shallow.\n\nWith regards to doctrines, a simplistic, black-and-white understanding of wala wa-l-bara is propagated by the extremists; one that the intellectually-challenged (of the ilk of George W. Bush) would have absolutely no difficulty understanding. \u201cYou\u2019re either with us or against us\u201d, both Bush and Awlaki pontificate.\n\nYet, the real world that we live in is not as black and white as these Manichean camps would like it to be. A clear and simple argument can be made that on each and every issue, we should stand with the truth, regardless of which side that truth is on. And it is not uncommon that this truth is not on one side, but somewhere in between.\n\nIn the context of the very verses that many militants use to justify their black-and-white understandings of wala wa-l-bara, one verse (8:72) specifically mentions that even if Muslims under attack ask for help, and reach out to you based on religious loyalties, you are not obliged to help them if that help will compromise your political alliances. Extrapolating from this, one can state that while American Muslims are with the Palestinians, Iraqis and Kashmiris in wanting freedom, safety and security for them, at the same time we cannot help them militarily if that help will compromise our own safety and the safety of our families and communities, or if such help would contradict our political alliances. We can still help our suffering brethren in many other ways, for example, by educating our fellow countrymen regarding the dismal plight of these people and how our own government has been, many times, complicit in perpetuating or even causing such predicaments.\n\nThe point that I am stressing here is that a more nuanced and pragmatic reading of the Quran can also just as easily be done \u201c but it takes more wisdom, foresight and moral courage than many of these testosterone-filled youth are willing to undertake (and for the record, I firmly believe that one of the best ways to de-radicalize these young men is to help them get married early and encourage them to have kids, and I mean this in all seriousness).\n\nMuslims need to understand that anyone who approaches the Quran and Sunnah with preconceived notions, wishing to find justification for certain theological or legal opinions, can almost always do so. If one wishes to speak to the texts rather than allow the texts to speak to him, then only his imagination will be a limit to the opinion that he seeks to derive.\n\nWith regards to our Islamic history and heritage, our overzealous youngster is told of a few romanticized legends of how a woman cried out for the Caliph Mutasim to come rescue her from the clutches of the enemy, or how Umar b. al-Khattab could not rest even if only one Muslim was in trouble, or how Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi almost single-handedly raised up an army to liberate Jerusalem from the clutches of the evil Crusaders.\n\nBut this youngster never actually reads a book of Muslim history himself. If he did, he would find a very different story, a very human one. Yes, there is no doubt that there were times in our past when noble men achieved gallant feats and ordinary people faced almost impossible challenges, yet came out as heroes in the end. But, as with any human history, these examples are more the exceptions than the rule.\n\nPolitically speaking, the Muslims suffered from as much intrigue, internal backstabbing, civil wars, bureaucratic inefficiencies, secret dealings, internecine warfare, bribery and corruption as just about any other culture and civilization. Were this youngster to read further, he would discover the almost constant insurrections that the Umayyads had to face from various Muslim insurgents, the political intrigues and the civil wars fought multiple times within the Abbasids, the alliances that the Taifa Rulers of Andalus regularly formed with Christian princes against fellow Muslims in order to retain power, the rivalries and fratricide of the Ottoman Sultans, and many, many, many more such sordid facts facts that are not taught in Islamic Sunday school.\n\nMost of the armies that were harnessed and prepared in our fourteen centuries of Islamic history were actually gathered to fight other Muslims for political or material gain, and not to fight the \u2018inglorious infidel\u2019. Muslim societies of classical and medieval times struggled with many of the same issues that their modern counterparts do (albeit to different levels), of societal corruption and moral decay and religious indifference. If there were even prostitutes in the holy city of Madinah during the Prophetic era (as our source books clearly mention), does one believe that later societies would somehow be better than our \u2018pious predecessors\u2019?\n\nWhat a thorough reading of our history shows us is that our societies and people were not angels, but simply humans. Yes, there was much good as well, and there is no denying that having a Caliphate that ruled according to Islamic law led to a society of greater Islamic accomplishments than what can be obtained in our times. But by the same token, because we live in an age devoid of a Caliphate, the good that does occur in our era is of a different type, and the endeavors and struggles of our times will inevitably form its own legends and heroes for future generations.\n\nIt is immature and dangerous to over-glorify our past. By painting an imaginary and overly-romanticized picture of an Islamic epoch, it is easier for misguided clerics to convince energetic but na\u00efve youngsters to reclaim and resuscitate such a fantasy, no matter what the cost might be.\n\nI have no doubt that Umar AbdulMutallab saw a level of academic excellence at AlMaghrib that he would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the Western world. I also have no doubt that he was highly impressed with the scholastic content of our seminars. However, in the end, what was important to him was not what he saw, but what he didn\u2019t see. And what he didn\u2019t see was an exposition and condemnation of the role our own countries play in spreading terror around the world. What he didn\u2019t see were explicit solutions being offered in light of the current situation of the Ummah.\n\nIn other words, what he didn\u2019t hear was a discourse regarding the current political and social ills that he felt so passionately about, and a frank dialogue about the Islamic method for correcting such ills.\n\nAnd in that vacu\u00fcm, where neither AlMaghrib nor other mainstream voices had anything substantive to offer, the voices of radical extremism proved to be the only bait dangling in front of his eyes. For him, there never was a competition between Orthodox Islam and militancy; there never was an \u2018either-or\u2018 choice to be made because these two visions of Islam (from his perspective) were completely independent of one another. Each one discussed different topics and each was active in a different arena. So convinced was he by that message of radicalism that he was willing to give up his life for it, not realizing that living one\u2019s life for the sake of God is far more difficult than committing suicide for His sake (as if the latter can ever truly be for the sake of God!).\n\nBy allowing radicals to speak on behalf of the voiceless, we who remained silent simply lost the battle for the hearts and minds of people such as Umar.\n\nIf we truly wish to fight radical ideas amongst our youth; if we wish to persuade them away from rash measures drawn from raw emotions, and to persuade them to act upon wisdom and perform real acts of courage,then the first step that we will have to take is to become more vocal about the grievances that drive young men to acts of desperation. We will need to be frank about the role that our governments play in ruining the freedoms and happiness that specific societies around the world deserve. And after discussing these woes, we will need to educate our youth about the proper way forward in solving them: away from foolish and un-Islamic militancy, and towards education, political activism and other positive channels.\n\nThose who choose to take on this task will have much to worry about for themselves. They will have to brave the attention and subsequent fury of a fear-mongering media empire that loves to demonize any who dares disagree with its own romantic notion of a lost American utopia. These individuals will have to put their trust in Allah as they fight legal and political battles against their own governments and law enforcement agencies, as they themselves are wiretapped, monitored, harassed, baited and perhaps even jailed merely because they state the obvious: that it is our own country\u2019s domestic and foreign policies that are the greatest source of the anger and resentment fueling radicalism.\n\nIt is an awkward position to be in; for some, it appears to be a hopeless battle. How can one simultaneously fight against a powerful government, a pervasive and sensationalist-prone media, and a group of overzealous rash youth who are already predisposed to reject your message because they view you as being a part of the establishment (while, ironically, the \u2018establishment\u2019 never ceases to view you as part of the radicals)?\n\nBut there really is no other alternative. We need to protect our religion for our children after us, and we need to preserve what we can of the freedoms this country still offers us. And while I am skeptical that America will ever revert to its innocent pre-9\/11 state of affairs; still, despite all that has occurred to change this country, America remains far better than any European equivalent, and we need to appreciate and cherish this fact even as we struggle to balance our loyalties between the requirements of our faith and those that are increasingly being imposed upon us by our country.\n\nThe journey ahead of us is long and difficult, and the task is well beyond simply acknowledging the root cause of anger. Real and tangible solutions must be offered, and we must assess the pros and cons of any step that we undertake. This is but one step, and many more arduous miles lie ahead. But even the journey of a thousand miles must begin with one step.\n\nTo be continued.\n\nImage courtesy artcornwall.org"} -{"text":"Do Me a Favor, Prince [Monday Meeting Notes]\n\nMonday Meeting, News\n\nAnother fine piece of art from the Prince\u2019s Gambit card set by Mark Kelly. This time, of course, it\u2019s the Sabbat, which makes a lot of sense since part of the game is to figure out who among those playing is the Sabbat infiltrator or infiltrators. There\u2019s more info down below in the BLURBS! section about the Prince\u2019s Gambit Kickstarter, if you want to check it out.\n\nSpeaking of Kickstarters, somebody asked me what kinds of KSs I have backed and what compels me to back them. Which was a very different sort of question than I usually get asked, so thanks! So, for me, I\u2019ll back if the project is for a property I\u2019m interested in, or if the KS is for something that couldn\u2019t get made any other way. Sometimes those two coincide.\n\nSo, I just got in the giant, and I mean in dimensions, Judges\u2019 Guild book by Goodman Games that reprints a mess o\u2019 JG material at that \u201ctabloid\u201d size they published in back when I started out with D&D, and I just received my Unknown Armies books, from Atlas Games, that I backed because amazingly I never had a UA book in my game collection.\n\nOutside the industry, I absolutely had to back the MST3K revival KS, which might have fit into the next category, but honestly, I never thought it would fail.\n\nBut, in that second category, I backed MASHed, RPing in the Korean War by Mark Plemmons, which despite it having a perfect jewel of a triage system driving the operating room tension that was key to MASH, is the sort of ultra-focused game that might not have been made without KS.\n\nSimilarly, but outside RPGs, I backed Chris Moeller\u2019s KS that he ran several years ago to fund the creation of the third graphic novel in his Iron Empires series after the mainstream comic book publishers wouldn\u2019t touch it.\n\nAnd sometimes, if the KS is just so chock full of Stretch Goal stuff then I just have to pledge, even though I don\u2019t \u201cneed\u201d more stuff. The sculpts for the Rising Sun game were one of those things that were too cool, and in such quantity, that I couldn\u2019t say no.\n\nOur meetings today were mostly about process and getting things done. First Eddy and I went through a lot of the efforts he is going through setting up his schedule and his move to Ireland. Then we had our Onyx staff meeting, and that was also about all the projects we are working on, the differences between our properties and our licensed ones, and whether anyone expects us to respond to every comment Tweeted about us.\n\n(The answer is no, we have work to do).\n\nMirthful Mike Chaney asked me to remind everyone that we are still looking for artists, and frankly we always will be! If you are interested, you can email your interest and examples of your best work to him at: onyxpathart@gmail.com\n\nNow, here\u2019s the important part.\n\nWe want any of you who are considering sending some samples to Mirthful Mike to know that you have just as good a chance to get work with us, and to continue to work with us, as any other artist, regardless of gender, race, creed, or anything about the person you are. We\u2019re interested in awesome illustrations, and if you can do that, and deliver them on deadline, then that\u2019s what matters to us.\n\nAnd let me stress, because we want you to hear us, if you\u2019ve been unable to break into illustration because of any of those factors, we want you to know that we want you here working with us.\n\nSome people will ask why I felt the need to stress that.\n\nWell, because it\u2019s important for aspiring artists who\u2019ve had the door slammed in their faces because of who they are to know that the door we have opened isn\u2019t just open, but that we\u2019re waving them in because we want to see what kind of artwork they can do.\n\nThen it is up to the artwork to convince us to hire the artist.\n\nThere are other ways to phrase this, and other ways to try and get more diversity into this thing of ours. This is what we are doing right now, and how we are phrasing it.\n\nBLURBS!\n\nKICKSTARTER!\n\nThe Prince\u2019s Gambit casual vampire card game Kickstarter continues to roll with over 1100 backers! We\u2019re almost at the Stretch Goal for adding the Independent Clan Ravnos and then more new art, with more cool rewards yet to come. So please check it out: https:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/200664283\/princes-gambit-casual-vampire-card-game !\n\nDesigned by long-time Vampire: the Masquerade tabletop RPG developer Justin Achilli, Prince\u2019s Gambit is a fast-paced social deduction game set within the world of Vampire, but which requires no special knowledge to play. Players must cooperate to gain the favor of the Prince while deducing who among them are secretly the traitorous Sabbat infiltrators.\n\nNext, the Monarchies of Mau KS is scheduled come after Gambit.\n\nON SALE!\n\nLooking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Here\u2019s the link to the press release we put out about how Onyx Path is now selling through Indie Press Revolution: http:\/\/theonyxpath.com\/press-release-onyx-path-limited-editions-now-available-through-indie-press-revolution\/\n\nYou can now order wave 2 of our Deluxe and Prestige print overrun books, including Deluxe Mage 20th Anniversary, and Deluxe V20 Dark Ages!\n\nFrom the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: Beneath the Skin (Demon and Skinchangers 1486-1502 Aztec Empire). Ahuitzotl sits on the throne at the height of the Aztec Empire, overseeing his sorcerer-priests\u2019 sacrifices and the endless flower wars his jaguar and eagle warriors carry out in his name to keep the altars well-supplied with victims. The gears of the Aztec Empire turn smoothly and inexorably, but not everything is what it pretends to be. Skinchangers take the shapes of animals to run the wilds or bring down human prey, the Unchained cobble together identities from stolen lives, and stranger things still lurk in the deserts and jungles beyond the walls of Tenochtitlan.\n\nAvailable Wednesday in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG!\n\nFrom the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: Into the Cold (Demon: the Descent 1961 Berlin). East Germany erects a wall against its Western counterpart, turning West Berlin into an island within its own country. As the Cold War heats up, demons find themselves the targets of increasing human scrutiny, and begin to realize that the God-Machine\u2019s plans didn\u2019t end with the War.\n\nAvailable Wednesday in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG!\n\nThe splendor and horror of Rio is unwrapped! Cursed Necropolis: Rio for Mummy: the Curse is on sale in PDF and PoD versions: http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/205257\/Cursed-Necropolis-Rio\n\nBeneath the splendor of Rio de Janeiro seethes a hotbed of occult activity. Over a score of mummies keep their tombs in Rio, their presence seeping into the soil and stones and souls of the city. Over all this reigns the infamous Teshra-Gemet, the pretender Pharaoh.\n\nThe city of Rio births marvels both bright and dark\u2026 and you never know which kind you have until it\u2019s too late.\n\nCursed Necropolis: Rio contains:\n\nThe secrets and schemes of Rio\u2019s Arisen.\n\nNew Utterances, from the perception usurping Horse and Rider to the cleansing fire of Baal\u2019s Due.\n\n\u201cThe Serpent\u2019s Tooth,\u201d an all-new adventure to introduce players to the conflicts and power plays of Rio de Janeiro.\n\nBeasts are added to Hunter: the Vigil with Hunter: Tooth and Nail, coming atcha in PDF and physical book Pod versions on DriveThruRPG.com! http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/204066\/Hunter-Tooth-and-Nail\n\nTooth and Nail is a bonus chapter\/companion book to the previous released Hunter: Mortal Remains that explores antagonists inspired by the Beast: the Primordial RPG.\n\nHunter: Tooth and Nail includes:\n\nFiction and story hooks to bring these beasts of legend to your Hunter: The Vigil chronicle.\n\nchronicle. New bestial Dread Powers.\n\nNew Compacts and Conspiracies which hunt the monsters, but also sometimes hunt the zealous heroes that hunt as well.\n\nThe Secrets of the Covenants for Vampire: the Requiem 2nd REVEALED this Wednesday on DTRPG! Physical copy PoD version coming to DTRPG: http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/199280\/Secrets-of-the-Covenants\n\nVampires gather under many banners. But five have endured the tumult of Western history better than any other. The Carthian Movement. The Circle of the Crone. The Invictus. The Lancea et Sanctum. The Ordo Dracul. Each has its fierce devotees, its jealous rivals, and its relentless enemies. Now,for the first time, the covenants speak for themselves. This book includes: A variety of stories from each of the covenants, all told in their own words.\n\nNever-before revealed secrets, like the fate of the Prince of New Orleans.\n\nNew blood sorcery, oaths, and other hidden powers of the covenants.\n\nFrom the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: Fallen Blossoms (Hunter 1640-1660 Japan). Japan is moving into the Edo Period. New laws and new ways of thinking wash over the land, and with a new order come new threats to humanity. Take a look at the Vigil in a time where samurai transition from warlords to bureaucrats, Japan massively and lethally rejects outside influence, and when Edo rapidly grows into a world power.\n\nContinuing our individual Dark Eras chapters, we offer you Dark Eras: Fallen Blossoms on in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG! http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/205483\/Dark-Eras-Fallen-Blossoms-Hunter-the-Vigil\n\nFrom the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: Doubting Souls (Hunter 1690-1695 Salem). Immigrants and tribes struggled to co-exist on the Eastern Seaboard in the ever-expanding Colonies. Violent clashes, supernatural beliefs, and demonic influences spelled disaster for Salem Village and its surrounding towns, while others fought werewolves and vampires on the frontier. With so much at risk, only god-fearing men and women were deemed innocent \u2014 and those were few indeed.\n\nAvailable in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG: http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/204372\/Dark-Eras-Doubting-Souls-Hunter-the-Vigil\n\nFrom the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: The Bowery Dogs (Werewolf 1969-1979 NYC). New York City in the 1970s. Crime. Drugs. Gang violence. Vast economic disparity. And werewolves. It\u2019s a lean, ugly time to be alive, and the lone wolf doesn\u2019t stand a chance out there. In the end, all you really have is family.\n\nAvailable in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG: http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/203762\/Dark-Eras-The-Bowery-Dogs-Werewolf-the-Forsaken\n\nThe Locker is open; the Chronicles of Darkness: Hurt Locker, that is! PDF and physical copy PoDs are now available on DTRPG! http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/199275\/Chronicles-of-Darkness-Hurt-Locker\n\nHurt Locker features:\n\nTreatment of violence in the Chronicles of Darkness . Lasting trauma, scene framing, and other tools for making your stories hurt.\n\n. Lasting trauma, scene framing, and other tools for making your stories hurt. Many new player options, including Merits, supernatural knacks, and even new character types like psychic vampires and sleeper cell soldiers.\n\nExpanded equipment and equipment rules.\n\nHurt Locker requires the Chronicles of Darkness Rulebook or any other standalone Chronicles of Darkness rulebook such as Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, or Beast: The Primordial to use.\n\nFrom the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: Ruins of Empire (Mummy 1893-1924). Perhaps the quintessential era of the mummy in the minds of Westerners, this period saw the decline of the two greatest empires of the age: British and Ottoman. Walk with the Arisen as they bear witness to the death of the Victorian age, to pivotal mortal discoveries in Egypt, and to the horrors of the Great War.\n\nAvailable in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG. http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/178801\/Dark-Eras-Ruins-of-Empire-Mummy-the-Curse\n\nFrom the massive Chronicles of Darkness: Dark Eras main book, we have pulled this single chapter, Dark Eras: The Sundered World (Werewolf and Mage 5500-5000 BCE). At the birth of civilization, in the shadow of the Fall, the Awakened stand as champions and protectors of the agricultural villages spread across the Balkans. In a world without a Gauntlet, where Shadow and flesh mingle, the steady taming of the world by humanity conflicts with the half-spirit children of Father Wolf.\n\nAvailable in PDF and physical copy PoD versions on DTRPG. http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/202272\/Dark-Eras-The-Sundered-World-Werewolf-the-Forsaken-Mage-the-Awakening\n\nNight Horrors: Conquering Heroes for Beast: the Primordial is available now as an Advance PDF: http:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/202615\/Night-Horrors-Conquering-Heroes\n\nThis book includes:\n\nAn in-depth look at how Heroes hunt and what makes a Hero, with eleven new Heroes to drop into any chronicle.\n\nA brief look at why Beasts may antagonize one another, with seven new Beasts to drop into any chronicle.\n\nRules for Insatiables, ancient creatures born of the Primordial Dream intent on hunting down Beasts to fill a hunger without end, featuring six examples ready to use in any chronicle.\n\nCONVENTIONS!\n\nDiscussing GenCon plans. August 17th \u2013 20th, Indianapolis. Every chance the booth will actually be 20? x 30? this year that we\u2019ll be sharing with friends. We\u2019re looking at new displays this year, like a back drop and magazine racks for the brochure(s).\n\nIn November, we\u2019ll be at Game Hole Con in Madison, WI. More news as we have it, and here\u2019s their website: https:\/\/www.gameholecon.com\/\n\nAnd now, the new project status updates!\n\nDEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM ROLLICKING ROSE (projects in bold have changed status since last week):\n\nFirst Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)\n\nExalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)\n\nTrinity Continuum: Aeon Rulebook (The Trinity Continuum)\n\nM20 Gods and Monsters (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)\n\nM20 Book of the Fallen (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)\n\nEx Novel 2 (Aaron Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)\n\nC20 Novel (Jackie Cassada) (Changeling: the Dreaming 20th Anniversary Edition)\n\nPugmire Fiction Anthology (Pugmire)\n\nMonarchies of Mau Early Access (Pugmire)\n\nHunter: the Vigil 2e core (Hunter: the Vigil 2nd Edition)\n\nDtD Night Horrors: Enemy Action (Demon: the Descent)\n\nThe Realm (Exalted 3rd Edition)\n\nDragon-Blooded (Exalted 3rd Edition)\n\nArms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)\n\nRedlines"} -{"text":"People need to understand exactly what was going on before forming conclusions.The layers of the securization process go very deep. In simple terms:\n\n1. Bank lends you the money\n\n2. They sell the loan into securization\n\n3. The loan is then bundled with many other similar loans\n\n4, Then the whole bundle is divided into dozens if not hundreds of pieces and sold to investors.\n\n5. The investors then hold, sell, trade, whatever is their fancy\n\n6. Pieces of your loan go from party to party.\n\n7. Folks also short the securization, which in effect creates double the amount of long holders on that piece of the loan, offset by those who are short your loan.\n\n8. This process repeats itself and you have 5 times your loan held by investors offset by four times your loan being short. In effect your loan is being paid to five different investment pool parties and four other investment pool parties are also profferring up payments on your loan along with yours to even it all out. (possibly exaggerated)\n\n9. All along, the legal requirements for transferring ownership of the loan are ignored. Thats because there is no true distinct owner of the loan. Since they didn't bother naming the true owner before hypothecating the loans, these loans are truly invalid under contact law.\n\nThe banks are just acting as agents of the trust when they foreclose. The trust is just a nominee and can't be an owner under the law. These means neither the bank nor the trust are able to truly prove ownership.\n\nI said long ago the only solution was for the fed to buy these loans and refinance them at current market values. Banks could have continued servicing them to earn their money. A $100,000 loan modfied down to $70,000 still means a $135,000 total repayment at 5% interest. This could have allowed most people to keep their homes and also would set the ground for newly valid mortgage contracts. And the government could have even made a profit on it and saved the economy in one quick swoop. Proves they are not friends of the people."} -{"text":"Story highlights Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent social conservative leader for decades, has passed away\n\nThe 1970's-era ERA foe died at 92\n\nWashington (CNN) Phyllis Schlafly, a prominent anti-feminist and early leader of the social conservative movement, died Monday at the age of 92 at her home in St. Louis.\n\nSchlafly, an outspoken voice against the liberalism of the 1960's and 1970's, was a towering figure in what emerged as the modern religious right. Her death was confirmed by the Eagle Forum, the Missouri-based advocacy organization she led.\n\n\"Her focus from her earliest days until her final ones was protecting the family, which she understood as the building block of life. She recognized America as the greatest political embodiment of those values,\" the statement read. \"From military superiority and defense to immigration and trade; from unborn life to the nuclear family and parenthood, Phyllis Schlafly was a courageous and articulate voice for common sense and traditional values.\"\n\nSchlafly was most well-known for her work fighting the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970's, emerging as one of the leading female critics of the feminist movement.\n\nPhotos: History of the ERA Photos: History of the ERA The feminist activists of the 1960s, '70s and early '80s weren't the first to push for an Equal Rights Amendment. Suffragist leader Alice Paul, second from right, fought hard to pass the 19th Amendment -- which earned women the right to vote in 1920. She drafted the first ERA and introduced it to Congress in 1923. Hide Caption 1 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA In 1972, the House and Senate passed the ERA by the necessary two-thirds votes before sending it to state legislatures for ratification. Three-quarters of the states needed to ratify it, but the ERA fell three states short by its 1982 deadline. Among those where it failed was Florida, where supporters voiced their disapproval after the state Senate voted 22-16 against the ERA in June 1982. Hide Caption 2 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA Gloria Steinem, arguably the most recognized name and face in feminist activism, was among the key forces behind the ERA effort in the '70s and '80s. Although it wasn't ratified, most men and women were pro-ERA, Steinem says. She recently took a break from writing her latest book to join a gathering in support of the new ERA Coalition and celebrate the release of \"Equal Means Equal,\" written by coalition founder and director Jessica Neuwirth. Hide Caption 3 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA Women's rights activist, poet and writer Robin Morgan -- seen here during a women's liberation conference in New York in 1970 -- was also among the crowd at the fundraiser and book launch at Manhattan's Yale Club. Morgan's 1970 anthology, \"Sisterhood Is Powerful,\" helped galvanize a movement. Hide Caption 4 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA President Richard Nixon endorsed the ERA after it was adopted by both houses of Congress in 1972. Thirty-five of the needed 38 states ratified the ERA by its 1982 deadline. The latest efforts to revive the ERA have included legislation that would lift the deadline or start the ratification process from scratch. Hide Caption 5 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA The face of ERA opposition during the last big go-round was Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist who founded the Eagle Forum. Now 90, she says the ERA is \"dumb and offensive\" and that the new push for it is \"a colossal waste of time.\" Schlafly, seen in this 1975 photo, once warned that the ERA would lead to same-sex marriage and women being drafted into combat. She also said it It would threaten families -- an argument she still makes. Hide Caption 6 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA Schlafly led protests against the ERA, including this one at the White House in 1977. The group, about 200 strong, was protesting then-first lady Rosalyn Carter's campaign for the ERA. Amendment supporters like Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, say their real enemy was never Schlafly, but big business and insurance companies. Hide Caption 7 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy speaks at an ERA fundraising dinner in Washington in 1980. Kennedy spent more than three decades as a champion for the amendment in Congress. Hide Caption 8 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA Eleanor Smeal, then-president of the National Organization for Women, left, and first lady Betty Ford attend an ERA rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1981. Hide Caption 9 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA From left, Rep. Gwen Moore, Sen. Bob Menendez and Rep. Carolyn Maloney hold a news conference in 2010 outside the U.S. Capitol to call for passage of the ERA. The amendment has been introduced in nearly every session of Congress since 1923. Hide Caption 10 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA ERA supporters like to quote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who told California Lawyer in a January 2011 issue: \"Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.\" Hide Caption 11 of 12 Photos: History of the ERA Last April, Scalia appeared at the National Press Club beside his judicial polar opposite -- and friend -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The two were asked how they would amend the Constitution, if they could. Ginsburg, seen here at an annual Women's History Month event at the U.S. Capitol in March, didn't hesitate: \"If I could choose an amendment to add to this Constitution, it would be the Equal Rights Amendment,\" she said. Hide Caption 12 of 12\n\nSchlafly, until her death, remained in the political arena and recently made the case for electing Donald Trump president. On Monday night the Republican nominee eulogized Schlafly in a statement.\n\nRead More"} -{"text":"Dobson's history of perverse and shocking ideas about raising children is well-documented, but has escaped much media scrutiny.\n\nFrom Dobson's book \"The Strong Willed Child\":\n\n\"When I told Sigmund [the family dog] to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. \"Get lost!\" \"I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me 'reason' with Mr. Freud.\" . . . \"What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!\" ... \"But this is not a book about the discipline of dogs; there is an important moral to my story that is highly relevant to the world of children. JUST AS SURELY AS A DOG WILL OCCASIONALLY CHALLENGE THE AUTHORITY OF HIS LEADERS, SO WILL A LITTLE CHILD -- ONLY MORE SO.\" \"[I]t is possible to create a fussy, demanding baby by rushing to pick him up every time he utters a whimper or sigh. Infants are fully capable of learning to manipulate their parents through a process called reinforcement, whereby any behavior that produces a pleasant result will tend to recur. Thus, a healthy baby can keep his mother hopping around his nursery twelve hours a day (or night) by simply forcing air past his sandpaper larynx.\"\n\nKeep your children far away from Dobson - and anyone who follows his teachings.\n\nOn p.15 Dobson tells the story of a mother who spanks her 5 year old daughter and locks her in the garage for throwing some stones at cars. On p.18 he tells the story of a mother who slaps her 18 month old 9 separate times for reaching for a candy dish. On p.20 he tells the story of a mother who counts to three \"and if the kids had not minded by then, they would have to face the wooden spoon.\"\n\nOn p.61 Dobson says to spank a 6 year old for calling his parents \"hot dog\" or \"moose\" and on p.63 Dobson says to spank a 7 year old for lying. . . . On p. 135 Dobson is asked this question: \"Q: How long do you think a child should be allowed to cry after being punished or spanked? Is there a limit? A: Yes, I believe there should be a limit. As long as the tears represent a genuine release of emotion, they should be permitted to fall. But crying can quickly change from inner sobbing to an expression of protest aimed at punishing the enemy. Real crying usually lasts two minutes or less but may continue for five. After that point, the child is merely complaining, and the change can be recognized in the tone and intensity of his voice. I would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears.\" On p.136 Dobson recommends using a switch or paddle to beat children. (link above) On p.137 Dobson says \"The spanking may be too gentle. If it doesn't hurt, it doesn't motivate a child to avoid the consequence next time. A slap with the hand on the bottom of a diapered two-year-old is not a deterrent to anything. Be sure the child gets the message.\"\n\nOne can only imagine with horror what goes in this man's household. Sick and crazy.\n\nMore here if you want to be even more throughly repelled.\n\nBut this will almost - almost- make you feel sorry for the man:\n\nA recent profile of Dobson sheds some light on these questions. As it turns out, Dobson\u2019s parents physically and mentally abused him as a child, and he once got beaten up in school by a kid even Dobson admits was widely acknowledged to be a \u201csissy.\u201d The article in a Denver magazine called \u201c5280\u2033 makes Dobson\u2019s mother, Myrtle, sound like a real piece of work. Notes writer Eileen Welsome: Myrtle [tag]Dobson[\/tag] was an amiable and social woman, but she didn\u2019t hesitate to whack her son with a shoe or belt when she felt it was required. Consequently, Dobson writes, he learned at an early age to stay out of striking distance when he back-talked to his mother. One day he made the mistake of mouthing off when she was only four feet away and heard a 16-pound girdle whistling through the air. \u201cThe intended blow caught me across the chest, followed by a multitude of straps and buckles wrapping themselves around my midsection.\u201d The girdle incident did not dampen his defiance, however. One evening, after Dobson\u2019s mother forbid him from going to a dance, the recalcitrant teenager told her that he was going anyway; she picked up the telephone and called her husband. \u201cI need you,\u201d she said. The article continues: \u201c\u2018What happened in the next few days shocked me down to my toes,\u2019 writes Dobson.\u201d His father canceled the next four years\u2019 worth of speaking engagements, put the Oklahoma house up for sale, and took a pastor\u2019s job in San Benito, Texas, a small town near the Mexican border. Dobson had two years of high school left, and when he started classes he found himself the target of a couple of bullies. Rather than turn the other cheek, Dobson wheeled around and threw his schoolbooks in the face of one annoying youth. \u201cBy the time he could see me again I was on top of him,\u201d Dobson writes. Dobson also tried a little bullying himself, targeting a boy whom he sized up as a \u201csissy.\u201d But the boy gave him such a thrashing that Dobson concluded bullying wasn\u2019t for him. Elsewhere the story notes that in the Dobson household there were \u201ca million rules\u2026regulations and prohibitions for almost every imaginable situation.\u201d Dobson recalls being \u201cchewed out for using the expression \u2018Hot dog!\u2019 and forbidden from uttering \u2018darn,\u2019 \u2018geez,\u2019 or \u2018dad-gummit\u2019 because they were considered shorthand swear words.\u201d Even more alarming, Dobson admits in one of his books that as a child he arranged a fight between two mismatched dogs. The battle involved a tenacious bulldog and a \u201csweet, passive Scottie named Baby,\u201d and Dobson provoked it by throwing a tennis ball toward Baby. He writes what happened next: \u201cThe bulldog went straight for Baby\u2019s throat and hung on. It was an awful scene. Neighbors came running from everywhere as the Scottie screamed in terror. It took ten minutes and a garden hose for the adults to pry loose the bulldog\u2019s grip. By then Baby was almost dead. He spent two weeks in the animal hospital, and I spent two weeks in the doghouse. I was hated by the entire town.\u201d As any child psychologist will tell you, this type of cruelty toward animals is a sign of a serious psychological disturbance.\n\nJames Dobson is a sick, sick man. Instead of seeking help for the psychological damage he suffered as a child, he decided instead to inflict evil on others by manipulating them into beating their own children and telling them God wants them to. Talk about dragging Biblical understanding through the gutter.\n\nI will never on any day be listening to anything James Dobson has to say about the Bible or any other subject. Why the media gives his man any credence whatsoever is one of the great mysteries of life that will never be adequately explained."} -{"text":"It's not clear how or why two men attacked a man believed to be a British soldier in the London neighborhood of Woolwich, but U.K. officials are already investigating it as a possible act of terrorism.\n\nA video broadcast by the U.K. network ITV purports to show one of the two attackers explaining himself to a camera immediately after the attack. His hands are covered in blood, a knife and a machete in his right hand. The victim is clearly visible on the ground with a crowd gathering in the background. Here's what he said:\n\nWe swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth. We apologise that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don't care about you.\n\nThe Guardian cites eyewitnesses as describing the attack as a \"beheading.\" The BBC talked to an eyewitness who describes what he saw after arriving in the middle of the attack:\n\nI saw two people lying over him and I thought they were trying to resuscitate him. I went down to the garage and another bloke come along and told me they were actually stabbing him. Apparently they actually ran the car into him and knocked him down before they did anything. And the next minute a silver car came along and a man got out and shouted he was going to phone the police. The next thing that happened was he actually pulled a handgun out. It was a gun that looked as if it could take about 12, 15 rounds so I definitely know it was handgun because I actually seen it in his hand.\n\nThe same witness also said that some unarmed police were nearby but did not want to approach the men, who appeared to be armed, until armed \"Trojan\" police arrived.\n\nThe two attackers were shot by police and are currently receiving medical treatment.\n\nUpdate: The Washington Post's Anthony Faiola, reporting from London, listened to the ITV video very carefully and came away with a different quote than the one circulating in British media. The first part of the attacker's quote is difficult to hear because the ITV anchor is speaking over him. It's not clear to me where the above version, which is cited in The Guardian and elsewhere, first appeared. Here's the quote as heard by Faiola:"} -{"text":"If you take the long view with Chelsea \u2014 the view that starts on the day Roman Abramovich first wrote his name on the club in 2003 \u2014 the amazing thing isn\u2019t that they won the Champions League but that they won it the way they did \u2014 as underdogs, riding on luck and drama. Consider:\n\n1. Chelsea became the champions of Europe while finishing in sixth place in their own country, the worst domestic-league finish of any team since the European Champion Clubs\u2019 Cup became the Champions League in 1992. If they hadn\u2019t won the tournament, they wouldn\u2019t have qualified to play in it next year.\n\n2. In the quarterfinals, Chelsea overturned a 3-1 first-leg deficit against Napoli to win 5-4 after the home leg at Stamford Bridge. This happened after a late Lampard penalty forced extra time, allowing Branislav Ivanovic, who has scored eight goals in 107 appearances for Chelsea, to slot home a Drogba cross in the 105th minute.\n\n3. In the semis, they blew a 1-0 first-leg lead against the hugely favored Barcelona, went down 2-0 in the away leg, saw John Terry sent off in the first half, and somehow, with 10 men, came back to win 3-2 when Fernando Torres \u2014 he of the recent 1,541-minute goal drought \u2014 scored on a breakaway counter in the 91st minute.\n\n4. In the final, again playing against a favored team at that team\u2019s home stadium, and now missing four key players due to suspension, they again fell behind, needing late Drogba heroics, extra time, a colossal Petr Cech save against Arjen Robben, and a comeback during penalties (including more late Drogba heroics) to win. Bayern had a 43-9 shot advantage and a 20-1 advantage in corner kicks. Chelsea\u2019s one corner led to Drogba\u2019s match-tying goal.\n\nYou know those scenes in Friday Night Lights when Dillon comes back to win on a four-play, 240-yard drive that ends with a 90-yard Hail Mary with 0.001 seconds left? Chelsea did that in the Champions League against three straight opponents, two of whom (Barcelona and Bayern) finished 1-2 in both possession and pass-completion rate in Europe, one of whom (Barcelona) was an era-defining team that had won two of the last three Champions League titles. If it hadn\u2019t been Chelsea \u2014 a massively well-funded English club with global reach and an owner who owns multiple submarines \u2014 we would have talked about this as if it were the Cinderella run to end all Cinderella runs. No matter how dire their situation looked, Chelsea just kept surviving, trailing streams of exclamation points, and somehow repeatedly blowing up the clock a split second before the minute hand touched midnight.\n\nIt\u2019s hard to remember now what a disruptive force Chelsea was in world soccer during the first few years after Abramovich bought the club. Back in 2006 \u2014 the year the club won the second of its two straight Premier League titles under Jose Mourinho \u2014 the novelist John Lanchester joked that he was now supporting Chelsea \u201con Maoist grounds,\u201d and his friend responded, \u201cI think that\u2019s more Pol Pot\u2013ist.\u201d That was how Chelsea seemed back then: like a terrifying power that was either going to remake the game or burn it to the ground, if not both.\n\nYears before Manchester City batted an eyelash toward Abu Dhabi, it was Abramovich\u2019s takeover at Chelsea that established the archetype of the shady superbillionaire who buys a soccer team to use as his personal plaything. The old, established hierarchy of powerful clubs \u2014 the Manchester United\/Real Madrid cohort \u2014 certainly ran on money, but even the top clubs were shocked by the sums Abramovich could casually throw around \u2014 \u00a321 million for Shaun Wright-Phillips, \u00a324 million for Drogba, \u00a331 million for (gulp) Andriy Shevchenko. Not all these players worked out (see previous gulp), but what difference did that make when Chelsea could go back to the well for \u00a330 million whenever they felt like it? European soccer, which had no salary cap, no luxury tax, very little revenue sharing, no draft \u2014 almost no parity-fostering features at all \u2014 had no defense against this. Chelsea looked upon the dynamics of the sports economy and just luxuriantly did not give a shit. Any player in the world was potentially theirs for the taking.\n\nThis was also right around the moment when the Premier League stopped being an English sports league with international appeal and became an international sports league that happened to be based in England. Knowingly or not, Abramovich exacerbated all the tensions associated with the league\u2019s rush toward globalization. He was a trembly-lipped, bodyguard-flanked petro-oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin. He was the long-distance governor of a remote Russian province. (Chukotka forever!) He collected yachts. He built the club both with global capital and in the model of global capital \u2014 ruthless, chaotic, indifferent to local tradition. Arsenal had filled squads with foreign players, but only in the service of Arsene Wenger\u2019s finer principles; they had to buy this Ivorian and this Estonian, because of the harmony and balance that would result from bringing them together. Abramovich, by contrast, bought foreign players the way other people might shop for shoes online. It wasn\u2019t about team chemistry or even tactics. It was about acquisition for its own sake, about taking whatever you wanted. Or anyway, that was how it seemed.\n\nPredictably, Chelsea was feared and hated. Abramovich compounded both emotions by hiring Jose Mourinho to manage the club in 2004. The new coach reveled in the panic Chelsea caused and did everything he could to provoke the English soccer establishment, from calling Arsene Wenger a \u201cvoyeur\u201d to signing the widely loathed Ashley Cole as the team\u2019s left back. Mourinho created the mother of all siege mentalities around the club, and it worked frighteningly well: In 2004-05, Chelsea demolished the field during the most annihilating championship run since the Football League was founded in 1888: 95 points, 29 wins, 15 goals (15!) conceded all season. They won again in 2005-06. For four and a half years \u2014 86 games, stretching from March 2004 to October 2008 \u2014 Chelsea didn\u2019t lose a single home game.\n\nIt was easy to hate them, but there was also something thrilling about the ease with which they turned English soccer upside-down. Top-level European soccer is essentially a racket that benefits the big clubs at everyone else\u2019s expense. The only thing capable of destabilizing the status quo is a massive amount of money. For around five years, from 2003 to 2008, Abramovich\u2019s billions were the most anarchic force in the sport. Chelsea wasn\u2019t staging a proletarian revolution; that\u2019s not how billionaires operate. But they were doing the next best thing \u2014 punching Manchester United in the mouth and swaggering off with both middle fingers up. Their audacity was its own kind of greatness, even if it was founded on an even more rigged game, global capitalism.\n\nNaturally, this couldn\u2019t last. Chelsea spent three seasons as the flashpoint of English soccer \u2014 the club with the most money, the deepest and most talented squad, the most flamboyant coach, and by far the most controversial headlines. At some point, though, the rest of soccer started to catch up. More billionaires bought into the game. Some of them, like Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City, were even richer than Abramovich. Other clubs got better at exploiting global finance, sponsorship, and the weird pathways of 21st-century commerce (cf. Real Madrid\u2019s plan to build a $1 billion resort island in the United Arab Emirates, which reads like something Jerry Jones dreamed up on a particularly sweaty peyote trip). UEFA passed Financial Fair Play, a set of rules that should\/might\/could possibly curtail runaway sugar-daddying in European soccer.\n\nAt the same time, Chelsea itself tore down some of the walls that kept it separate from other big teams. For years, Chelsea was at entertaining odds with the G-14, a supergroup of the biggest clubs in European soccer. After a lot of cloak-and-dagger maneuvering from then-Chelsea executive Peter Kenyon, the G-14 dissolved in January 2008 and was replaced by the European Club Association, a larger group that does include Chelsea. But the typical radicals-to-congressmen rules applied: Every time Chelsea made it a little further into the game\u2019s aristocracy, the club seemed a little less dangerous.\n\nMore urgently, Abramovich decided that winning the European Cup was his overriding top priority. After firing Mourinho\u2019s successor, the toadlike, thoroughly unqualified, and surprisingly successful Avram Grant \u2014 whose run included a 16-match unbeaten streak, a razor-thin loss on penalties in the 2008 Champions League final in Moscow, and a press conference in which he refused to answer any questions \u2014 Abramovich cycled through a sequence of far more conventional big-name managers like Phil Scolari, Carlo Ancelotti, and Guus Hiddink. He demanded \u201centertaining football\u201d in place of Mourinho\u2019s dull but punishingly effective 4-5-1. Where Chelsea had once seemed totally indifferent to the established ways of doing business, now they started to seem like another Juventus or Madrid \u2014 a big club answerable to the whims of the fans and the media. They even started sounding serious when they talked about turning a profit.\n\nPeople (including me) still complain about Chelsea and their money, but the truth is that they\u2019ve been pretty normal for a pretty long time. Manchester City has more or less taken over the \u201ccrazed and embattled vessel of the super-rich\u201d role at this point, with the difference being that their most provocative antics now feel kind of homespun and familiar, because Chelsea\u2019s already been there. Soccer has a way of assimilating whatever weird new challenges the clubs throw at it, and the aging squad of ex-controversialists at Stamford Bridge is proof that the game will still be there when Carlos Tevez finally calms down.\n\nThe terror that Chelsea represented in those early years was that with enough money, all the surprise could be taken out of the sport. When you spend a hundred million and then concede 15 goals across a 38-game season, you raise the legitimate fear that you will simply buy all the talent, win all the matches, and conquer European soccer with your unstoppable army of math. The irony, of course, is that by winning the Champions League with a frenzy of improbable, last-second comebacks, Chelsea finally conquered European soccer behind exactly the sort of unpredictability that they once threatened to eradicate. Somehow, winning the biggest tournament in the game was the least fearsome and most accessible thing they\u2019ve done in the Abramovich era. It took frantic adjustments, the way it does for everybody, and a different kind of good fortune. After nearly a decade under soccer\u2019s most iconoclastic rich dude, Chelsea now wins and loses on lucky breaks and heart, the way everyone loses and wins."} -{"text":"Yet the President is fast losing the few friends he did have in the capital, following a wild period in which he offered cover to white supremacists and ignited a war of words with North Korea, leaving GOP allies in the crossfire.\n\nThursday brought rebukes from two prominent Republican senators and a member of the highly influential Murdoch family, staunch supporters of the President.\n\nBob Corker, one of the most respected Senate Republicans, who has tried to keep open channels to the White House and coax Trump toward a more conventional foreign policy, unloaded on him in a spectacular manner.\n\nThe chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee is not prone to outspoken outbursts and thinks carefully before delivering his analysis. So his critique that the President has not shown sufficient stability, competence or understanding of the character of the country that he leads was devastating.\n\nSouth Carolina Sen. Tim Scott was another Trump ally who had been wrestling with a painful political and moral dilemma. But he also broke ranks Thursday, saying he could not defend the \"indefensible\" in the wake of Trump's comments about the alt-right rallies in Charlottesville.\n\nScott, the only black Republican senator, suggested that Trump had squandered the moral authority of his office -- a critical commodity vital in binding the nation together in a time of crisis or national tragedy that also helps to sustain the power of any presidency.\n\nAnother sign of Trump's growing isolation came Thursday night. James Murdoch, the 21st Century Fox CEO and son of Rupert Murdoch, who is one of Trump's close informal advisers, wrote a withering email denouncing the President's reaction to the White Supremacist rally and the violence it sparked.\n\n\"I can't even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis,\" Murdoch wrote. \"Or Klansmen, or terrorists. Democrats, Republicans, and others must all agree on this, and it compromises nothing for them to do so.\"\n\nTheir sharp words were a clear indication of the damage that Trump inflicted on himself with his unchained news conference Tuesday, in which he drew an equivalence between racists and counterprotestors in Charlottesville and offered a shocking glimpse of his inner beliefs and temperament.\n\nThe defections of the two senators followed a stampede away from Trump by CEOs who served on White House advisory councils, amid fears their company brands could be tarnished by association with the President.\n\nIt all left Trump increasingly alone and even more reliant on his ever-loyal core voters, who sustain him in times of self-inflicted controversy and public outrage, but who may not represent a sufficiently broad base on which to build a successful presidency.\n\nCorker and Scott have been slow to join the ranks of Trump's critics. Corker for instance, was on the President's short list to become vice president or secretary of state. And although he warned in May the White House was in a \"downward spiral,\" he has not been a fixture on the chorus of Trump critics that includes Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake.\n\nCongressional tensions have a political price\n\nThe rebukes by Corker and Scott also pointed to a looming political problem that Trump has only exacerbated by his recent behavior.\n\nThe President was already lacking friends in the Senate, a reality that became clear in his narrowly failed push to repeal and replace Obamacare that left little doubt that few senators fear or revere him.\n\nIf he is to enact his ambitious political agenda that includes items such as tax reform and a massive infrastructure program -- or to influence Senate Republican legislation on these issues -- he will need to mend his toxic relations with top GOP members of the chamber, not least his feud with Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell.\n\nEvery lawmaker is acutely conscious of the political pressures that weigh on them in their districts and states. The fact that Corker and Scott felt able to speak out may hint at trouble for Trump's political fortunes.\n\nIt may also reflect an ebbing of enthusiasm for the President among grassroots GOP voters. While 83% of Republicans approved of the job that the President was doing in the latest CNN poll last week , there were indications that the number of GOP voters who strongly approve of him is beginning to wane.\n\nIn a way it's not surprising that Republicans feel free to criticize the President. His presidency has been in crisis from almost its first day. His approval ratings are the lowest of any modern president at an equivalent stage, and his campaign is facing a special counsel probe into allegations of collusion with a foreign espionage service. Only the resilient economy that continues to pump out good job numbers may be preventing a complete free-fall.\n\nThe implications of Corker's remarks Thursday are staggering.\n\nTaken to their logical conclusion, the remarks, from the lips of a friend, suggest that the President is simply not fit for office.\n\n\"The President has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,\" Corker said, according to a video posted by local news website Nooga.com.\n\nThe Scott and Corker critiques fit into a trend that is seeing Trump's circle of influence and political relationships shrink as his White House slips further into self-imposed isolation and crisis.\n\nThe now-disbanded advisory councils on which the CEOs served might have been little more than public relations efforts, but their demise dealt a blow to Trump, who relished gathering corporate titans to talk business and to stage photo-ops in which he starred.\n\nIn many ways, after a largely unproductive first seven months in office, Trump is again becoming what he has always been \u2014 an outsider.\n\nHis White House inner circle is dwindling, after the ouster of former chief of staff Reince Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer, creatures of the Washington D.C. Republican establishment. There are rumors that another latecomer to Trump's campaign, his ideological alter ego Steve Bannon, may also be on the way out.\n\nThis week, Trump, having failed to lure a big hitter to the West Wing, named Hope Hicks, one of his most loyal aides, as interim communications director.\n\nIn another sign of his insularity, the President -- even when he leaves the White House -- rarely spends time outside his comfort zone in Trump-branded properties. He has spent extended time at his resort at Mar-a-Lago in Florida and Bedminster in New Jersey. If he goes out in Washington, it's usually to the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. If he's in the White House at weekends, he usually flees to his golf course on the banks of the Potomac in Virginia.\n\nTesting the limits of an unorthodox strategy\n\nTrump's narrowing political horizons are also reflected in his political strategy. In many ways, his unrestrained, unpredictable behavior of the last week recalls the persona that made him so popular with disaffected heartland voters.\n\nBy picking political fights on the status of Confederate monuments amid the fallout of his interventions on Charlottesville, he is raising issues that are important to a certain section of the conservative, Republican base.\n\nNext week, the President will return to the embrace of his adoring core voters, at what is expected to be a raucous rally in Arizona.\n\nHis pitch is sure to position him as the anti-establishment champion of voters who revile Washington. So while the defections by senators like Corker and Scott are damaging to his hopes of getting things done, they actually offer a measure of validation in a different political context.\n\nMany accounts of Trump's life and career stress that the President has never been the kind of person who cultivates vast networks of close political friendships. And he gives the impression that the only people who are not expendable to him are those in his family inner circle.\n\nRight from the start of his rise as a brash, young, real estate up-and-comer from Queens, Trump was spurned by New York elites and seen as a brazen self-publicist. He was never part of the corporate crowd he courted as President.\n\nBut his experience of being spurned helps explains the uncanny connection he forged with working-class, heartland voters who felt excluded from the economic boons unleashed by globalization and the economic recovery after the 2008 crisis.\n\nHis instinctive understanding of his fellow outsiders also helped shape his ferocious assault on the GOP establishment \u2014 which made him President.\n\nBut it left him with a string of political enemies that made the friends he did have in Washington all the more important. That's why the rebukes from Corker and Scott may end up being even more damaging than they first appear."} -{"text":"It's prom season at high schools across the country, a special time that until recently has been reserved for straight student couples. A sign of growing acceptance and change took place in West Virginia on Saturday night.\n\nThe Mussleman High School senior prom was held at The Heritage Hall in Inwood, West Virginia. Among the couples attending were Michael Martin, a Mussleman senior, and his boyfriend Logan Westrope, who attends Hedgesville High School.\n\nMichael was a four-year starter on his school's soccer team, making all-state as a goalie. He is also an all conference swimmer and tennis player. He told his coming out story on Outsports in December, in what was our most-viewed story of 2014. Michael will attend Wilson College in Pennsylvania this fall, major in Environmental Sustainability and play soccer. Logan plays tennis for Hedgesville High School. He will attend Penn State University and major in meteorology. The two have been dating for four months.\n\n\"We knew this would be a night to remember,\" Logan told Outsports. \"We walked in, checked in with our tickets, and were off to have fun! At first we were both a little hesitant to hold hands, not knowing how the rest of the student body would react. But after a short while, we were always next to each other and danced together the whole night.\n\n\"Some of the slow songs we danced to were 'Stay With Me' (Sam Smith), 'See You Again' (Wiz Khalifa), and 'All of Me' (John Legend). At the moment when the slow songs played, we would just stare into each other's eyes and would think of how lucky we are to have each other.\n\n\"We didn't hear any negative comments about Michael and I. A lot of people would come up to us (especially the girls) and say, 'You both are so cute!' or 'You guys look great!' Once we left the prom, I remember Michael saying to me in the car, 'Logan, this is our last prom and I'm so glad I got to spend it with you.' I couldn't have asked for a more perfect night.\"\n\nMichael asked Logan to the prom in March in the parking lot of Chik-fil-A, where Logan works. \"I asked Logan to the prom after his work. I gave him a bag with a chicken sandwich inside and asked, 'Are you a chicken or will you go to the prom with me?' \" Michael said. \"He easily and gladly said yes.\"\n\n\"Most everyone knows that I am gay and for the most part everyone that I work with there accepts me for who I am,\" Logan said. \"I was extremely nervous to tell my fellow employees but then realized I wasn't afraid to show the real me.\"\n\nHere are photos from their big prom night. All photos were taken by Logan's mom, Jodi Brotman Westrope:\n\nMichael and Logan get ready for the night\n\nWest Virginia cool\n\nLogan's dog, Piper, sees her master and his man off\n\nAn avid photographer (his Instagram page has 19,000 followers), Michael takes a shot of Logan at Poor House Farm Park in Martinsburg\n\nMichael adjusts Logan's corsage\n\nLogan returns the favor\n\nNo prom these days would be complete without a selfie\n\nThe happy couple at the end of the night\n\nMichael Martin can be reached via email (soccer4h96@gmail.com), Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Logan can be reached via email (logan.westropehhs@gmail.com), Facebook and Instagram."} -{"text":"In the city that never sleeps, most people could not be bothered to count the sheep that for three minutes every night this month have been filling more than 20 electronic billboards in Times Square.\n\nBales of hay, flocks of sheep and other pastoral scenes that were shot in Wyoming are being beamed onto screens ranging in size from 15,000 square feet down to 32 \u2014 small enough to fit on the side of a newsstand. A sheep\u2019s face peered over Broadway between 42nd and 43rd Streets as it appeared more than seven stories tall on the Nasdaq billboard.\n\nThe glimpses of rural life displayed in the heart of New York are part of \u201cMidnight Moment,\u201d a synchronized digital art exhibition curated by Times Square Arts that lasts from 11:57 p.m. to midnight each night. The footage, from a yet-to-be-released documentary called \u201cCounting Sheep,\u201d was first shown on Dec. 1 and will appear through Dec. 30."} -{"text":"The following is an analysis of a currently (at the time of this writing in early June) unnecessarily embargoed vulnerability in multiple OSes regarding the userland heap\/stack gap and how it affects grsecurity (or rather, doesn't affect it and hasn't affected it for many years). It's unnecessarily embargoed because the issue was already publicly discussed fully in Ga\u00ebl Delalleau's underappreciated 2005 CanSecWest presentation available here. A patch (available here) for this problem even existed prior to that presentation, created by Andrea Arcangeli in 2004 and included in at least SUSE Linux Enterprise 9 and 11 (as mentioned here).\n\nI am not a member of the private distros or linux-distros mailing lists, and though this particular issue is leaking through various channels like a sieve, I have no interest in digging out more details or ruining embargoes that I'm not party to. As a matter of principle, we choose not to participate in embargoes (even for issues reported to us) as they distort public perception of security: differences in response time, level of proactive measures, and quality of in-house security talent is obfuscated through the activity and delay happening behind closed doors. Effective security shouldn't depend on hoping the \"bad guys\" don't have early access to vulnerability information, which is what zero-days are all about. So this article is being written based off my impression of what the \"newly\" discovered vulnerability is, knowing nothing about whatever particular userland application prompted the sudden intense interest, and will be published immediately after expiration of the embargo.\n\nAndrea's patch mentioned above was never included in upstream Linux in 2004, and no improved version appeared in its place in the years following. That changed in 2010 when a highly-publicized instance of the kind of vulnerability Andrea's patch was designed to prevent was published against the X server by Rafal Wojtczuk. Rafal had worked with distributions on the now-shuttered private vendor-sec mailing list to ensure a fix for the issue was created at the kernel level. Seven weeks later, based purely off private discussions, Linus attempted to silently fix the issue via this commit, yet it had to be revised repeatedly later (at least as late as 2013 -- see this commit) as it broke userland applications and oopsed the kernel. But more importantly, Linus' patch didn't address the wider problem, but instead only the particular reported instance of the problem -- attacker-controlled recursion that could be prevented by a single guard page. We mentioned the problems with the patch publicly in comments on an LWN article on Linus' patch, but those comments, technical explanations, and C\/assembly examples of issues not covered by Linus' patch fell on deaf ears; the upstream Linux stack\/heap guard code saw no improvements in the following years. And now, as they say, the chickens have come home to roost.\n\nI imagine the issue is that someone again realized the behavior of GCC and LLVM on non-Windows OSes with regard to the default non-existence of stack probing and found some new instance of a vulnerable and widely-used application\/service to exploit. The following is a summary of the main issues which have all been heavily detailed and explained already in Ga\u00ebl's 2005 presentation from slide 24 onward (under the heading of \"Jumping the stack gap\"). Calls to alloca() over a page in size, large local variables, variable-length arrays (VLAs), etc can all easily skip over a single guard page and read from\/write to an attacker-controlled mmap-based heap allocation and cause further deeper stack frames to do the same, with all the implications on saved instruction pointers, etc. Not only does this problem affect the main process stack, but it's an issue for thread stacks as well. It was part of the motivation for the creation of GRKERNSEC_RAND_THREADSTACK over four years ago in response to this alloca()-based vulnerability\/exploit by Exodus Intelligence. Further easing exploitation is that Linux will honor mmap hints, conceivably permitting some rare vulnerable application to allow an attacker to suggest an allocation just below the stack guard page without needing to exhaust virtual address space to accomplish it (which would open up this vulnerability for more 64-bit apps).\n\nUnder PaX's ASLR, this is infeasible since mmap hints are ignored. MAP_FIXED requests are of course honored as required by the standard, but an attacker controlling those can just as easily blow away any existing allocation and replace it with their own content. Further, much like Andrea's original patch, our heap\/stack protection (implemented via an enforced gap instead of Linus' guard page) can be adjusted in size at runtime. Andrea's patch defaulted to a single page gap (for compatibility reasons that aren't a problem for the PaX implementation) whereas the PaX implementation enforces a 64KB gap at minimum by default. Without stack probing in place, any uncontrolled alloca() could be abused, so the chosen size of the enforced gap is a tradeoff between virtual address space wastage and security-based assumptions about reasonable stack allocation ranges an attacker might have control over without being fully unbounded. It should be clear that kernel-only attempts to solve this problem will necessarily always be incomplete, as the real issue lies in the lack of stack probing. Since the alternative real solution depends on rebuilding all userland, this is likely the only feasible solution for the foreseeable future. On grsecurity systems, the size of the heap\/stack gap can be adjusted via the \/proc\/sys\/vm\/heap_stack_gap sysctl entry. For instance, the following command will enforce a 1MB main stack gap for all new allocations:\n\necho 1048576 > \/proc\/sys\/vm\/heap_stack_gap\n\nAn interesting historical note: looking through the current upstream Linux kernel code, one will find a remnant perhaps of Andrea's never-merged original implementation, a single \"int heap_stack_gap = 0;\" line unreferenced by anything else in the kernel, but introduced by accident via an unrelated nommu commit by David Howells in 2005. This variable in Andrea's implementation held the number of pages of the variable-sized heap\/stack gap, something Linus' later implementation crucially lacked. Despite several public comments and LKML threads about this line, it continues to stand alone as a reminder about the dangers of NIH.\n\nOne might now be wondering: doesn't this same issue also apply to the kernel stack? Yes, it does. Here too upstream developers failed to note or care about this particular excerpt from our KSTACKOVERFLOW configuration help:\n\nThis introduces guard pages that in combination with the alloca checking of the STACKLEAK feature and removal of thread_info from the kernel stack prevents all forms of kernel process stack overflow abuse.\n\nThe PaX STACKLEAK plugin was added to grsecurity prior to my work on KSTACKOVERFLOW, so KSTACKOVERFLOW built upon it. The STACKLEAK plugin importantly instruments all implicit and explicit calls to alloca() by the kernel, ensuring the requests wouldn't step outside expected stack boundaries. One might recall the STACKLEAK plugin from when it was \"ported\" by a member of the KSPP, making no mention whatsoever in the commit description or Kconfig help of this functionality, and also having failed to even enable the plugin at all due to failing to adjust some copied and pasted lines from the Makefile to actually enable the plugin. This functionality also wasn't mentioned during a subsequent recent \"port\". This is but one of many examples that seriously raise the question of how security functionality will be properly implemented and maintained upstream if the maintainers don't understand what the code they've copy+pasted from grsecurity does in the first place.\n\nThe upstream CONFIG_VMAP_STACK has been claimed by many to be equivalent to what's present in grsecurity. Its Kconfig description includes the following:\n\nThis causes kernel stack overflows to be caught immediately rather than causing difficult-to-diagnose corruption.\n\nThis claim was repeated by various news outlets reporting on the upstream VMAP_STACK feature. One may recall VMAP_STACK for being responsible for over a dozen kernel CVEs, introducing potential memory corruption and denial of service through its design and resulting in several additional CVEs for memory handling errors in the fixes needed for those CVEs. Defending VMAP_STACK recently against claims by me that the implementation is objectively bad, Kees Cook of the KSPP said \"With this implementation in place, now those kernel stack exploit methods are dead.\" Remember that even though stack overflow vulnerabilities are quite rare in the first place, let alone exploitable ones, at least one of the published exploits for a Linux kernel stack overflow vulnerability (CVE-2010-3848) was exactly for this kind of vulnerability that VMAP_STACK would be unable to protect against. Unless there were at least 99 other exploitable stack overflow vulnerabilities in the kernel, characterizations by another KSPP and linux-hardened contributor that VMAP_STACK fixes 99% of the issue are also patently false.\n\nIn fact, VMAP_STACK lacking the equivalent functionality in grsecurity not only leaves it possible to exploit certain VLA-based overflows, it may ironically make it even easier to exploit these lingering forms of kernel stack overflows. Vmalloc allocations are less frequent to the point that one could more reliably target an adjacent victim kernel stack or other large allocation, not needing to know its absolute address.\n\nAs should now be clear, the kinds of kernel stack overflows grsecurity can prevent are not at all dead upstream, or for that matter in the recent linux-hardened project, which in its comparison matrix comparing upstream to grsecurity under the heading of \"Prevent kernel stack overflows\" suggests that upstream's reimplementation of grsecurity's protection for this class of vulnerabilities is \"complete\". In our comparison matrix we marked the associated KSPP feature with a orange minus symbol denoting \"watered-down features that differ significantly in their implementation and security benefits\". We'd been called misleading for this, while I held my tongue knowing the facts of the matter. By now it should be evident how much faith should be put into security claims and comparisons to grsecurity by developers that don't understand the basics of the code they're copying and pasting. It also demonstrates what we've said all along about the synergistic benefits of various grsecurity and PaX features that aren't realized by mindless piecemeal extraction.\n\nA careful reader may have noted the title of this article is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the LWN article linked above. This blog is being published as a teachable moment to demonstrate that articles written by non-security experts simply repeating the security claims of other non-security experts about their own code or others' code are to be taken with a large grain of salt. The \"ancient kernel hole\" LWN grandiosely proclaimed was closed, was in fact not closed at all for the past seven years. The facts destroying the myth have been available there for everyone to see all this time, but when a news site seems to care so little about accuracy in reporting that it doesn't (for instance) contact the subject of an article prior to publication, or correct glaring factual errors in its content that they've been made aware of, instead requiring readers to wade through pages of third-party comments, it's no wonder that the public is fooled by authoritative-sounding articles and don't bother investigating further. Some months ago I stopped publicly commenting on LWN due to its lack of concern for accuracy in reporting and commenters' lack of interest in learning. When the next issue is reported incorrectly, a reader can't assume an expert will chime in with a proper analysis as happened in this case seven years ago.\n\nTechnical debt always finds a way to be repaid, with interest."} -{"text":"Double Dragon is one of the most iconic games ever made, and while the series is best known as side-scrolling beat \u2019em up, there was actually a legit Double Dragon fighting game based in the 1994 movie.\n\nReleased for the Neo Geo CD, the movie-based fighting game was actually a well-developed and fun game that even The Angry Video Game Nerd (James) can\u2019t help but praise. It\u2019s apparently one of his favorite fighters of all time.\n\nNow, James is no fighting game aficionado, but he is a gaming enthusiast who knows a thing or two about good and bad video games. Watch him play and critique the obscure Double Dragon fighting game\u2026\n\nAre you old enough to remember Double Dragon? Do you have any fond memories of the series? Let us know in the comments below."} -{"text":"Nintendo will release special shiny packaged versions of its upcoming Nintendo 3DS ports of Pok\u00e9mon Gold and Silver, the company announced today \u2014 at least in Europe and Japan.\n\nThe company\u2019s European division tweeted out the photo below, confirming that the boxes would contain digital download codes for the games; these can also be purchased separately.\n\nOn 22\/09, shiny packaged versions of #Pokemon Gold and Pok\u00e9mon Silver containing a download code will be released in shops. pic.twitter.com\/PpfYtZFzp2 \u2014 Nintendo of Europe (@NintendoEurope) August 18, 2017\n\nThe Japanese version of the retail release includes additional goods: magnets shaped like the original Game Boy Color cartridges, stickers and a poster featuring the Gold and Silver generation\u2019s Pok\u00e9mon.\n\nPolygon has reached out to Nintendo to ask if the special edition boxes will also be available in North America and will update when we hear back. Maybe don\u2019t get your hopes up, however \u2014 similar retail releases for the 3DS Virtual Console ports of Pok\u00e9mon Red and Green last year didn\u2019t make it stateside.\n\nNintendo announced in June that Pok\u00e9mon Gold and Silver, originally released in 2000 for the Game Boy Color, would be available to download on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. Nintendo also confirmed that the updated versions of the games would be compatible for the first time with Pok\u00e9mon Bank, the 3DS service that allows players to deposit, store and manage their pocket monsters in private Boxes online.\n\nPok\u00e9mon Gold and Silver will be available to download on Sept. 22."} -{"text":"TODAY marks the 22nd anniversary of Xena: Warrior Princess, who first came into our lives in 1995 and has remained a major part of pop culture ever since.\n\nFor many, Xena was an icon of feminism, female empowerment and strength and became an icon for the LGBT community thanks to her challenging ideas of masculinity and femininity, and her relationship with sidekick Gabrielle.\n\nSo to celebrate all that Xena\u2019s given us over the years, here are a few facts you may not have known about the show, complete with tributes from around the Twittersphere from fans celebrating this auspicious day.\n\nLUCY LAWLESS WAS NOT THE FIRST CHOICE TO PLAY XENA\n\nXena is so ingrained in pop culture now that it\u2019s hard to imagine anyone else playing the part, but she wasn\u2019t actually the first choice for it.\n\nThe first choice was British actress Vanessa Angel, who starred in the TV adaptation of Weird Science. However Angel fell ill before she was supposed to fly to the set and Tapert eventually decided on giving Lawless the role.\n\nRENEE O\u2019CONNOR WASN\u2019T THE FIRST CHOICE FOR GABRIELLE, EITHER\n\nRenee O\u2019Connor has similarly become the only face fans could imagine playing Xena\u2019s trusty sidekick and love interest Gabrielle, but she also wasn\u2019t the first choice.\n\nSunny Doench was meant for the role but backed out, reportedly because she didn\u2019t want to leave her partner in the States. Lucky break for us, but not so much for her.\n\nXENA\u2019S LOOK WAS MODELLED OFF A TENNIS STAR\n\nXena was originally going to be blonde, but Lucy Lawless died her hair black.\n\nLawless decided that an Amazonian princess should look more like Gabriela Sabatini who was \u201cthe big noise in tennis\u201d at the time.\n\nIn an interview for the Emmys, Lawless said: \u201cI was like, \u2018What about being like her? She\u2019s big and bronze and dark-haired.\u2019 Fortunately they went that way, because my hair would have fallen out if we tried to keep it blonde.\u201d\n\nTHE CREDITS HAD A RUNNING IN-JOKE FOR FANS\n\nThe credits regularly had a fake disclaimer similar to the Humane Association messages saying \u201cno animals have been harmed\u201d.\n\nIt started as an occasional joke in season one, but by season two, every single episode had disclaimers like, \u201cDespite Gabrielle\u2019s incessant hurling, Ulysses\u2019 ship was not harmed during the making of this motion picture\u201d, \u201cNo harpies were harmed in the making of this episode\u201d, \u201cNo oversized Polynesian-style Bamboo Horses were harmed during the production of this motion picture. However many wicker lawn chairs gave their lives,\u201d and in an episode featuring Xena\u2019s death; \u201cXena was permanently harmed in the making of this motion picture, but kept her spirits up.\u201d\n\nFans caught on and started keeping track of each message via internet forums. Which brings us to the next point.\n\nXENA AND GABRIELLE WERE PRACTICALLY MARRIED\n\nSpeculation has always been rife over the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle and through many interviews over the years, the cast and crew have confirmed that gay subtext was done entirely on purpose.\n\nBut while the relationship was never made explicitly clear on the show, Lawless told Lesbian News in 2003 that Xena was \u201cGay. Gay, definitely.\u201d Not bisexual, not pansexual, not even just curious and experimenting \u2014 as far as she\u2019s concerned Xena and Gabrielle, \u201cThey\u2019re married, man.\u201d\n\nXENA WAS ONE OF THE FIRST SHOWS TO HAVE AN ONLINE FANDOM \u2014 AND IT\u2019S STILL GOING STRONG\n\nWhile nowadays, we use the internet for pretty much everything all the time, the 90s were a different time. Yet somehow, Xena managed to grow an online fandom.\n\nThe Xena fandom was one of the first to utilize the net to discuss their favourite show via the Xena Online Community board.\n\nThe Xena fandom was so strong that it only just had its final convention in 2015, a full 14 years after the show ended, and the online forums are still alive and thriving.\n\nXENA WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO DIE\n\nXena was originally only brought into Hercules because producer Rob Tapert wanted a dark figure to counterbalance the cheerful and heroic Hercules.\n\nShe was supposed to be there for three episodes and then die, but Tapert and the other producers liked Xena so much that they remodelled their previously planned Hercules spin-off just for her.\n\nPraise the TV Gods.\n\nThis story originally appeared in the New Zealand Herald."} -{"text":"Please enable Javascript to watch this video\n\nOccupy protestors performed a small bit of satirical play acting Wednesday as a form of demonstrating against the influence of corporate money in government.\n\nBoth Occupiers and supporters of LGBT rights had their say as the lawmakers and lobbyists observed from the balconies inside the Capitol Rotunda.\n\n\u201cToday's event is a piece of political theater and it\u2019s is intended to showcase how ALEC, or the American Legislative Exchange Council has an influence and a direct impact on our legislative branch,\u201d said Occupy Salt Lake protestor Michael Wilson.\n\nALEC describes itself as a conservative legislative think-tank that creates model legislation lawmakers can take to their states and use. According to their website, they are the \"only\" organization to provide that service in the country. Their next annual meeting is in Salt Lake City.\n\n\u201cAttending the summit here this summer is $7000 if you're an attendee or $50 if you happen to be a legislator,\u201d said Wilson.\n\nFOX 13 tried contacting ALEC via phone and email, but had not received a response back as of Wednesday whether those costs disparities between a private person and a legislator are true.\n\nAn LGBT protest that also happened earlier Wednesday had protestors expressing a degree of anger in regards to a statewide antidiscrimination bill getting quickly tabled by lawmakers.\n\nFOX 13 will have more on this protest tonight during News at Nine."} -{"text":"MADRID \u2014 European basketball authorities say they will investigate an alleged assault of former Portland Trail Blazer player Rudy Fernandez while he was boarding the team bus in Lithuania.\n\nFernandez plays for Real Madrid, and the mayhem followed his team's 105-104 overtime win over Zalgiris Kaunas on Thursday.\n\nMadrid official Juan Sanchez says two fans hit Fernandez on the shoulder and neck and struck a security guard several times. The Euroleague says it has asked for reports from both teams and the local police.\n\nFernandez was back in his home country of Spain on Friday. He says he is fine and thankful \"things did not go further.\"\n\nHe stresses that \"people should not think that all Lithuanian fans are like that just because of these two people. Not at all.\"\n\n-- The Associated Press"} -{"text":"Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, compared Connecticut's homicide rates during the 10 years following the law's implementation to the rates that would have been expected had the law not been implemented. The large drop in homicides was found only in firearm-related killings, not in homicides by other means, as would be expected if the law drove the reduction.\n\nEarlier research from Webster found that Missouri\u2019s 2007 repeal of its handgun license law was associated with a 25 percent increase in its firearm homicide rates. For the Connecticut study, Webster and his colleagues used comparison states with homicide trends that most closely matched those in Connecticut before the law went into effect in order to predict what would have happened to homicide trends in Connecticut had the handgun licensing law not been implemented. \u201cTaken together, these studies provide compelling evidence that permit to purchase licensing systems is one of the most effective policies we have to reduce gun violence,\u201d Webster says.\n\nIn 1995 Connecticut added a law to the state's books requiring licenses (permits) and requiring background checks. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research decided to look into whether or not there were any results as a result. Comparing these results with results of the inverse happening in Missouri after they repealed their handgun law license has led to the shocking conclusion that gun laws help save lives. Cold dead hands and all that."} -{"text":"Story highlights Police: 14-year-old was armed with a pistol, held hostages in a 2nd-floor classroom\n\nHe released the hostages first, then put down his gun and surrendered to authorities\n\n(CNN) A 14-year-old boy held numerous students and a teacher hostage Tuesday inside his West Virginia high school -- a scary episode that ended peacefully with the teen dropping his gun and surrendering, police said.\n\nA 911 call placed at about 1:30 p.m. alerted Barbour County authorities that a person with a gun was inside Philip Barbour High School in Philippi, a city of 3,000 people about 40 miles south of Morgantown.\n\nAccording to a West Virginia State Police post on Facebook, responding officers arrived to find a 14-year-old armed with a pistol with other students and the teacher in a second-floor classroom.\n\nEveryone else was quickly shuttled to safety, first to the school's football field and then home via bus.\n\nNo injuries were reported.\n\nRead More"} -{"text":"Tony Abbott under fire from Cabinet colleagues over decision to grant knighthood to Prince Philip\n\nUpdated\n\nSome of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's most senior colleagues are bewildered, angered and dismayed by his decision to award an Australian knighthood to Prince Philip.\n\nPrince Philip and former Defence Force chief Angus Houston were named Australia's newest knights today, under an honours system reinstated by Mr Abbott last year.\n\nCabinet ministers have told the ABC the Prime Minister did not consult any of the leadership group before announcing the move.\n\nMr Abbott agreed it was a \"captain's call\", saying he consulted only with Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Order of Australia chairman Sir Angus.\n\nMinisters said they would have opposed the knighthood, if asked.\n\nOne described it as a \"stupid\" decision that would make the Government an object of ridicule.\n\nAnother said the Prime Minister's colleagues were willing him to succeed, but he had started the year badly and had made the job of trying to lift the Coalition's electoral credibility just that much harder.\n\n\"There is an old saying that when you are in a hole you should stop digging,\" one minister said.\n\n\"Well, we've just punched through the Earth's crust.\"\n\nAnother Coalition MP said the move reinforced the left-wing caricature of the Prime Minister: the appointment harked to Australia's past and the opportunity of making a positive statement about the future on the national day had been squandered.\n\nThe private anger of Coalition MPs and ministers was given public voice by the conservative chief minister of the northern territory, Adam Giles.\n\nHe said that when he read reports of the Prince's knighthood this morning he wondered if he had woken on April Fools' Day.\n\n\"It's Australia Day,\" he said. \"We're not a bunch of tossers, let's get it right.\"\n\nThe move to award an Australian knighthood to the Queen's husband has also been criticised by republicans, with former Western Australia premier Geoff Gallop calling it a \"sad reflection\" on Australia.\n\nAnd it drew fire on social media from commentators including Canberra press gallery veteran Laurie Oakes, who tweeted: \"Libs must wonder who can help a PM apparently determined to be seen as a joke. #jokeknighthood\".\n\nAnswering questions about the decision at an Australia Day event in Canberra today, Mr Abbott said he was \"really pleased\" the Queen had accepted his recommendations on the knighthoods and added that whilst the Duke had not called to say thank you for the honour, he did not \"expect gratitude\".\n\nAnd he said social media criticism of the move was akin to \"electronic graffiti\"\n\n\"I think that in the media, you make a big mistake to pay too much attention to social media. You wouldn't report what's sprayed up up on the walls of buildings and look, as I said, social media has its place, but it's anonymous,\" he told reporters.\n\n\"It's often very abusive and in a sense, it has about as much authority and credibility as graffiti that happens to be put forward by means of IT.\"\n\nMr Abbott said he stood by the decision to award the knighthood to 93-year-old Prince Philip because \"the monarchy has been an important part of Australia's life since 1788\".\n\n\"Prince Philip has been a great servant of Australia, he's been a great servant of all the countries of the Commonwealth.\n\n\"Here in this country he's the patron of hundreds of organisations. He's the inspiration and wellspring of the Duke of Edinburgh's Awards which have provided leadership training for tens if not hundreds of thousands of Australians over the years.\n\n\"I'm just really pleased that in his 90s, towards the end of a life of service and duty, we in this country are able to properly acknowledge what he's done for us.\"\n\nAsked how widely he had consulted before making the decision, Mr Abbott said: \"As you would expect, I consulted with the Chairman of the Order of Australia, and I consulted with the Governor-General. That's what you would expect.\"\n\nAsked if Prince Philip was a \"captain's pick\" for the award, Mr Abbott said \"I'm not going to dispute your characterisation\" before calling for questions on other topics.\n\nShorten says award for British royal 'a time warp'\n\nOpposition Leader Bill Shorten, who yesterday called for a renewed debate on Australia becoming a republic, said giving a knighthood to an English royal on Australia Day was outside the mainstream of Australian thinking.\n\n\"It's a time warp where we're giving knighthoods to English royalty,\" Mr Shorten told Fairfax Radio.\n\n\"On Australia Day, we're talking about Australia, Australian identity, the Government's managed to find a British royal to give a medal to, a knighthood to.\"\n\nHe said that if Labor won office it would not continue the tradition of knights or dames.\n\n\"When we look at Australia in the 21st century, it's about who we're going to be as a people and I just think giving out a top award to a British royal is anachronistic.\"\n\nPrince has 'long relationship with Australia'\n\nEarlier the head of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, Professor David Flint, said the knighthood was an appropriate recognition for Prince Philip's \"long relationship with Australia\".\n\n\"He was a sailor in the convoys that protected Australian troops being taken to the Middle East in the Second World War,\" Professor Flint said.\n\n\"He was also in the Pacific Fleet and he was actually in Tokyo Bay at the time the Japanese surrendered.\n\n\"He opened the '56 Olympics, he's got a very long relationship through the Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme.\"\n\nBut Mr Gallop said Mr Abbott's decision to start awarding Australian knighthoods had \"heavily polluted\" the Australian honours system.\n\n\"As we try to reflect upon our nation ... one of Australia's highest honours goes to someone who's not part of our community,\" he said.\n\n\"In effect this is the eccentricity of Tony Abbott's views on our constitution coming through.\n\n\"It certainly doesn't reflect the view of the Australian people through a meritocratic process.\"\n\nFamed for his off-the-cuff quips and gaffes, Prince Philip, who married Queen Elizabeth in 1947, is the longest serving royal consort in British history.\n\nThe Queen once described him as \"my strength and stay all these years\".\n\nBut the duke, a constant presence by his wife's side throughout her six decades on the throne, has suffered a series of health scares in recent years.\n\nTopics: constitution, government-and-politics, royal-and-imperial-matters, human-interest, abbott-tony, australia, united-kingdom\n\nFirst posted"} -{"text":"WE STILL NEED YOUR HELP! HOURS LEFT TO PLEDGE!\n\nEven though we have met our goal, we'd love to raise another $3k to help cover the Kickstarter and Amazon fees (8-10%). We still have some great rewards available and even several producer credits left!\n\nRECENT PRESS\n\nHuffington Post - USA Today - Indiewire - \"Project of the Day\"\n\nSundance just featured us on their front page! Check it out here.\n\nABOUT THE FILM\n\nFIGHT CHURCH is a feature documentary about the confluence of Christianity and Mixed Martial Arts. The film follows several pastors and fighters in a quest to reconcile their faith with a sport that some consider violent and barbaric. Faith is tried and questions are raised. Can you really love your neighbor as yourself and then punch him in the face?\n\nWHY WE NEED YOUR HELP\n\nThe film is still a long ways from being done and we must raise 30k to complete our shooting and post production. Here's where your money will be going:\n\n1) $12,500- We need to return to New York and various other states to film with our main character and additional characters. Without this footage, we won't be able to tell the full story.\n\n2) $17,500- We have another 6-9 months of editing ahead of us. We need to hire an editor and an assistant editor at a bare bones salary to work with us to shape the story. We have about half the film edited, but can't finish without a budget.\n\nPlease help us tell the stories of these amazing individuals today! We want to finish our passion project and can't do it without your help!\n\n________________________________________________________\n\nTHE FILMMAKERS & THEIR FILMS\n\nWhile some of you may already be familiar with our work, others may not. Here are a few of the past projects we've completed.\n\nDaniel Junge, Director\n\nSaving Face - Oscar Winner for Best Documentary Short. The film follows several Pakistani women who are victims of acid violence.\n\nThe Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner - Oscar Nomination. The documentary follows the assisted suicide ballot initiative in Washington State.\n\nThey Killed Sister Dorothy - Jury and Audience Award Winner at SXSW, Emmy-nominated, Oscar Short-Listed. Documentary on the killing of 73-year-old Catholic nun and activist Sister Dorothy Stang.\n\nBryan Storkel, Director\n\nHoly Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians - Award-winning documentary tells the story of a team of card counting Christians who took millions from Vegas.\n\nEben Kostbar & Joseph McKelheer, Producers (Film Harvest)\n\nFree Samples - Narrative Feature starring Jesse Eisenberg, Jason Ritter, & Jess Weixler. Premiered at Tribeca 2012.\n\nThe Hammer - Award Winning Biopic on UFC fighter, Matt Hamill.\n\n__________________________________________________\n\nHOW CAN YOU HELP US FURTHER?\n\nPlease follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and please tell your friends and family about our Kickstarter campaign.\n\nFight Church on Facebook\n\nFight Church on Twitter\n\nBecause of how Kickstarter works, if we don't reach our goal of $30k, we won't get to keep any of the money. We can't do this without you! Here's how you can help us...\n\n1) Like us on Facebook, then share the Kickstarter Link with your FB friends, asking them to pledge.\n\n2) Make a small donation to help us finish the film!\n\nTHANK YOU VERY MUCH! :)"} -{"text":"The spotlight cast on the novelist by the Charlie Hebdo attacks should not mislead us \u2013 his target here is not Islamism but suggestible modern men News: Houellebecq stops promotion of novel after Charlie Hebdo attack\n\nAs the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo murders continues to unfold, French readers are turning to the magazine\u2019s latest cover star, with Michel Houellebecq\u2019s Soumission racing to the top of bestseller lists at Amazon.fr. But is France\u2019s most celebrated controversialist offering a splenetic vision of the Muslim threat to Europe or a spineless \u201csubmission\u201d to gradual Islamic takeover? Actually, neither. It\u2019s much more interesting than that.\n\nThose riffling impatiently through the opening for controversy will be disappointed, as we are introduced slowly to the narrator, Fran\u00e7ois, a middle-aged literary academic who teaches at the Sorbonne. He is an expert on Huysmans, the cultish 19th-century anatomist of decadence, and he sleeps hungrily with his students. But he is bored. The narration is enjoyably sardonic, a pungent mixture of deadpan jokes about sexual politics and close reading.\n\nThe novel, due to be published in English later this year, is set seven years hence, in the year 2022. Fran\u00e7ois settles in to enjoy the TV spectacle of the presidential elections, which he considers second only to the World Cup for entertainment value. After the first round of voting, the two candidates left are Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National, and the head of France\u2019s new Islamic party, Mohammed Ben Abbes. The Socialists do a deal with the \u201cMuslim Fraternity\u201d to defeat Le Pen, and Ben Abbes becomes president. Immediately all women go veiled in the street, state secondary schools adopt an Islamic curriculum, and Fran\u00e7ois is informed that he cannot return to his university work unless he converts to Islam.\n\nSome in France have already complained that the novel fans right-wing fears of the Muslim population, but that is to miss Houellebecq\u2019s deeply mischievous point. Islamists and anti-immigration demagogues, the novel gleefully points out, really ought to be on the same side, because they share a suspicion of pluralist liberalism and a desire to return to \u201ctraditional\u201d or pre-feminist values, where a woman submits to her husband \u2013 just as \u201cIslam\u201d means that a Muslim submits to God.\n\nBut Soumission is, arguably, not primarily about politics at all. The real target of Houellebecq\u2019s satire \u2013 as in his previous novels \u2013 is the predictably manipulable venality and lustfulness of the modern metropolitan man, intellectual or otherwise. Fran\u00e7ois himself happily submits to the new order, not for any grand philosophical or religious reasons, but because the new Saudi owners of the Sorbonne pay much better \u2013 and, more importantly, he can be polygamous. As he notes, in envious fantasy, of his charismatic new boss, who has adroitly converted already: \u201cOne 40-year-old wife for cooking, one 15-year-old wife for other things \u2026 no doubt he had one or two others of intermediate ages.\u201d\n\nMichel Houellebecq stops promotion of new novel after Charlie Hebdo attack Read more\n\nThe novel ends in an almost science-fictional conditional mood, with Fran\u00e7ois looking forward dreamily to his own conversion and a future of endless sensual gratification: \u201cI\u2019d have nothing to regret.\u201d But with his publisher under police protection, Houellebecq must surely regret the manner in which his darkly clever and funny book has become another succ\u00e8s de scandale."} -{"text":"Two worlds collide in Mario + Rabbids\u00ae Kingdom Battle!\n\nThis game is available for purchase exclusively on Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch.\n\nGold Edition includes game and season pass:\n\n8 new solo challenges + 5 co-op maps\n\n16 new weapons.\n\nAn exclusive world featuring a new hero, coming in early 2018.\n\nThe Mushroom Kingdom has been torn apart by a mysterious vortex, transporting the chaotic Rabbids into this once-peaceful land. To restore order, Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Yoshi must team up with a whole new crew: four Rabbids heroes!\n\nTogether, they will battle with weapons through four worlds filled with combat, puzzles, and unpredictable enemies. Developed exclusively for the Nintendo Switch\u2122 system, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is the best of the Mario and Rabbids franchises, combining all that you love about Mario's iconic universe with the side-splitting antics of the Rabbids."} -{"text":"Image caption Harry Redknapp said two men fell on their knees and began pulling at his trouser legs\n\nTottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp has revealed he was mugged while attending a football match in Spain on Thursday.\n\nRedknapp, 63, was in Madrid to see the Spanish capital's two main teams, Real and Atletico, play in the Copa del Rey.\n\nHe said two men fell to their knees in front of him and tugged at his trouser legs to distract him while four others took money and items from his pockets.\n\nRedknapp said he did not report the incident to police.\n\nHe said he was at the match with his assistant manager Kevin Bond and had to borrow money from him to pay for a taxi back to his hotel and for dinner before returning to London.\n\n'Got some sweets'\n\nThe former Portsmouth and West Ham manager said: \"I'm walking round the outside of the stadium, it's a fantastic atmosphere, there's all little stalls there selling sweets.\n\nI just probably looked stupid or something Harry Redknapp\n\n\"I got some sweets, me and Kevin, and it was so packed. The next thing there's two guys on their knees in front of me and I felt someone pull my overcoat.\n\n\"I thought 'what are you doing?'. The next thing he's got my keys on the floor.\n\n\"I thought 'is he a blind man or someone having trouble walking properly?' What are they doing, these two blokes?\n\n\"I'm going 'let go of my trousers', pushing them away. While I'm doing that they're rifling my pockets, there were about six of them. And then they went.\n\nImage caption The Spurs manager was in Spain to watch Real Madrid beat Atletico Madrid\n\n\"I thought 'what are they doing?' I went to put my hand in my pockets and realised what they'd done.\n\n\"They took everything. All my money, credit cards, everything really.\"\n\nThe Spurs manager said he did not believe the muggers knew who he was.\n\n\"I just probably looked stupid or something, and they thought 'here's one here, he's not Spanish, obviously and we're looking for a foreigner'.\"\n\nReal Madrid won the match at Atletico's Vicente Calderon Stadium 1-0. Redknapp said the incident unsettled him and he left about 15 minutes before the end of the game, which he attended to watch potential transfer target Diego Forlan, the former Manchester United striker."} -{"text":"Image caption Mr Eastwood said if the 90,000 people who voted in the Brexit referendum turn out in March we wouldn't be 'hurtling towards direct rule'\n\nThe SDLP leader has urged the public to turn out for March's assembly elections in the same numbers as the EU referendum in June.\n\nColum Eastwood said if voter turnout was as high as it was for Brexit it could avoid the collapse of Stormont and a lengthy period of direct rule.\n\nThe referendum saw 63% of the electorate in Northern Ireland voting.\n\nThat was eight percentage points higher than the turnout for the Stormont election the previous month.\n\n'Alternative power-sharing government'\n\nMr Eastwood told the BBC he believed that a higher turnout on 2 March would increase the chances of a change to the status quo.\n\nSpeaking to the Inside Politics programme, he argued that his party and the Ulster Unionists had shown they could work together in a spirit of co-operation, but acknowledged they would need other parties to form an alternative power-sharing government together.\n\nMr Eastwood said that next month's election presented a \"major opportunity\" to change local politics.\n\nImage caption 62.7% of the electorate voted in the referendum, 8% higher than the turnout for the May's Stormont election\n\n\"If you take the 90,000 people who voted in the Brexit referendum but didn't vote in the May election,\" he argued, \"if those people came out, then you'd have a very different type of politics.\n\n\"We wouldn't be hurtling towards direct rule that we might not come back from. We'd be able to form a government on day one despite all the differences and all of the challenges.\"\n\n'Full transparency'\n\nThe SDLP leader said he wrote some weeks ago to the Secretary of State James Brokenshire asking him to name a date for the publication of party political donations.\n\nPreviously the SDLP had opposed full transparency over donations, but Mr Eastwood said that in the wake of the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal it is right that the current rules should change.\n\nThe SDLP leader said it is unfortunate that the DUP has not revealed the identity of an English organisation which helped fund its Brexit referendum campaign.\n\nQuestioned about the Irish government's opposition to the idea of special designated status for Northern Ireland within the EU, Mr Eastwood said he didn't care about the \"semantics\" of what any special measures are called, but supports protection for citizens, businesses and communities who will be disadvantaged as a result of Brexit.\n\nImage caption On reforming the petition of concern, Mrs Long argued that neither the DUP nor Sinn F\u00e9in have been genuine in their approach.\n\n'About policy, not people'\n\nMeanwhile, the Alliance leader Naomi Long has said she will not base her decision on joining a future Stormont executive on whether Arlene Foster is nominated again as first minister.\n\nBoth Sinn F\u00e9in and the SDLP have said they would not be prepared to participate in an executive led by Mrs Foster before she is cleared of responsibility by the public inquiry now examining the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal.\n\nHowever, if Alliance is approached to take a department it will not be taking a similar line as Mrs Long believes any decision \"should not be about people or personalities, but rather about policy and practice\".\n\nOn reforming the petition of concern, Mrs Long argued that neither the DUP nor Sinn F\u00e9in had been genuine in their approach.\n\nShe told Inside Politics the assembly must continue to have protection mechanisms for minorities and she believes Arlene Foster's suggestion that the petitions of concern could be abolished is in order to have \"no restraint on the DUP's ability, or unionists' collective ability to simply override nationalist opinion.\"\n\nOn the RHI scandal, the Alliance leader said the publication of the names of RHI recipients of the scheme would only be meaningful if it happened in conjunction with the release of the names of donors to political parties in Northern Ireland."} -{"text":"What do you want done with your body after you die?\n\nIt is an unnerving but important question, and for most Americans there have long been only two obvious choices: burial or cremation.\n\nBut a third option, a liquefaction process called by a variety of names \u2014 flameless cremation, green cremation or the \u201cFire to Water\u201d method \u2014 is starting to gain popularity throughout the United States.\n\nThis week, California became the 15th state to outline commercial regulations for the disposal of human remains through the method, chemically known as alkaline hydrolysis.\n\nIt may seem markedly different from the traditional means of digging graves or burning the dead. A machine uses a chemical bath to dissolve protein, blood and fat, leaving only a coffee-colored liquid, powdery bone and any metal implants, like dental fillings."} -{"text":"Mueller Turns Up The Heat With Unusual Search Warrant In Russia Probe\n\nEnlarge this image toggle caption Alex Wong\/Getty Images Alex Wong\/Getty Images\n\nFederal prosecutors have lots of ways to intensify pressure on the people they're investigating, from early morning FBI raids to leaning on relatives of those under government scrutiny.\n\nBut even by those measures, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in last year's presidential election is moving with unusual speed and assertiveness, according to half a dozen legal experts following the probe.\n\nConsider disclosures that FBI agents executed a search warrant last month for business and tax records at the suburban Virginia home of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. That step would have required them to prove to a judge that there's probable cause a crime has been committed.\n\nKenneth Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel frequently criticized for alleged overreach by then-President Bill Clinton, never utilized search warrants, two members of the team told NPR. Neither did the special counsel investigating the leak of a CIA operative's identity in the George W. Bush administration, said William Jeffress, a Washington attorney who represented White House aide Lewis \"Scooter\" Libby in that probe.\n\n\"A search warrant in a case like this is highly unusual,\" Jeffress said.\n\nLawyers said the special counsel may have been motivated to use a search warrant over concerns that evidence might be concealed or destroyed, which sometimes happens in terrorism and drug trafficking cases. Or, they said, Mueller may have been moving quickly amid a series of existential threats. In recent weeks, President Trump has blasted the Russia investigation as a \"witch hunt\" and flirted with the idea of firing Justice Department leaders as a roundabout way to get rid of Mueller himself.\n\nTalking with reporters Thursday, the president said he was \"very surprised\" by the FBI raid at Manafort's home and said it sent a \"strong signal.\" Trump also said that the White House is cooperating with the special counsel probe even though, he said, the subjects under investigation never happened.\n\nIn any case, the Justice Department frequently deploys tough tactics with a larger goal in mind: securing the cooperation of insiders who can guide authorities through a complex investigation and help deliver bigger targets.\n\n\"I call it 'climbing the ladder,' \" Jeffress said. \"It happens in every corporate investigation,\" where investigators question clerks and assistants, and then move up to vice presidents and higher-level executives.\n\nA spokesman for Manafort, Jason Maloni, said he is responding to government inquiries.\n\nWhether Manafort, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn or anyone else decides to strike a deal with the government is being closely watched by people in and outside the probe.\n\nAuthorities routinely enlist relatives to try to turn up the heat. Recent media reports suggested that investigators have reached out to Manafort's son-in-law, with whom he'd entered into some real estate dealings.\n\nIndeed, several members of Mueller's 16-lawyer special counsel team have a long history of approaching lower-level figures, including spouses and in-laws, to build bigger cases.\n\nTake Andrew Weissmann, a special counsel lawyer who once led the Justice Department's Enron Task Force. Prosecutors looking to uncover and punish fraud at that defunct energy company famously threatened to charge the wife of the company's chief financial officer with tax offenses if he did not agree to plead guilty and testify against his corporate superiors. The finance official, Andrew Fastow, refused. So, authorities indicted his wife, Lea. They both served prison time.\n\nA more recent addition to the special counsel team, Greg Andres, helped bring to justice the Bonanno crime family boss as a young mob prosecutor in Brooklyn, N.Y. Through the course of the trial, Andres helped unravel dozens of crimes over three decades, using federal agents and members of the crime family as narrators. One of his key witnesses was the brother-in-law of the defendant, Joseph Massino.\n\n\"The story principally was told from the vantage point of those involved in the crimes at issue and their credibility was a crucial issue,\" Andres told the publication Law360 last year.\n\nAndres so got under the skin of the mobsters that one later testified he had been targeted for a \"hit.\""} -{"text":"Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Jose Manuel Barroso: \"Without the EU Britain will have less influence\"\n\nThe UK would have \"zero\" influence if it voted to leave the EU, the outgoing president of the European Commission has said.\n\nJose Manuel Barroso said Britain could not negotiate with the US and China \"on an equal footing\" on its own.\n\nHe also said free movement of people within the EU was an \"essential\" principle that could not be changed.\n\nConservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said Mr Barroso was \"out of touch\" and an \"unelected bureaucrat\".\n\nMr Barroso was asked about Prime Minister David Cameron's stated intention to negotiate a better deal for the UK in Europe, ahead of an in\/out referendum.\n\nThe prime minister has said he will \"not take no for an answer\" and \"get what Britain needs\" on the question of freedom of movement.\n\n'One last go'\n\nIf the Conservatives remain in power, a referendum would be held by 2017, Mr Cameron has said.\n\nSpeaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Barroso, whose term of office ends this month, said he believed Mr Cameron wanted Britain to remain in the EU.\n\n\"Britain is stronger in the European Union,\" Mr Barroso said, pointing to the Ebola crisis as an area where Britain would not have the same level of influence if it was outside the EU.\n\n\"David Cameron wrote to all of us about Ebola... What would be the influence of a prime minister of Britain if it was not part of the European Union?\n\n\"His influence would be zero.\"\n\nMr Cameron has said he wants to curb migration within the EU and last week pledged to have \"one last go\" at renegotiating the rules for Britain.\n\nThe Conservatives lost the recent Clacton by-election to the UK Independence Party, which wants the UK to leave the EU.\n\nImage caption Conservative chairman Grant Shapps said Britain had negotiated \"lots of impossible things\" from the EU\n\nMr Barroso would not comment on a report in the Sunday Times that the government could limit the number of national insurance numbers given to low-skilled immigrants.\n\nBut he said that while the EU was willing to discuss benefit fraud and sham marriages, an \"arbitrary cap\" on migration would \"not be in conformity with European rules\".\n\nHe said Mr Cameron had previously asked him to enforce the free movement principle between Spain and Gibraltar.\n\nMr Barroso said 1.4 million Britons lived elsewhere in the EU and it was a \"matter of fairness\" that other EU citizens had the same rights.\n\nHe also criticised comments by Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond last week that Britain was \"lighting a fire under the European Union\" with the proposed referendum.\n\n'Slap-down'\n\nMr Barroso said: \"I'm told the foreign secretary was the former minister of defence. I think this reference to fire and weapons is more appropriate for defence than foreign secretary.\n\n\"It is very important to have a positive tone regarding these issues between Britain and the EU.\"\n\nBBC political correspondent Matt Cole said this was a \"bit of a slap-down\" for Mr Hammond although Jean-Claude Juncker would shortly be taking over as commission president.\n\nAnalysis\n\nImage copyright Reuters\n\nBy BBC political correspondent Ben Wright\n\nThese comments are definitely unhelpful - and a window into Brussels thinking.\n\nBut Jose Manuel Barroso is on his way out - he's the outgoing president and a whole new commission will take over next month.\n\nAnd in several areas where David Cameron wants to renegotiate, he has allies in Europe.\n\nOn restricting benefits that EU migrants can claim, his concern is shared in several capitals - most importantly Berlin.\n\nI think there is some support for returning powers from Brussels to national governments.\n\nBut the big hurdle is this question of free movement of existing EU citizens which Mr Cameron is now talking about - even though we don't have a clear policy proposal from the government.\n\nA change of treaty would be impossible, I think.\n\nThere could be an attempt to change the directive that puts the freedom into practice but that would require agreement by EU leaders and the parliament.\n\nThe incoming commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has said he is prepared to make a \"fair deal\" with Britain. But it won't be at any price.\n\n'Total free movement'\n\nMr Shapps said Mr Barroso had \"dismissed\" the UK, adding: \"If he can dismiss us... then every other country in the EU ought to look out because apparently no country means anything to him.\"\n\nSpeaking on the BBC's Sunday Politics, Mr Shapps said \"a whole bunch of things\" needed to change in the EU, of which immigration control was \"one of the important ones\".\n\nImage copyright PA Image caption The government wants to get net migration below 100,000 a year\n\nHe said: \"[Mr] Barroso is only the latest person from Europe to tell us we will never get what we want.\"\n\nMr Shapps said \"there are lots of impossible things that we have negotiated\" including a cut to the EU budget.\n\nUKIP leader Nigel Farage said there was no way of limiting European migration while the UK remained an EU member.\n\n\"Do not take Mr Barroso's comments on their own,\" he said. \"Everyone in Brussels... says the same thing.\n\n\"We are committed by treaty - we have been since 1973 - to total free movement of peoples within the European Union.\"\n\nNon-negotiable\n\nThe level of net migration stands at more than twice the government's target of 100,000 a year.\n\nInternational Development Secretary Justine Greening told Sky's Murnaghan programme: \"Free movement of labour was never meant to be an unqualified principle, irrespective of how it might have worked on the ground.\n\n\"We do need to see action taken in relation to negotiation with the EU.\"\n\nShe said the government was \"taking a fundamental look at some of the rules that allow unrestricted immigration\".\n\nEurosceptic Conservative MP John Redwood said he understood work had been going on \"for some time\" to come up with ways to limit migration from the EU.\n\nBut the BBC's Mark Mardell said a senior Brussels source had told him Mr Cameron's plan was \"complete nonsense legally and economically\".\n\nMats Persson, director of Open Europe, a think tank that calls for EU reform, said free movement was \"the most basic principle perhaps of European Union membership, so you are effectively saying to the EU 'we want to renegotiate one of your founding principles'\"."} -{"text":"0\n\nSince we started our IMAX screening series, we\u2019ve mostly been focused on the newest movies about to be in theaters. While I love promoting new movies, when I first pitched the idea to IMAX for this series, the goal was to show both new and older films and balance the two. The fact is, while I love IMAX, the only negative about the format is that once a film is out of theaters, it\u2019s extremely rare to be able to see it again on their massive screens. Which is why showing older films in our screening series is just as important to me as showing the newest release.\n\nAnd this brings me to our next IMAX screening: TRON: Legacy.\n\nOn Tuesday, February 28 at 7pm, we\u2019re going to be showing TRON: Legacy for the first time in laser projection and in 3D! Back in 2010, when Legacy was first in theaters, laser projection was still in development.\n\nFollowing the screening, I\u2019ll be moderating an extended Q&A with director Joseph Kosinski where we will go in depth about the making of the film, the amazing Daft Punk soundtrack, and so much more.\n\nI\u2019m a huge fan of Tron and the world Steven Lisberger created in the early 80s. I\u2019ve probably watched the film more times than I care to admit and showing TRON: Legacy has been on my wish list for our IMAX screening series since it first started.\n\nSo if you\u2019d like to see TRON: Legacy in IMAX 3D and watch our Q&A with Joseph Kosinski you need to click this link to enter for tickets. We\u2019ll be accepting requests until February 23rd and soon after we\u2019ll contact the people that won with exact details about the screening.\n\nGood luck and hope to see you there!"} -{"text":"But it is not so simple. The final weeks in a war zone are often the most dangerous, as weary troops get sloppy or unfocused. Once they arrive home, alcohol abuse , traffic accidents and other measures of mayhem typically rise as they blow off steam.\n\nWeeks later, as the joy of return subsides, deep-seated emotional or psychological problems can begin to show. The sleeplessness , anxiety and irritability of post-traumatic stress disorder , for instance, often take months to emerge as combat veterans confront the tensions of home and the recurring memories of war.\n\nPhoto\n\nIn their new normal, troops must reconnect with children, adjust to more independent spouses and dial back the hypervigilance that served them well in combat \u2014 but that can alienate them from civilians.\n\n\u201cThe hardest part for me is, I guess, not being on edge,\u201d said Staff Sgt. Francisco Narewski, a father of three who just completed his second deployment. \u201cI feel like I need to do something, like I need to go on mission or I need to check my soldiers. And I\u2019m not.\u201d\n\nFor the First Battalion, 87th Infantry out of Fort Drum, N.Y., which recently finished a yearlong tour, leaving Afghanistan proved as deadly as fighting in Afghanistan. In the first 11 months of deployment, the battalion lost two soldiers, both to roadside bombs. During the next month, it lost two more, neither in combat.\n\nOn March 9, the day before he was scheduled to leave Kunduz, Specialist Andrew P. Wade, 22, was accidentally shot and killed by a friend who was practicing a drill with his 9-millimeter pistol inside their tent.\n\nThree weeks later, Specialist Jeremiah Pulaski, who had returned from Afghanistan in February, was shot and killed by a police officer after he shot and wounded a man outside a bar in Arizona . He was 24.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nBoth soldiers were considered among the best in the battalion. Specialist Wade, a whiz with a soccer ball, was a member of the elite scouts platoon and on a fast track to promotion. Specialist Pulaski could be quick to use his fists in an argument but was revered for his fearlessness on the battlefield.\n\nSpecialist Pulaski was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor for dashing across an open field during an ambush in December, drawing enemy fire away from his platoon. Later that same day, he killed several insurgents as they were trying to ambush his unit near a village called Haruti.\n\nPhoto\n\nCaptain Bonenberger, Specialist Pulaski\u2019s company commander, said the soldier saved his life twice that day \u2014 and it gnawed at him that he had been unable to return the favor.\n\n\u201cWhen he was in trouble, he was alone,\u201d Captain Bonenberger said. \u201cWhen we were in trouble, he was there for us. I know it\u2019s not rational or reasonable. There\u2019s nothing logical about it. But I feel responsible.\u201d\n\nFinal Weeks\n\nIn Kunduz and Baghlan Provinces, war defied the usual rhythms last winter. American forces typically hunker down in the cold months to await the spring fighting season. But from October to January, American, German and Afghan forces cleared several major insurgent strongholds.\n\nBy February, the Afghan police were conducting regular patrols alone into places they had refused to visit without American forces just weeks before: Gor Teppa, Chardara and Aliabad in Kunduz, and Dahana-i-Ghori and the Golden Triangle north of Pul-i-Khumri in Baghlan.\n\nEven a slice of Dasht-i-Archi, where the stoning of an adulterous couple last year became a worldwide symbol of the Taliban \u2019s resurgence, was cleared of mines and insurgent checkpoints.\n\nAmerican intelligence officers say scores of insurgent fighters were killed and as many as 300 laid down their arms or switched sides. Cellphone towers that had been shut down nightly by the Taliban started running 24 hours a day. A radio station that played rock music returned to the air. Commerce revived along roads once too dangerous to travel.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nThrough the winter campaign, only a handful of American soldiers were wounded, and none died.\n\n\u201cThe police are more capable today than they were a year ago,\u201d said Lt. Col. Russell Lewis, the battalion commander. \u201cThey are going places they haven\u2019t been in years.\u201d\n\nPhoto\n\nStill, there was much debate among American soldiers over whether the stability would last. Had insurgent forces melted away simply to regroup for a spring offensive? Would the insurgents who switched sides remain allies? Many soldiers had doubts.\n\nThen came a series of attacks that made it clear the insurgents were not gone. In early February, the governor of Chardara District was killed by a suicide bomber just hours after a visit with Colonel Lewis. Two weeks later, a bomber detonated a powerful device in Imam Sahib, killing 30 people, most of them civilians. And in early March, another suicide bomber assassinated the police chief of Kunduz Province, Gen. Abdul Rahman Saidkhail, outside his heavily guarded office.\n\nGeneral Saidkhail had been aggressive in pursuing Taliban commanders and cajoling their fighters to switch sides. To American officers, his death was a blow to the government of President Hamid Karzai and an ominous indication of what lay ahead for Kunduz Province.\n\n\u201cWhatever chapter has been written is now finished,\u201d Captain Bonenberger recalled thinking when he heard about the general\u2019s death. \u201cThe book is lying on the table and that\u2019s it. What\u2019s done is done.\u201d\n\nJourney Home\n\nThe string of winter operations against the Taliban had given many soldiers a sense of accomplishment that was missing in the fall, when morale, like the temperature, was sinking. By the end of the tour, spirits were high and pranksters were afoot, hogtying officers in their beds and stealing clothing from showering soldiers.\n\nBut there was also a more solemn sense among soldiers that they would return home altered by their year away.\n\nSpecialist Alan Bakula, 22, had seen the exhilarating highs and shattering lows of combat. One of the battalion\u2019s steadiest fighters, he earned two Purple Hearts and an Army Commendation Medal with Valor in several major firefights.\n\nPhoto\n\nBut he had also been shot through the ankle and hit by shrapnel in the elbow and the face. He had also seen one good friend, Specialist Matthew Hayes, lose his leg to a mine and another, Specialist Wade, killed in an accident. By the end of the deployment, he had lost his taste for battle and was ready to trade the Army for college.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\n\u201cGetting injured a few times definitely changes your perspective a little bit, makes you feel a little less bulletproof,\u201d he said in Kunduz.\n\nSpecialist Billy Moody, 26, wondered whether he could ever talk openly to friends about the close calls he had seen: rocket-propelled grenades that just missed, accurate mortar rounds that somehow failed to explode.\n\nHe detailed those experiences in a notebook that he planned to share with his wife and family, but no one else.\n\n\u201cSome stuff, people just don\u2019t \u2014 they wouldn\u2019t really believe or appreciate,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope people don\u2019t ask me that kind of stuff, and then after I tell it to them, they think I\u2019m exaggerating.\u201d\n\nJust getting the battalion\u2019s nearly 800 soldiers home was far from simple. It would take a month, along with dozens of helicopters, military cargo planes and commercial jets, to move them the 6,500 miles from Kunduz through Mazar-i-Sharif and Kyrgyzstan to Watertown, N.Y.\n\nOn his final flight home, Private Stevenson, 20, fantasized about the freedoms he would soon taste again: texting anyone anytime, wearing blue jeans and T-shirts, taking his little brother to the zoo. Being alone.\n\nPhoto\n\nHis deployment had been a mixed bag. After getting into an argument with a higher-ranking soldier, whom he half-heartedly threatened to kill, he lost a rank. But he had also performed well under pressure.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nWhile driving his platoon leader on a mission last fall, his truck hit a powerful mine that blew off its rear end and flipped it over. Private Stevenson was the first out and helped the three other passengers, including his lieutenant, escape. He earned a Purple Heart after sustaining a back injury and a possible concussion in the explosion.\n\nAs the plane approached New York, he was thinking about his next big challenge. His fianc\u00e9e was pregnant, and he was so excited by the prospect that he planned to buy baby furniture and diapers as soon as he got home. More than ever, he thought he should get out of the Army and try college.\n\nHe had never known his own father and had lived on the streets of Port Arthur, Tex., as a teenager after his mother died of AIDS . \u201cI know I\u2019m not ready\u201d to be a father, he mused. But he wanted badly to try.\n\nNewsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.\n\n\u201cI want to be there for my kid\u2019s first steps; I want to be there for his first bicycle accident,\u201d he said. \u201cI kind of think the Army is not for me, family-wise.\u201d\n\nReunions\n\nA wet snow was falling as Sergeant Narewski\u2019s charter DC-10 touched down at Wheeler-Sack Army Airfield in March. It was just after midnight, and the air was colder than it had been in Afghanistan. But he bounded off the plane beaming like a boy heading into summer vacation.\n\n\u201cI love America,\u201d he shouted as he sprinted to the terminal.\n\nHis unit went through customs, turned in weapons and received safety briefings on base speed limits, malaria pills and mental health counseling. Then they waited. Finally, at 6 a.m., they boarded yellow school buses and headed to the Fort Drum gymnasium.\n\nPhoto\n\nIn the bleachers sat his wife, Christina, with their three children. She had risen at 1 a.m. to apply her makeup, shimmy into a tight dress bought just for this occasion and hustle the children into front-row seats.\n\nAs the soldiers marched into the gym, she craned anxiously in search of her husband, squirming with impatience as they croaked their division\u2019s song out of key. She kicked off her high heels, and as soon as a commander shouted \u201cDismissed!\u201d she sprinted across the hardwood floor.\n\n\u201cEverybody was laughing at me, but I ran,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s all I remember, is running.\u201d\n\nFor minutes, time enough for some couples to hug and leave, she buried herself in Sergeant Narewski\u2019s broad arms, whimpering. \u201cJust to have him hold you or be in his arms again is just the greatest,\u201d she said. \u201cYou think about that not happening while he\u2019s gone.\u201d\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nThis second deployment of his had been harder than she anticipated, and she had begun taking medication to calm her nerves. To her delight, Sergeant Narewski, 31, accepted a drill sergeant assignment at Fort Jackson, S.C., a two- to three-year tour with no deployments.\n\nBeing a drill sergeant would be good for his career, the sergeant said. But inside, he was still thinking about leading soldiers into combat. \u201cI love it,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to miss it. I miss it already.\u201d\n\nFor Sgt. Tamara Sullivan, 32, there was nothing about Afghanistan she would miss. For days after arriving in Kunduz a year ago, she cried at the thought of not seeing her children, ages 4 and 2. The experience taught her a lesson about emotions, one she learned to apply with iron discipline.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s something that you just have to learn how to turn off and on, like a light switch,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like it made me less of a mother because I learned how to shut it off. I think it made me a better soldier.\u201d\n\nPhoto\n\nNow she was finally home, looking lost as she searched the crowd for her husband, Tim, who had come without the children from North Carolina , where the couple have a home. Suddenly he appeared, and they embraced awkwardly before rushing to find her bags.\n\nShe had been thinking for days about how this deployment might change their family dynamic. Tim had learned to be a single parent and was so comfortable in the job that she wondered whether he was prepared to give it up.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m ready to come back home and jump back in, you know, where I left it, do my mommy role,\u201d she said before leaving Afghanistan. \u201cJust shoo him out of the way. I\u2019m pretty sure he\u2019ll be a little, you know, like, \u2018Wait a minute, I used to do it this way.\u2019 \u201d\n\nBut she would have to wait to test those waters. She was scheduled to transfer to Fort Gordon, Ga., in October, but until then, Tim and the children would remain in North Carolina. Except for occasional weekends, they would be apart for another six months.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nStill in her uniform, she took Tim to the airport and then went shopping at Wal-Mart . On a 3-by-5 card, she had neatly listed items she needed for her new apartment near Fort Drum: linens, a frying pan, food for one. She filled two carts and headed home.\n\nIn her second-floor home, she began unpacking boxes of paperback books, unused uniforms and crayon drawings from her children. Without the children, it had been a subdued, almost joyless homecoming. But she seemed content in her solitude. The Army is her career, and a good one, she told herself. She just needed to be patient.\n\n\u201cAs long as my children are happy, as long as I know their education is set for, then I\u2019m good,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll just keep doing this as long as I have to.\u201d\n\nPhoto\n\nSergeant Keith\u2019s homecoming was surprisingly boisterous, even without his wife and son. His parents, grandfather, brother, nieces and nephews greeted him at the gymnasium, then accompanied him to a new apartment they had found and furnished for him.\n\nBut when they left, he was by himself for the first time in practically a year. He took a shower, the longest and hottest in months, then crawled into a bed that felt as large as a swimming pool. \u201cI never felt more alone any time ever in my life,\u201d he recalled.\n\nThe deployment, his third in six years, had been great, and not because of the adrenaline rush of combat \u2014 he saw none of that. A fuel specialist, Sergeant Keith, 29, was responsible for making sure gas tanks were full and generators were running.\n\nSent from the battalion headquarters in Kunduz to an outpost in Baghlan, he had been left alone to do his job and loved the independence. For the first time in years, he felt proud to be a soldier, and ambitious to do more.\n\nThe deployment had clearly been hard on his wife and made him almost a stranger to his 18-month-old son. \u201cI got to work my way back into his life again,\u201d he said.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\nAnd yet, almost to his surprise, he felt a sense of lightness and liberation now that his wife had left him. He went drinking at the American Legion with friends. Maybe he would start dating. And down the line, he felt almost certain he would deploy again.\n\nPerhaps it was the clarity of deployed life that he craved. The structured routines seemed so much simpler than the messy realities of home. He could not quite put his finger on it, but he knew that \u201cnormal life\u201d no longer meant what it once did.\n\nPhoto\n\n\u201cOnce you get stuck into that environment,\u201d he said of deployment, \u201cand you do it every day, it\u2019s very, very hard coming back to the states and living a normal life. I\u2019m just having a real hard time dealing with it.\u201d\n\nHealing\n\nIn the weeks after the battalion got home, Captain Bonenberger, 33, moved into an apartment with two fellow captains and considered his future. Should he accept a teaching position at West Point or get out of the Army?\n\nPrivate Stevenson married and learned that his child, due in August, was a boy. He bought an SAT prep book.\n\nSpecialist Hayes, undergoing rehabilitation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center , visited his platoon mates at Fort Drum. To celebrate, they drank Guinness from his prosthetic leg.\n\nAnd Sgt. First Class Brian Eisch, 36, struggled to learn how to run again.\n\nA machine-gun burst had almost taken off his left leg during a battle in Kunduz last fall, and he had been flown to Walter Reed for treatment. Determined to return to a frontline unit, he would have to prove that he could run with a pack. Doctors told him to go slow, but it was not in his nature.\n\nSo after returning to Fort Drum in February, he went to the gym almost nightly, working the shreds of muscle still in his calf. When he continued to limp, his doctors suggested that he replace the leg with a prosthetic. No way, he said.\n\nAdvertisement Continue reading the main story\n\n\u201cI\u2019m trying to put on the happy face and the strong guy, but at the end of the day I\u2019m almost in tears in pain, \u201c he said. \u201cIt hurts.\u201d\n\nA single father, Sergeant Eisch was also trying to get his sons reacquainted with Fort Drum. They had spent the first half of his deployment in Wisconsin with their uncle. Now back home, Joey, 8, was dodging homework, and Isaac, 12, was having nightmares about bad things happening to his father.\n\n\u201cI explained to him, that\u2019s just your body,\u201d said Sergeant Eisch, who was having his own recurring nightmares. \u201cYour body is just trying to get rid of stress.\u201d\n\nThough he earned a Bronze Star with Valor for aiding a critically wounded Afghan police officer, Sergeant Eisch was also plagued by self-doubt. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense of me that says I failed for getting shot,\u201d he said.\n\nDoctors suggested he had post-traumatic stress disorder, but Sergeant Eisch questioned the diagnosis. He also bristled at his assignment to a Warrior Transition Unit, where he felt he was surrounded by unmotivated and overmedicated soldiers.\n\nUp and then down. He raged at the Army. Then he bought himself a new boat to go with his new truck. He bemoaned his bad leg. Then he hugged his boys and considered himself lucky.\n\nIt was like that in the Army. Hero one day, faceless grunt the next. Scout platoon sergeant in November, wounded warrior in March. He had rolled with it for almost 17 years; he hoped he could make it three more to retirement .\n\n\u201cHey, I\u2019m still kicking, and there\u2019s new motivation there,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to heal.\u201d"} -{"text":"Researchers at Johns Hopkins University will perform the US's first penis transplant in 2016, according to The New York Times. And when they do, they will be helping a soldier who was injured by a bomb blast in Afghanistan.\n\nJohns Hopkins has given its doctors permission to perform 60 of the experimental surgeries. It's unclear how high the demand is for this type of transplant, but a lot of people might end up benefitting from these operations if the researchers are successful. Between 2001 and 2013, more than 1,300 men in the US military have suffered injuries to their genitals, according to the Department of Defense Trauma Registry. Most were under the age of 35 at the time, and many lost all or a portion of their penises or testicles.\n\nThese injuries are \"as devastating as anything that our wounded warriors suffer.\"\n\n\"These genitourinary injuries are not things we hear about or read about very often,\" W. P. Andrew Lee, the chairman of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Johns Hopkins, told the Times. But these injuries are \"as devastating as anything that our wounded warriors suffer.\"\n\nThis won't be the world's first penis transplant. The first successful surgery was performed in December of last year; the recipient was a 21-year-old man in South Africa who lost the organ because of complications related to a traditional circumcision procedure. In June, his doctors announced another success: the recipient's partner is pregnant. There has been another high-profile attempt in 2006, but it ended in failure. Doctors in China spent 15 hours attaching a penis to a 44-year-old patient, only to reverse it two weeks later at the patient's request. At the time, the recipient and his wife said they were suffering from psychological problems.\n\nAs with any transplant, the risks of this operation are great. Bleeding, infections, rejections, and psychological effects could all arise; and some men may not regain complete function. But for many, the benefits may outweigh the risks. Lee told the Times that fathering children after the operation is a \"realistic goal.\"\n\nFor now, the transplant will be available only to veterans who were injured during a combat mission. The operation will take 12 hours and cost between $200,000 and $400,000; the university has offered to pay for the first surgery. For all 60 operations, the penis will come from a deceased donor. If the surgeries go well, Johns Hopkins University may decide to make the transplant a standard treatment."} -{"text":"White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the administration's budget proposal a \"Taxpayer First Budget,\" on May 23, and defended its cuts to federal anti-poverty programs. (Reuters)\n\nPresident Trump on Tuesday proposed a new process for closing numerous military bases, the elimination of government funding for public radio and television, and cuts of more than $1 billion to after-school programs.\n\nHe called to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), defund several programs that study climate change, cut research on infectious diseases and reduce the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by 50 percent.\n\nMuch of the focus on Trump's $4.094 trillion budget plan has been on the large reductions in safety net programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but there are dozens of smaller budget cuts that, in aggregate, would amount to a major realignment of the government\u2019s role in society.\n\nAside from national defense and border security, Trump\u2019s plan would put the onus on states, companies, churches and charities to offer many educational, scientific and social services that have long been provided by the federal government. This was the overriding goal in revamping numerous anti-poverty programs, prodding states to do more to limit the number of people who seek and receive benefits.\n\nTop White House advisers said that the government spends too much and that a dramatic reduction is necessary to make the government \u2014 and its presence in society \u2014 smaller.\n\n\u201cWe're no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs, but by the number of people we help get off of those programs,\u201d White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday.\n\nThe budget would also cut retirement benefits for federal employees, reduce health-care benefits for low-income children and make it harder to qualify for disability benefits.\n\nThese changes, the White House said, are necessary to eliminate the deficit over 10 years, though many critics have questioned the budget math used to wipe out the gap between spending and revenue. Because the government spends more than it brings in through revenue, the government runs a deficit, which adds to the federal debt each year.\n\n\u201cIf I take money from you and I have no intention of ever giving it back, that is not debt, that is theft,\u201d Mulvaney said. \u201cAnd if we're going to borrow money from people, we have to have a plan for how we are going to pay it back.\u201d\n\nWhite House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney defended the projection of unemployment rates in the administration's 2018 budget proposal on May 23, amid criticism of their assumptions about future economic performance. (Reuters)\n\nUnder Trump\u2019s plan, a number of the government\u2019s biggest obligations would remain intact. It would continue to fully finance Medicare and Social Security retirement benefits, which combined will account for $1.5 trillion in federal spending next year.\n\nBut myriad other programs would be structurally changed. The White House proposes reducing the size of the federal workforce (though it doesn\u2019t specify by how much) and trimming regulation in a way that top aides argue will foster more economic growth. Workforce training programs run by the Labor Department would be scaled back.\n\nCritics have raised alarms that the changes would cut the government\u2019s investment in future growth, making companies less competitive.\n\n\u201cThe budget shrinks the core parts of government \u2014 the parts that do education, research, infrastructure \u2014 to unprecedentedly low levels for a modern economy,\u201d said Jason Furman, who was a top economic adviser during the Obama administration. \u201cIn doing so, I think it would make it harder \u2014 not easier \u2014 to reach the outlandishly high growth target that the administration has set for itself.\u201d\n\nThe budget would crack down on the CFPB, an agency created after the financial crisis that is designed to ensure that lenders don't rip off consumers. It proposes reducing the CFPB's funding by $6.8 billion between 2018 and 2027. The watchdog agency is an \u201cunaccountable bureaucracy controlled by an independent director with unchecked regulatory authority and punitive power,\u201d the White House said in its budget request. The agency needs to be restructured, it said, and limiting its budget in 2018 would \u201callow for an efficient transition period.\u201d\n\nSupporters of the CFPB, however, believe weakening it will make it easier for lenders to trap borrowers with predatory loans. Similarly, the Trump budget plan would strip some money from the Securities and Exchange Commission.\n\nThe Trump administration renewed a long-held call by the Pentagon for a new round of base realignments and closures, saying it could save $2 billion per year that could be spent on boosting military readiness.\n\nThe request asks Congress to authorize the Defense Department to begin studying base realignment, with an eye toward carrying out the plan in 2021. But there could be strong resistance on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have long been resistant to base closures in their districts.\n\nThe last round of base realignment was carried out in 2005 by the administration of President George W. Bush.\n\nThe White House is also proposing to shift the way it delivers some foreign aid programs, replacing grants with loans that must be repaid.\n\nNot all of the budget is red ink, though.\n\nIn its $27.7 billion budget request, the Justice Department asked for $26 million for 300 new prosecutors in U.S. attorney's offices nationwide to support Attorney General Jeff Sessions\u2019s emphasis on targeting violent criminals and prosecuting illegal immigrants. An additional $75 million was requested for 75 more immigration judges to adjudicate removal proceedings for people in the United States illegally. About $80 million was sought to fully open an underused federal prison in Thomson, Ill., which was once considered as a possible facility to hold Guant\u00e1namo prisoners and would provide the Bureau of Prisons with 1,500 to 2,000 more beds.\n\nAnd at least one of the cuts the White House had threatened has been pulled back.\n\nThe budget would retain the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which had been threatened with virtual extinction, with $368.5 million in funding, a small decrease from its 2017 funding.\n\nIn an email to full-time employees this month, Richard Baum, the acting director of the office, said the administration\u2019s proposal for the fiscal year that begins in October would reflect \u201ca nearly 95 percent\u201d cut in the agency\u2019s budget. That appears to have been largely reversed, and the office\u2019s two major programs \u2014 the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas Program and the Drug-Free Communities Support Program \u2014 have been retained."} -{"text":"This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.\n\nNatural products with medicinal value are gradually gaining importance in clinical research due to their well-known property of no side effects as compared to drugs. Tinospora cordifolia commonly named as \u201cGuduchi\u201d is known for its immense application in the treatment of various diseases in the traditional ayurvedic literature. Recently the discovery of active components from the plant and their biological function in disease control has led to active interest in the plant across the globe. Our present study in this review encompasses (i) the genetic diversity of the plant and (ii) active components isolated from the plant and their biological role in disease targeting. The future scope of the review remains in exploiting the biochemical and signaling pathways affected by the compounds isolated from Tinospora so as to enable new and effective formulation in disease eradication.\n\nTinospora cordifolia commonly named as \u201cGuduchi\u201d in Sanskrit belonging to family Menispermaceae is a genetically diverse, large, deciduous climbing shrub with greenish yellow typical flowers, found at higher altitude.[ 1 \u2013 3 ] In racemes or racemose panicles, the male flowers are clustered and female are solitary. The flowering season expands over summers and winters.[ 4 ] A variety of active components derived from the plant like alkaloids, steroids, diterpenoid lactones, aliphatics, and glycosides[ 4 ] have been isolated from the different parts of the plant body, including root, stem, and whole plant. Recently, the plant is of great interest to researchers across the globe because of its reported medicinal properties like anti-diabetic, anti-periodic, anti-spasmodic, anti-inflammatory, anti-arthritic, anti-oxidant, anti-allergic, anti-stress, anti-leprotic, anti-malarial, hepatoprotective, immunomodulatory and anti-neoplastic activities. In this review, we focus our attention to: (i) the reported genetic diversity in the Plant (ii) biological roles reported in humans and animals and active components from the plant. (iii) biological roles reported in humans and animals.\n\nAll the reports of experiments on different model types (in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo) were taken varying from animal and human model systems. Reported data was analysed and represented in the form of figures and tables for the current review. ChemDraw Ultra 9.0 Software, Cambridge soft Life Science Enterprise Solutions was used for drawing the figures in the review. The figures of the compounds were obtained as reported in different journal sources.\n\nPublished literature on recent developments in research in Tinospora cordifolia, including original articles and papers in Pubmed and Pubmed Central Databases were taken into study for the report. Information extracted from a total of 175 published articles of which five review articles and cross references thereof were collected. The search criteria were restricted to the roles of the plant in the field of medical advancements and the effects that has been observed with different experiments.\n\nRESULTS\n\n(i) Tinospora cordifolia: A genetically diverse plant Reports on studies of morphological and physiological characters of the plant, including plant length, stem diameter, growth habit, floral morphology, flower color, stomatal density, trichomal density, lenticels density, petiole length, plant biomass, and other characteristics of the plant and diversity in the genetic components identified by markers have indicated the diversity in the medicinal plant which has profound importance for efficient and effective management of plant genetic resources. Reports using markers for random amplified polymorphic DNA,[5] and inter-simple sequence repeat primers[1,5] have pointed toward the genetic variation within the population. However, reports on conservation strategies and propagation of the germplasm are few.\n\n(ii) Tinospora cordifolia: Biological roles A myriad of biologically active compounds, including alkaloids, diterpenoid lactones, glycosides, steroids, sesquiterpenoid, phenolics, aliphatic compounds, and polysaccharides have been isolated from different parts of the plant body [ [4\u201339], ]. These compounds have been reported to have different biological roles in disease conditions thus enabling potential application in clinical research. Tinospora cordifolia extracts are extensively used in various herbal preparations for the treatment of different ailments for its anti-periodic, anti-spasmodic, anti-microbial, anti-osteoporotic, anti-inflammatory, anti-arthritic, anti-allergic, and anti-diabetic properties[6] [ ]. Table 1 Open in a separate window Open in a separate window The major biological property of Tinospora cordifolia includes:\n\nImmunomodulatory property The immuomodulatory property of Tinospora cordifolia is well documented.[40\u201342] Active compounds 11-hydroxymustakone, N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, N-formylannonain, cordifolioside A, magnoflorine, tinocordiside and syringin[6] has been reported to have potential immunomodulatory and cytotoxic effects.[13,40\u201342] They have been reported to function by boosting the phagocytic activity of macrophages, production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in human neutrophil cells,[43] enhancement in nitric oxide (NO) production by stimulation of splenocytes and macrophages indicative of anti-tumor effects.[44] Aqueous Tinospora extracts has been also reported to influence the cytokine production, mitogenicity, stimulation and activation of immune effector cells.[44] In mice, Tinospora cordifolia extracts has been shown to result in up-regulation of IL-6 cytokine, resulting in acute reactions to injury, inflammation, activation of cytotoxic T cells, and B cell differentiation.[45] Active compounds in aqueous extracts like alkaloids, di-terpenoid lactones, glycosides, steroids, sesquiterpenoid, phenolics, aliphatic compounds or polysaccharides[19] in experimental rat model have been reported for their cytotoxic action. Dry stem crude extracts of Tinospora cordifolia with a polyclonal B cell mitogen, G1-4A on binding to macrophages have been reported to enhance immune response in mice by inducing secretion of IL-1, together with activation of macrophages. Reports on Tinospora cordifolia in prevention of oxidative damage also exist.[46] The (1,4)-alpha-d-glucan (alpha-d-glucan), derived Tinospora cordifolia have been shown to activate human lymphocytes with downstream synthesis of the pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines, in vitro.[47] Synergistic effects of compounds in the immunomodulatory activity of Tinospora cordifolia are reported.[6]\n\nAnti-diabetes property The stem of Tinospora cordifolia is widely used in the therapy of diabetes by regulating the blood glucose[48] in traditional folk medicine of India. It has been reported to mediate its anti-diabetic potential through mitigating oxidative stress (OS), promoting insulin secretion and also by inhibiting gluconeogenesis and glycogenolysis, thereby regulating blood glucose.[48] Alkaloids, tannins, cardiac glycosides, flavonoids, saponins, and steroids as the major phytoconstituents[49] of Tinospora cordifolia have been reported to play an anti-diabetic role. The isoquinoline alkaloid rich fraction from stem, including, palmatine, jatrorrhizine, and magnoflorine have been reported for insulin-mimicking and insulin-releasing effect both in vitro and in vivo.[10] Oral treatments of root extracts have been reported to regulate blood glucose levels, enhance insulin secretion and suppress OS markers. Initiation and restoration of cellular defence anti-oxidant markers including superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and glutathione (GSH), inhibition of glucose 6-phosphatase and fructose 1, 6-diphosphatase, restoration of glycogen content in liver was reported in in vitro studies.[10] The crude stem ethyl acetate, dichloromethane (DCM), chloroforms and hexane extracts of Tinospora cordifolia inhibited the enzyme's salivary and pancreatic amylase and glucosidase[50] thus increasing the post-prandial glucose level and finds potential application in treatment of diabetes mellitus. The root extract has been reported to decrease the levels of glycosylated hemoglobin, plasma thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, hydroperoxides, ceruloplasmin and vitamin E diabetic rats.[51] Oral administration of Tinospora cordifolia extract in \u201cIlogen-Excel\u201d formulation (Ayurvedic herbal formulation) composed of eight medicinal plants including Curcuma longa, Strychnos potatorum, Salacia oblonga, Tinospora cordifolia, Vetivelia zizanioides, Coscinium fenestratum, Andrographis paniculata, and Mimosa pudica is reported to reduce GSH and vitamin C[51] in blood and urine glucose and lipids in the serum and tissues in alloxan diabetic rats with a subsequent decrease in body weight.[52] Decreased concentration of GSH, GPx, and SOD, catalase activity is reported in heart and brain of diabetic rats.[53] T. cardifolia root extract (TCE) has been reported to cause an increase in body weight, total hemoglobin and hepatic hexokinase[54] and lowering hepatic glucose-6-phosphatase, serum acid phosphatase (ACP), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) in diabetic rats thus having hypoglycemic and hypolipidaemic effect.[54] The protective effects of TCE were reported in presence of higher levels of anti-oxidant molecules and enzymes.[55] TCE has been shown to significantly counterbalance the diabetes-associated OS in the maternal liver by lowering the levels of malondialdehyde and ROS and the increased levels of GSH and total thiols.[56]\n\nAnti-toxic effects Tinospora cordifolia extracts have been reported to scavenge free radicals generated during aflatoxicosis.[57] It exhibited protective effects by lowering thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) levels and enhancing the GSH, ascorbic acid, protein, and the activities of anti-oxidant enzymes viz., SOD, CAT, GPx, Glutathione S-transferase (GST) and glutathione reductase (GR) in kidney. Alkaloids such as a choline, tinosporin, isocolumbin, palmatine, tetrahydropalmatine, and magnoflorine from Tinospora cordifolia showed protection against aflatoxin-induced nephrotoxicity.[57] Tinospora cordifolia stem and leaves extract has shown hepatoprotective effect in Swiss albino male mice against lead nitrate induced toxicity.[58] Oral administration of plant extracts prevented the occurrence of lead nitrate induced liver damage.[59] Decreased level of SOD, CAT and increased level of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), ALP, and ACP were observed in mice suffering from lead toxicity.[59] Synergistic administration of aqueous extract of stem and leaf along with the lead nitrate increased the activities of SOD and CAT and decreased the levels of AST, ALT, ALP, and ACP enzymes.[59] Protective role of aqueous extract of stem and leaves of Tinospora cordifolia overcoming the toxic effects of lead is shown as its effects on the hematological values.[58] Cyclophosphamide (CP) an anti-cancer drug has been reported to reduce the GSH content in both bladder and liver and lowered levels of cytokines Inerferon-\u03b3 and IL-2 an increased levels of pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-\u03b1. This effect could be reversed on Tinospora cordifolia treatment indicating the role of Tinospora cordifolia in overcoming CP induced toxicities in cancer treatment.[60]\n\nAnti-arthritic, anti-osteoporotic effects Single or synergistic formulations of Tinospora cordifolia with Zingiber officinale has been used in rheumatoid arthritis treatment in traditional medicine.[61] Tinospora cordifolia have been reported to affect the proliferation, differentiation and mineralization of bone like matrix on osteoblast model systems in vitro and hence finds potential application as an anti-osteoporotic agent. Alcoholic extract of Tinospora cordifolia have been shown to stimulate the growth of osteoblasts, increasing the differentiation of cells into osteoblastic lineage and also increasing the mineralization of bone like matrix.[62] Ecdysteroids isolated from the plant have been reported of protein anabolic and anti-osteoporotic effects in mammals. Beta-Ecdysone (Ecd) from Tinospora cordifolia extracts have been reported to induce a significant increase in the thickness of joint cartilage, induce the osteogenic differentiation in mouse mesenchymal stem cells[63] and to relieve osteoporosis in osteoporotic animal models.[63] Further 20-OH-\u03b2-Ecd isolated from Tinospora cordifolia has been reported of its anti-osteoporotic effects[62] thus highlighting the role of Tinospora cordifolia in the treatment of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.[64]\n\nAnti-HIV effects TCE has been shown to demonstrate a decrease in the recurrent resistance of HIV virus thus improving the therapeutic outcome.[65] Anti-HIV effects of TCE was revealed by reduction in eosinophil count, stimulation of B lymphocytes, macrophages and polymorphonuclear leucocytes and hemoglobin percentage thus, revealing its promising role of application in management of the disease.[65,66]\n\nAnti-cancer effects The anti-cancer effects of Tinospora cordifolia are mostly studied in animal models. TCE have been shown to have a radioprotective role by significantly increase in body weight, tissue weight, testes-body weight ratio and tubular diameter and inhibit the harmful effects of sub-lethal gamma radiation on testes in male Swiss albino mice. In pre-irradiating mice, TCE significantly affected radiation induced rise in lipid peroxidation and resulted in the decline of GSH concentration in testes.[67] Pre-treatment of HeLa cells by TCE have been shown to decrease the cell viability, increase LDH and decrease in GSH S-transferase activity.[68] Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) in TCE has been reported to stimulate the growth and proliferation of Human LNCaP cells (which are androgen-sensitive human prostate adenocarcinoma cells). Androgenic compounds in TCE act via androgen receptor.[69] Newly isolated compounds like (5R, 10R)-4R, 8R-dihydroxy-2S, 3R: 15, 16-diepoxycleroda-13 (16), 17, 12S: 18,1S-dilactone (ECD), a diterpenoid from Tinospora cordifolia has been reported for its chemopreventive potential in diethylnitrosamine (DEN) induced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in rats by decreasing anti-oxidant activities via SOD, CAT and detoxification enzymes like GSH, GPx and subsequent increase in the activities of the hepatic markers ((Serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase)SGOT, (Serum Glutamic Pyruvate Transaminase) SGPT, LDH) and decreased serum transaminase level thus confirming its anti-tumor effects and promising application as a potent chemo preventive drug for HCC.[26] The radiosensitizing activity of DCM extract of Tinospora cordifolia has been reported in Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (EAC) mice enabling tumor-free survival via depletion of GSH and glutathione-S-transferase by elevated levels of lipid peroxidation and DNA damage to tumor cells.[9,57,70] TCE hexane fraction has been shown to block the G1 phase in EAC mice and cause apoptosis by the formation of apoptotic bodies, nuclear condensation, activation of caspase-3, decreased cell number and ascites volume, increased expression of pro-apoptotic gene, Bax, and decreased expression of anti-apoptotic gene, Bcl-2.[71] TCE could induce a reduction of papillomas, tumor yield, tumor burden, and tumor weight while increase phase II detoxifying enzymes[72] in skin carcinoma animal models. The effect of a hydroalcoholic (80% ethanol: 20% distilled water) extract of aerial roots of Tinospora cordifolia on Swiss albino mice[73] revealed a significant increase in acid-soluble sulfhydryl (-SH), cytochrome P (450) contents, and enzyme activities of cytochrome P (450) reductase, cytochrome b5 reductase, GST, DT-diaphorase (DTD), SOD, catalase, GPX, and GR activity in the liver highlighting the chemopreventive role of Tinospora cordifolia against carcinogenicity.[73] In vivo anti-angiogenic activity of TCE in B16-F10 melanoma was detected by increased levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, including IL-1 \u03b2, IL-6, TNF-\u03b1, granulocyte monocyte-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and the vascular endothelial cell growth factor (VEGF), increased production of anti-angiogenic agents IL-2 and tissue inhibitor of metalloprotease-1 (TIMP-1) in the B16-F10 extract-treated animals.[74] The polysaccharide fraction from Tinospora cordifolia was found to be very effective in reducing the metastatic potential of B16-F10 melanoma cells. Markers of neoplastic development were reduced significantly in the treated animals compared with the untreated control animals.[75] Most of the synthetic chemotherapeutic agents suffer from toxic side effects.[76] The effect of Guduchi extracts was comparable or better than doxorubicin treatment.[77]\n\nTinospora cordifolia: Anti-microbial activity The methanol extracts of Tinospora cordifolia have been reported to have potential against microbial infections.[78] The anti-bacterial activity of Tinospora cordifolia extracts has been assayed against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus vulgaris, Salmonella typhi, Shigella flexneri, Salmonella paratyphi, Salmonella typhimurium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter aerogene, and Serratia marcesenses (Gram-positive bacteria).[78\u201380] In mice models, TCE has been reported to function in bacterial clearance and improved phagocytic and intracellular bactericidal capacities of neutrophils.[81] TCE has been reported of immunostimulant properties on macrophages.[82] Intra-mammary infusion of hydro-methanolic extracts of Tinospora cordifolia treatment showed enhanced phagocytic activity of polymorphonuclear cells in bovine subclinical mastitis.[39,83]\n\nTinospora cordifolia: Anti-oxidant activity The anti-oxidant capacity of Tinospora cordifolia stem methanol extracts administered orally increased the erythrocytes membrane lipid peroxide and catalase activity. It also decreased the activities of SOD, GPx in alloxan-induced diabetic rats.[52,84,85] Tinospora cordifolia Willd.(Menispermaceae) extracts possess possible inhibitors of aldose reductase and anti-oxidant agents[86] thereby reducing chemotoxicity induced by free radicals.[87] TCE has been reported of its strong free radical scavenging properties against superoxide anion (O 2 -), hydroxyl radicals (OH), NO radical, and peroxynitrite anion (ONOO-).[87] The extract was also found to reduce the toxic side effects of CP in mice by the free radical formation.[88,89] Tinospora cordifolia lowers the levels of malondialdehyde and ROS and the higher levels of GSH and total thiols. The protective effects of Tinospora cordifolia could be observed even in the fetal milieu, with higher levels of anti-oxidant molecules and enzymes.[56] Tinospora cordifolia has the ability to scavenge free radicals generated during aflatoxicosis. Tinospora cordifolia showed protection against aflatoxin-induced nephrotoxicity due to the presence of alkaloids such as a choline, tinosporin, isocolumbin, palmatine, tetrahydropalmatine, and magnoflorine.[8] A significant increase in the concentration of TBARS in brain along with a decrease in heart has been observed in diabetic rats.[53] It also enhanced formation of SOD, GPx, and GSH in liver. Treatment with Tinospora cordifolia also inhibited glucose 6-phosphatase and fructose 1, 6-diphosphatase; and restored glycogen content in liver. Tinospora cordifolia has been shown to regulate blood glucose.[90] (5R, 10R)-4R, 8R-dihydroxy-2S, 3R: 15, 16-diepoxycleroda-13 (16), 17, 12S: 18,1S-dilactone (ECD), a diterpenoid from Tinospora cordifolia has been shown to possess chemo-preventive potential in DEN induced HCC rats. Treatment of ECD in both preventive and curative DEN induced animals increased the level of anti-oxidants and detoxification enzymes.[26] An aqueous extract of Tinospora cordifolia has a radio-protective enhancing the survival of mice against a sub-lethal dose of gamma radiation.[64\u201365] Tinospora cordifolia was effective in elevating the GSH levels, expression of the gamma-glutamylcysteine ligase and Cu-Zn SOD genes.[91] Aqueous extract of Tinospora cordifolia inhibited radiation mediated 2-deoxyribose degradation by inhibiting the formation of (Fe2+)-bipiridyl complex formation to confer radio-protective effects.[92] The arabinogalactan polysaccharide (TSP) isolated from Tinospora cordifolia showed good protection against iron-mediated lipid peroxidation of rat brain homogenate as revealed by the TBARS and lipid hydroperoxide (LOOH) assays.[42] Tinospora cordifolia also has the components that decrease the recurrent resistance of HIV virus to antiretroviral therapy (ART) and improve the outcome of the therapy.[93] The effect of a hydroalcoholic (80% ethanol: 20% distilled water) extract of aerial roots of Tinospora cordifolia on carcinogen\/drug metabolizing phase-I and phase-II enzymes, anti-oxidant enzymes, GSH content, LDH and lipid peroxidation has been shown in liver of Swiss albino mice. The enhanced GSH level and enzyme activities involved in xenobiotic metabolism and maintaining anti-oxidant status of cells are suggestive of a chemo-preventive efficacy of Tinospora cordifolia.[73] Tinospora cordifolia has been reported to contain an alpha-glucosidase inhibitor, characterized as saponarin (apigenin-6-C-glucosyl-7-O-glucoside). The leaf extract had appreciable anti-oxidant and hydroxyl radical scavenging activities.[20] Pepticare, a herbomineral formulation of the Ayurveda medicine consisting of the herbal drugs: Glycyrrhiza glabra, Emblica officinalis and Tinospora cordifolia, has anti-ulcer and anti-oxidant activity in rats.[94] Hyponidd is another herbomineral formulation composed of the extracts of 10 medicinal plants (Momordica charantia, Melia azadirachta, Pterocarpus marsupium, Tinospora cordifolia, Gymnema sylvestre, Enicostemma littorale, Emblica officinalis, Eugenia jambolana, Cassia auriculata and Curcuma longa). Hyponidd administration also decreased levels of glycosylated hemoglobin, plasma thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, hydroperoxides, ceruloplasmin and alpha-tocopherol in diabetic rats.[95] Anti-oxidant activities of Dihar, a polyherbal formulation containing drugs from eight different herbs viz., Syzygium cumini, Momordica charantia, Emblica officinalis, Gymnema sylvestre, Enicostemma littorale, Azadirachta indica, Tinospora cordifolia and Curcuma longa in streptozotocin induced type 1 diabetic rats. Dihar produced a significant decrease in serum creatinine and urea levels in diabetic rats.[7]"} -{"text":"KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - A missing Malaysian airliner appears to have been deliberately steered off course after someone on board shut down its communications, Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Saturday.\n\nA week after the disappearance of flight MH370, Najib said its last transmission of satellite data came nearly seven hours after it disappeared from radar screens.\n\nBut the new satellite data gave no precise location, and the plane\u2019s altered course could have taken it anywhere from central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean, he said.\n\nMinutes after the Malaysian leader outlined investigators\u2019 latest findings, police began searching the house of the aircraft\u2019s 53-year-old captain for any evidence that he could have been involved in foul play.\n\nThe Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours of March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard.\n\nNajib, giving his first statement at a news conference since then, confirmed reports that investigators believe somebody cut off the plane\u2019s communications reporting system, switched off its transponder and steered it west, far from its scheduled route.\n\n\u201cIn view of this latest development the Malaysian authorities have refocused their investigation into the crew and passengers on board,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cDespite media reports the plane was hijacked, I wish to be very clear, we are still investigating all possibilities as to what caused MH370 to deviate.\u201d\n\nSearch operations by navies and aircraft from more than a dozen nations were immediately called off in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea to the east of Malaysia, where the plane dropped off civilian air traffic control screens at 1:22 a.m. last Saturday (1722 GMT on Friday).\n\nMalaysia said new data showed the last communication between the missing plane and satellites at 8:11 a.m. (0011 GMT), almost seven hours after it turned back and crossed the Malay peninsula.\n\nThe data did not show whether the plane was still flying or its location at that time, presenting searchers with a daunting array of possible last locations. Seven hours\u2019 more flying time would likely have taken it to the limit of its fuel load.\n\nTWO CORRIDORS\n\nNajib said the plane\u2019s final communication with satellites placed it somewhere in one of two corridors: a northern arc stretching from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, or a southern one stretching from Indonesia to the vast southern Indian Ocean.\n\n\u201cClearly, the search for MH370 has entered a new phase,\u201d said Najib, whose government has come under criticism for its slow release of information surrounding one of the most baffling mysteries in aviation history.\n\nRelated Coverage Malaysian plane saga highlights air defense gaps\n\nIndia stepped up its search in two areas at the request of Malaysia - one around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and another further west across the Bay of Bengal - but found no evidence that would indicate that the plane had come down in its waters, the Defence Ministry said.\n\nA senior military official in Port Blair, capital of the archipelago, said Indian aircraft had combed waters stretching up to 300 nautical miles offshore and overflown all 572 islands in the chain but \u201cwe don\u2019t have anything so far\u201d.\n\nIndia\u2019s Eastern Naval Command was investigating a separate rectangular \u2018box\u2019 15 km wide by 600 km long, some 900 km east of Port Blair, but had found nothing.\n\nAbout two-thirds of the passengers on board the flight were Chinese, and Beijing has been showing increasing impatience with the speed and coordination of the Malaysian search effort.\n\nOn Saturday, China said it had demanded that Malaysia keep providing more thorough and accurate information, and added that it was sending a technical team to Malaysia to help with the investigation.\n\nChina\u2019s Xinhua state news agency said in a commentary that Najib\u2019s disclosure of the new details was \u201cpainfully belated\u201d.\n\n\u201cAnd due to the absence - or at least lack - of timely authoritative information, massive efforts have been squandered, and numerous rumors have been spawned, repeatedly racking the nerves of the awaiting families,\u201d it said.\n\nThe fate of flight MH370 has been shrouded in mystery since it disappeared off Malaysia\u2019s east coast less than an hour into its scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.\n\nBut investigators have increasingly discounted the possibility of an accident due to the deliberate way it was diverted and had its communications switched off.\n\nEXPERIENCED CAPTAIN\n\nInvestigative sources told Reuters on Friday they believed the plane was following a commonly used navigational route when it was last spotted early on Saturday, northwest of Malaysia.\n\nTheir suspicion has hardened that it was flown off-course by the pilot or co-pilot, or someone else with detailed knowledge of how to fly and navigate a large commercial aircraft.\n\nNo details have emerged of any passengers or crew with militant links or psychological problems that could explain a motive for sabotaging the flight.\n\nThe experienced captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was a flying enthusiast who spent his off days tinkering with a flight simulator of the plane that he had set up at home, current and former co-workers said. Malaysia Airlines officials did not believe he would have sabotaged the flight.\n\nJapan Coast Guard pilots look out from the cockpit of their Gulfstream V Jet aircraft, customized for search and rescue operations, as they search for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 plane over the waters of the South China Sea March 15, 2014. REUTERS\/Edgar Su\n\nThe 27-year-old co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, was religious and serious about his career, family and friends said, countering news reports suggesting he was a cockpit Romeo who was reckless on the job.\n\nAs the search enters its second week, several governments are using imagery satellites - platforms that take high definition photos - while data from private sector communications satellites is also being examined. China alone says it has deployed 10 satellites.\n\n\u201cThe area is enormous. Finding anything rapidly is going to be very difficult,\u201d said Marc Pircher, director of the French space centre in Toulouse. \u201cThe area and scale of the task is such that 99 percent of what you are getting are false alarms.\u201d\n\nThe corridors given by Najib represent a satellite track, which appears as an arc on a map. The plane did not necessarily follow the corridor, but was at some point along its path at the moment the signal was sent.\n\nOfficials at Kazakhstan\u2019s state air navigation service were not available for comment while in Turkmenistan, state aviation officials referred queries to the Foreign Ministry.\n\nAfghanistan\u2019s ministry of aviation said its controllers were certain the plane had not crossed their airspace. A spokesman for Pakistan\u2019s civilian airspace authority said: \u201cWe have not received any requests from Malaysia authorities for help, nor have we any information on the plane\u2019s whereabouts.\u201d\n\nSATELLITES\n\nEarlier, a source familiar with official U.S. assessments of electronic signals sent to geostationary satellites operated by Britain\u2019s Inmarsat said it appeared most likely the plane had turned south over the Indian Ocean, where it would presumably have run out of fuel and crashed into the sea.\n\nIf so, just finding the plane - let alone recovering the \u201cblack box\u201d data and cockpit voice recorders that hold the key to the mystery - would be a huge challenge.\n\nThe Indian Ocean has an average depth of more than 12,000 feet, or two miles. This is deeper than the Atlantic, where it took two years to locate wreckage on the seabed from an Air France plane that vanished in 2009, even though floating debris quickly gave an indication of the area of the crash.\n\nAny debris would have been widely dispersed by Indian Ocean currents in the week since the plane disappeared.\n\n\u201cWe have many radar systems operating in the area, but nothing was picked up,\u201d Rear Admiral Sudhir Pillai, Chief of Staff of India\u2019s Andamans and Nicobar Command, told Reuters.\n\n\u201cIt is possible that the military radars were switched off as we operate on an as-required basis. So perhaps secondary radars were operating, which may not have the required range to detect a flight at an altitude of 35,000 feet.\u201d\n\nThe other interpretation was that the aircraft continued to fly to the northwest and headed over Indian territory.\n\nThe source said it was believed unlikely the plane had flown for any length of time over India because it has strong air defence and radar coverage that should have allowed authorities to see the plane and intercept it.\n\nSlideshow (16 Images)\n\nIt is extremely rare for a modern passenger aircraft to disappear once it has reached cruising altitude, as MH370 had. When that does happen, the debris from a crash is usually found relatively quickly, close to its last known position.\n\nIn this case, there has been no trace of the plane, nor any sign of wreckage.\n\nThe maximum range of the Boeing 777-200ER is 7,725 nautical miles or 14,305 km. It is not clear how much fuel the aircraft was carrying, though it would have been enough to reach its scheduled destination, Beijing, a flight of five hours and 50 minutes, plus some reserve."} -{"text":"The relentless attacking football implemented by Brendan Rodgers at Anfield has acted as a major inspiration for the Reds' U21s team this season, according to Alex Inglethorpe.\n\nOn Friday, the coach takes his Academy youngsters into a Barclays U21 Premier League semi-final clash with Manchester United on the back of a campaign which has featured 55 goals in just 21 outings.\n\nKick-off at Anfield is at 7.45pm BST; tickets for the Kop are available to purchase now, while the game will also be broadcast live on LFC TV and LFCTV GO from 7.15pm. Click here for details.\n\nAhead of the encounter, Inglethorpe reflected on how he and his players are inspired by Rodgers' approach and the footballing philosophy the Northern Irishman has installed at the club.\n\n\"I think it's a very clear philosophy that runs from the top,\" he explained to Liverpoolfc.com.\n\n\"We've got incredible mentors and fantastic people to look up to in the first team in the style which they have played all season, irrespective of systems, because the first team have played a few different systems.\n\n\"The style has been consistent, they want to have the ball, they want to attack, they want to press high on the pitch, they want to entertain and they certainly do that.\n\n\"They are a side which people will regularly tune in and want to watch a Liverpool match because you are guaranteed excitement and a return to the values that the club was associated with for so many years, and it's our job as an U21s team to do our best to imitate that.\n\n\"At times we've been able to do that, other times we've tried but not been successful, but that's the nature of youth football and development, but we certainly know what we are trying to do.\"\n\nWatch the video here \u00bb\n\nThe young Reds are now one step away from a final against Chelsea to determine who will be this year's national U21 champions, and Inglethorpe is relishing another date in front of the Kop.\n\nThis season at Anfield, the U21s have won four games out of five - firing 14 goals in the process - and the coach knows his young charges are keen to impress once more.\n\nHe added: \"We're looking forward to it as a group. We feel as though we've worked hard all season and it's always nice, when you get to the end of the season, to have something to play for.\n\n\"It's great because the lads have more opportunities to impress and improve and there's no greater chance than at Anfield on Friday.\n\n\"To get the chance to play at Anfield I think is everything, not just the players but for the staff as well. Anfield generates an incredible atmosphere and there's an incredible ambience about the place.\n\n\"It's a fantastic place to go and work and it does give the players that lift because it's ultimately where they want to go and play every week.\n\n\"They want to play at home, they want the ground to be full and they want to contribute to the club, so to have a little dress rehearsal before the future main event is inspirational for all of them.\""} -{"text":"Clarity is a short film project, estimated at under a half hour run time. It is currently in pre-production, and shoot dates will be in July, 2014 in the Phoenix, AZ area. Dustin Diamond and Lynn Lowry are acting in it! It was written by Jenny Brundage, and will be directed by Brian LaPan.\n\nCover Art\n\nNear Future: About one-third of North America's population has either died, or is fatally ill due to side-effects of a commonly-ingested substance. The early symptoms can be mild, and include memory loss, but eventually lead to dementia and a horrible, painful death.\n\nKrystal, a young woman, stops off for a bite to eat, on her way to the city, and is reunited with her childhood best friend's older sister, Hope, whom invites her to visit a resort for a few days to catch up. Days pass, and romantic feelings blossom between the women. The resort and its inhabitants seem more and more like home and family. Unfortunately, many of the people are fatally ill, and some of them are not as stable as they initially seem...\n\nEverybody is preparing for the punch toast at midnight... but with different drink options, and different reasons behind their choices.\n\nClick here for CAST and CREW UPDATES!\n\nCast:\n\nLynn Lowry as Mrs. Diamond\n\nLynn Lowry\n\nDustin Diamond as Dusty Diamond\n\nTo be clear, Dustin Diamond, best known for his portrayal of Samuel \"Screech\" Powers on Saved by the Bell, will be portraying a regular, nice, somewhat sarcastic guy. Ever want to see him in something serious, dark and eerie? Back this Kickstarter to get your chance!\n\nDustin Diamond, known mostly to starring in Saved By The Bell, is an actor who has hit most screens in the recent past. He played the role of Samuel Power for almost thirteen years since it began. He played the role so well that he continued the role in the college series where it went by the name, Saved By The Bell: The College Years. Other than appearing on this show, he also appeared in number of games and some reality shows. Some of the reality shows that he appeared in are The Weakest Link, Celebrity Boxing 2, Celebrity Fit Club, and Professional Wrestling. He has also appeared in films like Dickie Roberts: Former Child star in 2003. Dustin has performed stand-up comedy for several years. He has a stage humor which most comedians don\u2019t have. He also commentates on TruTV\u2019s, The Smoking Gun Presents: World\u2019s Dumbest\u2026 He has written Behind the Bell, the inside story of the young cast from Saved by the Bell. You can see him in the upcoming film Scavenger Killers (A New Kind of Crazy).\n\nE.E. King as Tia... and she's also doing the cover art!!!\n\nE.E. King\n\nE. E. King is a performer, writer, biologist and painter. Ray Bradbury called her stories \u201cmarvelously inventive, wildly funny and deeply thought provoking. I cannot recommend them highly enough.\u201d She is the recipient of various international biology and painting grants. She has murals in Los Angeles and Spain.\n\nYou might have even seen Meeting of Minds, Mural on Mercado La Paloma, Los Angeles, 2000 121\u2019 x 33\u2019. Also, E.E. King will be Artist in Residence in the Bermuda Museum of Master Artists in 2015. Did I mention she's doing the cover art for Clarity???\n\nDirector:\n\nBrian LaPan\n\nBrian LaPan--Background includes being writer\/producer on television shows, including Roseanne, Dinosaurs, Unhappily Ever After, The Sinbad Show, and Parker Lewis Can't Lose. Because of his television background, he is especially suited to skillfully handle our short shoot, work with both novices and seasoned Hollywood actors, and help Clarity become an utterly amazing film."} -{"text":"If you believed the internet, you'd think there's huge debate over whether eggs, coffee, or salt are good or bad for you. In reality, there's significant agreement on diet and health issues among experts, but the general public is conflicted. So why are we so confused when experts agree? Let's clear the air.\n\nIf you asked most people about foods that are \"good\" or \"bad\" for you, you'd get a dozen different answers. You'd find people who vehemently argue that eggs are both good or bad for you, that sodium does and doesn't contribute to hypertension, or that carbs do or don't make you sick. In general, you'll find a lot of laypeople with opinions that may or may not be based in real science. Researchers however, generally have some pretty solid opinions on these issues, and are quick to note where their own shortcomings are.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nSo where's the disconnect? In this post, we'll look at where the breakdown happens, who's to blame, and what you can do about it all. We sat down with a number of our own experts to get their input. It's going to be a bumpy ride, so let's get started.\n\nThe \"Health and Diet\" Industry Carries Much of the Blame\n\nAdvertisement\n\nAmericans spend billions on health and diet products every year. From books and meal plans to prepackaged foods and DVDs, we eat the stuff up (pun intended). It's natural to be attracted to any path that promises big results for little effort, but there's more to it. People who would otherwise consider themselves rational are often duped by marketing and half-truth statements made in the name of science.\n\nThis is where the diet industry flourishes. By taking advantage of the public's desire for practical health information, so-called \"experts\" sell us everything from juicers to supplements, convincing us the whole time we'll live forever thanks to their advice. It shouldn't work, but it does. Beth Skwarecki, a science writer and educator, explains why:\n\nWe respond strongly to warnings about danger, and promises of really awesome stuff (like health, or weight loss)\u2014but only if those warnings or promises are actionable. And with food, that really applies: We can act on a warning to avoid gluten or eat superfoods (or whatever) at our next meal or our next trip to the grocery store. It makes us feel good to have control over ourselves. I'm not a psychologist and this is just my personal opinion, but I'm sure there is research that backs this up.\n\nWhy this causes confusion: Truth and falsehoods are both presented this way. \u201cVitamins are magical substances that will make you more healthy if you are deficient!\u201d Well, yeah. That's actually true. \u201cVitamins are magical substances that will make you more healthy!\u201d Sounds similar, but it's not the same, and it's not true in most cases. Then you can substitute various other chemicals or superfoods for the word \"vitamins\" in that sentence. True claims and misleading ones sound very similar. People selling diets or exercise programs will latch on to true things that help them sell their product; they'll also latch onto false ones. Just look at Dr. Oz: plenty of what he's pushing is true, but lots of it isn't, or is misleading. Which is which? I don't know that he cares. He just needs a steady stream of things to endorse.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nWe don't mean to single out Dr. Oz here. There are a number of physicians and other medical professionals who are highly educated, but have made the decision to \"sell health.\" They may believe they're doing good, or just want to make a living. In all of those cases, the message is similar: \"Living healthy doesn't have to be hard, just do this thing\/eat this food\/buy my book.\"\n\nSelling health is only half of the job. The other half is undermining public trust in science-based medicine and traditional authorities (although they carry blame too\u2014we'll get to that in a moment) so they can swoop in to the rescue. Andy Bellatti, registered dietitian and frequent Lifehacker contributor, explains:\n\nThe food industry thrives on confusion, and it loves to propagate the notion that \"Gee whiz, one day you're told coffee is good for you, the next day you're told it's unhealthy!\" By making nutrition advice seem \"confusing,\" they attempt to gain the public's trust.\n\nIt also doesn't help that, increasingly, food companies are setting up \"institutes\" (i.e.: Coca-Cola's Beverage Institute for Health and Wellness, General Mills' Bell Institute) that are essentially PR efforts that oh-so-coincidentally frame these companies' products as healthful (or, in the case of soda, in no way problematic from a health standpoint). To make matters more confusing, these institutes have doctors, cardiologists, and dietitians on their payroll\u2014as well as key media contacts\u2014resulting in a health professional talking to media about, say, how soda is \"unfairly vilified.\" Most times, the general public isn't aware that this isn't an objective health professional choosing to say that.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nWhen we debunked stubborn exercise myths, we ran headlong into one of these groups. The \"Gatorade Sports Science Institute\" has papers explaining why Gatorade is better than water for exercise\u2014papers we saw copied word-for-word on other sites. In reality, depending on the exercise you do there's either no difference between water or sports drinks, and for most people (and for moderate exercise) there's clear evidence that water is the better option unless you're doing for bouts of prolonged exercise.\n\nAll of these tactics may seem underhanded, but they're just part of the marketing game. By playing on the public's confusion and presenting their own products as quick fixes they convince us to buy their books, follow their diet plans, and perhaps most dangerously, ignore legitimate advice and real research.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nIt's not just companies that do this though. Individuals with a message to sell also do it. Skwarecki's article, Why It's So Easy to Believe Our Food is Toxic, is an exceptional case study in this. She explains how \"experts\" take good premises\u2014like the need to take your health in your own hands and be critical of the things you eat and buy\u2014and go off the rails when the sales pitch gets involved. She calls out nutrition gurus and health \"experts\" you've likely seen reposted on Facebook, like Vani Hari (aka The Food Babe,) and Joseph Mercola, among others, who thrive on obfuscating nutrition so much that the only clear thing they do suggest is that you should buy their books, sponsored foods, and DVDs.\n\nFood industry marketing firms and \"diet guru\" salesmen both use the same tactics, and both groups make money from your fear and lack of knowledge about health. You should treat both with the same skeptical eye, even if one's message is more attractive than the other.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nCorporate-Influenced Government Writes the Guidelines\n\nThe diet industry only shares part of the blame here. Much rests squarely on the shoulders of our government. We're not talking about a political party or person. This problem extends back for over 50 years, and it's not just an American problem. Our dietary guidelines and food industries have far-reaching global impact. People in countries around the world aim to adopt a more luxurious, first-world lifestyle, and that includes all of the food products available in countries like ours. Our industry reps are at the table when writing trade agreements. Nutrition scientists however, are not.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nDietary guidelines issued by government agencies responsible for food (largely the USDA) have changed over the years. They now focus less on foods and more on nutrients, which has three big problems:\n\nA \"balanced diet\" has transformed from a selection of foods and portion suggestions into a concoction of nutrients that people have to \"make sure they're getting enough of,\" (which they would anyway with a balanced diet.) It's led the public to panic over specific nutrients and ingredients in our foods. So-called \"nutritionism\" has led to the low-fat craze, the salt-is-evil scare, and the eggs-cause-heart-disease panic, all of which have been largely refuted (with special cases excepted.) The people responsible for dietary guidelines are directly at odds with (and often influenced by) food industry groups, agricultural companies, and other businesses with a massive stake in making sure you eat the food they pack and sell\u2014and they're willing to spend politically to make sure the government recommends their products.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nJust like money can buy influence in politics, it can buy influence in dietary guidelines. Kamal Patel, director at Examine.com, a site that aims to bring relevant studies to nutrition topics, explained the connection this way:\n\nThe USDA created the food pyramid to encourage a healthy diet, but the USDA also has a mission to encourage agricultural products grown in the US. There can be a LOT of conflict between those two goals. So the food pyramid (ahem, I mean \"MyPlate\") is not simply an objective summary of the available evidence. In fact, if the dietary guidelines had to go through peer review, I'm not sure it would be accepted for publication.\n\nSpeaking of the dietary guidelines...some people are of the mindset that they don't really matter. Nobody really reads the whole guidelines document, unless you're a researcher or just really into nutrition. But the guidelines are actually hugely important. Who's the biggest provider of food in the US? It's not McDonald's. It's the US government, by far. They provide food for the school lunch program and for over a million military members, in addition to subsidizing food for people with low incomes and a variety of other groups. And that's outside the indirect effect the guidelines have on physicians, who then inform their patients, who often aren't Lifehacker types who do their own research but rather just do exactly as their doctor directs. Or at least attempt to.\n\nEqually important is the huge size of supplement industry and the food lobby. Farmers have little to no power compared to Unilever, General Mills, etc. They made it so that packaged foods are the norm, food and supplement marketing has become insane, and whole foods have lost out big time. In the beginning days of the food pyramid, they were using the slogan \"Eat Right\". Kraft used that slogan, so they told the government to stop, and they did! Companies always win. A few more examples: Government policy favors packaged foods that can display health claims (e.g. Granola bars, Lunchables) rather than natural foods that come loose or in clear plastic (e.g. strawberries, chicken thighs). Grains were originally 2-3 servings per day until food companies complained and they more than doubled the recommendation. Fruit and veggie manufacturers make very little money compared to General Mills and Unilever, so it took the National Cancer Institute to step in and tell the first-draft writers for the food pyramid that they really need to bump up the fruit and veggie intake. Even the person in charge of the first pyramid, Louise Light, wrote a book about how screwed up the process was by industry and differing interests. She said that the grain-based pyramid would cause obesity and diabetes, and it did. The people in charge told her that fruits and veggies are kind of interchangeable with grains, plus grains are cheaper for food stamps. Although few if any researchers are out to lie to the public, note that for the 2000 Dietary guidelines committee, 6 out of 11 members had financial ties to food and agriculture manufacturers. Researchers have pet projects and advocate for them, and funding and careers are dependent on that.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nWhen Patel explained this, I asked how the government\u2014probably the closest thing to a trusted resource\u2014could re-shape its recommendations. He explained:\n\nA better way to form the guidelines may be to avoid focus on individual nutrients (since few nutrients are categorically good or bad, other than manmade trans-fats which are always bad) and rather encourage whole foods. But if that message was the basis of a more simple guideline, and processed packaged foods were discouraged, where would that leave General Mills, Monsanto, and Unilever? Not that they directly write the guidelines, but they have lobbies and fund studies. And the government allows them to label Fruity Pebbles as healthy, just because they add some sprinkling of vitamins into the sugary mix. One last reason why it's good to focus on foods rather than nutrients for recommendations: single vitamins often fail in trials. Researchers used to think that vitamins E and A may protect against disease if supplemented. Dozens of trials later, it turns out that both may slightly lower lifespan or cause a bit more disease. One reason is that nutrients work in concert \u2014 eating a healthy diet where the foods naturally have a variety of nutrients is probably a better idea than relying on supplements to save you from a crappy diet. Indeed, there are no \"superfoods\" or \"supernutrients\"...it's probably more important to eat a natural diet that has some of each nutrient in addition to some healthy plant and animal components that aren't classified as essential nutrients (these are good\/great for optimal health, but not technically necessary to live).\n\nAdvertisement\n\nUnfortunately, that won't happen as long as major food industry groups play a significant role in drafting nutritional guidelines. This isn't to say they're not at all useful, but they should be viewed with a skeptical eye. Alannah Dibona, frequent Lifehacker contributor, MS in Nutrition Studies and registered dietitian, sums it all up:\n\nWe humans are experts at changing our minds, issuing inaccurate self-reports, and, well, living. Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health explains this beautifully alongside other issues with nutrition research in his latest book \"Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating.\" Dr. Willett takes care to point out another major factor: in this country, nutrition research for governing bodies is frequently in direct conflict with agriculture and its stake in the economy. The research that contributes to the USDA food pyramid, for example, is largely funded by grants from the dairy and beef industries. Thus, dietary \"recommendations\" from different bodies should be examined with a critical, research-oriented eye. The consumer must ask, \"Who paid for this?\"\n\nAdvertisement\n\nThe Media and the Scientific Community Communicates Poorly\n\nSo we've established that money talks. But surely science-based medicine must offer useful data that we can all use, right? Not quite. When I asked Skwarecki about it, she explained it this way:\n\nThe other reason there is confusion? Because there really ARE old beliefs that were held as true that are being corrected. Saturated fat is a subject with genuine controversy. Experts have not come to a consensus, but decades of public-health messages are in the process of being potentially overturned. When you hold to something as a foundation (Of course fat is bad for you! Of course stretching prevents injury!) and that belief gets challenged, you're tempted to give up on everything. It's a very reasonable thing to do: My facts were wrong, I need to reevaluate all my facts.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nThe truth is, while there's consensus on many things, there's a huge lack of it on others. Epidemiology, or the study of the patterns and causes of disease, is extremely difficult to do. Says Patel:\n\nNutritional epidemiology is a really, really tough thing to study. Harder than most other areas of health. Much harder than it sounds. Some people think \"Oh nutrition! I know about food and nutrition! That's much easier than some analyzing some obscure medication that I can't even pronounce.\" Wrong. Medication effects can be complex, but nutritional epidemiology makes that look like child's play. ... It's easy to see how the public can get mixed messages. Research results are notoriously unpredictable, since only some of the total number of studies get published. Studies have a higher chance of getting published if they show positive results, and food and supplement manufacturers can keep funding trials until one gets published. Nutrients interact with each other, so the effects of any one nutrient are hard to predict, let alone the effect of any one food in the midst of a diet comprised of dozens or hundreds of foods. So while I don't agree with everything Michael Pollen says, his message is generally on point: \"nutritionism\" is bound to fail. If you obsess about your diet and individual nutrients, you not only lose the benefit of the occasional cronut or thanksgiving dinner, but you lose the forest for the trees. Natural foods are what's healthy, nutrients and the controversies they cause are what keeps research dollars flowing and flip-flops popping up every couple weeks. It's important to get nutrients, but it's wise to get them mostly through food, and only after that supplement what you need in a very targeted manner.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nIn short, the science here is complex, difficult, and slow-moving. Patel explained that while there is consensus on some things, everyone's body is different. For every factor where there is agreement, there's another factor that influences everything:\n\nThere is a rough agreement that a balanced diet is probably a good idea. While there are some regular people who experiment with meat-only diets, macrobiotic diets, etc, most researchers are old dudes who eat normal diets and believe that veggies and fruits and whole grains are good, and red meat is bad, and some other things are in between. I'm just one person who has had the opportunity to make a career out of reading articles and grading their study quality \u2014 but I can honestly say that I don't know what is correct for sure. Gluten and wheat is bad for some people, low carb could help certain diabetics but so could a very nutritious diet, and low carb can also cause side effects in some people. Some people live long lives with \"healthy\" diets, some live long lives eating milk chocolate and fried chicken every day. For any specific nutrient, I can summarize the evidence. And for any type of diet, I can find the totality of observational evidence for it. But there haven't been many (any?) long term randomized trials of low carb, high carb, etc etc. It would be too expensive, deemed unethical, and just not logistically feasible for compliance \u2014 the primary researcher for long term observational trials (where they just follow people and collect data, not make them eat certain diets) often die in the middle of the trial, so it's quite an effort to keep a long randomized trial going that costs millions. Especially when food trials are funded at levels so much lower than pharmaceutical trials.\n\nThis is where the media comes in. Research that you hear about may be just one study designed to tackle a specific angle to a much larger problem. This is where the media (yes, ourselves at Lifehacker included) are at fault. Preliminary results published and popularized as cure-alls, rat cures touted as future human cures, it makes the public believe every miracle is a few trials away, and when it's not, people are frustrated and confused. This kind of poor communication and science reporting is a topic we've covered before in detail, and it plays a huge role in making the public's perception of science and medicine worse. As a result, it sends people running into the arms of diet hucksters and snake oil salesmen, eager to capitalize on that lack of trust.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nWe Are Predictable and Easily Influenced\n\nAdvertisement\n\nWe're part of the problem too. Our buying habits are predictable and easy to capitalize on. Our psychology is even predictable, and well studied by marketers. The power of the word \"natural\" to drive sales even though we all know it's meaningless is a good example, as is the fear around the word \"processed\" without context.\n\nThe scare over the \"yoga mat chemical\" (aka azodicarbonamide) is a good example too - we're poorly educated when it comes to science issues, don't read beyond headlines, succumb to confirmation bias, take up sides and arms in specific camps, and carry our message around to anyone who'll listen without listening ourselves.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nSimilarly, where we put our money influences who has power and amplifies their message, even if it's not backed by science. We put our money where those opinions are, and those opinions are influenced easily. The industries and companies we support grow, even as we look elsewhere in the world for examples of healthy living. Those companies in turn export our lifestyle into new markets. Unless there's strength in the food traditions in those markets, they become more like us and suffer the same illnesses we do. In the process, they lose the very things we could learn the most from.\n\nSo What Can We Do?\n\nAdvertisement\n\nBy now it may seem like we're pretty screwed. Where can you turn for legitimate advice? I asked our panel for their suggestions, and unfortunately they all agreed that we have to properly calibrate our bullshit detectors, and seek out multiple, trustworthy resources. Be ready for conflicting data\u2014if you find it, it just means the topic isn't settled. The image above, from this pocket guide to bullshit prevention over at io9, is a good starting point.\n\nYou could ask your doctor, or a nutritionist\u2014but Patel explained that's not always the best route. Most physicians get minimal nutrition training during medical school. A \"nutritionist\" could be anyone with a range of certifications, some of which can be earned in months without any real science study or knowledge. Even some registered dietitians (RDs) can unflinchingly toe the official government line just because it's easy and the closest thing we have to an evidence-backed recommendation, even though it's far from perfect.\n\nWhen I asked Patel, he suggested everyone take time to learn about nutrition science and empower themselves:\n\nIt's best to learn a bit of basic nutrition science (like from a free online course or book\u2014online courses from Udemy, Khan, MIT, etc), and then get to finding people who seem logical to discuss things with. These people can be at a local meetup, they could be a doctor or an alternative medicine practitioner or a dietician. Do not rely on Mayo Clinic, WebMD, etc. They are very conservative and go with whatever the government says for the most part. People who like food, who like cooking in particular, often eat healthy even if they don't know everything about nutrition. This is because eating plants and animals is probably the healthiest diet, rather than eating mostly packaged foods comprised of some type of flour, some type of vegetable oil, and a long list of other ingredients.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nBellatti suggests you be critical, but also don't boil it down to the old adage, \"everything in moderation.\" It oversimplifies things:\n\nThe basic principles of healthful eating\u2014eat a generous amount of fruits and vegetables, eat as little sugar as possible, prioritize whole foods (i.e.: avocados and chickpeas as opposed to Lucky Charms and Cheetos)\u2014have remained unchanged for decades. The issue of moderation is problematic because it sounds good in theory, but it has been so watered down and so co-opted by the food industry that it now means nothing. The food industry loves to use \"everything in moderation\" to state that all their offerings\u2014no matter how heinous\u2014\"fit in a healthy diet.\" Alas, a diet that includes frozen pizza, sugary cereal, soda, chips, and fast food all in \"moderation\" quickly becomes a diet where these foods, \"in moderation,\" take up the most real estate. I urge people to remain curious and open-minded, but also to remember common sense and, whenever possible, read the actual study or seek the opinion of a well-informed individual who is able to understand the studies. Sometimes, a study like \"X food lowers diabetes risk by 35%\" is based on a study where the servings needed to slash that risk are preposterous.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nAt the end of the day, the reason why there's so much confusion is because there's too much to be gained by keeping us all confused and looking for guidance. Similarly, the fact that nutrition and health science is difficult and slow doesn't engender much faith from a quick-fix addicted public.\n\nThe big lessons here though are ones you probably knew already: Eat smart, cook your own food, and think critically when someone tries to sell you a diet or lifestyle. Think just as critically when someone is trying to sell you fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Do your own research, challenge your confirmation bias, and be willing to change your mind as new evidence arises (don't fall for the \"I've done this my whole life and I'm fine\" excuse.) Finally, and most importantly, remember that what works for you may not work for someone else. Nutrition is never a one-size-fits-all science.\n\nKamal Patel is the director of Examine.com. He's a nutrition researcher with an MPH and MBA from Johns Hopkins University, and is on hiatus from a PhD in nutrition in which he researched the link between diet and chronic pain. He has published peer-reviewed articles on vitamin D and calcium as well as a variety of clinical research topics. Kamal has also been involved in research on fructose and liver health, mindfulness meditation, and nutrition in low income areas. Examine.com and Kamal are both on facebook.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nBeth Skwarecki is a science writer and educator. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, PLOS Public Health Perspectives, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. You can find more of her work in her portfolio here, and you can follow her on Twitter at @BethSkw .\n\nAndy Bellatti, MS, RD is a Las Vegas-based dietitan and the author of the nutrition blog Small Bites. You can follow him on Twitter at @andybellatti.\n\nAlannah DiBona, MA, MS, is a Boston-based nutritionist and mental health counselor, and the woman behind mindbodysportconsulting.com.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nAll four graciously volunteered their expertise for this story, and we thank them."} -{"text":"Tax and spend: Seattle outpaces other governments\n\nThe City of Seattle's operating budget has increased by 65 percent since 2000, a significantly faster clip than the jumps in spending at King County and the state.\n\nBut it still hasn't been enough.\n\nSeattle faces a $67 million deficit next year, a situation that has led Mayor Mike McGinn to propose broad cuts to next year's city budget -- including the elimination of nearly 300 jobs and reductions to the arts, neighborhoods and human services.\n\nMost governments are underwater due to a combination of rising expenses and tax revenues coming in at a slower than expected rate due to the Great Recession. However, Seattle has outpaced others when it comes to taxing and spending, according to a review by seattlepi.com.\n\nKing County's operating budget has gone up 32 percent during the decade, while its general fund revenues have increased 41 percent. The state's operating budget increased by about 53 percent in 10 years while its revenues rose by about 50 percent. The money the city gets from taxes, fees and other sources to pay for day-to-day services has gone up 67 percent over the past decade .\n\nIt's tricky to compare governments because they do different things and serve different populations. King County has fewer taxing resources and it's charged with providing services for unincorporated areas that are expensive to cover, for example. And the state's operations dwarf those of cities and counties, while Olympia lawmakers can rewrite tax and spending laws to help deal with downturns. And the state writes its budget on a two-year cycle. Seattle and King County operate on one-year budgets.\n\nSeattle, the state's largest city, has a famously tax-friendly electorate. It's rare for Jet City residents to reject a tax hike, so its political leaders are less wary than their counterparts elsewhere to reach for that option.\n\n\"The vast majority of the differences between growth at the county and the city are the revenue tools allowed by state law. The city has the ability to rely on property taxes, sales taxes, B&O (business) and utility taxes, while the county does not have the B&O or utility tax,\" said Hall Walker of Seattle's budget office.\n\nKing County relies on the property tax for the bulk of its funds. In 2001, voters passed Initiative 747, which limits property tax growth to 1 percent plus new construction. It had been 6 percent before that. \"King County's general fund revenues are more constrained than either the state's or a city's,\" said Frank Abe, spokesman for Executive Dow Constantine.\n\nWalker said there were other reasons for the discrepancy in government growth. The county removed park funding from its general fund and the Emergency Medical Services levy renewed at a much higher rate in 2007, $630 million over six years. The owner of a $400,000 home is paying $120 a year for the service. The county funnels the EMS monies into a separate account, while Seattle puts its EMS revenue in its general fund. And Seattle has raised its business and occupation tax rates and added more paid, on-street parking spaces to try to bring in more money.\n\nIn 2000, Seattle's adopted operating budget was $548 million. This year it was just over $905 million. Ten years ago the city took in $542 million from taxes and other sources to pay for its daily operations. This year that figure was about $900 million.\n\nIn his budget for next year, McGinn proposed no general tax increases. But he did suggest $23 million in higher fees and other revenue-generating proposals. The business community objected to plans to significantly raise the hourly parking rate.\n\nLast month McGinn and a coalition of city unions announced they'd tentatively agreed to forgo automatic 2 percent cost-of-living raises in future years. Previously, unions got at least a 2 percent annual bump, regardless of inflation.\n\nGoing forward through 2013, raises will track the Consumer Price Index. For next year that would mean a 0.6 cost-of-living increase and a $2.3 million savings for the general fund. Labor costs are the biggest chunk of the operating budget, and, since 2000, what the city has paid its workers in salary and benefits has gone up 58 percent -- from $733.8 million to $1.1 billion.\n\nOn Monday, McGinn, the City Council and labor leaders have scheduled a news conference to discuss potential labor savings."} -{"text":"random schedule, VI Felipe de Bourbon, became at midnight the new King of Spain, one hour after the removal of the national football team, the defending champion, the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. At 46, the young monarch was sworn in Madrid during a simple ceremony, during which he swore allegiance to the Constitution of 1978, the founding base of Spanish democracy.Modern and discreet.\n\nhe succeeded his father Juan Carlos, who on Wednesday signed his abdication. His wife, Princess Letizia, a former television news presenter, becomes Queen of Spain the same occasion.\n\nStudy Abroad, military training: \u201cHis goal, his only goal is to serve Spain. It was instilled in his heart, he must be the first servant, \u201csaid one day his mother, Queen Sofia. Its mission is to ensure the continuity of a parliamentary monarchy gradually introduced with the arrival on the throne in 1975, Juan Carlos, the hero of the democratic transition after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. Contested in the polls by a Spanish two in a country plagued by economic crisis and unemployment. Monarchy\n\n12:05. Royal Parade new king meets a great success The decorated in the colors of Spain, a convertible sedan, a king physique which has just passed his first inauguration speech \u2026 Felipe VI through no fault this morning streets handover. The people cheered.\n\n12 hours. Moment of communion with the Spaniards It declared a national holiday in Spain has allowed citizens to travel to attend the handover. Returning to the palace, the new king salutes the crowd during forty minutes to give a strong signal to his country.\n\n11h, 55. Letizia smiling and happy this crazy woman temperament, divorced once, and daughter taxi driver, who has often been described as \u201cambitious\u201d suggests his happiness to become Queen of Spain through its mine happy and relaxed.\n\n11h 50. Letizia and Felipe VI ride in the convertible Rolls to greet the crowd Felipe VI standing in convertible sedan embodies the crown in sunny Madrid. A beautiful image to create enthusiasm. Favorable to the monarchy polls back for fifteen days."} -{"text":"The story of the ExMoi occupation in Turin, a solution by radicals and refugees to the problems of homelessness amongst migrants in a city full of empty buildings, and the reaction of racist organisations to the project.\n\nThe story of ExMoi begins with two open wounds: the countless empty buildings in Turin, and the countless refugees living on Italian streets and in Italian train stations.\n\nBack in 2006, the Turin municipality and the national government spent over 140 million euros in building a new neighbourhood to host athletes for the Winter Olympic Games. This was in an area that once held the city\u2019s biggest wholesale market (MOI \u2013 Mercato Ortofrutticolo all\u2019Ingrosso). Designed by international architects and built according to the latest ecological and sustainable design criteria, the Olympic Village was finished in 20 months. It was used for around 16 days and left mostly empty after the Games ended.\n\nLittle by little, the regional government has sold off some of the buildings; some have been converted into student housing and a youth hostel. At the same time, serious structural problems have emerged, revealing the poor quality of the buildings: as a consequence, no-one wants to invest in them. The potential for regenerating the deprived Lingotto area has been squandered. Four buildings were sold off to a private holding (35% owned by the city, the rest by Pirelli and the Intesa San Paolo bank) and left empty for seven years.\n\nEven though no official investigation has been carried out, many claim that the Mafia was involved in the construction work (as has been proved the case in many other public tenders for public housing and private buildings). Many believe that quick and shoddy building for money laundering purposes is the reason for structural and other problems (the concrete is breaking up, the solar panels have never worked, countless minor pieces of heating insulation and pipework were never finished, and the paint is peeling off).\n\nIn the meantime, between 2011 and 2013, a steady stream of refugees continued to arrive in Italy. These asylum seekers were able to benefit from the ENA (North Africa Emergency Plan), an Italian government comprehensive integration project to tackle the humanitarian crisis following the turmoil in North Africa and the war in Libya. While actively supporting the Libyan war, the Italian government was unable to host the 30,000 ENA refugees properly. This programme reinforced the SPRAR project (Services for the Protection of Asylum Seekers and Refugees), providing funds to support the refugees\u2019 insertion into training placements and the labour market as well as providing access to public healthcare and to dignified shelter. These projects were lacking in many ways: they failed to teach Italian, many were set in distant locations, no social integration or any understanding of Italian bureaucracy was provided, and job training just did not take place. Some locations were simply hotels or other facilities where the refugees were forced to stay with nothing to do. The ENA ended abruptly and in March 2013 many refugees ended up on the street.\n\nSome refugees were in contact with local squatters and housing rights activists. Together, they decided to occupy the ExMoi buildings in the former Olympic Village and on 30 March 2013 about 300 refugees took part in the action. Currently around 800 people of over 26 different nationalities live at the ExMoi, in four different buildings. This is the largest, most stable and important occupation by and for refugees that has ever taken place in Italy. On 23 May 2014 UNHCR reported that \u201cthousands of refugees are forced to live in empty buildings in the main Italian cities like Rome, Milan and Turin, due to the lack and insufficiency of the projects.\u201d The ExMoi is a prime example of this.\n\nThe Refugees and Migrants Solidarity Committee is a group of volunteers which includes students, migrants, committed citizens and social activists. It is linked politically to two autonomist squats in the city, CSOAs Askatasuna and Gabrio, is also supported by various local associations and the local church, and is connected to the national grassroots housing movement. The Committee has been supporting the ExMoi occupation with the aim of providing refugees with housing after they were abandoned by the government. Since the occupation, the Committee has provided medical, language and legal care, created a school on the premises, and co-ordinated the distribution of food, furniture and other basic supplies. This is a significant development but not without precedent in Turin. Refugees were squatting in the city long before the ExMoi occupation. The movement started in 2007 with refugees from Darfur and there are currently at least eight occupied buildings for refugees (among 27 with other housing or political aims). Together, these buildings are home to more than 1,000 people.\n\nAn eight-month-long political battle, begun by refugees and the Committee, has included various demonstrations and temporary blockades of public offices in order to get legal permanent residency (Residenza) for the refugees. Permanent residency grants access to all social and health services, and (for children) to school. It is necessary to renew the Permesso di soggiorno (permission to stay) which all refugees require in order to stay in Italy. It allow refugees to have a driving licence and legal job contracts. At long last, the Turin municipality granted all refugees permanent residency which gives them access to public healthcare and allows them to sign up with the employment agency. It does not, though, grant access to social services (which is discriminatory, according to Italian legislation).\n\nIn early 2014 the Committee supported another occupation. A five-storey building was occupied, following the overcrowding of the ExMoi building complex. It currently hosts around 60 people. The internal yard has been converted into a vegetable garden run by the residents, and there is also a self-managed bike repair workshop. Formerly a nursing home managed by the local Catholic parish, today the building is managed by its residents, who take most decisions via a weekly assembly\/meeting. Ownership remains in the hands of the Church, however, which has decided to form a refugee project in order to legalise the building\u2019s status.\n\nMeanwhile the ExMoi occupation lives on. Many among the refugees are families (15% of the inhabitants are women and more than 30 children under 10 live there), some have found jobs and continue living there to support their friends. Many people have not been able to find a proper job but survive by selling metal or other materials found in rubbish bins. A community has somehow been created, with a mix of ethnic groups living peacefully together. Although there have been some minor personal clashes, life goes on, even if the structural problems make everyday living challenging: water pours from some ceilings, the electricity system cuts out, and only half of the apartments have hot water, not to mention the lack of any heating system. Despite all this, the refugees and the Committee have managed to keep ExMoi clean and working, repairing the worst problems in three out of four buildings.\n\nUnfortunately, a wave of racist reaction from the usual suspects (Lega Nord, Fratelli d\u2019Italia and Forza Italia) has managed to destabilise the situation. These parties have joined together to create a political campaign with the aim of forcing the municipality to evict the residents, who they call \u201ccriminals\u201d and \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d. Through contacts in the Turin municipality, they arranged an \u201cinstitutional visit to check the situation\u201d. Following negotiation with ExMoi, this was cancelled but a right-wing politician decided to come anyway, before being shown the door by the refugees. The far-right groups then held a racist demonstration in the area in December 2013, attended by around 50 people, mostly from Giovent\u00f9 Nazionale, the youth wing of Fratelli d\u2019Italia. They have now invited the head of Lega Nord, Matteo Salvini, well known for his racist statements and his hatred of social movements and immigrants. Thankfully, nothing has come of this. So far.\n\nFinally, in December 2014, a judge signed an authorisation order to evict the residents. It usually takes a long time for an order to lead to an actual eviction but the news made the papers immediately and right-wing parties are exerting pressure for an eviction to take place. It is highly unlikely that the municipality will use the police to evict the refugees, although this has happened in other places. In this case, both police and judges would like a peaceful solution, especially because of the large number of residents involved. It seems that the Mayor of Turin (Fassino, Democratic Party) will ask the national government for exceptional funding. The Mayor is also the president of ANCI, the association of Italian local councils, and has a direct channel to the prime minister, Matteo Renzi. This situation could have serious repercussions for Renzi and the PD.\n\nThe experience of the 2007 Darfur refugees indicates how the institutions are likely to act: ask for funding, offer a legal temporary solution to those who accept, force out those who do not comply. It is worth mentioning that the police are both the authority that has to perform the eviction and acquire all possible information to perform it, and also the authority in charge of renewing the visas the refugees need (most of those living at ExMoi have humanitarian one-year visas, which are very hard to renew).\n\nThe solution offered by the local government is quite clear: get millions of euros from national government, perform the eviction by any means, give the money to a well known association already handling refugee projects, give the association some breathing space with the funds, let the projects run for three to 12 months and then, once the money has run out and the story is no longer newsworthy, kick the refugees out again.\n\n(The associations which handle refugee projects tend to be linked to political parties or to the Catholic church. They include those recently implicated in the ongoing \u201cCapital Mafia\u201d scandal.)\n\nIn the end, money comes and goes, not into new solutions but into this well-established system, a system which is certainly not improving matters for refugees. The existence of ExMoi is testament to that.\n\nThe process will take some time to work through, due to the large size of ExMoi. Meanwhile, the right-wing parties will have an easy target for the next elections and will keep on pushing for the harshest punitive measures.\n\nThe refugees and the supporting Committee know this, and most are willing to stay and resist. In the months approaching the second anniversary of the occupation the refugees will have to weigh up the offer, if there is one, and make a very difficult decision.\n\nFor more information, see the original article here."} -{"text":"Thanks to a recent poll from ABC News and the Washington Post, we know that nearly two-thirds of American adults think global warming is \u201ca serious problem facing the country.\u201d\n\nAnd now, thanks to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change (full study available at this link), we know exactly how many people are out there taking money from dirty energy interests to try and confuse Americans about climate changeto derail overdue action and protect the fossil fuel industries' profits.\n\nJustin Farrell, a professor of sociology at Yale\u2019s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and the author of the report, studied both the institutional and social network structure of the climate denier movement and found that there are some 4,556 individuals with ties to 164 organizations that are involved in pushing anti-climate science views on the public.\n\n\u201cThe individuals in this bipartite network include interlocking board members, as well as many more informal and overlapping social, political, economic and scientific ties,\u201d Farrell wrote in the report. \u201cThe organizations include a complex network of think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, trade associations, and ad hoc groups.\u201d\n\nFarrell notes that while funding from ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have notoriously played a part in building the climate denial movement, there was very little empirical evidence demonstrating exactly how much influence these corporate benefactors had on the actual output of climate deniers and, in turn, how much they affected what politicians and other decisionmakers were saying about climate change.\n\nSo Farrell studied all of the written and verbal texts relating to climate change produced between 1993 and 2013 by climate denial organizations (40,785 documents comprising nearly 40 million words), as well as any mention of global warming and climate science by three major news channels (14,943 documents), every US president (1,930 documents) and the US Congress (7,786 documents).\n\nHe focused on Exxon and the Koch Brothers\u2019 family foundations because, he writes, they are \u201creliable indicators of a much larger effort of corporate lobbying in the climate change counter-movement.\u201d\n\nWhat Farrell found was that organizations taking funds from \u201celite\u201d corporate funders of climate denial like Exxon and the Koch Brothers \u2014 groups like the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute \u2014 \u201chave greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information\u201d than other denial groups.\n\nAfter performing a sophisticated semantic analysis, Farrell was able to show that climate denial organizations with ties to those two major funders were more successful at getting their viewpoint echoed in national news media. Presidential speeches and debate on the floor of Congress showed less of an impact.\n\nAccording to Bloomberg, Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted similar research but was not involved in the Nature Climate Change study, said that Farrell\u2019s findings beg a very obvious question:\n\n\u201cWhy is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?\u201d\n\nThat is very similar to the questions posed by DeSmog's executive director Brendan DeMelle in his coverage of Justin Farrell's other recent study on this issue: Research Confirms ExxonMobil, Koch-funded Climate Denial Echo Chamber Polluted Mainstream Media. DeMelle listed three questions for media outlets to ponder:\n\nWill this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation? Will false balance \u2014 quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote \u2014 finally stop? Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn\u2019t published any longer?\n\nImage credit: P.WOLMUTH\/REPORT DIGITAL-REA\/Redux"} -{"text":"By By Andrew Moran Jul 19, 2009 in Health In recent preliminary reports published on the internet, Baxter Healthcare Corporation applied for a patent for the vaccine that would immunize the H1N1 Swine Flu. After the application was leaked on the World Wide Web by a United Kingdom publication, justoneclickgroup, it showed that the company also applied for patents to other diseases: \u201cIn particular preferred embodiments the composition orvaccine comprises more than one antigen\u2026..such as influenza A and influenza B in particular selected from of one or more of the human H1N1, H2N2, H3N2, H5N1, H7N7, H1N2, H9N2, H7N2, H7N3, H10N7 subtypes, of the pig flu H1N1, H1N2, H3N1 and H3N2 subtypes, of the dog or horse flu H7N7, H3N8 subtypes or of the avian H5N1, H7N2, H1N7, H7N3, H13N6, H5N9, H11N6, H3N8, H9N2, H5N2, H4N8, H10N7, H2N2, H8N4, H14N5, H6N5, H12N5 subtypes.\u201d Head of Virology at Baxter\u2019s Austrian subsidiary Otfried Kistner was part of the Austrian-based team that applied for the patent for the H1N1 Swine Flu on August 28, 2007. Many countries are ordering vaccinations for the recently declared pandemic. Some countries are even making it In August 2007, Baxter Healthcare Corporation, the company developing the swine flu vaccination, applied for a patent on many vaccines including H1N1 Swine Flu After the application was leaked on the World Wide Web by a United Kingdom publication, justoneclickgroup, it showed that the company also applied for patents to other diseases:\u201cIn particular preferred embodiments the composition orvaccine comprises more than one antigen\u2026..such as influenza A and influenza B in particular selected from of one or more of the human H1N1, H2N2, H3N2, H5N1, H7N7, H1N2, H9N2, H7N2, H7N3, H10N7 subtypes, of the pig flu H1N1, H1N2, H3N1 and H3N2 subtypes, of the dog or horse flu H7N7, H3N8 subtypes or of the avian H5N1, H7N2, H1N7, H7N3, H13N6, H5N9, H11N6, H3N8, H9N2, H5N2, H4N8, H10N7, H2N2, H8N4, H14N5, H6N5, H12N5 subtypes.\u201dHead of Virology at Baxter\u2019s Austrian subsidiary Otfried Kistner was part of the Austrian-based team that applied for the patent for the H1N1 Swine Flu on August 28, 2007.Many countries are ordering vaccinations for the recently declared pandemic. Some countries are even making it mandatory now . However, since the fifty countries have ordered the vaccines , Baxter has declared that it cannot accept any more requests. Baxter Spokesman Chris Bona said, \"At this time we're not in a position to take additional orders.\" More about Swine flu, Vaccinations, Baxter healthcare group swine flu vaccinations baxter healthcare gr..."} -{"text":"At 2am on a cold winter\u2019s night in London last year I was loitering in the shadows on Furnival Street near Chancery Lane tube station with a veteran urban explorer called Lucy Sparrow. Across the street was a six-storey building with scaffolding haphazardly arranged on its facade, pinioned by a large blue wooden hoarding and an aluminium sign reading: \u201cCaution - deep manhole. Do not enter.\u201d\n\nOur fingers were going numb in the cold as we waited for a black cab parked at the end of the street to leave. It looked like he was taking a break, listening to a late-night radio show, but after what felt like hours he finally clicked on his lights and pulled away. We withdrew into the darkness as he drove past.\n\nWhen the street was empty, we sauntered across arm-in-arm \u2013 just another pair of late-night lovers out on the piss. Out of sight of a nearby CCTV camera I crouched down, interlaced my fingers and boosted Lucy over the wooden hoarding so she could quietly open an emergency fire door from the other side and let me in. The whole performance was over in a blink. Twenty minutes later, a late-night rambler might pass and have no clue that we were 60m under their feet, running through miles of empty tunnels in what was once Britain\u2019s deepest telephone exchange.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Kingsway Telephone Exchange was built as a second world war air-raid shelter\n\nI am a geographer interested in what is not on maps. Over the past six years I have spent much of my time sneaking into places closed to public access as a part of a long-term research project on urban exploration. Urban explorers \u2013 who now number in the thousands across the globe \u2013 access neglected, forgotten, closed and hidden areas in cities. Tagging along with some of the most dedicated and skilled urban explorers in the world, I have trespassed into countless abandoned buildings and subterranean tunnel systems and scaled prominent skyscrapers in dozens of cities without permission - including the Shard back in 2012, before the far more daring external summit by Greenpeace activists the following year.\n\nExplorations behind the scenes show us that a city is a beautifully threaded tapestry of wires, pipes and rails\n\nThere is attentiveness to time in everything urban explorers do: from a considered historic appreciation of derelict remains, to knowing the window of opportunity when one can scale a construction crane over the City \u2013 explorers recognise everything is temporary. Not long into my research, I was told by a French explorer that \u201cruins are just like construction sites because they reveal the city as it really is \u2013 a place of constant change\u201d. Though ruins and construction sites morph at a different rate, he argued, they both hint that the city we pass through every day requires careful and dedicated maintenance to preserve the urban stasis we all take for granted.\n\nThere is also attentiveness to space. Victorian Londoners used to tour urban infrastructure, including sewage pumping stations, curious to know how it all worked. Far fewer people today think about what happens where they flush the toilet, make a phone call, or throw something in the bin - what kind of process that triggers and what sort of physical spaces are required to make those things possible. As Alan Weisman made clear in his book The World Without Us, the time it would take for the city to begin to break down and deteriorate if we stopped maintaining it is incredibly short.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest The River Tyburn flows in underground culverts and sewers for its entire length from Hampstead to the Thames\n\nThe photography of hidden places that explorers undertake \u2013 a practice which is quickly developing its own particular aesthetic sensibility \u2013 is an attempt to create a visual mark of the present, with reference to what came before, what will come after, and how it is all connected through us. Explorations behind the scenes show us that a city is not a collection of isolated locations but a beautifully and delicately threaded tapestry of wires, pipes and rails.\n\nI\u2019ve experienced many incredible things tagging along on missions into the forbidden city, and as much as I might treasure memories of watching sunsets from the roofs of council blocks or waking up on top of bridges, it is undercity London that most piques my interest. The tangle of tunnels that keeps the city ticking are vast, diverse in function and undoubtedly the most difficult in the world to access, this being the city of paranoia and all.\n\nThe urban exploration crew I had worked with, the London Consolidation Crew or LCC, had long graduated from ruins and skyscrapers \u2013 it was the city in the city they were after, the secrets buried deep underground where the line between construction site and ruin is very thin indeed. The Kingsway Telephone Exchange was the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me, more coveted even than abandoned Tube stations or possibly even the forgotten Post Office railway we accessed in 2011.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Kingsway Telephone Exchange contained a bar for workers on their off-hours, 60m below the London streets\n\nWhen I walk the city now, I can\u2019t help but imagine it vertically as well as horizontally\n\nKingsway was originally built as a second world war air-raid shelter under Chancery Lane. These deep level shelters were, at one time, connected to the Tube and citizens would have undoubtedly taken refuge here during Luftwaffe bombing runs. In 1949 the tunnels were sold to the General Post Office where they became the termination for the first submarine transatlantic phone cable \u2013 the \u00a3120m TAT1 project. The system, meant to protect the vital connective tissue of the city in the event of terror-from-the-air (including nuclear attack), stretched for miles. It only had three surface entrances and contained a bar for workers on their off-hours, rumoured to be the deepest in the UK at 60m below the street. Although the government employed a host of people to maintain the tunnels, Kingsway was a spatial secret of state - part a trio of the most secure and sensitive telephone exchanges in Britain, along with the Anchor Exchange in Birmingham and the Guardian Exchange in Manchester.\n\nThe conversion of the air-raid shelter into the Kingsway Telephone Exchange was undertaken secretly by the government. In 1950 the tunnels suddenly vanished from the map, as did a big chunk of taxpayer money used to retrofit them. However, as the journalist Duncan Campbell wrote in his book War Plan UK, \u201cthe secrecy of the new government project did not last long - a report of the \u2018Secret Network of Tunnels\u2019 appeared on the front page of the Daily Express in September 1951.\u201d The Express later published a second article suggesting new networks were being dug under Whitehall \u2013 what would eventually become subterranean military citadels, connected by tunnels not on any map of underground London, even today. The Cabinet Office called a meeting with MI5, GPO employees and Ministry of Works officials to discuss their options for suppressing the Daily Express or leaking counter-information about the tunnels. Campbell writes:\n\nThe minutes of the secret committee, known only as MISC 379, observed: \u2018It would be embarrassing to the government if the public got the impression that deep shelters were being constructed. Either the public would think that the government were out to protect their own skins and those of their immediate servants; or the public would assume that the shelters were intended for public use in time of war and would be disappointed when they found they were not.\n\nWord of these tunnels systematically disappeared from the public eye. Then, incredibly, in 1980 the ever-tenacious Campbell \u2013 equipped with a bicycle and a camera - gained access to them and explored the entirety of the system. He published his explorations, including photos, in the New Statesman. The GPO suggested the explorations were fake and that the photos of the tunnels had been made in a studio - which obviously wasn\u2019t the case because Campbell relayed access details for the tunnels which, 30 years later, got us in.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest High-voltage electricity cables under central London\n\nAfter climbing 60m down a set of alternating ladders in a long, vertical metal cage, we emerged into a set of tunnels that smelled reassuringly neglected. Like a post-apocalyptic game show, we suddenly had to make a choice between three tunnel entrances to the left, right and straight ahead. It turned out it didn\u2019t really matter which we entered, they all linked back on each other in the end. Once we had circled back, we were sure we were alone and had the run of the tunnels all night. We found the bar, the switchboard, medical facilities, power control panels and more.\n\nTwo things really struck me while we were in there. First, the electricity was on wherever we went. I couldn\u2019t help but wonder whose job it was to change the bulbs in the (no-longer-so) secret subterranean telephone exchange. Second, the tunnels, in the middle of winter, were a cosy hoodie temperature. It made me think about how all this space was being wasted, space that was built with taxpayer money. I thought about Campbell\u2019s determination over 30 years ago to make clear what was being spent by the government and the lengths he was willing to go to to reveal what was still a state secret and the way he insisted that the government should be held accountable for the construction of this bizarre underworld.\n\nBattles over space are nothing new in London of course \u2013 urban space is a continually contested place\n\nToday, we\u2019ve been so inculcated with fear and distracted by obligations and consumer junk, we can\u2019t even be bothered to ask why numerous miles of warm, fluorescently lit tunnels under Chancery Lane are laying mothballed while people with no homes freeze to death on the streets above them \u2013 forced to sleep in hypothermic conditions by anti-homeless spikes installed on ledges outside shops, luxury flats and offices.\n\nMany of us have a sense that cities are being closed to us, but we find it difficult to articulate how or why; we simply feel we\u2019re losing control of things in some fundamental way. Battles over space are nothing new in London of course: from private Georgian squares in the 18th century to the South Bank Undercroft in the 21st, urban space is a continually contested place. But these days we seem less inclined to stand up to spatial inequality or obstructive behaviour over the release of information.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest A huge disused water reservoir under Finsbury Park in north London\n\nThere is, perhaps, a sense that the battle is lost; that it is not worth fighting any more in a climate where we are all being monitored. New surveillance technologies or increasing corporate control of space are not the most worrying developments of our time, however \u2013 the biggest concern is growing apathy. So before you dismiss urban exploration as a weird fad \u2013 or mark it as just another interesting tab in your flooded browser to look at later \u2013 be aware that these explorers risked death and imprisonment to bring you these photos and that they insist it was worth it, because if we don\u2019t even know these spaces exist we can hardly have a public conversation about what to do with them. Urban exploration carries on the important work of exploratory journalism; it spreads stories that help us perceive worlds other than the ones presented to us, and it gives us an alternative where one has not been offered. Urban exploration is an apathy killer.\n\nAs the geographer David Harvey wrote, the freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is one of the most precious and neglected of our human rights. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m overstating the case when I say that it\u2019s vital to the maintenance of what few rights to place remain to continually make transparent and subvert the boundaries that are constantly being circumscribed around our bodies and imaginations. Rather than condemning the system, urban explorers will insist that we must simply carry on exploring and imagining, regardless of those constraints. If we want to live in cities replete with citizens rather than inhabitants, we must encourage exploration.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Aldwych Underground station (which opened as the Strand in 1907) closed in 1994\n\nBeing an urban explorer has been a wonderful lesson in geography. I\u2019ve learned about how people build relationships to places; how space is surveilled, controlled and regulated; how the city is built to not just influence our behaviour but to actually condition the way we think about what is ethical, right and even possible. Although it was chasing the story of urban exploration that got me involved in the first instance, it is the way urban exploration makes boundaries visible and keeps me sharp, paying attention to everything and continually calling me to action, which holds my interest as a researcher.\n\nWhen I walk the city now, I can\u2019t help but imagine it vertically as well as horizontally. Most of the tourists walking at street level \u2013 photographing Parliament and clippers cruising the Thames \u2013 haven\u2019t a clue that there is a snarl of tunnels underneath their feet, many of which aren\u2019t on any map.\n\nPerhaps it\u2019s right that local knowledge should reside with locals; this is our city after all. We, like Campbell, are engaged citizens acutely aware of what\u2019s going on around us and determined to partake in the conversation about what constitutes the city. Urban explorers want to know what is being built, by whom, with what funds and to what ends; they want to know what has been forgotten and left behind and how that space might be re-imagined with the public interest in mind. These expectations \u2013 like the expectation that people will explore whatever environment they happen to live in \u2013 are threaded with common sense throughout, unlike many of the policy decisions that have led to our cities increasingly become a sight to be seen rather than a place to participate in.\n\nThrough these photos of the London you never knew, I invite you to expand your vertical imagination of the city into subterranea: delve into the sewers, utility tunnels, abandoned Tube stations, secret bunkers and finally into the new depths being bored by tunnelling machines at this very moment. Although much of what is here is, I believe, an important piece of documentation, it is also more importantly an invitation for you to increase your understanding of what is happening under your feet right now, because the ongoing conversation about public space does not stop at the manhole cover.\n\nBradley Garrett is a geographer at the University of Southampton and author of Explore Everything: Place Hacking the City. His new book, Subterranean London: Cracking the Capital, was published in October 2014"} -{"text":"U.S. Announces Coalition To Fight Against The Islamic State\n\nThe United States says it has formed a coalition of 10 countries to help in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq.\n\nThe group consists of the United States plus Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark.\n\nThe New York Times reports that the coalition will act in two ways: It will support allies fighting against the Islamic State on the ground, and it will continue attacking the Sunni militants using air strikes.\n\nReuters reports that in a meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Wales, Secretary of State John Kerry said the strategy for the coalition was to contain, not destroy, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.\n\n\"We need to attack them in ways that prevent them from taking over territory, to bolster the Iraqi security forces and others in the region who are prepared to take them on, without committing troops of our own,\" Kerry said, according to Reuters. \"Obviously I think that's a red line for everybody here: no boots on the ground.\"\n\nThe Times adds:\n\n\"American officials are hoping to expand the coalition against ISIS to include as many countries as possible, particularly in the region. Obama administration officials said privately that in addition to the countries that attended the meeting Friday morning, the United States was hoping to get quiet intelligence help about the Sunni militants from Jordan, whose leader, King Abdullah, was participating in the NATO summit. \"United States officials said they also expected Saudi Arabia to provide money and aid for moderate Syrian rebel groups. Yousef al-Otaiba, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States, said in a statement earlier this week that the United Arab Emirates stood ready to join the fight against ISIS. 'No one has more at stake than the U.A.E. and other moderate countries in the region that have rejected the regressive Islamist creed and embraced a different, forward-looking path,' the ambassador said. The Emiratis, he said, are 'ready to join the international community in an urgent, coordinated and sustained effort to confront a threat that will, if unchecked, have global ramifications for decades to come.' \"\n\nThe Islamic State, if you remember, caught the international community's attention when it began a brazen and lightning-fast attack on Iraq over the summer. Since then, the group has overtaken several Iraqi cities and has taken responsibility for the beheading of two American journalists.\n\nAs the Islamic State moved further into Iraq, the United States began an air campaign against the group."} -{"text":"Patrick Rothfuss Goodreads Author\n\nBorn\n\nWebsite\n\nTwitter\n\nGenre\n\nMember Since\n\nFebruary 2008\n\nIt all began when Pat Rothfuss was born to a marvelous set of parents. Throughout his formative years they encouraged him to do his best, gave him good advice, and were no doubt appropriately dismayed when he failed to live up to his full potential.\n\nIn high-school Pat was something of a class clown. His hobbies included reading a novel or two a day and giving relationship advice to all his friends despite the fact that he had never so much as kissed a girl. He also role-played and wrote terrible stories about elves. He was pretty much a geek.\n\nMost of Pat's adult life has been spent in the University Wisconsin Stevens Point. In 1991 he started college in order to pursue a career in chemical engineering, then he considered clinical psychology.\n\nIt all began when Pat Rothfuss was born to a marvelous set of parents. Throughout his formative years they encouraged him to do his best, gave him good advice, and were no doubt appropriately dismayed when he failed to live up to his full potential.\n\nIn high-school Pat was something of a class clown. His hobbies included reading a novel or two a day and giving relationship advice to all his friends despite the fact that he had never so much as kissed a girl. He also role-played and wrote terrible stories about elves. He was pretty much a geek.\n\nMost of Pat's adult life has been spent in the University Wisconsin Stevens Point. In 1991 he started college in order to pursue a career in chemical engineering, then he considered clinical psychology. In 1993 he quit pretending he knew what he wanted to do with his life, changed his major to \"undecided,\" and proceeded to study whatever amused him. He also began writing a book....\n\nFor the next seven years Pat studied anthropology, philosophy, eastern religions, history, alchemy, parapsychology, literature, and writing. He studied six different martial arts, practiced improv comedy, learned how to pick locks, and became a skilled lover of women. He also began writing a satirical advice column which he continues to this day: The College Survivial Guide. Through all of this he continued to work on his novel.\n\nIn 2000 Pat went to grad school for English literature. Grad school sucked and Pat hated it. However, Pat learned that he loved to teach. He left in 2002 with his masters degree, shaking the dust from his feet and vowing never to return. During this period of time his novel was rejected by roughly every agent in the known universe.\n\nNow Pat teaches half-time at his old school as an assistant-sub-lecturer. He is underpaid but generally left alone to do as he sees fit with his classes. He is advisor for the college feminists, the fencing club, and, oddly enough, a sorority. He still roll-plays occasionally, but now he does it in an extremely sophisticated, debonair way.\n\nThrough a series of lucky breaks, he has wound up with the best agent and editor imaginable, and the first book of his trilogy has been published under the title \"The Name of the Wind.\"\n\nThough it has only been out since April 2007, it has already been sold in 26 foreign countries and won several awards.\n\nPat has been described as \"a rough, earthy iconoclast with a pipeline to the divine in everyone's subconscious.\" But honestly, that person was pretty drunk at the time, so you might want to take it with a grain of salt."} -{"text":"Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Wednesday announced the Department of Education would pause two rules created by former President Barack Obama's administration that would protect student borrowers and imposed requirements on for-profit colleges. Photo by Erin Schaff\/UPI | License Photo\n\nJune 15 (UPI) -- The Department of Education has paused two rules created by former President Barack Obama's administration to protect student borrowers and impose requirements on for-profit colleges.\n\n\"The department intends to develop fair, effective and improved regulations to protect individual borrowers from fraud, ensure accountability across institutions of higher education and protect taxpayers,\" the Department of Education said in a statement on Wednesday.\n\nOne rule, the Gainful Employment regulation, required for-profit colleges and certificate programs at non-profit colleges -- under the threat of withholding federal aid -- to show that a student's education in those institutions would help those students receive \"gainful employment.\"\n\nThe second rule, the Borrower Defense to Repayment regulation, clarified how student borrowers who were defrauded or misled by their college could apply for loan forgiveness and also created a fast-track for students who apply for forgiveness in case their college closed.\n\nThe rules were to take effect July 1 but the Department of Education under Betsy DeVos said it would delay implementation upon further review. The Obama-era rules were first proposed amid the collapse of the Corinthian Colleges Inc. for-profit institution.\n\n\"My first priority is to protect students,\" DeVos said. \"Fraud, especially fraud committed by a school, is simply unacceptable. Unfortunately, last year's rulemaking effort missed an opportunity to get it right.\"\n\nDeVos said her department would uphold processing claims already filed by 16,000 student borrowers.\n\nSome Democratic members of Congress criticized the move by the department.\n\n\"Delaying this important pathway to debt relief would harm thousands of students, many with crushing levels of student loan debt and few meaningful job prospects,\" Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Patty Murray, Sherrod Brown and Dick Durbin wrote in a statement."} -{"text":"Barney Frank, long known as America\u2019s crankiest liberal, is actually not feeling too bad. Frank retired from Congress in 2012, after three decades of representing Massachusetts\u2019s Fourth District, then wrote a memoir, became a director of the Signature Bank, and took his curmudgeon act on the road as a lecturer. But the election of Donald Trump has not shattered his confidence about the nation\u2019s political future. \u201cThis was not a wipeout. People will tend to overinterpret it. Remember, we got more votes than they did,\u201d he said, in an interview this week. \u201cAnd there is one silver lining for us. They have succeeded in blaming us for everything that goes wrong in the world. From now on, anything bad that happens is on them. They control the whole government\u2014White House, Senate, House, Supreme Court. Some people think that maybe Trump can somehow evade that responsibility, but I think it will be hard to blame it on some Mexicans when something goes wrong.\u201d\n\nStill, Frank believes that politics did change in some fundamental ways with Trump\u2019s victory. \u201cTwo major rules of American politics disappeared this year,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first was that you had to argue that America has to be strong and assertive worldwide. Trump won while rejecting that view. And the second change was that you should only talk about growth for everyone and avoid talk of class warfare. The fundamental reason that Trump won is the anger in America and other developed countries at the unfairness of the distribution of wealth. It\u2019s been building and building, and all of a sudden it broke through.\u201d\n\nIn particular, Frank believes that Bernie Sanders\u2019s primary campaign helped Trump\u2019s portrayal of himself as a populist succeed in the fall. \u201cSanders wounded her badly,\u201d Frank said, referring to Hillary Clinton. \u201cHis differing with her on the issues was entirely reasonable, but he\u2019s the one who sold the argument that she was corrupt and bought by Wall Street. He had one ad which I called McCarthyite\u2014where he essentially said Goldman Sachs got off so easy because they paid Clinton for speeches. Sanders helped Trump become the guy who says we are tired of rich guys getting away with everything. Sanders helped persuade people that she is on the wrong side of that issue.\u201d Then, too, of course, there were the e-mails and the last-minute intervention of James Comey, the F.B.I. director. \u201cIf she hadn\u2019t been using that e-mail system, she would have won, and Comey exacerbated the problem,\u201d Frank said.\n\nFrank is fond of the adage, attributed to Harold Macmillan, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, that the future of politics is determined by \u201cevents, my dear boy, events.\u201d The success or failure of Trump\u2019s Presidency will be the critical factor in the future of the Democratic Party. \u201cIf he delivers somehow and increases employment among the white working class, and increases prosperity, then we\u201d\u2014the Party, that is\u2014\u201chave a political problem,\u201d Frank said. But since Frank believes that Trump\u2019s program will not yield these kinds of successes, he feels that Democrats will have room to criticize and propose alternatives.\n\nIn some respects, Frank believes that the Trump campaign may help the Democrats produce an updated and more appealing message. \u201cObama began to walk away from the idea that we have to be the leader of the free world,\u201d Frank said. \u201cNow it\u2019s clear that we don\u2019t have to be the leader of the free world and we don\u2019t have to pay to be the leader of the free world.\u201d That will open the door, Frank believes, to substantial reductions in military spending\u2014on the order of a hundred and fifty to two hundred billion a year. \u201cWe could then use that money to offset some of the inequality in the economy. Reduce the age of access to Medicare to fifty-five. Raise the minimum wage. Put a lot of people to work on infrastructure.\u201d\n\nHis second idea for Democrats may be more controversial within the Party. \u201cWe need to be less absolutist on environmental issues, especially wetlands and endangered species,\u201d he said. \u201cWe currently treat those issues as absolute bars to development, and they should not be absolute. They should be balances. I saw in my district how much anger these issues generate. Our current position is bad politics and bad public policy.\u201d Frank does not believe, however, that Democrats should retreat on climate change. \u201cToo much at stake on climate change to give way there,\u201d he said.\n\nOne part of Trump\u2019s ascendancy reflects the great political success of Frank\u2019s life. During Trump\u2019s campaign, and in a recent interview on \u201c60 Minutes,\u201d the President-elect said that he regarded same-sex marriage as a settled issue, which he would not seek to overturn. As a longtime leader in the gay-rights movement, and the husband of Jim Ready since 2012, Frank, who is now seventy-six, watched the cause of same-sex marriage move from the fringe to the realm of conventional wisdom. Indeed, the subject turns this often cantankerous man downright cheerful. \u201cSixty years ago, people didn\u2019t talk about being gay,\u201d Frank said. \u201cBut now that so many people are out, straight people know they have gay relatives, gay co-workers. Being gay is kind of positive. It\u2019s kind of fun.\u201d"} -{"text":"CNN has set a September 1 premiere date for Holy Hell, an inside look at Buddhafield, a secretive, spiritual cult formed in 1980s West Hollywood. The pic will air at 9 PM ET and repeat at 11.\n\nDirector Will Allen joined the group just after graduating from film school and eventually became its unofficial documentarian. As he got more deeply involved, he began filming his experiences as the group\u2019s unofficial videographer. It wasn\u2019t until after Allen left the cult that he understood the film he\u2019d been making for more than 20 years. The close-knit Buddhafield aspired to an artistic utopian communal life. Led by enigmatic and charismatic guru, Michel. Buddhafield members pursued his vision for fulfillment while living together, exploring nature, and performing together. Gradually, several came to grow disenchanted with Michel and alleged emotional manipulation and even physical abuse.\n\nHoly Hell had its world premiere at Sundance in January, followed by a May 27 theatrical self-release via Allen\u2019s WRA Productions. He produced the film along with Tracey Harnish and Alexandra Johnes. Michael C. Donaldson, Julian Goldstein, Jared Leto, and Cheryl Wheeler Sanders are the executive producers. Check out the newly released key art for the film:"} -{"text":"CTV.ca News Staff\n\nFor the first time there are more single Canadian adults than married Canadians, a new report says.\n\nCanadians are also working longer hours, and spending less time with their families -- and the families they have are less likely to be the traditional nuclear family.\n\nThose are just some of the findings in Families Count: Profiling Canada's Families IV, a new report released Monday by the Vanier Institute of the Family.\n\nUsing information from the 2006 census, the report said that only 47.9 per cent of adults were married.\n\nThe highest amount of married people by province was in Newfoundland and Labrador with 54.3 per cent and the lowest was in Quebec, with 37.5 per cent. Among the territories, only 31 per cent of adults were married in Nunavut.\n\nThe number of married couples without children also outnumbered married couples with children for the first time.\n\nMarried-with-children families now represent 39 per cent of families, compared to 55 per cent in 1981.\n\nCommon-law families are the fastest-growing family type in Canada, from 5.6 per of families in 1981 to 15.5 per cent in 2006.\n\nTwo decades ago, 81 per cent of children under the age of 15 lived with legally married parents, but in 2006, only 66 per cent of children under 15 did.\n\nKathy Buckworth, the author of several books on motherhood, said the rising proportion of common law relationships may be due to the fact that \"we're dealing with people who grew up in the divorce generation.\"\n\n\"If they grew up in that situation, perhaps they're thinking, \u2018If I can't get married, I can't get divorced,'\" she told CTV News Channel.\n\nBuckworth also said that financial factors may play a role, with many couples opting to keep their finances separate.\n\n\"Weddings can cost a lot of money, and with less pressure to have that traditional relationship, or marriage certificate, maybe that's being bypassed,\" she added.\n\nThe 2006 census was the first to record data on same-sex marriages. The data said 16.5 per cent of same-sex couples were married.\n\nEconomic impact on families\n\nClarence Lochhead, the executive director of the Vanier Institute of the Family, said modern economic realities have had a serious impact on the makeup of the Canadian family.\n\nMore adult children are living with their families, especially young men. Some 60 per cent of men between 20-24 were living at home, as were 26 per cent of men between the ages of 25 to 29.\n\n\"If you think about the education required to be successful in the labour markets . . . people are waiting much longer to leave home . . . it's a reflection of the economic reality of the labour market,\" Lochhead told CTV News Channel.\n\nAging parents are also an additional stress on families, as 4.7 million Canadians were providing care for a senior.\n\n\"It's one of the big challenges we have as a society,\" Lochhead said.\n\nFamilies are responding by working more. In 82 per cent of two-parent families, each parent is earning some income and in 32 per cent of two-parent families, each parent is working full time.\n\nMen are working longer hours, up to 8.8 a day in 2005 compared to 8.2 hours in 1986. That extra work is coming at the expense of the family, with men now spending 3.4 hours a day with family, compared to 4.2 hours in 1986.\n\nWomen are now more likely to be the breadwinner in a two-parent family, with 28 per cent being the primary earner in their family. That is up from 12 per cent in 1976."} -{"text":"Adapted from a recent online discussion.\n\nHi Carolyn:\n\nI live on a street with a large number of young children (under age 6). One family recently bought a new puppy, and we were surprised to learn that it is a pit bull. Now several of us are worried about letting our children play freely on the street, since pit bulls are known as an aggressive breed that can attack without provocation. Any advice on what we can do?\n\nNeighbors bought a pit bull\n\nYes: Inform yourselves about pit bulls. Heck, about dogs: Just about any dog can hurt a small child, badly.\n\nDogs don\u2019t \u201cattack without provocation\u201d unless they have temperament problems, and those problems are quite visible in other circumstances. Otherwise, dogs who bite give all kinds of signs that they\u2019re going to defend themselves or their people. Many people ignore\/are ignorant of those signs and so they continue the behavior that provokes the dog \u2014 or, the owners don\u2019t know anything about dogs and don\u2019t train or handle them safely. Again, this is all dogs, not just pit bulls.\n\nUnfortunately, pit bulls became a look-at-how-cool-I-am accessory and fell in disproportionate numbers into the hands of idiots, posers and thugs \u2014 people who have no business having pets, much less powerful dogs.\n\nThe pit bull is not the most dangerous breed out there. What is? Trick question: The most dangerous dog is one that has irresponsible owners and is big enough to kill.\n\nMeanwhile, \u201ccute\u201d little dogs, like dachshunds and Jack Russells, are much more likely to bite the neighborhood 6-and-unders. Pits historically have been bred to be responsive to their humans, and they\u2019re actually far less likely to bite if a kid, say, tugs an ear (it just makes the news if they do). Tugging not recommended, by the way, with any dog, which responsible parents teach their kids.\n\nEver see \u201cOur Gang\/Little Rascals\u201d? The dog, Petey, is a pit. Pit bulls\u2019 nickname in the past has been \u201cthe nanny\u201d because they were known as great family dogs. Still are, by a dedicated population of defenders.\n\nSo. Do not fear this dog unless you have cause to fear the neighbors. Is the dog spayed or neutered, trained, never chained, walked\/exercised regularly and otherwise supervised \u2014 all just as good for dogs as for neighbors? Are the neighborhood kids taught how to interact with dogs?\n\nHysteria is no way to protect children from anything. When you feel threatened by something, seek knowledge first, then seek a remedy, if you even need one after you have the facts.\n\nRe: Pit bull bullies:\n\nIt took a conscious effort on my part to learn about pit bulls when a roommate decided to get not one but two! These dogs ended up being the kindest, most well-behaved dogs I\u2019ve ever been around. My roommate also had a\n\n3-year-old daughter.\n\n\u201cNeighbors\u201d needs to teach her children about how to approach a dog and what a dog means by its body languages.\n\nAnonymous\n\nAbsolutely. Abundant resources are a browser away. Type \u201cdog stress signs.\u201d\n\nAnyone curious about pit bulls should also check out what became of the Michael Vick pit bulls. Educational and inspiring.\n\nWrite to Tell Me About It, Style, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or tellme@washpost.com."} -{"text":"Image: wireless sensor microchip\/UCL\n\nThe IEEE Computer Society released a report this week detailing its predictions for the state of computing technology in 2022. No, the Singularity is not part of it: no downloaded personalities or post-human artificial intelligence. It nonetheless sounds a lot like \"the future\" should, with wearable, implantable nanotechnology and batteries that hold charges for months on end, just a more comprehensible future, one that doesn't involve sudden innovative inflationary periods or out-of-the-blue discoveries.\n\nTechnology follows a trajectory.\n\n\"Predicting the future in the computer industry is even harder and riskier due to dramatic changes in technology and limitless challenges to innovation,\" the IEEE CS report begins. \"Only a small fraction of innovations truly disrupt the state of the art.\"\n\n\"Some [innovations] not practical or cost-effective, some are ahead of their time, and some simply do not have a market,\" the report continues. \"There are numerous examples of superior technologies that were never adopted because others arrived on time or fared better n the market. Therefore this document is only an attempt to better understand where technologies are going.\"\n\nThe report is the product of nine technical leaders within the IEEE Computer Society surveying the current states and progressions of 23 different technologies, including,\n\n3D printing, big data and analytics, open intellectual property movement, massively online open courses, security cross-cutting issues, universal memory, 3D integrated circuits, photonics, cloud computing, computational biology and bioinformatics, device and nanotechnology, sustainability, high-performance computing, the Internet of Things, life sciences, machine learning and intelligent systems, natural user interfaces, networking and inter-connectivity, quantum computing, software-defined networks, multicore, and robotics for medical care.\n\nThis authors took the above listed technologies and examined them in light of different drivers and disruptors. The relative weights of technological drivers there were able to determine are indicated in the chart below.\n\nDisruptors:\n\nSo, what does it all add up to? A key projection of the IEEE report is the \"seamless intelligence scenario. Computing devices\u2014from the very small, such as wearable devices and chips embedded under the skin, to the computers inside our mobile devices, laptops, desktops, home servers, TV sets, and refrigerators, to the computing cloud that we reach via the Internet\u2014are interconnected via different communication and networking technologies,\" the report explains.\n\n\"Together, they form an intelligent mesh,\" the authors continue, \"a computing and communication ecosystem that augments reality with information and intelligence gathered from our fingertips, eyes, ears, and other senses, and even directly interfaced to our brain waves.\" It's the internet of things, where we ourselves become a thing.\n\nThe report is really a series of reports, each one examining each of the aforementioned 23 technologies in great detail. It's open-access and worth a deep dive.\n\nSome other highlights include a worrisome note about the looming limits of classical computer systems, as they shrink to their absolute minimum and effectively put the brakes on Moore's law. Computers as we know them will stop getting faster and smaller\u2014soon. The authors seem hopeful that quantum computing can save the day, but as to whether practical QC will be ready in time is unsettled.\n\nAdvances in computer memory will help stave off this Moore's wall, at least. I've written here before about the profound limits current memory systems are putting on computing power. Computers may get faster, but they're not gaining memory access speed nearly as fast. The hope is for a \"universal memory\" system to save the day, in which SRAM, DRAM, hard-drive, and flash memory are all integrated into one quickly accessible and extremely small system. In the future, hard-drive access could be as quick as it is for an actual logic unit to access its own registers (the slivers of memory within the unit itself).\n\n\"We expect at least one NVM [non-volitile universal memory] technology to reach maturity and volume manufacturing capabilities within the next three to five years,\" the IEEE team predicts. By 2022, it's reasonable to expect a \"collapsing\" of the memory hierarchy into a single (or near to it) uniform technology. There will still be organization, of course, but all within the same basic superfast device.\n\nFortunately, medicine seems less likely to hit a fundamental limit than computers. \"Imagine your life being saved by a custom-designed medical machine made from particles 50,000 times as small as a single strand of your hair,\" the report offers. You might be living with a fleet of diagnostic bots just cruising around inside your body, looking for trouble and fixing it. A proper auxiliary immune system.\n\nIn Wired, the IEEE's Dejan Milojicic, makes a valiant effort at summarizing the report's other key findings, which are extensive. \"With energy consumption increasing along with the world's population, electric cars, LEDs, smart grids, smart cities, dark silicon, new battery technology, and new ways of cooling data centers are some areas where advances in sustainability are expected,\" he writes.\n\n\"Silicon photonics will address bandwidth, latency, and energy challenges, and developments at all levels of the network stack will continue to drive research and the Internet economy,\" Milojicic continues. \"In the area of software-defined networks, OpenFlow and SDN will make networks more secure, transparent, flexible, and functional.\"\n\nFortunately, predicting the future isn't solely the realm of futurists, but of scientists too. In some ways that's just as hopeful."} -{"text":"Gun rally to end permits for concealed weapons Grassroots NC pressures Republican Senators to pass gun bill Share Shares Copy Link Copy\n\nHide Transcript Show Transcript\n\nWEBVTT THE STATE CAPITOL TODAY, INHOPES OF DOING AWAY WITH PERMITSFOR CONCEALED WEAPONS.BILL O'NEIL TAKES US THERE.BILL: GUN RIGHTS ADVOCATES CAMEUP SHORT THIS PAST SESSION.THEIR EFFORTS TO ELIMINATECONCEAL CARRY PERMITS PASSED THEHOUSE, BUT NEVER CAME TO A VOTEIN THE SENATE.>> WE ARE TELLING THEM TO DOWHAT THEY SENT YOU HERE FOR.THEY SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN WHOBROUGHT THEM TO THE DANCE.BILL: TODAY'S RALLY TARGETSSENATE REPUBLICANS.THE GUN RIGHTS GROUP CALLEDGRASSROOTS NORTH CAROLINA SAYSIT WANTS TO SHAME THEM INTOACTION.THEY USED A MASCOT NAMED SQUISHYTHE MAGIC RINO TO CALL OUT WHATGUN SUPPORTERS SAY ARE RINOS,REPUBLICANS IN NAME ONLY.>> THE FACT IS VOTERS SENT THEMHERE, GUN VOTERS SENT THEM HERETO DO A JOB, AND WE WANT THEM TODO T JOB WE SENT THEM TO DO.BILL: GUN SUPPORTERS DELIVERTHEIR MESSAGE TO THE OFFICE OFTHE SENATE'S TOP REPUBLICAN,PHIL BERGER, WHO WASN'T IN.BUT A NUMBER OF REPUBLICANSOPPOSE ELIMINATING PERMITS FORCONCEALED WEAPONS, INCLUDINGGUILFORD COUNTY LAWMAKER JOHNFAIRCLOTH.>> LOOK AT HOW MANY KILLINGS WEHAVE HAD IN NORTH CAROLINA INTHE LAST SIX MONTHS.IT IS GETTING TO BE AN EPIDEMIC,ALMOST.BILL: GUN RIGHTS ADVOCATES SAYSSENATE REPUBLICANS CAN EXPECT TOSEE THEIR RINO MASCOT NOT ONLYAT THE LEGISLATURE, BUT AT GOPCAMPAIGN EVENTS AS WEL"} -{"text":"Image copyright Reuters Image caption Northern Ireland has effectively been without a devolved government for almost six months\n\nSinn F\u00e9in has called on the British and Irish governments to intervene to help break the deadlock in Stormont's power-sharing negotiations.\n\nJohn O'Dowd said they must inject \"leadership and energy\" into the talks.\n\nBut the DUP's Edwin Poots said that \"one party cannot deliver this process on its own\".\n\nTalks to restore Northern Ireland's devolved government are going down to the wire, with the parties having until 16:00 BST on Thursday to reach a deal.\n\nIf agreement is not reached by the deadline, which is set down in law, Northern Ireland faces the prospect of a return of direct rule from London.\n\n'Expect very late night'\n\nThe negotiations involve the five main Northern Ireland parties and the UK and Irish governments, although a deal is dependent on whether the two biggest parties, the DUP and Sinn F\u00e9in, can resolve their differences.\n\nThese include republican demands for a stand-alone Irish Language Act and rights for the LGBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community.\n\nThe DUP has criticised the Irish government for supporting Sinn F\u00e9in's demand for an Irish Language Act.\n\nIn a statement, the party said: \"Only last week the Irish government lectured our United Kingdom government on the importance of observing neutrality when dealing with Northern Ireland parties.\n\n\"Yet by publicly declaring its support for Sinn F\u00e9in's position in negotiations, the Irish government has undermined its own credibility as being neutral.\"\n\nRound-table talks involving the five party leaders were due to take place on Wednesday but the BBC understands the DUP and Sinn F\u00e9in did not show up.\n\nIrish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney tweeted: \"Stormont talks continuing - efforts intensified to find agreement on outstanding issues before tomorrow's deadline. Expect very late night.\"\n\nMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption What are the options if no deal is reached?\n\nShortly after 17:00 BST on Wednesday, Sinn F\u00e9in's John O'Dowd said no compromise had been reached and he called on the governments to become more involved in the efforts to reach a deal.\n\n\"With less than 24 hours to go in these talks, the DUP have not moved to resolve the issues which brought down the institutions in January,\" Mr O'Dowd said.\n\nImage caption Sinn F\u00e9in's John O'Dowd called on the British and Irish governments to help break the deadlock\n\n\"Rights, equality and respect need to be resolved, they need to be implemented in legislation and we need to get to that position.\n\n\"There is now clearly an onus on the two governments to inject energy into these talks, to inject leadership into these talks and ensure that the outstanding issues are resolved in the timescale we have left to us.\"\n\nHowever, the DUP's Edwin Poots said the party wanted to show \"absolute respect for other people's language and culture\" in respect of Sinn F\u00e9in's demand of an Irish Language Act.\n\nMr Poots also said that talks had been a \"slow grind\".\n\n\"We're trying to get to people's bottom lines so decisions can be made as to how we can move forward. We would like to do that tomorrow but that's up to others.\n\n\"Ultimately, one party can't deliver on this process on its own, it's going to be an engagement.\"\n\nHe added that the DUP were ready to establish government before the deadline and \"if there's issues outstanding that we need to continue to work on, then we're happy to do that\".\n\nWith no breakthrough reached by Wednesday evening, it would be very difficult to meet Thursday's deadline, according to BBC NI political correspondent Enda McClafferty.\n\n\"It appears there has been little or no progress made on the key issue which is emerging - the Irish Language Act,\" he told the BBC's Evening Extra programme.\n\n'Real Madrid star'\n\nEarlier, Northern Ireland Secretary James Brokenshire said that there would be serious implications if the Stormont parties could not agree a deal by Thursday's deadline.\n\nMr Brokenshire would not go into detail about any alternatives he might be considering if the talks fail.\n\nHe also denied the Tory-DUP confidence and supply deal would make it impossible for the government to maintain their impartiality in Northern Ireland.\n\nHe said he had not been part of those talks.\n\nSpeaking at Northern Ireland Questions in Westminster, Mr Brokenshire said he would not be on a liaison committee being set up by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the Conservatives.\n\nImage copyright Reuters Image caption DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Tory Chief Whip Gavin Williamson signed the deal agreed this week\n\nUnder the \"confidence and supply\" arrangement, the DUP guarantees that its 10 MPs will vote with the government on the Queen's Speech, the Budget, and legislation relating to Brexit and national security - while Northern Ireland will receive an extra \u00a31bn over the next two years.\n\nWhile rival Stormont parties have largely welcomed the additional funding, concerns have been raised that the deal could undermine the peace process and devolution negotiations, with the UK government dependent on the support of the DUP.\n\nThe Scottish National Party said the DUP was holding a \"sword of Damocles\" over the government's head.\n\nSNP MP Alison Thewliss joked that the \u00a31bn deal meant each DUP MP was now worth more than the Real Madrid footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.\n\nThe new Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Smith said there was a danger that trust in the perception of the government's impartiality would be eroded.\n\nHe called on the government to publish the minutes of any meetings of the new liaison committee.\n\nImage caption If parties cannot agree a deal by Thursday, then direct rule could be implemented\n\nNorthern Ireland has effectively been without a devolved government for almost six months.\n\nIts institutions collapsed amid a bitter row between the DUP and Sinn F\u00e9in about a botched green energy scheme.\n\nThe late deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, stood down in protest over the DUP's handling of an investigation into the scandal, in a move that triggered a snap election in March."} -{"text":"David Cameron is \u201cliving in cloud cuckoo land\u201d when he suggests a new Tory government would ban messaging apps that use encryption, security experts have told the Guardian.\n\nThe prime minister has pledged anti-terror laws to give the security services the ability to read encrypted communications in extreme circumstances. But experts say such access would mean changing the way internet-based messaging services such as Apple\u2019s iMessage or Facebook\u2019s WhatsApp work.\n\nIndependent computer security expert Graham Cluley said: \u201cIt\u2019s crazy. Cameron is living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks that this is a sensible idea, and no it wouldn\u2019t be possible to implement properly.\u201d\n\nOther security experts echo Cluley, describing the approach as \u201cidiocy\u201d and saying Cameron\u2019s plans are \u201cill-thought out and scary\u201d. The UK\u2019s data watchdog has also spoken out against \u201cknee-jerk reactions\u201d, saying moves could undermine consumer security.\n\nMeanwhile a start-up has warned on the possible effect on Britain\u2019s nascent technology sector of Cameron\u2019s plans. Eris Industries, which uses open-source cryptography, has said it is already making plans to leave the UK if the Conservative party is re-elected with this policy in its programme.\n\nOn Monday, Cameron made a speech in which he decried the ability of ordinary people to have conversations on which the security services were unable to eavesdrop.\n\n\u201cIn extremis, it has been possible to read someone\u2019s letter, to listen to someone\u2019s call, to mobile communications,\u201d Cameron said. \u201cThe question remains: are we going to allow a means of communications where it simply is not possible to do that? My answer to that question is: no, we must not.\u201d\n\nCluley said either tech companies would have to work with UK government and build backdoors into their software to allow the authorities to intercept messages, or the apps themselves will have to be banned.\n\n\u201cIf there are backdoors in the apps, or if weak encryption is used, then you are only opening up opportunities for hackers to break in and steal information too. That\u2019s not going to go down well with businesses or consumers,\u201d Cluley said.\n\nRoss Anderson, professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge, said: \u201cThis is just what the agencies pushed in the late 1990s, after Al Gore persuaded Tony Blair to go back on his pre-election promise not to ban encryption.\n\n\u201cIndustry fought back, along with civil society, and the outcome was the Rip Act, which gives a chief constable the power to demand decryption.\u201d\n\nPeter Sommer, professor of cybersecurity and digital evidence at de Montfort and the Open Universities, said: \u201cThe National Crime Agency and the people there understand that relationships with people and the companies like Google are important, as they will help you, but passing laws and badmouthing in public is simply not going to work,\u201d\n\n\u201cBut at the top there\u2019s been the kind of idiocy exemplified by what happened in the basement of the Guardian, where there were obviously lots of copies of the Snowden material but they insisted on the destruction of a computer that might have been used for storing them.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes you can pass laws in Westminster until you\u2019re blue in the face but you can\u2019t enforce them,\u201d said Sommer.\n\nThe UK\u2019s data watchdog, the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham and data privacy campaigners were equally worried by Cameron\u2019s comments and the implications it could have on data security and privacy.\n\n\u201cWe must avoid knee jerk reactions,\u201d said Graham. \u201cIn particular, I am concerned about any compromising of effective encryption for consumers of online services.\u201d\n\n\u201cCitizens, businesses, and nation states need to protect themselves. Internet companies are understandably offering their customers online services that are better encrypted following recent security incidents,\u201d said Graham.\n\n\u201cCameron\u2019s plans appear dangerous, ill-thought out and scary,\u201d said Jim Killock, director of the Open Rights Group. \u201cHaving the power to undermine encryption will have consequences for everyone\u2019s personal security. It could affect not only our personal communications but also the security of sensitive information such as bank records, making us all more vulnerable to criminal attacks.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe only practicable way forward is a new international treaty on access to communications data and content, which must involve safeguards that will be acceptable to all,\u201d said Anderson.\n\nPreston Byrne, the chief operating officer of Eris Industries, warns that his company will be forced to leave the UK if Cameron\u2019s comments on the technology become policy, and move to \u201cmore liberal climes such as Germany, the U.S., the People\u2019s Republic of China, Zimbabwe, or Iraq.\u201d\n\nByrne, who is also a fellow at the London-based free-market think tank ASI, told the Guardian that \u201csecure open-source cryptography is at the core of our business\u2026 so we were able to make the decision more or less immediately.\u201d\n\nEris Industries uses technology loosely based on the bitcoin cryptocurrency to build a decentralised network, with potential applications in communications, social networking and community governance. But, Byrne warns, \u201cnone of these benefits can be realised without secure cryptography, including end-to-end encryption.\n\n\u201cDavid Cameron has said this measure is designed to \u2018modernise\u2019 the law. He fails to understand the full extent of how out of date the law is. The only way you can shut down cryptographic distributed networks today is to either arrest the vast majority of (or in the case of a blockchain database, all) persons running a node and ensure that every single data store containing a copy of that application database is destroyed; or shut down the Internet.\u201d\n\nAs a result, he tells the Guardian, \u201cI\u2019d be very surprised if the Conservatives stick to their guns on this.\u201d\n\nOne insider at a major US technology firm told the Guardian that \u201cpoliticians are fond of asking why it is that tech companies don\u2019t base themselves in the UK\u201d.\n\n\u201cI think if you\u2019re saying that encryption is the problem, at a time when consumers and businesses see encryption as a very necessary part of trust online, that\u2019s a very indicative point of view.\u201d"} -{"text":"PROVIDENCE, R.I. \u2014 Four men are in custody after a shooting Thursday morning just a block away from the Garrahy Judicial Complex in downtown Providence.\n\nA report of shots fired came in to Providence police at 10:48 a.m., after a possibly gang-related dispute broke out inside the courthouse and moved outside after deputy sheriffs ejected the participants, Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements Jr. said.\n\nDetectives converged on the downtown area and quickly took four young males into custody. The suspect who was believed to have fired the gun was picked up behind the Coro Center, Clements said.\n\nThere were no reported victims, but detectives will check with the hospitals, Clements said.\n\nDetectives recovered a handgun, according to Commander Thomas Verdi.\n\n\"Everyone is safe,\" Clements said. The suspect \"clearly had an intended target.\"\n\nLawyer Nick Obolensky was inside the fourth-floor court hallway when he saw several young men get into a fight and the deputy sheriffs eject them, he said.\n\nThe young men went outside, where the fight continued and gravitated on to Pine Street.\n\nGarrahy courthouse was placed on lockdown for about a half-hour, with no one allowed to go in or out, Amanda Lysikatos, who'd been in court on a matter, said as she watched detectives work the scene.\n\nBeverly Berard, of North Providence, said she saw about 10 young people fighting and cursing in the center of Pine Street.\n\n\"All of a sudden a gun went off,\" said Berard, who works at the Pierce Atwood law firm.\n\nFour to five people scattered in one direction on foot. Four to five others ran in the opposite direction, she said. One of the people involved had a ponytail and wore red shorts.\n\n\"You hear fighting at the courthouse, but never a gun shot,\" she said.\n\nA suspect was seen sprinting down Fountain Street moments later.\n\nThe scene drew the attention of criminal justice majors at Johnson and Wales University as police and prosecutors questioned witnesses. Several left the homeland security class after hearing gunfire and checking Providence police scanner activity.\n\n\"I wanted to go so bad,\" said Michael Clark, a senior who plans to go to law school.\n\nAlexis Pollack, also a senior and budding cop, documented the scene on Facebook Live.\n\nIt is the second shooting outside a courthouse in less than a year. A 22-year-old Pawtucket man was critically injured after a noontime drive-by shooting in January near the Licht Judicial Complex.\n\nDiscussions are afoot in the state judiciary about changing the policy that bars deputy sheriffs from carrying guns. Since 2015, some deputy sheriffs have carried Tasers in addition to batons, pepper spray and handcuffs.\n\nCraig Berke, spokesman for the judiciary, said the deputy sheriffs armed themselves during the incident and security was enhanced at the courthouse. Surveillance video taken in and outside the courthouse is being reviewed, he said.\n\nBerke released this statement late Thursday: \"Court security procedures are constantly under review and the Judiciary's administration is certainly looking at this event. We are always looking at measures that will further enhance the safety of litigants, the public, judges and staff within our courthouses. Our security protocols worked today. There was no breach within the courthouse or on the courthouse grounds, not even when one of the subjects involved sought refuge from the shooting by returning to the courthouse, where he was screened and detained for the police.\"\n\nThis story was updated multiple times, most recently at 11:46 a.m., 12:43 p.m. and 3:59 p.m."} -{"text":"You really can\u2019t make up how ludicrous things have gotten at campuses in the United States. Here\u2019s the latest via the University of Michigan:\n\nDelicate snowflakes. Univ. of Michigan cancels \u2018American Sniper\u2019 screening: \u2018Made students feel unsafe\u2019 http:\/\/t.co\/NJ8SH4cGPI \u2014 JWF (@JammieWF) April 8, 2015\n\nOh, COME ON!\n\nI'm disgusted by the Univ of Michigan, it cancelled the campus screening of American Sniper http:\/\/t.co\/sBixroYm0p #ChrisKyleAmericanHero \u2014 Dave Melin (@Schneider_F3) April 8, 2015\n\nGutless display by my alma mater. University cancels \u2018American Sniper\u2019 screening: \u2019Made students feel unsafe\u2019\u2026 http:\/\/t.co\/SwS3TfT4xF \u2014 Steve (@evetsgnaw) April 8, 2015\n\nAre U of Mich students delusional, thinking campus was in Iraq or just wussies? American Sniper canceled. http:\/\/t.co\/tu7h69ES3s \u2014 Michael R Shannon (@ReluctantUser2) April 8, 2015\n\nAnd instead of \u201cAmerican Sniper,\u201d the vicious, killer Wolverines of Michigan will see\u2026\n\nWin for the precious snowflakes. Univ of Michigan pulls \"American Sniper\" screening, replaces w\/ \"Paddington Bear\". http:\/\/t.co\/r6JPc3Pzbg \u2014 CamEdwards (@CamEdwards) April 8, 2015\n\n@Mashon45 Paddington will be shown instead. \u2014 Campus Involvement (@UMInvolvement) April 7, 2015\n\nHa!\n\nHere\u2019s the official statement from UM\u2019s Center for Campus Involvement on the cancellation:\n\nA statement from the Center for Campus Involvement regarding the screening of American Sniper at UMix this Friday. pic.twitter.com\/uClDigpd4w \u2014 Campus Involvement (@UMInvolvement) April 7, 2015\n\nUpdate: The university has decided to go ahead and screen the film, but with these safeguards.\n\n***\n\nRelated:\n\nTwitchy coverage of American Sniper"} -{"text":"Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, quit his position on Friday after telling President Donald Trump he disagreed with the hiring of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director.\n\nTrump offered Scaramucci, a New York financier, the job on Friday morning and reportedly requested that Spicer stay on. Scaramucci said at a White House briefing that \u201cSean decided that he thought it would be better to go.\u201d\n\nSarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been Spicer\u2019s deputy, will take over for Spicer as White House press secretary.\n\nSee live blog of White House press briefing.\n\nScaramucci founded the investment firm SkyBridge Capital, and the SALT hedge-fund conference. He regularly defended Trump on television during the campaign and was a campaign fundraiser.\n\nAFP\/Getty Images Anthony Scaramucci\n\nSpicer was communications director at the Republican National Committee before joining the Trump team. The 45-year-old was known for being combative with White House reporters and the subject of lampoons by comedian Melissa McCarthy on \u201cSaturday Night Live.\u201d\n\nSee: Sean Spicer on Melissa McCarthy\u2019s \u2018SNL\u2019 performance: Cute, funny but \u2018dial it back.\u2019\n\nSanders read a statement from Trump at the briefing, saying he was \u201cgrateful\u201d for Spicer\u2019s White House service and that he wished him well. \u201cJust look at his great television ratings,\u201d Trump said in the statement.\n\nScaramucci said he loved Spicer and that \u201cI hope he goes on to make a tremendous amount of money.\u201d\n\nSpicer\u2019s tenure got off to a controversial start when he said Trump\u2019s inauguration was \u201cthe most watched ever,\u201d a statement that was later debunked. In recent weeks, Spicer had briefed the press less regularly. Sanders has instead frequently taken the podium at the White House briefings, which have often been held off camera. Before Friday, there had not been an on-camera briefing since June 29.\n\nSpicer said in a tweet on Friday that it had been an \u201chonor\u201d to serve Trump and that he would work through August.\n\nIt's been an honor & a privilege to serve @POTUS @realDonaldTrump & this amazing country. I will continue my service through August \u2014 Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) July 21, 2017\n\nIn May, Trump blamed his press team, including Spicer, for failing to put out the public firestorm that erupted after Trump fired James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As USA Today wrote, the strain in the Trump-Spicer relationship was on display when Trump did not invite the devout Catholic to a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican in late May.\n\nIn another memorable episode involving Spicer and the media, a Washington Post story in May said he was hiding in bushes at the White House. The Post later said he was \u201camong\u201d the bushes. The story prompted mocked-up pictures of Spicer in bushes, including one on Friday."} -{"text":"Two of the longer term concerns entering the 2013-14 season for the Toronto Maple Leafs were the contract statuses of their star players Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf. GM Dave Nonis made good on Kessel\u2019s desire to negotiate before the season, and now the Leafs leading scorer will be in the fold until 2022. Having taken care of the time sensitive work, now Nonis\u2019 sights will be set on re-signing the Leafs captain to a long term deal. But what\u2019s it going to cost? Let\u2019s take a look.\n\nFor his part, Phaneuf has said he\u2019s open to negotiating a new deal midseason, having done so in Calgary back in 2008. And why not? The Flames overpaid to lock up a young, budding star defender that had already reached the 20-goal and 60-point plateau by the age of 23. He\u2019s never managed to repeat either feat since, and was shipped to Toronto two years later as a high-priced disappointment. Since coming to Toronto, he\u2019s lost and re-found some measure of his scoring touch, while regularly lining up in the toughest defensive assignments. His role has changed, the cap has risen, the rules have changed, but his paycheque has remained static since then.\n\nTo look at what Phaneuf should get, I looked into the last four seasons of data on defensemen (2009-10 through 2012-13). Amusingly, these happen to be the four worst years of Phaneuf\u2019s career from a statistical standpoint, but probably better reflect his scoring output as the seasons roll on. Yes, in an eight-year career, two Phaneuf\u2019s worst individual seasons saw him feature 10th and 12th in league scoring among defenders. So please understand that I used the word \u2018worst\u2019 in a relative sense here.\n\nIn 277 games over the last four seasons, Phaneuf ranks 23rd in points scored with 134, good for .48 points per game. More impressively, he ranks 8th in goals (41), power play goals (18) and time on ice (6916 minutes). It is in that last category where there\u2019s some interesting salary correlations, as six of the seven players ahead of him in TOI over the last four seasons also have higher cap hits (Weber, Chara, Bouwmeester, Doughty, Suter and Boyle). Only Duncan Keith, signed to a phony 13-year, $72-million deal that pays just 5% of his total salary over his final two seasons, has a lower annual cap hit and has played more hockey than Phaneuf.\n\nNow, ice time is hardly a perfect measure of Phaneuf\u2019s worth, and I think most would agree that at least five of the seven players ahead of Phaneuf on that list are better defensemen than the Leafs captain. But what we can extrapolate is that is that defensemen who play as much as Phaneuf does tend to get paid as much as Phaneuf does. They also tend to have both a leadership role and a \u2018play in all situations\u2019 role with their club, much like Phaneuf does. So while I\u2019d be hesitant to say that Phaneuf is the league\u2019s 8th best defenseman, he\u2019s certainly in the top 20.\n\nBut one of the greatest difficulties in projecting Phaneuf\u2019s future cap hit is understanding the vast shift in his playing style since coming to Toronto. As alluded to above, he has been tasked with defensive zone starts and top lines every shift he\u2019s skated in Toronto. In his early days, Phaneuf saw over 5 minutes a night on the power play, and was given sheltered minutes at even strength. This season, Phaneuf finds himself in an elite pair of defenders (the other being Phoenix Coyotes defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson) who average at least 3:30 in ice time on both the penalty kill and power play per game while facing the league\u2019s best forwards.\n\nAt this point, I\u2019d like to remind Leafs fans of Phaneuf\u2019s idol and potential career model, Scott Stevens. While known for punishing hits and staunch defensive play for the New Jersey Devils, it\u2019s sometimes hard to remember that he was once a pure scorer. While never among the ranks of Larry Murphy or Paul Coffey offensively, Stevens still tallied 900 points in his career. His best season was 1993-94 when he finished with 78 points. Then came the first of Gary Bettman\u2019s lockouts and a new game format that encouraged stifling defensive play. In 10 more seasons, Stevens would only crack 30 points once more, yet he became the most notable defensive presence of the \u201cDead Puck Era.\u201d\n\nSimilarly for Phaneuf, the offensive dynamism that made him rich seems to have been replaced by defensive prowess. It\u2019s not that Phaneuf has lost that offensive side to his game, it\u2019s that his role and usage limit his overall number of offensive chances for in favour of limiting offensive chances against. Phaneuf could never score 40 points again, but he\u2019s significantly more reliable, responsible and positionally sound than he was in his halcyon days as a scorer. As both James Mirtle and I said on Monday, Phaneuf is without a doubt the most irreplaceable player in the line up.\n\nMany have argued that Phaneuf\u2019s current cap number looks out of place citing his capgeek comparables, and have been using Jay Bouwmeester when forecasting Phaneuf\u2019s next deal. The St. Louis Blues defender and former linemate of Phaneuf\u2019s is in the last year of a deal that pays him $6.68-million annually. He also recently signed a five-year extension with the Blues that will pay him a mere $5.4-million. And for seemingly little reason, that\u2019s what Phaneuf should get. Or so the thinking goes.\n\nBut there\u2019s several factors that make me believe there\u2019s no chance that Phaneuf can be re-signed for JayBo\u2019s modest number. Firstly, there\u2019s little similarity in their game, beyond the fact that both log a tonne of minutes. Over the past four seasons, Bouwmeester has 30 fewer points than Phaneuf; 22 fewer goals. While a top defenseman in his own right, Bouwmeester has to fight for third billing behind standouts Alex Pietrangelo and Kevin Shattenkirk. It\u2019s hard to ask for a raise when there are two other guys at your work who do your job better than you. Phaneuf does not have to suffer that workplace competition, and might never in a Leaf uniform. Also, George W. Bush was still president at the start of the last season where Bouwmeester recorded 40 points. Finally, Phaneuf is also a year younger than Bouwmeester, still closer to his prime and still able to crack 40 points.\n\nSo what does it all mean? What is Phaneuf worth? Most would agree that he\u2019s not worthy of Ryan Suter\u2019s $7.4-million paycheque, despite Phaneuf having 59 more points over 600-game careers. He\u2019s also worth more than Jay Bouwmeester\u2019s future cap hit of $5.4-million.\n\nIf I had to stake a guess, I\u2019d actually say that Phaneuf will see a slight raise ahead of next season. He\u2019s still only 28, and has been healthy most of his career. He\u2019s proven capable of playing 25-minutes a night and more likely than not to score 40 points a season. There\u2019s a dearth of options internally or externally that the Leafs could acquire to immediately replace and improve upon what Phaneuf does.\n\nThe only way I could see him re-signing at his current price tag or for less money is if the Leafs are willing to offer Phaneuf an eight-year deal. But if I had to give a more accurate range, I\u2019d say that the Leafs and Phaneuf will probably end up coming to terms on a deal in the 7-8 year, $47-56-million deal. That would put his annual cap hit at a reasonable, $6.7 to $7-million cap hit on a deal that would expire when Phaneuf was 36 or 37 years of age. Should the Leafs want shorter term, expect the AAV to go up accordingly.\n\nWhile it might sound unreasonable, nothing about NHL player\u2019s paydays are ever reasonable. And ask yourself, what would you rather have? Phaneuf at 6.9 million, or to spend the next few seasons trying to replace him?\n\nHighest Scoring NHL Defenseman\n\nFor combined seasons, from 2005-06 to 2013-14, playing defenseman, sorted by descending goals scored."} -{"text":"Buy Photo Domestic abuse victims who call the police often won\u2019t have to worry about being kicked out of their rental properties under a bill approved by the Legislature and sent to the governor Wednesday, April 27, 2016. (Photo: William Petroski\/The Register)Buy Photo\n\nIowa lawmakers voted Monday to advance Gov. Terry Branstad's controversial water quality proposal with assurances from his staff that they will offer amendments to address the concerns of various stakeholders.\n\nA three-person House subcommittee voted to 2-1 to advance the bill to a full committee. It was the first time lawmakers had a chance to publicly consider the bill.\n\n\"I\u2019ve seen two proposals for water quality in our state over the last year. One was a lawsuit,\" said Rep. Peter Cownie, R-West Des Moines, referencing a suit brought by the Des Moines Water Works against three northwest Iowa counties over water quality.\n\nHe credited that action with drawing state attention to the issue, but said \"I like this way of doing things better.\"\n\nThe governor's proposal, which he has said is his top priority for the session, would extend for another 20 years a one-cent sales tax currently earmarked for education infrastructure spending. That tax currently is set to expire in 2029.\n\nSchools would be guaranteed everything they currently receive through the tax plus an additional $10 million annually. The proposal would capture revenue growth beyond that cap and direct it to water quality projects.\n\nThe Department of Revenue projects the plan would create $4.7 billion to support water quality over 32 years and maintain $21 billion for schools.\n\nBut so far, the proposal has been met with skepticism, with some arguing that it pits water quality against education \u2014 two high-priority issues in the state.\n\nMany people who spoke at the subcommittee meeting said they appreciate that the governor has attempted to tackle the issue, but most said they are reserving judgment before choosing to support or oppose the legislation.\n\nTed Stopulos, a legislative liaison for the governor, said the bill was designed to be a starting \"framework\" for discussions. He said Branstad has been meeting with stakeholders in the weeks since announcing his plan and his administration plans to bring amendments to address a number of issues that have caused some concern.\n\nHe said there will be an amendment forthcoming that would allow school districts to use revenue generated by the tax to support not just infrastructure needs, but also transportation, per pupil spending and property tax relief. But it would prevent districts from using the money to build new sports stadiums.\n\nNEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News Alert newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Alerts on breaking news delivered straight to your inbox. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-877-424-0225. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Alert Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters\n\nStopulos said there also would be an amendment to require that any school infrastructure project worth than more than $1 million would require a vote to move forward.\n\nFinally, he said, they will support a provision promoting accountability, such as requiring some form of annual report to the Legislature.\n\nRep. Lee Hein, R-Monticello, who chaired the committee, said he believes this is the first step in what will likely be a long process. But he said he's glad to see the conversation continuing and believes the issue is worthy of being discussed at the committee level.\n\nRead or Share this story: http:\/\/dmreg.co\/1XtMtNw"} -{"text":"A former South Carolina police officer has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for fatally shooting an unarmed African-American motorist.\n\nMichael Slager committed second-degree murder when he shot Walter Scott, 50, in the back as he fled arrest after a traffic stop, a judge ruled.\n\n\"I forgive you,\" relatives of Scott told Slager, 36, in court, as they spoke about the death's impact on them.\n\nA bystander recorded mobile phone video of the April 2015 shooting.\n\nExperts say that without a video of the shooting, the former officer probably would not have been fired from the force nor have faced murder charges.\n\nVideo caption The dash cam footage shows Walter Scott's car being pulled over and Officer Michael Slager asking for his paperwork before Mr Scott runs away\n\nJudge David Norton told the court that Slager, who is white, had \"lived a spotless life\" before the shooting.\n\n\"Regardless, this is a tragedy that shouldn't have happened,\" he added.\n\nLawyers for Slager had argued in court that he opened fire on Scott because he thought he had taken his police-issued stun gun during their scuffle.\n\nThe case ended in a mistrial in 2016, and rather than face another jury, the former North Charleston officer pleaded guilty in May to a federal charge of violating the victim's civil rights.\n\nImage copyright Reuters Image caption The dead man's mother, Judy Scott, forgave Slager in court\n\nIn Thursday's sentencing, the judge ruled that Slager had acted with malice and \"willful intent to provide false testimony\".\n\nThe judge also had the option of sentencing him for a lesser crime of voluntary manslaughter, which would have carried a sentence of 12 to 15 years.\n\nThe dead man's mother, Judy Scott, told Slager in court on Thursday that she forgave him.\n\nShe said she hoped he would repent and allow Jesus into his heart.\n\nScott's brother, Anthony, said it had taken him a long time to overcome his depression and forgive Slager.\n\nImage copyright Reuters Image caption Michael Slager gestures as he testifies in his murder trial last year\n\n\"I'm not angry at you, Michael,\" he told Slager. \"I pray for you.\"\n\nMembers of the family thanked onlooker Feidin Santana for filming the encounter.\n\nThe City of North Charleston paid a $6.5m (\u00a34.8m) settlement to the Scotts.\n\nSlager told the court on Thursday: \"I wish this never would have happened.\n\n\"I wish I could go back and change events, but I can't and I am very sorry for that.\"\n\nSlager chased Scott after pulling him over for a broken brake light.\n\nScott, who was wanted for unpaid child support, fled the vehicle, police dashcam footage shows.\n\nVideo caption Racism in the US: Is there a single step that can bring equality?\n\nA bystander's video captured Scott breaking free from Slager's grasp and running directly away from him, with his back to the officer.\n\nSlager draws his pistol and fires from about 15ft (4.5m) away, hitting Scott five times.\n\nThe death took place amid US media scrutiny of police treatment of African Americans, and provoked protests by the Black Lives Matter movement.\n\nUS Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement: \"Officers who violate anyone's rights also violate their oaths of honour.\n\n\"And they tarnish the names of the vast majority of officers, who do incredible work.\""} -{"text":"House OKs small biz jobs bill\n\nNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- One week after the Senate passed a $42 billion bill aimed at helping small businesses, the House voted Thursday to send the bill to President Obama's desk.\n\nThe measure, which passed the House in a 237 to 187 vote, is aimed at creating 500,000 jobs, according to a Senate summary of the bill. The Small Business Jobs Act also is intended to make credit more available for Main Street and enacts about $12 billion in tax breaks.\n\nThe president will sign the bill into law on Monday.\n\n\"The small business jobs bill passed today will help provide loans and cut taxes for millions of small business owners without adding a dime to our nation's deficit,\" said Obama in a statement.\n\nNot only is Obama under pressure to create jobs, but he started talking about getting cheap capital to small businesses nearly a year ago.\n\nThe House first passed a version of the legislation about 3 months ago, but the bill met stiff Republican opposition in the Senate. After months of debate and significant pressure from the White House, the Senate finally passed the bill in a 61 to 38 vote last week.\n\nThe president chided Congress for the politicking even as he celebrated the passage. \"After months of partisan obstruction and needless delay, I'm grateful that Democrats and a few Republicans came together to support this common-sense plan to put Americans back to work,\" he said.\n\nThe Financial Services Roundtable, a group of the nation's largest financial institutions, supports the bill. \"Small businesses are the linchpin of our nation's economic growth and well-being,\" said Steve Bartlett, president of the Roundtable.\n\nRepublicans have largely opposed the bill: The votes in both the House and the Senate have fallen nearly on party lines.\n\n\"Unfortunately, this bill does nothing to help end the uncertainty that is crippling job creation and hurting small businesses,\" said House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. \"Instead it puts taxpayers on the hook for even more bailouts.\"\n\nWhat is in the bill: The Small Business Jobs Act authorizes the creation of a $30 billion fund run by the Treasury Department that would deliver ultra-cheap capital to banks with less than $10 billion in assets.\n\nThe idea is that community banks do the lion's share of lending to small businesses, and pumping capital into them will get money in the hands of Main Street businesses.\n\nAnother provision aims to increase the flow of capital by providing $1.5 billion in grants to state lending programs that in turn support loans to small businesses. The state programs have proven themselves to be efficient, targeted and effective, but with many states struggling to balance their budgets, the programs are going broke.\n\nThe bill would also provide a slew of tax breaks that will cost $12 billion over a decade, according to a preliminary estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation. The breaks aim to encourage small businesses to purchase new equipment, to incentivize venture capital firms to invest in small businesses, and to motivate entrepreneurs to start their own business.\n\nAnother provision of the legislation increases the loan limits on government-backed loans. It also extends the popular loan sweeteners for Small Business Administration loans through the end of the year. The sweeteners, initiated with the 2009 Recovery Act, have been a ,stimulus success story, and small businesses have been in line waiting for more funding.\n\nThere are quite a few tax breaks, but here is a rundown of five that have the potential to be game changers for the small businesses that are affected:\n\n100% exclusion of capital gains: The bill would eliminate capital gains taxes on investments in qualifying small businesses.\n\nTo qualify for the tax break, a small business needs to be a C corporation - sorry, LLCs and S-corps - with assets of less than $50 million. The investor must buy the stock at \"original issue,\" meaning it's purchased directly from the company, and has to hold it for at least five years.\n\nCarry back provision extended to 5 years: When a business books a profit, it pays income tax on its earnings. But if the business then turns a loss in later years, tax rules allow the business to \"carry back\" its loss and deduct the money from earlier profits.\n\nBy filing an amended tax return for the earlier, profitable year, the business can claim an immediate refund on the taxes it paid. The bill allows certain small businesses to extend the carryback for 5 years.\n\nIncrease of Section 179: To motivate companies to go spend money on equipment, \"Section 179\" of the tax code allows businesses to write off capital expenditures immediately, putting cash in a company's pocket quickly.\n\nThanks to the Recovery Act, businesses can write off up to $250,000 worth of equipment through 2009. This bill extends the benefit through 2011 and the maximum increases to $500,000.\n\nBonus depreciation extension: Businesses can also opt to recover the cost of capital expenditures by writing off a bit of the cost of the purchase over a number of years, following a depreciation schedule.\n\nTemporarily, businesses can front-load that deduction by writing off 50% of capital expenditures made in 2008 and 2009. This bill extends that first-year depreciation for qualifying property that is put in service in 2010.\n\nHelp for start-ups: Currently, entrepreneurs can deduct up to $5,000 in start-up expenses. That amount is reduced by the amount that the start-up's expenses exceed $50,000. The bill would increase the deduction to $10,000 for 2010, and the deduction would be reduced by the amount that an entrepreneur exceeds $60,000."} -{"text":"Blue Bunny, one of the biggest ice cream makers, is testing a line of nondairy vegan ice cream in five cities, and Dallas and Houston are on the list.\n\nThe line includes four flavors \u2014 vanilla, chocolate, mint chocolate chip and mocha fudge \u2014 and can be found at all Kroger stores in Dallas and Houston. It's also being sold in Denver, Omaha and Des Moines.\n\nCompany spokeswoman Deanna Dugo says the new ice cream reflects a nationwide trend. \"In the current climate, nondairy alternatives are huge, whether it's a sensitivity or with more people becoming vegan,\" she says.\n\nThe ice creams are made with almond milk, and they are cholesterol- and lactose-free. \"Almond milk has become a big trend,\" Dugo says. \"This means you can eat ice cream even if you don't do dairy.\"\n\nThey run from 150 to 180 calories per serving \u2014 typical for supermarket-style ice cream \u2014 with 6 to 8 grams of fat, also typical. They provide 20 percent of the recommended daily allotment of calcium, which is higher than most regular ice cream.\n\nNondairy ice cream is common at natural-food stores like Sprouts and Whole Foods Markets, who devote half their freezer case to nondairy, but it says something when it's a mainstream company like Blue Bunny. Ben & Jerry's also recently announced that it will start selling vegan ice cream in 2016.\n\nWith Texas-based Blue Bell still downed following a recall of its products in April after an outbreak of listeria, the timing is good for Blue Bunny to add something new to the freezer case, especially in these parts, says Gary Huddleston, spokesman for Kroger.\n\n\"Dallas-Fort Worth is a huge ice cream market, and as of a couple of weeks ago, the Blue Bunny ice creams are at all of our stores,\" he says."} -{"text":"The myth of 'mum and dad' property investors\n\nUpdated\n\nProperty groups want us to believe that average income earners dominate property investment and negative gearing - a closer look at the statistics shows that's a furphy, writes Michael Janda.\n\nThere's no doubt that a lot of ordinary, average-income Australians own investment properties, many of which are negatively geared.\n\nIf you aren't a property investor yourself, then there's a good chance you know plenty of them, and run into them incessantly at weekend barbeques, weddings, on the golf course, or at a range of other social functions.\n\nThat's not surprising, because Tax Office statistics show there are almost 1.9 million individuals who declare rental income or, more typically, make rental losses.\n\nWhat is surprising is that, according to the Housing Industry Association, nearly three quarters of them earn a taxable income of $80,000 or less.\n\nThat's one of the key justifications trotted out for maintaining the current negative gearing regime - that it overwhelmingly benefits ordinary, average-income 'mum and dad' investors.\n\nWhen the HIA made that claim again this week upon releasing an economic report in defence of negative gearing, it set off my bull-dust detectors big time.\n\nSo I went to the source, the ATO's tax stats, to find out the truth.\n\nFor those who argue that negative gearing isn't overwhelmingly the domain of society's better-off, the truth hurts.\n\nWhen I crunched the raw numbers, I did find that 72 per cent of investors indeed earned $80,000 or less in the latest 2011-12 figures (the discrepancy with the HIA figures being that their report used the 2010-11 stats).\n\nBut this just didn't tally up with Melbourne University's widely respected Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey taken every four years that examines the nation's household finances in depth.\n\nFigures compiled by the Reserve Bank from that survey show that investment housing loans are, unsurprisingly, more than twice as common amongst the top fifth of highest-earning households than amongst any other income group.\n\nIn its latest Financial Stability Report, the RBA's analysis of HILDA also shows that a whopping 60 per cent of investment housing debt is held by the top fifth of income earners.\n\nThat got me thinking about the apparent discrepancy between the RBA data and the tax stats - such a large survey as HILDA surely couldn't have got it that wrong.\n\nAn obvious issue with the HIA's use of the ATO data was that it looked at taxable income - after people take out various deductions to lower their tax bills.\n\nWhen I crunched the numbers, over 60,000 people with investment properties whose taxable income was $80,000 or less had total incomes above that $80,000 threshold.\n\nThat takes the HIA's claimed 74 per cent, which is 72 per cent on the latest data, further down to 68 per cent.\n\nBut more than two thirds of landlords earning under $80,000 a year still seemed way too high in light of other evidence.\n\nThat's when I found the ATO's Excel tables that look at what taxable and total incomes people have declared who collect rent from investment properties.\n\nAlmost 74,000 people who declare rental income or losses have a total income of less than $0 - that's right, they either live on nothing or have other means of paying the bills that don't have to be declared to the ATO.\n\nSpeaking to tax experts, including Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand's Michael Croker and UNSW's Professor Peter Swan, there are a few unverifiable possibilities as to who these people might be.\n\nThey could be people who own a property, are losing money on it, but are living off their partners' incomes; they could be people living off savings whose rental losses outweigh any investment income they earn; they could be superannuants drawing on now non-taxed drawdowns and pension streams; maybe they have some sophisticated trust structures which mean they can pay the bills while apparently earning no money.\n\nOr they could be foreign investors.\n\nRental income or losses are the only earnings that non-resident foreign property investors are likely to have to declare to the Australian Tax Office, as their wages, profits or other investment earnings are likely to be sourced overseas.\n\nSeparate ATO data show 50,600 non-residents declared rental income in 2011-12, of which almost all (49,520) earned $80,000 or less in Australia.\n\nSo take them out of the HIA figures and you are now down to 65.7 per cent.\n\nThat's already a fair bit less than three-quarters, but still more than the HILDA figures would seem to suggest.\n\nHowever, on top of the 74,000 negative income earners, there are another quarter of a million people declaring rental income or losses who have total incomes below $20,000.\n\nAgain, it is highly unlikely that these people could survive if that was their genuine income level, let alone service the mortgages that the 116,000 of them who are negatively geared have.\n\nCompletely removing all double counting, if we exclude these people as well, that takes the proportion of landlords earning $80,000 or less down to around 60 per cent - certainly closer to the truth, but probably still overstating the true situation.\n\nThe very reason that many housing investors fall below the $80,000 threshold is because they have used negative gearing to slash their tax bill.\n\nThat's because the ATO's measure of \"total income\" includes net, not gross, rent - that is, rental earnings or losses after deductions such as interest payments have already been removed.\n\nThe very reason that many housing investors fall below the $80,000 threshold is because they have used negative gearing to slash their tax bill.\n\nThe net result of all these calculations could be boiled down to a 'fact check' of the HIA's statement, and the outcome would be 'massively overstated'.\n\nThe vagaries of what is counted as income for tax purposes, and of tax deductibility, mean that it is impossible to be sure exactly how many landlords really earn less than $80,000 per year.\n\nOne other interesting fact from the ATO's figures is that the average 'total income' of Australian taxpayers was $55,000.\n\nThat means that on the way the tax office calculates 'total income' - looking at net rent and net capital gains, and excluding non-taxable items - someone on $80,000 is already a relatively high income earner.\n\nIncome by itself is also an incomplete measure of whether these are 'average' Australians - wealth is just as important as income when considering the equality of tax measures.\n\nMany of the sub-$80,000 income earners are self-funded retirees who may own several investment properties, and possibly have a substantial share portfolio or bank balance as well.\n\nTheir incomes may be below $80,000 in any given year, but they have the option to liquidate those assets at will to fund their retirement lifestyle.\n\nGiven that superannuation drawdowns aren't counted either, it is certain that many of these superannuants are exactly the \"so-called wealthy investors\" that the HIA claims the tax figures show are so few in number.\n\nA lot of this group may no longer be utilising negative gearing, but it will have undoubtedly assisted them in building up the assets that will give them a comfortable retirement.\n\nFor all these reasons, the HILDA data - used extensively by the Reserve Bank - is a much more reliable measure than the Tax Office data on what type of household gets by far the biggest benefit from negative gearing, and it ain't the poor.\n\nMichael Janda is an online business reporter with the ABC. View his full profile here.\n\nTopics: housing, housing-industry, tax\n\nFirst posted"} -{"text":"The partition of Quebec refers to the secession of regions of the province of Quebec, rather than to partitions in a strict political sense. It is usually discussed as a possibility in the event of Quebec secession from Canada. It was not a key issue in either the 1980 Referendum on Quebec Sovereignty or the 1995 Referendum on Quebec Sovereignty, but dominated the politics of national unity for about two years in the aftermath of the second referendum. Since then, the issue has occasionally resurfaced (for example in the 2007 provincial election).\n\nPartition proposals [ edit ]\n\nWhat area would an independent Quebec occupy? That of the Province as it is today without any territorial waters? That of 1867 i.e., the territory without the 1898 and 1912 annexes? That of 1984 with the addition of Newfoundland's Labrador? A.-L. Sanguin, 1984[1]\n\nBroadly speaking, partition proposals have tended to fall into three categories:\n\n1. New borders based on a return to historical boundaries that predate the Confederation of 1867.\n\nProvinces of Canada at Confederation in 1867\n\nThe logic here is that the separation of Quebec would represent an end to a constitutional deal in which Quebec was granted stewardship over certain lands which would revert to their former sovereign owners if Quebec were to leave Canada. For example, in his 1991 book Who Gets Ungava?, David Varty notes that the northern two-thirds of Quebec\u2019s current territory had formerly been a part of the lands owned by the Hudson's Bay Company, and that it had been transferred to Quebec by means of two Acts of the Canadian Parliament, in 1898 and 1912 respectively. For this reason, if Quebec were to secede, the transfer would be legally void: Quebec was a province of Canada at the time that the Ungava territory was transferred to Quebec\u2019s jurisdiction... Had Quebec been moving to become an independent country, the transfer of jurisdiction would not have taken place. There was an implied condition that the Province of Quebec was going to remain part of Canada. Any attempt to move to independence would constitute a breach of that implied condition attached to the transfer.[2]\n\n2. New borders that would create a \u2018land bridge\u2019 between New Brunswick and Ontario This could be set up to prevent Canada\u2019s remaining nine provinces from being split into two non-contiguous chunks of territory separated by about 300 miles (480 km) of foreign (Quebec) soil. The term sometimes used for this eventuality is \"Pakistanisation\",[1] in reference to the way in which East Pakistan and West Pakistan were separated by hundreds of miles of foreign soil, following independence in 1947, with East Pakistan eventually separating and becoming its own country, Bangladesh, in 1971. The fear is that Canada would be unworkable if its four Atlantic provinces were to become an exclave. 3. New borders based on the preferences of local populations. The logic of this approach is that, if Quebecers as a whole have the right to determine by majority vote whether to separate from Canada, then by extension the residents of regions within Quebec ought to be accorded the same right to separate from Quebec and to remain within Canada. The areas of Quebec that have been mentioned as likely to choose to remain in Canada include predominantly English-speaking municipalities on the western part of the Island of Montreal, Northern Quebec, the Eastern Townships and the Pontiac region in the Outaouais.[ citation needed ] In his 1992 book Canada Remapped: How the Partition of Quebec Will Reshape the Nation, Scott Reid argues in favour of partition as determined by local populations and largely dismisses the first two lines of thought on partition listed above.\n\nHistory of the Partition debate [ edit ]\n\nThe partition movement dates from May 1976, when William Shaw, a candidate for the leadership of the Union Nationale, proposed the idea in a series of interviews with journalists. Writing several years later, Shaw recounted one of these interviews: \"I said to the journalist at that time, \u2018I want to introduce a new word into the lexicon of Canadian politics\u2014PARTITION. The threat of partition will prevent separation.\u2019\"[3]\n\nIn December 1976, an organization called the \"Preparatory Committee for an Eleventh Province\" was formed in Montreal. This group contained some individuals who believed, along with Shaw, that the threat of a partition in which some parts of Quebec would remain within Canada would weaken support for separation.\n\nOther members of the Preparatory Committee sought to create a new province out of the linguistically mixed parts of Quebec even if Quebec were to remain in Canada, in order to create a new, bilingual province.[4] This faction within the early partition movement bears some resemblance to the movements that have arisen from time to time in parts of some Canadian provinces to break away and form new provinces. For example, also in the 1970s, there was a movement, led by the Parti Acadien, to create a new Acadian province out of northern New Brunswick.\n\nShortly before the 1980 referendum on Quebec secession, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau remarked, \"Si le Canada est divisible, le Qu\u00e9bec doit \u00eatre aussi divisible.\"[5] (This translates as, \"If Canada is divisible, Quebec must also be divisible.\") Apparently taking their inspiration from this statement,[6] Shaw and co-author Lionel Albert had published a book on the subject by the end of the year. Partition: The Price of Quebec\u2019s Independence outlined a plan for the excision of three slices of territory from a newly independent Quebec republic:\n\nShaw and Albert calculated that the resulting independent Quebec republic would contain somewhat less than one-quarter of the province\u2019s total landmass, have a population of around 2.9 million, and would be about 97% French-speaking. The parts remaining in Canada would contain over three million residents, of whom about two-thirds would be French-speaking. But they also seem to have believed that their scenario would never play out. As they put it, \"Such a country will not be proclaimed\u2014ever. The French-Canadian people would not have it. They would rather have a large province than a small country. That is why separation will not happen.\"[10]\n\nThe Grand Council of the Crees and the Inuit of Nunavik in Northern Quebec have both expressed that they will keep their lands in Canada should Quebec secede, invoking international laws that guarantee their right to self-determination. In 1995, a Cree referendum voted 95% in favour of staying in Canada should Quebec secede.\n\nFollowing the narrow loss by the separatist side in the October 1995 referendum on secession, there was a widespread belief that another referendum would be held in the near future. For this reason, potential players began to take actions that would strengthen their positions in the coming unity crisis.[11] Forty-three municipal councils in Quebec, including many on the western part of the Island of Montreal, passed resolutions expressing their will to stay in Canada.[12]\n\nIn 1997, Denzil Spence, the mayor of Allumette Island, a small west Quebec municipality on the Ontario border, approached the county councils in several nearby Ontario counties with the following pro-partition resolution which had previously been endorsed by Quebec's Equality Party:\n\nResolved: Regardless of the outcome of any referendum on the independence of Quebec conducted by the government of the province of Quebec, the Government of Canada guarantee forthwith the rights of loyal citizens of Canada, where they form the majority in any provincial riding in Quebec, to remain citizens of Canada, territorially part of the Canadian nation and people, one and indivisible.[13]\n\nBetween March and August 1997, the resolution was endorsed by county councils in Renfrew County, Frontenac County, Lanark County, and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry United Counties, but it was rejected by the council of Prescott-Russell County.[14]\n\nA similar resolution, circulated by a group called the Quebec Committee for Canada, was endorsed by New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna in early summer 1997, and shortly afterwards by New Brunswick's Union of Municipalities, representing about 40 predominantly anglophone municipal councils. However the parallel francophone organization, the Association of New Brunswick Municipalities, rejected the partition resolution.[15] Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard responded to Premier McKenna's letter of endorsement with a letter of his own, defending Quebec's right to secede with its territory intact. This in turn provoked an open letter from federal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister St\u00e9phane Dion, arguing that partition was a legitimate option. Finally, on August 14, Quebec's deputy premier, Bernard Landry, responded with an open letter in Le Droit, accusing partitionists of being anti-democratic.\n\nShortly after these events, the sovereigntist provincial government of Premier Bouchard enacted a law forcing many of Quebec's municipalities to merge \u2014 and in particular, forcing all of the small non-francophone municipalities on the Island of Montreal to become part of a single francophone-majority municipality covering the entire island. Montreal Gazette columnist Henry Aubin observed shortly afterwards that \"many sovereigntists hoped that the merger would boost French and stymie partition.\", ignoring the fact that municipalities have no constitutional powers and belong to the province.[16]\n\nArguments against partition [ edit ]\n\nQuebec sovereigntists and federalist Quebec nationalists generally oppose partition. Partition is chiefly supported by the argument of the right of territorial integrity (int\u00e9grit\u00e9 t\u00e9rritoriale) of Quebec. A number of arguments have been advanced in defence of this position.\n\n1. International law guarantees the territorial integrity of Quebec. The most precise expression of the argument that international law would guarantee a sovereign Quebec\u2019s right to its current boundaries was given, in 1992, from the B\u00e9langer-Campeau Commission, by a panel of international law experts (Thomas Franck, Rosalyn Higgins, Alain Pellet, Malcolm Shaw, Christian Tomuschat) commissioned by the government of Quebec in the aftermath of the failed Meech Lake Accord. They responded to the following two questions on the territorial integrity and the potential partition of an independent Quebec, which were posed by a special commission of the Quebec National Assembly:\n\nQuestion No. 1: \u201cAssuming that Quebec were to attain sovereignty, would the boundaries of a sovereign Quebec remain the same as its present boundaries, including the territories attributed to Quebec under the federal legislation of 1898 and 1912, or would they be those of the Province of Quebec at the time of the creation of the Canadian Federation in 1867?\u201d\n\nQuestion No 2: \u201cAssuming that Quebec were to attain sovereignty, would international law enforce the principle of territorial integrity (or uti possidetis) over any claims aiming to dismember the territory of Quebec, and more particularly: \u201c(a) claims of the Natives of Quebec invoking the right to self-determination within the meaning of international law; \u201c(b) claims of the anglophone minority, particularly in respect of those regions of Quebec in which this minority is concentrated; \u201c(c) claims of the inhabitants of certain border regions of Quebec, regardless of ethnic origin?\"\n\nThe panelists answered with their opinions as follows:\n\nAnswer No. 1: \u201cIf Quebec were to attain independence, the borders of a sovereign Quebec would be its present boundaries and would include the territories attributed to Quebec by the federal legislation of 1898 and 1912, unless otherwise agreed to by the province before independence, or as between the two States thereafter.\u201d\n\nAnswer No. 2: \u201cIf Quebec were to attain independence, the principle of legal continuity (absence of a vacuum juris) would allow the territorial integrity of Quebec, guaranteed both by Canadian constitutional law and public international law, to be asserted over any claims aimed at dismembering the territory of Quebec, whether they stem from: \u201c- the Natives of Quebec, who enjoy all the rights belonging to minorities, in addition to those recognized in indigenous peoples by present-day international law, but without giving rise to the right to secede; \u201c- the anglophone minority for whom the protection provided by international law has no territorial effect; or \u201c- persons residing in certain border regions of Quebec, who, as such, enjoy no particular protection under international law.\"\n\n\u201cThese conclusions are reinforced by the applicability of the principle of the succession to the existing territorial limits at the time of independence.\u201d[17]\n\nThis line of argumentation is supported by \"Uti possidetis juris\" which states, as per customary international law, that newly formed sovereign states should have the same borders that their preceding dependent area had before their independence.[18]\n\n2. Quebec is a nation, and therefore it has the collective right to be an independent nation-state, and also a collective right not to be partitioned or divided. There may be corollaries to this argument. First, Canada including French-speaking and English-speaking Canadians would be considered not to be a nation, and hence its territorial integrity does not warrant the protection given under international law to the existing borders of nation-states. Second, the fact that English-speaking Canadians living in Quebec are linked by language to another nation (the rest of Canada) does not mean that they have the right to remain within Canada in their homes if the province secedes. This was the argument presented by Premier Lucien Bouchard when he stated, on January 27, 1996, that \"Canada is not a real country.\"\n\nThis argument is also based in international law, more specifically Section b. of Article XI of the Charter of the United Nations, stating:\n\n\"Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end: [...]\n\nb. to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement; [...]\"[19]\n\nWorded otherwise, this means that Quebec, as a distinct nation, has the right to aspirations to form a sovereign state, as well as the right to be supported by the Federal government in this endeavor.\n\nG\u00e9rald Larose, the president of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, used this argument to explain why he referred to partition proposals as \"racist\":\n\n\"Asked why he calls the partition movement racist, Larose said, 'cutting up a territory, wherever it's done in the world, is a racist project. They cut according to the backyard and the sidewalks of people, according to their race. This is a racist project.' Asked why this does not apply to the sovereigntist project and Canada, he said, 'There is not one people in Canada. There are two peoples. Quebec is a people and Canada is another people and we have our territory. That is why Canada is divisible, Quebec un-divisible.'\"[20]\n\nThis argument has also been supported by francophones in provinces outside of Quebec. In the two-year period following the 1995 referendum, when many municipal councils in Ontario and New Brunswick were passing resolutions endorsing the right of individual municipalities within Quebec to leave the province and rejoin Canada, the \"partition resolution\" was rejected by almost all French-majority municipalities in the two provinces. In the mostly French-speaking Ottawa suburb of Vanier, the council approved the resolution, and later rescinded its approval. Mayor Guy Cousineau explained this reversal to a newspaper reporter by stating \"I had letters and calls from many francophones in Nepean, Gloucester, and on the Quebec side.\" He went on to explain, \"We must show solidarity for 'la francophonie' from one ocean to the other. Not just here in Ontario, not just in Quebec, but everywhere in Canada\u2026. Now, it's very clear and certain that we're not in favour of Quebec separation, but there are better ways to encourage Quebecers to remain in Canada.\"[21]\n\n3. Partition is based on the undemocratic assumption that Quebec is not divisible as long as it is voting \"No\" to secession, but that it is divisible as soon as it votes \"Yes.\" In 1997, future Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois leader Bernard Landry expressed this point of view when he wrote,\n\n\"The partitionists argue that 'No' voters should have more rights than 'Yes' voters. In 1980 and again in 1995, sovereigntist voters accepted with good grace the majority decision. According to the partitionists, some 'No' voters could ignore democracy, refuse the verdict and change the rules of the game. This would be an intolerable injustice\u2026. [Do] you think that the towns or the regions that voted 'Yes' in 1980 and in 1995 also have the right to break themselves away from Canada? Surely not.\"[22]\n\nAs an example of what ex-premier Bernard Landry explained, it can be established that after the Quebec Referendum of 1995 where the Yes vote lost by a margin of about 0.5% (49.42% Yes, 50.58% No), no attempts to partition were made by the \"Yes\" voter base, in respect of the referendum. It is an argument based less on legal grounds, and more on moral grounds.\n\n4. Partition is an impractical solution, or is being proposed insincerely even by its advocates. This argument has been advanced by Raymond Villeneuve, a founding member of the FLQ and leader of the Mouvement de lib\u00e9ration nationale du Qu\u00e9bec (MLNQ), who says,\n\n\"They're always threatening us, always, always. Whether it's Brent Tyler, Stephen Scott, William Johnson, William Shaw or whoever. And they're very subtle about it. They say that if we want to divide Canada, then they'll divide Quebec. And they make it sound as though people will accept it. Their real objective is to scare people, but they say, 'We don't want violence. We just won't pay our taxes. We'll use civil disobedience.' \"\n\nThere is merit in Villeneuve's characterization of partition as being primarily an argument designed to encourage Quebecers to vote against separation in any future referendum on separation. Trudeau's 1980 observation that if Canada is divisible, Quebec is also divisible, was made on the eve of a referendum in which he was attempting to encourage voters to cast their ballots against secession. The first book on the subject, and the one which gave its name to the movement, was 1980's Partition, the Price of Quebec's Independence, by Lionel Albert and William Shaw. The title of this book makes clear its intention to use the threat of territorial losses to dissuade Quebecers from voting in favour of secession. Stephen Scott was even more direct about his intention to use the threat of partition as a means of preventing separation altogether:\n\n\"Partition is to Quebec nationalists like rats for Winston Smith in George Orwell's novel 1984 \u2014 it is the ultimate fear. That is the only thing they have ever been afraid of: the disintegration of their territory.\"[23]\n\nBy the time of the second referendum on secession, in 1995, not all partition arguments were designed with the intention of causing Quebecers to vote against independence. The referendums by Quebec's Cree and Inuit populations in the days prior to the province's referendum seem to have been designed not to serve as a threat, but rather to provide a clear basis on which to actually carry out the separation of these territories from Quebec, in the event of a provincewide majority in favour of secession.\n\n5. Partition is illegal due to municipalities being entities created by the Quebec National Assembly and therefore, the municipalities cannot hold referendum on separations, because they don't have any constitutional powers.\n\nThe fact that municipalities don't have constitutional powers is recognised by the constitution act:\n\n\"The Constitution Act, 1867 established the parameters of current federal and provincial relationships with municipalities. Section 92 of the Act sets out the exclusive powers of provincial legislatures in 16 areas, with section 92(8) giving the legislature of each province exclusive responsibility for making laws relating to that province\u2019s municipal institutions. [...] Because local governments are legally subordinate to provincial governments, the only sources of authority and revenue available to municipalities are those that are specifically granted by provincial legislation.\"[24]\n\n6. Partition is not allowed without the consent of the affected provinces. Section 43 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms explicitly states that \u201cany alterations to boundaries between provinces [\u2026] only where so authorized by resolutions [\u2026] of the legislative assembly of each province to which the amendment applies\u201d[25]\n\nPopular support \/ opposition [ edit ]\n\nNo polling was done on the subject of partition prior to the 1995 referendum on secession, so it is difficult to guess at levels of support. However, during the years following the referendum, a number of polls were conducted, asking Canadians their views on the subject. Different questions sometimes elicited different responses, but certain patterns could nevertheless be distinguished:\n\nSupport for partition was relatively low when people were asked, simply, if they favoured \u201cpartition\u201d as a concept, but rose rapidly when the pollsters asked whether people or regions should be allowed to choose whether to remain in Canada. For example, one poll published in late September 1997 reported that when Quebecers were asked, \u201cAre you for or against partition?\u201d only 34.4% supported the idea. In another poll conducted at almost the same time, 60% of Quebecers answered \u201cyes\u201d when asked, \u201cDo you believe that any regions of Quebec which want to remain part of Canada have the right to do so?\u201d[26]\n\nWithin Quebec, opinion was about evenly divided as to whether parts of the province that wish to remain within Canada should be permitted to do so. However, outside Quebec, a decisive majority believed that parts of Quebec which wish to remain Canadian should be permitted to do so. In a poll conducted five months after the referendum, 48% of Quebecers responded \u201cyes\u201d, and 45% \u201cno\u201d to the question, \u201cIf Quebec becomes sovereign, do you think regions of Quebec should have the right to remain part of Canada?\u201d In the rest of Canada, 75% answered \u201cyes\u201d and only 23% answered \u201cno.\u201d[27] In a 1997 poll, 56% of Quebecers and 80% of non-Quebecers felt that \u201cregions\u201d of Quebec should \u201chave the right to stay in Canada\u201d if Quebec were to secede.[28]\n\nBoth inside and outside Quebec, there tended to be opposition to any option that hinted of the use of force to settle territorial issues. The strongest opposition to partition came in the answers to a 1996 poll in which respondents were asked whether it would be acceptable \u201cfor groups within Quebec to partition the territory and separate from Quebec.\u201d Only 66% of non-Quebecers said this option was acceptable (about 10 - 15% below support levels in other polls), and it was supported by only 25% of Quebecers. Significantly, survey respondents had first been asked whether they agreed with the statement, \u201cIf Quebec votes to leave Canada, the federal government should use force to make it stay,\u201d and it seems likely that many survey respondents associated partition with the use of force.[29]\n\nAmong both Quebecers and non-Quebecers, support was higher for giving the right to self-determination to Quebec\u2019s aboriginals, than it was for giving the same right to non-aboriginals who might want to remain within Canada. For example, in a 1997 poll, 75% of Quebecers and 92% of non-Quebecers agreed that the Cree and Inuit regions of northern Quebec \u201chave the right to stay in Canada.\u201d[30] A 1999 poll showed that 72% of Quebecers found it reasonable that \u201cnorthern regions with an aboriginal majority could stay in Canada\u201d, while only 49% were willing to accord the same right to regions where a majority had voted No to separation.[31]\n\nNo major political party in Quebec supports partition, including federalist parties.\n\nProvincial election of 2007 [ edit ]\n\nDuring the Quebec provincial election of 2007, Liberal Premier Jean Charest stated that while he personally was opposed to partition, it would emerge as an issue if Quebec voted to secede from Canada.[32] Political rivals Mario Dumont (Action d\u00e9mocratique du Qu\u00e9bec) and Andre Boisclair (Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois) criticized this.\n\nPierre-Karl P\u00e9ladeau 2015 [ edit ]\n\nOn 26 November 2015, PQ leader Pierre-Karl P\u00e9ladeau created controversy when he implied First Nations and other groups could negotiate succession from an independent Quebec. This went against his party's longstanding position than an independent Quebec's borders would remain the same. He later retracted his statement, saying negotiations with First Nations would take place within the context of Quebec's current territory.[33]\n\nSee also [ edit ]\n\nReferences [ edit ]"} -{"text":"An Iqaluit man has taken advantage of Amazon's free shipping to the city to make food donations to local schools. Now he wants to expand his giving to other schools throughout Nunavut's Baffin Island region.\n\n\"The need's not going away,\" said Michael Murphy of the high local food prices that have driven him to ditch his shopping cart for his computer mouse.\n\n'At the post office ... there was a section that was called 'Michael's Section'' says Murphy. (CBC)\n\nSince November Murphy has shipped $7,000 worth of food to several schools in Iqaluit.\n\nHe started in November 2015 by asking for donations to help pay for breakfast and lunch programs and food hampers at the schools.\n\nHe bought all the food \u2014 peanut butter, cereal, soup, breakfast bars \u2014 on Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.\n\n\"That's where you get the best buying power,\" Murphy said.\n\nFree shipping key to program\n\nAmazon.ca charges substantial shipping fees to shoppers living outside of the Nunavut capital.\n\nWhat it costs on Amazon to ship 12 cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup to Pond Inlet, Nunavut. The same order can be shipped for free to Iqaluit. (CBC)\n\nSomeone from Pond Inlet ordering a dozen 284-millilitre cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup would have to pay $121 in shipping and handling fees \u2014 12 times the cost of the soup.\n\nBut someone placing the same order from Iqaluit has the option of choosing free shipping or slightly faster free shipping using a $79-a-year Amazon Prime account, which is what Murphy has.\n\n\"If Amazon ever changes the shipping to Iqaluit, we would be hurting up here,\" he said. \"Our dollar doesn't go very far.\"\n\nExpanding to other communities\n\nMurphy's next goal is to ship food to other Baffin Island communities \u2014 like Pond Inlet, which is a two-and-a-half hour plane ride from Iqaluit \u2014 where free Amazon shipping is not an option.\n\nBut he knows that, once the items arrive in Iqaluit, shipping them himself to the other communities will be pricey.\n\n\"I'm exploring other avenues for when I start up in the fall to see if I can get it on gratis on a plane to go up there,\" he said.\n\nSylvain Charlebois, professor of agriculture at Dalhousie University. (CBC)\n\nMurphy is also talking to schools in the Toronto District School Board about auctioning off art depicting life in the North made by Nunavut schoolchildren, as a way to raise money for shipping outside of Iqaluit.\n\n\"If anything the need has just gotten worse and it's not going to go away,\" he said of those communities.\n\nSylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University's Faculty of Agriculture, says Amazon has the potential to fight food insecurity in the North thanks to the company's sheer size and its ability to keep food prices low and stable.\n\n\"Amazon could actually allow many people to have access to not only good food, but many people up North could actually have access to affordable food as well,\" he said."} -{"text":"FORMER Brisbane Lions captain Jed Adcock is determined to extend his career at another club, believing he has at least three years of football left in him.\n\nThe Lions informed the 29-year-old last month they would not renew his contract beyond this season after 12 years and more than 200 games with the club.\n\nBut a match-winning four-goal and 21-disposal effort in the Lions' surprise victory over the Western Bulldogs has left Adcock even more certain he can play on for several more years.\n\n\"I was pretty confident throughout the whole year that my future next year was going to be pretty good, so it came as a fair shock when I got told at the end of the year that I'd be moving on,\" Adcock told AFL.com.au.\n\n\"I felt like my form as a defender was really good, and I definitely felt that I'd done enough.\n\n\"I still feel like I've got three or four really good years of footy left in me. I'm only 29. I'm excited by the opportunity to move on and see what's next for me.\"\n\nAdcock was the longest serving Lion on the club's list in 2015, was co-captain with Jonathan Brown in 2013 and took on the reins solely in 2014 before the role was handed to teammate Tom Rockliff.\n\nAdcock said he spoke with coach Justin Leppitsch about two weeks before the end of the season and was delivered the news he would not be at the club in 2016.\n\n\"It was a weird meeting. It was just me and 'Leppa', and Leppa felt that my form had dropped a little bit,\" he said.\n\n\"But it was more that he was worried that my body had given way more than anything and that my pace was down and change of direction not as good. I found that a bit hard to believe.\"\n\nAdcock said the ensuing final rounds of the season were difficult knowing he would soon be packing up his locker and departing, describing it as \"a kick in the guts\".\n\n\"But it was really important for me to play well, because I've not got to go out and prove to other teams they should be picking me up and that I do have three good years left in me,\" he said. \"I'm hoping on the weekend some teams were able to see that.\"\n\nAdcock's credentials are strong. He has been durable \u2013 playing 20 or more games in the past five seasons \u2013 and will be able to start next pre-season on day one after not requiring off-season surgery.\n\nHe has had two top-three finishes in the club's best and fairest (in 2005 and 2007) and was an All Australian nominee in 2007.\n\nHe will also be eligible as a delisted free agent, allowing clubs to consider signing him without having to go through the trade process.\n\n\"They know me as a defender but having that flexibility and going both ends of the ground is only going to help me find a club next year,\" Adcock said.\n\n\"Hopefully it's not a hard sell but I imagine what will happen is there's probably bigger priorities they're trying to get at the moment and I'll fall through after that.\"\n\nAdcock and his young family are prepared to move anywhere for another AFL opportunity, having already considered it likely they would leave Queensland after his career at the Lions ended.\n\nHe has been developing his skills as part of the Next Coach Program run by respected football assistant coach David Wheadon, and hopes to get into a position as soon as his playing career ends.\n\n\"It's probably made me think about footy in a few different ways, but in a lot of ways my beliefs about coaching are the same as his,\" Adcock said.\n\n\"The more I've done it the more I've enjoyed it. There as aspects I've got to do a bit more work on but there are other aspects which I feel right across.\"\n\nWhile speculation had dogged the Lions in recent weeks about unrest with some players and their coach \u2013 including midfielder Jack Redden who wants to be traded out of the club \u2013 Adcock said he had a good relationship with Leppitsch.\n\n\"It was never going to be an easy conversation with a 12-year player who has captained the side. It was never going to be easy for him,\" he said.\n\n\"I respect that he was able to tell me face-to-face where he thought my footy was at. It's fine, that's footy and I understand it's a business and sometimes you have to make the tough calls.\n\n\"This opens another opportunity for me and we're really excited to find out what that will be and I can play some good footy at another club.\""} -{"text":"Arena South District redevelopment 8 Gallery: Arena South District redevelopment\n\nGRAND RAPIDS, MI \u2013 The parking lots south of the Van Andel Arena need more pedestrian connections, green spaces and buildings for people to work, live and shop in, according to a \u201cvisioning plan\u201d presented to the Downtown Development Authority Wednesday, April 10. The seven-week study yielded a series of drawings that propose replacing freeway exits and parking lots in the Arena South District with new buildings, some of which would wrap around parking structures.\n\nTom Nemitz, an architect who led the \u201cvisioning\u201d effort, said the suggestions gained from meeting with residents and stakeholders in the area, concluded the \u201cSouth Arena District\u201d should establish \u201cstreet grids\u201d that end the US-131 off ramp at Cherry Street rather than Oakes Street. One option called for a tree-lined boulevard leading to Oakes Street while another option called for the creation of a park-like plaza connected to Oakes Street. While the DDA did not act on any of the plans, it voted to approve the five priorities established by the study. Those goals included: \u2022 Growing business and economic opportunities \u2022 Greening streets, buildings and public spaces \u2022 Building compact urban blocks that are densely developed and designed for people \u2022 Connecting transit, shops, restaurants, hotels, schools and the Grand River \u2022 Living and engaging in a multi-season inclusive environment. Mayor George Heartwell urged the planners to consider the needs of low-income residents in the neighborhood. Heartwell also encouraged the planners to consider mass transit options as an alternative to replacing the parking spots that will be lost with redevelopment. em>E-mail Jim Harger:\n\nand follow him on Twitter at"} -{"text":"Live concert I recorded and released on tape years ago. Original pressing was limited to 25 and they were all given out at Brattfest. For sale now is a copy from my personal archives. Very rare cover songs and one unreleased song. Won't find these recordings anywhere else! Please note the sound quality isn't the greatest as it was recorded live straight to cassette.\n\nTrack listing:\n\n1. New Mexico song (part)\n\n2. Free as the rent we don't pay (part)\n\n3. Whiskey is my kind of lullaby\n\n4. DIY orgasms\n\n5. Where is my coffee\n\n6. Green St.\n\n7. Wagon wheel\n\n8. Harmony parking lot song\n\n9. Acid song\n\n10. Color in your cheeks\n\n11. Going to Georgia\n\n12. This year\n\n13. Tampa Bay song\n\n14. Fuck cops intro, into Skaggy\n\n15. No trespassing waltz\n\n16. Crackhouse song\n\n17. Sellout song"} -{"text":"Canberra's proposed lockout laws ditched by ACT Government\n\nUpdated\n\nThe ACT Government has scrapped its proposed bar and nightclub lockout laws in the face of opposition from the Greens, businesses and the community.\n\nThe Government was considering enforcing a 3:00am closing time or increasing fees for businesses selling alcohol after that time.\n\nThe proposal was aimed at reducing the amount of alcohol-fuelled violence in Canberra.\n\nBut similar changes introduced in Sydney have been widely condemned by business owners and patrons.\n\nOn Tuesday the Greens announced they would not support the changes, effectively blocking the proposal.\n\n\"The Greens didn't support restrictions on trading hours because we want Canberra to have a thriving night time economy,\" ACT Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury said.\n\n\"It would shut down opportunities for nightlife and entertainment in Canberra, when in fact we should be moving in the other direction.\n\n\"Dealing with alcohol-related harms is important, but we don't need to do it by curbing Canberra's nightlife.\n\n\"We can have safety and entertainment at the same time.\"\n\nEmphasise on smaller venues and transport: Rattenbury\n\nMr Rattenbury said he believed there were other ways to reduce street violence.\n\n\"We believe an emphasise on smaller bars, restaurants and live music is one of the key issues to addressing alcohol-fuelled violence,\" he said.\n\n\"So there are options for people to go out and be entertained without having to just drink alcohol.\n\n\"Certainly having good transport options for people to get home at the end of the night safely is another important part of maximising the ability for people to go out without getting involved in alcohol-related violence.\"\n\nChief Minister Andrew Barr denied he had been \"rolled\" by the Greens.\n\n\"Well without me it wasn't going to get up and I didn't support it and that was the most important factor in the decision,\" he told 666 ABC Canberra.\n\n\"I'm not going to go through in great detail the position of each individual Cabinet minister, but suffice to say the Attorney-General [Simon Corbell] put forward a discussion paper and it had the support of all of his colleagues.\"\n\nBut Mr Barr said community and Cabinet response to a possible 3:00am closing time was mixed.\n\n\"The issue here is to what extent does the poor behaviour of a very small number of people dictate a response that impacts very negatively on a much larger number of people,\" he said.\n\nAttorney-General Simon Corbell said the Government would continue to work with police and venues to reduce street violence.\n\n\"There is no place in our city for alcohol-fuelled violence and we will continue to work to keep our streets safe,\" he said.\n\nThe Government will continue to introduce legislation later this year that will include initiative to \"lower licence fees for lower risk venues and red tape reduction for cafes\".\n\nTopics: music, health, alcohol, community-and-society, states-and-territories, canberra-2600, act\n\nFirst posted"} -{"text":"Ribbon Profile Blog Joined April 2010 United States 5278 Posts Last Edited: 2011-07-19 08:06:12 #1\n\nAre you a nerd?\n\nAre you a slob?\n\nDo you have a girly screen name on Team Liquid?\n\nIf you answered any of these questions, there's only one thing can salvage your life\n\nBUFFCRAFT! HUAH!\n\nYou see, I know a lotta y'all wanna spread the word of e-sports, but how you gonna get taken seriously if you look like the sterotypical gaming nerd. Y'aint, t's how.\n\nIn order for our fandom to be taken seriously by today's materialist culture, we must be more than devoted, funny, and all around cool people. The Starcraft 2 fandom must be known o'er the land as the fandom with the\n\nROCK!\n\nHARD!\n\nABS!\n\nHuah!\n\nRules\n\nWhen you're a real man (or real woman, as they case may be. Muscles are not a patriarchy, they're a pec-riachry), you make your own rules. Here's what they are:\n\n1. You gotta ladder, bro. How you gonna be taken serious as a Starcraft 2 player if you don't ladder. That's common sense.\n\n2. When you win a game, reward yourself by doing a manly act of your choice. Flex! Punch something! Headbutt a tree! What matters is that you stay pumped\n\n3. But when you LOOOOOSE, that's when you need to earn back the right to play.\n\n3a. If you lose a macro game, you need to do 10 crunches OR 10 jumping jacks OR ten push-ups\n\n3b. If you lose to cheese, you need to do 25 crunches, jumping jacks, OR push-ups\n\n3c. If you yourself are the cheeser and still you lose, you must do 30 crunches, jumping jacks, or push-ups\n\n4. After payin' your dues, you can rest if you feel you feel you need to. Play when you're ready, don't actually hurt yourself. We don't judge you...out loud.\n\n5. If you wanna keep track of your weight-loss and share the results with the thread, fucking go for it, bro. If you want to keep it to yourself, that is also dude. The goal is self-improvement through self-indudement.\n\n6. Buffcraft is not a substitute for an actual exercise regime. I'm not a doctah. Go see one before starting this program if you feel the need, due a medical condition, pregnancy, or anything like that.\n\nRemember, the most important rule is to get a little healthier and manlier (or womanlier!) while having fun playing Starcraft 2. Anything in accordance with that rule is not only allowed, but encouraged. You think you can have more fun adding \"flex and then yell\" at 50 food in your build order. Fucking do it. You wanna ladder dressed as David Coverdale from the band Whitesnake? Huah!\n\nAnd if you get flex and crunch your way to Masters, then you're just goddamn winning at everything.\n\nEDITED:\n\nA lot of y'all in the thread thing that the Buffcraft regime is insufficiently masculine. I'm proud of you for recognizing that more can be done. You wanna participate, and you think you can handle MORE than the vanilla pansy-ass version of Buffcraft. Post your alternative regimen in the thread, and keep us updated as you step up further. But remember, lying causes your secondary sexual organs to shrink to the size of raisins. And nobody likes raisins.\n\nRibbon\n\nWin: Having crushed my enemy and seeing him driven before me, I imagine the lamentations of his women.\n\nLose a macro game: 25 crunches. 25 jumping jacks\n\nLose to cheese: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 10 push-ups\n\nFail at committing cheese: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 20 push-ups. However, Ribbon does not cheese, and thus never has to face this punishment. Are you a nerd?Are you a slob?Do you have a girly screen name on Team Liquid?If you answered any of these questions, there's only one thing can salvage your lifeYou see, I know a lotta y'all wanna spread the word of e-sports, but how you gonna get taken seriously if you look like the sterotypical gaming nerd. Y'aint, t's how.In order for our fandom to be taken seriously by today's materialist culture, we must be more than devoted, funny, and all around cool people. The Starcraft 2 fandom must be known o'er the land as the fandom with theHuah!When you're a(or, as they case may be. Muscles are not a patriarchy, they're a pec-riachry), you make your own rules. Here's what they are:1. You gotta ladder, bro. How you gonna be taken serious as a Starcraft 2 player if you don't ladder. That's common sense.2. When you win a game, reward yourself by doing a manly act of your choice. Flex! Punch something! Headbutt a tree! What matters is that you stay3. But when you, that's when you need toback the right to play.3a. If you lose a macro game, you need to do 10 crunches OR 10 jumping jacks OR ten push-ups3b. If you lose to cheese, you need to do 25 crunches, jumping jacks, OR push-ups3c. If you yourself are the cheeser and still you lose, you must do 30 crunches, jumping jacks, or push-ups4. After payin' your dues, you can rest if you feel you feel you need to. Play when you're ready, don't actually hurt yourself. We don't judge you...out loud.5. If you wanna keep track of your weight-loss and share the results with the thread, fucking go for it, bro. If you want to keep it to yourself, that is also dude. The goal is self-improvement through self-indudement.6. Buffcraft is not a substitute for an actual exercise regime. I'm not a doctah. Go see one before starting this program if you feel the need, due a medical condition, pregnancy, or anything like that.Remember, the most important rule is to get a little healthier and manlier (or womanlier!) while having fun playing Starcraft 2. Anything in accordance with that rule is not only allowed, but encouraged. You think you can have more fun adding \"flex and then yell\" at 50 food in your build order. Fucking do it. You wanna ladder dressed as David Coverdale from the band Whitesnake? Huah!And if you get flex and crunch your way to Masters, then you're just goddamn winning at everything.EDITED:A lot of y'all in the thread thing that the Buffcraft regime is insufficiently masculine. I'm proud of you for recognizing that more can be done. You wanna participate, and you think you can handle MORE than the vanilla pansy-ass version of Buffcraft. Post your alternative regimen in the thread, and keep us updated as you step up further. But remember, lying causes your secondary sexual organs to shrink to the size of raisins. And nobody likes raisins.: Having crushed my enemy and seeing him driven before me, I imagine the lamentations of his women.: 25 crunches. 25 jumping jacks: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 10 push-ups: 25 crunches, 25 jumping jacks, 20 push-ups. However, Ribbon does not cheese, and thus never has to face this punishment."} -{"text":"Washington (CNN) It was their last, best chance at a big, bipartisan deal: President Barack Obama and congressional Republican leaders all agreed on free trade.\n\nJust a little more than a year ago, that philosophical alignment looked like enough for Obama's signature trade deal and centerpiece of his Asian pivot policy -- the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership -- to clear Congress.\n\nThen the 2016 presidential campaign intervened. Now, as Obama participates in his last Southeast Asian summit to promote the pivot and its massive trade pact, the TPP looks like it's headed to the political graveyard.\n\nObama tried to sound optimistic Wednesday about the deal's future, while also conveying to leaders in Asia the reality of the obstacles.\n\n\"I believe that we'll get it done but it's always going to be hard,\" Obama said at a news conference in Laos, suggesting the deal's path might be easier after the US election. \"Nothing is easy in the US Congress right now. Maybe there was a time when it was but I haven't seen it.\"\n\nRepublican presidential nominee Donald Trump roused a populist base with his strident anti-trade message, declaring the Pacific Rim deal \"terrible\" and a \"rape\" of American workers. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, seeking to minimize the threat of primary opponent Bernie Sanders, announced that she, too, opposes the TPP. And, sensing the political risk of supporting a controversial deal both presidential nominees oppose, several lawmakers changed their positions.\n\nTrump is expected to call Wednesday for eliminating the sequester on defense spending and bolstering the US' defenses by proposing a \"major investment\" in US military spending.\n\nAs Obama tries to cajole last concessions from partner countries on his final trip to Asia, the same congressional leaders who'd nudged him along on the TPP now say it's unlikely to be ratified.\n\n\"The current agreement, the Trans-Pacific agreement, which has some serious flaws, will not be acted upon this year,\" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flatly declared at a Kentucky Farm Bureau event last week.\n\nRight now, with even pro-trade stalwarts like McConnell opposed to ratification during Obama's term, advocates of the TPP admit that they don't have the votes necessary to clear the House and the Senate.\n\nThe summer has featured a rush of Republicans -- particularly those in competitive races -- bolting from the trade deal.\n\nSen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican and long-time trade supporter, wrote in August in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette op-ed : \"We should dump the TPP and return to the negotiating table to get an agreement that would create jobs and economic growth here at home.\"\n\nMissouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt told reporters he's having second thoughts about the deal . Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, once a Trump challenger, hasn't taken an official position, but he stripped mention of trade -- and his support for earlier steps greasing the wheels for TPP -- from his website, RealClearPolitics recently reported\n\nAnd Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican who once negotiated pacts as the US trade representative under George W. Bush, opposes the TPP.\n\nConservative activists who waged a battle to deny Obama trade promotion authority in the first place, meanwhile, say they believe Trump awakened a party that had been ignoring its loyalists on trade.\n\n\"I think this will last. Every time an issue comes to the forefront, I've never seen the activists forget about it. Once that issue is in the quiver and activists are paying attention to it, it stays there and activists will fight it forever,\" said Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler. \"The stain is here to stay.\"\n\nThe deal's supporters -- including the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers -- aren't giving up. But they acknowledge the uphill battle on Capitol Hill.\n\nLinda Dempsey, the National Association of Manufacturers' vice president of international economic affairs, said that, \"additional leadership is needed in Washington to forge a viable path forward.\"\n\nThe US manufacturing sector \"continues to lose foreign sales and access to new customers in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world,\" Dempsey warned about the deal falling through.\n\nObama and TPP advocates have a problem with the president's typical allies on the left, too.\n\nOnly a small group of Democrats -- mostly members of the centrist New Democrat Coalition -- backed trade promotion authority in the first place, making for the unusual coalition of Obama and congressional Republicans.\n\nSince then, those Democrats have been under pressure from labor unions that argue the TPP, which they've dubbed \"NAFTA on steroids,\" would siphon more manufacturing jobs away from the United States.\n\nSanders stoked opposition to the TPP among unions and progressives during the primaries, making it a mainstay of his stump speech and his go-to answer about what differentiated him from Obama and Clinton.\n\nThat forced Clinton -- who'd declared the TPP a \"gold standard\" trade deal in 2012 while serving as Obama's secretary of state -- to the left. Her announcement in the fall of 2015 that she opposes the deal made Obama's task of getting Democrats on board even tougher.\n\nOpponents, meanwhile, are declaring victory -- at least for now.\n\n\"It won't come up because the votes aren't there,\" Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, a labor union that opposes TPP, said at a Christian Science Monitor Breakfast Thursday. \"The candidates running will have to declare where they stand on TPP and the chips will fall where they may.\"\n\nRepublican House Speaker Paul Ryan has maintained the deal would need substantial renegotiation -- a tough task since each of the other 11 participating nations have their own political sensitivities and Obama has less than five months remaining in office.\n\n\"They have to fix this agreement and renegotiate some pieces of it if they have any hope or chance of passing it,\" Ryan said in an early August interview with Wisconsin Public Radio. \"I don't see how they'll ever get the votes for it.\"\n\nBut McConnell made clear last week that the path to the TPP's passage isn't totally closed.\n\n\"It will still be around. It can be massaged, changed, worked on during the next administration,\" he said.\n\nEven if Congress ultimately does approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the next president will have ways of blocking its implementation -- such as procedural steps like refusing to officially notify other countries of the United States' implementation of the deal or not verifying that those countries have satisfied their TPP commitments.\n\nThe hope of trade supporters is that a President Clinton or Trump would drop their resistance to the trade deal once in office. If they did, they'd be following a path similar to Obama, who pledged as a presidential candidate to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement but governed as a trade supporter who entered new negotiations with the European Union and Asia-Pacific countries.\n\nBut trade was less of a driving issue in the 2008 race, and neither Clinton nor Trump has left much wiggle room for a post-election reversal.\n\n\"I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages -- including the Trans-Pacific Partnership,\" Clinton said in August in Warren, Michigan. \"I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as president.\"\n\nTrump -- whose strident rejection of the TPP and other trade deals is a staple of his campaign events -- denounced the pact again on conservative radio host Laura Ingraham's show Thursday.\n\n\"It's a terrible deal for the United States,\" he said. \"It's a terrible deal for our workers.\""} -{"text":"The wide scar that runs the length of Vivi Lozoya\u2019s abdomen is a daily reminder of the brutal attack that almost took her life.\n\nShe constantly replays the incident in her mind.\n\nIt was May 2011, and Lozoya, a transgender prostitute, had recently run away from the pimp she says had abused her and held her captive for two years.\n\nOne day while she was out with friends, Lozoya says a man working for her pimp and his associates came up to her on the street, tapped her on the shoulder, and stabbed her in the stomach - she can't remember if it was three or four times. She does remember what the man said before sticking the knife in: \"They sent me to wish you sweet dreams.\"\n\nThe recovery was grueling. To this day, Lozoya says, when she drinks water, it sometimes feels as if it\u2019s seeping out of her digestive tract.\n\n\"And I still dream about being chased,\" she recounts one recent afternoon, sitting in her apartment in a working-class Los Angeles neighborhood. She says she doesn\u2019t know if her attacker was ever caught.\n\nViolence is common\n\nLozoya\u2019s experience was extreme in its brutality. But advocates say violence against transgender women, specifically transgender immigrants like Lozoya who are in the U.S. illegally, is all too common.\n\nIn response, immigrant rights groups are beginning to expand the scope of their work to raise awareness about the discrimination and abuse that gay, and specifically transgender, immigrants often face.\n\nZizi Bandera, an organizer with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, says the impetus to address these issues was the realization that the broader LGBT movement - with its emphasis on marriage equality - has not embraced the cause of gay immigrants.\n\n\"It\u2019s led by gay white men and it hasn\u2019t centered the lives of immigrants that are also LGBT, and particularly transgender,\" Bandera maintains.\n\nA 2011 study by the National Center for Transgender Equality found that 26 percent of transgender people had experienced either physical or sexual abuse. But advocates believe the number is much higher among transgender immigrants, because of intolerant families or because those in the country illegally are much more likely to engage in prostitution to survive, or both. What drives those high rates of abuse, Bandera asserts, is the belief by some people that transgender lives are expendable.\n\nAbuse from an early age\n\nFor Lozoya, the abuse began early, even before she arrived in the U.S. at 19 and began the transition from man to woman. She says it began when Vivi Lozoya was Jose Lozoya, a 12-year-old gay boy living in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. Beatings from homophobic family members were common, Lozoya remembers.\n\nOnce in the U.S., Lozoya decided to become a woman physically, and paid for the surgeries with the money earned from prostitution. Always trusting and, she admits, a bit na\u00efve, Lozoya says she welcomed an offer by a man she met on the street to help her earn more money by placing ads for her services.\n\nBefore long, she says, the man was driving her from one hotel to another across northern California, beating her and forcing her to have sex with up to 30 men a day.\n\nWhen she finally ran away, she filed a restraining order against him, she recalls. She thought that would keep him away; she hadn\u2019t expected him to send someone to kill her.\n\nLozoya only recently started sharing her story. One afternoon in mid-April, she stands before a crowd of people near downtown L.A. and lifts her blouse to show the gruesome scar.\n\nThe first \"Day of Transgender Survivors\"\n\nThe event, called the First International Day of Transgender Survivors, is a resource fair organized by the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. About 200 transgender people and their allies show up to tell stories of violence and survival.\n\nWhen Banderas began working with transgender immigrants about two years ago, she noticed that many of those who came to the Coalition for immigration help - especially the transgender women - had stories of being attacked.\n\n\"I can\u2019t think of one transgender woman here that I\u2019ve worked with that hasn\u2019t faced some kind of severe physical violence in her life,\" she says.\n\nAnd yet many of the women no longer seem fazed by the violence, as if they are used to it, she adds. Banderas says she\u2019s spending a lot of time trying to get transgender women to understand that such violence isn\u2019t normal - and that it should be reported to the police.\n\nThose in the country illegally resist going to the authorities \"out of fear of deportation,\" Bandera says. Others hesitate \"out of fear that their abuser or the person that attacked them will find them later on if the police [don't] follow up the way they should.\"\n\nThe Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights is beginning to work with police to sensitize them to the issues that transgender people face and to encourage them to investigate attacks against transgender people as hate crimes, Bandera says. Though she acknowledges that a hate motive isn\u2019t always apparent in such crimes, she's convinced that \"their transgender identity has everything to do with the violence they experience.\"\n\nA stark reminder\n\nThe resource fair culminates with a noisy march to nearby MacArthur Park, with transgender men and women and their supporters chanting and carrying signs declaring, \"Trans Lives Matter\" and \"Trans Lives Are Beautiful.\"\n\nAs she marches, Vivi Lozoya says being so visible and open about her story gives her a sense of empowerment unlike any she\u2019s felt before.\n\nBut that mood is quickly spoiled. As the rally\u2019s participants head back to their cars, three transgender women are assaulted in two separate attacks.\n\nOrganizer Zizi Bandera says the attacks are a reminder: While transgender people want to make themselves more visible to the world, doing so still isn\u2019t completely safe.\n\nShe says the coalition plans to increase security at next year\u2019s event."} -{"text":"I\u2019m conflicted. As a front-end web developer, I should be excited about the advancements in HTML5: the new HTML tags that correct all the hacks and self-replicating div s; the correctly cross-browser rendered styles which have finally caught up to modern web design; and the new Javascript API\u2019s that make the browser into a semi-legitimate \u2013 albeit Frankensteinian \u2013 app environment.\n\nThen I read this presentation on HTML5, and suddenly, I\u2019m a lot less excited. It\u2019s one thing to formalize the hacks developers have come up with over the years and standardize them into a cohesive spec, but with the renewal of the browser wars, it feels like an escalating feature war all over again.\n\nGoogle has taught us, over the years, that it\u2019s possible but difficult to build complex applications completely in the browser. Google+, Gmail, Google Docs are written with many millions lines of carefully hand-crafted front-end code[1]. Careful coding, because the development environment is markedly unfriendly: loose HTML parsing, undefined and silently-failing CSS styling, and ironically unforgiving Javascript interpretation.\n\nFor a while, this was the accepted state of the web development world: the pieces didn\u2019t really fit together, but with enough brute force you could make things work, even across browsers if you really put in that 50% extra effort. When that wasn\u2019t good enough, browser vendors raced to introduce new features, knowing the spec would take a decade or more to be ratified.\n\nThe new API\u2019s were great, but they necessitated defensive coding in languages not suited for it (e.g., enabling the styling of HTML5 tags in IE\u2019s not recognizing HTML5 with the appropriately-named html5shiv). It also brought about the idea of graceful degradation, where you not only have to worry about getting the functionality to work properly as it is coded, but also somewhat work when functions, features and entire languages are ripped away via browser incompatibilities and user preferences.\n\nNowadays it seems like we\u2019re just going full-steam-ahead, damn the compatibility issues. With the pace of browser releases picking up \u2013 Google\u2019s at the forefront with rapid Chrome releases, Firefox following suit \u2013 it\u2019s nice to have new API\u2019s to play with, but it reeks of the Microsoft-style, proprietary add-ons to an already-crowded and piecemeal coding \u201cecosystem\u201d.\n\nHaving to support 3-4 major browser was already a pain, but supporting 7-8 various browser versions is impossible. Even worse, only Chrome is really set up for rapid client releases; Firefox, for instance, is trying to release more often, but has already claimed its first casualties with a legacy plugin system[2] that wasn\u2019t designed for malleable software versioning. In other words, a lot of add-ons just stopped working with the upgrade, despite how similar FF5 was to FF4.\n\nAdding even more features that is basically implemented in the 3rd-place browser further bifurcates web development: either make full use of new technologies and create cool demos that target a small subset of platforms, or work across all modern platforms targeting a wide audience while sticking with more mundane design and coding techniques. I think most of us who have to work on the web fall into the latter camp by business necessity; it\u2019s only in our spare time that we can try out the new stuff, but with no real hope to transfer what we learn back work-related tasks.\n\nAlthough\u2026now that I think about it, there is a platform for the former group of adventurous web coders.\n\nChrome OS. It suddenly makes a little more sense."} -{"text":"Market expectations for an interest-rate hike before the end of 2015 have fallen sharply this autumn, following weaker-than-expected economic data and rising fears of a global growth slowdown.\n\nThe Fed-funds futures market is now pricing in a 5% probability of a rate increase in October and a 30% probability of a rate increase in December The first fully priced-in rate hike has now been pushed out to March 2016, according to the CME Group\u2019s Fed Watch Tool.\n\nBut if history serves as a guide, the market is probably still getting it wrong, according to Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank.\n\nSince 2009, the market has continuously overestimated the Fed\u2019s rate-hike intentions, getting caught in continuous cycles of anticipating a rate rise and readjusting as the Fed subsequently stayed put, Slok said, in a note late last week.\n\nAs the following chart shows, Fed-funds futures have been predicting a Fed liftoff for the past six years\u2014and have been proven wrong every time.\n\nThe dotted lines represent the projected Fed-funds rate, based on Fed-funds futures prices, while the red line shows the actual Fed-funds rate.\n\nDeutsche Bank The market\u2019s rate-hike expectations (dotted lines) have overestimated the Fed\u2019s actions (red line).\n\nForecasts by Wall Street economists about the benchmark 10-year rate have also been too optimistic for a very long time, the Deutsche Bank report showed.\n\nFor more than a decade, as the following chart shows, forecasts for the 10-year rate from the Fed\u2019s quarterly survey of professional forecasters came in consistently about 60 basis points higher than the actual 10-year yield.\n\nDeutsche Bank The projected 10-year rate (dotted lines) has constantly overestimated the actual 10-year yield (blue line) by about 60 basis points.\n\nCurrently, the Philly Fed survey projects a 2.5% yield by the end of 2015, according to the report. That\u2019s about 46 basis points above the current 10-year yield TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.98% which on Monday hovered around 2.037%, according to Tradeweb.\n\nMaking an accurate prediction about future interest rates might become even more difficult as Fed policy makers\u2014in the name of transparency\u2014express conflicting opinions on monetary policy.\n\nWhen Stanford University economist John Taylor, a well-known expert on monetary policy, told New York Fed President William Dudley on Thursday that the Fed is creating confusion in the market, he echoed the views of many interest-rate strategists.\n\n\u201cIt has recently become cloudier as Fed officials have been taking diverging views,\u201d said Ninh Chung, head of investment strategy at SVB Asset Management.\n\n\u201cThe data remain uneven and inconsistent, so you can see an argument to support both sides. Fed officials\u2019 conflicting views just cause more volatility,\u201d said Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors.\n\nProviding critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here."} -{"text":"Sometimes lost in the contentious discussion around fighters receiving a Therapeutic Use Exemption for Testosterone Replacement Therapy is that some fighters unequivocally need it for medical reasons. While many fans are cynical over Vitor Belfort's use of TRT, the case of Antonio \u201cBigfoot\u201d is another matter.\n\nSilva engaged in a battle for the ages with Mark Hunt at UFN 33, but tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone afterwards. Although he had been granted a TUE, he let his levels get too high, so the fight was declared a no contest, Silva was suspended for nine months, and he was denied his Fight of the Night bonus.\n\nSilva's manager Alex Davis appeared recently on The MMA Hour and explained that Silva's case is a medical necessity.\n\n\u201cThis is one of the guys that really have authentic technical reasons to be on TRT,\u201d said Davis as transcribed by MMA Fighting. \u201cHe has acromegaly. His pituitary gland overproduces GH (growth hormone) and that unbalances all his other hormones.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen I started managing him, he was actually lactating. He has extreme low testosterone. He has extremely low testosterone, so he has a real reason to be on TRT.\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t really take part on the TRT process. There was a miscommunication between him and his doctor. If I was in the middle of it maybe we would have avoided it. I didn\u2019t realize I needed to be involved.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe took the instructions wrong, but he did not try to cheat. What happened was, there was a miscommunication with the doctor and he ended up taking injections at the wrong time. He was taking a month then started taking a week. He took one a week before the fight and one at the week of the fight, which wasn\u2019t supposed to. It got mixed up.\u201d"} -{"text":"Patrick Stokes, Deakin University\n\nDear Mr Briggs,\n\nWe haven\u2019t met. But I\u2019ve been following your ministerial career with some interest, since just before the last election.\n\nAs you\u2019ll recall you were the then-opposition\u2019s spokesperson on \u201cgovernment waste,\u201d a role that involved attending a surprising amount of sport. And in that capacity, you launched a broadside against what you saw as: those ridiculous research grants that leave taxpayers scratching their heads wondering just what the Government was thinking.\n\nYou gave four examples of ARC funded \u201cprojects that do little, if anything, to advance Australians [sic] research needs.\u201d As I discussed on this site at the time, two of those four were projects in my field, philosophy.\n\nOf course, ARC funding is insanely competitive, so those projects were more or less by definition world class contributions to the discipline. Yet you chose to ridicule them \u2013 and, by extension, the life\u2019s work of people like me \u2013 all the same.\n\nCan you believe that was only two years ago? My, what a roller coaster it\u2019s been for you: winning the election, becoming Assistant Minister (not, as you insisted to Raphael Epstein that time, a \u2018junior minister\u2019 even though that\u2019s a common and well-understood term) for Infrastructure and Regional Development, busting a leg tackling the newly deposed PM, being made Minister for Cities and the Built Environment.\n\nAs your new boss might have said, surely there was never a more exciting time to be Jamie Briggs.\n\nAnd then, seemingly out of nowhere, you had to resign after inappropriate behaviour towards a public servant in a bar in Hong Kong.\n\nSo clearly you\u2019ve been busy, and I doubt you\u2019ve had much time to revisit the question of what does and doesn\u2019t count as a valid area of research.\n\nBut what I\u2019d urge you to do, now that you\u2019re back to constituency business and maybe have a little time on your hands, is to find out a bit more about what you knocked back then. Perhaps, in your enthusiasm to win the election, you were a bit too hasty. Perhaps philosophy was the answer all along.\n\nThere\u2019s certainly precedent for those in your profession. Plato, after all, insisted the rulers of the ideal state should be trained philosophers. The likes of Cicero, Seneca, and the philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius all managed to meld the life of the mind and the affairs of state, to the benefit of both. As a Liberal, you\u2019ll surely appreciate the Harm Principle - the cornerstone of modern liberalism - formulated by J.S. Mill, who served one term as an MP.\n\nBut as you can confirm, politics is also brutal and full of setbacks. Philosophy can help there, too.\n\nThe philosopher Boethius was a powerful official under the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, until he was accused of treason. While awaiting execution, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy (523), one of the most influential books of the Middle Ages. As my Cogito colleague Laura D'Olimpio has described, Boethius imagines being visited by a personification of philosophy, who explains that love of wisdom is the only true balm for the sufferings of his soul.\n\nThe Stoics, too, might offer you some resources for overcoming your recent loss of rank. But perhaps that won\u2019t be won\u2019t be enough, and you\u2019ll find you can\u2019t shake it off that easily (as another noted philosopher urges). Politics is a game built for the ambitious, and there\u2019s little so painful as frustrated ambition. Perhaps you\u2019ll find yourself in the position William James describes:\n\nThe paradox of a man shamed to death because he is only the second pugilist or the second oarsman in the world. That he is able to beat the whole population of the globe minus one is nothing; he has \u2018pitted\u2019 himself to beat that one; and as long as he doesn\u2019t do that nothing else counts. He is to his own regard as if he were not, indeed he is not.\n\nFifty years earlier, Kierkegaard too had diagnosed this particular form of despair:\n\nThus when the ambitious man, whose slogan was \u2018Either Caesar or nothing\u2019, does not become Caesar, he is in despair over it. But this signifies something else, namely, that precisely because he did not become Caesar he now cannot bear to be himself. Consequently he is not in despair over the fact that he did not become Caesar, but he is in despair over himself for the fact that he did not become Caesar.\n\nThat\u2019s a bad place to be. We\u2019ve already seen what how corrosive that form of despair can be with one ousted PM and it looks ominously like we might be seeing it with another.\n\nIf philosophy can help you avoid that fate, surely it\u2019s worth taking a second look?\n\nBest regards,\n\nPatrick\n\nPS: Do let me know if I can offer any reading suggestions. Always happy to help."} -{"text":"Sen. John Cornyn said Tuesday, he viewed \u201cfour large binders full of classified information that\u2019s been made available to the committee to conduct\u201d its wide-ranging investigation. | Getty CIA providing raw intelligence as Trump-Russia probes heat up Congress has entered a new phase in its investigation.\n\nLawmakers are trekking to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to review classified evidence on Russia\u2019s involvement in the presidential election. The House has scheduled its first public hearing on the issue. And the Senate is preparing to interview witnesses.\n\nThe congressional investigations into ties between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russian officials are in full swing.\n\nStory Continued Below\n\nFor months, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said their investigations into Russia\u2019s meddling in the 2016 presidential election were in their \u201cinitial\u201d stages. On Tuesday, it became clear that the probes had moved into a new phase.\n\nThe CIA is now providing raw intelligence documents to committee members, according to multiple senators. Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) visited CIA headquarters on Monday to view the documents underlying the intelligence community\u2019s unclassified assessment that Russia sought to sway the election in favor of Trump.\n\nAt Langley, Cornyn said Tuesday, he viewed \u201cfour large binders full of classified information that\u2019s been made available to the committee to conduct\u201d its wide-ranging investigation.\n\nHouse Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said members of his panel had also made visits to CIA headquarters and that there will be \u201cmore trips out there.\u201d He said he was close to reaching an agreement with the intelligence community on whether evidence would be turned over to Congress or continue to be housed within the agencies.\n\nNunes also said Tuesday that his panel\u2019s first public hearing on the issue would be held March 20 and that former members of the Obama administration had been asked to testify \u2014 including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump in January after refusing to defend his travel ban executive order in court.\n\nThe Senate Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, is expected to begin questioning witnesses behind closed doors \u201cin the coming days and weeks,\u201d according to a congressional source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. These formal interviews are expected to take place on Capitol Hill, the source said, and will likely be with officials from the agencies that contributed to the assessment that concluded Moscow was trying to aid Trump in November \u2014 the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency.\n\nThe panel\u2019s top Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, said he planned to travel to Langley on Wednesday to view the raw intelligence documents. Warner emphasized that the documents were \u201cnot the extent of the information we'll need\u201d to conduct the Intelligence Committee\u2019s Russia investigation, which will include looking into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.\n\nThe Virginia senator said he and Burr were in discussions about which people should be interviewed as part of the probe. He declined to say whether the committee would seek testimony from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a top Trump backer, who did not disclose two meetings he had with Russia\u2019s ambassador last year during his January confirmation hearing.\n\nThe Associated Press reported Monday that the Intelligence Committee had reached out to former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page and that Page had responded to the panel that he would \"provide any information\" that might be needed.\n\nMorning Cybersecurity A daily briefing on politics and cybersecurity \u2014 weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.\n\nWarner also indicated Tuesday he was happy with the cooperation the Intelligence Committee has gotten so far from the FBI. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, has accused the FBI of withholding information from his panel.\n\n\u201cI have regular conversations with [FBI] Director [James] Comey,\u201d Warner said Tuesday. \u201cI am confident that we're going to get all the information we need to get to the bottom of this in a way that we can let the American people know what happened or didn't happen.\u201d\n\nNunes also suggested Tuesday the intelligence community might not have shared information about potential counterintelligence investigations with top lawmakers \u2014 called the Gang of Eight \u2014 who are supposed to be briefed on such matters.\n\nThe congressman noted that multiple news reports have indicated that people associated with the Trump campaign were being investigated for potential ties to Russia, but that Congress was not made aware of any such investigations.\n\n\u201cIf Trump or any other political campaign, anybody associated with Trump, was under some kind of investigation, that clearly should have risen to the Gang of Eight level,\u201d Nunes said. \u201cClearly we have some questions about whether or not last year we were read into everything that we should have been read into.\u201d\n\nJosh Gerstein contributed to this report."} -{"text":"An Ocean\u2019s Eleven or Dirty Dozen-style caper series with time travel? That\u2019s DC\u2019s Legends of Tomorrow which started filming its series today on Vancouver\u2019s waterfront near Crab Tree Park with most of the cast on set except for the Big Bad \u2014 Vandal Savage.\n\nDoctor Who\u2019s Arthur Darvill is time-master Rip Hunter who assembles a squabbling group of DC super heroes and villains \u2014 Victor Garber as Dr. Martin Stein, Wentworth Miller as Leonard Snart\/Captain Cold, Caity Lotz as resurrected Sara Lance\/the White Canary, Brandon Routh as Ray Palmer\/ the A.T.O.M, Dominic Purcell as Mick Rory\/Heatwave, Ciara Renee as Kendra\/Hawkgirl, Falk Hentschel as Carter Hall\/Hawkman and Franz Drameh as Jax Jackson \u2014 to try to stop Vandal Savage (Casper Crump), who threatens the planet and time itself. It could be a suicide mission but they\u2019ll trade quips along the way. The two-part pilot is directed by Glen Winter. Legends of Tomorrow showrunner Phil Klemmer is on set too.\n\nDay one of #LegendsofTomorrow with our amazing director!! I think this show is going to be ________! pic.twitter.com\/KAbftRP0xw \u2014 Caity Lotz (@caitylotz) September 9, 2015\n\nCiara Renee, Caity Lotz and Falk Hentschel.\n\nArthur Darvill as Rip Hunter. And looking like David Tennant\u2019s Doctor Who with the big brown coat.\n\nWentworth Miller.\n\nPrison Break reunion: Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller.\n\nBrandon Routh and Caity Lotz soak up the sun waiting for the next take.\n\nVictor Garber as Dr. Martin Stein. And Franz Drameh as Jay Jackson in the passenger seat.\n\nDancing in the streets like a proper time master\u2026.tick tick tick Boom A photo posted by Caity Lotz (@caitylotz) on Sep 10, 2015 at 2:54pm PDT\n\nGot to meet the lovely Caity Lotz at DC\u2019s \u2018Legends of Tomorrow\u2019 filming in Downtown Vancouver today! @olv @yvrshoots pic.twitter.com\/9ZgT0KvXHd \u2014 Rachel Short (@RackkShort) September 9, 2015\n\nAfter production wrapped on the waterfront it moved into Gastown\u2019s Bourbon Bar.\n\nDC\u2019s Legends of Tomorrow debuts mid-season on The CW."} -{"text":"SA\u017dETAK: Istra\u017eivanja pokazuju da postoji pozitivna povezanost me\u0111u predrasudama prema razli\u010ditim dru\u0161tvenim skupinama, kao i odre\u0111ena vremenska stabilnost te stabilnost rang poretka u izra\u017eenosti predrasuda. Sukladno tome, opravdano je pretpostaviti da, osim nestalnih, kontekstualnih faktora, antecedente izra\u017eenosti predrasuda mogu predstavljati i neke trajnije dispozicije pojedinca. Cilj doktorskog rada je produbiti razumijevanje dispozicijskih osnova za sklonost predrasudama prema razli\u010ditim dru\u0161tvenim skupinama, odnosno pobli\u017ee istra\u017eiti odnos osobina li\u010dnosti i kognitivnih sposobnosti s generaliziranim predrasudama. Istra\u017eivanje na kojem se rad temelji provedeno je na reprezentativnom uzorku maturanata iz Grada Zagreba i Zagreba\u010dke \u017eupanije (N = 1034). Istra\u017eivanjem su prikupljeni kvantitativni podaci o kognitivnim sposobnostima, osobinama li\u010dnosti, desnoj autoritarnosti, orijentaciji na socijalnu dominaciju te predrasudama prema starijim osobama, pretilim osobama, psihi\u010dki oboljelim osobama, ateistima, gej mu\u0161karcima i imigrantima. Rezultati istra\u017eivanja pokazali su da je pozitivne interkorelacije izra\u017eenosti predrasuda prema pretilima, psihi\u010dki oboljelima, ateistima, gej mu\u0161karcima i imigrantima mogu\u0107e objasniti latentnim g faktorom predrasuda koji upu\u0107uje na sklonost generaliziranim predrasudama. Najva\u017eniji korelati generaliziranih predrasuda su orijentacija na socijalnu dominaciju, desna autoritarnost, otvorenost prema iskustvu i kognitivne sposobnosti. Zajedno s ostalim dimenzijama li\u010dnosti iz petofaktorskog modela, ove varijable obja\u0161njavaju tri \u010detvrtine varijance latentnog konstrukta generaliziranih predrasuda. Kognitivne sposobnosti i pored otvorenosti prema iskustvu imaju jedinstven doprinos predikciji kriterija. Analiza mehanizama djelovanja dispozicijskih varijabli na generalizirane predrasude pokazala je da: (1.) otvorenost prema iskustvu i kognitivne sposobnosti imaju na generalizirane predrasude izravne i neizravne negativne efekte posredovane desnom autoritarnosti i orijentacijom na socijalnu dominaciju; (2.) ugodnost ima neizravni pozitivni efekt posredovan desnom autoritarnosti i neizravni negativni efekt posredovan orijentacijom na socijalnu dominaciju; (3.) neuroticizam ima izravni i neizravni negativni efekt posredovan orijentacijom na socijalnu dominaciju; (4.) ekstraverzija i savjesnost imaju isklju\u010divo neizravne pozitivne efekte posredovane desnom autoritarnosti. Primarni doprinos istra\u017eivanja ogleda se u \u010dinjenici da pru\u017ea uvid u, ranije nedovoljno istra\u017een, me\u0111uodnos osobina li\u010dnosti i kognitivnih sposobnosti u kontekstu predikcije predrasuda. _____________________________________________________________________________________EXTENDED SUMMARY: Introduction. Prejudice most often denotes negative attitude towards a social group or its members. Previous studies revealed a positive correlation between prejudices towards different social groups, as well as certain time stability and rank-order stability of prejudice. This suggests that individual's dispositions, along with contextual factors, may play a significant role as antecedents of prejudice. This thesis focuses on personality and cognitive ability as possible precursors of prejudice. Three theories seem to be especially relevant when examining the relationship between dispositions and prejudice: McCrae and Costa\u2019s (2008) meta-theoretical framework of the Five-Factor Theory (FFT) of personality, Duckitt\u2019s (2001) Dual-process motivational model of ideology and prejudice (DPM) and Dhont and Hodson\u2019s (2014) Cognitive Ability and Style to Evaluation (CASE) model. According to the FFT, dispositions (as basic tendencies) should relate to the ideological attitudes (as characteristic adaptations), which should further relate to prejudice, ethnocentrism or discrimination (as objective biography). This is in line with the postulates of the other two relevant theoretical frameworks. As stated in the DPM, the exposure to threatening and competitive social surroundings results in the development of social conformity (i.e. low openness and high conscientiousness) and toughmindedness (i.e. low agreeableness). A person characterized by high social conformity reacts sensitively to signs of threat within society and is eager to protect the established norms at any cost. Individuals characterized by high toughmindedness perceive the world as a competitive jungle and tend to be unattached and interpersonally aversive. These characteristics bring forward the motivational goals for security and power (embodied in the right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation), which ultimately lead to prejudice. Finally, according to the CASE model, lower cognitive ability and higher need for structure, order and predictability enhance the perception of changing social environment as threatening. This leads to the activation of the prevention focus, aimed at keeping the status quo. Perceived threat and prevention focus can further lead to the right-wing, socially conservative attitudes that are related to the resistance to change, and consequently, stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. The causal order of these models\u2019 components was supported both experimentally and longitudinally. Although this thesis did not comprehensively test any of the above-mentioned theoretical models, it largely aligned with the FFT, the DPM and the CASE model predictions when building its hypotheses. The aim of the study. The aim of the study is to deepen the understanding of the dispositional basis of proneness to prejudice. Empirical study was conducted examining the relationship of personality traits and cognitive ability with generalized prejudice. It also explored the mechanisms underlying the effects of dispositions on generalized prejudice and analyzed the interdependence of dispositional predictors of generalized prejudice. Methodology and data analysis. The study was conducted on a representative sample of secondary school students from the City of Zagreb, Croatia and the Zagreb County. Participants were 17-20 years old and were attending their final year of secondary education (N = 1034). The measures encompassed dispositional variables - Big Five personality traits and cognitive ability, ideological variables - right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, as well as different measures of prejudice - prejudice towards elderly people, prejudice towards overweight people, prejudice towards individuals with mental illnesses, prejudice towards atheists, prejudice towards gay men and prejudice towards immigrants. The data was analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and series of regression analyses. In addition, structural equation modelling with latent variables was performed. Results and discussion. Results revealed that positive correlation between the measures of prejudice towards overweight people, individuals with mental illnesses, atheists, gay men and immigrants can be explained by the latent g factor of prejudice. Prejudice towards elderly people shared less variance with other measures of prejudice and appeared to be somewhat sub-optimal indicator of the g factor of prejudice. Therefore, this indicator was not included in the definition of the generalized prejudice construct. The lower correlation of this specific prejudice measure with the g factor was discussed with respect to the following: the peculiarity of this group as an untypical out-group; the prevailing norm of nurturance of traditional values in contemporary Croatian society; and the opposite direction of its relations to the ideological variables of right-wing authoritarianism [-] and social dominance orientation [+]. Generalized prejudice was strongly positively correlated to right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation and moderately negatively correlated to openness to experience and cognitive ability. There was a low negative correlation of generalized prejudice with neuroticism and low positive correlation of generalized prejudice with extraversion and conscientiousness. The correlation of generalized prejudice with agreeableness was low and statistically insignificant. The ideological variables, followed by openness to experience and cognitive ability, appeared to be the most pertinent correlates of generalized prejudice. The latter is in accordance with the theoretical background and previous empirical evidence about these relationships. In the thesis, only tentative interpretations of the relationships of extraversion, conscientiousness and neuroticism with generalized prejudice were given, since the correlations were low and the earlier findings were incongruent or inconsistent. The unexpected finding revealing the non-significant relationship of agreeableness and generalized prejudice was discussed in regard to the opposing direction of the correlations of agreeableness with right-wing authoritarianism [+] and social dominance orientation [-], as well as regarding the fact that the Big Five Inventory was used as a measure of personality traits. A set of dispositional and ideological variables explained about three quarters of the variance of the generalized prejudice latent variable. The dispositional predictors appeared to be as useful in explaining the variance of generalized prejudice as the ideological variables (with contribution shared with dispositional variables accounted for). The results indicated a statistically significant contribution to the prediction of generalized prejudice by all the individual predictors. The most important predictors were social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism and openness to experience. Importantly, cognitive ability and openness to experience had non-redundant contributions to the explanation of the variance of the generalized prejudice. The present study also investigated the mechanisms underlying the effects of dispositional variables on generalized prejudice. The analysis of direct and indirect effects resulted in several notable conclusions. Firstly, the effect of the openness to experience and cognitive ability on generalized prejudice was threefold: (1.) direct negative effects of these variables suggested that higher openness to experience and higher cognitive ability were associated with lower generalized prejudice; (2.) indirect negative effects via right-wing authoritarianism suggested that individuals with higher openness to experience and higher cognitive ability were more inclined to reject right-wing attitudes and thus had lower generalized prejudice; and (3.) indirect negative effects via social dominance orientation indicated that individuals who were more open to new experiences and had higher cognitive ability were less focused on establishing hierarchy in social relations and thus less inclined to generalized prejudice. Secondly, agreeableness had a dual contrasting effect on generalized prejudice via right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation: (1.) an indirect positive effect via right-wing authoritarianism suggested that more agreeable individuals were more inclined to adhere to right-wing ideology and thus more inclined to generalized prejudice, while (2.) an indirect negative effect via social dominance orientation suggested that the more agreeable individuals were less supportive of social domination and thus, indirectly, less prone to generalized prejudice. Thirdly, the effect of neuroticism on generalized prejudice was twofold: (1.) a direct negative effect suggested that higher neuroticism (trait more characteristic of female compared to male participants) was associated with lower generalized prejudice, while (2.) an indirect negative effect via social dominance orientation suggested that the individuals with higher neuroticism preferred egalitarian social relations and thus demonstrated lower generalized prejudice. Finally, extraversion and conscientiousness had positive effects on generalized prejudice, mediated by the right-wing authoritarianism - more extroverted and conscientious individuals were more inclined to favor right-wing authoritarian tendencies and thus, indirectly, were more inclined to generalized prejudice. Comparing the magnitude of indirect effects of dispositions for which both ideological variables served as mediators of the effect on generalized prejudice, right-wing authoritarianism was found to be more important mediator in the case of openness to experience, and social dominance orientation was found to be more important mediator in the case of agreeableness and cognitive ability. In sum, both right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation appeared to be of vital importance in ensuring the mechanism through which the dispositions exerted its effects to prejudice, since the former mediated the effects of five, and the latter mediated the effects of four (out of six examined) dispositional variables to generalized prejudice. In addition, none of the dispositional variables had exclusively direct effect on generalized prejudice. Rather, indirect effects always followed the identified direct effects. However, it should be borne in mind that the robustness of some (unforeseen) mechanisms might be brought into question by the upcoming research, since the significance of some of the effects may well be influenced by the fact that the analysis was performed on a large sample. Conclusion. The present research contributes to better understanding of the role of personality traits and cognitive ability as precursors of (generalized) prejudice, especially with respect to their interdependence. A deeper understanding of the dispositional basis of proneness to prejudice serves as one of the preconditions for the integration of these constructs into the models that include a wider spectrum of prejudice antecedents. Indirectly, the research fuels further advancement in the study of nature and determinants of prejudice and provides a basis for the development of more effective interventions for prejudice reduction."} -{"text":"FORT COLLINS, Colo. - Colorado State, in conjunction with the University of Arkansas, announced on Wednesday that the two teams will play each other on Sept. 8, 2018 in Fort Collins. It will mark the second time that an SEC school has ever visited Fort Collins, joining Mississippi State in 1981.\n\n\"This is exciting for our football program and for our fans,\" said head coach Mike Bobo . \"Being able to bring an SEC opponent to Fort Collins speaks to the growth of our program and also speaks to the impact our new on-campus stadium is already making. We want to challenge ourselves in our non-conference schedule and also bring those quality opponents to our home field and our fans.\"\n\nThe addition to the schedule completes the Rams' 2018 non-conference slate, which will feature three Power-5 opponents for the second year in a row. The season will begin Sept. 1 with the annual Rocky Mountain Showdown vs. Colorado in Denver. The following week, Sept. 8, the Razorbacks will visit Fort Collins, followed by a trip to another SEC school, Florida, on Sept. 15. The Rams will close the non-conference portion of their schedule on Sept. 22 vs. Illinois State before opening up Mountain West action. CSU will host Hawai`i, New Mexico, Utah State and Wyoming in conference play while travel to Air Force, Boise State, Nevada and San Jose State.\n\nTuesday's announcement with Arkansas is the second in the past year. In April, it was announced that the two schools will face each other in Fayetteville during the 2019 season. Additionally, the two schools signed a home-and-home deal to play in basketball over the next two seasons, which was also announced in April.\n\n\"Arkansas is a wonderful addition to our home schedule in 2018 and reinforces our trend of securing high-profile non-conference opponents,\" said athletics director Joe Parker . \"We are thrilled to have the Razorbacks in Fort Collins as we transition an originally agreed-upon guarantee game into a home-and-home series.\"\n\nThe Rams and Razorbacks have met three times in football. All three contests - in 1974, 1979 and 1990 - were played in Little Rock and won by Arkansas.\n\nBetween 2018-2028, CSU now has 18 non-conference dates scheduled, 15 of which are against Power-5 teams. The Rams will also play three Power-5 opponents in 2017, facing Colorado (Denver), hosting Oregon State and traveling to Alabama. From 2008-14, CSU did not host a Power-5 school once, but from 2015-2021, at least one will visit Fort Collins in six of the seven years, plus other dates already scheduled for 2025, 2026 and 2027.\n\nThe Rams are preparing for their highly anticipated 2017 season and opening of the new on-campus stadium. New season ticket commitments are now being accepted by contacting the Rams Sales Team at 800-491-RAMS (7267) or visiting www.CSURams.com\/tickets. Current season-ticketholders will have first priority to select their seats during appointed times set to begin March 22. In preparation for the inaugural season of the on-campus stadium, the Colorado State athletics department has launched a special football gameday website, which provides in-depth information on everything from tickets to parking, tailgating, gameday logistics and much more. The website can be found at www.CSURams.com\/footballgameday.\n\nFUTURE COLORADO STATE NON-CONFERENCE FOOTBALL SCHEDULES\n\n2017\n\nSept. 1 - vs. Colorado (in Denver)\n\nSept. 9 - ABILENE CHRISTIAN\n\nSept. 16 - at Alabama\n\nSept. 23 - OREGON STATE\n\n2018\n\nSept. 1 - vs. Colorado (in Denver)\n\nSept. 8 - ARKANSAS\n\nSept. 15 - at Florida\n\nSept. 22 - ILLINOIS STATE\n\n2019\n\nAug. 31 - vs. Colorado (in Denver)\n\nSept. 14 - at Arkansas\n\nSept. 21 - TOLEDO\n\n2020\n\nSept. 5 - COLORADO\n\nSept. 12 - at Oregon State\n\nSept. 26 - at Vanderbilt\n\n2021\n\nSept. 11 - VANDERBILT\n\nSept. 25 - at Toledo\n\n2025\n\nSept. 6 - TEXAS TECH\n\nSept. 27 - at Vanderbilt\n\n2026\n\nSept. 12 - at Texas Tech\n\nSept. 26 - VANDERBILT\n\n2027\n\nSept. 4 - ARIZONA\n\n2028\n\nSept. 2 - at Arizona"} -{"text":"Leyton Orient are understood to have offered the head coach role to Kevin Nugent.\n\nThe O's are looking for a replacement to Russell Slade following his resignation last week. Nugent stepped in as caretaker boss for Saturday's 3-2 home defeat to Rochdale and is expected to take charge again at home to Swindon this weekend.\n\nNugent is believed to have accepted the offer in principle although it has not yet been confirmed by the club.\n\nSpeaking at the weekend, Nugent said: \"I'm sure there will be people interested because it's a fantastic job for someone. I'm sure there will be interest in it but I don't know.\n\n\"I've obviously worked here a long time and I've done the youth team, scouting and all sorts. Changing the role to head coach is something that would certainly excite me but we'll have to wait and see.\""} -{"text":"We\u2019ve been hearing for years that the NFL is a quarterback-driven league. We\u2019ve assumed this means you need a star QB in order to compete for a title. But what if the other end is also true? What if competing for a title can turn a modest quarterback into a star?\n\nWith the rules and nature of the pro game favoring passing attacks, coaches can now tailor their systems to highlight a quarterback\u2019s strengths and\/or hide his weaknesses. The square-peg, round-hole thing has become borderline moot; the holes are now so large that anyone can fit in. So in this quarterback-driven league, wouldn\u2019t that mean more opportunities for all quarterbacks to succeed, including the mediocre ones?\n\nLook at the quarterbacks likely to be in this year\u2019s AFC playoff bracket: Ryan Fitzpatrick; Alex Smith; Brandon Weeden (or journeyman Brian Hoyer, depending on his health); AJ McCarron (assuming his wrist is healthy enough, he\u2019s in for an injured Andy Dalton, who had been the poster child of \u201cdecent but limited\u201d quarterbacking); Brock Osweiler; Tom Brady (the exception to this group, though as we\u2019ll see shortly, much less of an exception than you might guess).\n\nThe quarterbacks likely out of this AFC postseason: Philip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger, Andrew Luck, Joe Flacco (the latter two were on the fringe even before injuries). Star passers did not carry the show this year.\n\nThere will always be a place for big-bodied, strong-armed passers who make full-field progression reads from the pocket. Each NFL game still presents multiple scenarios that demand this type of play. But the game has opened up and evolved to the point where this classic style of quarterbacking is no longer mandatory on every series.\n\nThere are numerous ways to tailor an offense for a quarterback. Let\u2019s go through the prime example from each of this year\u2019s likely AFC playoff teams.\n\n\u2022 THE FINE FIFTEEN: A new team sits atop Peter King\u2019s power rankings, plus what the Broncos\u2019 Monday night defeat of the Bengals means for the playoff picture\n\n* * *\n\nNew York Jets (No. 6 seed)\n\nWhen Chan Gailey coached Ryan Fitzpatrick in Buffalo, he quickly understood what the journeyman QB was and what he was not. Fitzpatrick had an OK arm that he at times treated like a great arm, rifling balls into too-tight windows. With erratic mechanics, Fitzpatrick\u2019s ball could also get away at times\u2014all the more problematic when you consider the defensive traffic surrounding those \u201ctoo-tight windows.\u201d Instead of trying to change his quarterback\u2019s makeup (which almost never works in the NFL), Gailey structured a system that would minimize Fitzpatrick\u2019s damages. The Bills spread out. This spread the defense as well, minimizing the traffic and better clarifying the passing lanes. Because of the spacing, your route combinations from a spread can be limited. But that was not a huge problem because Fitzpatrick didn\u2019t always play within the timing and structure of route combinations anyway.\n\nReunited with Gailey in New York, the 33-year-old Fitzpatrick has been tamed into less of a wild stallion, though not enough for Gailey to change his approach. The Jets are a bona fide spread offense. To capitalize on this (and also hide the fact that they have nothing at tight end), they instill as much receiving speed and athleticism into their spreads as possible. More than 30 percent of their snaps this season have come with four wide receivers on the field\u2014by far the highest margin in the NFL. Here\u2019s an illustration of their template.\n\nAnother benefit for Fitzpatrick in a four-receiver spread is that it leaves minimal bodies in pass protection. This compels the QB to get rid of the ball quickly. That\u2019s why the Jets, despite an average offensive line, have given up only 21 sacks this season, second fewest in the league.\n\n\u2022 MAKING TODD BOWLES: Bruce Arians, Joe Gibbs and Bill Parcells each had a hand in molding Todd Bowles, who is now remaking the Jets in his own image\n\n* * *\n\nKansas City Chiefs (No. 5 seed)\n\nNot everyone likes to hear this, but it\u2019s true: Alex Smith is the consummate game manager. He doesn\u2019t throw interceptions because he doesn\u2019t take chances. In the system Andy Reid has built for him, that\u2019s fine. The Chiefs manufacture a passing game through pre-snap motion and shifts, and intertwined route combinations that create defined reads for the quarterback, usually at the shorter intermediate levels. Here\u2019s a classic example:\n\n\u2022 Q&A WITH JAMAAL CHARLES: The Chiefs star on his rehab, his status for 2016 and what it\u2019s been like to watch his team\u2019s hot streak\n\n* * *\n\nHouston Texans (No. 4 seed)\n\nBrandon Weeden has been stellar if not spectacular in his six quarters as Houston\u2019s signal-caller. Bill O\u2019Brien, one of the trendier offensive innovators in football, has not asked Weeden to do too much. It helps that O\u2019Brien wasn\u2019t asking Weeden\u2019s predecessor, Brian Hoyer, to do too much either. (Hoyer will likely be healthy for the Wild-Card Round.) The Texans this season have not had to amend much of their system despite starting four different quarterbacks. Here\u2019s an illustration of that system.\n\n\u2022 Q&A WITH CECIL SHORTS: The Texans receiver (and sometimes quarterback) on how Houston turned things around\n\n* * *\n\nCincinnati Bengals (No. 3 seed)\n\nThe Andy Dalton injury was a critical blow to the Bengals. Dalton had become very adroit in Hue Jackson\u2019s scheme, which took advantage of the quarterback\u2019s high pre-snap awareness. That said, Dalton\u2019s injury was not a death blow. Jackson\u2019s scheme can also simplify things in the post-snap phase, as long as the QB reads the safeties properly. Two things the Bengals have done well with Dalton: attacking the seams in the red zone and stretching the field outside, often with A.J. Green. Two weeks ago at San Francisco, in AJ McCarron\u2019s first NFL start, Cincy still got huge plays from these concepts.\n\n\u2022 WATCHING FILM WITH\u2026 A.J. GREEN: The Bengals superstar wideout breaks down the nuances of his game\n\n* * *\n\nDenver Broncos (No. 2 seed)\n\nSince leading the Broncos to a snowy Sunday night upset over the Patriots, Brock Osweiler has been asked to mostly just manage games. Many of Osweiler\u2019s throws have been on simplified route concepts at the short-intermediate levels. The results have been good and bad. Ultimately, if Denver is to advance this postseason, Gary Kubiak will have to lengthen his 25-year-old quarterback\u2019s leash. Fortunately, Kubiak\u2019s system is already equipped to do that, thanks to its heavy emphasis on zone play action. This approach naturally slices the field in half, which helps any QB.\n\n* * *\n\nNew England Patriots (No. 1 seed)\n\nTom Brady is the obvious outlier among this year\u2019s AFC playoff quarterbacks. Fans marvel at the way he wins no matter how bland his supporting cast might be. What\u2019s not asked often enough is how does he win? Brady has full power to adjust plays at the line of scrimmage, and his pocket mobility, pinpoint accuracy and underrated arm strength make him a lethal full-field progression passer. But with a makeshift offensive line, average wide receivers and a mediocre ground game, Brady lacks the surrounding resources to play this way down in and down out. So he and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels have constructed a quick-strike passing attack that sustains drives through small chunks and yards-after-catch.\n\n* * *\n\nBig-time quarterbacking still carries the day in the NFL. This year\u2019s NFC playoff bracket shows as much. Carson Palmer has been the prototype. Cam Newton has evolved into an elite pocket passer (among other things). Aaron Rodgers has kept Green Bay\u2019s utterly ineffective aerial attack above water. And in Seattle, Russell Wilson has learned to play from the pocket without sacrificing his sandlot prowess. The other two playoff teams, however, Minnesota and Washington, both fit in the AFC mold. That means seven of this year\u2019s 12 finalists have quarterbacks who must be aided and camouflaged by their offensive system. With the nature of today\u2019s pro game, those seven teams all still have a shot."} -{"text":"This post is about making functional decomposition from perspective of Aspect Oriented Programming using C++11. If you are not familiar with ideas of AOP don\u2019t be afraid \u2013 it\u2019s rather simple concept, and by the end of this post you will understand the benefits of it.\n\nYou also can treat this post just as example how to use high-order functions in C++11.\n\nIn short \u2013 AOP tries to perform decomposition of every business function into orthogonal parts called aspects such as security, logging, error handling, etc. The separation of crosscutting concerns. It looks like:\n\nSince C++11 supports high-order functions now we can implement factorization without any additional tools and frameworks (like PostSharp for C#).\n\nYou can scroll down to \u2018what for\u2019 chapter to check out the result to get more motivated.\n\nPART 1 \u2013 TRIVIAL SAMPLE\n\nLet\u2019s start from something simple \u2013 one aspect and one function.\n\nHere is simple lambda with trivial computation inside:\n\nauto plus = [](int a, int b) { LOG << a + b << NL; }; 1 auto plus = [ ] ( int a , int b ) { LOG << a + b << NL ; } ;\n\nI want to add some logging before and after computation. Instead of just adding this boilerplate code into function body let\u2019s go other way. In C++11 we just can write high-order function which will take function as argument and return new function as result:\n\ntemplate std::function wrapLog(std::function f) { return [f](Args... args){ LOG << \"start\" << NL; f(args...); LOG << \"finish\" << NL; }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 template < typename . . . Args > std :: function < void ( Args . . . ) > wrapLog ( std :: function < void ( Args . . . ) > f ) { return [ f ] ( Args . . . args ) { LOG << \"start\" << NL ; f ( args . . . ) ; LOG << \"finish\" << NL ; } ; }\n\nHere we used std::function, variadic templates and lambda as result. (LOG, NL \u2013 my own logging stream and you can just change it with std::cout , std::endl or your another logging lib).\n\nAs i hoped to achieve the most simple and compact solution, i expected to use it like this:\n\nauto loggedPlus = wrapLog(plus); 1 auto loggedPlus = wrapLog ( plus ) ;\n\nUnfortunately this will not compile. \u2018no matching function to call \u2026.\u2019 The reason is that lambda is not std::function and automatic type conversion can\u2019t be done. Of cause we can write something like this:\n\nauto loggedPlus = wrapLog(static_cast>(plus)); 1 auto loggedPlus = wrapLog ( static_cast < std :: function < void ( int , int ) >> ( plus ) ) ;\n\nThis line will compile, but this is ugly\u2026 I hope cpp committee will fix this casting issue. Meanwhile, the best solution i found so far is the following:\n\ntemplate struct function_traits : public function_traits {}; template struct function_traits { typedef ReturnType (*pointer)(Args...); typedef std::function function; }; template typename function_traits::function to_function (Function& lambda) { return typename function_traits::function(lambda); } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 template < typename Function > struct function_traits : public function_traits < decltype ( & Function :: operator ( ) ) > { } ; template < typename ClassType , typename ReturnType , typename . . . Args > struct function_traits < ReturnType ( ClassType :: * ) ( Args . . . ) const > { typedef ReturnType ( * pointer ) ( Args . . . ) ; typedef std :: function < ReturnType ( Args . . . ) > function ; } ; template < typename Function > typename function_traits < Function > :: function to_function ( Function & lambda ) { return typename function_traits < Function > :: function ( lambda ) ; }\n\nThis code is using type traits to convert anonymous lambda into std::function of same type. We can use it like this:\n\nauto loggedPlus = wrapLog(to_function(plus)); 1 auto loggedPlus = wrapLog ( to_function ( plus ) ) ;\n\nNot perfect but much better. Finally we can call functional composition and get the result.\n\nloggedPlus(2,3); \/\/ Result: \/\/ start \/\/ 5 \/\/ finish 1 2 3 4 5 6 loggedPlus ( 2 , 3 ) ; \/\/ Result: \/\/ start \/\/ 5 \/\/ finish\n\nNote: if we had declared aspect function without variadic template we could compose functions without to_function() conversion, but this would kill the benefit from writing universal aspects discussed further.\n\nPART 2 \u2013 REALISTIC EXAMPLE\n\nIntroduction is over, let\u2019s start some more real-life coding here. Let\u2019s assume we want to find some user inside database by id. And while doing that we also want log the process duration, check that requesting party is authorised to perform such request (security check), check for database request fail, and, finally, check in local cache for instant results.\n\nAnd one more thing \u2013 i don\u2019t want to rewrite such additional aspects for every function type. So let\u2019s write them using variadic templates and get as universal methods as possible.\n\nOk, let\u2019s start. I will create some dummy implementation for additional classes like User, etc. Such classes are only for example and actual production classes might be completely different, like user id should not be int, etc.\n\nSample User class as immutable data:\n\n\/\/ Simple immutable data class UserData { public: const int id; const string name; UserData(int id, string name) : id(id), name(name) {} }; \/\/ Shared pointer to immutable data using User = std::shared_ptr; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 \/\/ Simple immutable data class UserData { public : const int id ; const string name ; UserData ( int id , string name ) : id ( id ) , name ( name ) { } } ; \/\/ Shared pointer to immutable data using User = std :: shared_ptr < UserData > ;\n\nLet\u2019s emulate database as simple vector of users and create one method to work with it (find user by id):\n\nvector users {make(1, \"John\"), make(2, \"Bob\"), make(3, \"Max\")}; auto findUser = [&users](int id) -> Maybe { for (User user : users) { if (user->id == id) return user; } return nullptr; }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 vector < User > users { make < User > ( 1 , \"John\" ) , make < User > ( 2 , \"Bob\" ) , make < User > ( 3 , \"Max\" ) } ; auto findUser = [ & users ] ( int id ) -> Maybe < User > { for ( User user : users ) { if ( user -> id == id ) return user ; } return nullptr ; } ;\n\nmake<> here is just shortcut for make_shared<>, nothing special.\n\nMaybe<> monad\n\nYou, probably, noticed that return type of request function contains something called Maybe. This class is inspired by Haskell maybe monad, with one major addition. Instead of just saving Nothing state and Content state, it also might contain Error state.\n\nAt first, here is sample type for error description:\n\n\/\/\/ Error type - int code + description class Error { public: Error(int code, string message) : code(code), message(message) {} Error(const Error& e) : code(e.code), message(e.message) {} const int code; const string message; }; 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 \/\/\/ Error type - int code + description class Error { public : Error ( int code , string message ) : code ( code ) , message ( message ) { } Error ( const Error & e ) : code ( e . code ) , message ( e . message ) { } const int code ; const string message ; } ;\n\nHere is minimalistic implementation of Maybe:\n\ntemplate < typename T > class Maybe { private: const T data; const shared_ptr error; public: Maybe(T data) : data(std::forward(data)), error(nullptr) {} Maybe() : data(nullptr), error(nullptr) {} Maybe(decltype(nullptr) nothing) : data(nullptr), error(nullptr) {} Maybe(Error&& error) : data(nullptr), error(make_shared(error)) {} bool isEmpty() { return (data == nullptr); }; bool hasError() { return (error != nullptr); }; T operator()(){ return data; }; shared_ptr getError(){ return error; }; }; template Maybe just(T t) { return Maybe(t); } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 template < typename T > class Maybe { private : const T data ; const shared_ptr < Error > error ; public : Maybe ( T data ) : data ( std :: forward < T > ( data ) ) , error ( nullptr ) { } Maybe ( ) : data ( nullptr ) , error ( nullptr ) { } Maybe ( decltype ( nullptr ) nothing ) : data ( nullptr ) , error ( nullptr ) { } Maybe ( Error && error ) : data ( nullptr ) , error ( make_shared < Error > ( error ) ) { } bool isEmpty ( ) { return ( data == nullptr ) ; } ; bool hasError ( ) { return ( error != nullptr ) ; } ; T operator ( ) ( ) { return data ; } ; shared_ptr < Error > getError ( ) { return error ; } ; } ; template < class T > Maybe < T > just ( T t ) { return Maybe < T > ( t ) ; }\n\nNote, that you don\u2019t have to use Maybe<> and here it\u2019s used only for example.\n\nHere we also use the fact that nullptr in C++11 has it\u2019s own type. Maybe has defined constructor from that type producing nothing state. So when you return result from findUser function, there is no need for explicit conversion into Maybe<> \u2013 you can just return User or nullptr, and proper constructor will be called.\n\nOperator () returns possible value without any checks, and getError() returns possible error.\n\nFunction just() is used for explicit Maybe construction (this is standard name).\n\nLogging aspect\n\nFirst, let\u2019s rewrite log aspect so it will calculate execution time using std::chrono. Also let\u2019s add new string parameter as name for called function which will be printed to log.\n\ntemplate std::function logged(string name, std::function f) { return [f,name](Args... args){ LOG << name << \" start\" << NL; auto start = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now(); R result = f(std::forward(args)...); auto end = std::chrono::high_resolution_clock::now(); auto total = std::chrono::duration_cast(end - start).count(); LOG << \"Elapsed: \" << total << \"us\" << NL; return result; }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 template < typename R , typename . . . Args > std :: function < R ( Args . . . ) > logged ( string name , std :: function < R ( Args . . . ) > f ) { return [ f , name ] ( Args . . . args ) { LOG << name << \" start\" << NL ; auto start = std :: chrono :: high_resolution_clock :: now ( ) ; R result = f ( std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; auto end = std :: chrono :: high_resolution_clock :: now ( ) ; auto total = std :: chrono :: duration_cast < std :: chrono :: microseconds > ( end - start ) . count ( ) ; LOG << \"Elapsed: \" << total << \"us\" << NL ; return result ; } ; }\n\nNote std::forward here for passing arguments more clean way. We don\u2019t need to specify return type as Maybe because we don\u2019t need to perform any specific action like error checking here.\n\n\u2018Try again\u2019 aspect\n\nWhat if we have failed to get data (for example, in case of disconnect). Let\u2019s create aspect which will in case of error perform same query one more time to be sure.\n\n\/\/ If there was error - try again template std::function(Args...)> triesTwice(std::function(Args...)> f) { return [f](Args... args){ Maybe result = f(std::forward(args)...); if (result.hasError()) return f(std::forward(args)...); return result; }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 \/\/ If there was error - try again template < typename R , typename . . . Args > std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > triesTwice ( std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > f ) { return [ f ] ( Args . . . args ) { Maybe < R > result = f ( std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; if ( result . hasError ( ) ) return f ( std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; return result ; } ; }\n\nMaybe<> is used here to identify error state. This method can be extended \u2013 we could check error code and decide is there any sense to perform second request (was it network problem or database reported some format error).\n\nCache aspect\n\nNext thing \u2013 let\u2019s add client side cache and check inside it before performing actual server-side request (in functional world this is called memoization). To emulate cache here we can just use std::map:\n\nmap userCache; \/\/ Use local cache (memoize) template std::function(K,Args...)> cached(C & cache, std::function(K,Args...)> f) { return [f,&cache](K key, Args... args){ \/\/ get key as first argument if (cache.count(key) > 0) return just(cache[key]); else { Maybe result = f(std::forward(key), std::forward(args)...); if (!result.hasError()) cache.insert(std::pair(key, result())); \/\/add to cache return result; } }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 map < int , User > userCache ; \/\/ Use local cache (memoize) template < typename R , typename C , typename K , typename . . . Args > std :: function < Maybe < R > ( K , Args . . . ) > cached ( C & cache , std :: function < Maybe < R > ( K , Args . . . ) > f ) { return [ f , & cache ] ( K key , Args . . . args ) { \/\/ get key as first argument if ( cache . count ( key ) > 0 ) return just ( cache [ key ] ) ; else { Maybe < R > result = f ( std :: forward < K > ( key ) , std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; if ( ! result . hasError ( ) ) cache . insert ( std :: pair < int , R > ( key , result ( ) ) ) ; \/\/add to cache return result ; } } ; }\n\nThis function will insert element into cache if it was not there. Here we used that knowledge that cache is std::map, but it can be changed to any key-value container hidden behind some interface.\n\nSecond important part, we used only first function argument here as key. If you have complex request where all parameters should act as composite key \u2013 what to do? It\u2019s still possible and there are a lot of ways to make it. First way is just to use std::tuple as key (see below). Second way is to create cache class which will allow several key parameters. Third way is to combine arguments into single string cache using variadic templates. Using tuple approach we can rewrite it like this:\n\nmap,User> userCache; \/\/ Use local cache (memoize) template std::function(Args...)> cached(C & cache, std::function(Args...)> f) { return [f,&cache](Args... args){ \/\/ get key as tuple of arguments auto key = make_tuple(args...); if (cache.count(key) > 0) return just(cache[key]); else { Maybe result = f(std::forward(args)...); if (!result.hasError()) cache.insert(std::pair(key, result())); \/\/add to cache return result; } }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 map < tuple < int > , User > userCache ; \/\/ Use local cache (memoize) template < typename R , typename C , typename . . . Args > std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > cached ( C & cache , std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > f ) { return [ f , & cache ] ( Args . . . args ) { \/\/ get key as tuple of arguments auto key = make_tuple ( args . . . ) ; if ( cache . count ( key ) > 0 ) return just ( cache [ key ] ) ; else { Maybe < R > result = f ( std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; if ( ! result . hasError ( ) ) cache . insert ( std :: pair < decltype ( key ) , R > ( key , result ( ) ) ) ; \/\/add to cache return result ; } } ; }\n\nNow it\u2019s much more universal.\n\nSecurity aspect\n\nNever forget about security. Let\u2019s emulate user session with some dummy class \u2013\n\nclass Session { public: bool isValid() { return true; } } session; 1 2 3 4 class Session { public : bool isValid ( ) { return true ; } } session ;\n\nSecurity checking high-order function will have additional parameter \u2013 session. Checking will only verify that isValid() field is true:\n\n\/\/ Security checking template std::function(Args...)> secured(S session, std::function(Args...)> f) { \/\/ if user is not valid - return nothing return [f, &session](Args... args) -> Maybe { if (session.isValid()) return f(std::forward(args)...); else return Error(403, \"Forbidden\"); }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 \/\/ Security checking template < typename R , typename . . . Args , typename S > std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > secured ( S session , std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > f ) { \/\/ if user is not valid - return nothing return [ f , & session ] ( Args . . . args ) -> Maybe < R > { if ( session . isValid ( ) ) return f ( std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; else return Error ( 403 , \"Forbidden\" ) ; } ; }\n\n\u2018Not empty\u2019 aspect\n\nLast thing in this example \u2013 let\u2019s treat not found user as error.\n\n\/\/ Treat empty state as error template std::function(Args...)> notEmpty(std::function(Args...)> f) { return [f](Args... args) -> Maybe { Maybe result = f(std::forward(args)...); if ((!result.hasError()) && (result.isEmpty())) return Error(404, \"Not Found\"); return result; }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 \/\/ Treat empty state as error template < typename R , typename . . . Args > std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > notEmpty ( std :: function < Maybe < R > ( Args . . . ) > f ) { return [ f ] ( Args . . . args ) -> Maybe < R > { Maybe < R > result = f ( std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; if ( ( ! result . hasError ( ) ) && ( result . isEmpty ( ) ) ) return Error ( 404 , \"Not Found\" ) ; return result ; } ; }\n\nIm not writing here about error handling aspect, but it\u2019s also can be implemented via same approach. Note that using error propagation inside Maybe<> monad you can avoid using exceptions and define your error processing logic different way.\n\nMultithread lock aspect\n\ntemplate std::function locked(std::mutex& m, std::function f) { return [f,&m](Args... args){ std::unique_lock lock(m); return f(std::forward(args)...); }; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 template < typename R , typename . . . Args > std :: function < R ( Args . . . ) > locked ( std :: mutex & m , std :: function < R ( Args . . . ) > f ) { return [ f , & m ] ( Args . . . args ) { std :: unique_lock < std :: mutex > lock ( m ) ; return f ( std :: forward < Args > ( args ) . . . ) ; } ; }\n\nNo comments.\n\nFINALLY\n\nFinally, what for was all this madness? FOR THIS LINE:\n\n\/\/ Aspect factorization auto findUserFinal = secured(session, notEmpty( cached(userCache, triesTwice( logged(\"findUser\", to_function(findUser)))))); 1 2 3 \/\/ Aspect factorization auto findUserFinal = secured ( session , notEmpty ( cached ( userCache , triesTwice ( logged ( \"findUser\" , to_function ( findUser ) ) ) ) ) ) ;\n\nChecking (let\u2019s find user with id 2):\n\nauto user = findUserFinal(2); LOG << (user.hasError() ? user.getError()->message : user()->name) << NL; \/\/ output: \/\/ 2015-02-02 18:11:52.025 [83151:10571630] findUser start \/\/ 2015-02-02 18:11:52.025 [83151:10571630] Elapsed: 0us \/\/ 2015-02-02 18:11:52.025 [83151:10571630] Bob 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 auto user = findUserFinal ( 2 ) ; LOG << ( user . hasError ( ) ? user . getError ( ) -> message : user ( ) -> name ) << NL ; \/\/ output: \/\/ 2015-02-02 18:11:52.025 [83151:10571630] findUser start \/\/ 2015-02-02 18:11:52.025 [83151:10571630] Elapsed: 0us \/\/ 2015-02-02 18:11:52.025 [83151:10571630] Bob\n\nOk, let\u2019s perform tests for several users ( here we will request same user twice and one non-existing user ):\n\nauto testUser = [&](int id) { auto user = findUserFinal(id); LOG << (user.hasError() ? \"ERROR: \" + user.getError()->message : \"NAME:\" + user()->name) << NL; }; for_each_argument(testUser, 2, 30, 2, 1); \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.283 [83858:10583917] findUser start \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] Elapsed: 0us \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] NAME:Bob \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] findUser start \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] Elapsed: 0us \/\/ error: \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] ERROR: Not Found \/\/ from cache: \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] NAME:Bob \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] findUser start \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] Elapsed: 0us \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] NAME:John 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 auto testUser = [ & ] ( int id ) { auto user = findUserFinal ( id ) ; LOG << ( user . hasError ( ) ? \"ERROR: \" + user . getError ( ) -> message : \"NAME:\" + user ( ) -> name ) << NL ; } ; for_each_argument ( testUser , 2 , 30 , 2 , 1 ) ; \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.283 [83858:10583917] findUser start \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] Elapsed: 0us \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] NAME:Bob \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] findUser start \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] Elapsed: 0us \/\/ error: \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] ERROR: Not Found \/\/ from cache: \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] NAME:Bob \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] findUser start \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] Elapsed: 0us \/\/2015-02-02 18:32:41.284 [83858:10583917] NAME:John\n\nAs you can see it\u2019s working as intended. It\u2019s obvious that we got a lot of benefits from such decomposition. Factorisation leads to decoupling of functionality, more modular structure and so on. You gain more focus on actual business logic as result.\n\nWe can change order of aspects as we like. And as we made aspect functions rather universal we can reuse them avoiding a lot of code duplication.\n\nInstead of functions we can use more sophisticated functors (with inheritance), and instead of Maybe<> also could be more complex structure to hold some additional info. So whole scheme is extendable.\n\nNote also, that you can pass lambdas as additional aspect parameters.\n\nWorking sample to play with: github gist or ideone\n\nPs. BONUS:"} -{"text":"The actual Great Canyon features probably the most polarized climate extreme conditions associated with all over the world. The actual Northern edge rests in a hill height associated with 8, 000 ft, the actual Southern Edge from 7, 000 ft, and also the base from the Great Canyon and also the Co Water rests in a low-desert height associated with simply two, 000 in order to two, 500 ft. Due to these types of extreme conditions within height, the actual temps within the Canyon also provide high levels and incredibly reduced levels. Individuals possess each freezing in order to passing away as well as already been warmed in order to passing away, just about all within places which are just a couple of kilometers through one another.\n\nBecause it is breakthrough through Europeans within the middle 1500s (actually through The spanish language explorer Coronado as well as their men), the actual Great Canyon offers stated the actual life associated with countless individuals. Within the guide \u201cOver the actual Advantage: Passing away within the Great Canyon\u201d the actual writers discover all the numerous ways individuals give up on within the Canyon. Heating system in order to passing away, or even more precisely perishing associated with dehydration- as well as warmth stroke-induced heart police arrest, is actually the most typical method individuals end within the Canyon.\n\nThe actual wheels, becoming hill conditions, tend to be awesome within the summer time as well as lower correct chilly within the winter season. In the wheels, typical levels within the summer time remain eighty levels, along with levels within the 50s. Typical levels within the winter season in the wheels remain forty levels, levels close to eighteen levels.\n\nTherefore beginning in the Edge points feel at ease sufficient, however as soon as lower within the Canyon the actual landscape as well as climate alter significantly! Typical levels in the Co Water within the summer time float close to 110 levels, and that is within the tone, along with levels just within the reduced 80s. Within the winter season, the actual Co Water offers levels around sixty levels, along with levels close to forty levels.\n\nLots of people begin OKAY in the wheels, considering the actual Canyon isn\u2019t actually which large of the offer. These people begin without having sufficient drinking water as well as without having sufficient of the mind start heat from the day time. As soon as lower within the Great Canyon, they are devoted to possibly dealing with drinking water or even obtaining back again away. Once the warmth strikes, most of them have not managed to get in order to possibly.\n\nWithin the winter season, walkers tend to be departing the actual Co Water along with levels close to sixty as well as seventy levels \u2014 fairly comfy. However through the period they are in the wheels they may be the sub-zero level blizzard. You will find walkers who\u2019ve really succumbed towards the chilly close to the wheels as well as already been hidden within the snowfall, just found days later on once the snowfall dissolved away. Difficult to assume whenever the first is departing the heat from the canyon base.\n\nAn additional main element in Great Canyon climate may be the monsoon period, that endures through middle 06 in order to middle Sept, and may usher within damaging thunderstorms. Walkers as well as boaters have to be cautious associated with large container canyons whenever there is ANY KIND OF climate in the region. The thunderstorm in the Northern Edge can make the expensive ton within Phantom Creek sixteen kilometers aside, as well as you will find individuals that have passed away presently there along with other locations along with apparently absolutely no pre-warning. In the event that there is any kind of possibility of rainfall inside 50 kilometers in a path, prevent container canyons.\n\nThe actual Great Canyon is a good spot to go to, however be ready as well as understand what you are engaging in. It might simply save your valuable existence!"} -{"text":"Image caption Thomas Hadley said 11 lambs were still missing and 33 have been killed\n\nA young farmer has spoken of his shock after most of his flock of 56 lambs were killed by two dogs.\n\nThomas Hadley was telephoned on Friday to say two dogs were attacking his sheep in Risbury, Leominster.\n\nMr Hadley, 23, said when he arrived the field was \"scattered\" with dead and injured lambs and the dogs were still attacking other sheep.\n\nPolice sent armed officers and seized the dogs. A 64-year-old man has been arrested and bailed.\n\nThe man, from Leominster, has been bailed until October on suspicion of allowing a dog to be out of control and allowing a dog to kill or maim livestock. A police spokesman said the firearms officers were deployed as a \"matter of precaution\".\n\n'Can't trust any dog'\n\nMr Hadley said 33 of the lambs, who were born in April, died from their injuries or shock or had to be destroyed.\n\n\"I haven't slept at all,\" he said. \"We are still missing 11 lambs and these could be fatally injured lying somewhere and we have searched a two-mile radius of this place and haven't found them.\"\n\nMr Hadley, who also works as an sheep shearer and livestock agent, has been breeding sheep for three years and said the incident had cost at least \u00a310,000.\n\n\"I have lost the breed lines and will have to start from scratch,\" he said.\n\n\"People don't realise that their dogs can do this,\" he said. \"You can't trust any dog around livestock.\""} -{"text":"LONDON (Reuters) - Gold rose on Wednesday, recovering from its lowest in nearly two weeks, as prospects for further economic stimulus helped to bolster investor appetite whil the dollar remained flat.\n\nAccommodative monetary policies favour gold as well as equities because low interest rates encourage investors to opt for assets that do not rely on interest yields.\n\nSpot gold was up 0.7 percent at $1,340.90 an ounce by 1417 GMT, having earlier touched $1,327.30, its lowest since July 1. Bullion had fallen by 1.7 percent on Tuesday, its biggest one-day drop since May 24.\n\nU.S. gold rose 0.5 percent to $1,341.50.\n\n\u201cGold prices can continue to benefit from an uncertain economic picture for the UK and Europe after the Brexit vote and also from any quantitative easing, which also means low interest rates,\u201d Natixis analyst Bernard Dahdah said.\n\nGold has gained about $100 an ounce since Britain voted to leave the European Union, with worried investors piling their cash into safe-haven assets.\n\nGlobal shares came within reach of testing their 2016 peak on Wednesday, also bolstered by prospects of economic stimulus. [MKTS\/GLOB]\n\nThe dollar, in which gold is priced, fell 0.2 percent against a basket of six currencies.\n\nAfter five weeks of gains, gold had come under some pressure following strong U.S. non-farm payrolls data on Friday.\n\nDespite better than expected jobs data, the Federal Reserve should be in no rush to raise interest rates, two senior Fed officials said.\n\n\u201cGold thrives in an environment of negative rates, low government bond yields ...obviously the unknown is the probability of a Fed rate increase, which could however no happen this year, helping the metal\u2019s price ascent,\u201d Societe Generale analyst Robin Bhar said.\n\nHoldings of SPDR Gold Trust, the world\u2019s largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, fell 1.63 percent to 965.22 tonnes on Tuesday, its biggest one-day decline since Dec. 2. [GOL\/]\n\nPalladium touched an eight-month high of $645 an ounce.\n\nPlatinum, which fell for the first time in two weeks in the previous session, rebounded 0.1 percent to $1,087.50.\n\nSilver, meanwhile, gained 0.7 percent to $20.27."} -{"text":"Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.\n\nJune 21, 2017, 2:48 PM GMT \/ Updated June 21, 2017, 3:21 PM GMT By Alex Seitz-Wald\n\nSANDY SPRINGS, Georgia \u2014 Democrats are tired of losing and the accusations are flying.\n\nAfter going all in and coming up short in Georgia's special election Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers and political operatives are venting their frustration at losing every competitive special congressional election so far this year.\n\nMany were upset that Democrat Jon Ossoff blunted what was arguably his greatest asset \u2014 antipathy toward President Donald Trump \u2014 by going relatively easy on the president and avoiding controversy at all cost. Others, however, countered that Ossoff was a fine candidate who was the victim of a party that is too cautious and has lost its ability to connect with voters.\n\nSen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), one of the party\u2019s rising stars, said Democrats have been distracted by the investigation in Trump\u2019s alleged ties to Russia and need to focus more on making a concrete impact on voters' lives.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been hyper-confused for the past five years,\" he said on MSNBC\u2019s \"Morning Joe.\" \"Some of the time we\u2019re talking about economic growth, some of the time we\u2019re talking about economic fairness.\u201d\n\n\"We need to be hyper-focused on this issue of wage growth and job growth \u2014 I think Democrats are scared of this message because it\u2019s what Republicans have been talking about,\" he added.\n\nRep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) said, \"Close is only good in horse shoes. A loss is a loss...We can't just dismiss it. We need to review it together.\"\n\nRELATED: Five Lessons From the Georgia Special Election\n\nDemocrats also have an \"authenticity\" problem, he said, noting, \u201cI think that there are a lot of people who look at the Democratic party and aren\u2019t sure that we aren\u2019t also captive by special interest \u2014 and that\u2019s not true.\"\n\nOn her path to victory, Republican Karen Handel returned to the GOP playbook of tying Democratic candidates in purple-to-red districts to the party's liberal wing, and especially to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Ossoff presented himself as squeaky clean alternative with uncontroversial plans like cutting government spending.\n\nRepublican candidate for Georgia's 6th District Congressional seat Karen Handel celebrates with her husband Steve as she declares victory Tuesday, June 20, 2017, in Atlanta. John Bazemore \/ AP\n\n\u201cOne important lesson is that when they go low, going high doesn't f**king work,\u201d tweeted Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, referring to Michelle Obama's maxim from the 2016 campaign.\n\nRep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), a former Marine with three degrees from Harvard and one of the party's up-and-comers, said the defeat should be a \u201cwake up call for Democrats.\u201d\n\nRep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a progressive who represents Silicon Valley, said Democrats have failed to appreciate how massive changes in the economy are impacting voters.\n\n\u201cWe have to figure out how we are going to speak to people\u2019s economic anxiety,\u201d he told NBC News. \u201cWe\u2019ve failed at doing that.\u201d\n\n\u201cOur politics are still conventional, incremental, are not very different, frankly, from our proposals from 10 years ago,\u201d he added.\n\nAnd when Democrats don\u2019t run on bold economic ideas, Khanna added, \u201cThese elections will end up being about what party people are from or more trivial issues like that.\"\n\nJeff Weaver, Bernie Sanders\u2019 former presidential campaign manager, said that while Ossoff ran a good campaign, Democrats should not have made that race their only cause. Instead, Weaver argued, the party should have offered more help to its candidates in the Montana and Kansas special elections earlier this year.\n\n\u201cIn the Montana race, the one I\u2019m most familiar with, with a fraction of the investment that was made in Georgia 6 we likely could have sworn in a Democratic congressperson,\u201d Weaver told NBC News.\n\n\u201cShould we as Democrats compete in economically conservative districts like Georgia 6? Absolutely. We should compete everywhere. But the more likely road to a Democratic U.S. House majority runs through places like Kansas, Montana and South Carolina,\u201d he added.\n\nDemocratic candidate for 6th congressional district Jon Ossoff, left, waves to the crowd while stepping offstage with his fiancee Alisha Kramer after conceding to Republican Karen Handel at his election night party on June 20, 2017 in Atlanta. David Goldman \/ AP\n\nThe Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly sought to move past the Georgia debacle by distributing a memo to staff and Democratic lawmakers officially declaring \u2014 for the first time \u2014 that Chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luj\u00e1n (D-NM) believes \"the House is in play.\"\n\n\"I don\u2019t make this statement lightly \u2014 I\u2019ve never said it before,\" Luj\u00e1n said. \"This is about much more than one race: the national environment, unprecedented grassroots energy and impressive Democratic candidates stepping up to run deep into the battlefield leave no doubt that Democrats can take back the House next fall.\"\n\nAnd former Obama White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer warned Democrats to avoid yet another round of self-flagellating recriminations.\n\nBut Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn.org, said the Georgia race shows \u201cDemocrats will not win back power merely by serving as an alternative to Trump and Republicans.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the closing weeks of the race, Ossoff and the [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] missed an opportunity to make Republicans\u2019 attack on health care the key issue, and instead attempted to portray Ossoff as a centrist, focusing on cutting spending and coming out in opposition to Medicare for All,\u201d she said.\n\nSome of the toughest criticism came from the Sanders wing of the party.\n\nRoseAnn DeMoro\u200f, the president of National Nurses Union, suggested the Democratic party\u2019s current strategy was \"insanity.\"\n\nBut Stacey Abrams, the minority leader of the Georgia House and a 2018 gubernatorial candidate, said Democrats need to take a breath and focus on the long game.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m a red state Democrat in the South,\" she told NBC News. \"We understand that we have to make incremental progress, that we don\u2019t win in one fell swoop.\""} -{"text":"Ben Simmons Expects To Go First Overall, Prepares To Play For Sixers\n\nShare ! tweet\n\nLSU\u2019s Ben Simmons expects nothing less than being picked No. 1 overall in the coming 2016 NBA Draft and according to a report, his camp is already preparing the multi-faceted forward to suit up with the Philadelphia 76ers.\n\nThe story was supported with the fact that Simmons has already signed a shoe deal with Nike, cancelling out the rumor about the Australian forcing his way to Los Angeles in search of better endorsement opportunities.\n\nTom Moore of Burlington County Times wrote:\n\nAgent Rich Paul, who represents LeBron James, John Wall and others, \u201chas been preparing for his client to go to Philadelphia from the moment the Sixers got the\u201d top selection in the May 17 draft lottery, according to the source. Neither Simmons nor Paul has apparently made any public comments about draft preference and the Sixers since the lottery. Simmons has a connection to the area in that his trainer lives in Drexel Hill. He\u2019s also known Sixers coach Brett Brown, who coached Simmons\u2019 dad in Melbourne, Australia, since birth.\n\nAccording to most experts, the draft is a two-horse race between Simmons and Duke\u2019s Brandon Ingram but all indications point to the Sixers selecting the former by a landslide.\n\nIt seems the feeling is now mutual.\n\nMandatory Credit: Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports\n\nComments\n\ncomments"} -{"text":"Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect\u2019s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect\u2019s place on Marc Hulet\u2019s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect\u2019s rank on Hulet\u2019s overall top-100 list.\n\n***\n\nOrlando Castro, LHP, Pittsburgh Pirates (Profile)\n\nHigh-A: 22N\/AN\/A55.2 IP, 46 H, 18 R, 41\/7 K\/BB, 2.91 ERA, 2.77 FIP\n\nSummary\n\nWhile he\u2019s not remotely physically imposing, this little lefthander knows what he\u2019s doing.\n\nNotes\n\nLast year, Orlando Castro emerged on the fringes of the prospect scene with a stellar first half with Low-A West Virginia, putting up a 1.93 ERA and 63\/6 K\/BB ratio in 74.2 innings. He was basically a complete nobody before that, so his performance didn\u2019t get him noticed by many other than Pirates diehards and K\/BB leaderboard sorters, and a mediocre second half with High-A Bradenton did nothing to further his ascent up prospect lists.\n\nNow, though, Castro\u2019s doing it again, dominating High-A hitters by filling the zone and missing enough bats to stay interesting, and this second successful run commands a bit more attention. After all, Castro\u2019s just 22 and he throws with his left hand.\n\nCastro\u2019s listed at 5\u201911\u201d and 190 pounds, and size is certainly not a positive for him. As you might expect from a small lefty control artist, he\u2019s not an especially hard thrower, though he works consistently at 88-91 mph, which isn\u2019t particularly poor for a lefthanded starter. Castro throws both a four-seam and a two-seam fastball, the latter of which helps him get groundballs.\n\nThe Pirates tend to heavily emphasize changeup development over that of breaking pitches in the low minors, and so when I saw him in 2013, Castro used his 83-84 mph changeup far more than his big-breaking 73-76 mph curveball, but both pitches should end up average or better. The changeup is so advanced that he\u2019s limited righties to just a .214\/.245\/.328 line this year, while his fellow southpaws have hit .257\/.301\/.314.\n\nIt all comes out of an extremely simple, eminently repeatable motion that allows Castro to hit his spots consistently. He\u2019s not just a guy going out there and aiming for the plate\u2013he moves and mixes his pitches and locations adeptly.\n\nThere\u2019s certainly precedent out there for guys with this sort of approach succeeding in the bigs\u2013take Tommy Milone, Jason Vargas, Dallas Keuchel, Jon Niese, and Travis Wood as a few examples of sub-90 southpaws with good pitchability and offspeed pitches. How he adjusts to Double-A hitters will be a big indicator of whether Castro will ascend to that status or become merely another organizational control pitcher. He\u2019s probably about ready for that test, though, and I have a feeling he\u2019ll do better on it than many think.\n\n***\n\nJames Dykstra, RHP, Chicago White Sox (Profile)\n\nLow-A: 23N\/AN\/A51.2 IP, 59 H, 22 R, 44\/7 K\/BB, 3.83 ERA, 2.64 FIP\n\nSummary\n\nThis sixth-round find has a polished arsenal and good control.\n\nNotes\n\nThe brother of former first-rounder and current Triple-A slugger Allan Dykstra, James Dykstra became the highest-drafted player ever out of Cal State San Marcos last year, with his sixth-round selection trumping Johnny Omahen\u2019s 35th-round slot quite handily. While his brother has walked more than he\u2019s struck out this year, James has posted an eye-catching K\/BB ratio of his own in his first extended minor league action, tacking on a 61% groundball rate as well. Above-average strikeouts, minimal walks, and an extreme groundball rate comprise a great statistical platform to build from, but Dykstra is 23, so he\u2019ll need to move quickly to be taken seriously.\n\nHe has the stuff to make that jump, though, with a polished three-pitch mix that includes an 89-93 mph running fastball, a 72-76 mph big-breaking curveball, and an 80-84 mph sinking changeup. His fastball\/changeup combination is solid, and both are solid-average pitches; the curveball flashes higher than both of them and could be a plus offering, but he\u2019s not consistent with his usage of it. Sometimes he\u2019ll fall in love with the pitch and throw it 50% of the time for an inning, while others he\u2019ll abandon it altogether. Here\u2019s a look at the pitch flummoxing touted Red Sox prospect Manuel Margot:\n\nAnd here\u2019s a look at a strikeout on the changeup:\n\nWith good size and athleticism, an easy delivery, and an interesting set of pitches, Dykstra has the upside of a good innings-eater at the big-league level. He\u2019s not always consistent with his stuff and approach, which is both an obvious negative\u2013consistency is, well, good\u2013and a positive\u2013he\u2019s already pitching extremely well without consistency, so if he can tighten the screws further on his stuff, mechanics, and approach, he\u2019ll adjust to new levels very well. He will need to move quickly due to his age, but this isn\u2019t just a random college finesse pitcher beating up on inexperienced bats\u2013the all-around excellent numbers are backed up by across-the-board solid attributes.\n\n***\n\nAntonio Senzatela, RHP, Colorado Rockies (Profile)\n\nLevel: Low-A Age: 19 Top-15: N\/A Top-100: N\/A\n\nLine: 55.1 IP, 57 H, 28 R, 27\/13 K\/BB, 3.90 ERA, 5.40 FIP\n\nSummary\n\nA teenager with easy velocity, Senzatela doesn\u2019t have exciting numbers, but his upside is high if his offspeed pitches come around.\n\nNotes\n\nAntonio Senzatela has the highest walk rate of the three pitchers discussed in this piece, at (a still very good) 5.5%. He also has easily the lowest strikeout rate, a worrisome 11.5%. His FIP is an ugly 5.40, roughly double Dykstra\u2019s and Castro\u2019s. So why should we care about him? There are several reasons.\n\nFirst, Senzatela turned 19 in January, roughly two months after Dykstra\u2013who, mind you, is in the same league\u2013turned 23. Comparing their performances doesn\u2019t mean a whole lot\u2013one would hope that Dykstra\u2019s the more advanced guy, and he is. Senzatela has at least a couple of years before he needs to really get moving performance-wise; at this stage, the question is stuff.\n\nAnd he has stuff. Or, at least, he has a fastball.\n\nThree things about the above video:\n\n1.) He hit 95 mph.\n\n2.) He hit 95 easy.\n\n3.) He hit 95 easy in the sixth inning.\n\nWhen Senzatela first came out for warmups in the start I saw, I wasn\u2019t expecting much. He looks shorter than his listed 6\u20191\u2033 and heavier than his listed 180, maybe 5\u201911\u201d 205 or so, and he employs a low-effort motion that doesn\u2019t look like it should generate a whole lot of velocity, especially from a pitcher of that size. And yet, there it is. Senzatela works mostly at 90-94 mph and projects for above-average command due to the easy motion, which is a heck of a pair of building blocks for a teenager.\n\nEverything else is a work in progress, which is why Senzatela doesn\u2019t miss many bats. He throws a slider, curve, and changeup, all of which grade out as 30 or 35-grade pitches on the 20-80 scouting scale. The 71-75 mph curve is very soft and doesn\u2019t have the big break required to make a pitch that slow work, the slider lacks bite, and the changeup doesn\u2019t have good movement either, though it does have good velocity separation at 77-82 mph. Every now and then, Senzatela will flash up to fringe-average with his offspeed pitches, lending hope that he\u2019ll take some steps forward in that department as time goes on. The curve, in particular, has some potential if he can tighten it up some, an adjustment that is quite common for pitchers at this developmental stage. All he needs is one of his secondary pitches to come around to profile as a good relief pitcher, and if the whole set can come up to average, he\u2019ll be a good #4 starter. There\u2019s some risk involved here because of the inadequacy of his current offspeed arsenal, but Senzatela\u2019s easy velocity can\u2019t be taught, and he has time to figure everything else out."} -{"text":"Enter Shadar Logoth. There are some really nice descriptions of the architecture of this ruined city.\n\nHow do you picture the characters?\n\nThe boys slip out the back of the warded shelter without permission to explore the empty city. As night approaches, they encounter Mordeth. We get into the motivations of this dangerous character.\n\nMatt picks up the ruby hilted dagger during their flight, but tells no one.\n\nAfter they return Rand has a dream. Is the old man in it Ishmael?\n\nThe approach of Tollocs forces the party to flee.\n\nWoTSpoilers is a twice weekly book-club, you can join the conversation on Discord\n\nRemember, we're two nerds in a basement who would rather be creating content full time, than working our 9-5s. You can help us create the content you love, by donating on Patreon"} -{"text":"A weird \u2018metal butterfly\u2019 which buzzed a father and son as they left a restaurant in Ohio this week is among the clearest UFO pictures ever taken.\n\nBut some UFO fans say it\u2019s a fake - possibly created using CGI software.\n\nLocal men Tom and Christopher claim that the weird, butterfly-like craft buzzed them - then they saw two black, military helicopters following it.\n\nIt was shown off by paranormal-themed YouTube channel Secure Team - whose creator, Tyler Glockner, swears it is real.\n\nGlockner says, \u2018The reason I am calling this an alien craft rather than just a UFO\u2026is in the stunning detail, where we can see the true structural characteristics of this ship.\n\n\u2018And guys you take a look and tell me with a straight face this has anything to do with humans.\n\n\u2018The features on this thing don't make any sense.\u2019\n\nGlockner claims that the duo who filmed the clip were unable to photograph the military helicopters which tailed the craft, as they were \u2018going the other way\u2019.\n\nNigel Watson, author of the UFO Investigations Manual, is more sceptical, saying, \u2018It looks like it was produced using a model and CGI. It is a very distinctive looking object, it reminds me of the Millennium Falcon spacecraft in the Star Wars films with a bite taken out of it.\n\n\u2018Alarm bells ring when the witnesses are only known as Tom and Christopher, and we might also wonder why other people in the area didn't see it."} -{"text":"Yesterday was brutal for NC State fans. First they learned that Trevor Lacey was going pro, then they find out Kyle Washington is transferring. So for all of you toeing the ledge right now, we have some recruiting news that will hopefully put you in a better mood.\n\nAccording to Adam Zagoria of ZagsBlog, Mark Gottfried is in Greece looking for a commitment from 7 foot center Georgios Papagiannis.\n\nN.C. State coach @Mark_Gottfried left for Greece today where he will see 7-footer Georgios Papagiannis. More here: http:\/\/t.co\/QvTZ5Ywtcr \u2014 Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) April 17, 2015\n\nNow, I\u2019m not going to act like I\u2019ve seen anything more than a few videos, but this kid is legit. In fact, there are a few coaches that think he\u2019s a potential one and done type guy (From the videos I\u2019m not buying that). He\u2019s 7\u20191, has a good frame, is bouncy, coordinated, can handle it a bit and can shoot it. Gott is trying to lock him up and is likey the first coach to go over to visit him.\n\nHe is also looking at St. John\u2019s, Temple, Oregon, Kentucky and UConn. He is expected to make a decision by June but Gottfried is surely hoping to come home with one in a few days."} -{"text":"Dear President Obama:\n\nBefore you decide to attack Syria, yet another Arab or Islamic country that does not threaten U.S. security, there are certain constitutional \u201cniceties\u201d that you should observe. Chronically violating the Constitution overturns the rule of law and can produce costly blowbacks.\n\nOn August 28, you stated that bombing Syria \u201cis not about war, it\u2019s about accountability,\u201d obviously referring to the brutal gassing of neighborhoods outside of Damascus. What about your accountability to receive authorization from Congress which, under Article 1, Section 8, has the sole and exclusive power to declare war? Spare Americans the casuistry of your lawyers who \u201clegalized\u201d your war on Libya, with no declaration, authorization or appropriation of funds from Congress, and pushed the envelope of the \u201cunitary presidency\u201d beyond the unlawful and brazen extremes advocated by George W. Bush and his lawyers.\n\nNearly 200 members of both parties of Congress \u2013 now on its August recess \u2013 demanded there be no attack on Syria without Congressional authorization. These signers have so far included 72 Democrats. Merely secretly consulting with some lawmakers on the Intelligence Committees does not substitute for formal Congressional authorization. The framers of our Constitution \u2013 whatever their other differences \u2013 were unanimous in writing Article 1, Section 8, so that no president could go to war on his own. To do so, as you have already done in the past, would be a major impeachable offense.\n\nThe media have reported that your lawyers are searching for legal justification for Tomahawk Missiling Syria. They need look no more \u2013 the Constitution clearly rests the power to engage in war with Congress and Congress only. You cannot start another war! You cannot continue to be the prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner anywhere, and at any time.\n\nYou may think the foregoing cautious and mere formalities. But the framers held the war-making power in Congress for another reason than just thwarting a latter-day King George III tyranny. They wanted a deliberative open process to avoid reckless presidential decisions that were bad for our country and produced entanglements with warring foreign nations. Remember George Washington\u2019s farewell address on this point \u2013 truer today than in his day.\n\nRemember what the nearly 200 members of Congress said to you \u2013 \u201cengaging our military in Syria with no direct threat to the United States and without prior Congressional authorization would violate the separation of powers that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.\u201d Congressional deliberations would ask the following questions in the open:\n\nAssuming the veracity of the regime as the cause, how could a U.S. attack not make a horrible situation even more horrible, both inside Syria and in the volatile region?\n\nWhy are so many in the U.S. military privately opposed to such an action \u2013 though they defer to civilian authority? Could it be due to the lack of any strategic purpose and the violent plethora of uncontrollable consequences? See the oppositional stands, reported in the August 30th Washington Post, \u201cfrom captains to a four-star general.\u201d\n\nHow are you going to avoid the kind of awful continual civilian casualties that were produced in the first Iraq war in 1991? U.S. bombings broke chemical warfare containers and led to sickness (called the Gulf War Syndrome) for tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers \u2013 many continue to suffer to this day.\n\nHow are you going to deal with the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East and at least 70 percent of Americans here who are opposed to you bombing Syria? Do you think that lack of domestic public support and even deeper hatred abroad are inconsequential? Your empire mentality seems to say yes.\n\nOne would think that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), of all people, who just sent you a detailed letter of inquiry and caution, citing Congressional authority, should give you pause. Increasingly, you are coming across, even to your hardcore political supporters, as impulsively aggressive, too quick to order killing operations and too slow to contemplate waging of peace.\n\nThe Syrian civil war \u2013 riven by fighting rebel factions, sectarian revenge cycles, outside arms suppliers and provocations, and a spreading al-Qaeda force fighting the dictatorial Assad regime \u2013 can only get worse following a violent attack by your Administration.\n\nListen to Hans Blix, the former United Nations head of the weapons inspection team in Iraq during 2002-2003 that was aborted by George W. Bush\u2019s criminal invasion that led to the continuing loss of over a million Iraqis, many more injuries, five thousand U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of injured Americans.\n\nSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts\n\nMr. Blix, former Swedish minister for foreign affairs, urges an international peace conference under the UN Security Council\u2019s auspices attended by all governments supporting the various sides in Syria\u2019s civil war. Since all fighters in Syria are receiving their weapons from outside nations, these \u201csupplier countries have leverage,\u201d Blix writes, to support the demand \u201cthat their clients accept a ceasefire \u2013 or risk losing further support.\u201d\n\nAchieving this goal will require strong leadership. While it is difficult for you to move from waging war to waging peace, history documents that the latter brings better outcomes and forestalls worse slaughter and blowbacks that security experts fear could reach our country.\n\nWhen your own military believes you are moving into dangerous terrain and possible points of no return, you\u2019d better start to rethink. You\u2019d better reread the warnings in the measured memoranda given to you by Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, and the chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey.\n\nMore publically, retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, who directed operations for the Joint Chiefs during the run-up to the Iraq war, told the Washington Post: \u201cThere\u2019s a broad naivet\u00e9 in the political class about America\u2019s obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve.\u201d He said that many of his fellow officers share his views.\n\nGeneral Newbold\u2019s words seem like a rebuke not just to the Bush Neocons (pro-Vietnam war, draft dodgers) who pushed the Iraq invasion, but also to you and your immediate circle of hawkish civilian advisors.\n\nAll weapons of violence \u2013 chemical, biological, nuclear, drones, conventional munitions \u2013 are used to destroy lives and habitats. The fact that using some weapons constitutes international war crimes per se is hardly consoling to the victims of other mass weapons systems.\n\nAggressive arms controls should be the priority of the leading superpower in the world. Why haven\u2019t you made U.S. ratification of the small arms, the landmines, and the cluster munitions treaties, adhered to by most nations, a priority?\n\nBefore you violently embroil our country into yet another Mid-East country\u2019s tragic turmoil, visit the government supported U.S. Institute of Peace for intensive tutorials. Then read again Article 1, Section 8, and its originating history, which says that going to war is not your decision but the exclusive decision of the Congress. That may help you accept the imperative of your moral and legal accountability.\n\nSincerely,\n\nRalph Nader"} -{"text":"Government spending cuts could cause growth only if they increase the other components by more than spending was cut. There's a common argument that this could happen in the long term. Less federal spending allows the government to take in fewer tax dollars. If you believe that the private sector better promotes economic growth than the government, then it makes sense that smaller government paired with lower taxes will lead to higher growth.\n\nBut that's not the situation we're talking about here. We're trying to pay down the enormous government debt, so we can't lower taxes in proportion to the spending cuts. Doing so would leave the debt level unchanged. In order for spending cuts in a vacuum to stimulate the economy, they must have some intangible positive effect on one or more of the other components of GDP. Let's think through this.\n\nConsumption : Less government spending will not provide consumers with more money to spend. So to spend more, they would need to save less or incur more personal debt. These options seem somewhat unlikely, as less government spending probably means the impact of entitlements softens -- so Americans will need to save more, not less.*\n\n: Less government spending will not provide consumers with more money to spend. So to spend more, they would need to save less or incur more personal debt. These options seem somewhat unlikely, as less government spending probably means the impact of entitlements softens -- so Americans will need to save more, not less.* Investment : Less government spending will not provide firms with more money to invest. So they would either need to pay shareholders less or borrow to invest more of their revenue for growth. It's hard to see why cutting government spending would encourage either of these options. At best, you could see the private sector attempt to provide some of the services that government cut, but most of the government's functions tend not to be potential profit centers for firms. More importantly, this would just replace the services the government already provided, so growth would remain flat. Economic activity would remain unchanged: some would just shift from government to firms.\n\n: Less government spending will not provide firms with more money to invest. So they would either need to pay shareholders less or borrow to invest more of their revenue for growth. It's hard to see why cutting government spending would encourage either of these options. At best, you could see the private sector attempt to provide some of the services that government cut, but most of the government's functions tend not to be potential profit centers for firms. More importantly, this would just replace the services the government already provided, so growth would remain flat. Economic activity would remain unchanged: some would just shift from government to firms. Net Exports: Less government spending could actually reduce net exports. If the deficit declines, then the dollar should strengthen. While that might sound great, it means that our goods and services will appear more expensive to those overseas. That will make it more difficult to convince them to buy U.S. exports.\n\nYou can quibble that government spending shouldn't be a part of the definition of GDP. That position isn't crazy, but it also doesn't change anything. As just shown, those other components will not reflect new economic activity boosting growth if government spending is cut.\n\nRemember, cutting spending takes money out of the economy. That money isn't being replaced. Any further growth will have to occur by draining savings or by taking on more credit. Will less government produce stronger economic sentiment to induce such behavior? It could if the government borrowing was having an adverse negative effect on the economy in some way. Currently, that doesn't appear to be the case. U.S. debt is still being issued relatively cheaply."} -{"text":"This story is a further continuation of \u201cPlaying a Story in a Believable World\u201d and \u201cPlaying a Story in a Believable World 2\u201d. I highly recommend reading both of those articles before continuing.\n\nPlay on Assumptions\n\nAdventures can be inspired from anything. In the campaign I mentioned last article, one particularly nasty antagonist that the party set out to destroy was almost completely based on H.P. Lovecraft\u2019s \u201cPickman\u2019s Model\u201d. It\u2019s a story that hardly lends itself to high combat, but with a little modification I was able to pay it homage while making something unique and fun that Lovecraft fans could make a few guesses about along the way. Another adventure, to hunt a sewer dwelling urban legend called Croc-Man, led the party to call up thoughts and stories of Killer Croc from the Batman cartoon\/comics. The story hardly had anything to do with the DC character, but it allowed me to direct the investigation because I knew what assumptions the party had made.\n\nAs my campaign evolved, the story called for higher action and less intrigue. Though I never stated that a genre change was impending, I did allude to it repeatedly. A war was brewing in my plot, a battle to epitomize Good vs. Evil on a mass scale. The players could feel the danger growing larger session by session, NPCs spoke of an end to the battles they faced, and prophecy warned of the final confrontation. To prepare for the massive combat, I watched movies like 300, Gladiator, and other violent action flicks. I noted their soundtracks and during my battles, played those coupled with other powerful songs; music that I knew (knowing my group\u2019s tastes) would pump some adrenaline into the room. I can\u2019t say I recommend Metallica\u2019s Battery covered by acoustic metal group Van Canto for every game, but with my group is was the perfect choice. Battles truly felt like epic moments of intense rage directed at an irredeemable enemy, exactly what I hoped to convey.\n\nAfterword\n\nEvery group is different; I cannot tell you specifically how to lead every player to the assumptions you want from them. However, I do feel that being aware of the mood you are crafting will help you figure out how to guide your particular group. Here are a few starter ideas to help you establish a Continuity of Theme, Tone, and Mood.\n\nChoose and communicate a genre style. Every genre comes with its own set list of assumptions on the types of characters, adventures, and so much more. Use this to quickly explain the feelings your story is trying to create.\n\nWatch movies or read books that capture the chosen genre. Anything that well illustrates the given tone you want to recreate can serve as inspiration.\n\nDon\u2019t be afraid to make references to the genre directly or indirectly in your campaign. I don\u2019t recommend taking your plot straight from Mass Effect for your Sci-Fi RPG, but if your group is familiar with the game and it has elements that blend well, use them.\n\nSpend some time with Thesaurus.com (or a real thesaurus! Advice I could use myself). Look up descriptors for the mood you are establishing and find similar words, then use these in your descriptions for locations, artifacts, or characters.\n\nTry to stay consistent from the outset. This is probably the most difficult tip to master, if such a thing is possible. In the event you are forced to change your mind about your genre due to disinterest or dramatic plot change, be sure to review this list of tips, choose a new genre, and communicate it to the players.\n\nI think it is very important to mention here not place yourself in a box. Your chosen genre should serve only as a baseline, a point from which assumptions can be made. How you twist and direct those assumptions is entirely up to you as the writer and GM. Lastly, crafting a believable world to tell your story in doesn\u2019t end here, these are only steps along the path. Experiment, read on game theory, and decide what works for you. I\u2019m working on more articles regarding NPC Relationships, Time Use, and Equipment that all tie your series of adventures into a story world your players can really get into.\n\n[tag]Game Mastering, Pen and Paper RPG, role playing, Role Playing Games, roleplaying, rpg[\/tag]"} -{"text":"As the Los Angeles Clippers propose guard Jamal Crawford in possible trade scenarios, the NBA's Sixth Man of the Year has a message for the Clippers and potential future teams: Wherever Crawford's playing, he wants a contract extension next summer.\n\n\"Our intention is to get an extension with the Clippers or anywhere else that he may be traded based on the fact that he's undervalued for the production he's providing,\" his agent Andy Miller told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday night.\n\nCrawford has become a subject of sign-and-trade discussions with the Clippers, who have inquired about working deals for several potential free agents, including Cleveland's Luol Deng and Spencer Hawes, sources told Yahoo.\n\nScroll to continue with content Ad\n\nCrawford has two years, $11 million left on his deal, including a team option for the 2015-16 season. Crawford is eligible for an extension in the summer of 2015, and believes he's out-performed his deal. Crawford had a tremendously productive season for the Clippers, averaging 18.6 points in 30 minutes per game on his way to his second Sixth Man of the Year award in four seasons.\n\nCrawford averaged 15.5 points in 24 minutes per game in the 2014 Western Conference playoffs.\n\nIn 14 NBA seasons, Crawford has averaged 15.5 points. He's played with Chicago, New York, Golden State, Atlanta, Portland and the Clippers."} -{"text":"New Datamined Patch - Class Changes, Passive Effects, Rift Keystones, Item Set Names, Bounty Scrolls, New Banners, Warlords of Draenor Buff, Lots of Graphics\n\nWarning - all things below should NOT be considered as a confirmation or anything close to it. This is datamining and not everything is a representation of what would be in the game.\n\nUpdate 4: Added Set Item bonuses. There are quite some changes!\n\nUpdate 3: Added portraits. Faces are as follows: Enchanted Soul Fragment, Lord Wynton, Spirit Barbarian, Spirit Crusader, Spirit Crusader Male, Westmarch Boy, Adria Boss, Cow King, Zayl, Common Angel, BSmith Apprentice, Sophia. Looks like this might be it for the patch!\n\nUpdate 2: Added buff icons from items, Warlords of Draenor \"flag\" buff, new Bounty target Health Bar and Legendary Reagents. Fixed incorrect Pool of Reflection string.\n\nUpdate: Added a lot more pictures. Made Warlords of Draenor Buff more obvious in the notes below.\n\nNew Graphics - Icons, Items, Portraits, UI\n\nSet Item Bonuses\n\nDiabloFans Quote: Krelm's Buff Bulwark (New)\n\n2 pieces: [+500 Vitality] Chantodo's Resolve 2 pieces: [Your shields heal for 25% of their remaining amount when they expire.] (New) Legacy of Nightmares\n\n2 pieces: [This ring sometimes summons a Skeleton when you attack.] (Seems like it was missing from the tooltip the last few builds) Born's Command 2 pieces: [+15% Life] (Down from 20%)\n\n3 pieces: [Increases experience rewarded per kill by 20%] (Moved from 2 pieces)\n\n3 pieces: [Reduces cooldown of all skills by [{VALUE1}*100|1|]%.] (New) Cain's Destiny\n\n3 pieces: [50% Better Chance of Finding Magical Items] (Down from 100%) Captain Crimson's Trimmings\n\n2 pieces: [Reduces cooldown of all skills by [{VALUE1}*100|1|]%.] (New)\n\n2 pieces: [Regenerates 2000 Life per Second] (Up from 1945)\n\n3 pieces: [Reduces all resource costs by 10%.] (New)\n\n3 pieces: [+50 Resistance to all elements] (Down from 100) Aughild's Authority\n\n2 pieces: [Reduces damage from ranged attacks by 0.07%] (Moved from 3 pieces)\n\n3 pieces: [Reduces damage from Elites by 15%] [Increases damage versus Elites by 15%] (New) Asheara's Vestments 3 pieces: [Melee attackers take 3498 Holy Damage per hit] (Removed) Guardian's Jeopardy 2 pieces: [+250 Vitality] (Down from 975\n\n2 pieces: [Regenerates 2000 Life per Second] (Up from 1945)\n\n3 pieces: [+15% Movement Speed] (New) Demon's Hide\n\n2 pieces: [Melee attackers take 6000 Fire Damage per hit] (Up from 3498)\n\n3 pieces: [Chance to Deal 25% Splash Damage on Hit.] (Changed from 5.1% chance to Fear on Hit) Sage's Journey\n\n2 pieces: [+250 Intelligence] [+250 Strength] [+250 Dexterity] [+250 Vitality] (All values down from 975) Hallowed Protectors\n\n2 pieces: [Attack Speed increased by 10%] (Up from 8%) The Shadow's Mantle (Ninja Set) 2 pieces: [Automatically cast Smoke Screen when you fall below 25% Life. This effect may occur once every 30 seconds.] (Moved from 4 pieces. Replaces: Your Spike Traps lure enemies to them)\n\n4 pieces: [Reduce all cooldowns by 1 second every time you kill a demon.] (New) Helltooth Harness (Witch_Doctor_Set_x1) 4 pieces: [ Reduces cooldown of Wall of Zombies by 2 seconds. ] (Previously 500 Intelligence)\n\n6 pieces: [NYI] (Previously 500 Intelligence)\n\nItem Passive Effects\n\nDiabloFans Quote: New ItemPassive_Unique_Ring_739_x1 - Elemental skills have a chance to trigger a powerful attack that deals [{VALUE1}*100]% weapon damage:\n\n*Cold skills trigger Freezing Skull\n\n*Poison skills trigger Poison Nova\n\n*Lightning skills trigger Charged Bolt\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Bow_008_x1 - Ravens flock to your side.\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_586_x1 - Wall of Zombies spews acid, dealing [{VALUE1}*100]% weapon damage every second for its entire duration. (Was NYI till now)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_587_x1 - All damage taken is split between wearers of this item. (Was NYI till now) Changed ItemPassive_Unique_Ring_533_x1 - Strafe gains the effect of the Drifting Shadow rune. (Previously removed Hatred cost)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_602_x1 - Your Spike Traps lure enemies to them. Enemies may be taunted once every {VALUE1} seconds. (Added taunt mechanic description)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_600_x1 - Summons shadow clones to your aid when you Stun an enemy. This effect may occur once every {VALUE1} seconds. (Added occurrence limitation)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_615_x1 - Healing wells replenish all resources and reduce all cooldowns by {VALUE1} seconds. (Now also reduces cooldowns)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_621_x1 - Fan of Knives gains the effect of the Fan of Daggers rune. (Changed from having a knock back effect)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_626_x1 - Grasp of the Dead gains the effect of the Rain of Corpses rune. (Changed from having no cooldown)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Ring_643_x1 - Blocks have a chance of summoning a charging wolf that deals [{VALUE1}*100]% weapon damage to all enemies it passes through. (Added creature details, changed from hell hound)\n\nItemPassive_Unique_Mighty_1H_011_x1 - Chance on attack to Whirlwind furiously for 325% weapon damage as Physical every second for 6 seconds. (Finally added actual numbers!)\n\nWarlords of Draenor Buff\n\nNOTE that Blizzard uses QUAD DAMAGE as a placeholder for CE stuff.\n\nDiabloFans Quote: WoDFlagBuff_name - Collectors Edition Buff\n\nWoDFlagBuff_desc - QUAD DAMAGE\n\nRift Keystones, Item Set Names, Bounty Scrolls, New Banners\n\nDiabloFans Quote: Bnet_EscapeMenu.txt RaiseDifficulty - Raise Difficulty Errors.txt NephalemRiftWarning_PlayerNeedsKey - Five Rift Keystone Fragments are needed to conjure a Nephalem Rift.\n\nPowerUnusableInDifficulty - You can't do that in this difficulty level.\n\nDifficultyTooLow - You must be in a higher game difficulty for that.\n\nItemCannotBeEnchantedLegacy - The mystic cannot enchant legacy items.\n\nItemCannotBeEnchantedMysticLevelRequired - The mystic needs to be level {s1} to enchant this item type. General.txt LootRunClosesWarning - Nephalem Rift closes in:\n\nQuestUpdateNewBountyChatMessage - {s1}, {s2}\n\nStatAbbr - {s1}k HeroDetails.txt SplashDamage - Area Damage (Renamed from Splash Damage) ItemSets.txt Ninja_Set_x1 - The Shadow\u2019s Mantle\n\nThorns_Set_x1 - Thorns of the Invoker\n\nEarthquake_Set_x1 - Might of the Earth\n\nGolden_Oxen_Set_x1 - The Legacy of Raekor\n\nDot_Set_x1 - Raiment of the Jade Harvester\n\nMonkey_King_Set_x1 - Monkey King's Garb\n\nArcane_Wraps_Set_x1 - Vyr's Amazing Arcana\n\nWitch_Doctor_Set_x1 - Helltooth Harness\n\nWar_Harness_Set_x1 - Krelm\u2019s Buff Bulwark BuffTooltips.txt X1_Passive_BountyScroll_DemonDamage_0 - Bounty Scroll\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_DemonDamage_0_desc - 25% increased damage to Demons.\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_UndeadDamage_0 - Bounty Scroll\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_UndeadDamage_0_desc - 25% increased damage to Undead.\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_BeastDamage_0 - Bounty Scroll\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_BeastDamage_0_desc - 25% increased damage to Beasts.\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_TeddyBear_0 - Cuddle Bear!\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_TeddyBear_0_desc - You feel more cuddly.\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_RunSpeed_0 - Bounty Scroll\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_RunSpeed_0_desc - 30% increased movement speed. Powers.txt X1_Passive_BountyScroll_DemonDamage_name - Bounty Scroll\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_UndeadDamage_name - Bounty Scroll\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_BeastDamage_name - Bounty Scroll\n\nX1_Passive_BountyScroll_RunSpeed_name - Bounty Scroll Tutorials.txt X1_PoolsOfreflection_2 - You now have a pool of bonus experience which will persist between games. Dying will remove this bonus.\n\nX1_PoolsOfreflection_2_title - Pools of Reflection Bonus\n\nX1_RiftKeystone_title - Rift Keystone Fragments\n\nX1_RiftKeystoneInventory - Use 5 Rift Keystone Fragments to open a Nephalem Rift at the Nephalem Obelisk in town.\n\nX1_RiftKeystoneInventory_title - Rift Keystone Fragments\n\nX1_RiftKeystoneComplete - You now have 5 Rift Keystone Fragments. You can go back to the Nephalem Obelisk in town and open a Nephalem Rift.\n\nX1_RiftKeystoneComplete_title - Rift Keystone Fragments X1_LoadscreenTips.txt TIP056 - Primary or secondary properties proceeded by an orange bullet icon {icon:bullet2} are not factored into item comparisons.\n\nTIP057 - Shift-click on player names to link them.\n\nTIP058 - Holding down the SHIFT key while assigning paragon points will speed up the process by assigning them ten at a time. BannerAccents.txt banner_basic_sigilAccent_BatWings_01 - Wings\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Goblet_01 - Goblet\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_MoonStar_01 - Moon & Sun\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Orb_01 - Orb\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Rose_01 - Roses\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Serpent_01 - Serpent\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Snakes_01 - Snakes\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Leaves_02 - Vines\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Rays_01 - Rays\n\nbanner_basic_sigilAccent_Sun_01 - Evenstar BannerPatterns.txt banner_basic_pattern_wave_04 - Wind\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_cross_05 - Cruces\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_cross_06 - Crucifix\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_drip_03 - Scalloped\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_fire_02 - Flares\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_fire_03 - Fire\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_starburst_01 - Infinity\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_starburst_02 - Starburst\n\nbanner_basic_pattern_starburst_03 - Sunburst BannerShapes.txt banner_basic_shape_chevron004 - Highborn\n\nbanner_basic_shape_chevron005 - Royal\n\nbanner_basic_shape_chevron006 - Imperial\n\nbanner_basic_shape_goth004 - Exultant\n\nbanner_basic_shape_point006 - Hallowed\n\nbanner_basic_shape_point007 - Glorious\n\nbanner_basic_shape_point008 - Westmarch\n\nbanner_basic_shape_rectangle002 - Reserved\n\nbanner_basic_shape_rectangle003 - August BannerSigils.txt banner_basic_sigilMain_Axe_01 - Axe\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Bird_01 - Ascendance\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Crus_01 - Crusader\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Hood_01 - Malthael's Hood\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Orb_01 - Crucible\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Rose_01 - Thorny Rose\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Scythe_02 - Scythes\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Shield_03 - Crusader Shield\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Sickle_01 - Sickles\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Soulstone_01 - Black Soulstone\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Malskull_01 - Reaper\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Axe_01_alt_01 - Axe\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Bird_01_alt_01 - Ascendance\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Crus_01_alt_01 - Crusader\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Flail_01 - Flails\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Flail_01_alt_01 - Flails\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Hood_01_alt_01 - Malthael's Hood\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Malskull_01_Alt_01 - Reaper\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Orb_01_alt_01 - Crucible\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Rose_01_alt_01 - Thorny Rose\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Scythe_02_alt_01 - Scythes\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Shield_03_alt_01 - Crusader Shield\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Sickle_01_alt_01 - Sickles\n\nbanner_basic_sigilMain_Soulstone_01_alt_01 - Black Soulstone\n\nClass Changes"} -{"text":"A white supremacist group will rally on the steps of the Pennsylvania State Capitol on Nov. 5, within days of the presidential election.\n\nThe National Socialist Movement's announcement of a rally in the \"heart of Democracy\" spurred local social service groups to organize their own event across town in the hope of averting a potentially violent protest.\n\n\"One of our goals is to show that equality and nonviolence will be spoken louder than hate that day in Harrisburg,\" said Ann Van Dyke, who's helping to organize a unity event as white supremacists converge on the Capitol. \"The other is to encourage young people to stay away from the rally -- to give them something better to do that day.\"\n\nAccording to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NSM is \"one of the largest and most prominent neo-Nazi groups in the United States.\" The center reported that the number of hate groups nationwide has increased 14 percent since 2014.\n\n\"They have 46 chapters in 40 different states,\" said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the SPLC. \"That makes them far larger than other groups in terms of chapters.\"\n\nPotok said their protests typically center around 10 or 20 members of the group but can draw dozens of police officers and as many as 500 demonstrators.\n\n\"There's always the threat of violence because anti-racists are so provoked and infuriated by the Nazis,\" he said. \"The police have a tough jog in these situations. They have to keep the neo-Nazis and their opponents apart.\"\n\nTroy Thompson, a spokesman for the state Department of General Services, confirmed that the NSM obtained a permit for its rally at the Capitol.\n\n\"Everyone has the right to free speech and freedom of expression,\" Thompson said. \"While we may not agree with the content of the message, as long as it's delivered in a peaceful manner, every individual has the right to express themselves.\"\n\nMessages left with the NSM rally's organizers were not returned Wednesday, but in a press release the group said it chose Harrisburg because of its status as \"one of the birthplaces of American democracy.\"\n\nOn its website, the NSM emphasized the timing of the rally within days of the presidential election although it does not explicitly endorse either candidate.\n\n\"We chose Harrisburg because of its living history,\" said Jeff Schoep, an NSM leader, in a written statement, \"a history so poignant in its remembrance during these turbulent social and political times.\"\n\nhttp:\/\/www.pennlive.com\/news\/2016\/02\/the_hateful_state_pennsylvania.html\n\nVan Dyke said the counter-demonstration, which will likely be held at a school far from the Capitol, will be apolitical.\n\nAmanda Arbour, racial justice coordinator for YWCA Greater Harrisburg, said the best response to a hate group is to shift focus away from their activities.\n\n\"Whenever there's a hate group having a rally, it's not as productive to have a counter-protest at the rally,\" she said. \"It draws more attention to their efforts.\"\n\nVan Dyke said the counter-event will include music, poetry and other activities designed to attract young people. Its organizers, she said, include Christian Churches United, the Community Responders Network, the Mayor's Interfaith Advisory Council, and the World Affairs Council.\n\nVan Dyke said it's important to keep protesters -- and particularly young people -- away from the white supremacist rally in order to protect them.\n\n\"Hate groups say such venomous things in their public rallies that sometimes protestors, particularly young people, lose control and end up breaking the law,\" she said. \"They're usually the ones that end up getting arrested.\"\n\nHate groups want protesters -- and the media coverage that follows -- at their events, she said, because it helps spread their message. Furthermore, any failure by local authorities to control the crowd could result in more favorable coverage or lawsuits against the city or state.\n\n\"Another goal, which is really important to keep in mind, is that they seek to inflame existing tensions in that town between the community and police,\" she said. \"For so, so many reasons, we need to have an alternative unity event.\"\n\nThe organizers are still finalizing the location of the alternate event, which will run concurrently with the rally at 2 p.m. on Nov. 5. Those interested in assisting the counter-event can call the YWCA at 717-234-7931.\n\nhttp:\/\/www.pennlive.com\/politics\/index.ssf\/2016\/06\/donald_trump_10_political_fire.html"} -{"text":"NewsFaith\n\nSANTA PAULA, California, December 1, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) \u2014 There will be a mass rosary service throughout the United States on December 12, the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, inspired \u201c100 percent\u201d by the Rosary on the Borders in Poland.\n\nThe \u201cRosary on the Coasts and Borders\u201d is the initiative of a group of Church Militant fans who proposed \u2014 and then began planning \u2014 the event in its website comments box.\n\n\u201cI am in constant admiration of Poland,\u201d Patricia Lemmon, who is one of the organizers, told LifeSiteNews. \u201cOver and over again, (the Poles) show their allegiance to reality. Their pro-life laws and initiatives encouraging families to have children, supporting families when a Down syndrome child is expected, welcoming Christian refugees but barring (jihadist) incomers, these are a beacon of intelligence coupled with goodness in the midst of so much truly dark news out of dying secular western Europe.\u201d\n\nLemmon also praised the rosary events in Italy and Ireland.\n\nThe intention of the prayers will be \u201cto ask Our Lady to save the USA from Islamic jihad, from the denial of the Christian faith, and for an end of abortion.\u201d\n\nThe USA Rosary on the Coasts and Borders will not literally surround the nation\u2019s massive territory. Instead, Lemmon said, it will put up \u201ca prayer shield by representation.\u201d\n\n\u201cHere in the States we do things state by state, and we believe in representation,\u201d she told LifeSiteNews. \u201cSo (we need as representatives) one person or group from each of the 50 States, plus D.C., plus Puerto Rico, plus Guam or other territory. By December 12, that will be all 53 of us, representing the whole USA to Our Lady of Guadalupe.\u201d\n\nIn this way, the organizers hope to match a state or protectorate to each of the Hail Marys in a five-decade rosary.\n\nThe Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe was chosen for a few reasons. First, the only Marian apparition in the New World pronounced authentic by the Catholic Church was witnessed in Villa de Guadalupe in 1531. Next, Pius XII named Our Lady of Guadalupe the Patroness of the Americas in 1946. Finally, an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was taken by Don Juan of Austria\u2019s Christian army into the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. The Battle of Lepanto represented a major defeat to the Ottoman Empire.\n\n\u201cThe New World\u2019s Lady sailed to confront jihad in the Old World,\u201d Lemmon said. \u201cIs this not mind-blowing? That battle, against all odds, saved Europe from imminent invasion. \u2026 As Don Juan fought under that banner, the pope prayed the rosary.\u201d\n\nThe anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto on October 7 is also the Feast of the Holy Rosary and the date chosen by the organizers of the Polish Rosary to the Borders.\n\n\u201cSo the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, victor of Lepanto, seems the ordained date for America to link with Poland \u2026 \u201d said Lemmon. \u201cThus we will jointly block jihad and embrace faith and life.\u201d\n\nThe Rosary On the Coasts and Borders currently has representatives in 30 states and Puerto Rico. The organizers are still looking for representatives in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Guam, or some other protectorate.\n\nCanadians, too, are invited to join in. Lemmon addressed them through LifeSiteNews, saying, \u201cTurn to your south on December 12 and join us in throwing up to heaven a bubble of protection across these vast lands. \u2026 And when you do your own Canadian rosary, we will turn to our north \u2026 and join you in storming heaven for Canada!\u201d\n\nLemmon described the lay-led event as \u201ca Wild West Rosary.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe didn't wait for the U.S. bishops to do anything,\u201d she told LifeSiteNews. \u201cAs a group, they don't seem cut from the same cloth as the great Polish bishops who are so busy (being bishops), protecting and leading their flock among real dangers (although the U.S. does have a few sterling bishops). We here in the States can springboard off of the American do-it-yourself spirit.\u201d\n\nThose interested in joining can register on the Disqus link here."} -{"text":"Preface\n\nTerminology for 18650 batteries can be very confusing. In this blog post I will clear five common myths.\n\nMyth #1 - You have individual 18650 batteries\n\nMyth #2 - What is better, Li-Po or Li-ion?\n\nMyth #3 - When you charge a cell, its capacity increases\n\nMyth #4 - 18650 batteries can be either Primary or Secondary cells\n\nMyth #5 - Impedance and Resistance are interchangeable terms\n\nI decided to go into some detail for each point so that readers may fully appreciate what lies behind each myth. With detail also lies some complexity. Admittedly I'm worried. I want this post to clear up 18650 battery myths, not confuse even more.\n\nFor that reason I added as many metaphors for phenomenon as possible. When you come across these, really take a moment to think about what is going on. I find these metaphors are really the best way to quickly grasp complicated concepts.\n\nAnd lastly, if you come across any mistakes, have any questions, or disagree with something I've written, please let me know in the comments!\n\nMyth #1 - You have individual 18650 batteries\n\nAnswer: Technically, you have individual 18650 cells, not batteries\n\nThe terminology problem here arises because of the difference between consumers and engineers.\n\n1 - Cell\n\nTechnically speaking, an individual 18650 battery is actually a cell. A cell is the smallest packaged form a battery can take (and for 18650 batteries a cell is normally 4.2V).\n\n2 - Module\n\nThe next step up in the hierarchy is a module, which can consist of several 18650 cells connected in either parallel or series. Modules can range in size from several cells to several hundred cells depending on energy requirements.\n\nA BMW i3 lithium-ion battery pack, with viewable individual battery modules\n\n3 - Battery (or Battery Pack)\n\nA battery is a group of cells or modules connected together in either parallel or series, commonly referred to as a battery pack. Both engineers and consumers refer to the final package as a battery pack. However, only engineers typically refer to the pack with the single world \u201cbattery\u201d in the context of lithium-ion 18650 batteries. 18650 battery packs almost always contain a BMS (battery management system), which is circuitry that regulates the cells and modules.\n\nIf needed to distinguish between a pack and a battery, the \u201cpack\u201d is often smaller, while the \u201cbattery\u201d is larger\n\nDo I really have to start calling them cells and not batteries?\n\nWell it depends who you are and what you\u2019re doing.\n\nCalling an individual 18650 cell a battery, is completely acceptable for most people. We do it frequently on Battery Bro. This is because for most consumers, an 18650 is a battery just like an AA is a battery. It a little cylinder thing that gives us power - it\u2019s easy to communicate.\n\nBut nomenclature for engineers is different. Concerns for efficiency dictate an adherence to standards and depending on their work philosophy, some engineers can take this quite personally. I have come across such, and do not disagree with them.\n\nThat is because typically a battery is a self-contained system capable of powering a device safely. The key point is battery safety. An 18650 cell on the other hand, needs additional regulation circuitry to operate safely because lithium is so chemically reactive.\n\nThe addition of a BMS is also critical to maintaining a li-ions expected long cycle life. Individual cells do not have a BMS, that is the job of the pack.\n\nRemember the three tier system used in building battery packs - cells, modules, and battery. Each category has a different set of rules so they can\u2019t share their names. So in some cases the distinction between cell and battery is necessary.\n\nTo recap, an individual 18650 is a cell, and a group of 18650s is a battery.\n\nConsumers say: 18650 Battery\n\nEngineers say: 18650 Cell\n\nConsumers say: 18650 Battery Pack\n\nEngineers say: 18650 Battery (or 18650 Battery Pack)\n\nMyth #2 - What is better, Li-Po or Li-ion?\n\nAnswer: You can not actually compare the two.\n\nThere are two uses for the word LiPo (lithium polymer).\n\n(Uncommon) The original meaning, referring to a \u201cpolymer electrolyte\u201d (Common) The new meaning, a cell with a \u201cpouch format\u201d In this new meaning, cells do not have a different electrochemistry than li-ion (lithium ion)\n\nUsage #1 - (Uncommon) Polymer Electrolyte\n\nMany years ago, there was development of a chemistry dubbed LiPo. It never really was applied, and is not often menioned. In this type of cell actual polymer electrolytes are used - but it has not reached commercialization and is very much a prototype research cell.\n\nUsage #2 - (Common) Polymer Casing or Pouch Format\n\nToday, the word LiPo means Lithium Polymer. Polymer being a malleable, soft material that creates the external shell of the battery.\n\nThis is a bulging (decomposing) lipo cell (usually from age). Note an 18650 could never bulge like this.\n\nLithium Polymer (LiPo, LiPoly, etc.) is used for mobile phone and tablet batteries; think of their varying shapes and easy-to-puncture material. Contrast that with the steel-shelled 18650 cylindrical battery - which is standardized, hard, and cylindrical. 18650 (18mm by 65mm) batteries never share the characteristic of using a soft, malleable polymer pouch casing.\n\nIf we take a step back we can then see, that both the hard-shelled, and soft-shelled batteries use the same fundamental electrochemistry. They are both lithium-ion (li-ion, liion, etc.) batteries.\n\nThat is, they both give us usable energy by shunting lithium ions between the cathode and anode sheets. The ions move in one direction during charge, and in the other direction during discharge. This fundamental movement is present in both the hard 18650 and the soft LiPo type batteries. Both are lithium ion batteries.\n\nAwesome, aren't all these different polymer architectures nice?\n\nConfusion - All cells contain a little polymer, but it\u2019s not reactive\n\nSo what is polymer exactly? In ancient Greek, polus had the meaning \u201cmany, much\u201d and meros \u201cparts\u201d. A polymer is a large molecule composed of many repeating subunits. This broad definition means there are many types of polymers - notably synthetic plastics, and other natural biopolymers like DNA.\n\nThat means even an 18650 cell without a polymer separator, or any electrolyte may still contain \u201cpolymer\u201d. In fact lithium ion cells do have internal polymer but it accounts for less than 5% of the total weight and does not provide any electrochemical reactions.\n\nThis polymer is often a binding agent. It may be poly(vinylidene fluoride) or PVdF - which helps the mix of chemicals stick to the copper and aluminium foils inside the battery.\n\nThis binding agent shouldn\u2019t be confused with the true meaning of lipo. Lip means \u201cpouch format\u201d.\n\nMyth #3 - When you charge a cell, its capacity increases\n\nAnswer: When you charge a cell, its charge increases and not its capacity.\n\nThe distinction between charge and capacity is not intuitively clear so this myth arises.\n\nThe fuel gauge is a great way to think about battery charge\n\nThe \u201cFuel Gage\u201d\n\nThe easiest way to explain the charge is with an analogy to a fuel or gas gauge of a car. With this gauge you can easily compare the energy left in your car with the energy you had when it was full. The fuel gauge quickly lets you see how much energy you have left, until you need to recharge.\n\nFor batteries, this condition is called the State of Charge (SOC)(%), also known as the \u201cFuel Gauge\u201d function.\n\nNow think about holding your battery and asking \u201cHow charged is it?\u201d It\u2019s the same type of answer you expect if you ask \u201cHow much fuel is in my car?\u201d That means when you are talking about charge of a battery, what you really want to know is its SOC (state of charge) - not its capacity.\n\nTo recap: When you want to see something like a fuel-gauge for your battery, you are asking about its charge, and not its capacity.\n\nIn contrast with the fuel gauge, buckets are a great way to think about battery capacity\n\nCapacity\n\nThe best way to understand capacity is to think of it as a bucket. A bucket in the middle of a sandstorm. Every day you can see how much water is in the bucket, and how much can be refilled. However, every time you open the lid, sand gets in and builds up at the bottom of the bucket. Gradually your capacity decreases as sand increases.\n\nThe bucket is capacity, and the water is energy. The sand is battery degradation (due to cell oxidation) which is a naturally occurring and irreversible process.\n\nJump to France in the 1780\u2019s - a man named Charles-Augustin de Coulomb invented the SI unit of electric charge - which is now named after him. The coulomb unit is equal to the amount of electricity produced or consumed in exactly one second by one amp.\n\nWhen we are talking about battery capacity, we are talking about its coulometric capacity which is derived from discharging the battery.\n\nCoulometric capacity is calculated with the following formula:\n\n(Discharge Current in Amps) x (Discharge Time*)\n\n*Discharge time is the range between its fully charged SOC to the cut-off voltage.\n\nFor example:\n\n(2 A) x (2 Hours) = 4Ah or 4000mAh\n\n(20 A) x (6 Minutes) = 2Ah or 2000mAh\n\nThe resulting coulometric capacity is expressed in amp hours, or often translated to milliamp hours.\n\nThat is the equivalent of \u201cI know how much space is in my bucket, if I drink it with a 2mm straw and it takes me 2 hours, I can say I have 4 millimeter hours left in my bucket.\u201d\n\nIf you take this measurement when your bucket is brand new (no sand, no degradation) it is called rated capacity. If you take the measurement after some use, it is called current or actual capacity.\n\nEnvironmental conditions like temperature and variations in amperage during charge and discharge can significantly alter the useable capacity of a cell. Think of the bucket analogy - if the water is too hot you can\u2019t sip it at full speed. Likewise with brainfreeze on the other end of the spectrum. You can\u2019t measure the bucket well unless the water is at or near its optimal temperature.\n\nFurthermore,\n\nSOC depends on capacity\n\nThe SOC reference can be either the current capacity or the rated capacity. Remember current capacity is what the cell or battery can hold, while the rated capacity is what it can hold when it\u2019s brand new, in optimal conditions.\n\nUsing the rated capacity can be very misleading because of cell degradation over time.\n\nWithout accounting for the loss of performance from degradation, the fuel meter would always read 100% when charged, even if it could only hold half as much fuel as it could in the beginning of its life. Imagine if your fuel tank slowly shrunk over time, and car manufacturers did not tell you.\n\nDuring high amp continuous discharge or high amp pulses, the cell is used too fast and inefficiencies occur hence the loss of capacity. This is because chemical reactions take a finite time, and more energy can be put in than can be reacted to. The best analogy I have heard to explain this is with the pouring of beer. You have to pour it in slowly to fill it. Pouring it too fast leads to froth and annoyingly little beer.\n\nDischarging at high rates removes more power in an exponential way, and reversely, discharging at low rates increases the run-time significantly. This is dealt with by using Peukert\u2019s equation (I n T = C).\n\nOverview\n\nCharge is like a fuel gauge - it\u2019s easy to see how much you have left. Capacity is the total amount of fuel you can carry. You can measure the capacity for any given SOC (state of charge) but it is only an estimation.\n\nMyth #4 - 18650 batteries can be either Primary or Secondary cells\n\nAnswer: All 18650 batteries are secondary cells.\n\nA primary cell is one that is not rechargeable (or can not be easily recharged) after it is discharged. Primary cells are like disposable plates - used once and then discarded.\n\nA secondary cell is one that is rechargeable.\n\nNote: a rechargeable alkaline battery like a rechargeable AA is considered a rechargeable primary cell rather than a secondary cell, adding to confusion\n\nSecondary cells have become more and more popular and have replaced primary cells in many applications. However, in some use-cases like smoke detectors it still makes sense to use primary cells because their self-discharge rate is much lower.\n\nLithium-ion batteries are secondary cells, but they are used as primary cells were used in the past - for example when they direct power in laptops, mobile phones, and electric bikes. Even though li-ion is often used as primary cells have been in the past - liion is still considered a secondary cell.\n\nMyth #5 - Impedance and Resistance are interchangeable terms\n\nAnswer: There is little relationship between the two, and while they both function with the same purpose - the output (in Ohms) is always different.\n\nTo understand the difference between DC resistance and AC impedance you should understand that electrical loads have both resistive, and reactive phenomenon.\n\nSo keep these two things in mind:\n\nResistive phenomenon Reactive phenomenon\n\nKnow these interchangeable terms:\n\nDC Approach \/ load = Internal Resistance\n\nAC Approach \/ signal = Internal Impedance\n\nOhmic resistance (Ro)\n\nMeasuring internal resistance disregards the reactive elements.\n\nThis is the inside view of an internal heating element\n\nLooking at the internal resistance of a cell or battery from a purely resistive value (ohms) disregards reactive elements. The best analogy I have heard for this is that of a heating element that produces heat by the friction (resistance) of current passing through. The more internal resistance, the more heat is generated. In this scenario there are no reactive components, only one resistive one determining the output.\n\nWhen your voltage drops from use, this is because the battery current is flowing through its internal resistance.\n\nThe older DC approach\n\nThe DC approach is dubbed: Internal Resistance\n\nThe first and most common approach is to load-stress the battery. You apply a certain number of amps for a certain given time (eg. 20 amps for 5 seconds) and measure the resulting drop in voltage.\n\nThis is like adding friction to the heating element from the previous analogy, and measuring its resulting increase in heat.\n\nHow difficult would it be to hear someone from across this room?\n\nA note should be made regarding signal-to-noise ratio. Early DC tests required high-amperage for this reason. Imagine being at a cocktail party and trying to listen to a conversation across the room. It is only possible to do if the person is screaming.\n\nThe AC approach\n\nThe AC approach is dubbed: Internal Impedance\n\nA newer, improved approach to measuring resistance came after the DC approach. Using AC power, battery scientists were able to send an AC signal through the battery at a very specific frequency. The frequency here is the key point.\n\nIf we go back to the cocktail party. Now imagine we are a dog, and the person across the room has a dog-whistle. This is what using a specific AC frequency can do - it can allow us to very accurately discern the signal from the noise with a unique signature.\n\nThe problem is that this AC ripple will interact with other elements of the battery (inductive reactance from coil, and capacitance reactive from capacitor) which will degrade the signal quality. This is akin to the dog whistle bouncing off the walls and people.\n\nImpedance is used by manufacturers who frequently test 18650 cells at an AC of 1 kHz.\n\nThe newer DC approach\n\nThere are newer approaches where high amperage is no longer required, and tiny amounts of pulsed current can be applied to accurately discern the signal. This is akin to now being able to clearly hear a butterfly flap its wings across the room at the cocktail party.\n\nThe capacity and SOC (state of charge) of lithium-ion is not correlated with its internal resistance (measured by the DC approach)\n\nReactions\n\nAs we can see, the DC approach to measure internal resistance does not measure anything reactive. It is like a heater, you have more friction and you have more heat - there is nothing else. On the other hand,- the AC ripple reacts with coils and capacitors. One utilizes a DC load, the other an AC signal.\n\nWhen measuring an 18650 battery or cell, it\u2019s important to note which approach you are using because the resulting ohm values will be different.\n\nA new, fully charged 18650 cell tested with the AC approach (1kHz) may yield between 30 and 60 milliOhms.\n\nWhile with the equivalent DC approach it may yield 100 to 130 milliOhms.\n\nComparing resistance to impedance is not comparing apples to oranges - they are different non-interchangeable terms.\n\nFinish\n\nAnd that is the end of these five battery myths. Here is a recap of the myths and their answers:\n\nMyth #1 - You have individual 18650 batteries\n\nAnswer: Technically, you have individual 18650 cells, not batteries\n\nMyth #2 - What is better, Li-Po or Li-ion?\n\nAnswer: You can not compare the two.\n\nMyth #3 - When you charge a cell, its capacity increases\n\nAnswer: When you charge a cell, its charge increases and not its capacity.\n\nMyth #4 - 18650 batteries can be either Primary or Secondary cells\n\nAnswer: All 18650 batteries are secondary cells.\n\nMyth #5 - Impedance and Resistance are interchangeable terms\n\nAnswer: There is little relationship between the two, and while they both function with the same purpose - the output (in Ohms) is always different."} -{"text":"Jamie Vardy scored his first hat-trick since his three goals for Fleetwood against Ebbsfleet on 21 February 2012\n\nJamie Vardy scored a hat-trick as Leicester City pulled off a stunning victory over an out-of-sorts Manchester City.\n\nThe Foxes were 2-0 up in five minutes as Vardy ended his 10-game run without a Premier League goal by slotting home, and Andy King curled in moments later.\n\nIt was 3-0 within 20 minutes as Vardy added another after skipping past visiting keeper Claudio Bravo, and he completed his hat-trick by intercepting a misplaced John Stones pass and finishing from a narrow angle.\n\nAleksandar Kolarov, with a free-kick, and Nolito scored late consolation goals for the away side.\n\nThey have now lost back-to-back league games for the first time since Pep Guardiola took over in the summer, and are four points adrift of leaders Arsenal.\n\nFor defending champions Leicester, victory ended a five-game run without a league win and moved them up to 14th.\n\nMan City pay for chaotic defending\n\nGuardiola said this week he wanted a new rule to allow teams to use up to six substitutes - and after five minutes he may have hoped his wish was a reality.\n\nManchester City have kept just two Premier League clean sheets this season, and Guardiola reshuffled his formation to start with a back three of Pablo Zabaleta, John Stones and Bacary Sagna.\n\nThat strategy was swiftly scrapped, though, when his side fell 2-0 down after just 255 seconds - Kolarov was hauled out of midfield and into a hastily created back four.\n\nOnly Islam Slimani (19) averaged most of his playing time in the opposition half for Leicester - eight Manchester City outfield players spent most of the game in Leicester territory\n\nThe visitors, looking marginally better for the change, still managed to get caught on the break for Leicester's third and frequently put themselves under pressure by trying to play out from the back - Stones' misplaced backpass for Vardy's third the costliest example.\n\nTheir fragility could well be a result of their lack of a consistent starting XI, with Guardiola never having kept the same line-up for two consecutive games during his time at Etihad Stadium.\n\nSuspensions for Sergio Aguero, Fernandinho and Nicolas Otamendi had forced the Spaniard to make changes here, and his side were devoid of cohesion.\n\nFor all their possession, they did not have their first shot on target until Kolarov scored a well-placed free-kick in the 82nd minute, and only salvaged further respectability when Nolito tapped in the Serb's low cross late on.\n\nFoxes show championship charm again\n\nLeicester, who were a point above the relegation zone when they kicked off, were superb and, for perhaps the first time this season, showed all the hallmarks of last term's incredible title-winning campaign.\n\nThat most unlikely of championships was built on resolute defending, lightning-quick counter-attacking, Vardy's goals and Riyad Mahrez's magic - all of which were on show.\n\nMahrez pulled off a superb first touch to direct a high ball to Islam Slimani, who in turn slid in Vardy for the opener, and the Algerian repeated the feat when he redirected a long ball into the path of Vardy for Leicester's third.\n\nVardy, who scored 24 Premier League goals last season, had endured a 741-minute goal drought in the league, but took his tally for this term to five when he capitalised on Stones' error and somehow threaded a finish from the tightest of angles.\n\nMan of the match - Jamie Vardy\n\nA first hat-trick for Leicester in a performance reminiscent of his best displays last season - the confidence poured back into him after his first goal\n\n'Welcome back Jamie' - what they said\n\nMedia playback is not supported on this device Leicester City 4-2 Manchester City: Ranieri praises \"true\" Leicester\n\nLeicester boss Claudio Ranieri told BBC Sport: \"It was the true Leicester, maybe because we have played so badly in our last few matches, but today we were so strong.\n\n\"We played smart, slowed down the tempo.\n\n\"I am very pleased for Jamie. When he finished, I said 'welcome back'.\"\n\nFormer Leicester defender Matt Elliott on BBC Radio Leicester: \"There was a spark and zip about Leicester's play from the off. You could sense it, a freshness in the air.\n\n\"That's their best performance by some distance this season and that might just reignite their season, certainly in domestic terms.\"\n\nManchester City boss Pep Guardiola told BBC Sport: \"Leicester won the second balls and scored fantastic goals.\n\nMedia playback is not supported on this device Leicester 4-2 Manchester City: Guardiola will 'look inside' himself after defeat\n\n\"Football is a game with mistakes, especially today. I would never complain to my players and I will look inside myself and analyse the reason why we have problems with the second balls when they arrive.\n\n\"Our game is not bad, but in the box we have a lot of problems.\"\n\nMatch of the Day pundit Danny Murphy: \"That's as good as I've seen Leicester this season, it was like the Leicester of last season. But City didn't half help them.\n\n\"Kolarov was supposed to be playing as a third centre-half but he played so far forward, he left Stones isolated. Zabaleta was playing in a weird in-between position and it didn't look like he knew what he was doing.\n\n\"Kevin de Bruyne appeared to be at left-wing-back. The communication and lack of line was pretty bad. Kolarov was playing his own game going forward so often. They gave Leicester so many opportunities to attack them. It could have been more.\n\n\"Fifty changes, they've made this season. It's nice to build relationships and have some familiarity. You can't keep changing players.\"\n\nDefensive numbers make bad reading for Guardiola\n\nGuardiola has seen his side concede three or more goals in back-to-back league games for the first time as a manager.\n\nA Guardiola side conceded four goals in a league for only the third time (Atletico Madrid 4-3 Barcelona in 2009, Wolfsburg 4-1 Bayern Munich in 2015).\n\nOnly Crystal Palace, Hull and Sunderland (one) have kept fewer clean sheets than Manchester City in the Premier League this season.\n\nClaudio Ranieri has won eight of his nine Premier League matches as a manager against Manchester City, drawing the other.\n\nManchester City conceded twice in the opening five minutes of a Premier League game for the first time since October 2006 against Wigan.\n\nWhat's next?\n\nOn Monday, both sides find out who they will face in the last 16 of the Champions League.\n\nManchester City will be drawn against one of Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Juventus, Monaco or Napoli.\n\nLeicester City will meet Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich, Benfica, Paris St-Germain, Real Madrid or Sevilla.\n\nOn Tuesday, Leicester travel to Bournemouth (19:45 GMT). Manchester City host Watford the following day (20:00)."} -{"text":"The English city of Norwich is an undeniably small place, even by European standards. With a population of just 210,000 (including its suburbs), it\u2019s not surprising that Norwich is largely unknown in global terms. But for lovers of beer and ale, there\u2019s no better place to experience England\u2019s rich drinking heritage.\n\n\u201cBrewing has taken place in Norwich since before 1249. The brewing of beer was a way to purify water, which was often unsafe to drink,\u201d says Philip Cutter, Landlord at The Murderers, a pub that has operated in the city since 1696. \u201cDuring the construction of the Norwich Anglican Cathedral, Franciscan monks brewed beer for the workmen at The Adam and Eve Pub, which still trades in the Cathedral grounds today.\u201d\n\nBoth The Murderers and The Adam and Eve are what\u2019s known as \u201creal ale\u201d pubs, meaning they stock high-quality, natural ales that have gone through secondary fermentation \u2013 a process that involves the ale being left to mature in the cask it\u2019s served from. The trend for this method of traditional production took off around 40 years ago, and has been growing ever since.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the process of secondary fermentation which makes real ale unique and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide,\u201d says Rob Whitmore, Norwich and Norfolk Branch Secretary of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional \u201creal\u201d ales.\n\nCAMRA began its work in the 1970s as a response to a rut in the UK beer market. Concerned that the availability of traditional, flavorful English ales was becoming a thing of the past, four ale lovers from the north-west of England came together to campaign against the domination of the industry by big companies producing large quantities of low quality ale. Today, CAMRA is known as one of the most successful consumer campaigns in European history. The organization itself now boasts 200 branches in the UK and more than 160,000 members from across the world.\n\nFur & Feather Inn is recognized in CAMRA's Good Beer Guide.\n\nIn Norwich, the city once said to have a pub for every day of the year, real ale has become a significant part of the urban architecture; a defining point in where and what you choose to drink. \u201cWe\u2019ve developed a strong bank of local brewers who have helped Norwich pubs not only survive, but become better and stronger,\u201d Whitmore explains. \u201cIf you did a tour of all the pubs in Norwich on any given day, it would not be uncommon to see over 250 different real ales for sale. This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ratio per head in the country.\u201d\n\nThe pubs themselves view real ale as a crucial part of their identity, and one that offers benefits to their business as much as it does to the city\u2019s reputation as a standout destination for beer. \u201cBeing recognized as a \u2018real ale\u2019 pub is enormously important to us, and certainly brings in many customers locally, and attracts out of town visitors,\u201d Cutter says. \u201cBeing part of a successful and vibrant real ale city makes us extremely fortunate \u2013 but being recognized as an award winning real ale pub put our establishment in the forefront, ahead of many others.\u201d\n\nDawn Leeder is chair of the City of Ale Festival, a 10-day celebration of Norwich\u2019s ale and pub scene every May, and she has seen enormous growth and renewed interest in the real ale scene over recent years. \u201cThe real ale renaissance of the 21st century has allowed many microbreweries to open in Norwich and Norfolk. Over 40 breweries took part in last year\u2019s festival and several more have opened since then,\u201d she says. \u201cNorfolk also produces some of the finest malting barley in the world \u2013 the maritime microclimate of our county\u2019s north coast gives rise to cooling harsh frosts which slow the ripening of the grain, intensifying the flavors to make very fine beer indeed.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s this stellar combination of real ale production and availability that led Tim Hampson, Chairman of the British Guild of Beer Writers, to declare that Norwich\u2019s status as a city of ale is \u201cno longer a question, but a fact\u201d earlier this year. A lot may have changed since the monks started brewing here in the 13th century, but Norwich is definitely still the heartland of England\u2019s brewing culture."} -{"text":"Toys M.A.S.K. Toys\n\nM.A.S.K. toys accompanied the cartoon that was first released in 1985 and went on to spawn toys, video games and comics. There were four series of toys released between 1985 and 1988 in the USA, however, in Europe a fifth series was released in 1986 which contained smaller toys that came in blister packs.\n\nAs with most toy-lines in the 1980\u2019s the toys were split between the good guys M.A.S.K. (Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand) and the bad guys V.E.N.O.M. (Viscous Evil Network of Mayhem), however, far more M.A.S.K. toys were released over the four series.\n\nM.A.S.K. Toys\n\nSeries 1 (1985)\n\nThe first wave of toys was released in 1985 and featured all the major characters and vehicles from the first season of the TV show.\n\nM.A.S.K.\n\nBoulder Hill Condor Firecracker Gator Rhino T-Bob Thunderhawk\n\nBoulder Hill \u2013 Service Station play-set, home of M.A.S.K.\n\n\u2013 Service Station play-set, home of M.A.S.K. Brad Turner and Condor \u2013 A green motorcycle than can change into a helicopter.\n\n\u2013 A green motorcycle than can change into a helicopter. Hondo MacLean and Firecracker \u2013 An orange pickup which elevates into a mobile weapon platform.\n\n\u2013 An orange pickup which elevates into a mobile weapon platform. Dusty Hayes and Gator \u2013 An orange Jeep CJ7 with releasable boat.\n\n\u2013 An orange Jeep CJ7 with releasable boat. Matt Tracker, Bruce Sato and Rhino \u2013 A Kenworth semi tractor that converts into a mobile defence platform and command centre.\n\n\u2013 A Kenworth semi tractor that converts into a mobile defence platform and command centre. Matt Tracker and Thunderhawk \u2013 A Chevrolet Camaro which transforms into a jet airplane.\n\n\u2013 A Chevrolet Camaro which transforms into a jet airplane. Scott Tracker \u2013 Comes with his robot T-Bob\n\nV.E.N.O.M.\n\nJackhammer Piranha Switchblade\n\nCliff Dagger and Jackhammer \u2013 A Ford Bronco which turns into an assault vehicle.\n\n\u2013 A Ford Bronco which turns into an assault vehicle. Sly Rax and Piranha \u2013 Motorcycle with releasable submarine side-car.\n\n\u2013 Motorcycle with releasable submarine side-car. Miles Mayhem and Switchblade \u2013 A helicopter which can transform into a jet airplane.\n\nSeries 2 (1986)\n\nThe second series of toys tied in with the second season of the show apart from Hurricane, which appeared at the end of season one under the name \u201cNightstalker\u201d.\n\nM.A.S.K.\n\nFirefly Hurricane Raven Slingshot Volcano\n\nJulio Lopez and Firefly \u2013 An orange dune buggy that turns into a jet.\n\n\u2013 An orange dune buggy that turns into a jet. Hondo MacLean and Hurricane \u2013 A 1957 Chevy which turns into a six-wheeled tank.\n\n\u2013 A 1957 Chevy which turns into a six-wheeled tank. Calhoun Burns and Raven \u2013 A black Chevrolet Corvette which turns into a seaplane.\n\n\u2013 A black Chevrolet Corvette which turns into a seaplane. Ace Riker and Slingshot \u2013 A van which transforms into a jet and launch ramp.\n\n\u2013 A van which transforms into a jet and launch ramp. Matt Tracker, Jacques LaFleur and Volcano \u2013 A blue monster truck which converts into an attack station.\n\nV.E.N.O.M.\n\nOutlaw Stinger Vampire\n\nMiles Mayhem, Nash Gorey and Outlaw \u2013 A tanker truck which transforms into an assault station and mobile command centre.\n\n\u2013 A tanker truck which transforms into an assault station and mobile command centre. Bruno Sheppard and Stinger \u2013 An orange Pontiac GTO that turns into a tank.\n\n\u2013 An orange Pontiac GTO that turns into a tank. Floyd Malloy and Vampire \u2013 A red motorbike that turns into a jet.\n\nSeries 3 (1987) \u201cRacing Series\u201d\n\nThe third wave of toys was the largest release and were all centred around a racing theme, hence the name \u201cRacing Series\u201d.\n\nM.A.S.K.\n\nBillboard Blast Bulldog Bullet Goliath Meteor Razorback The Collector Wildcat\n\nDusty Hayes and Billboard Blast \u2013 A billboard which opens up to reveal a gun emplacement.\n\n\u2013 A billboard which opens up to reveal a gun emplacement. Boris Bushkin and Bulldog \u2013 A white semi tractor truck which turns into a half-track tank.\n\n\u2013 A white semi tractor truck which turns into a half-track tank. Ali Bombay and Bullet \u2013 A blue and white racing motorcycle which turns into a hovercraft.\n\n\u2013 A blue and white racing motorcycle which turns into a hovercraft. Matt Trakker, Nevada Rushmore and Goliath \u2013 A purple race car that becomes a jet.\n\n\u2013 A purple race car that becomes a jet. Ace Riker and Meteor \u2013 A white jet that splits into an aerial fighter and a missile launching tank.\n\n\u2013 A white jet that splits into an aerial fighter and a missile launching tank. Brad Turner and Razorback \u2013 A red and white Ford Thunderbird which turns into an elevated platform.\n\n\u2013 A red and white Ford Thunderbird which turns into an elevated platform. Alex Sector and The Collector \u2013 A toll booth that transforms into an attack installation.\n\n\u2013 A toll booth that transforms into an attack installation. Buddy Hawks and Wildcat \u2013 A red truck which turns into a tall tank.\n\nV.E.N.O.M\n\nBuzzard Iguana Manta Pit Stop Catapult\n\nMiles Mayehm, Maximum Mayhem and Buzzard \u2013 A Formula 1 race car which splits into a drone pilot-controlled jet and two smaller assault motorcycles.\n\n\u2013 A Formula 1 race car which splits into a drone pilot-controlled jet and two smaller assault motorcycles. Lester Sludge and Iguana \u2013 An off-road vehicle which turns into a mobile buzz-saw.\n\n\u2013 An off-road vehicle which turns into a mobile buzz-saw. Vanessa Warfield and Manta \u2013 A Nissan 300 ZX which turns into a plane.\n\n\u2013 A Nissan 300 ZX which turns into a plane. Sly Rax and Pitstop Catapult \u2013 An armoured gasoline stand.\n\nM.A.S.K. Laser Command (1987)\n\nHornet Ratfang\n\nHornet \u2013 A M.A.S.K. packing crate that opens to reveal an attack vehicle.\n\nRatfang \u2013 A V.E.N.O.M. truck with limited transforming capabilities, its doors, wheels and hood burst off when triggered by infra-red beams from Hornet.\n\nSeries 4 (1987-1988) \u201cSplit Seconds\u201d\n\nThe fourth and final series of M.A.S.K toys was called \u201cSplit Seconds\u201d as each vehicle could split into two separate parts, most of theses toys never appeared in the cartoon.\n\nM.A.S.K.\n\nThe Collector Wildcat Afterburner Detonator Dynamo Fireforce Skybolt Stiletto\n\nDusty Hayes and Afterburner \u2013 A dragster that splits into a small jet plane and an elevated turret.\n\n\u2013 A dragster that splits into a small jet plane and an elevated turret. Jacques LaFleur and Detonator \u2013 A VW Beetle that separates into an attack boat and an assault quad bike.\n\n\u2013 A VW Beetle that separates into an attack boat and an assault quad bike. Bruce Sato and Dynamo \u2013 A dune buggy that splits into a helicopter and assault car.\n\n\u2013 A dune buggy that splits into a helicopter and assault car. Julio Lopez and Fireforce \u2013 A Pontiac Fiero that splits into a jet plane and an assault quad bike.\n\n\u2013 A Pontiac Fiero that splits into a jet plane and an assault quad bike. Matt Tracker and Skybolt \u2013 A jet fighter plane that splits into an assault rocket car and an aerial attack craft.\n\n\u2013 A jet fighter plane that splits into an assault rocket car and an aerial attack craft. Gloria Baker and Stiletto \u2013 A Lamborghini Countach that split into a helicopter and assault plane.\n\nV.E.N.O.M\n\nBarracuda Vandal Wolfbeast\n\nBruno Sheppard and Barracuda \u2013 A motorbike that turns into a rocket glider and armed cycle.\n\n\u2013 A motorbike that turns into a rocket glider and armed cycle. Floyd Malloy and Vandal \u2013 A front-end loader which splits into an aircraft and tank.\n\n\u2013 A front-end loader which splits into an aircraft and tank. Miles Mayhem and Wolfbeast \u2013 A Corvette Stingray which splits into a tank and jet plane.\n\nCheck out this collection of M.A.S.K. commercials from the 1980\u2019s below!"} -{"text":"What you should know about a new law that will make it tougher for consumers to clear their debts.\n\nMore on bankruptcy \u0095 \u0095 \u0095 \u0095 QUICK VOTE Do you think people abuse the bankruptcy laws?\n\nYes\n\nNo\n\nView results Video More video President Bush talks about what the new bankruptcy law will require. Play video\n\nNEW YORK (CNN\/Money) \ufffd President Bush on Wednesday signed into law a bankruptcy reform bill that will make it harder for individuals to clear their debts through bankruptcy. So, experts say, if you were thinking about filing for bankruptcy, you might think twice -- or act twice as quickly, since major provisions of the law will go into effect six months from the day the law is signed. Individuals filing for bankruptcy usually do so either under Chapter 7 or under Chapter 13. In a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, your assets (minus those exempted by your state) are liquidated and given to creditors, and many of your remaining debts are cancelled, giving you what's known as a \"fresh start.\" In 2004, over 1.1 million people filed for Chapter 7, accounting for roughly 72 percent of non-business bankruptcies. Since many Chapter 7 filers don't have assets that qualify for liquidation, credit card companies and other creditors sometimes get nothing. In a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you're put on a repayment plan of up to five years. Any debts not addressed by the repayment plan don't have to be paid. Last year, there were 445,574 Chapter 13 filings. Under the new law, fewer people will be allowed to file under Chapter 7; more will be forced to file under Chapter 13. Lawmakers who favor the legislation argue that it will prevent consumers from abusing the bankruptcy laws \ufffd using them to clear debts that they can afford to pay. But consumer advocates argue that the new law is a gift to creditors \ufffd particularly the credit card industry, which may receive $1 billion or more from repayment plans due to the expected increase in Chapter 13 filings, according to Robert McKinley, CEO of CardWeb.com. \"The bill simply doesn't balance responsibility between families in debt trouble and the creditors whose practices have contributed to the rise in bankruptcies,\" said Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Federation of America in a written statement. Key changes Here are some of the major changes for consumers under the new law: A qualifying test: Currently, it's up to the court to determine if your case qualifies for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Under the new law, your income will be subject to a two-part means test. First, it will be subject to a formula that exempts certain expenses (rent, food, etc.) to determine whether you can afford to pay 25 percent of your \"nonpriority unsecured debt\" such as your credit card bills. Second, your income would be compared to your state's median income. You won't be allowed to file for Chapter 7 if your income is above your state's median and you can afford to pay 25 percent of your unsecured debt, said California-based bankruptcy attorney Stephen Elias, who is coauthor of the book \"How to File for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy.\" But, he said, you may be allowed to file for Chapter 13. If your income is below the state's median but you can pay 25 percent of your unsecured debt, you may be able to file Chapter 7, but the court can still require you to file Chapter 13 instead if it believes that you would be abusing the system by filing for Chapter 7, Elias said. Under current law, the court has great latitude in deciding whether debtors may file for bankruptcy in consideration of their personal circumstances. Under the new law, there will be few if any exceptions made to the means test, no matter how sympathetic your case, said Leon Bayer, a bankruptcy attorney in Los Angeles. Determining what you can afford to pay: Currently, if you file for Chapter 13 today, the court determines what you can afford to pay based on what you and the court deem to be reasonable and necessary expenses. Under the new law, the court will apply living standards derived by the IRS to determine what is reasonable to pay for rent, food and other expenses to figure out how much you have available to pay your debts. The IRS regulations are more stringent, and to contest them means asking for a hearing from a judge, which can mean more time and expense, Elias said. Tougher homestead exemptions: Currently, if you declare bankruptcy, the state where you file may allow you to protect from creditors some or all of your home equity. In Florida, for instance, your home may be entirely exempt, even if you bought it soon before filing. In Nevada, you may exempt up to $200,000. The new law, however, places more stringent restrictions on the homestead exemption. For instance, if filers haven't lived in a state for at least two years, they may only take the state exemption of the state where they lived for the majority of the time for the 180 days before the two-year period. Filers may only exempt up to $125,000, regardless of a state's exemption allowance, if their home was acquired less than 40 months before filing or if the filer has violated securities laws or been found guilty of certain criminal conduct. Unlike most of the other provisions, the new homestead exemption rules go into effect immediately. Lawyer liability: Under the new law, if information about a client's case is found to be inaccurate, the bankruptcy attorney may be subject to various fees and fines. What that means for consumers is it will be harder to find a bankruptcy attorney willing to file because of the liability and the additional work required to verify a client's information, Elias said. Those who are willing are likely to charge more. Credit counseling and money management: Under provisions of the new law you must meet with a credit counselor in the six months prior to applying for bankruptcy. And before debts are discharged, you must attend money management classes at your expense. What should you do? For those people who have considered bankruptcy, the time to act may be now, consumer advocates say. Talk to a good bankruptcy lawyer, Plunkett said. If together you decide bankruptcy is the right call, you might consider speeding up your plans to file since most of the main provisions of the new law won't go into effect until six months from now. Typically, it can take a couple of weeks to file for bankruptcy, said Bayer. See Money magazine's 9-step program for tackling your debt problem. Money 101: Controlling debt Debt reduction planner"} -{"text":"The comments section might be set ablaze but, believe it or not, the Daily News Autos is here to tell you that the iconic BMW logo does not represent a stylized airplane propeller.\n\nThat\u2019s right BMW fans, everything you thought you knew about the blue and white logo on your beloved M3 or hybrid-powered i8 is wrong.\n\nFOLLOW DAILY NEWS AUTOS ON FACEBOOK. \u2018LIKE\u2019 US HERE.\n\nDon\u2019t feel bad, the idea that the famous BMW Roundel has roots in aviation stretches back almost to the very founding of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, which happened way back on March 7, 1916.\n\nCar logo origins: From the Ferrari horse to the Lamborghini bull\n\nAnd yes, the firm\u2019s first technical creations happened to be aircraft engines. So wait a minute, how the heck can we be so smug about the BMW logo not having something to do with airplanes?\n\nYou can blame the world of marketing and advertising for this Bavarian-themed level of miscommunication.\n\nThe blue and white logo is borrowed from the colors in the Bavarian flag, nothing more. Go ahead and Google search \u201cBavarian flag,\u201d we\u2019ll wait while you do.\n\nHere is the advertisement that ignited years of controversy surrounding the origins of BMW's iconic logo. (BMW AG)\n\nWhile it\u2019s true that BMW got its start in aircraft engines, the close of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles forbade the company from continuing down its original path. After the conclusion of WWI, BMW moved into motorcycle manufacturing. Eventually, the company was also allowed to restart the aviation side of its business.\n\nIt was an advertisement used in the late-1920s, in which the BMW logo cleverly represented the spinning propellers of an airplane, that we encounter the foundation of the famous Roundel\/propeller controversy. Yes, the logo represented plane propellers - but only in the ad, not the logo in general.\n\nThe advertisement must have been popular, because for decades since, most people assume design and colors of the BMW Roundel are firmly rooted in aviation.\n\nBMW Car Club of America E30 M3 showcase\n\nAround the same time this ad apperared, so did the first BMW motorcar. The thin-tired and dainty-looking BMW Dixi 3\/15 PS was powered by a small 4-cylinder engine that produced a grand total of 15-horsepower. Small, simple, and quite cheap; the little Dixi helped BMW survive the Great Depression, which arrived only months after the car first went on sale.\n\nSomewhat ironically, this first BMW automobile owed nearly all of its design to the Austin 7, a huge sales hit that was originally designed and engineered entirely...in Britain!\n\nLEARN MORE ABOUT BMW HERE.\n\nSign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing!\n\nDid you find this article helpful? If so, please share it using the \"Join the Conversation\" buttons below, and thank you for visiting Daily News Autos."} -{"text":"Turn to the nation's most objective and informative daily environmental news resource to learn how the United States and key players around the world are responding to the environmental...\n\nBy Rachel Leven\n\nSept. 10 \u2014 The Clean Power Plan presents a unique opportunity to shift how states and companies think about energy, but it won't be a \u201csilver bullet\u201d for all environmental justice issues related to power plants, an Environmental Protection Agency official said Sept. 10.\n\nThe EPA's landmark rule is intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, meaning that other pollutant emissions aren't required to be reduced under the rule, Kevin Culligan, an EPA associate division director, told justice advocates. But as states and companies think about how to comply with the rule, it provides them a \u201creal opportunity\u201d to look at their actions in \u201ca larger energy-planning kind of way,\u201d alongside other environmental mandates, he said during the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council's meeting in Arlington, Va.\n\n\u201cThere isn't a single silver bullet\u201d for resolving environmental justice concerns, Culligan said, urging justice advocates to harness all parts of the Clean Air Act and other laws to resolve these overburdened communities' other pollutant concerns.\n\n\u201cThe real opportunity here is not that the Clean Power Plan itself can solve all of the concerns about all of the power plants \u2026 but in many ways, [the opportunity is] that it changed the dialogue\u201d to think holistically, Culligan said.\n\nThe EPA released on Aug. 3 its final Clean Power Plan rule (RIN 2060-AR33), which sets state-specific power sector carbon dioxide emissions rates or alternatively mass-based targets. States must develop their own plans to meet these goals, which are phased in between 2022 and 2030. In order to receive an extension to develop and submit those plans, the states must demonstrate they have addressed overburdened communities as part of the planning process.\n\nBenefits for EJ Communities\n\nCulligan made his remarks following\u2014and in response to\u2014comments from several environmental justice advocates on the final rule, some of whom called for the EPA to do more to protect overburdened communities.\n\nWhile council member Vernice Miller-Travis praised both the agency and justice advocates for their involvement in developing a rule that culminated in a strong environmental justice focus, council member Nicky Sheats and others said that the rule didn't ensure that overburdened communities received the benefits.\n\nJustice advocates have expressed concern that actions such as carbon trading could result in increased activity at certain power plants, resulting in higher emissions for those communities, and the EPA moved to address those issues in its final rule.\n\n\u201cThe rule does a good job of saying \u2018we don\u2019t want disproportionate impacts in overburdened communities,' \u201d Sheats said. \u201cBut what we really want is [an emissions] reduction in [environmental justice] communities.\u201d\n\nSeveral members of the council called for the EPA to encourage states to ensure that these communities saw reduced emissions locally, to establish clear investment and outcome metrics for state plans and to ensure that communities have the knowledge to engage with industry and states effectively on state plans as they are developed.\n\nTo contact the reporter on this story: Rachel Leven in Washington at rleven@bna.com\n\nTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Pearl at lpearl@bna.com"} -{"text":"\u201cWhen Europeans entered North America,\" writes Arthur Remillard of the Saint Francis University, \u201cthere were approximately 500 independent Indian cultures, each with its own unique spiritual world view.\" By Indians, Remillard here means the native Americans. The games that the natives played \u201calso carried an air of sacredness\". But the Europeans saw the games or \u201cbodies in motion\" as \u201can affront to Christianity, and a barrier to conversion\". These bodies in motion were taken as evidence of \u201csuperstition\"\u2014an indication that Western Christianity\u2019s \u201ccivilizing\" role had yet to begin.\n\nThe complex relationship that sport and religion have had over the centuries continues to this day. Last week, the International Basketball Federation or Fiba, the world governing body for basketball, ratified a new rule allowing players to wear headgear. The decision has been welcomed by many Islamic and Sikh groups as the new rule will allow players to wear hijab and turbans during the game. The demand to change the rules in various sports to accommodate different cultures has been growing for some years now. An impetus to such demands was provided by Ibtihaj Muhammad, the US fencer who became the first American athlete in Olympic history to wear a hijab in the Rio games of 2016.\n\nThe media also splashed images of female beach volleyball players from Egypt\u2014some of them in hijab and all of them in full sleeves and long pants. This was in sharp contrast to their opponents, who were attired in the bikini-style apparel one would normally associate with beach volleyball. Following these developments, Nike, one of the top global sportswear brands, has announced that it will be coming out with a \u201cPro Hijab\" for Muslim athletes.\n\nSports should indeed embrace more diversity. If an innocuous change in a rule or two will enable competitors from culturally different parts of the world to exhibit their skills, then those changes should be made. But changing rules cannot solve all the problems. Take the case of Heena Sidhu, the Indian shooter, for instance. She decided to pull out of the Asian Airgun Shooting Championship in Iran last year because of the compulsory hijab rule for women participants. The matter, as it can be seen, boils down to choice. And if some choice has to be taken away, which of the two\u2014sport or religion\u2014will be the final arbiter?\n\nSports is the ultimate celebration of merit over identity. The story of Jesse Owens is the best example: The African-American athlete single-handedly dismantled Nazi propaganda of Aryan superiority in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. When two players or teams battle it out against each other, the rules create the level playing field required for a black individual to contest against a white, or the underprivileged to challenge the wealthy. In other words, sport, unlike politics, is a great equalizer. Sometimes in the quest for enforcing this equality, the sport can end up stifling diversity. Therefore, periodic review of rules is a good practice.\n\nBut religion can be far more stifling\u2014and the process of any change there can be far more cumbersome and protracted. While interpreting religious texts is a tricky business, more often than not the ambiguities of the text are exploited to cover for patriarchy and parochial politics. What else would explain the Taliban giving a go-ahead to men\u2019s cricket in Afghanistan but not to women\u2019s? Even the green-lighting of men\u2019s cricket had more to do with the sheer popularity of the sport in Afghanistan than the fact that the gentleman\u2019s game, unlike football, which the Taliban disapproves of, doesn\u2019t let the knees show because of full-length trousers, as the Taliban would argue.\n\nThe Taliban wanted to use cricket to boost their domestic popularity and increase the acceptability of their regime worldwide. The Taliban government which was recognized internationally by just three countries\u2014Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates\u2014thought an affiliate membership for the Afghanistan Cricket Federation (now Afghanistan Cricket Board) in the International Cricket Council would only serve to shore up its legitimacy.\n\nSport and religion, however, have not always been on a collision course. Christianity\u2019s initial problems with sports, as shown in Remillard\u2019s account, dissolved with time as sports became more popular and the idea of \u201cMuscular Christianity\" gained ground. While a patriarchal concept, Muscular Christianity\u2019s emphasis on physical activity and good health would slowly win over the evangelicals. And although the domain of sports was not immune to anti-Semitism and unfortunately isn\u2019t even today, Jewish minorities often found sports to be a good way of integrating with the mainstream. In Hinduism too, sports like wrestling have served as vehicles for social and caste mobility. Outside religion, sports would provide a platform of protest against racism\u2014the champion boxer Muhammad Ali being the most recognized exponent of this crusade.\n\nThe impact of sports on human history has overwhelmingly been for the better. The sport-governing bodies should, however, realize that a quest for equality on the field of play should not end up imposing uniformity to the extent of throttling diversity. Hijabs, turbans and kippahs are non-threatening additions and can be embraced. To be fair, sport has shown the ability to respond to democratic demands. The performance of religion on this count has been slightly less encouraging, to put it mildly.\n\nIs religion incompatible with sports? Tell us at views@livemint.com"} -{"text":"We owe a hat tip to Aleister at Progressives Today for this one because the debate over Second Amendment rights may have just hit a new low. You may recall that we previously covered the release of some Second Amendment friendly reboots of Grimm\u2019s Fairy Tales for the NRA, created by our friend Amelia Hamilton. That clearly didn\u2019t sit well with anti-gun groups, particularly the Brady Campaign. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, they responded with a frank, well researched argument about how these portrayals are unproductive and offered alternate suggestions for crafting a more nuanced, accurate argument.\n\nNaw\u2026 I\u2019m just kidding. They produced their own fairy tale which features Alice of Wonderland fame shooting herself in the face.\n\nA new ad from a prominent gun control group features the main character from Alice in Wonderland shooting herself in the face with a handgun. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence published the ad titled Alice PSA to its YouTube page Thursday. In it, Alice can be seen following the white rabbit through wonderland when she comes upon a room with a cabinet. In the cabinet she finds a gun, which she then shoots herself in the face with. \u201cOver one-third of all American households have a gun,\u201d a voiceover says as Alice pulls the trigger. \u201cAsk your neighbor: Is there a gun where they play? Asking saves kids.\u201d\n\nThat likely sounds so implausible as to border on science fiction so you should probably take a look for yourself. Don\u2019t worry\u2026 it\u2019s pretty short.\n\nAs you can imagine, Amelia wasn\u2019t thrilled with their take on it.\n\nMe: what if fairy tale characters were safe?\n\nBrady campaign: what if they shot themselves in the face? \u2014 Amelia (@AmeliaHammy) April 12, 2016\n\nWhat is it with these anti-gun groups? The original fairy tales \u2013 as I\u2019m sure most people would agree \u2013 are pretty horrific and filled with violence as it is. But the violence is generally directed at the heroes and heroines of the story or innocent bystanders and supporting characters. In Amelia\u2019s version, the characters have the chance to defend themselves and actually resolve some conflicts through intimidation rather than actually having to kill, skin or burn the evil-doer.\n\nThe Brady Campaign clearly chooses to go a different route. They\u2019re so desperate to have some violence, preferably at the hands of someone with a gun, that they portray a young child unloading a handgun into her face. As if the original fairy tales weren\u2019t scarring enough for kids who are trying to get some sleep!\n\nThis is just sick. There\u2019s really no other way to describe it."} -{"text":"Meet the lesbian Atlanta Police officers suing for the right to legally marry in Georgia\n\nMeet the lesbian Atlanta Police officers suing for the right to legally marry in Georgia\n\nOne Tuesday morning late last month, Rayshawn Chandler and her wife Avery Chandler pulled into the parking lot at the 730 Midtown building and began walking towards the entrance.\n\n\u201cBaby, you see the news trucks?\u201d Rayshawn asked Avery.\n\nAvery looked over, then back to Rayshawn. \u201cWhy would you say that?!\u201d she asked, laughing, since Rayshawn was well aware that Avery was nervous.\n\nThey continued on into the building and the reason for Avery\u2019s nerves\u2014they were heading for the Southern Regional office of Lambda Legal, and about to step out of the shadows and in front of a horde of local and national press to be introduced to the world alongside their five fellow plaintiffs in Inniss v. Aderhold, the federal class-action lawsuit attempting to strike down Georgia\u2019s 2004 same-sex marriage ban.\n\nAvery recalls talking \u201ca million miles a second\u201d on the way to the press conference. \u201cI was freaking out,\u201d she says.\n\nHowever, her wife balanced her out.\n\n\u201cI used that time to just think about the success of what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d Rayshawn says. \u201cI\u2019m really positive that things are going to come around for us.\u201d\n\n\u2018THE SKY JUST OPENED UP\u2019\n\nRayshawn, 29 and a Miami native, and Avery, 30 and an Atlanta native, are both officers with the Atlanta Police Department. Avery is also in the Army Reserves.\n\nThey met at the police academy in 2010 and occasionally worked out or went on runs together. It was strictly a colleague relationship until the following March, when they worked a few extra jobs together and began to talk and learn more about each other. And it was clear who was chasing whom.\n\n\u201cI thought I was going to have to go get a rope and tie her down,\u201d Rayshawn says laughing. \u201cOh my God, she was running.\u201d\n\nAvery thought Rayshawn was straight and told her she \u201cdidn\u2019t need another straight friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy gaydar was broken,\u201d Avery says.\n\nShe finally picked up on Rayshawn\u2019s intentions and ended up accepting an invitation to Rayshawn\u2019s June graduation from the police academy.\n\n\u201cShe surprised me and came and I just thought that it was the sweetest thing,\u201d Rayshawn says. \u201cShe went out to dinner with my family and I after graduation and it was wonderful.\u201d\n\nThey consider that graduation day, June 26, their anniversary and have been dating ever since. They moved in together the following October, then were married the following June in West Hartford, Connecticut, on their two-year anniversary.\n\nThe ceremony occurred in a rose garden in Elizabeth Park.\n\n\u201cIt seemed like it blossomed just for us because we were told that prior to our wedding day, it had rained the entire week,\u201d Rayshawn says. \u201cThe sky just opened up on our wedding day.\u201d\n\nFIGHTING FOR THEIR FAMILY\n\nLike many of the other plaintiffs involved in Inniss v. Aderhold, neither Rayshawn nor Avery, who call themselves \u201cTeam Chandler,\u201d have any background in LGBT activism. They live a quiet life together in Jonesboro, getting together with friends and family for the occasional barbecue or bowling night. So how did they get from there to walking through Lambda Legal\u2019s doors on April 22 and telling their story to the world?\n\nThe decision to join the suit didn\u2019t come without concerns, with Rayshawn mentioning having their \u201clife on a platter for everyone to look at and pick at and make their assumptions and put their opinions on,\u201d and Avery was worried about \u201cbeing vulnerable and exposed for everybody to look at.\u201d\n\nBut the Chandlers want kids, and they were more concerned about moving forward with that plan without the legal protections afforded to straight families throughout Georgia than they were concerned about the intrusion a lawsuit would bring on their private lives.\n\n\u201cWe want a family dynamic that\u2019s fair and that receives the same respect that others get,\u201d Rayshawn says. \u201cThat\u2019s a pet peeve of mine. We don\u2019t want to be tagged as \u2018that lesbian couple.\u2019 We\u2019re just a couple. We just want to be normal.\u201d\n\nThe perils of their jobs also factored into the decision, since their choice to protect the city of Atlanta (and in Avery\u2019s case, the nation) increases the risk to their personal safety. Avery says that they want to ensure that \u201cif anything were to happen to Ray or to me, we wouldn\u2019t have to worry about having to fight anyone for our child,\u201d she explains. \u201cOr fight for the right to see my wife in the hospital.\u201d\n\nThey\u2019re in the planning phase of becoming parents and hope to take that step in the next year or so.\n\n\u201cThis is a really important issue and it\u2019s near and dear to my heart,\u201d Avery continues. \u201cAnd if it\u2019s near and dear to your heart then you want to fight for it and make things right.\u201d\n\n\u2018SHOCK AND AWE\u2019\n\nThe press conference ended up being an emotional scene, with several plaintiffs and even an attorney or two wiping away tears as each of the plaintiffs\u2019 stories were told.\n\n\u201cTo finally know the background of everybody and that we\u2019re all fighting for the same mission, it meant so much,\u201d Rayshawn says. \u201cAll of us have our own individual reasons for why [we\u2019re joining the suit], so it was kind of like an \u2018ah-ha\u2019 moment. They all make sense. Look at that. They\u2019re all valid reasons why this thing should be recognized.\u201d\n\nFollowing the press conference, and especially after segments on the lawsuit ran on the 12 o\u2019clock news that day, came what Rayshawn called \u201cshock and awe\u201d\u2014a barrage of phone calls, text messages and Facebook messages and friend requests from people far and wide trying to make a connection with this suddenly public couple.\n\nAlthough well prepared for the attention the lawsuit would bring, the size of the initial onslaught still surprised them.\n\n\u201cThe support was amazing,\u201d Rayshawn says. \u201cWhen we went into it, we didn\u2019t look at how big it would be and how it would impact so many people. We were in a bubble. In our eyes we were just looking at our situation.\u201d\n\nThings have quieted down since then and gotten back to normal as Lambda Legal and the rest of the legal team await a response from the defendants in the lawsuit. The couple posts the occasional video to their YouTube channel, OurNormalLifeAtlanta, giving an update on their lives and fielding questions from viewers. They\u2019ve also bonded with the other plaintiffs, meeting up for the occasional bite to eat and they\u2019re planning a group outing soon.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like a little family,\u201d Avery says.\n\nIf the lawsuit goes as they hope it to, Rayshawn, Avery and the rest of Georgia\u2019s LGBT community will be able to rest easier knowing each of their little families will have the same rights and protections, no matter whom they love.\n\n\u2022 Visit Rayshawn and Avery Chandler\u2019s YouTube channel OurNormalLifeAtlanta at www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCWKT-wBeguIu-qrGk2-c1GA\n\npsaunders@thegavoice.com | @patricksaunders"} -{"text":"Microsoft is bringing its classic Hover! game back to life, on the web. The game combines bumper cars and capture the flag, and originally shipped on Windows 95 CDs in a special folder called fun stuff. Microsoft has worked with Dan Church, an independent developer, to bring Hover! to the web. It took around eight weeks to get it ready in time for the launch today, and Hover! fans will be able to play the PC classic in retro and modern modes.\n\n\"Dan actually approached Microsoft when he read about IE11 and WebGL,\" says Microsoft's senior director of IE marketing, Roger Capriotti, in an interview with The Verge. The partnership led to a new Hover! version built using the latest WebGL technologies, and it looks very different than the original game. However, the gameplay, physics engine, and original levels are all still in place so while there's a modern twist on a PC classic, it will feel all too familiar. Microsoft has also built in a new multiplayer option and touch support for its Hover! web version, allowing Internet Explorer 11 users on Windows 8.1 to make use of a touchscreen to play the game.\n\nThe most impressive part, at least for fans of the classic Hover! version, is that Microsoft has also built in a \"secret\" retro mode to activate a web version of Windows 95 complete with the original. If you visit the site and type bambi at the main screen, the original codename for the Windows 95 game release and a nod to an old Easter egg, it will activate the retro mode. While it's not a full version of Windows 95, you can also double click on share_fb.exe and tweet.exe from the desktop and Windows 95-style setup wizards will appear allowing you to share the site to Facebook and Twitter. It's all very retro and executed perfectly for those who remember using Windows 18 years ago.\n\nFor Microsoft, the project is mainly about reviving a classic game to showcase WebGL and IE11. \"We build these experiences to showcase what the web can be,\" says Capriotti. While it's promoting Internet Explorer, the new Hover! web version will work with any browser that supports WebGL. Microsoft thinks the new site will highlight its work with WebGL, but also generate some nostalgia amongst fans. \"There's over 10 unofficial versions of it [Hover!] floating around the web,\" says Capriotti, noting that it has a cult following. Hundreds of Hover! fans took to Reddit recently in a nostalgic thread to highlight the game. \"There's a big fan base and we think folks are gonna share the game and talk about what the game was like in the '90s.\""} -{"text":"In addition to the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, the US government is pursuing court orders to force Apple to help bypass the security passcodes of \"about a dozen\" other iPhones, the Wall Street Journal reports. The other cases don't involve terror charges, the Journal's sources say, but prosecutors involved have also sought to use the same 220-year-old law \u2014 the All Writs Act of 1789 \u2014 to access the phones in question.\n\nThe FBI has argued that it only wants Apple to allow it to \"guess\" the passcode for the San Bernardino iPhone, but that innocuous-sounding process involves Apple performing a rewrite of the phone's iOS software, allowing the Bureau to use brute-force techniques to crack the passcode that might otherwise take years. The agency says it only wants this process performed on this one specific iPhone, but privacy advocates could see the additional cases as the US government already attempting to overreach this mandate.\n\nIt's not clear yet what the other cases involve\n\nAt this point, however, it's not clear what the dozen-or-so cases actually entail, nor what prosecutors are asking Apple to do exactly, or why Apple is pushing back. The FBI has complained that Apple is simply resisting its demand to unlock the phone so as not to \"tarnish the Apple brand,\" but the company says if it gives in and allows the FBI to access the phone with \"absent clear legal authority to do so,\" it would breach its consumers' trust.\n\nApple regularly assists law enforcement by helping authorities extract information from both on and off the device \u2014 from iCloud backups, for example \u2014 but it has pushed back in the San Bernardino case because the FBI is attempting to breach encryption methods introduced in newer versions of its iOS software. In cases involving phones running iOS 7 and earlier, Apple can pull out information without actively unlocking the phone for law enforcement, but iOS 8 introduced encryption linked to the passcode that made this impossible. We don't yet know which operating system the dozen other iPhones were running, but the WSJ says that many of them are using older software than iOS 9."} -{"text":"As I age, I get a feeling that I am becoming more and more nostalgic about the simple life, limited number of options and opportunities that were present, good food, clean environment, closer interactions with people and less of noise and emissions that electronic-mechanical machines cause. The recent trip to my hometown has already made me even more wistful, in fact. However, \u2018change\u2019 is must for the humanity to progress and\u2026 sigh\u2026 I have to live with the present.\n\nAs for my childhood to college life, I have so many things to share some of which was mentioned in a recent post on this blog. Today\u2019s post is about some of those great old brands and products that have been part of our lives during the 70s and 80s. Of course, some of them are still being produced and sold but have transformed for good while many of them have been discontinued. Here are the things that I am talking about:\n\n1. Parry\u2019s Green hard candy\n\nUnfortunately I do not have a picture of this but I am sure anybody in their 30s and 40s must have eaten whole lot of them during their childhood. These candies \u2013 known as \u2018Green Parry\u2019 (\u2018Paccha pyaari\u2019 in Malayalam) \u2013 was among the four or five wrapped candy options that we had at that time apart from those local made \u2018uncovered\u2019 ones. I remember, Parry\u2019s competitor Nutrine introducing an imitation of the same several years later.\n\nThe Parry\u2019s Confectionery ltd company was taken over by \u2018Lotte \u2019several years back and this particular product has been discontinued since then, I believe.\n\n2. Hero Pens\n\nAs far as I am concerned, this is the ONLY Made in China product that I have ever liked in my whole life and it was my first Chinese experience as well. Unlike today\u2019s children, we never got to use the ball point pen s until the age of 12 (or sixth grade) on account of \u2018bad hand writing\u2019 resulting from ball point pens. Most of us started our writing with cheaper \u2018Bismi\u2019 or \u2018Jubilee\u2019 fountain pens and then progressed to using the Hero Pens (fondly called \u2018Heero pena\u2019 In Malayalam. Many of us in fact get to use it only for exams \u2013 for some not until the SSLC examination \u2013 and it was indeed a super smooth experience to use them. Mostly people used to get these pens as gifts from those who worked in the Gulf countries but later on they were available in shops for Rs.25 or so in stationery shops.\n\nThe hero pens were cool due to their smooth quality of writing and the ability to fill ink via a cool press-suction operation. Old time pens had to be filled via direct pouring of the ink and we used to end up having the ink spilled on the floor as well as on our shirts.\n\nAs I moved to college, the Hero pen gave way to Pilots, Parkers and Sheaffers but the Hero fountain pen was always my hero!\n\n3. Happy T-shirts\n\nNow, this one is tricky and probably only Malayalis will understand what I am talking about. During those days mostly there would be at least one Keralite from every other household working in the Gulf countries (Generalized as \u2018Persia\u2019) and they make a visit once in every four or five years. At that time, everyone in the family \u2013 to the n\u2019th relationship level \u2013 neighborhood and the village need to be gifted something or other. Cigarettes, cheap perfume sprays and synthetic clothe material or saris that will last beyond five generations were some of the cheaper options to keep everyone happy. Among these gifts, the kids usually gets the so-called \u201cHappy T-shirt\u201d which is nothing but a round neck T-shirt made of cheap synthetic fabric and a big H A P P Y written on it in a semi circle. We kids were, indeed, very happy to get them as gifts and would proudly wear them till they wore out. Those who wear Happy Tees were identified as the Gulf fellow\u2019s son or relative.\n\n(Several years later somebody revealed to me that a dozen of them would cost only something like 5 Dirhams or so and that\u2019s how the poor Gulf Malayali could afford to buy them for everyone of our age group in that village. By the way, I do not know the actual the brand name of this T-shirt but it was always known as Happy shirt)\n\n4. Chelpark Ink\n\nOf course, the usage of fountain pen would mean daily refill of ink in the same. When we were in fourth or fifth grade, we used cheaper \u201cBrill\u201d or \u201cCamel\u201d brand of ink. At that time my father was using a Sheaffer\u2019s pen and he used to buy this blue-black ink by Chelpark. It was super quality ink for the Indian standards and I believe it\u2019s still being produced in India. However, the original wide-bottom glass bottle is missing now.\n\nI used the Chelpark ink for several years, I would say till I got my first job but had totally forgotten about it until my co-brother Manoj reminded me of that brand last week. In fact, that was the inspiration behind this post.\n\n5. Camel instrument box\n\nThe camel brand of math instrument box is no brainer. Camel is still a leading brand in India for stationery and art-craft supplies. However, during our school days it was something big and getting a Camel box was an ultimate achievement in one\u2019s otherwise limited wish list. Some of us get them during fifth or sixth grade and had to use the same till you pass out of 10th standard. Many times, the original paper sleeve wrapper around the box would be preserved intact for many years in order to protect the precious box from losing any of its print work on the surface.\n\nFor those who couldn\u2019t afford to spend two rupees more, there were brands like \u2018Nataraj\u2019 and the twin-brother of Camel was the \u2018Camlin\u2019 brand of instrument boxes.\n\n6. Premier rubber slippers\n\nLungis and Dhotis were the perfect clothing (and it still is for many) for Malayalis due to the sultry climate conditions and rains aplenty. The perfect footwear that goes with them was a pair of \u2018Premier\u2019 rubber slippers. I believe, I am recalling the name right because before brands like \u2018Paragon\u2019, \u2018Fisher\u2019 etc surfaced, it was all about Premier Hawai chappals. I am attaching a picture of the currently available Paragon slippers to give you an idea of how Premier looked like. But I guess, Premier brand is not available any more.\n\nTalking about these Hawai chappals, most Malayalis wore them to school, colleges or even to work. And like their ultra white dhotis (Mundu), these slippers used to be maintained ultra clean was well. The jobless and educated mallu\u2019s main hobby \u2013 apart from discussing international politics and Hartal or Bandh opportunities \u2013 those days was cleaning own slippers not just from the top but from sides and bottom as well.\n\nI have used this brand of slippers for many years and I still have a pair of Paragon at home.\n\n7. Murphy radios\n\nNow, this should ring the bell for all because many Indian families must have had one such Murphy or Philips vintage radio until recently. These were known as \u2018valve sets\u2019 which requires quite some skill to tune it to the right frequency and several precautions for proper maintenance. Many of the featured a green dancing light valve that can be seen outside and moves according to the tuning procedure. The frequency needle \u2013 mostly sitting at a centimeter or two away from the actual frequency numbers and usually dangling \u2013 had to be carefully positioned to get the right radio station and its position usually is not the same when you tune from left as compared to the right. Basically only the owner of the radio and most likely only the elder male member of the family could tune it to perfection.\n\nThese radios also had external antenna fittings and sometimes sporting a long mesh antenna \u2013 stretching from one end of the house to the other \u2013 was considered something royal. Due to issues in tuning or reception, most of the radio stations then used to sound like the distant Ceylon station. The cold starts used to be almost impossible and needed some heating via incandescent bulbs and occasional taps (out of frustration as well) on its wooden cabinet. Usually to listen to the 12:50 noon news (called Delhi news), one had to start preparing at around 12:30 itself.\n\nDespite all the above issues, it was fun to see and listen to such a Murphy radio. And I almost forgot to mention the Murphy logo which had a sweet baby\u2019s face.\n\nDoes anyone still have a vintage radio at your home?\n\n8. Dyanora TV sets\n\nNow, these are not really very old entities but it was the first Indian television brand that I got to watch (at my neighbour\u2019s place). I believe it was in 1980 or so? These Dyanora TVs (black and white) used to be thrice as big as its picture tube itself with two speakers on either side and sliding shutters that would close from both sides. It had pathetic design aesthetics but who cares when the transmission itself is available for only one or two hours per day \u2013 that too in black and white and with full of interruptions (Rukaavat ke liye khed hai!)\n\nThough I never ever liked Dyanora as a brand, I think it was one of the household names during those days and I remember it as the first TV I ever watched.\n\n9. Vijay Super Scooter\n\nWell, in a comment within my post about the Bajaj Chetak Scooter, I had mentioned about the Vijay super scooter. I learned riding on a Vijay super which is a discontinued model for years now. It was in fact something that looked like a Lamby and would run on a half-petrol half-kerosene mix. Though, this combination meant starting trouble and occasional \u2018fut-phut\u2019 sounds, I always remember it as the first geared two-wheeler I have ridden in my life not to forget the Luna moped which I had tried prior to that.\n\n10. Tinopal\n\nNow, how many of you can guess what it was? Tinopal (later it became Ranipal) was one of the clothe whitening agents (like Ujala) that I have seen my mother using during my childhood. It always amazed me because a drop of it was good enough for a bucketful of white clothes to make it surprisingly sparkling and smelling good. Its fragrance was similar to that of the modern fabric conditioners but I believe it was far superior. Sometimes, I just don\u2019t understand why such brands were discontinued.\n\nBy the way, I managed to Google out this newspaper ad announcing the brand name change \u2013 Tinopal to Ranipal\n\nOver to you\n\nI am sure all of you have plenty to talk about those retro brands. I still have many in my list but some of them that I haven\u2019t directly consumed or experienced.\n\nLet me know if you have any pleasant memories to share about those products or old brands that you have seen, used or experienced 20 or 30 years (or even before) back!"} -{"text":"Forms of address used in the United Kingdom are given below. For further information on Courtesy Titles see Courtesy titles in the United Kingdom.\n\nAbbreviations [ edit ]\n\nSeveral terms have been abbreviated in the table below. The forms used in the table are given first, followed by alternative acceptable abbreviations in parentheses.\n\nRoyalty [ edit ]\n\nA formal announcement in The London Gazette reads:\n\n\"The Queen has been pleased by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 31 December 2012 to declare that all the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales should have and enjoy the style, title and attribute of Royal Highness with the titular dignity of Prince or Princess prefixed to their Christian names or with such other titles of honour.\"\n\nThis refers to any children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.\n\nNobility [ edit ]\n\nPeers, peeresses and non-peerage [ edit ]\n\nEldest sons, grandsons and great-grandsons of dukes, marquesses and earls [ edit ]\n\nEldest sons of dukes, marquesses and earls use their father's most senior subsidiary title as courtesy titles: note the absence of \"The\" before the title.[Note 8] If applicable, eldest sons of courtesy marquesses or courtesy earls also use a subsidiary title from their (great) grandfather, which is lower ranking than the one used by their father. Eldest daughters do not have courtesy titles; all courtesy peeresses are wives of courtesy peers.[Note 9]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Courtesy marquess Marquess of London My Lord or\n\nDear Lord London My Lord or\n\nLord London Courtesy marquess's wife Marchioness of London Madam or\n\nDear Lady London My Lady or\n\nLady London Courtesy earl Earl of London My Lord or\n\nDear Lord London My Lord or\n\nLord London Courtesy earl's wife Countess of London Madam or\n\nDear Lady London My Lady or\n\nLady London Courtesy viscount Viscount London My Lord or\n\nDear Lord London My Lord or\n\nLord London Courtesy viscount's wife Viscountess London Madam or\n\nDear Lady London My Lady or\n\nLady London Courtesy baron\n\nCourtesy Lord of Parliament Lord London My Lord or\n\nDear Lord London My Lord or\n\nLord London Courtesy baron's wife\n\nWife of courtesy Lord of Parliament Lady London Madam or\n\nDear Lady London My Lady or\n\nLady London\n\nHeirs-apparent and heirs-presumptive of Scottish peers [ edit ]\n\n(Heirs-apparent and heirs-presumptive of Scottish peers use the titles \"Master\" and \"Mistress\"; these are substantive, not courtesy titles. If, however, the individual is the eldest son of a Duke, Marquess or Earl, then he uses the appropriate courtesy title, as noted above.)\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Scottish peer's heir-apparent\n\nor heir-presumptive The Master of Edinburgh Sir or\n\nDear Master of Edinburgh Sir or\n\nMaster Scottish peer's heiress-apparent\n\nor heiress-presumptive The Mistress of Edinburgh Madam or\n\nDear Mistress of Edinburgh Madam or\n\nMistress\n\nSons, grandsons and great-grandsons of peers [ edit ]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Duke's younger son\n\n(Courtesy) Marquess's younger son The Lord John Smith My Lord or\n\nDear Lord John (Smith) My Lord or\n\nLord John Duke's younger son's wife\n\n(Courtesy) Marquess's younger son's wife The Lady John Smith Madam or\n\nDear Lady John My Lady or\n\nLady John (Courtesy) Earl's younger son\n\n(Courtesy) Viscount's son\n\n(Courtesy) Baron's son\n\n(Courtesy) Lord of Parliament's son The Hon John Smith Sir or\n\nDear Mr Smith Sir or\n\nMr Smith (Courtesy) Earl's younger son's wife\n\n(Courtesy) Viscount's son's wife\n\n(Courtesy) Baron's son's wife\n\n(Courtesy) Lord of Parliament's son's wife The Hon Mrs John Smith Madam or\n\nDear Mrs Smith Madam or\n\nMrs Smith\n\nDaughters, granddaughters and great-granddaughters of peers [ edit ]\n\n(If a daughter of a peer or courtesy peer marries another peer or courtesy peer, she takes her husband's rank. If she marries anyone else, she keeps her rank and title, using her husband's surname instead of her maiden name.)\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Duke's daughter\n\n(Courtesy) Marquess's daughter\n\n(Courtesy) Earl's daughter\n\n(unmarried or married to a commoner) The Lady Mary Smith (if unmarried),\n\nThe Lady Mary Brown (husband's surname, if married) Madam or\n\nDear Lady Mary My Lady or\n\nLady Mary (Courtesy) Viscount's daughter\n\n(Courtesy) Baron's daughter\n\n(Courtesy) Lord of parliament's daughter\n\n(unmarried) The Hon Mary Smith Madam or\n\nDear Miss Smith Madam or\n\nMiss Smith (Courtesy) Viscount's daughter\n\n(Courtesy) Baron's daughter\n\n(Courtesy) Lord of Parliament's daughter\n\n(married to a commoner) The Hon Mrs Brown (husband's surname) Madam or\n\nDear Mrs Brown Madam or\n\nMrs Brown\n\n[10] Gentry and minor nobility [ edit ]\n\nBaronets [ edit ]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Baronet Sir John Smith, Bt (or Bart)[Note 5] Sir or\n\nDear Sir John (Smith) Sir or\n\nSir John Baronetess in her own right Dame Mary Smith, Btss Madam or\n\nDear Dame Mary (Smith) Madam or\n\nDame Mary Baronet's wife Lady Smith Madam or\n\nDear Lady Smith My Lady or\n\nLady Smith Baronet's divorced wife Mary, Lady Smith Baronet's widow Mary, Lady Smith\n\nDowager Lady Smith, or\n\nLady Smith if the heir incumbent is unmarried\n\nKnights [ edit ]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Knight (of any order) Sir John Smith[Note 5] Sir or\n\nDear Sir John (Smith) Sir or\n\nSir John Lady (of the Order of the Garter or the Thistle) Lady Mary Smith Madam or\n\nDear Lady Mary (Smith) My Lady or\n\nLady Mary Dame (of an order other than the Garter or the Thistle) Dame Mary Smith Madam or\n\nDear Dame Mary (Smith) Madam or\n\nDame Mary Knight's wife Lady Smith Madam or\n\nDear Lady Smith My Lady or\n\nLady Smith\n\nScottish barons (non-peerage nobility) [ edit ]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Feudal baron The Much Hon John Smith of Edinburgh\n\nor The Much Hon John Smith,\n\nBaron of Edinburgh or\n\nThe Much Hon The Baron of Edinburgh[8] Sir or\n\nDear Edinburgh or\n\nDear Baron Edinburgh or\n\nBaron Female feudal baroness or\n\nFeudal baron's wife As feudal baron,\n\nsubstituting \"Madam\"\n\nfor first name and\n\nsubstituting \"Baroness\" for \"Baron\", or\n\nLady Edinburgh[9] Madam or\n\nDear Baroness or Dear Lady Edinburgh Madam or\n\nBaroness or\n\nLady Edinburgh\n\nChiefs, chieftains and lairds [ edit ]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Chief, chieftain or laird\n\n(Only lairds recognised in a\n\nterritorial designation by\n\nthe Lord Lyon) John Smith of Smith or\n\nJohn Smith of Edinburgh\n\nor\n\nJohn Smith of that Ilk or\n\nThe Smith of Smith or\n\nThe Smith of Edinburgh or\n\nThe Smith[Note 10]\n\n(only the 2nd form of\n\naddress above applies\n\nto lairds) Sir or\n\nDear Edinburgh (if placename in title) or\n\nDear Smith (otherwise) Edinburgh (if placename in title) or\n\nSmith (otherwise) Female Chief, chieftain or laird or\n\nChief, chieftain or laird's wife Chief, chieftain or laird's wife, substituting\n\n\"Madam\" or \"Mrs\" for first\n\nname or \"The\"\n\nor Lady Edinburgh[11][12][13] Madam or\n\nas on envelope Madam or\n\nas on envelope Chief (etc.)'s heir-apparent John Smith of Edinburgh, yr or\n\nJohn Smith, yr of Edinburgh or\n\nJohn Smith of Edinburgh\n\n(last only if different first name to father) Sir or\n\nDear Younger of Edinburgh or\n\nDear Mr Smith of Edinburgh Sir or\n\nYoung Edinburgh or\n\nThe Younger of Edinburgh Chief (etc.)'s heir-apparent's wife Mrs Smith of Edinburgh, yr or\n\nMrs Smith, yr of Edinburgh Madam or\n\nDear Mrs Smith of Edinburgh the Younger Madam or\n\nMrs Smith of Edinburgh Chief (etc.)'s eldest daughter (if none senior) Miss Smith of Edinburgh or\n\nJane Smith, Maid of Edinburgh Madam or\n\nDear Miss Smith of Edinburgh or\n\nDear Maid of Edinburgh Madam or\n\nMiss Smith of Edinburgh or\n\nMaid of Edinburgh Chief (etc.)'s younger daughter Miss Mary Smith of Edinburgh Madam or\n\nDear Miss Smith of Edinburgh Madam or\n\nMiss Smith of Edinburgh\n\nClergy [ edit ]\n\nChurch of England [ edit ]\n\nSimilar styles are also applied to clergy of equivalent status in other religious organisations. The words clergy and cleric\/clerk are derived from the proper term for bishops, priests and deacons still used in legal documents: Clerk in Holy Orders (e.g. \"Vivienne Frances Faull, Clerk in Holy Orders\").\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Archbishop The Most Revd and Rt Hon The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury\/York Dear Archbishop Your Grace or\n\nArchbishop Archbishop that is not in Privy Council The Most Revd The Lord Archbishop of Wales Dear Archbishop Your Grace or\n\nArchbishop Diocesan bishop in Privy Council The Rt Revd and Rt Hon The Lord Bishop of London Dear Bishop My Lord or\n\nBishop Bishop, diocesan or suffragan The Rt Revd The Lord Bishop of Durham Dear Bishop My Lord or\n\nBishop Dean The Very Revd The Dean of York Dear Mr\/Madam Dean Dean or\n\nMr\/Madam Dean Archdeacon The Ven The Archdeacon of London Dear Archdeacon Archdeacon Prebendary The Revd Prebendary Smith Dear Prebendary Smith Prebend Canon The Revd Canon John Smith Dear Canon Canon Priest The Revd John Smith Dear Mr\/Mrs\/Ms Smith Mr\/Mrs\/Ms Smith or\n\nVicar\/Rector\/Prebendary\/Curate\/Chaplain etc. as applicable Deacon The Revd Deacon John Smith or\n\nThe Revd John Smith\n\nDear Mr\/Mrs\/Ms Smith or\n\nDear Deacon Smith Deacon Smith or Mr\/Mrs\/Ms Smith\n\nThe usage 'Lord' as applied to a bishop pre-dates the United Kingdom, and is a well-established convention. It is more usual to abbreviate Reverend (if at all) to Rev'd rather than Rev. Where a personal name is not used for a priest or deacon, the manner of address is Rev Mr etc., i.e. the Rev is used with the usual title. Without this title, the use of Rev with a surname should not be used in the United Kingdom for any ordained person, whether Anglican or not - it is a solecism. Catholic (and Anglo-Catholic) clergy favour Fr (Father) {or Mthr (Mother)}. For further details see Crockford's Guide to addressing the Clergy.\n\nClergy: 'introduce as Mr Pike or Father Pike according to his preference' (Debrett's Etiquette and Modern Manners 1981 pg230)\n\nChurch of Scotland [ edit ]\n\nIt should be noted that the Church of Scotland as a Presbyterian Church recognizes state-awarded titles only as courtesy. In court (Assembly, Presbytery and Session) one may only be addressed as Mr, Mrs, Miss, Dr, Prof, etc. depending on academic achievement. Thus ministers are correctly addressed as, for example Mr Smith or Mrs Smith unless they have a higher degree or academic appointment e.g. Dr Smith or Prof. Smith. It is 'infra dig' to use the title 'Rev' and even the use of 'the Rev Mr' requires sensitivity to official style.\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly His Grace The Lord High Commissioner Your Grace Your Grace or Sir\/Ma'am Clergy The Rev John Smith Dear Mr Smith Mr Smith\/Dr Smith etc. Current Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland The Right Rev John Smith Dear Mr Smith Mr Smith\/Dr Smith etc. Former Moderators of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland The Very Rev John Smith Dear Mr Smith Mr Smith\/Dr Smith etc.\n\nJudiciary [ edit ]\n\nUnited Kingdom [ edit ]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address In court Male Justice of the Supreme Court The Lord Smith, PC Lord Smith Lord Smith My Lord[14] Female Justice of the Supreme Court The Lady Smith, PC Lady Smith Lady Smith My Lady[14]\n\nEngland and Wales [ edit ]\n\nScotland [ edit ]\n\nA judge's first name only forms part of their judicial style if, at the time of their appointment, there is a senior judge with the same or a similar surname. Thus, if there is a \"Mr Justice Smith\", subsequent judges will be \"Mr Justice John Smith\", \"Mrs Justice Mary Smith\", etc.\n\nA member of the Bar (but not a solicitor) addresses a circuit judge or higher, out of court, as \"Judge\".\n\nAcademics [ edit ]\n\nThe forms of address used for academics can, in most cases, be either formal or social.[18][19]\n\nPosition On envelopes Salutation in letter Oral address In conversation Chancellor (formal) The Chancellor of [university name] Dear Chancellor Chancellor (if on a platform) or by name and title The Chancellor or by name Chancellor (social) [Name],[Note 13] Chancellor of [university name] By name By name or Chancellor The Chancellor or by name Vice-Chancellor (formal) The Vice-Chancellor of [university name][Note 14] Dear Sir\/Madam\/Vice-Chancellor Vice-Chancellor (if on a platform) or by name The Vice-Chancellor or by name Vice-Chancellor (social) [Name],[Note 13] Vice-Chancellor of [university name] By name or Dear Vice-Chancellor Vice-Chancellor (if on a platform) or by name The Vice-Chancellor or by name Professor (formal) Professor Jane Smith[Note 15] Dear Sir\/Madam Professor Smith Professor Smith Professor (social) Professor Jane Smith Dear Professor Smith Professor Smith Professor Smith Doctor (formal)[Note 16] Dr Jane Smith or The Revd John Smith DD or Susan Brown MD or Tom Brown PhD, etc.[Note 17] Dear Sir\/Madam Dr Smith Dr Smith Doctor (social)[Note 16] Dr Jane Smith Dear Dr Smith Dr Smith Dr Smith\n\nSee also [ edit ]\n\nNotes [ edit ]\n\n^ \"London\" represents any peerage title. ^ The forms given under \"Salutation in Letter\" are for use in social correspondence only. In formal letters, \"Sir\" or \"Madam\" would be used instead. ^ [3] and [4] The definite article \"the\" in the middle of two or more titles is sometimes capitalized, as in these tables. However this is controversial: traditional British guides use the lower-case \"the\". As a single example, Debrett's gives \"Major-General the Lord\u2026\u2026\",and Pears' Cyclopaedia in the section on Modes of Address gives several examples where the definite article interior to a list of honours is lower case. a b c d \"of\" may be omitted in the form of Marquessates and Earldoms and included in the form of Scottish Viscountcies. It is never present in peerage Baronies and Lordships of Parliament and always present in Dukedoms and Scottish feudal Baronies. a b c d e f g h i Some styles that could represent more than one class of person are clarified by the use of post-nominal letters. For instance: Knights and Baronets are distinguished by the use of \"Bt\" (or, archaically, \"Bart\") after the latter's names (and by the use of the appropriate post-nominal letters if the former are members of an Order of Chivalry). Knights bachelor have no post-nominal letters. Substantive peers below the rank of Marquess and courtesy peers who are Privy Counsellors (both of whose titles are preceded by \"The Rt Hon\") are distinguished by the use of \"PC\" after the former's names. ^ \"Smith\" represents any surname. ^ \"Edinburgh\" represents any Scottish place name. ^ Some sources do not recommend the use of the definite article before certain courtesy titles (particularly those who have prospects of promotion within the family's titles), but it is used by official Court publications such as the Court Circular ^ If the definite article is not used before courtesy peerages and The Hon Elizabeth Smith marries Sir William Brown, she becomes The Hon Lady Brown, but if she marries the higher-ranked Lord Brown, a courtesy Baron, she becomes only Lady Brown. If this Sir William Brown's father is created Earl of London and Baron Brown, as a result of this ennoblement his wife's style will actually change, from \"The Hon Lady Brown\" to \"Lady Brown\". It is important to note that while the style may appear diminished, the precedence taken increases from that of a wife of a knight to that of a wife of an earl's eldest son. ^ The exact form of a Scottish chief's style varies from family to family, and is generally based on tradition rather than formal rules. ^ Some circuit judges \u2013 for example, the Recorder of Liverpool or circuit judges sitting in the Central Criminal Court \u2013 are addressed in court as \"My Lord\" or \"My Lady\". a b \"Master\" is used as the form of address whether the High Court Master is male or female. a b This is the full name and title as it would be according to the rules elsewhere on this page, e.g. The Viscount London, Sir John Smith, KBE, Professor Jane Doe, Dr Tom Brown. ^ Check official title for the university concerned: The Reverend the Vice-Chancellor (Oxford) The Right Worshipful the Vice-Chancellor (Cambridge), The Vice-Chancellor and Warden (Durham), The President and Provost (UCL), etc. ^ If a professor holds an ecclesiastical rank this, strictly speaking, supersedes the academic rank. However, the academic style may still be used within academia and the two can be combined, e.g. as The Reverend Professor Jane Smith. If a professor holds a peerage or a knighthood, this title can be combined, e.g. Professor Lord Smith, Professor Sir John Smith, Professor Dame Jane Smith. a b The forms off address for a doctor applies to \"the recipient of a doctorate conferred by a university or other body, such as the Council for National Academic Awards\", not just those working in academia. The exception is surgeons, who are never addressed as Doctor even if they hold a doctorate. ^ Doctorates in divinity and medicine are always given as letters after the name, and this form may optionally be used for doctorates in other faculties. If \"Dr\" is used before the name, degrees are not given after it."} -{"text":"We\u2019re excited to announce VMware Workstation 11 and Player 7 Pro today with general availability in December 2014.\n\nVMware Workstation 11\n\nVMware Workstation\u2122 11 delivers leading-edge features and performance that technical professionals rely on every day when working with virtual machines. With support for the latest version of Windows and Linux, the latest processors and hardware, and the ability to connect to VMware vCloud Air, VMware Workstation is the perfect tool to increase productivity, save time and leverage the cloud.\n\nVMware Workstation 11 updates include:\n\nReady for Windows 10 Tech Preview \u2013 Run hundreds of operating systems including the latest Microsoft Windows 10 Tech Preview. Technical users can also run the latest Linux distributions including Ubuntu 14.10, RHEL 7, CentOS 7, Fedora 20, Debian 7.6 and many more.\n\n\u2013 Run hundreds of operating systems including the latest Microsoft Windows 10 Tech Preview. Technical users can also run the latest Linux distributions including Ubuntu 14.10, RHEL 7, CentOS 7, Fedora 20, Debian 7.6 and many more. State of the Art Performance \u2013 VMware Workstation supports the latest Intel 64-bit x86 processors, including the new Haswell microarchitecture for maximum performance. Taking advantage of key new Haswell extensions, the solution also delivers up to 45 percent improvement in CPU intensive operations like multimedia and encryption\/decryption compared to Workstation 10.\n\n\u2013 VMware Workstation supports the latest Intel 64-bit x86 processors, including the new Haswell microarchitecture for maximum performance. Taking advantage of key new Haswell extensions, the solution also delivers up to 45 percent improvement in CPU intensive operations like multimedia and encryption\/decryption compared to Workstation 10. Powerful Virtual Machines and Graphics \u2013 Create virtual machines with up to 16 vCPUs, 8 TB virtual disks, 64 GB memory, and now 2GB video memory. Graphics-intensive applications can now be given an additional boost by allocating up to 2 GB of video memory per virtual machine.\n\n\u2013 Create virtual machines with up to 16 vCPUs, 8 TB virtual disks, 64 GB memory, and now 2GB video memory. Graphics-intensive applications can now be given an additional boost by allocating up to 2 GB of video memory per virtual machine. Connection to VMware vCloud Air \u2013 Connect to VMware vCloud Air to extend and scale virtual machines on a public cloud. Developers can easily connect to VMware vCloud Air and upload, run, and view virtual machines right from the Workstation interface to easily collaborate with remote team members and scale through a public cloud.\n\nVMware Player 7 Pro\n\nVMware Player 7 Pro\u2122 is a streamlined desktop virtualization application that runs multiple operating systems on the same computer without rebooting. With its simple user interface, unmatched operating system support and portability, it\u2019s now easier than ever for IT professionals to get their users up and running with a corporate desktop. Player 7 Pro is licensed for commercial use and is enabled to run restricted virtual machines created by VMware Workstation 11 and Fusion\u00ae Pro 7.\n\nKey Features Include:\n\nEnhanced Operating System Compatibility \u2013 VMware Player 7 Pro will run on the latest release of Windows including Windows 8.1 and will support prevalent operating systems like Windows XP and Windows 7 in a virtual environment so users can continue to run legacy applications as long as they need.\n\n\u2013 VMware Player 7 Pro will run on the latest release of Windows including Windows 8.1 and will support prevalent operating systems like Windows XP and Windows 7 in a virtual environment so users can continue to run legacy applications as long as they need. Greater Hardware Compatibility \u2013 VMware Player 7 Pro will be optimized to run on today\u2019s modern hardware including the latest PC laptops and high-resolution tablets.\n\n\u2013 VMware Player 7 Pro will be optimized to run on today\u2019s modern hardware including the latest PC laptops and high-resolution tablets. Updated VMware Compatibility \u2013 VMware Player 7 Pro will be able to run restricted virtual machines created by VMware Workstation 11 or VMware Fusion 7 Pro. Restricted virtual machines secure corporate desktops with encryption, runtime password protection, USB access restriction, isolation between the host and guest OS, and time limitation.\n\nNew System Requirements\n\nWhile 32 bit operating systems are supported inside virtual machines, VMware Workstation 11 and Player 7 Pro will require 64 bit processor and 64 bit host operating systems for advanced computing and enhanced performance.\n\nAvailability and Pricing\n\nVMware Workstation 11 and VMware Player 7 Pro will be available for purchase in December for $249.99 and $149.99 respectively. Upgrades from VMware Workstation 9.x and 10.x to Workstation 11 will be priced at $149.99 and upgrades from VMware Player 6 Plus to VMware Player 7 Pro will be priced at $79.99, at the time of availability.\n\nCustomers who purchase VMware Workstation 10 and VMware Player 6 Plus between October 2014 and December 2014 will receive a free electronic upgrade to VMware Workstation 11 and VMware Player 7 Pro respectively. For more details, visit the upgrade page."} -{"text":"Back in the 1990s, Steve Rambam posed as a university researcher to get war criminals to tell him their stories.\n\nIn Hope, B.C., he interviewed Antanas Kenstavicius.\n\n\u201cHe was a police chief in Lithuania and his unit, under supervision of Germans, rounded up 5,000 Jews. They were locked up for a week, the women raped, their belongings looted. Then they lined them up naked in the ditch\u2026 it took them six days to kill them all by gunfire. This guy was telling me all this matter-of-factly. He told me: \u2018Then on Nov. 19, no more Jews.\u2019\u201d\n\nIt took them six days to kill them all by gunfire. This guy was telling me all this matter-of-factly\n\nProceedings to deport Mr. Kenstavicius began in 1997; the 90-year-old died the same day.\n\nThe case was not the first, or last, Canadian failure to bring suspected Nazi war criminals to justice.\n\nNazi hunter @StevenRambam to speak in Toronto, June 24. Fundraiser for United Chesed unitedchesed.com\/store\/c1\/Featu\u2026 http:\/\/t.co\/j7ePBd2mr0 \u2014\n\nDave Gordon (@davegordonwrite) May 13, 2014\n\nIt is estimated that between 2,000 and 5,000 war criminals fled to Canada after the Second World War, but not one Nazi has ever been successfully prosecuted in this country.\n\n\u201cIt is to the Canadian government\u2019s great and eternal shame that more was not done,\u201d said Mr. Rambam, the renowned \u201cNazi hunter\u201d who will be in Toronto on Tuesday for a charity event.\n\nActivists say it\u2019s not too late for Canada to act. A handful of cases are still actionable.\n\nLooking back, a key problem was that for decades Canada did not actively pursue suspected war criminals, and when it did decide to launch proceedings they were done badly and ineffectively, said David Matas, senior legal counsel of B\u2019nai Brith Canada.\n\n\u201cCanada started too late; there were just too many perpetrators; too much evidence had been destroyed or lost. The effort was more an attempt to construct a justice legacy for the victims of the Holocaust,\u201d said Mr. Matas.\n\nThe seeds of Canada\u2019s inaction were sown three years after the end of the war. The allied powers decided that prosecuting war criminals would end and the British Commonwealth Relations Office wrote to the dominions explaining the policy.\n\nThe punishment of war criminals is more a matter of discouraging future generations, than of meting out retribution\n\n\u201cIn our view, the punishment of war criminals is more a matter of discouraging future generations, than of meting out retribution to every guilty individual,\u201d wrote the department, as revealed by Franklin Bialystok in his book Delayed Impact: The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community.\n\nThe letter went on to say it was \u201cnow necessary to dispose of the past as soon as possible.\u201d\n\nIn 1985, pressure from the Jewish community led Brian Mulroney to set up a Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, headed by Jules Desch\u00eanes. The Desch\u00eanes Commission put forward the names of 883 suspects.\n\nFrom 1987 to 1992 just 26 cases were filed before the justice system; charges were laid under the Criminal Code in four cases.\n\nThe man in the dock in 1987 was Imre Finta, the first suspect to be accused under new laws on war crimes. Mr. Finta, who came to Canada in 1948 and died here in 2003, was accused of being a key official in the rounding up of Jews in Szeged, Hungary, in 1944 and sending them to Auschwitz and to Strasshof.\n\nHis acquittal in 1990 shut down any hope of winning criminal proceedings against Nazi war criminals.\n\n\u201cFinta presented no evidence to answer the charges against him,\u201d Mr. Matas said. \u201cWhen asked if he wanted to call evidence on his own behalf at his criminal trial he declined. Yet he was acquitted.\u201d\n\nWhy? The courts allowed a defence that said believing Jews to be the enemy was a legitimate reason for killing them.\n\nTwo appeal courts agreed.\n\nParliament later legislated to overturn the reasoning in the Finta case in 2005. But by then it was too late to recommence prosecutions, Mr. Matas said.\n\nAfter the failure of criminal prosecutions, the government in 1995 announced it would use such administrative measures as revoking citizenship and ordering deportation.\n\nUnder this new course of action, two men were extradited and five deported.\n\nBernie Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, calls a 90-year-old Kitchener, Ont., man, Helmut Oberlander, the \u201cfinal symbol\u201d of Canada\u2019s failure on this issue.\n\nIn fact, three cases could still be acted on: those of Mr. Oberlander, Vladimir Katriuk, and Wasyl Odynsky.\n\nMr. Oberlander was part of a Nazi killing squad, Einsatzkommando 10a, which operated in the eastern occupied territories during the Second World War. Mr. Oberlander admits to serving with the \u201cGerman armed forces\u201d but says he never subscribed to the Nazi ideology or participated in any killings.\n\nA judge ruled in 2000 that Mr. Oberlander worked, lived, and travelled as an interpreter for a Nazi mobile death squad and, although there was no evidence he participated in atrocities, he must have been aware of them.\n\nMr. Oberlander has been fighting attempts to strip him of his citizenship and deport him since 1995.\n\nThere is no justification for continuing to give him a haven\n\nIn 2008, he was stripped of his citizenship for a second time, but in 2009, the Federal Court of Appeal instructed the federal cabinet to reconsider because of Mr. Oberlander\u2019s assertion that he joined the squad as an interpreter under duress.\n\nIn 2012, Mr. Oberlander, a Ukrainian Canadian, was again stripped of his citizenship and immediately mounted a counter challenge. The Federal Court heard the appeal in February this year, but has not yet released a decision.\n\nMr. Oberlander could not be contacted for comment.\n\nVladimir Katriuk, ranked No. 4 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center\u2019s most-wanted list, came to Canada under a false name in 1951.\n\nIn 1999, the Federal Court ruled he had obtained his Canadian citizenship by misrepresentation, but found there was no evidence he had committed atrocities. The cabinet decided in 2007 not to revoke his citizenship\n\nNew evidence in the case came when declassified records released in 2008 documented that a man with the same name as Mr. Katriuk, currently in his 90s and living on a farm in Ormstown, outside of Montreal, was a commander of a platoon in a battalion that perpetrated a massacre in a Belarusian village in 1943, and that he personally opened fire with a machine gun.\n\nB\u2019nai Brith wrote to the government in 2011 urging that the government reverse the Katriuk decision.\n\n\u201cThe information we now know about Mr. Katriuk makes it unconscionable for the existing decision \u2026 to stand. There is no justification for continuing to give him a haven in Canada,\u201d it said.\n\nThe organization never got a response.\n\nMr. Katruik has consistently refused to talk publicly about his past. His wife told the National Post on Thursday that he would not be answering any questions.\n\nWasyl Odynsky came to Canada in 1949. Mr. Odynsky, 90, who had been living in Toronto but whose whereabouts are not known, was accused of serving as a guard at two forced labour camps and in an SS battalion. While a Federal Court ruled in 2001 that he had lied to gain entry to Canada, it also found that he was unlikely to have participated in a massacre of Jewish captives.\n\nIn 2007 the government decided not to take away his citizenship.\n\nB\u2019nai B\u2019rith is also challenging that decision.\n\nMr. Rambam, the U.S. private investigator who will speak at an event for impoverished Jews in Toronto on Tuesday, believes scores of war criminals are still living in Canada.\n\n\u201cEntire units came en masse into Canada through Halifax in the 1940s,\u201d he said. \u201cCanada knew at that time who they were.\n\n\u201cIf there are a few cases that can still be brought, just for the sake of doing the right thing, then that should happen.\u201d\n\n\u201cNone will live long enough to make it to trial, they will hire excellent lawyers. \u2026 They\u2019ll delay and throw legal roadblocks in the way until they have died safely in their beds, but it\u2019s the point of doing it.\u201d\n\nIt was the justice system itself that in the end let us down\n\nMr. Rambam interviewed 72 out of a list of 1,000 suspected Nazis living in Canada. His work was sent to the authorities, but he said little was done.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a stain on the history of Canada,\u201d he said.\n\nMr. Farber views things slightly differently.\n\n\u201cThe government did look at this matter with laser focus, so I think we have to give them credit \u2026 they tried. It was the justice system itself that in the end let us down.\u201d\n\nPaloma Aguilar, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice, said individuals who have been involved in war crimes or crimes against humanity would find no haven in Canada.\n\n\u201cThe Desch\u00eanes Commission put forward the names of 883 suspects. To this day, federal authorities have investigated upward of 2,000 files,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cThe government continues to receive allegations, all of which are examined.\u201d\n\nNational Post"} -{"text":"Sausage Party has become the surprise hit of a summer sorely lacking in them, making almost $37 million on a $19 million budget. Well, now animators are speaking out about how the film kept costs down.\n\nStories about horrible working conditions first started coming out in the comments of a Cartoon Brew interview with directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. Anonymous commenters claiming to have worked on the film flooded the article with complaints about working for Nitrogen Studios. Here are a few examples:\n\nThe production cost were kept low because Greg would demand people work overtime for free. If you wouldn\u2019t work late for free your work would be assigned to someone who would stay late or come in on the weekend. Some artist were even threatened with termination for not staying late to hit a deadline.\n\nAlmost half the animation team was not credited. The team believed in this film and poured their hearts and souls into it. Despite this, more than half of it was not credited. You can see the full team on IMDB, which contains 83 people (and I am certain there are some missing). The film\u2019s credits, however, contains 47.\n\nAll of the comments are truth or maybe rather written too lightly. I personally know & witnessed many other incidents during the production; such as an \u201cOpen Letter\u201d to the clients, and how Greg threatened artists for it. I cannot put more details because I\u2019m scared of revealing my identity.. and *I really want to keep working in this industry* Sickening how one can brag about production cost, when he was the one who demanded artists to work for free, otherwise get fired.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nIt made sense that the commenters were anonymous: everyone was afraid of reprisals, especially since the stories included Tiernan threatening to ruin people\u2019s careers. But, of course, that also made it hard to verify.\n\nNow Variety has talked to the animators while keeping their names out of the story. And it all sounds true. The \u201cOpen Letter\u201d referenced above was a petition sent to Annapurna Pictures\u2014the production company behind the film\u2014by the animators telling them about the conditions. According an animator, one of the reasons they had to send a letter to the clients was because the person that received the complaints about Nitrogen was Nicole Stine, Tiernan\u2019s wife.\n\n\u201cThere was no one you could go to,\u201d the animator told Variety. \u201cIt was uncomfortable.\u201d\n\nAdvertisement\n\nNitrogen Studios is based in Vancouver, and conditions similar to these are apparently the norm in non-US-based animation studios. It\u2019s a combination of an overabundance worldwide of animators, making it hard to rock the boat when you know it\u2019s easy to be replaced, and Canada providing tax incentives for productions. In Los Angeles, animators are unionized and have protections workers in other countries just don\u2019t have.\n\nSony, which distributed the film, and Annapurna didn\u2019t comment on the Variety story, while Tiernan told Variety that the complaints were \u201cwithout merit\u201d and wouldn\u2019t explain why they existed, if they weren\u2019t true. \u201cWe take these things seriously and don\u2019t want to ignore these claims,\u201d he said.\n\nNow that complaints been made public, they can\u2019t.\n\n[Variety]"} -{"text":"This week's edition of Critical Reception examines online reaction to People Can Fly's first-person shooter, which reviews describe as \"an intelligent, nuanced design with fathoms of depth.\"currently earns a score of 86 out of 100 at Metacritic.com.David Houghton at Games Radar scoresat 10 out of 10 . \",\" he begins, \"is a very intelligent, highly intricate, and sumptuously nuanced design masquerading as a big dumb action game. In fact it's such an evolution of the FPS experience that it's very probably destined for that pantheon of rare games to be deemed worthy of the word 'important' in a couple of years time.\"is not just a shooter,\" Houghton explains. \"In fact, once you've taken the time to really explore its depths, you'll realise that being a shooter is just one small part of what it's about. It's just as much a 3D puzzle game, high-speed strategy game, and even, if you really get into it, a bit of a maths challenge too.\"'s combo system proves to be a compelling mechanic. \"You're constantly judged on the complexity and inventiveness of your kills, and scores decrease with repetition,\" Houghton says.\"The points you score for clever killing are the currency you use to buy new weapons, as well as functionality upgrades for your existing ones. Every gun and additional perk is meticulously designed to integrate with and balance against the others, opening up a pantheon of new options with each one that's added to the mix.\"These options make up's comprehensive list of Skill Shots, a line-up of circumstantial kills and stacked combos detailed in the pause menu, which comprise every possible violent interaction you'll concoct and plenty you won't. We're talking well over a hundred individual 'moves' here, with an accessible freedom of blendability that evokes the glory days of's combo system.\"This ultimately defines the experience, according to Houghton. \"None of this creative killing is any mere gimmick. It all serves serious purpose,\" Houghton says. \"The kind of interactions most games save for their most inventive Achievements or Trophies,builds its core game around. And when you really start plumbing its depths you'll discover a sense of personal involvement and purpose within its world that genuinely is groundbreaking.\"\"Forget your preconceptions ofas a foul-mouthed big dumb action game,\" Houghton writes. \"It's an intelligent, nuanced design with fathoms of depth, which marks a return to the importance of player creativity in shooters and simultaneously evolves the concept of interactivity in an FPS world. And with two cleverly complimentary secondary modes, it will have serious legs for a good long while to come.\"IGN's Arthur Gies ratesat 8 out of 10 . \"At face value I shouldn't like,\" he begins. \"It comes off as obnoxious and crass, full of toilet humor, emphasizing a sort of dickish boldness and attitude that's been driven into the ground by countless shooters over the last few years.\"\"So it's a surprise then thatis actually something kind of special,\" Gies says. \"Sure, it's still brash, and it's still full of toilet humor, but with context,is a violently charming popcorn shooter that plays well with some great design.\"Gies praises's Leash weapon, in particular. \"The Leash allows Grayson to snag enemies and fling them into the air in slow motion, and its AI has been designed to evaluate combat performance \ufffd it rewards balls-out combat bravado in the form of points that can be redeemed at Confederate resupply pods scattered around the planet,\" he explains. \"By combining shots to specific appendages and\/or bathing suit areas with standing and sliding kicks, the Leash, and various environmental hazards, you'll discover a variety of named kill combos that reward more points than standard shots.\"Gies continues: \"The Leash AI takes all of's unique and genre-defying mechanical elements and makes sense of them within its own particular reality. It's... smart. Who'd have thought, particularly given the throwback nature of's first person shooting? There's no cover, enemies aren't especially smart, and levels are a straight shot from A to B, butstill impresses. In tandem with shooting that feels responsive and meaty, with powerful, interesting weapons, the combo system makes's combat a success.\"disappoints with its omission of cooperative play, however. \"The time-and-score-attack Echo mode is a nice enough inclusion with its online-enabled leaderboards, but why isn't there leaderboard-enabled campaign scoring in the main game?\" Gies asks. \"Campaign co-op also seems like a missed opportunity; you have at least one AI partner at all times in, which makes the solo-only nature of the main game that much more jarring. Campaign leaderboards would help give replay value to a main game that I finished in less than six hours, and Echo just didn't hold my attention.\"demonstrates the value of 'why' for action games,\" Gies asserts. \"Taken out of the context of its fiction, People Can Fly would have something fun but forgettable on their hands, but the wayfits together results in something cool and memorable. Multiplayer failings notwithstanding,shines as a single-player shooter.\"Taylor Cocke at 1UP.com gives a B- grade . \"Billed as the 'antidote' to the modern shooter,is certainly on a much higher level of ridiculousness than, say, thefranchise or the recent reboot of,\" he notes. \"Even its sister series,, which is over-the-top in its own right, can't keep up with's old school, hyper masculine tendencies. And yet, it doesn't go quite far enough.\"Cocke finds that's limp narrative is one of its greatest shortcomings. \"Unfortunately,doesn't manage to escape the pitfalls of those it seemingly attempts to lampoon,\" he explains. \"The story revolves around Grayson's obsession with taking down his former commanding officer Serrano for a past deception that caused Grayson and his covert operations unit, Dead Echo, to assassinate various innocent citizens under the pretense that they were enemies of the state. Of course, upon discovering that fact, Grayson declares that he'll have his revenge. Sound too serious? It really is.\"Cocke continues: \"All the game needed to was a simple excuse to go on a rampage, not a deep motivation to appease some sort of indignant revenge desire. For a game ostensibly based around absurd violence and 'killing with skill', the seriousness of the plot feels like a misstep.\"This softens the impact of's over-the-top gameplay. \"There's a discrepancy between the Skillshot-heavy gameplay and the overtly serious plot that drags the campaign down,\" Cocke writes. \"While I attempted to have a good time with action and vulgar jokes, the plot intruded. All I wanted to do was kick fools into massive cactus spikes (for the Pricked Skillshot, of course), but I the generic, all too serious plot points simply took my maniacal murderous rage, previously aimed at the on-screen enemies, and redirected it right back at the unnecessarily humorless plot.\"is a game unsure of what it wants to achieve,\" Cocke concludes. \"When it lets itself, it's a fantastic adrenaline rush through well-constructed set-pieces and gloriously fun-to-watch violence. But it too often drags itself down with overly structured situations and restrictive, strategy-heavy gameplay.\"It feels like if chaos had been allowed to take the design process over, this could have had one of the most fun shooters of our generation, but as it stands,is a mechanically enjoyable game that's missing what it needed to be great.\""} -{"text":"Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were asked directly if Donald Trump is a racist at Wednesday\u2019s Democratic debate in Miami.\n\n\u201cSecretary Clinton, you have known Donald Trump a long time. You have seen what kind of campaign he\u2019s running,\u201d the Washington Post\u2019s Karen Tumulty said 20 minutes into the debate. \u201cSecretary Clinton, is Donald Trump a racist?\u201d\n\nClinton first said she prefers to keep the Democratic primary about Democrats, then reiterated her criticisms of Trump\u2019s xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric \u2014 and added a splash of spanish.\n\n\u201cI was the first one to call him out. I called him out when he was calling Mexicans rapists, when he was engaging in rhetoric that I found deeply offensive. I said basta,\u201d she said, drawing applause from the room. \u201cAnd I am pleased that others are also joining in making clear that his rhetoric, his demagoguery, his trafficking in prejudice and paranoia has no place in our political system. Especially from somebody running for president who couldn\u2019t decide whether or not to disavow the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke.\u201d\n\nAdvertisement\n\nPressed by Tumulty, she again demurred from the journalist\u2019s label but said the Democratic nominee \u201ccan make the case against him, if he is the nominee, by pointing out what he has said, what he claims to believe in, the values he\u2019s promoting. I think that\u2019s a better way for the American people to draw their conclusions.\u201d\n\nTumulty put the question differently to Sanders, asking if it was fair to say Trump is racist. Sanders also declined to provide a direct yes-or-no. After saying that Americans will never elect someone who insults Mexicans, Muslims, women, and African-Americans, Sanders pointed out Trump\u2019s prominent role in a racist smear of Barack Obama.\n\n\u201cAnd let us not forget that several years ago Trump was in the middle of the so-called Birther movement trying to delegitimize the President of the United States of America,\u201d Sanders continued, to applause. \u201cMy dad was born in Poland and I know a little bit about the immigrant experience. Nobody has ever asked me for my birth certificate. Maybe it has something to do with the color of my skin.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile on the right, Trump\u2019s rise has helped reinvigorate avowed white supremacist groups. \u201cDemoralization has been the biggest enemy and Trump is changing all that,\u201d Stormfront founder Don Black recently told Politico.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nThe Southern Poverty Law Center\u2019s recent report on white nationalist activity in 2015 found a 14 percent rise in the number of hate groups, and cites other research finding more people were killed by domestic terrorists in 2015 than in any year since 1995. According to the group, this moment is comparable in radical white racist activity to 1968, the year Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. In a sense, then, the Grand Old Party is coming full circle on its long-running strategic deployment of coded racism that prominent Republican strategist Lee Atwater described at the dawn of the Reagan era."} -{"text":"Fireworks black market: Experts struggle to halt sale of illegal crackers\n\nPosted\n\nPyrotechnics experts are warning it will be difficult to stop Australia's dangerous underground market of illegal professional-grade fireworks.\n\nPolice are urging people to hand in their stashes of illegal fireworks before Australia Day, as they investigate two deaths from accidents with the devices.\n\nA 52-year-old man on the NSW Central Coast and a 46-year-old man in Victoria's Gippsland died after they attempted to set off illegal crackers on New Year's Eve.\n\nAustralia's fireworks industry is made up of between 250 to 300 companies.\n\nChristian Howard, the president of the Pyrotechnics Industry Association, said the black market fireworks were sourced from legal suppliers in Australia, rather than imported from overseas.\n\n\"I think the legal market of suppliers sell to the legal users, that they potentially on-sell them to the illegal market,\" he said.\n\n\"So there's a supply chain that's all legal and then at some point people start selling them to the public.\n\n\"I think there is a small amount of direct import but I think that's actually been slowed down in the last 10 years. It's very difficult to export them and import them into the country.\"\n\nMr Howard admits it will be difficult to stop the black market in illegal fireworks.\n\n\"There was a person selling fireworks out of a white van in Western Sydney and one of my colleagues who worked in the area just advised me that they were there.\n\n\"We alerted the authorities.\n\n\"They worked out he'd sold several hundred cartons of fireworks per year, just as a one person driving around in a van making a lot of cash on the side.\"\n\nThat person was linked back to a legal supply chain.\n\n\"In actual fact, he had a licence to use pyrotechnics but he would buy them and not use them, he would buy them and sell them, which is illegal because you need a licence to sell.\"\n\nFireworks are also freely for sale on the internet, including on Facebook.\n\n\"We take a lot of time and energy to make sure as an industry that we are safe with storage, handling, using, transporting and then the fact that then anyone can then buy them or sell them online and the general public is then using fireworks,\" Mr Howard said.\n\n\"And probably most of the time they are not low-level fireworks, they are probably the professional-grade, high-altitude aerial shells, which are very dangerous.\"\n\n'Hand them in', police warn\n\nThe sale of fireworks is banned in Australia, except on a single day in the Northern Territory, and under tight controls in Tasmania.\n\nThe deaths of two men on New Year's Eve are believed to be the first deaths from illegal crackers in four years.\n\nVictoria's Deputy Commissioner Andrew Crisp has urged people who may be holding onto illegal fireworks for Australia Day to hand them in.\n\n\"If you have illegal fireworks hand them in, report to Victoria police report to Worksafe, if you know of someone whose got illegal fireworks, similarly report it.\n\n\"How would you feel if you knew someone was about to let off illegal fireworks and it resulted in serious injury or the death of another person?\"\n\nTopics: accidents---other, accidents, disasters-and-accidents, law-crime-and-justice, crime, australia, nsw, vic"} -{"text":"Watergate veterans have seen this movie before about a president firing his attorney general to stop an investigation.\n\nIt didn\u2019t work back then, and the consensus among three Watergate insiders interviewed by The Daily Beast is that it won\u2019t work now. Just as the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973 marked the beginning of the end for President Nixon, who resigned in August 1974, President Trump would grease the skids for himself if he tries to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions with someone who would fire special counsel Robert Mueller.\n\n\u201cMueller is the kind of guy who would say, \u2018Fire me without cause, and I\u2019m going to Court.\u2019 And that could end up strengthening the Special Counsel,\u201d says John Dean, Nixon\u2019s White House counsel during much of Watergate.\n\n\u201cThey can\u2019t just cook up a PR campaign. It\u2019s like the Muslim ban. You just can\u2019t do it and pretend there\u2019s cause. The courts could come in and play havoc with Trump. It\u2019s amazing the institutions are working exactly the way they should. It\u2019s a pleasant surprise.\u201d\n\nConservative backing for the embattled Sessions appears to have scared Trump off Sessions, at least for now, as some Republicans are beginning to show some backbone. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley tweeted that there is no room on the committee\u2019s schedule to confirm a new AG\u2014and if Trump tried to slip one in while the Senate was in recess, it would almost certainly trigger a constitutional crisis.\n\nPublic outrage forced Nixon to name a second special prosecutor to replace the fired Archibald Cox. The White House thought Texas lawyer Leon Jaworski wouldn\u2019t be overly aggressive. After he heard the tape of Dean telling Nixon there is a \u201ccancer on the presidency,\u201d Jaworski told Dean he knew the president was \u201cguilty as sin.\u201d\n\nI asked Dean if he thought we could get that kind of clarity today. After all, as Trump likes to point out, the FBI has been investigating the Russia connection for a year, and no one has been charged with a crime. \u201cWe\u2019re in a different technical era,\u201d Dean replied. \u201cWho knows what\u2019s out there today. Who knows what the NSA is sitting on. None of us have seen this intelligence.\u201d\n\nAs news has poured in over the less than 200 days that Trump has served as president, people have forgotten how \u201cagonizingly slow Watergate was,\u201d says Dean.\n\nNixon\u2019s resignation on Aug. 8, 1974 came 782 days after the June 17, 1972, break-in. It was 920 days after the break-in that a jury found former Attorney General John Mitchell and aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice.\n\nElizabeth Holtzman was a member then of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Democrat Peter Rodino in the Democratic controlled House, and in her telling, the Democrats took no action even as the taping system in the White House was disclosed, along with Dean\u2019s \u201ccancer on the presidency\u201d and reports of the Watergate burglars being paid off with hush money (PDF). There were serious abuses of power, if not criminality by the president. In July of 1973, Father Drinan, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, filed an article of impeachment based on Nixon\u2019s secret bombing of Cambodia.\n\n\u201cAnd nobody paid attention,\u201d she says, even as Nixon was trying to dismantle a signature Great Society program, the Office of Economic Opportunity. \u201cSo you had the president thumbing his nose at limitations of power, but none of that moved anybody in the leadership of the House. Peter Rodino had no interest in impeachment. It was really forced by the American people.\u201d\n\nThe trigger event was the Saturday Night Massacre. Members of the House were inundated with phone calls and telegrams. \u201cThe American people were outraged. It was an amazing shift in public opinion,\u201d says Holtzman. \u201cMy office was flooded with messages. That\u2019s what started the process [of impeachment]. It was not a partisan process.\n\n\u201cThe lesson for Trump is if the American people realize that he\u2019s threatening our democracy, and they don\u2019t want to be a banana republic, the president can\u2019t pick his prosecutor. They can force the Congress into action. Nixon had a huge landslide victory in 1972 and 11 months later, the Saturday Night Massacre was the beginning of the end. We expect our president to obey the law.\u201d\n\nWhen the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Elliot Richardson as Richard Kleindienst\u2019s successor in May \u201973, they made him name a special prosecutor to their liking, Archibald Cox, and pledge that he would not fire Cox except for \u201cextraordinary improprieties,\u201d a Justice Department regulation that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has adopted in saying he would not fire special counsel Robert Mueller except for \u201ccause.\u201d\n\nRichard Ben-Veniste was one of the lead Watergate prosecutors, \u201cfollowing money to find a motive,\u201d he recalled to The Daily Beast, from the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) and then ultimately the White House.\n\nHe explains that here, investigators are probing Trump\u2019s financial dealings to determine whether they provide a motive for Trump asking Comey to go easy.\n\nBen-Veniste reminds those impatient with the pace of the Russia investigation that for a long period after the break-in, the White House was successful at deflecting investigative efforts to determine who sponsored it. Those efforts to deflect turned out to be obstruction of justice, so a separate crime was committed.\n\nAs today\u2019s investigation unfolds, he cautions that \u201cwe are drifting into what may be uncharted waters if Trump makes good on his threat to fire Mueller. That would create a constitutional crisis.\u201d\n\nAsked how that might play out, he says it\u2019s \u201cunclear whether Trump would find anyone\u201d to fire Mueller if Rosenstein refused. Asked how far down in the Justice Department Trump could go, Ben-Veniste said, \u201cI don\u2019t know if the elevator goes down that far.\u201d\n\nHe concluded our conversation saying that if Trump does what everybody is advising him not to do, and one way or another, gets rid of Mueller, it will come down to \u201cwhether Republicans in Congress can put country above party. Our system will be severely tested, and we will find out whether we are a government of laws, where the rule of law is respected, or whether an outrage like firing a person lawfully appointed is acceptable to one political party.\u201d\n\nIf Trump understood Watergate, he\u2019d be having second thoughts about trying to push out Sessions, says Dean.\n\nUnlike Sessions, who has significant support both in the Senate and in the conservative media, Kleindienst was easy to toss overboard. During marathon confirmation hearings over a record 22 days, he repeatedly perjured himself on his knowledge of an antitrust case that involved a $400,000 payoff to the 1972 Republican convention. The case had nothing to do with Watergate, but Kleindienst resigned under fire the same day (April 30, 1973) that Nixon announced the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman, and fired Dean.\n\nAt least Nixon didn\u2019t trash Kleindienst in public, I ventured in my conversation with Dean. \u201cNixon did that in private,\u201d he said, before there was Twitter. \u201cThere\u2019s no one who worked for Nixon he hadn\u2019t trashed on the tapes.\u201d\n\nDean calls the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg\u2019s psychiatrist\u2019s office in September of 1971 the reason the White House was so concerned about the Watergate break-in. Gordon Liddy, who headed the White House Plumbers unit (named for its initial mission of plugging leaks), had used two of the same guys, who were now in jail and could tie the break-ins to the White House. \u201cOtherwise we would have cut the Re-Elect loose,\u201d says Dean.\n\nLiddy\u2019s plan had gotten shot down twice before Mitchell signed off, saying, \u201cgive them $250,000 and see what they come up with.\u201d\n\nThe casual straying from dirty tricks to criminal behavior is striking. \u201cWe wrote the book on what not to do, and Trump doesn\u2019t seem to have any knowledge of what\u2019s in that book,\u201d says Dean.\n\n\u201cA lot of Watergate is just bungling\u2014it\u2019s pure bungling\u2014stupid things, like not hiring a lawyer. I tried to get Ehrlichman to agree to a criminal lawyer on my staff after Liddy confessed to me the same people were used in the Ellsberg break-in\u2014the first I heard of the Ellsberg break-in. Ehrlichman shot me down.\u201d\n\nAfter he left the White House, Dean learned of a handwritten memo signed by Ehrlichman authorizing the Ellsberg break-in \u201cas long as it is not traceable to the White House.\u201d It was an options memo on how to deal with Ellsberg, who had released the Pentagon Papers, and one of the options suggested by the Plumbers was to enter his psychiatrist\u2019s office, take his files and use them to discredit him.\n\nNixon launched into the cover-up very early, not because anybody told him about the Ellsberg situation, but because he was concerned about Mitchell, says Dean. \u201cBut for John Mitchell, he never would have become president. Mitchell is to Nixon what Trump\u2019s family is to him\u2014you can\u2019t get any closer.\u201d When Nixon came to New York from California, Mitchell set him up as a partner in a prestigious law firm, put money in his pocket, and when Nixon decided to run again in 1968, Mitchell ran the campaign.\n\nMitchell didn\u2019t want to be attorney general, according to Dean, but Nixon insisted, and the president was very worried on a personal level about Mitchell. \u201cAnd that comes through on the tapes,\u201d says Dean. \u201cFour days after the arrest of the Watergate burglars, there\u2019s a conversation where Nixon says, \u2018Let\u2019s just put all the facts out, put this thing behind us\u2014but if that\u2019s going to hurt Mitchell, we can\u2019t do it.\n\n\u201cThat was a bungle,\u201d says Dean. At every point where they could have cut their losses, they dug in deeper, and the crimes piled up under the heading conspiracy to obstruct justice. There was also the cover-up Nixon got away with, says Dean, by intentionally disrupting President Johnson\u2019s efforts to get peace in 1968.\n\nNixon biographer John Farrell found the evidence in Haldeman\u2019s notes, \u201cand if that isn\u2019t treason it sure does look, feel and smell like it,\u201d says Dean. \u201cIt was long suspected that Nixon wanted to break into the Brookings Institution when he heard they had \u2018bombing halt\u2019 papers. He might have been worried they had papers somehow showing what he had done with South Vietnam.\u201d\n\nThe Republic survived Watergate and people thought the safeguards put in place afterward ensured that a scandal of that magnitude could never happen again. Forty government officials were indicted or went to jail. One Senate investigator who did not want to give his name told The Daily Beast, \u201cIn retrospect, everyone in the administration who got anywhere near Watergate, even tangentially, lied or sat still while other people lied. It was a lesson in an administration going absolutely wild. My whole generation of lawyers and politicians feel this is history repeating itself\u2014the same personal characteristics, personal weaknesses, the same personal desire to acquire and embrace power.\u201d\n\nSome people saved their reputation then, notably Attorney General Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, who defied Nixon\u2019s order to fire the special prosecutor. We\u2019re waiting for today\u2019s profiles in courage. There should be ample opportunity."} -{"text":"China\u2019s Digging\n\nSince the industrialization of coal, the world has sourced much of its energy from fossil fuels. While the global energy landscape has started to change again over the past several years, with the introduction of more renewable and cleaner sources, fossil fuels are still the main source of much of today\u2019s energy. However, it looks like China has now found a way to access a previously elusive source of energy.\n\nReports from China\u2019s Ministry of Land and Resources claim that the country has successfully extracted methane hydrate \u2014 also known as \u201cflammable ice\u201d \u2014 from beneath the South China Sea, just 300 kilometers (186 miles) southeast of Hong Kong.\n\n\u201cWe brought the gas to the surface and have lit it up since May 10. By now, the drill has been running continually for eight days,\u201d project leader and deputy chief engineer at the China Geological Survey Ye Jianliang told the South China Morning Post. \u201cThe daily output [of gas] exceeds 10,000 cubic meters. The best day recorded 35,000 cubic meters.\u201d\n\nNot Clean Enough\n\nThough methane hydrate is not a new discovery, researchers have had difficulty putting it to practical use. The substance is called \u201cflammable ice\u201d because it looks like ice, but it\u2019s actually methane trapped inside water molecule lattices. Deposits of methane hydrate are usually found in areas with low temperatures and moderate pressure, such as the bottom of the ocean, making them difficult to access."} -{"text":"CNET\n\nYahoo.com visitors over the last few days may have been served with malware via the Yahoo ad network, according to Fox IT, a security firm in the Netherlands. Users visiting pages with the malicious ads were redirected to sites armed with code that exploits vulnerabilities in Java and installs a variety of different malware.\n\nCorrection:This story previously stated that the ads required a click to trigger the exploit. According to Maarten van Dantzig of Fox IT, the ad being displayed is enough to redirect users to the malware injection site. We are checking with Yahoo for further explanation.\n\nIn a blog post, Fox IT estimated that, based on sample traffic, the number of visits to the site carrying the malicious code was visited around 300,000 times per hour.\n\n\"Given a typical infection rate of 9% this would result in around 27,000 infections every hour. Based on the same sample, the countries most affected by the exploit kit are Romania, Britain, and France. At this time it's unclear why those countries are most affected, it is likely due to the configuration of the malicious advertisements on Yahoo,\" Fox IT said on its blog.\n\nThe security firm found evidence that the redirects go to domains hosted in the Netherlands, but was unable to identity the perpetrators. Traffic has slowed to the exploit, Fox IT noted, suggesting that Yahoo is addressing the vulnerability.\n\nYahoo confirmed the presence of malware on its servers and said it had taken steps to combat the issue.\n\n\"We recently identified an ad designed to spread malware to some of our users,\" Yahoo said Saturday in a statement. \"We immediately removed it and will continue to monitor and block any ads being used for this activity.\"\n\nIn a further statement issued Sunday, a Yahoo spokesperson said:\n\nOn Friday, January 3, on our European sites, we served some advertisements that did not meet our editorial guidelines, specifically, they were designed to spread malware. We promptly removed these advertisements. Users in North America, Asia Pacific and Latin America were not served these advertisements and were not affected. Additionally, users using Macs and mobile devices were not affected.\n\nYahoo subsequently modified its statement, adding that malicious ads were served between December 31 and January 3, not just Jan. 3. The spokesperson added that the company plans to post more information on the malware incident for its users.\n\nUpdated January 5, 2014, with additional information from Yahoo.\n\n[Via ZDNet and the Washington Post]"} -{"text":"David Zalubowski\/Associated Press\n\nNate Jackson was a tight end and wide receiver with the Denver Broncos from 2003-08. In April, he wrote about the draft from a player\u2019s perspective.\n\nYour body says No, but your brain says Yes.\n\nYes, you will get out of bed. Yes, you will try to eat breakfast. And Yes, you will put on your pads and run out on that field. Despite the pain, the doubt, and the fear, you will say Yes. You always say Yes.\n\nTraining camp is hell. Some players adapt to hell well, some burn up quickly. But there is no way around the psychological and physical warfare that players will endure this month.\n\nIn a strictly physical analysis, training camp brutalizes the body. The N.F.L. is home to the strongest, most explosive athletes on the planet. Being hit over and over again by these men is a painful ordeal, not so much as it\u2019s happening, but after the fact: after practice, late at night, early in the morning. Morning is the worst.\n\nAbout three or four days into training camp is when the soreness starts to peak, and it sticks around for about a week and a half until your body starts to desensitize itself to misery. During my six seasons with the Denver Broncos, there were days when getting out of bed was so difficult I was sure there was no way I could practice. Of course I was wrong. I found a way to get it done. Football players learn how to push down the pain and make a play. But it hurts later. It hurts a lot.\n\nCompounding the physical pain is the strange dichotomy between players and coaches. Coaches expect mathematic perfection from their players, so most often, whatever a player does is not quite right. There is always something to improve, even when you get the job done. As my friend Stefan Fatsis eloquently describes it in his book A Few Seconds of Panic, about the summer he spent on the field with me and my Denver teammates (as a kicker), different coaches communicate in different ways. But in the N.F.L., the militaristic approach usually dominates: veiny-foreheaded dopplegangers berating players daily.\n\nThe longer you\u2019re around, the more the cackle becomes background noise, which you learn to accept as an industry standard. But it\u2019s unproductive, because the aim begins to be, \u201cDon\u2019t make a mistake, don\u2019t get yelled at.\u201d That\u2019s an awful way to play football, especially when the dudes doing the yelling are or were inferior athletes to you.\n\nThe verbal haranguing isn\u2019t exclusive to the field. In meetings every day and night, it continues. The decibel level decreases, but it\u2019s no less biting. Every play of every practice is watched on film by the whole team that same day. Morning practice is watched in the afternoon before the afternoon practice, and the afternoon practice is watched at night before going home. Practices are watched on huge screens with high quality projectors. When a player makes a mistake, it is pointed out and discussed.\n\nNothing slips through the cracks. Depending on the severity of the mistake, and the frequency of mistakes being made by the player, the reaction from the coaches will vary, but the feeling for the player is always horrible. Being called out in meetings and having everyone in the room watching you fail in slow motion \u2014 often with a laser pointer on your two-dimensional body \u2014 is demoralizing, and only intensifies the pain. This scrutiny is well intentioned, but often falls flat from overkill, the message trampled by the messenger.\n\nTeams will go through their training-camp schedule for about eight days before a day off. Eight straight days is bad enough, but the length of each day makes it feel much longer. Each day feels like three days. Players arrive at the facility at roughly 7:30 a.m. The first practice is at 8:30 and lasts until around 11. After that comes lunch and a bit of down time, when players relax however they can: napping, video games, reading, crying. A special-teams meeting at around 1:30 p.m. is followed by offense\/defense meetings, then back on the field around 4 for a slightly shorter practice than in the morning. After practice is dinner, then meetings from 7 p.m. until 10 p.m.\n\nThe meetings drag on more than one would imagine. N.F.L. players spend typically twice as much time in meeting rooms as they do on the field. The attention to detail and robotic application of minute coaching points become an obsession, so there\u2019s always something to fix. This drains the brain. It\u2019s not uncommon to see a rookie make mistake after mistake as he mopes around the field on one day or another, simply because his brain is filled to the brim with detailed coaching points. The players who end up making the team and having a sustained career in the N.F.L. are the ones who can process these details and apply them quickly. It\u2019s one thing to understand what you\u2019re supposed to do, but to actually do it, at 100 miles an hour against the best in the world, is another thing entirely.\n\nAdding to the general feelings of blah and barf are cuts that must be made as August progresses. Realistically, of the 80 guys on each roster, 15 are already cut. Coaches have a pretty good idea of what the final roster will look like. There\u2019s a little bit of wiggle room in the middle of the depth chart. At every position, there are usually two guys competing for one spot. This is usually where I found myself, fighting for my professional life on a daily basis, battling with another good football player who was often my friend. I learned how to win that daily battle, but it never came easy, and someone was always left in its wake.\n\nBut this is in the middle of the depth chart, meaning that if a team is carrying 10 receivers in camp, receivers Nos. 5 and 6 are battling for a job. Nos. 7 through 10 are camp bodies, there to bolster the numbers, to take punishment, to give veterans an occasional rest, to serve as verbal punching bags for position coaches trying to make a point. This happens at every position, even quarterback. Players see this happening to them, and there is nothing they can do about it. At the bottom of the depth chart, guys get very few quality \u201creps\u201d \u2014 repetitions, turns to play in practice. Coaches often encourage these players, saying things like, \u201cDon\u2019t count your reps, make your reps count!\u201d But reality sets in. For many, this will be the last football they will ever play.\n\nYes, there is much to worry about this month for players on N.F.L. teams. For every superstar, there are 10 blue-collar players who fear their job security is in danger. This fear makes them anxious and paranoid. If you know someone in the N.F.L., leave him alone this month. If he survives, he will be better for the experience. Just wait until September to ask him about it."} -{"text":"Khao Yai National Park, Thailand\n\nThailand\u2019s not known for its wine; you\u2019re much more likely to think of beer when you think of this South-east Asian nation. But at Khao Yai National Park, around two hours by road from Bangkok, you\u2019ll find a cluster of wineries, producing an array of reds and whites.\n\nThe locally run Thailand Wine Tours (thailandwinetour.com) take visitors on a tour of the national park where they can spot the huge white Buddha statue on a hilltop, as well as visiting two wineries. Prices start from 7,850 baht (\u00a3169) for two people including transport from Bangkok, lunch, wine and English speaking guides.\n\nJoin Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just \u00a35.99 \u20ac6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just \u00a35.99 \u20ac6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads \u2013 for just \u00a35.99 \u20ac6.99 $9.99 a month\n\nLastminute.com has a week in Bangkok from \u00a3377pp including flights and two-star room-only accommodation.\n\nKefalonia, Greece\n\nThe Ionian island of Kefalonia, off the west coast of mainland Greece, has a beautiful landscapes and exceptional wines \u2013 some of which can\u2019t be exported, so a trip here is the only way you\u2019ll get to taste them.\n\nThe Robola Wine Cooperative, in the Omala valley, is around an hour from all of the main resorts, and half an hour from the capital, Argostoli.\n\nThomson (thomson.co.uk) offers packages to Kefalonia from \u00a3534pp in October including flights and self-catering accommodation in Skala, and for an additional \u20ac45pp you can book a day trip to Argostoli and the Robola vineyards, where you can try a selection of whites, reds, and a very strong dessert wine \u2013 which I would describe as half way between a port and a sherry. In addition to the wine, the views of the valley are worth the visit alone.\n\nJeruzalem, Slovenia\n\nLjubljana markets itself as a \"City of Vine and Wine\"; this despite there being no vineyards in or around the city. But if you\u2019re not satisfied with the Slovenian capital\u2019s numerous wineries, take a two-hour trip to the north-eastern village of Jeruzalem. It\u2019s renowned for its white wines and great views, which can be experienced in tandem on a walking wine tour.\n\nThe Ljubljana tourist board runs a Wine Routes of Jeruzalem tour (visitljubljana.com) in which you\u2019ll visit Prlekija, a Slovenian region known for its wine, food and thermal springs, before heading to the wine hills of Jeruzalem.\n\nThe tour costs \u20ac102 including wine tasting, lunch and transfers. The tour is available from the beginning of March \u2013 30 October.\n\nExpedia (expedia.co.uk) offers four nights in Ljubljana from \u00a3220pp including flights.\n\nOahu, Hawaii\n\nHawaii conjures imagery of fresh fruit, bright cocktails and exotic flavours, yet you\u2019ll also find wine produced here. Island Mana Wines (islandmanawines.com), in Honolulu\u2019s beachside Waikiki neighbourhood, on the isle of Oahu, is a wine tasting experience with a difference. The tipples here are not made with grapes, but instead include varieties produced from guava, mango, passion fruit and pineapple\u2013 all sourced from organic fruit native to the island. Reservations must be made in advance; entry is free, you just pay for the wine you drink.\n\nVirgin Holidays (virginholidays.co.uk) offers a week in Waikiki from \u00a31470pp in October, including flights and room-only accommodation.\n\nSkane, Sweden\n\nSkane, the region known for producing Absolut vodka, started to make a name for itself in the wine world during the 1990s. The main grapes of the region are solaris and rondo, which produce fruity whites and full-bodied reds. The Hallakra Vingard (hallakra.com), however, is renowned for its pinor noir. Groups of eight or more can book tours and tastings on request all year round (it\u2019s open to the general public over the summer); prices available on request.\n\nThe vineyard is half an hour from the city of Malmo, or around an hour from Copenhagen \u2013 across the bridge in Denmark. easyJet Holidays (easyjet.com\/holidays) has three nights in Copenhagen from \u00a3290pp including flights and hotel, room only."} -{"text":"British society needs modernisation but instead Brits will be busy rebuilding bridges they are about to tear down\n\nI love British humour. When something goes fundamentally wrong, the British laugh at it.\n\nBrexit? The EU now has 1GB of free space. If that gives you a wry smile, better jokes will be along soon \u2013 Brexit has a lot of potential to go wrong.\n\nTravelling for two months around Britain and Ireland, visiting Birmingham, Hull, Grimsby, York, Edinburgh, Belfast, Newry and Dundalk, I got an idea of why so many people voted for Brexit and how difficult it will be. For Britain, Europe and the rest of the world.\n\nGuardian readers gave me inspiration for where to go and who to meet, sending nearly 100 emails after I asked for tips in my first article. \u201cYou should visit my 76-year-old mum in Grimsby. In a Brexit heartland, she was the one swearing at our bridge club players, telling them not to betray their grandchildren,\u201d wrote Paul.\n\nIt was a pleasure to meet the resolute Mary Randall and her friends Margaret and Beat Haessig in Grimsby, and it helped me understand people\u2019s anxieties and challenges in an area that has suffered a long period of economic decline.\n\nWhen Margaret was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, Grimsby was thriving. By the time Mary moved to the town in 1983, the decline had already begun. \u201cBut when the fish industry went downhill there was no investment at all,\u201d she said. \u201cThe young people went away because there were no jobs for them.\u201d\n\nThey showed me around once-busy shopping areas, now run-down, and pointed out shops and businesses that had closed.\n\nTravelling to Hull the next day, practically a stone\u2019s throw away on the other side of the river Humber, took almost two hours because there is no proper train connection. Local entrepreneurs told me how fed up they were with the bad infrastructure and the lack of investment from Westminster. I heard \u201cyou in London\u201d a lot, even though I was only a temporary Londoner for two months.\n\nThe people I spoke to who had voted for Brexit and claimed to be fed up with Europe really had more specific concerns: sinking living standards, a lack of affordable housing, rising poverty and an inefficient NHS. All good reasons to be disgruntled, though Brussels is hardly to blame.\n\nThe morning I left Grimsby was the day the world learned that Donald Trump had won the US election. The outsider had beaten the establishment. Plenty of people, including me, felt that Brexit had happened again.\n\nFrank Stauss, a political consultant who has organised several election campaigns for the Social Democrats in Germany, said Trump\u2019s biggest asset was \u201cthat he didn\u2019t stand for going on with business as usual\u201d. Trump\u2019s voters in the US wanted a change, and so did leave voters in Britain. They were fed up with an establishment that promised wealth and prosperity in the EU when they were experiencing the opposite.\n\nWhen I came to Britain I had a picture in my mind of a divided society in which young, urban and well-educated people had voted for remain, while elderly and working-class people, and xenophobic ones, had voted to leave.\n\nBut it isn\u2019t that simple. I met a shipowner who employs only Polish people on his trawlers but voted to leave. (If the Poles left, he said, he would hire Russians instead.) I talked to a porter who was proud to have voted remain.\n\nBritish society as I experienced it has more and deeper faultlines than any other country I have lived in \u2013 namely Poland, Sweden, Germany and Italy.\n\nAccording to research by Poverty and Social Exclusion, 30 million people in the UK suffer from financial insecurity, 4 million people are not properly fed and 2.3m households cannot afford to heat the living areas of their homes. On the other hand, more billionaires live here than in many other countries, and the economy has grown over the last six years.\n\n\u201cPrivileged\u201d young Londoners with good jobs told me that starting a family was out of the question because they could not afford flats with enough space. \u201cOur parents live in houses we could never afford,\u201d say the millennials. The Northern Irish and Scottish complain that they are neglected by decision-makers in London.\n\nSome Britons claim Polish people are taking their jobs, but the Poles say they were welcomed at first as cheap labour, then treated with mistrust when they took on better jobs and homes. \u201cThe British liked us in these cheap jobs and became concerned when they improved,\u201d my friend Ania Faluta, with whom I studied in Poland, told me. She started her career in London 11 years ago as a cleaner and is now a project manager.\n\nIt struck me sometimes that the British are so occupied with competing \u2013 in their jobs, dancing, baking, with other nations \u2013 that they miss the bigger picture.\n\nAn education system that provides chances for everybody irrespective of social background? Well, has there ever been a Guardian editor from a comprehensive school?\n\nA modern childcare system that is affordable and adapted to the needs of families? Women told me how they jeopardised their careers by staying at home with their toddlers because it was cheaper than sending them to nursery.\n\nAn efficient healthcare system? I spent hours listening to my housemate\u2019s enraged reports about his experiences in waiting rooms.\n\nWith every week I spent in Britain, I grew fonder of the German federal system that allows states to set their own key issues, independent of the government in Berlin, and of a social system that allows me to have four children, a full-time job and to afford a two-month break abroad.\n\nBritish society could do with modernisation, in my view. It\u2019s so 1980s. But I doubt if Brexit will bring that about. Instead, the British will be occupied with rebuilding the bridges to the EU that they are just about to tear down.\n\nThat\u2019s what the negotiations are aimed at, aren\u2019t they? To leave Europe and the European single market, and at the same time guarantee access to the latter. Norway, which could serve as an example, is not a member of the EU but of the European Economic Area, and has 70% of EU directives and 17% of EU regulations in force.\n\nBrexit seems like a big waste of time and money, but nevertheless I\u2019d prefer the British to be as close as possible to the EU. When Theresa May sets off to embrace the autocrats in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the other Gulf countries, the democratic opposition in these countries will be even less heard.\n\nBut the EU is also far from perfect. Its harshest critics should not be easily dismissed. And we Germans could do with a good deal more of the politeness, consideration and respect that people in Britain show to their fellow humans.\n\nAnd, of course, with some British humour. How many Germans do you need to change a lightbulb? One! They are so efficient and have no sense of humour. You see?"} -{"text":"When Massachusetts voters legalized recreational marijuana in November, it sparked a war in the legislature, where some lawmakers are bent on limiting the sale, use and cultivation of the intoxicating plant. Pro-pot advocates have accused lawmakers of trampling on the will of the voters as bill after bill \u2014 37 to be exact \u2014 has been filed to scale back the legalization rollout. One bill, filed by Sen. William Brownsberger, D-Belmont, on behalf of a constituent, seeks wholesale repeal of the referendum that legalized pot. Recommended Slideshows 4 Pictures PHOTOS: Singapore's treasures star in NY Botanical Garden's 2019 Orchid Show 4 Pictures 36 Pictures Oscars 2019: Red carpet looks and full list of winners 36 Pictures 36 Pictures All of these celebrities have had their nudes leaked 36 Pictures More picture galleries 16 Pictures These photos of Trump and Ivanka will make you deeply uncomfortable 16 Pictures 4 Pictures Inside Brooklyn's Teknopolis is tech that makes us more human 4 Pictures 4 Pictures Inside The Strand's Fight Against Being Named a New York City Landmark 4 Pictures \u201cWhat we are worried about is bills that would really eviscerate what was passed in November,\u201d said Jim Borghesani, spokesman for the Yes on 4 campaign that lobbied for legalization. \u201cIt goes completely against the will of the people. You can\u2019t say you pledged to uphold the will of the people while at the same time filing bills that gut the very measure the people approved.\u201d The referendum to legalize retail pot sales and possession and growing the plant for adults over 21 passed by more than 53 percent of those who voted. Among other things, the bills would: Slash the amount of pot people over 21 can possess in their homes from 10 ounces to 2 ounces; Cut the number of plants people could grow from 12 down to six per household; Impose a two-year moratorium on the sale of marijuana-infused products at retail dispensaries; Give regulators the power to outright ban any product other than the leafy plant matter itself. In Colorado, where recreational pot was legalized in 2012, infusedproducts account for more than 50 percent of the market, state data shows . Related Articles Melting pot simmers Oakland legalizes pot growth Fruity One-Pot Lamb Fourteen of these bills were filed by Sen. Jason Lewis, D-Winchester, a leader in the failed crusade to stop legalization, who has said the specifics should be left to the legislature to \u201cresponsibly, thoughtfully and safely implement a legal marijuana market in Massachusetts.\u201d The legislature has already successfully pushed back the opening of retail dispensaries and the establishment of a Cannabis Control Commission by six months, something Borghesani also opposes. \u201cLewis is a prohibitionist and his bills are reflecting his position,\u201d Borghesani said. \u201cDuring the campaign, he opposed legalization just like he opposed med marijuana and just like he opposed the decriminalization of marijuana. Now he is doing his best to undo what voters approved overwhelmingly in November.\u201d"} -{"text":"Ciaran Clark scored in Newcastle's 6-0 win at QPR in September, but his own goal denied the Magpies victory at St James' Park\n\nCiaran Clark's last-minute headed own goal handed Queens Park Rangers a draw at St James' Park and denied Newcastle United top spot in the Championship.\n\nJonjo Shelvey's superb half-volley put the hosts ahead inside 37 seconds, but it was Rangers who created by far the better of the first-half chances and equalised through Conor Washington.\n\nNewcastle, beaten by Oxford in the FA Cup on Saturday, then edged back in front thanks to Matt Ritchie's header.\n\nBut Clark's error earned QPR a point.\n\nThe 27-year-old defender was stretching back in an attempt to clear Kazenga LuaLua's cross, but could only loop his header from the edge of the area over stranded goalkeeper Karl Darlow.\n\nIt means Rafael Benitez's side remain in second, one point behind leaders Brighton & Hove Albion and only four clear of Reading in third.\n\nOn the overall balance of play it was no more than QPR deserved, having carved out several opportunities in the first half before looking dangerous on the break in the second.\n\nThe visitors wasted numerous chances to equalise even before Washington eventually poked them level from close range, with Massimo Luongo twice failing to beat Darlow when well placed.\n\nNewcastle wrested their advantage back early in the second half through Ritchie's smart finish - his 11th goal of the season - and looked on course for a return to the summit of the Championship table.\n\nHowever, Clark's mistake in the final minute of normal time gave QPR a valuable point to move them up to 18th, nine points clear of the relegation zone.\n\nNewcastle manager Rafael Benitez:\n\n\"We had a lot of chances but we didn't take our chances and we conceded with an own goal which is the worst thing that can happen.\n\n\"We didn't take the chances that we had. We needed to score the third goal but we didn't do it.\n\n\"We're all disappointed that we couldn't get three points.\"\n\nQPR boss Ian Holloway:\n\n\"Would I have taken this after 45 seconds? Yeah.\n\n\"We took a punch on the chin, shook ourselves down and managed to go. We've got to learn to be a bit more clinical but I'm delighted for everybody.\n\n\"I've brought a whole load of new people in. That group has done us all proud.\""} -{"text":"The British Obsession with Parliamentary Sovereignty\n\nGerry Hassan\n\nThe Scotsman, January 15th 2011\n\nThe curse of the European issue has been slowly re-emerging for the Tory led government after a period of relative quiet and calm.\n\nRight-wing voices have stated that the European Union Bill with its Clause 18 defining parliamentary sovereignty is not clear and powerful enough to block the continued encroachment of Brussels into British public life.\n\nWhat then is this thing called parliamentary sovereignty, why are our political classes obsessed with it, and what does this tell us about the health of our democracy?\n\nBritain\u2019s parliamentary sovereignty is based on the Diceyian notion that no Parliament can legally bind its successor. It is of course a myth, fraud, and part of the folklore which makes up how the British constitution has evolved over time.\n\nThe actual reality is that Britain stopped being governed by parliamentary sovereignty in the pure sense a long time ago. The rise of party and cabinet government was one factor in the early 20th century bemoaned by Dicey. Another was the creation of dominion status for Canada and Australia in the Empire, limiting the powers of Parliament.\n\nA significant moment in all of this was the accession of the UK to the then Common Market in 1973. Related to this has been the emergence of a more politicised judiciary, the increased use of judicial review and the passing of the Human Rights Act.\n\nThen there is Scotland. Long before devolution we had MacCormick versus the Lord Advocate in 1953 \u2013 a complicated judgement which in many eyes qualified parliamentary sovereignty in Scotland.\n\nMore crucially do our elected politicians really believe the people out there hold on to the idea of parliamentary sovereignty? Have they learned nothing from the expenses scandal and the private welfare state they built to cocoon themselves from the harsh winds they inflicted on the rest of us? The public rage on this showed a sentiment that was shaped by popular, not parliamentary sovereignty.\n\nPolitical power now stems from the people, not Parliament. The confused Conservative Eurosceptic response to this is shown by the fact that their suggested ultimate defence of parliamentary sovereignty in the European Union Bill is the holding of a referendum whenever the European Union proposes a significant extension of its powers into UK domestic life.\n\nAs any constitutional student at even A Level would know \u2013 a referendum \u2013 a device once frowned upon by the defenders of the British constitution as being \u2018unBritish\u2019 and the sort of thing \u2018continental dictatorships\u2019 used such as Hitler and Stalin \u2013 undermines parliamentary sovereignty. The reason being it is an expression of popular sovereignty.\n\nSome of the Tory discontent in this is admittedly with the party\u2019s backbench frustration with the Cameroons and David Cameron himself. There is a feeling which strays far beyond the Tory right that David Cameron isn\u2019t exactly \u2018a Tory\u2019 and that this is not a Conservative enough administration.\n\nThe toxic distrust on the Tory right takes them into a surreal world of the land of make believe where a more full-blooded Conservative Party would be rapturously received by the voters; it is the kind of Walter Mitty fantasyland which the Labour left used to inhabit in the 1980s and which did such damage to the Labour Party.\n\nStrangely one of the paradoxes of this is that as parliamentary sovereignty has weakened in practice, our political classes have become more obsessed by it. One explanation for this is that it is one of the tales told of which makes Westminster and its politicians feel special and unique. Parliamentary sovereignty is one of the last stories of British exceptionalism; a kind of British version of the American dream but just for our political elites.\n\nThen there is the story of British democracy and liberty, which has by modern times been reduced to a Whig style caricature and set of clich\u00e9s whereby all the Westminster classes sign up to the special importance of Britishness.\n\nParliamentary sovereignty has a special place in this story, for it is the conventional account of how Britain became a democracy, its politicians stood up to despots, and overthrew arbitrary power. All of this was then given validation through British democracy surviving the Second World War when as the phrase goes \u2018we kept the lights on in Europe\u2019 and then built a welfare state and civilised society.\n\nOur democracy and Parliament was meant to be the envy of the world at the end of Second World War, but this fed into a British complacency and conceit. One British expert on politics responded to an American academic by stating that \u2018the British constitution\u2019 was \u2018as nearly perfect as any human institution could be\u2019. Now only two other democracies in the world have parliamentary sovereignty, New Zealand and Finland, while the First Past the Post electoral system is only rarely used in places such as the USA, Canada and India. British democracy is increasingly an anachronism in the world.\n\nThere is more to it than that. The old system of parliamentary sovereignty was shaped by a carefully constructed system of checks and balances which gave Britain relatively representative and responsible government. However, as Britain faced huge economic and social challenges and decline this system began to fall apart.\n\nFrom Thatcher on governments have chosen to interpret a literal version of parliamentary sovereignty to do what they like: be partisan, centralise powers, reward groups of supporters, and abolish tiers of government as they fancy, and much worse.\n\nThatcherism and New Labour drove through their revolutions on minority votes, aided by our truncated democracy and the ethos of parliamentary sovereignty. This allowed them to mount in Chris Mullin\u2019s words \u2018a very British coup\u2019, using the cloak of time old precedent to push through far-reaching change.\n\nStill to this day the dusty, rarefied, ancient corridors of Westminster are filled not only with the ghosts and tales of old, but with present day worship and deference to the voodoo myth that is parliamentary sovereignty.\n\nIt is a fiction, but the worst, most damaging kind of fiction, one which our political classes believe to be true, and act accordingly. It is a mantra which animates and holds prison our politics, political system and ourselves, the people.\n\nIt has long outserved its usefulness, and should be carted away to some special museum or made the subject of a David Starkey TV special on the mumbo-jumbo which people used to believe in the bad old days. It is time for Britain to enter the modern age, become a fully-fledged democracy, and dispense with the idea that parliamentary sovereignty protects us."} -{"text":"Tony Gentile, POOL, AFP | Pope Francis (pictured centre) with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his wife, Jeannette, at the Vatican on March 20, 2017\n\nPope Francis asked for forgiveness on Monday for the \u201csins and failings of the Church\u201d during Rwanda\u2019s 1994 genocide, saying he hoped his apology would help heal the African state\u2019s wounds.\n\nADVERTISING Read more\n\nBut Rwanda\u2019s government indicated it felt the apology did not go far enough, saying the local Church was still complicit in protecting the perpetrators of the genocide.\n\nAt a meeting with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Pope Francis said that priests and Roman Catholic faithful had taken part in the slaughter of some 800,000 people from the ethnic Tutsi minority as well as moderates from the Hutu majority.\n\n\u201c(The pope) implored anew God\u2019s forgiveness for the sins and failings of the Church and its members, among whom priests, and religious men and women who succumbed to hatred and violence,\u201d the Vatican said in a statement.\n\nAn official Rwandan statement repeated the government\u2019s long-standing accusation of Catholic complicity in the massacres.\n\n\u201cToday, genocide denial and trivialisation continue to flourish in certain groups within the Church and genocide suspects have been shielded from justice within Catholic institutions,\u201d said a government statement.\n\nKagame, a Tutsi, led a rebel force to halt the slaughter in 1994 and accusations immediately surfaced that some priests and nuns had taken part in the killings.\n\nSome of the ugliest massacres were committed in churches, missions and parishes where Tutsis who took shelter were hunted down by extremist Hutu militias.\n\nA U.N. court in 2006 jailed a former Catholic priest for 15 years for ordering bulldozers to level a church, killing 2,000 people who were hiding inside.\n\nRwandan authorities have said other clergy implicated in the killings were allowed to start new lives in Europe and were protected by the Church.\n\nA Rwandan military court sentenced a missing priest in absentia to life in prison on charges of rape and delivering Tutsi refugees from his church to militias who killed them.\n\nLater arrested in France, where he was a popular priest in a rural parish, his case was eventually dropped and he was allowed to remain working at the parish. He has denied the charges.\n\nThe Catholic Church in Rwanda last year offered an apology, saying some of its members had fanned the ethnic hatred that led to the killings, but Kagame said at the time that he wanted the pope himself to say sorry.\n\n\u201cWhy doesn\u2019t he apologise like he does with other cases where more minor crimes were committed by comparison with here?,\u201d he said, referring to sexual abuse cases where the pope has regularly apologised to victims and their families.\n\nFrancis said on Monday he hoped his \u201chumble recognition of the failings of that period, which, unfortunately, disfigured the face of the Church, may contribute to a \u2018purification of memory\u2019 and may promote, in hope and renewed trust, a future of peace\u201d.\n\n(REUTERS)"} -{"text":"2\n\nPresident \ue000 rump has laid out \ue001our princi ples \ue001or tax re\ue001orm: First, make the tax code simple, \ue001air and easy to understand. Second, give American workers a pay raise by allowing them to keep more o\ue001 their hard-earned pay checks. Tird, make America the jobs magnet o \ue001 the world by levelin g the playing \ufb01eld \ue001or American businesses and workers. Finally , bring back trillions o\ue001 dollars that are currently kept o\ufb00shore to reinvest in the American economy. Te President\u2019 s \ue001our princip les are consisten t with the goals o\ue001 both congression al tax-writing committees, and are at the core o\ue001 this \ue001ramework \ue001or \ufb01xing America\u2019s broken tax code. \ue000oo many in our country are shut out o\ue001 the dynamism o\ue001 the U.S. economy, which has led to the justi\ufb01able \ue001eeling that the system is rigged against hardw orking American s. With signi\ufb01can t and meaning\ue001ul tax re\ue001orm and relie\ue001, we will create a \ue001airer system that levels the playing \ufb01eld and extends economic opportunities to American workers, small businesses, and middle-income \ue001amilies. Te \ue000rum p Administration and Congress will work together to produce tax re\ue001orm that w ill put America \ufb01rst.\n\nOVERVIEW"} -{"text":"Back in June, Toronto singer Daniel Caesar dropped two stunning new tracks, \"We Find Love\" and \"Blessed,\" as a kind of two-for-one single. Today he's gifting us with a grainy visual for the songs, which you can watch above. In the video, Caesar \u2014 who's low-key a total heartthrob \u2014 finds love, loses it, and finds it again.\n\nADVERTISEMENT\n\nToday, he's also announcing his debut album, Freudian, which will be out August 25 on Golden Child Recordings.\n\n\"I've never been as proud about anything I've created in my whole life,\" Caesar wrote in a note to The FADER, about the forthcoming full-length. \"This body of work is about examining my most complex feelings and thoughts more directly. I'm more exposed than ever on this album. It's like I'm in therapy, but it's on display. And I got to make this with my friends. It's just us, no label, so it makes it that much more special.\""} -{"text":"At this point, it should come as no surprise when Donald Trump manipulates the truth to his political advantage. However, presenting false racially biased statistics a day after an African-American protester was thrown out of one of his events doesn\u2019t send the best message.\n\nEarlier on Sunday afternoon, Trump did his weird version of a manual retweet of an image depicting a man (in this context, assumed to be black), with a bandana over his face pointing a gun sideways toward a list of wholly fabricated statistics.\n\nThe image alleges that 97 percent of African Americans were killed by African Americans, while only 1 percent of murdered African Americans were killed by police. These two statistics are demarcated from the rest in blue and red ink respectively. It also claims 81 percent of whites who are killed are killed by blacks, which is pure race-baiting at its most ignorant. The numbers in this erroneous image are attributed to the \u201cCrime Statistics Bureau - San Francisco,\u201d and reflect 2015 data.\n\nFor one thing, a \u201cCrime Statistics Bureau\u201d does not exist. The FBI is responsible for this data and they have yet to release a report on 2015, because, well, 2015 is not over yet.\n\nSecondly, whoever made that image did so with the intent of lying about the percentage of white Americans killed by black Americans. In 2014, that number was 14 percent, not 81 percent.\n\nAdditionally, in the graphic, only 16 percent of whites are killed by other whites. In the same FBI report, it clearly states that 82.3 percent of whites are in fact killed by other whites, which is very similar to the number of blacks killed by blacks (89.9 percent).\n\nFinally, when The Daily Beast reverse google image searched the picture, the only yielded results were attributed to YouTube videos in Arabic, which featured a duplicated image of the man in the picture Trump shared.\n\nThis explicit truth-bending is only compounded by the fact that a Black Lives Matter protester named Mercutio Southall Jr. was kicked out of a Trump rally in Alabama on Saturday.\n\n\u201cGet him the hell out of here, will you please?\u201d Trump requested at the rally. \u201cGet him out of here. Throw him out!\u201d\n\nSouthall at one point was on the ground being kicked and punched by several white men in attendance. When asked about the violent incident this morning on Fox & Friends, Trump said, \u201cMaybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing. I have a lot of fans, and they were not happy about it. And this was a very obnoxious guy who was a trouble-maker who was looking to make trouble.\u201d\n\nThe Daily Beast has reached out for comment to Southall Jr., who said he was repeatedly called a \u201cnigger\u201d and a \u201cmonkey\u201d at the event. Meanwhile in a Facebook message, his father asked me for some time before speaking about yesterday's events.\n\nThe Trump campaign has not responded to a question from The Daily Beast about whether Trump himself retweeted the image and where he got the information within it.\n\nThe FBI National Press Office told me they would have to wait until staffers were at work tomorrow to assess the validity of the data."} -{"text":"Williams \"couldn't afford\" to put together a mule car to run in Pirelli's 2017 tyre test program this year, according to Pat Symonds.\n\nPirelli asked teams to produce modified cars in order to simulate increased levels of downforce, allowing it to test the 2017 tyres before next year's cars hit the track. Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull will carry out a number of tests from August until November, with all three testing two days after the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi.\n\nWilliams was one of the teams to originally signal its intent to take part but Symonds - who is the team's chief technical officer - says the costs were too high.\n\n\"Not second class, but we don't have the money to do it,\" Symonds told the official Formula One website when asked if missing out makes it a second class team. \"We wanted to join, but then we worked out the costs and it showed that we couldn't afford to do it.\n\n\"Pirelli will disseminate the information as best as they can, but it will never be the same as running it on your car. And we certainly don't have a strategic relationship with any other team!\"\n\nAnd Symonds believes the change in tyre regulations next year will be the \"most crucial\" difference in 2017, but says tyre strategy will continue to play a part in races.\n\n\"Not eliminated - that would be a too strong word - but if Pirelli hit the target then I would expect that two-stop races turn into one-stop races and three-stop races turn into two-stop races. We will see wider windows to make the pit stop - so the strategic element will be less, but not eliminated.\n\n\"Of all the changes for 2017 the tyres will be the most crucial I believe. All teams aside from the three that do testing will have no knowledge of what the 2017 tyres will look like until they run them in February. Only Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull are testing - the rest, we need to see.\"\n\nClosing the gap? 2016 constructors points progression\n\nFEATURE: Red Bull Racing: Be My Guest\n\nFrom the cockpit: Felipe Nasr on the green grass of home\n\nKeep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter"} -{"text":"The manufacturer of the diet candy Ayds is seeking a new name for its product because publicity about the deadly disease AIDS is hurting sales, the chairman said today.\n\nThe diet suppressant has been on the market for 47 years and remains a profitable product for the the Dep Corporation, but sales have dropped by as much as 50 percent in recent years because of the name association, Robert Berglass, the chairman, said.\n\nSince January, Ayds has been marketed in Britain as Aydslim. If sales show signs of recovery, the appetite-suppressant candy may be sold in the United States under that name later this year, Mr. Berglass said.\n\nSo far, reaction from retailers has been positive, he said, but consumer reaction has not been determined. Consumer reaction could be available within a few months becuase most people go on diets in the spring, he said.\n\nFederal health officials believe about 40,000 Americans have been stricken with AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome."} -{"text":"EU Looks To Prevent Employers From Viewing An Applicant's Publicly Available Social Media Information\n\nfrom the well-that's-dumb dept\n\nEver since social media sites like Facebook and Twitter became household names here in America, we've occasionally had really stupid debates about just what type of access to those accounts employers should get from their employees. Some states have even passed laws that would allow employers to demand social media passwords from employees and applicants, presumably so that company reps can comb through private messages and posts shared only with the employee's or applicant's friends. If all of that seems stupid to you, that's because it totally is!\n\nBut it's not remotely as dumb as what the EU has decided to do in regulating corporations such that they are disallowed from viewing public social media information about an applicant unless it directly relates to the job for which they have applied. To be clear, this new regulation is non-binding at the moment, but it will be the basis of data protection laws set to come out in the future. Still, preventing a company from viewing publicly available information doesn't make much sense.\n\nEmployers who use Facebook, Twitter and other social media to check on potential job candidates could be breaking European law in future. An EU data protection working party has ruled that employers should require \"legal grounds\" before snooping. The recommendations are non-binding, but will influence forthcoming changes to data protection laws. The guidelines from the Article 29 working party will inform a radical shake-up of European data protection laws, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which are due to come into force in May 2018. Their recommendations also suggest that any data collected from an internet search of potential candidates must be necessary and relevant to the performance of the job.\n\nWhen it comes to privacy restrictions on matters of social media, it seems to me that there is an easy demarcation line that ought to suffice here: that which is public and that which is not. Most social media sites come with handy tools to keep some or all portions of an account private, or shareable only amongst connections within the platform. If an applicant wants something kept from the eyes of an employer, they need only hide it behind those privacy options. This regulation, however, would restrict a company from accessing public information, which should plainly be viewed as nonsensical.\n\nThe post notes that recruitment sites like CareerBuilder have seen rates of 70% or so employers that check public social media accounts of applicants they consider hiring. That's as surprising as the sun rising each morning. It's barely even considered creepy any longer to google the names of friends, never mind people you're looking to hire. Somehow I don't see any regulation curbing that across a continent.\n\nFiled Under: data protection, eu, interviews, jobs, privacy, public info, social media"} -{"text":"Americans believe that obesity is tied with cancer as the biggest health threat in the nation today. But though scientific research shows that diet and exercise are insufficient solutions, a large majority say fat people should be able to summon the willpower to lose weight on their own.\n\nThe findings are from a nationally representative survey of 1,509 adults released on Tuesday by NORC at the University of Chicago, an independent research institution. The study, funded by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, found that concerns about obesity have risen. Just a few years ago, in a more limited survey, cancer was seen as the most serious health threat.\n\nThe lead researcher, Jennifer Benz of the survey group at the University of Chicago, said that to her knowledge no other survey has provided so comprehensive a view of Americans\u2019 beliefs about obesity, including how to treat it, whether people are personally responsible for it and whether it is a disease.\n\nResearchers say obesity, which affects one-third of Americans, is caused by interactions between the environment and genetics and has little to do with sloth or gluttony. There are hundreds of genes that can predispose to obesity in an environment where food is cheap and portions are abundant."} -{"text":"Glendale Water & Power is warning customers of a recent increase in telephone scams aimed at bilking them of thousands of dollars for phony past-due bills.\n\nCustomers are contacted by presumed customer service representatives and told their accounts are delinquent and they must pay immediately over the phone or face service shutoff. They are instructed to purchase a Green Pack Money Card \u2014 a specific prepaid debit card \u2014 from a 7-Eleven or Rite Aid and then call back to pay the bill using the card.\n\nIn the past week, three separate customers have paid the scammers between $1,000 and $2,000 each, according to GWP spokeswoman Atineh Haroutunian.\n\nThe scheme is run mostly from outside the United States, and organizers use software to make the calls appear on caller ID to be coming from GWP or from local numbers with an 818 area code, the utility said in a statement.\n\nGWP says its representatives will never ask for payment over the phone, and customers who receive these types of calls are encouraged to contact the utility at 818-548-3300 to check the true status of their account and report the attempted fraud.\n\nCustomers are also asked to call the Glendale Police Department at 818-548-4911 to report the calls."} -{"text":"ADVERTISEMENT\n\nWouldn't it be nice if we could just get all the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump garbage out in the open now, pour it in some toxic news dump and sift through it for a week, air out all the shiny pieces, then go back to talking for six months about which policies are better for America?\n\nIf your answer is no, that would be boring, you're in luck.\n\nThese past two weeks, essentially the first in the general election campaign, Trump has taken us back to the 1990s, the Bill Clinton presidency, especially Clinton's extramarital affairs, even an unsubstantiated rape allegation and the nutty idea that Bill and Hillary had their friend Vince Foster iced. Bill Clinton has sometimes been a distraction when stumping for his wife's presidential campaign, and he arguably does more harm than good.\n\nBut Donald Trump has his own Bill Clinton problems, and refighting the political wars from the 1990s won't fix them. To begin with, as Paul Waldman notes, these scandals were endlessly litigated in the 1990s, and Clinton essentially won.\n\nThat's in part because many voters saw impeachment as an overreach, even though Clinton had lied (or relied on an obscure definition of \"sexual relations\") under oath about an affair with an intern during a six-year, $50 million taxpayer-funded investigation into a 1980s failed Arkansas land deal. (Yes, that is the Whitewater affair that Trump's campaign accidentally disclosed it will be dredging up to attack Hillary Clinton.) It's also because his main Republican antagonists in the impeachment trial \u2014 House Speakers Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, and (we now know) Dennis Hastert, plus Sen. Henry Hyde \u2014 each had their own history of illicit sexual encounters; Gingrich was having an affair while pushing to impeach Clinton.\n\nAnd that brings us to Donald Trump's first Bill Clinton problem:\n\n1. Trump has no business attacking Clinton's affairs.\n\nIs that because Trump, too, has had extramarital affairs? Sure. Is it because he has called Bill a friend, \"a terrific guy,\" who did \"a terrific job\" as president? Kind of. But the big problem for Trump is that he has already exonerated Clinton for any peccadilloes in the 1990s.\n\nIn an August 1998 interview, for example \u2014 the one where Trump called Clinton accuser Paula Jones \"a loser\" \u2014 Chris Matthews asked Trump if he would ever run for president. Trump said no, \"can you imagine how controversial that'd be? You think about [Clinton] with the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine....\" Matthews made a cigar joke, and Trump reconsidered: \"Well, they might like my women better, too, you know.\" As late as 2008, Trump called the Lewinsky affair \"something that was totally unimportant,\" and argued in 2001 that Bill Clinton's big mistake is that he didn't take invoke his Fifth Amendment right to stay silent during the questioning about Lewinsky.\n\nChanging your opinion of a friend is very different than suddenly expressing horror at sexual activity you already called \"totally unimportant.\" At The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf points out that there are really only two explanations for Trump's pivot:\n\nPerhaps Donald Trump truly believes that Bill Clinton is a rapist, or at best \"one of the worst abusers of women\" in U.S. history, as he said. And therefore, Trump invited a man he believes to be a rapist to his wedding, where Trump had his new wife pose beside the ostensible abuser, Trump smiling as the man he believed to be a sexual predator posed with his arm encircling his new bride's waist. Or maybe Trump doesn't actually believe that Bill Clinton is a rapist, or one of the worst abusers of women in history. Rather, he is cynically and falsely publicizing a rape accusation, knowing the accused may well be innocent, because spreading it will help Trump to win power. A frivolous or disingenuous rape accusation would typically make Trump supporters apoplectic.... They regard false rape accusations as serious if not unforgivable transgressions. [The Atlantic]\n\nNeither option looks very good for Trump. And yet he soldiers on, \"a walking contradiction,\" as Chuck Todd said on Wednesday's NBC Today. \"He has contradicted every single attack he's made on the Clintons. You can find sound to contradict it. It doesn't touch him.\"\n\nTrump's rationale, Todd said, is that he was a private citizen, not a politician, when he said nice things about the Clintons, and that being nice to powerful people is good for business. Which brings us to Trump's second Bill Clinton problem:\n\n2. Talking about Clinton makes Trump looking like a lying, misogynist jerk.\n\nWhen explaining why he is talking differently about Bill Clinton now, Trump is essentially saying that he used to be a private-sector liar, but now that he's a politician, he's a truth-teller. That's counterintuitive, but that's the campaign's story and they're sticking to it. When CNN's Chris Cuomo asked Trump's longtime attorney and political adviser, Michael Cohen, at what point Trump was lying about Bill Clinton, in the 1990s or now, Cohen replied: \"He was not lying. He was protecting a friend. There's a difference.\"\n\nWhat's that difference? Cuomo asked. Trump \"was being a true friend,\" Cohen said. He elaborated: \"He was a private citizen who was friendly with the Clintons, and he was trying to protect a friend, all right. Now, it's a different game. It's 2016.\" Cuomo pressed on, asking: \"Why would I trust you if you say all the things you said then were false?\" Trump \"was a private individual,\" Cohen said. When he was bad-mouthing the women accusing Clinton of sexual misconduct, Cohen suggested, Trump \"was standing up for a man who he considered to be a friend at the time.\"\n\nThat's essentially the \"bros-before-hos\" defense, and it's an interesting strategy for raising Trump's dismal favorability numbers with women.\n\n3. Trump wants spouses to be untouchable, except Hillary Clinton's.\n\nTwo of Trump's rockiest moments this campaign are when a Ted Cruz super PAC ran an ad showing a scantily clad Melania Trump, and when GQ published a long profile of Trump's wife. In the first instance, Donald Trump retweeted an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz to his legions of Twitter followers. After the GQ article, Trump said to leave his wife out of this. George Stephanopoulos asked the obvious follow-up.\n\n\"There was an article in GQ about your wife Melania this week,\" he told Trump on ABC News earlier this month. \"And you said that spouses should be off the table, but you are willing to talk about Bill Clinton. Should he be off the table as well?\" Trump eventually got to no. \"It depends if he's involved in the campaign,\" he said. \"I think if he's involved in the campaign, he shouldn't be. And I \u2014 he probably will be involved. I think he gets involved when she plays the women's card.\"\n\nNow this is nonsense, on its face. First of all, Melania Trump is involved in Trump's campaign \u2014 she appears with him at campaign events, she has been interviewed about the campaign on TV, and she has stumped for her husband. If Bill Clinton's participation in his wife's campaign makes him a target, Trump's exemption of his wife makes no sense. Second of all, Hillary Clinton pointing out the offensive things Trump has really said about women doesn't have anything to do with Bill Clinton.\n\nTrump's response is that Hillary Clinton is an \"enabler.\" Or as he told Stephanopoulos: \"Hillary Clinton's husband abused women more than any man that we know of in the history of politics, right. She's married to a man who was the worst abuser of women in the history of politics. She's married to a man who hurt many women.\" But surely Trump would be outraged if anyone in the Clinton camp called Ivana Trump, his first wife and mother of his children, an \"enabler\" of Donald Trump's affair with the future second Mrs. Trump, Marla Maples, when he was still married.\n\nIf only some spouses are off-limits, then Trump has to come up with a better explanation why his wife is untouchable \u2014 not that anyone in the Clinton camp is attacking her \u2014 and Bill Clinton is not. Otherwise he's playing his own \"woman's card.\" Which brings us to Trump's final Bill Clinton problem:\n\n4. Trump is trying to get in the Clintons' heads, and its backfiring.\n\nBill Clinton's extramarital dalliances are \"fair game,\" as Slate's Jim Newell points out, but it's a time-tested electoral dud. Did Trump really think the Clintons didn't expect this? So far, when confronted with Trump's taunts, neither Clinton has taken the bait. In fact, bringing up Bill Clinton and women only highlights Donald Trump's Mad Men-era way of talking about women, and as Newell contends, plausibly, it reminds even many politically moderate women why they don't like Trump's party in the first place \u2014 restricting access to contraception, attacking Planned Parenthood, scrapping WIC benefits. Talking about the \"women's card,\" he says, \"only reinforces how clueless the party is about the ill will such policymaking priorities created, especially among unmarried women.\"\n\nDonald Trump fashions himself as a \"counter-puncher,\" by which he means he only hits people who attack him first, and often he tries to hit them harder. He appears to be serious about this, even proud of it; to him, it sounds chivalrous, just like treating your date nicely is a sign that you are pro-woman. It's actually pretty juvenile, the grown-up version of the 5-year-old's lament: \"But, she started it!\" (It also is a terrible trait for a presidential candidate \u2014 would you really want a thin-skinned, egocentric commander-in-chief going nuclear if he perceives a slight from a foreign leader?)\n\nTrump has the political bully's instinct to attack his opponent's perceived strengths \u2014 \"Trusted\" Ted Cruz became Lyin' Ted, smart and wonky Jeb Bush became Low-energy Jeb \u2014 and Bill Clinton will be one of Hillary's assets in the general election. Bill is \"the most gifted politician of the baby boomer generation,\" said none other than Kenneth Starr \u2014 yes, the one from the Whitewater\/Lewinsky prosecution \u2014 to The New York Times this week. \"His genuine empathy for human beings is absolutely clear.... The 'I feel your pain' is absolutely genuine.\"\n\nSo it's not foolhardy to try and \"muddy up the image of the fondly remembered former president, Hillary Clinton's most effective proxy,\" as Slate's Newell puts it. \"If you can turn Bill Clinton into a liability, you've greatly increased your chances of defeating Hillary Clinton.\"\n\nBut it also carries risks, especially for Trump. That old saying about throwing stones from glass houses? Donald Trump has a glass tower with his name in big gold letters, and Bill Clinton has good aim."} -{"text":"Regardless, what is made abundantly clear on Pixelapse's website is that drawing coherent illustrations was not a business need for their company. This must be true more broadly, because Dropbox themselves acquired Pixelapse even though they could not competently draw a box.\n\nAnother reason that many disparage visual design is that there is real incentive to distancing oneself from it. Many rightly realize that the quickest way to guarantee not getting respect is if their job title includes the word \"creative.\" Thus there is a compensatory advantage to marginalizing visual design and thus proving one's dedication to doing the 'real work.' Daniel Burka of Google Ventures found \"Even among designers of similar seniority, there is marked difference in compensation for UX Design, UI Design, and Visual Design,\" with salaries tending to descend in that order.\n\nPaul Rand once claimed \"A bad design is irrelevant, superficial\u2026basically like all the stuff you see out there today.\" In the years since, he has not been alone in promoting this sentiment. In the introduction to Humanist Interface, I note that designers at prominent companies like Apple, Amazon, and Facebook argue that design used to be a trivial coat of paint.\n\nSince that writing, Facebook's Director of Product Design, Maria Guidice chided designers who \"like to make things pretty, a term I like to refer to as 'aesthetic masturbation.'\" Today we are told we can rest assured that visual design is no longer so vacuous and superficial, due to the advent of flat design.\n\nI take a different stance. 'Pure veneer' is not an insult in my book. Quite the opposite, it is the very definition of visual design. Thinking visual design is anything but superficial not only requires a profound level of ignorance, but it indicates an incredibly limited view of what visual communication can accomplish.\n\nThese rationalizations by newly turned modern minimalists are incredibly telling. If prominent practitioners are being honest with us in claiming that visual design was plagued by harmful decoration only up until the advent of flat design, then they are admitting that for years, for the history of the GUI, and perhaps even the entire history of design itself, designers have been putting on a sham project in order to dupe corporations.\n\nWorse still, claims of visual design's insignificance tell us that design leaders never took their craft seriously. It truly undermines their credibility that it took the arrival of flat design for them to treat the entire spectrum of roles in product design with respect. Of course, as soon as that happened, they graduated from respecting traditional interface design principles.\n\nThis so-called 'maturation' in the vast majority of the design industry is in this way a major indictment of the professional history of these practitioners. If anyone should be condemned, it should not be those accused of the crime of visual design, but those practitioners who treat their job as frivolous.\n\nPerhaps the design world breeds a form of narcissism due to its nature as a winner-take-all economy. That would explain the logic of this race to the bottom in which designers feel compelled to attack their craft before others assume they are 'bullshitters' too. In the words of Dr. Sam Vaknin:\n\nBy pre-empting society\u2019s punitive measures and by self-flagellating, the narcissist is actually saying: 'If I am to suffer unjustly, it will be only by my own hand and no one else's.'\n\nIt is this masochistic status-striving that I find so ugly in this industry. That he who discredits his own craft is the most pious. That the most respected designer is the one who disowns beauty. This perpetual need to be the first to assign irrelevancy to one's own professional practice is the true impetus behind much of the puritanism of modern minimalist avant gardism."} -{"text":"Just days after the racism-fueled Charleston massacre, in which young white supremacist Dylann Roof took the lives of nine black churchgoers, a woman in Texarkana, Texas is being called out on social media for trying to incite racist attacks against the black community.\n\nTexarkana resident Ashley M. recently posted photos of herself on Facebook after reportedly being \u201cjumped by 3 African Americans ourside [sic] of the as [sic] Walmart.\u201d In the photos, she appears to be sporting two black eyes and a bloody nose and lip.\n\nThe problem? The wounds were obviously poorly-applied makeup. In fact, it pretty much looks like Ashley snuck a piece of charcoal into her purse at the last barbecue she attended and then just rubbed it all over her eyes.\n\nAshley M.\/Facebook\n\nYup, she went there.\n\nThe Daily Dot called the Texas-side Walmart (Texarkana shares a border with the Arkansas town of the same name) where the alleged attack took place. We spoke with a security worker who said no incidents had been reported there within the past week.\n\nWe also showed the photos to Texarkana Police Department public information officer Mike Jones, who responded with an emailed statement.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve talked to our detective Sergeant. He has reviewed all of the reports from the weekend and there is no report of this incident,\u201d wrote Jones. \u201cThere is also no report in our system from a person with the poster\u2019s name. We are confident is stating that this incident, if it did occur, has not been reported to this department.\u201d\n\nThe Texarkana Police Department also posted public statements regarding Ashley\u2019s claims on its Facebook page. The post stated that police officials \u201cbelieve the post to be fake\u201d and that \u201cthe injuries\u2026 are highly questionable.\u201d The post has since been taken down.\n\nAshley\u2019s Facebook post has also gone viral on Twitter, after Twitter user and ownyourblackness.com owner @missjia tweeted a screengrab. The responses were both damning and also kinda hilarious.\n\n@missjia she wasted so much makeup doing this. Smh \u2014 \u2026 (@__hbritt) June 22, 2015\n\n@missjia So she went with the raccoon eye contouring method\u2026.I \ud83d\udc40 ya see Miss. Deranged White Lady \u2014 TeamNoChill (@MsRita73) June 22, 2015\n\n@meoskop I did exactly this eye for a drunk clown skit in high school\u2026 \u2014 Mikki Kendall (@Karnythia) June 22, 2015\n\nIn response to being mocked on Twitter, Ashley posted another photo of her \u201cbeaten\u201d face on her Instagram profile. She has since taken the photo down.\n\nIn the caption for the photo, Ashley continued to stick to her story:\n\n\u201cHere is your police report. Sorry I got jumped by three African American young men. I have 2 black eyes and nose still is bleeding, and somehow I am in the wrong. Enough for people to say it was makeup, how embarassing and very rude quite frankly. I don\u2019t want you pitty (sic) attention anything. I\u2019m just warning there are dangerous people in Texarkana be careful. They did this to me for no reason in front of my 3 year old. At Texas side Walmart.\u201d\n\nBy 11am Monday morning, both Ashley\u2019s Facebook and Instagram accounts have either been either removed or made private. Nonetheless, her story about being supposedly attacked by three black men has outraged the Internet.\n\nSadly, Ashley\u2019s attempt to frame black men as dangerous criminals hasn\u2019t been the only one in recent days, following the massacre at the Charleston church.\n\nAn image is currently circulating on Facebook of a young black man holding what appears to be two guns with the caption: \u201cYoung men get your guns and kill them white ass policemen. Do not think about it just do it. Call them bitchs (sic) out set them up with two in the head.\u201d\n\nPolice in Daytona Beach, Florida told WFTV that they had received more than 500 emails about the post by June 11. While officials were quoted as saying the photo \u201cmight be fake,\u201d they also said they were conducting an investigation along with the FBI and ATF, and that the man in the picture was holding \u201ctwo assault rifles.\u201d\n\nDaytona Beach might want to send those officers back to the police academy for more training. Because it\u2019s pretty clear from the gas station-like background and the coiled plastic cables attached to both guns that the guy\u2014who also looks young enough to be a teenager or possibly a college student\u2014is posing for a photo in a store, not trying to start a big, scary race war.\n\nUpdate 12:21pm CT, June 22: When asked why the Texarkana Police Department had taken down its statement on Ashley\u2019s Facebook post, a representative from the police department responded via email with the following statement:\n\nI was just informed by my social media manager that he was contacted by a friend of the original poster. We were informed that she is emotionally disturbed and that they are attempting to get her the assistance that she needs. We have removed the post to avoid contributing to her difficult struggle.\n\nUpdate 8:58am CT, June 23: An earlier version of this article speculated that the guns in the above viral Facebook photo were from a video game. But many gun enthusiasts on social media have pointed out that the trigger locks and security cable visible in the photo indicate that the photo depicts real guns, but was likely taken in a store.\n\nEditor\u2019s note: In light of the subject\u2019s potential mental instability, this story has been updated to remove her last name from the text and related images.\n\nH\/T @missjia\/Twitter | Photo via startupphotos\/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Fernando Alfonso III"} -{"text":"Sleep is present and tightly regulated in every vertebrate species in which it has been carefully investigated, but what sleep is for remains a mystery. Sleep is also present in invertebrates, and an extensive analysis in Drosophila melanogaster has shown that sleep in fruit flies shows most of the fundamental features that characterize sleep in mammals. In Drosophila, sleep consists of sustained periods of quiescence associated with an increased arousal threshold. Fly sleep is modulated by several of the same stimulants and hypnotics that affect mammalian sleep. Moreover, like in mammals, fly sleep shows remarkable interindividual variability. The expression of several genes involved in energy metabolism, synaptic plasticity, and the response to cellular stress varies in Drosophila between sleep and wakefulness, and the same occurs in rodents. Brain activity also changes in flies as a function of behavioral state. Furthermore, Drosophila sleep is tightly regulated in a circadian and homeostatic manner, and the homeostatic regulation is largely independent of the circadian regulation. After sleep deprivation, recovery sleep in flies is longer in duration and more consolidated, indicated by an increase in arousal threshold and fewer brief awakenings. Finally, sleep deprivation in flies impairs vigilance and performance. Because of the extensive similarities between flies and mammals, Drosophila is now being used as a promising model system for the genetic dissection of sleep. Over the last few years, mutagenesis screens have isolated several short sleeping mutants, a demonstration that single genes can have a powerful effect on a complex trait like sleep."} -{"text":"The former boarding house was due to hose 64 asylum seekers. Photo: Stian Strand \/ NTB scanpix\n\nEarly on Tuesday morning, a fire broke out a planned asylum centre in Hol Municipality in Hallingdal that left the building completely destroyed.\n\nPolice were notified of the fire at 4.52am on Tuesday.\n\n\u201cThe building has suffered great damage but it hasn\u2019t burned completely down. It\u2019s possible the fire brigade will monitor a controlled burn,\u201d police spokesman Ole Kristian Nerby told NTB.\n\nNerby said it was too early to say anything about the cause of the fire but confirmed that no one was in the building when the fire was discovered.\n\nThe building was approved for use as an asylum centre in January. The former boarding house was due to host 64 asylum seekers."} -{"text":"It\u2019s a common theme among many small apparel brands, and women\u2019s-specific brands in particular: a frustration with the current state of the market. Not happy with choosing from the limited selection of gear that\u2019s available, a passionate individual (or group of individuals) sets out to change the status quo. It was no different in the case of Femme Velo.\n\n\u201cWhen I started shopping for gear and clothing I was underwhelmed and increasingly disappointed by my lack of options,\u201d Nicole said. \u201cThe jerseys I found were an atrocious shade of pink or baby blue, which just wasn\u2019t for me.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m the kind of person that if I see something that can be better I don\u2019t wait around for someone else to fix it \u2014 I jump right in and fix it myself. Both my parents were entrepreneurs and so starting a business of my own never seemed far-fetched.\n\n\u201cWhen I had the dismal experience of trying to find kit I liked and that I could do long rides in without it literally being a pain in my ass, I decided, why not make it better?\u201d\n\nWhen she was still new to the sport, Nicole found out that while riding alone can be hugely rewarding, it\u2019s the social nature of the sport that binds us to our bikes. It provides the motivation to get out of bed when it\u2019s still cold and dark outside.\n\nFemme Velo initially began as a yearly women\u2019s cycling sportive in 2012, before launching its line of apparel earlier this year.\n\n\u201cI love where we came from in this sport,\u201d Nicole tells us. \u201cFemme Velo isn\u2019t about empowering women, because women don\u2019t need brands to empower them. Women need brands that complement them, that fit into their lifestyle, and most importantly women need choices.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s who we are and what we stand for and if we can get one more woman to walk past a bike shop and wonder at the possibility of what might come if she gets on bike and starts riding, then we\u2019ve done something great with our voice and our brand.\u201d"} -{"text":"The Freedom From Religion Foundation will be running a full-page ad in Sunday's Tulsa (Okla.) World and Wichita (Kan.) Eagle asking the question, \"What does the bible really say about abortion?\"\n\nThe answer is (as the ad puts it): \"There is no biblical justification for the assault on women's reproductive rights.\"\n\nThe advertisement features a compelling portrait of birth control crusader Margaret Sanger, and her quote: \"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body.\" It documents that the bible does not condemn abortion and, in fact, \"shows an utter disregard for human life.\" The ad reminds the reader: \"We live under a secular Constitution that wisely separates religion from government, and protects women's reproductive rights.\"\n\nThe ad is funded and was largely written by Brian Bolton, a retired professor and Life Member of FFRF, in memory of FFRF's principal founder Anne Nicol Gaylor (1926-2015), who was propelled into freethought activism by her experiences working to legalize abortion in the late 1960s and early '70s. Gaylor observed that the battle for women's rights \"would never end\" until the root cause of women's oppression, \"religion and its control of our government,\" is challenged.\n\nThe ad refers the reader for more information to Bolton's article, \"God is So Not Pro-Life\" and FFRF's nontract \"What Does the Bible Say About abortion?\"\n\nThe ad first debuted earlier this spring in the Austin American-Statesman and will appear later this month in the Houston Chronicle.\n\nFFRF warmly thanks Brian Bolton, who lives in Texas, for his generous support and commitment. Bolton additionally sponsors FFRF's annual graduate student essay contest.\n\nFor more information on bible sexism and its reach into civil law, also see Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So, by Annie Laurie Gaylor, published by FFRF."} -{"text":"Moisturize, Moisturize, Moisturize By Worker Bee\n\nConventional wisdom (our dear, dear friend) tells us that without the constant application of skin creams and face lotions and mineral moisturizers, we\u2019ll become haggard parchment people with wrinkled mugs that\u2019d put an elderly Sharpei to shame. It seems to have worked, too. Most bathroom mirrors conceal impressive caches of creams, lotions, and oils, and many people instinctively and compulsively lather the stuff on any chance they get (similar to our infatuation with Purell, but that\u2019s another post altogether). But, as we\u2019ve often wondered, is confronting a totally natural occurrence \u2013 dry skin \u2013 with unnatural methods and products really such a good idea?\n\nAs you know, we here at Mark\u2019s Daily Apple tend to prefer the natural to the artificial \u2013 but that\u2019s only because we\u2019ve found that following nature\u2019s way and listening to biology and evolution often go hand in hand. It\u2019s not a dogmatic ideology of naturalism we espouse here; it is a pragmatic approach to life that tells us the natural way most often is the best way, but that also allows the use of artificial aids, if they are safe and effective. With that in mind, we weren\u2019t all that surprised to read about a recent scientific study that discovered using lotions and skin creams can actually weaken your skin\u2019s resistance to the elements and create a dependency on skin products.\n\nSwedish scientist Izabela Buraczewska found that creams can actually make the skin drier in the long run. Basically, once you start using a cream or lotion to combat dry skin, you have to keep using it or your skin will regress to a point even drier than it was before you started using the cream. She used several different kind of creams and oils to test her results, and she found that even different pH levels didn\u2019t change the effects on the skin. Both mineral and vegetable oil were tried, and both resulted in the skin having less resistance to drying elements. Strangely enough, however, using a complex cream had less of a drying effect. To Buraczewska, this meant that a blanket assignation of blame to all creams and lotions simply isn\u2019t realistic. The problem wasn\u2019t with the idea of artificial skin creams; the problem was that an effective skin cream simply hadn\u2019t been created that could deal with the drying effects.\n\nTissue samples taken from patients suggest that the application of skin creams affects the activity of certain genes that regulate the production of skin fats, which figure prominently in the skin\u2019s moisture levels. If we can isolate the compounds in the creams that do dry the skin, perhaps new moisturizers can be developed without the bad stuff.\n\nSo maybe smearing raw avocado and palm oil on your body isn\u2019t the best Primal moisturizer. Maybe using unnatural oils and creams will eventually be a better way to fight dry skin. There\u2019s a lot of things you can call us, but rigid isn\u2019t one of them. Better living through rigorously tested and nearly perfected chemistry? Sure, we\u2019ll take that every time.\n\nonly alice Flickr Photo (CC)\n\nFurther Reading:\n\nWe Like Drugs \u2013 Fair and Balanced\n\nHow to Get that Natural Glow\n\n10 Rules of Aging Well\n\nPost navigation\n\nIf you'd like to add an avatar to all of your comments click here!"} -{"text":"Image caption John Hemming MP said he would raise the matter in Parliament\n\nAn MP is to raise the case of a woman who he says had her baby forcibly removed by Caesarean section, and taken by social services in Essex.\n\nLiberal Democrat John Hemming said the Italian woman had had a panic attack linked to her bipolar disorder and was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.\n\nShe was sedated after authorities obtained a court order.\n\nEssex County Council, which allegedly took the baby into care, said it could not comment on \"ongoing\" cases.\n\nIt is understood the woman was pregnant when she came to the UK to work for Stansted Airport in 2012.\n\nUp for adoption\n\nMr Hemming, MP for Birmingham Yardley and chairman of the Justice for Families Campaign, said he planned to raise the case in Parliament.\n\nHe claims to have seen documents proving Essex social services obtained a court order for a Caesarean section, and for the child to be taken into care.\n\nHe said the girl, who is now 15 months old, was still in the care of Essex social services and was being put up for adoption.\n\nSolicitor Brendan Fleming issued a statement in which he said he had been instructed by the woman's lawyers but would not discuss the case.\n\n\"We remain committed to fighting for our clients and shall fight tooth and nail to help mother be reunited with her baby,\" it said.\n\nA council spokesperson said: \"Essex County Council does not comment on the circumstances of ongoing individual cases involving vulnerable people and children.\""} -{"text":"When Rand Paul dropped out of the presidential race in February 2016, the self-described \"libertarianish\" senator from Kentucky vowed: \"I will continue to fight for criminal justice reform, for privacy, and your Fourth Amendment rights. I will continue to champion due process over indefinite detention.\" On Thursday, amid the hullaballoo of former FBI director James Comey's dramatic testimony on Capitol Hill, Paul brought a handful of libertarian reporters inside his Senate office to discuss his recent work on these projects.\n\nFront and center is a new piece of legislation, introduced this week, to once and for all ban indefinite detention. With the working title of \"The Sixth Amendment Preservation Act,\" Paul's bill \"prevents any future military force authorization from being used to justify indefinite detention without trial,\" according to a summary prepared by his office. More from that:\n\nSection 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act unconstitutionally declares that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force allows our Armed Forces to indefinitely detain citizens, legal residents, and foreign nationals who are alleged to have engaged in hostilities against the United States. This means U.S. citizens apprehended within the boundaries of the U.S. could be held indefinitely without trial. The Sixth Amendment Preservation Act repeals section 1021 making it clear that no military force resolution can legalize indefinite detention without a trial and seeks to restore our constitutional commitment to individual liberty.\n\nEmphasis in original. \"You never know who could be in the White House,\" Paul explained Thursday. \"Could someone be there that would actually take away all of our rights and begin arresting us for who we are, what we are, what we think, what we read? And so I consider this to be one of the most important pieces of legislation that we'll put forward.\"\n\nAlso covered in the discussion: the senator's efforts to vote down the recent blockbuster arms sale to Saudi Arabia (\"winning a battle like this would send a huge message out there\"), the Trump administration's tough-on-crime posture (\"I think there's very little of this attorney general, this Department of Justice, doing anything favorable towards criminal justice or towards civil liberties\"), criticism of Paul's vote to confirm Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and his reaction to the Comey hearing, which we teased out yesterday.\n\nProduced and edited by Todd Krainin. Cameras by Krainin and Mark McDaniel.\n\nSubscribe to our YouTube channel.\n\nLike us on Facebook.\n\nFollow us on Twitter.\n\nSubscribe to our podcast at iTunes."} -{"text":"The internet is a refuge for scorned groups, from furries to mommy bloggers, and atheists have found a home there as well. \u201cReddit Atheist\u201d has become shorthand for a subculture with its own memes, slang, rivalries, and parodies. While the internet has been a source of comfort for the irreligious, it has also intensified a stereotype about atheists\u2019 self-righteous arrogance.\n\nDespite the dominance of digital atheism, the community hasn\u2019t made the same impact on the mobile web. The online atheism community hasn\u2019t produced many apps of its own. Many of them are mainly collections of Richard Dawkins quotes in horrible fonts; others, like the Atheist Pocket Debater, are explicitly designed to needle Christians. While there are atheist apps, most of them are terrible, or promote arguing.\n\n\u201cI think the faithful have been propagating a narrative of the angry atheist for so long, and I think that there\u2019s some legitimacy to that,\u201d said Peter Boghossian, who teaches at Portland State University and has worked with inmates in Oregon, teaching critical thinking and moral reasoning. Boghossian, with the Richard Dawkins Foundation, created an app called Atheos to help us atheists change our reputation for being condescending doctrinaires. \u201cI wanted to give people a tool, so if they\u2019re approached by somebody, and instead of saying \u2018delusional maniac\u2019 and then swearing, they can explore the reasons for their beliefs,\u201d he said.\n\nIt\u2019s markedly different from other atheist apps in that it explicitly emphasizes not being rude to religious people. \u201cThe larger problem in society is an increasing incivility among different people holding different beliefs. I think it\u2019s really important to have civil, respectful dialogue with people, and we just haven\u2019t been doing that,\u201d he told me. \u201cSo that\u2019s a main thrust of the app.\u201d\n\n\u201cNone of us want this to be Iraq, right? Sunni and Shia divisions, people shooting each other because of different metaphysical beliefs about the world,\u201d he said.\n\nThough Boghossian used an inappropriately extreme example of religious conflict to compare, it is true that atheists are not well liked in America. A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that Americans rated atheism far lower than all major belief systems except Islam. It\u2019s also simply not cool to be atheist. Justin Bieber worships in shredded Japanese denim alongside Kevin Durant at Hillsong. Kanye raps about God dreams. Who do atheists have? Penn Jillette, Arian Foster, and the late Christopher \u201cWomen Aren\u2019t Funny but the Iraq War Is for Sure Good\u201d Hitchens. It\u2019s grim. I\u2019m an atheist, and I am sorry to confirm that we are the pedantic neckbeards of American culture, skulking around the Sam Harris section at Barnes & Noble and telling anyone who\u2019ll listen that Thomas Jefferson was actually a deist.\n\nThis is not helped by reports that some atheists repurpose religious apps to fight about belief; in 2013, for example, The Washington Post reported that a regular free Bible app had gained an unusual following among nonbelievers. Another atheist has made money off of a Bible app he sells to Spanish believers. One diabolical-sounding atheist said he used a Bible app every night to \u201cengage believers in verse-on-verse debates via Twitter.\u201d\n\nAtheos is meant as a corrective to the apps that encourage dismissive behavior toward believers. It\u2019s a multilevel, multiple-choice quiz game; players select canned retorts to statements like, \u201cYou atheists are evil.\u201d There\u2019s a section on how to engage door-to-door Mormon missionaries, and another on disabusing Scientologists of Scientology. \u201cThe believer is going to think you\u2019re not taking them seriously if you compare their faith to gay-dar,\u201d one tip intones. Players are advised to refrain from asking Scientologists if they are taking any medications.\n\nIf you are looking for the world\u2019s most accurate simulator of an interminable, politely fractitious seminar debate between Epistemology 101 students, you are in tremendous luck. Playing Atheos feels like completing homework for an online course in Atheism Studies. The glossary, which provides short definitions for jargon like \u201cFragenblitzen,\u201d reinforces the scholarly vibe. The levels are divided into \u201ccaves.\u201d It\u2019s free, but after the first level is completed, the rest of the content is accessible only with a $5 purchase. I guess you could say it\u2019s like Westworld, in that it\u2019s a game about the nature of reality. I also guess you could say it\u2019s like Westworld, because it could inspire insufferable dorm-room conversations.\n\nWhile Atheos has overtures toward civility, its endgame is to make interlocutors doubtful about their most deeply held beliefs, and there\u2019s something inherently confrontational about that. I don\u2019t see how an app that encourages atheists to practice rebuttals and argument-hole-poking will help relationships between believers and nonbelievers. Atheos might be more useful for atheists engaging in conversation with believers if the screen simply flashed the words Maybe switch the topic to prestige TV??? anytime its sensors picked up voices using the terms \u201cGod,\u201d \u201creligion,\u201d or \u201cNeil deGrasse Tyson.\u201d Maybe the reason there are no good apps for atheists is you just can\u2019t make one. Atheos certainly tries, but at the crux of all these apps is either engaging in fruitless argument or strategically avoiding discussion of the very thing you downloaded an app for.\n\n\u201cAll this back-and-forth sniping serves to do is to make us feel a sense of superiority to the person making the claims and does nothing for them except leave them with a smugness about their assumption that \u2018atheists are all mean,\u2019\u201d former atheist blogger Martin Pribble wrote in 2013. \u201cFaith overrides knowledge and truth in any situation, so arguing with a theist is akin to banging your head against a brick wall: You will injure yourself and achieve little.\u201d"} -{"text":"I haven\u2019t posted on here in quite a long while. I feel like life took me by surprise and dragged me for months. But I\u2019m here now, and lately I\u2019ve felt the need to blog. To write in this blog and converse with others. I recently got laid off from my job due to lack of work. There are so many things wrong with the U.S. economy, but this isn\u2019t the blog for that kind of talk.\n\nI\u2019ve fallen into a hole and I seem to not be able to climb out of it. I used to be completely optimistic and cheery. Lately things have changed and I\u2019m quite the opposite. I stopped practicing yoga, meditating, working out, eating the way I should be and I\u2019ve started being lazy and doing things that do not make me happy for fulfilled. It was a downward spiral and I needed to tighten my grip on reality.\n\nI realize that no one is going to change anything for me. It\u2019s entirely up to myself to change the negative thoughts to positive and to go out and practice kindness and happiness everywhere I go. I can\u2019t lay down on my bed anymore and wait for something good to happen. Good things are happening all around and I haven\u2019t opened my eyes to see them. If you want to see good in the world, like really concentrate on the good in people, you will see it. The same goes for the bad in the world. The bad is easier to see because the world is becoming more cynical and selfish.\n\nI\u2019m really motivated about spreading kindness and happiness. I want to show others that there is a reason to be positive even when there are a thousand negative issues going on. That there are kind people out there even if they can\u2019t seem to find them. That just because you\u2019ve hit a major setback in your life, it doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s the end or even near the end. I want to spread good in the world."} -{"text":"Apparently, Color War isn\u2019t just for kids anymore.\n\nDuring a recent visiting day at her three children\u2019s sleepaway camp in Maine, \u201cOdd Mom Out\u201d creator and star Jill Kargman watched as parents brought out the big guns in an all-out-battle for public affection, Upper East Side-style.\n\n\u201cSomeone had a red wheelbarrow, pulling all the presents \u2026 There were people with Nobu sushi and I said to these moms, \u2018How is that fresh?\u2019 and they were like, \u2018Oh, we were only wheels up an hour ago and we have ice packs,\u2019\u201d Kargman says of the private-jet-loving parents. \u201cSomeone brought a whole thing of [Chinese food from] Mr. Chow because their kids \u2018missed ethnic.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cI know you\u2019re happy to see your kids and it\u2019s a big three weeks not seeing them, but it seems excessive,\u201d says Kargman, 42, who lives in Manhattan.\n\nSleepaway camp is a rite of passage for many city tots. And with camps ranging from $8,000 to $13,000 for a full seven-week term, it\u2019s an expensive one. But, for some parents, it\u2019s not enough to send their kids away to lavish rural retreats. They hire professional packers to ensure their children\u2019s trunks are perfectly assembled, send them off on private planes with platters of Zabar\u2019s smoked salmon and even bring the household staff to visiting day to dust bust the cabin while the parents and kids reconnect after a grueling 3 \u00bd weeks apart.\n\n\u201cVisiting day is a whole beast in itself,\u201d says Jodi Zgodny, co-founder of Love, Laura Gifts, which assembles extravagant baskets for the annual event. \u201cParents definitely want the gifts wrapped and ready to go.\u201d\n\nZgodny says parents will shell out $70 for candy-covered lacrosse sticks and more than $100 for cellophane-wrapped, candy-filled packages outfitted in camp-colored ribbons. Then, there are the all-important bunk gifts \u2014 small, often custom, presents for the entire group \u2014 which can cost upward of $25 per kid (most bunks have around 10 kids).\n\nSometimes, the bunk gifts get even pricier.\n\n\u201cThere might have been a rumor that somebody gave iPod shuffles to every girl in the bunk one year,\u201d a director of an all-girls camp in New York coyly told The Post.\n\nThe camp banished the tradition five years ago after gifts became too excessive.\n\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t in line with our values,\u201d says the director, who asked to remain anonymous.\n\nLeslie Venokur, founder of Big City Moms, a parenting Web site, sends her 8-year-old daughter, Sami, to Camp Pontiac in the Berkshires. Venokur says the girls\u2019 beds are covered in gifts and food by the end of visiting day \u2014 no matter that all edible contraband is typically thrown out or donated after 24 hours.\n\n\u201cA lot of people go to their country clubs the day before and have them make their sushi platters and bring them up,\u201d says Venokur, who lives on the Upper East Side.\n\n\u201cMy daughter\u2019s favorite food is steak. She loves it and I know she doesn\u2019t have it at camp. My husband is crazy, and so he brought up a steak from Wolfgang\u2019s on visiting day.\u201d\n\nFor many parents, such as Upper West Sider Allysa Goldman, the excess is a way to show their love for their children.\n\n\u201cI was completely borderline certifiable,\u201d says Goldman of her first year sending her now 19-year-old and 16-year-old sons to Camp Starlight in Pennsylvania (the youngest one is going for his final year this summer).\n\n\u201cWe were notorious because we brought up so much stuff the first year and piled it up into the car and we realized we had no way of getting it all into camp,\u201d says Goldman. \u201cSo we had to drive into town and buy those huge, huge garbage cans with wheels to put everything in it and drag everything up.\u201d\n\nBut plain black bins didn\u2019t cut it for Goldman.\n\n\u201cI went and bought stickers to decorate the garbage cans and put their names on them,\u201d she says, with a laugh.\n\nSome parents even take their domestic staff to visiting day.\n\n\u201cEvery year, there are parents who bring their housekeepers to [clean],\u201d says Goldman. \u201cThey\u2019re there wiping the floors and spraying the Lysol.\u201d\n\nThe third-season premiere of Kargman\u2019s show, airing 10 p.m. July 12 on Bravo, centers around the absurdities of camp visiting day. She says nannies are more rare, but do make a cameo or two each summer. She recalls one set of parents who wouldn\u2019t let their nanny dress down for the occasion.\n\n\u201cThey made her wear the white Red Kap outfit,\u201d she says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Give her a break, can\u2019t she wear her dungarees? It\u2019s f\u2013king Maine. But she\u2019s in uniform?\u2019\u201d\n\nGoldman says some families will even pay to drive out all the \u201cbunk junk\u201d and food separately.\n\nFlying private to visiting day is the new norm for the elite.\n\n\u201cThe [hired help] will set everything up on the grass with a little tent and everything and leave,\u201d says Goldman.\n\nThis sort of over-the-top behavior starts well before visiting day.\n\nParents shell out thousands of dollars for customized camp gear ranging from $100 splatter-painted sleeping bags to $175 Uggs with their children\u2019s name spray-painted on.\n\nAnd, then, there are the professional packers.\n\nZgodny\u2019s company offers packing services at $100 an hour with a three-hour minimum.\n\n\u201c[My employees] bring Ziplocs and containers and Sharpies and label everything,\u201d says Zgodny.\n\n\u201cThey\u2019ll put dryer sheets between each layer of clothes, so when they come to camp, it smells good. And they\u2019ll put a nice gift on top, too,\u201d she says of the new trend of a \u201ctrunk gift.\u201d\n\nOf course, parents save some extravagances for themselves, too.\n\nFlying private to visiting day is the new norm for the elite who want to skirt a hellish 5-hour-plus drive to Maine and other out-of-the-way locales.\n\nFor those who don\u2019t have their own jets, there\u2019s Blade, which first launched private plane service to five camps last summer. This summer, they have expanded to 20 top camps in the Upper New York region, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Maine. One-way seats cost $425 to $525, according to Blade general manager Evan Licht, who says they\u2019ve already sold out of certain flights.\n\nKargman says two parents offered her and her husband a ride home on their jet after last year\u2019s visiting day.\n\n\u201cI was like, \u2018Well, we have our car so that doesn\u2019t work.\u2019 And she says, \u2018Send your people for it.\u2019\n\n\u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018I don\u2019t have people.\u2019\u201d"} -{"text":"ERBIL, Iraq \u2014 As Iraqi Kurdistan heads to a controversial independence referendum on Sept. 25, divisions are running deep in the Turkmen community, which, like the Kurds, has claims over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.\n\nTurkey's official policy terms Kirkuk \u201ca Turkmen city,\u201d and many Turks generally think that all Turkmens are on the same page. But the reality on the ground is different. To start with, the Turkmens in Erbil and Kirkuk differ in their stances on the prospect of Kurdish independence. Some Turkmens insist on the territorial integrity of Iraq, but others argue that cohabitation with the Kurds is easier. The Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), the largest party representing the Turkmens, is opposed to the referendum, while the Turkmen Development Party, founded by a group that split from the ITF, backs the referendum, arguing that Kurdistan is already a de facto state dealing directly with foreign countries.\n\nTurkey\u2019s and Iran\u2019s policies are another factor swaying Turkmen positions. For quite a while, Turkey has been advising the Turkmens to stay on good terms with the Kurds, which is contributing to the divergence of positions. Shiite Turkmens, meanwhile, have turned increasingly to Baghdad since the Islamic State\u2019s (IS) onslaught in 2014.\n\nBased on their reactions to the referendum, two major trends are discernible among the Turkmens. For those who live in Erbil, the Kurdistan project is not much of a problem. They argue they have been able to preserve their language and culture in Kurdistan, while Turkmens in the rest of Iraq have been obliterated. The Turkmens in Kirkuk, meanwhile, are worried that an independent Kurdistan would lead to the fragmentation of Turkmen areas, with the city of Kirkuk probably going to Kurdistan and towns such as Taza Khormato, Tal Afar, Tuz Khormato, Amerli, Qarah Tabbah and Jalawla staying with Iraq. This would mean an end to the dream of a Turkmen homeland, idealized in nationalist quarters.\n\nITF member Aydin Maruf, one of the five Turkmens in the Kurdistan parliament, paints a tough outlook for a community hit by geographical and sectarian divisions and relying on different powers for protection.\n\nMaruf told Al-Monitor that \u201cBaghdad\u2019s sectarian polices\u201d had pushed the Kurds to seek independence, arguing that the Iraqi Kurdistan Region had progressed both politically and democratically. \u201cHolding a referendum is a right. Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens alike can do that,\u201d he said.\n\nMaruf said the referendum was causing problems mostly in Kirkuk and Mosul. \u201cIn the disputed areas, neither Turkmens nor Arabs accept the referendum, and 70% of Turkmens live in the disputed areas,\u201d he said, stressing that the Kurds should have sought dialogue with other ethnic groups, including the Turkmens, before making the move.\n\nHe said that according to the Iraqi Constitution, Kirkuk, Tuz Khormato, Taza Khormato and Tal Afar do not belong to the Kurdistan region. \u201cTheir status must be resolved within a constitutional framework. That\u2019s why the Iraqi Turkmen Front does not accept holding the referendum in the disputed areas,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cWe have never opposed the rights of the Kurds,\u201d Maruf said. \u201cWe are living together. When the Baath regime [stormed the region] in 1991, the bombs rained on all of us. Our destiny is one. If there is a [Kurdish] state, we will be in that state, and if there is a war, we will be in that war as well. I\u2019m talking about Erbil here. The situation is different for those in Kirkuk and Mosul. If Iraq disintegrates, will it be only Kurdistan seceding? The Sunni Arabs might secede as well. Then, what will happen to the Turkmens in Mosul and Tal Afar?\u201d\n\nWhile some Turkmens charge that the Kurds have been trying to Kurdicize Kirkuk and cannot be trusted, the Kurds argue that Kurdistan is the best guarantee of Turkmen rights. According to prominent Kurdish commentator Massoud Abdulkhaliq, Kirkuk\u2019s Turkmens would be better off as part of Kurdistan. \u201cThe Turkmens used to have presence in all provinces and districts of Iraq. Now it is only in Kurdistan, which means they get along better with the Kurds than with the Arabs. No one is harassing them here,\u201d he told Al-Monitor in Erbil. \u201cThey insist that Kirkuk remain attached to Baghdad, but if it does, they will be finished in Kirkuk, too, as they were in other regions.\u201d\n\nThe ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) rejects accusations that the Turkmens have been subjected to ethnic cleansing and excluded from the administration.\n\nIn an interview with Al-Monitor, Mohammed Khurshid, the KDP head in Kirkuk, described a tradition of cultural diversity involving Kurds, Turkmens, Jews and Christians. That is why Kirkuk natives are called \u201cquadrilinguals,\u201d he said.\n\nKhurshid continued, \u201cAfter 1930, Bedouin Arabs were settled in Hawija to the south of Kirkuk. In 1963, the Arabs of Hawija attacked the Kurds, setting 300 villages ablaze. Hawija has always been a threat to Kirkuk. They attacked Turkmen villages as well. The Arabs of Hawija seized Turkmen lands. The [Arabization] project accelerated after 1974 under Saddam Hussein. In 1988, all Kurdish villages in Kirkuk were burned and destroyed. A total of 758 villages were either destroyed or resettled with Arabs. The people exiled from Kirkuk settled in Dahuk and Erbil.\u201d\n\nKhurshid denied any deliberate Kurdish policy to drive the Turkmens out of Kirkuk. \u201cI don\u2019t say there are no assassinations and explosions, but no Kurdish group has a policy of denial vis-a-vis the Turkmens,\u201d he said. \u201cBefore 2003, there was not even one Turkmen school in the city. Thanks to the Kurdish government, the Turkmens have opened several schools. They are even using the Latin alphabet. The Iraqi government does not accept that, but we do.\u201d Khurshid drew a comparison to Erbil, where, he said, Turkmens had a school before 2003. He argued that Kurds had been supportive of the idea that Turkmens hold senior administrative posts.\n\nThe status of Kurds who were driven out of rural Kirkuk is an issue. Khurshid said the Iraqi government failed to provide support to revive the old villages. \u201cAs a result, the people settled not in the villages but in the cities. The Turkmens are now complaining that the Kurds have settled in urban centers. \u2026 The Kurds moved to lands allocated by the government, not to other people\u2019s homes,\u201d he said, adding that Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who served as president of Iraq, built 1,000 homes in the town of Bashir, near Kirkuk, and gave them away to Turkmen returnees.\n\n\u201cIn our view, Kirkuk belongs to all of us. It\u2019s a city of all nationalities and religions,\u201d Khurshid said. He referred also to a proposal he had drawn up at the request of Kurdish leaders for a special status for Kirkuk within Kurdistan. The proposal, presented to representatives of other groups on July 30, outlines a power-sharing formula according to which the bloc that comes out first in the elections gets the governor\u2019s post, the second the post of provincial council speaker, the third the deputy governor\u2019s post and the fourth the deputy speaker\u2019s post. Given the demographic structure, the governor\u2019s post would likely go to the Kurds, the speaker\u2019s post to the Arabs, the deputy governor\u2019s post to the Turkmens and the deputy speaker\u2019s post to the Christians, Khurshid said. \u201cYet,\u201d he added, \u201cthe Turkmens demand that the third ticket gets both the deputy governor\u2019s and deputy speaker\u2019s posts. We reject that because the Christians would be cast out.\u201d\n\nBeyond those disagreements, another important factor has changed Turkmen perspectives. Because they see Turkey as a protector and guarantor, Turkmens used to say they did not need to arm themselves. Yet at least 12,000 Turkmens have joined the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) since the force was created in 2014 to fight IS, and now many believe that the PMU would fight for the Turkmens if need be.\n\nThe fear of an armed conflict with the PMU is rife among the Kurds. Recalling the 2015 flare-up between the Kurdish peshmerga forces and the PMU in Tuz Khormato, Abdulkhaliq said, \u201cIn Mosul, [the PMU] controls 12 of the 16 disputed areas, while the remaining four are in peshmerga hands. The danger of clashes is more serious in Tuz Khormato and to the south of Kirkuk.\u201d\n\nFormer KDP lawmaker Aso Karim drew attention to the PMU\u2019s Iranian connections. \u201c[The PMU] is growing and could step into action to retake the disputed areas. Iran is influential here,\u201d he said.\n\nIn an interview in Sulaimaniyah, Jalal Jawhar, a senior member of the Movement for Change (Gorran), also voiced concern that actors opposed to Kurdistan could start clashes in the disputed areas.\n\nThe referendum may be a natural right of the Kurds, but myriad uncertainties engulf the day after. The Kurds might still be able to avoid disaster scenarios if they follow more inclusive, flexible and prudent policies."} -{"text":"CLEVELAND (AP) -- Shaquille O'Neal's curious about one aspect of LeBron James' impending return to face angry Cavaliers fans -- the pregame ritual.\n\n\"I'm a silly fan,'' O'Neal said. \"I'm anxious to see if he's going to do that powder thing.''\n\nJames' homecoming on Thursday, his first game in Cleveland since deciding to join the Miami Heat this summer, may be the most anticipated matchup on the NBA schedule this season. Cavaliers fans are expected to mercilessly boo James, whose departure impacted the city's economy and psyche.\n\nDuring his seven seasons in Cleveland, James developed a routine -- before home and away games -- of filling his hands with a white powdered rosin and tossing it above his head just before tip-off, creating a dust cloud that has become as much his signature as any powerful dunk.\n\nOn Tuesday, James seemed unsure if he would do it in front of fans who may no longer appreciate the snow-like spectacle.\n\n\"The powder? I probably will,'' James said after practice in Miami on Tuesday. \"That's just a ritual for myself, a routine that I've always done, I've done on the road. I don't know. We'll see. I may change. I don't know.''\n\nO'Neal, who has felt the wrath of fans after leaving Orlando and Los Angeles, can't wait to find out.\n\n\"We have bets that he doesn't do it,'' said O'Neal, in town with the Boston Celtics to play the Cavaliers.\n\nDwyane Wade believes his Miami teammate will stick with his pregame powder ceremony.\n\n\"I wouldn't expect him to do anything different,'' Wade said. \"He's done it for every game he's played. So why change it just for one game? If he doesn't throw it up, I'll throw it up for him. That's what he does. You cannot stop doing what you do. Moreso than anything, that's his ritual. That's what gets him ready for the game.\n\n\"No one's going to know until tip-off. And we'll be excited to see.''"} -{"text":"Bray Wyatt has qualified to feature in the Money In The Bank WWE Title Ladder Match, besting Dean Ambrose in a qualifier match at the June 10th SmackDown tapings. We can also report that John Cena is scheduled to be added to the title match at some point, according to an update at F4wonline. That would make the line up to six big stars fighting for the title on June 29th, Cesaro vs Sheamus vs Orton vs Del Rio vs Cena vs Wyatt. Apparently WWE have already decided on who will be the new champion, and the company are also mulling over a second ladder match for the traditional MITB briefcase title shot. An argument could be made that Money In The Bank 2014 is in fact now stronger from Daniel Bryan's absence. His scheduled match against Kane was hardly a big sell to begin with. Instead we now have six of WWE's biggest stars fighting it out to be the new WWE Champion and a possible second ladder match on the show. Wyatt beat Ambrose in the SmackDown match after Seth Rollins ran in to distract the Shield member. It looks as if we will get Ambrose vs Rollins in a one on one undercard match at the pay per view, with Roman Reigns possibly doing nothing more than acting as enforcer at ringside. Overall the Money In The Bank pay per view is shaping up to be a great show, the addition of Wyatt into the title equation is exciting, we now await the final qualifier which will probably be Cena next week on Raw."} -{"text":"Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.\n\nJune 5, 2014, 3:16 PM GMT \/ Updated June 5, 2014, 3:58 PM GMT\n\nA senior politician from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party has been quoted saying that sometimes rape is \"right,\" sparking renewed outrage about rampant sexual assault in that country.\n\n\"This is a social crime which depends on men and women. Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong,\" Babulal Gaur, home minister of Madhya Pradesh state, was quoted as saying in the Hindustan Times. \"Until there's a complaint, nothing can happen.\"\n\nGaur is from Prime Minister Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).\n\nModi has so far been silent about the May 26 gang rape and murder of two teenage girls in the north of the country. Three men later confessed to the attacks, which ended with the girls being hung from a mango tree.\n\nThe 14- and 15-year-old cousins were from a poor family without operating toilets in their home and disappeared after going into fields to relieve themselves."} -{"text":"One of the most important things determining the quality of a photo is the angle from which it was taken. Even if you have a really interesting subject and you follow the most important composition guidelines, you still need to find that unique and interesting angle to really make your photo shine.\n\nIn this article I\u2019m going to share my 9 best tips for finding the perfect angle so that your iPhone photos really stand out and look as great as they possibly can\u2026\n\n1. Move around to improve composition\n\nWhenever you\u2019re trying to pick the best angle for a photo, you should always think about balancing the composition, and the angle that you shoot from makes a huge difference for the horizontal and vertical balance of the photo. Let me show you what I mean with an example.\n\nIn this photo my subjects are the tree in the foreground and the mountain in the background. The photo is balanced horizontally as the two subjects are at the opposite sides of the frame. However, it\u2019s not balanced vertically as there is nothing of interest in the top half of the frame, and all visual weight is concentrated at the bottom half of the frame.\n\nNow let\u2019s look at the same scene from a different angle. The next photo was shot from the same location with the iPhone positioned higher and the lens directed more towards the ground.\n\nHere you can see pretty much the opposite \u2013 there\u2019s nothing of interest at the bottom half of the frame, and all visual weight is concentrated at the top. It\u2019s tempting to think that the best solution would be aligning both the tree and the mountain centrally, but then all visual weight would be in the middle, and the top and the bottom would then look empty.\n\nHowever, I was able to balance this image by walking closer to the tree so that the shadow is also included in the composition. Now the tree takes up the top and central parts of the image, the mountain is in the central part, and the shadow fills up the bottom third of the image. I hope this example shows you how easy it can be to adjust composition by just moving around a little.\n\n2. Shoot from the height of your subject\n\nWe look at the world from the height of our eyes, and thus it\u2019s only natural to also take photos from the same height. However, in many photography situations \u2013 such as taking photos of children, pets or plants \u2013 shooting from the height of your eyes will almost always result in bad photos.\n\nWhen photographing children and animals, you should take photos from their height and thus capture the world from their point of view. If you just shoot from the height of your own eyes, your subjects will literally look like they\u2019ve been tossed on the ground.\n\n3. Get close\u2026 and even closer\n\nA great way to make your photos more intimate is to get closer to your subjects \u2013 even closer than you would feel comfortable. That way your photos can convey the kind of intimacy that is normally only found in real life.\n\nDid you notice that this photo is shot from the height of the cat?\n\n4. Add perspective to your photos\n\nWhen possible, try to choose an angle that will show perspective in your photos. There are a few different ways you can do this. If your subject is far away, one simple way to show perspective is to juxtapose it with larger-looking objects in the foreground as seen below.\n\nIf the view extends into the distance, you can show perspective by shooting from a higher angle as seen in the next photo. I took this photo from a staircase so that my main subject \u2013 the silhouette of a women \u2013 is situated against the street extending far into the background.\n\nAnother great way to show perspective is to get really low with your iPhone. That creates an exaggerated perspective by making the objects in the foreground look massive, which can be used to emphasize details on the ground level and make the image more immersive.\n\n5. Include interesting reflections\n\nAn easy way to greatly improve your photos and make mundane scenes exciting is to include reflections in your photos. While you can find reflections on many different surfaces, water is perhaps the most obvious medium for interesting and unique reflections.\n\nIn general, I prefer to include both the actual subjects and their refections in the photo, and I like to make the reflections equally or more prominent than the other parts of the photo. Often the only way you can do this is by placing the lens of your iPhone just a little bit above the water. If the iPhone is even an inch higher, you probably won\u2019t be able to frame the photo as needed.\n\nAnother great reason to place the iPhone within an inch above the water is that even the tiniest waves \u2013 which you can also create yourself \u2013 will look massive and distort the reflection, which of course also adds perspective to the photo. This is something you can only do with a smartphone since in traditional cameras the lens is placed much higher from the bottom of the camera.\n\n6. Include shadows in the composition\n\nMany photos can be greatly enhanced by also including shadows in the composition. This works particularly well if you shoot within the so-called golden hour, which is the hour before sunset (or after sunrise) when the shadows are longer and much more pronounced.\n\nTo make sure that the shadows fit in with the rest of the composition, treat them like you would treat any other photography subject. Quite often it means that your photos with shadows should be shot from the top with the ground taking up a large part of the composition.\n\n7. Shoot from the hip\n\nShooting from hip height is one of the best ways to improve your street photos and other photos of people that are not portraits. By changing the angle like this you can make the photo more dynamic and interesting just because we normally don\u2019t look at other people from that angle.\n\nYou could either get down on your knees to maintain full control over the process, or you can just lower your iPhone and literally shoot from the hip to add some randomness to your photos.\n\n8. Tilt your photos for a more dynamic look\n\nWho said you should always keep your iPhone straight and take perfectly horizontal photos? For some reason that\u2019s exactly what we end up doing 99% of the time. However, there are situations when tilting the iPhone a little will result in a far more interesting and unique photos.\n\nThis is one of my favorite iPhone photos, and it\u2019s made much more interesting by the subtle but perceptible tilting of the frame. Of course, the subjects couldn\u2019t walk like this in real life, thus making this photo a bit surreal.\n\n9. Always keep experimenting\n\nYou should always keep experimenting and looking for a unique and interesting angle for your photos. Don\u2019t just take a photo the way you see the scene, try to change the angle and see how that changes the photo. Don\u2019t just settle for the first version of what could be a great photo.\n\nMaybe you want to get down on your knees, maybe you want to climb the nearby stairs and take the photo from there, or maybe you want to get closer to your subject. Always keep experimenting with unique shooting angles, and you won\u2019t be disappointed with the results.\n\nEmil Pakarklis is the founder of iPhone Photography School, a website that helps people take better photos with the iPhone.\n\nAll photos in this article were shot and edited with iPhone 4S."} -{"text":"Yeast. They already participate in producing some of the most popular pain-killing substances around: beer and wine. Now, scientists have engineered yeast that can also make one of the most powerful analgesics: morphine. Their work is in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. [Kate Thodey, Stephanie Galanie and Christina D. Smolke, A microbial biomanufacturing platform for natural and semisynthetic opioids]\n\nOpiates like morphine and codeine are essential for treating severe pain. But making these meds isn\u2019t easy. All are derived from opium poppies, and tens to hundreds of thousands of tons are needed to meet global needs. The crops can also be affected by climate, disease and even political turmoil in the countries where the plants are grown, which further limits commercial production.\n\nTo get around these potential challenges, researchers have turned to yeast, an organism that can be grown easily on industrial scales.\n\nThe scientists inserted into yeast cells a handful of genes isolated from the opium poppy. These genes encode the enzymes the plants use to produce opiates. After tweaking the system to adjust the relative amounts of the enzymes, the researchers could feed their yeast a precursor chemical called thebaine, and get pure morphine in return.\n\nThe yeast can\u2019t yet make opiates from scratch. But with a bit more effort and a few more enzymes, yeast may produce painkillers that are prescription strength.\n\n\u2014Karen Hopkin\n\n[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]\n\n[Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.]"} -{"text":"Since the Pac-12 expanded to 12 teams in 2011, the annual showdown between Oregon and Stanford hasn't been as much a North Division game as an annual coronation. Four of the last five times these teams met, the winner would go on to win the Pac-12 championship.\n\nAnd once they got to the league's title game, they typically dominated their South brethren. The first five Pac-12 championship games have been won by either Oregon or Stanford by an average of three touchdowns. It was a shared dynasty that was the envy of the league's 10 other programs.\n\nOregon has a 3-6 record and may miss playing in a bowl game for the first time in a dozen years. Chris Williams\/Icon Sportswire\n\nStanford travels to Oregon on Saturday, only this time the duo's monopoly on conference titles was broken up weeks ago. Regardless of the outcome, neither will win the conference. And neither will win the North. Both programs have yielded to the gentlemen from the great state of Washington \u2026 or the great Washington State. The Cougars and Huskies swept the Cardinal and Ducks in blowout victories, effectively marking the end of one epoch and trumpeting in the Pac-12's Age of Apples.\n\nThe Oregon-Stanford matchup has traditionally influenced playoff and BCS tides. But this year it wouldn't make a ripple in a kiddie pool. The once-ordained have been reduced to ordinary.\n\nYet while there are no national stakes at play for either team, there is still plenty worth investing in. The Cardinal (6-3, 4-3) -- despite their injuries and stilted offense -- still have a shot at a nine-win season and a mid-tier bowl game.\n\nOregon (3-6, 1-5) needs to win to keep its slim hopes of making the postseason alive. The Ducks have lost six of their last seven and are in danger of missing a bowl game for the first time since 2004.\n\nThis has traditionally been a game of competing philosophies: Oregon with its up-tempo, high-scoring brand of offense against Stanford's stalwart defense. And that still holds true. The Ducks are No. 4 in the league in scoring offense at 38.2 points per game. Stanford has the league's No. 3 scoring defense, yielding just 18.6 points per game.\n\nBut there's another contrast this year. Oregon's defense can't stop hemorrhaging points. Stanford's offense can't find any. The Ducks are 11th in the league in scoring defense. Stanford is last in offense.\n\nEDITOR'S PICKS Week 10 Pac-12 Power Rankings\n\nCollege GameDay travels to Seattle to see the two hottest teams in the Pac-12 face off in Washington and USC.\n\nIt's the stoppable force versus the movable object.\n\nLast year was the only time the winner of this game didn't win the league title. Oregon pulled out a tight 38-36 victory at Stanford, eliminating the Cardinal from playoff contention. But Stanford still went on to win the conference and roll through the Rose Bowl.\n\nThat's been a theme in this matchup -- one knocking the other out of something significant. In 2012, it was the Cardinal who topped the Ducks in Eugene in overtime, spoiling an undefeated season and paving the way for that barn-burning Notre Dame-Alabama BCS championship. A year later the Cardinal again topped an undefeated Oregon team. And then in 2015, it was the Ducks who bounced the Cardinal from playoff consideration.\n\nOregon has won the last two, but three of the last four meetings have come down to one possession.\n\nThis game also features two of the league's preseason Heisman favorites -- running backs Christian McCaffrey from Stanford and Royce Freeman from Oregon. Both were coming off outstanding, record-breaking seasons in 2015. But injuries have slowed them statistically and negatively impacted their teams.\n\nIt's a situation neither of these teams wanted to be in Week 11. This is the game that's always been circled as an exhibition of the Pac-12's best and brightest. Heismans have been won and lost in this game. Opinions have been molded. National landscapes have been altered.\n\nBut not this year. Every game is important and every game matters. You won't find a player in either locker room who doesn't care about the outcome. This is just the first time in a long time that the rest of the country won't be watching. Because this time around it's not a coronation. It's just another North Division game."} -{"text":"(Image: Oli Scarff\/Getty)\n\nIt may look like a sci-fi movie prop, but it could be a glimpse at the future of prosthetics.\n\n3D printing can render everyday artefacts in clear plastic, so we can see in unprecedented detail how they work \u2013 and this exquisite model of a prosthetic arm is a brilliant example. It is one of the highlights at the London Science Museum\u2019s 3D printing exhibition, which features more than 600 printed objects.\n\nDesigned by Richard Hague, director of the Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing Research Group at the University of Nottingham, UK, and his students the arm shows how the printers can create strong structure, mobile joints and delicate sensors \u2013 like spiral-shaped metal touch-detectors \u2013 all in one process.\n\nAdvertisement\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a mock-up but it shows circuits that sense temperature, feel objects and control the arm\u2019s movement,\u201d says Hague. \u201c3D printing gives us the freedom to make complex, optimised shapes, and our research aim is focused on printing-in electrical, optical or even biological functions.\u201d\n\nSuch techniques are also bringing prosthetics to people who previously could not afford them. For instance, the open-source \u201crobohand\u201d project, pioneered by South African carpenter Richard Van As, aims to print cheap, plastic customised prostheses for people who have lost fingers, or who were born with some digits missing or malformed. Some of his work \u2013 with the designs available online \u2013 is also on show at the Science Museum.\n\nSee more: \u201cWhat our 3D-printed future looks like\u201c"} -{"text":"How To Fight Like Saenchai\n\nWatch and Learn Saenchai\u2019s Best Muay Thai Techniques and Tricks\n\nObserving Saenchai\u2019s skills in person is mentally exhausting.\n\nHis raw talent is just mind-blowing and it\u2019s nearly impossible to figure out how he fights so perfectly. I was blessed to watch him teach a session at Phoenix MMA (Bournemouth, UK) and managed to film a lot of the techniques and drills he was demonstrating.\n\nSaenchai has been my idol since I started Muay Thai, so it\u2019s my absolute privilege to share his favourite techniques with you. Whilst they are mechanically quite simple, the timing and precision he performs them with is what makes them so effective:\n\n#1. Saenchai\u2019s Kicks\n\nHis unique flexibility allows him to bring his chamber up high with amazing speed and control. When he raises his thigh for a round kick, you have NO idea whether you\u2019re about to get booted in the leg or take a shin to the head:\n\nQuestion Mark Kick\n\nStart by swinging your kick at your opponent\u2019s leg, then at the last minute elevate your chamber and smash your foot into their confused face. The final blow may end up as more of a karate\/tkd-esque flick (which finishes at the target) than a traditional Muay Thai round kick (which goes through the target).\n\nKey points \u2013 Make sure you pop up hard onto the toes of your standing leg to help achieve a good snap in the kick and to help it reach the head. Saenchai makes it look so easy mainly because he has such loose hip flexors, better get stretching if you want to throw it as smoothly as he does.\n\nFlying Switch Teep\n\nOnce you understand the quick footwork required, this highly explosive teep combination will send your opponent flying across the ring whilst making you look like an absolute baller: Throw a front leg teep, then as it lands back on the floor, quickly drag your rear foot up to the front. Now throw your front knee up and jump up off your rear foot. As you\u2019re in mid-air, throw the rear teep. Having blasted your opponent with your rear foot, bring it back behind you so that you land in your normal stance.\n\nKey point \u2013 Throw the front knee as high as you can before executing the kick to make yourself look as G as possible.\n\nFake Round Kick Into Teep\n\nSaenchai uses this classic technique better than anyone: Deceitfully throw a rear round kick chamber out wide to draw a front leg check from your opponent. As they are balanced on one leg, lean back and extend your foot straight down the middle to send them collapsing into a puddle of gullible shame.\n\nKey point \u2013 Exaggerate and sell the initial round kick chamber to force a check.\n\n#2. How to Miss\/Avoid a Kick\n\nMissing A Kick By staying face on to your opponent after you throw and miss a kick, you\u2019re telling the judges that you have complete control of your movements. Also, if you\u2019re looking at your opponent after a miss, it\u2019s easier to detect any incoming counter attacks (sorry to state the painfully obvious). So, next time you miss a kick and swing around in a full circle whilst raising an anticipatory check in foolish panic as you present your back to your opponent, slap yourself. Saenchai would not be pleased.\n\nP.S. There\u2019s a reason Saenchai struts around like he\u2019s just fucked the entire Playboy Mansion: Muay Thai judges favor ring authority and aggression so his confrontational and arrogant swagger tells the judges he\u2019s commanding the situation.\n\nKey Point \u2013 Develop your own ring character (and definitely don\u2019t copy his, or any fighter\u2019s, because people will just laugh at your unoriginality)\n\nThe Lean Back\n\nNo one pulls this off more stylishly than Saenchai. You\u2019ll see videos of him bending backwards to the point he\u2019s basically entering the matrix, but you don\u2019t actually need to be that flexible to do this move efficiently. The evasiveness of the technique comes from stepping back with your rear foot and leaning back just enough to avoid the kick. Making a more minimal movement will also allow you to counter more efficiently.\n\nKey points \u2013 Stepping back enough with the rear foot and not bending back too much.\n\n#3. Elbows Notice how small his movements are when he throws his elbow strikes. When timed properly, elbows do enough damage without the need to dedicate your entire body weight and mortgage behind the shot. You unnecessarily risk losing balance if you over commit. Rear Cross Elbow Watch how he steps out at a 45 degree angle with his lead foot. This allows the elbow to travel in a wider arc and build more momentum which will create a more powerful blow. Most people make the mistake of stepping straight forward when throwing the elbow which limits the strike\u2019s power. Key point \u2013 Step out at 45 degrees. Countering Knee With Up-Elbow Watch how he waits for Pakorn to commit to the knee before stepping in with his own elbow counter. This strike is best thrown as a counter against your opponent\u2019s movement. Key point \u2013 He doesn\u2019t just blindly throw the strike hoping it will hit. Countering Hook With Up-Elbow Key point \u2013 Reach out and meet the punch to prevent your opponent locking on a collar tie. #4. The Clinch Fuck clinching with Saenchai. Ever. Duck under A powerful position to obtain. This essentially turns your opponent into your bitch. Notice how Saenchai blocks Pakorn\u2019s elbow after clearing the arm to avoid being struck by it? Ensure you also pull your opponent at a downward 45 degree angle to break their balance. Key point \u2013 block the elbow and take a big step with your rear knee to load up the strike. Cross face As your opponent reaches to collar tie you, duck under their arm and push their face in the opposite direction to lock out their arm and completely fuck with their body\u2019s mechanics. It\u2019s essential to pull this move off quickly to avoid being countered as you do it. Key point \u2013 do it fast. Body head knee combo This isn\u2019t related to clinch, but it\u2019s a wicked combination I wanted to share. Key point \u2013 Exaggerate the duck down as you throw the overhand to sell it like a body shot, this will help lower your opponent\u2019s guard and increase your chances of putting him to bed. (Thank you to Yokkao for putting this seminar together and allowing me to film. To all the Pakorn fans wondering why I left him out, it\u2019s because he didn\u2019t do any teaching. He\u2019s still a legend in his own right, he just didn\u2019t have any relevance to this article!) Bonus Saenchai Technique Breakdown Video\n\nPlease follow and like us:\n\nAuthor Profile Sam Razvi Sam is a travelling fighter\/journalist from England. He backpacked to Thailand to learn Muay Thai when he was 18 where he ended up having 4 professional fights. He then trained kickboxing in Holland where he learned how much it sucks to not take a leg kick properly. Having also performed stand-up comedy he likes to think he's funny, so please forgive him for any ridiculous jokes (and for the audacity of writing about himself in the 3rd person). Check his travelling fight blog here - http:\/\/www.pineapplesamurai.com. Latest entries Author Archives Culture Western Muay Thai vs Thailand Muay Thai\n\nWestern Muay Thai vs Thailand Muay Thai Technique How To Fight Like Saenchai\n\nLike this: Like Loading..."} -{"text":"With Brisbane Festival in full swing, we round up the best places cheap cafes and restaurants in the city \u2013 whether you fancy a big bowl of ramen, delicate French pastries or beer and burgers\n\nMrs Luu's Vietnamese Canteen\n\nThis is not your traditional-style Vietnamese restaurant. The family who own Mrs Luu's used to run one of the most popular Vietnamese restaurants in Brisbane, but for this latest venture, they have taken just a handful of favourites and given them a contemporary twist. The \"three little piggies'\" banh mi (Vietnamese baguette sandwich) is a combination of barbecued pork, Vietnamese-style ham and their own porchetta, piled high with crunchy, fragrant salad ($7). There are six varieties of goi cuon rice paper rolls (two for $6) and daily blackboard specials, such as green papaya salad with king prawns and pork belly, or Mrs Luu's own pho thai nam (rare beef brisket and noodle soup). Cash only, but there is an ATM on the premises.\n\n\u2022 25 Railway Terrace, Milton, +61 (0) 7 3369 5760\n\nLittle Greek Taverna\n\nLittle Greek Taverna, Brisbane\n\nIt's bustling, rowdy and a bit rough-and-ready, and that's all part of the appeal. This family-run restaurant is hard to beat when it comes to hearty, home-style Greek fare. Select from a list of mezedes, which includes homemade dips, classic zucchini fritters with tzatziki and Aunty Thea Ellie's tiropita (crisp, golden pastry filled with a mixture of warm feta and ricotta cheese, $6). Generous servings of souvlaki come with salad for $15, or $5 per skewer. In addition to traditional yiros (kebabs) at $10 a plate, there's a range of grilled seafood, including octopus, prawns, calamari and scallops (all under $20). You can bring your own wine (corkage $2) and they'll throw in the party atmosphere for free.\n\n\u2022 1 Browning St West End, +61 (0) 7 3255 2215, www.littlegreektaverna.com.au\n\nDouble Shot Espresso\n\nThe guys who run this pint-sized neighbourhood cafe have been in the hospitality game for many years and it shows. Chef Michael manages to turn out an array of perfect cakes, tarts, terrines, sandwiches and innovative breakfast fare from the minuscule kitchen, while Ross manages front-of-house with unflappable cheer, despite how hectic it can be on weekends. You can't beat their banoffee pie. The espresso here is well-made, and as strong as the cafe's name suggests. There simply isn't a dud option on the menu, with everything under $20. Be sure to take cash as there are no card facilities.\n\n\u2022 125 Oxlade Drive New Farm, +61 (0) 7 3358 6556.\n\nJan Powers Farmers Market, Brisbane City\n\nA salad from Nom Noms\n\nThis normally drab corner of the concrete jungle is transformed every Wednesday, bringing a little bit of the Queensland country to the Central Business District. Farmers and producers peddle their delicious wares to a bustling crowd of city workers, students and visitors. For around $10 (\u00a36), you can take your pick from hand-crafted dumplings, German Bratwurst and tasty vegetarian options from the Nom Noms stall. This is also the place for hunting and gathering locally made cheese, hot-smoked salmon, artisan sourdough, macaroons, brownies and ginger beer \u2013 all the makings of a perfect riverside picnic in the nearby botanical gardens.\n\n\u2022 Reddacliff Place (top of the Queen St Mall), George St, Brisbane, every Wednesday; janpowersfarmersmarkets.com.au.\n\nSwamp Dog\n\nSmoked sardines, toasted sourdough, feta and dried tomatoes from Swampdog\n\nAt this edgy little South Brisbane fish and chippery, it's all about sustainable seafood, with an emphasis on locally caught fish. Pull up a stool at the big communal table and help yourself to homemade lemonade, or order a takeaway and head down to nearby South Bank Parklands. Sample Moreton Bay mullet and chips ($10.90) or salt-and-pepper calamari with preserved lemon aioli and chips ($12.90). Our favourites are the mackerel cutlet with zingy pineapple and coriander salsa ($16.90) and the tempura whiting with ginger prawn mousse and fragrant, crunchy Viet-style salad ($14.90).\n\n\u2022 186 Vulture St South Brisbane, +61 (0) 7 3255 3715, swampdog.com.au.\n\nSourced Grocer\n\nIt's the city's hippest market cafe, offering a simple, produce-driven menu, served against an industrial-chic backdrop of gourmet goodies, cut flowers and some of the best fresh produce around. The simple menu is handwritten on the white subway-tiled wall and reads like a who's who of local artisan producers. Food is as wholesome as it is delicious \u2013 salads such as the Noosa smokehouse salmon, freekeh tabbouleh, pistachio, grapes and goat's cheese ($12) will keep the taste buds and the scales happy. The bircher muesli and smashed avocado on sourdough are some of the best you'll find.\n\n\u2022 11 Florence St Newstead, +61 (0) 7 3852 6734, sourcedgrocer.com.au\n\nThe Bun Mobile\n\nbun mobile\n\nBrisbane's first food truck set the bar high. This is fast food with class, offering simple, freshly steamed Chinese-style buns packed with flavoursome fillings. Buns are $8 each ($10 for the daily special), and there are always vegetarian and gluten-free options. Slow-cooked Wagyu beef with soy-pickled shitake mushrooms is a menu staple, as is the char-grilled teriyaki chicken with carrot and mint 'slaw and Japanese mayo. The twice-cooked pork version with hoisin and sakura-pickled cucumber is worth crossing town for \u2013 check the location calendar on their website as these buns get around.\n\n\u2022 +61 (0) 401 420 922, thebunmobile.com.au\n\nTaro's Ramen\n\nTaro's Ramen, Brisbane\n\nThe ground floor of an office tower in the Central Business District seems an unlikely spot for what is undoubtedly the city's best ramen, but it's worth battling the lunchtime crush for a bowl of their signature Red Tonkatsu Ramen ($15.90). Made from Bangalow pork bones, the rich stock has been bubbling away for two days by the time it's ladled into your bowl with tender, slow-roasted char siu pork, noodles, nori, seasoned egg and shallots. Naturally, noodles are made on the premises. For a tamer option, the shoyu ramen broth is a balanced blend of vegetable, chicken and seafood \u2013 or try \"golden triple soup\" with aged soy for a delectable umami hit ($13.90).\n\n\u2022 363 Adelaide St Brisbane, +61 (0) 7 3832 6358, taros.com.au.\n\nChouquette\n\nFirst-time visitors stare agape at the baskets of traditional baguettes, golden croissants and exquisitely delicate cakes on display in this little New Farm establishment. With a host of French-born and \u2013trained pastry chefs in the kitchen and cafe, all rattling off orders to one another in French, this is the most authentic boulangerie-patisserie experience this side of Paris. Best of all, despite the commitment to traditional slow-fermentation bread-baking methods and quality ingredients, you can eat like a French queen here for surprisingly little. Take your pick from any of the picture-perfect pastries \u2013 the chocolate torsade and almond croissant are standouts; add a well-made espresso and expect to hand over a meagre $10 for the pleasure.\n\n\u2022 19 Barker St New Farm, +61 (0) 7 3358 6336, chouquette.com.au\n\nTippler's Tap\n\nTippler's Tap, Brisbane\n\nThis is Brisbane's unofficial craft beer headquarters. A dark, hip little hideaway in Newstead with a staggering array of craft beers and fantastic, Chicago-style bar food. Whether your chosen tipple is a Bacchus Queensland Ale or My Wife's Bitter from Burleigh Brewing Company on the Gold Coast, the bar snacks are a drawcard in themselves. Order a hearty bowl of Grandma Kennedy's chilli with crusty organic sourdough, or share a 1kg serving of Buffalo wings with blue cheese sauce and celery sticks (both $10). Sliders are some of the best around. It's impossible to choose between the classic beef-cheese-onion-mustard combination and the pork belly, caramel star-anise, pickled cucumber and cilantro, so hedge your bets and go with the five for $20 deal.\n\n\u2022 22 Masters St Newstead, tipplerstap.com.au.\n\nMorag writes for extravirgin.net.au. She also hosts a food tour of Queensland on 612 ABC Evenings (Wednesdays 8.15pm)."} -{"text":"Pick virtually any issue facing America today, and you will find a generous collection of Republican lies on the subject. Some are actually well-crafted lies, difficult to disprove, but some are so totally over the edge that a fifth grader could expose them, like this one, so why do they do it?\n\nRep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., delivered one of her signature hard-hitting speeches at the Values Voter Summit, a conference for socially conservative activists on Sept. 17, 2010. At one point, Bachmann took a shot at the woman who leads her chamber, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Pelosi, Bachmann said, \"has been busy sticking the taxpayer with her $100,000 bar tab for alcohol on the military jets that she\u2019s flying.\" Bachmann was referring to the Air Force jets that Pelosi uses to fly internationally and back to her home in San Francisco. (Her Republican predecessor, Dennis Hastert of Illinois, used them as well, under a program approved under President George W. Bush.) Bachman\u2019s claim drew a rapid counterattack from the Speaker\u2019s office, as aides revived arguments they\u2019d used when the allegation first surfaced months earlier. Among other things, Pelosi\u2019s office noted that the Speaker \"does not drink alcohol\" and that there \"is no alcohol service on the domestic flights the Air Force operates for travel from Washington to San Francisco for the Speaker.\"\u2026 [emphasis added]\n\nInserted from \n\nOf course Batshit Bachmann was busted on her lie, as she has been dozens of times before. So why bother? Two paradigms come into play here.\n\nFirst, if Republicans told the truth, nobody would vote for them, except for the richest and most hate filled in our culture."} -{"text":"A medical worker has been suspended from duty after an allegation that she smacked a four-year-old child in front of his mother.\n\nA medical worker has been suspended from duty after an allegation that she smacked a four-year-old child in front of his mother.\n\nThe HSE has confirmed that an investigation is under way into the alleged incident and gardai may become involved.\n\nThe child's mother claimed the incident happened at Letterkenny General Hospital at the weekend. She has made a statement claiming her child was slapped on the bottom.\n\nIn a statement to the Irish Independent, a hospital spokeswoman confirmed the parent had made a formal complaint.\n\nThe medical worker has been suspended while the incident is investigated.\n\n\"Letterkenny General Hospital is investigating a 'trust in care' incident concerning a child who was attending the hospital, accompanied by its parent,\" said the spokeswoman.\n\nShe said the hospital was guided by two policies when dealing with such incidents.\n\nRESPONSIBILITY\n\n\"The 'Children First' policy states that the key principles informing best practice are that the welfare of children is of paramount importance and that all personnel and health professionals, irrespective of the position held within the organisation, have a responsibility towards child protection and welfare,\" she said.\n\n\"The 'Trust in Care' policy aims to ensure that any allegations or complaints against a member of staff are thoroughly investigated.\n\n\"This policy states that 'at an appropriate stage in the process, management should take whatever protective measures are necessary to ensure that no patient\/client or staff member is exposed to unacceptable risk.\n\n\"'These protective measures are not disciplinary measures and may include putting the staff member off duty with pay pending the outcome of the investigation'.\"\n\nIn the statement the hospital also said: \"In the interests of fairness and to ensure due process, the nature of any investigation is not discussed with third parties not associated with the alleged incident.\"\n\nThe spokeswoman added: \"When the results of the investigation are known, appropriate action is taken \u2013 up to and including disciplinary action and, where appropriate, the reporting of the incident to external authorities.\"\n\nIrish Independent"} -{"text":"Felicia Pearson (born May 18, 1980) is an American actress. She played a character of the same name, Felicia \"Snoop\" Pearson, on The Wire. She wrote a memoir titled Grace After Midnight detailing her troubled childhood and time spent in prison for second-degree murder.\n\nEarly life [ edit ]\n\nPearson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of two incarcerated drug addicts, and was raised in an East Baltimore foster home. Born a premature crack baby and weighing only three pounds, she was not expected to live.[1] She was so small that she was fed with an eyedropper until she could be fed normally.[1] According to her memoir, Grace After Midnight, she met her biological parents very few times; her mother was a crack addict and her father was an armed robber. She thus decided to go by her foster family's surname. She was a tomboy from a young age.\n\nPearson worked as a drug dealer. At the age of 14, she was convicted of second degree murder after the shooting of a girl named Okia Toomer, and was sentenced to two eight-year terms, to be served consecutively, at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup, Maryland.[2] She was released after six and a half years.\n\nPearson said her life turned around at the age of 18 when Arnold Loney, a local drug dealer who looked out for her and sent her money in prison, was shot and killed.[1] He was the one who gave her the nickname Snoop because she reminded him of Charlie Brown's beagle Snoopy in the comic strip Peanuts.[1] While in prison, she earned her GED and was released in 2000.[1] She landed a local job fabricating car bumpers, but was fired after only two weeks when her employer learned she had a prison record.\n\nCareer [ edit ]\n\nActing & Reality Television [ edit ]\n\nPearson met Michael K. Williams, who played Omar Little on The Wire, in a Baltimore club. He invited her to come to the set one day. He introduced her to the writers and the producers, and after subsequent auditions, she was offered a role in the series.[1] She has appeared in videos of R&B singer Lil' Mo's \"Dem Boyz,\" rapper Rick Ross' \"The Boss,\" \"Here I Am,\" as well as \"Cash Flow\" by rapper Ace Hood and \"Shabba (feat ASAP Rocky)\" by A$AP Ferg.[citation needed].\n\nFor her performance in The Wire, Stephen King called her \"perhaps the most terrifying female villain to ever appear in a television series.\"[3]\n\nIn February 2015, Pearson appeared in Da Sweet Blood of Jesus as Lucky Mays.[4]\n\nIn December 2015, Pearson appeared in Spike Lee's movie Chi-Raq as Dania.[5]\n\nIn 2016, she played the role of Roxy Barnes in \"Good Cop Bad Cop\", the 2nd episode of the 7th season of the CBS police procedural drama Blue Bloods.[6]\n\nIn 2016, Felicia also joined the cast of VH1's Love & Hip Hop: New York, a reality tv series which documents the personal lives, relationships and careers of individuals who have a history in the hip-hop world.\n\nMusic [ edit ]\n\nPearson was featured in the song \"It's A Stick Up\" with Tony Yayo and Mazaradi Fox. The music video for the song featured clips from The Wire. She has also discussed her plans for forthcoming musical projects in a number of interviews.[7][8] She has the only speaking part in Snoop Dogg\u2019s \"So Many Pros,\" and appears in three \"roles\" in the video (a live-action montage of fake movie posters).\n\nPhilanthropy [ edit ]\n\nPearson has also volunteered as a prison visitor and worked on anti-violence and literary campaigns for youths, and supported The Stay Strong Foundation.[9][10][11]\n\nPersonal life [ edit ]\n\nOn March 10, 2011, Pearson was arrested along with 60 others and charged with drug offenses. The arrest was made during a predawn raid at her home in Baltimore following a five-month DEA operation.[12] At the first hearing after her arrest, Judge John Addison Howard denied Pearson bail due to her acting ability: \"Well, you can change your appearance, I've seen the episodes of The Wire in which you appear. You look very different than you do here today, and I'm not talking about the jumpsuit, I'm talking about your general appearance.\"[13] After a month in jail, Pearson was offered bail of $50,000 on April 8, 2011.[14] In August 2011, she pleaded guilty to the charges a day before her trial was to begin.[15] She was sentenced to a suspended seven-year prison term, with credit for time served, and given three years of supervised probation.[16]\n\nReferences [ edit ]\n\nFurther reading [ edit ]"} -{"text":"Fitness is not always just about exercises; it is also about your diet and nutrition. It is only when exercises and nutrition go hand in hand can you hope to become healthy and have a good physique. Even though most trainers know about nutrition they do not know their legal rights and if they are allowed to share the information.\n\nWhile trainers can share knowledge about nutrition in general but what determines if it is legal is the certification of the trainer and if they are competent to give health advice to their clients. Trainers should not cross the line when suggesting nutritional changes for medical conditions; that is the prerogative of the registered dietician and general physicians.\n\nAs a trainer, you can inform your clients on the importance of adding phytonutrients into their diet and the importance of reducing dairy and relying more on healthy fats; eating more of lean protein.\n\nYou can also share recipes. Basically, you can give them the bricks to build the foundation of their diet. Where you tread tricky ground is when you suggest diet solutions to treat diseases. You cannot suggest any meal plans because that is beyond the scope of a trainer in most countries; in many countries, there are no clear-cut laws on this aspect of fitness. In the US, the law varies based on the state and its guidelines.\n\nFinal thoughts\n\nYour client looks towards you to give them some guidelines on what to eat and what to avoid and you are well within your rights to suggest the right foods and show them the food pyramid; remember only when their diet corresponds to the exercises can they hope to benefit. Those clients who are into bodybuilding will already be following a dietician\u2019s advice and might even be testosterone pills with a positive avis sur testogen aiding their cause.\n\n\u2026"} -{"text":"When six senior Italian detectives arrived in Cairo in early February, following the discovery of the brutally battered body of 28-year-old Italian PhD student Giulio Regeni, they faced long odds of solving the mystery of his disappearance and death. Egyptian officials had told reporters that Regeni had probably been hit by a car, but clear signs of torture on his body had raised an alarm in Rome.\n\nThe Egyptian authorities guaranteed \u201cfull cooperation\u201d, but this was quickly revealed to be a hollow promise. The Italians were allowed to question witnesses \u2013 but only for a few minutes, after the Egyptian police had finished their own much longer interrogations, and with the Egyptian police still in the room. The Italians requested the video footage from the metro station where Regeni last used his mobile phone, but the Egyptians allowed several days to elapse, by which time the footage from the day of his disappearance had been taped over. They also refused to share the mobile phone records from the area around Regeni\u2019s home, where he disappeared on 25 January, and the site where his body was found nine days later.\n\nOne of the Egyptian chief investigators in charge of the Regeni case, Major General Khaled Shalaby, who told the press that there were no signs of foul play, is a controversial figure. Convicted of kidnapping and torture over a decade ago, he escaped with a suspended sentence.\n\nWho murdered Giulio Regeni? \u2013 podcast Read more\n\nThe Egyptians may well have hoped that the outside world, with no independent information, would have little choice but to accept their unsatisfying explanation for Regeni\u2019s death. But in the digital age, getting away with murder has become more difficult.\n\nAbout 10 days after the recovery of Regeni\u2019s body, Italian prosecutor Sergio Colaiocco and a couple of police officers travelled to Regeni\u2019s hometown of Fiumicello, in north-eastern Italy, to attend his funeral. It would be a rare opportunity to question many key witnesses in the case, gathered in one place.\n\nThe family had asked guests not to bring cameras, or to carry signs of protest, preferring a simple, sober ceremony. But more than 3,000 mourners attended the service, most of them spilling out of a school gymnasium into the street. The funeral turned the town of less than 5,000 people into a kind of miniature United Nations \u2013 a tribute to Regeni\u2019s short but global life.\n\nThere were friends from the US, where he had studied during high school; from Latin America, a region he knew well; from the UK, where he had done both university and graduate studies; from Germany and Austria, where he had worked; and from Egypt, where he had lived since November 2015, researching the trade union movement for his Cambridge doctorate. \u201cWe put people up in the houses of friends according to which languages they had in common,\u201d said Paola Regeni, Giulio\u2019s mother, who works as a teacher.\n\nMembership Event: The Long Read live at the Hospital Club\n\nNot only did the police have the chance to question witnesses, they received an unexpected bonus. In a gesture of astonishing openness, Giulio Regeni\u2019s grieving friends and relatives handed over their phones and laptops to the Italian police. As members of the Facebook generation, they were used to living transparently, ceding chunks of their privacy as the price for living in a connected world. If it could shed some light on the circumstances of Giulio\u2019s death, they were prepared to share their personal data.\n\nRegeni\u2019s parents also gave the police his computer, which they had taken from his Cairo apartment after he disappeared. This, together with the mass of emails and text messages collected from his friends, has allowed Italian prosecutors to work around the holes in the evidence provided by the Egyptian government, and to reconstruct Regeni\u2019s world.\n\nThe prosecutors also obtained another vital piece of evidence: Regeni\u2019s battered corpse, which, after an extremely thorough autopsy in Italy, has told them volumes about the final nine days of his life, from the time of his disappearance to the time his body was dumped in a concrete channel beside the road from Cairo to Alexandria.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Giulio Regeni. Photograph: Facebook\n\nWhile this evidence will almost certainly not be enough to help Italian investigators identify Regeni\u2019s killers by name, it has allowed them to refute a series of lies from the Egyptian government about Regini\u2019s murder \u2013 and keep up pressure on Egypt for hard information about his killing.\n\nItalian prosecutors recently made an important breakthrough: the Egyptian government agreed to hand over mobile phone records from both the area where Regeni was last seen, and the place where his body was found. Perhaps even more important, during a visit to Rome in early September, Egyptian prosecutors admitted for the first time that Regeni had been under police surveillance before his disappearance.\n\nThe Egyptian government continues to deny that it had any involvement in Regeni\u2019s death. Over the past eight months, Italian investigators have peeled away layers of false leads, attempted cover-ups, and phony evidence, to build a clearer picture of what happened to Giulio Regeni than at first seemed possible.\n\n\u201cI am going out,\u201d Regeni texted his girlfriend at 7.41pm on 25 January 2016. He was walking from his apartment to the nearby metro, bound for the centre of Cairo. This message is the last trace of him alive.\n\nThat Regeni disappeared on 25 January is not coincidental. It is, in fact, a crucial clue to understanding his murder\n\nThat Regeni should have disappeared on 25 January is not coincidental. It is, in fact, a crucial clue to understanding his disappearance and murder. It was the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, and the massive demonstrations in Tahrir Square that brought the Arab Spring to Egypt and led to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak. The date has a totemic significance for the regime of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, for whom it represents a traumatic climbdown \u2013 a moment in which the military\u2019s apparently unassailable grip on power seemed to slip. As a result, the army had been forced to accept the trial of Mubarak and the election of Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi, posing a serious threat to its position in Egyptian life. Such a thing could never be allowed to occur again.\n\nWhen Sisi and the military took control of the government and arrested Morsi in July 2013, Morsi supporters occupied two public squares and staged sit-ins, hoping for a repeat of the peaceful revolution in Tahrir Square. But this time Sisi sent in tanks and soldiers and massacred at least 1,000 people.\n\nAlthough Sisi came to power himself in the wake of mass demonstrations against Morsi, he seems to live in terror of the crowd. One of his first official acts was to ban any unauthorised assembly of more than 10 people. And each anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising has brought bloodshed. In 2014, Sisi\u2019s government killed more than 60 protesters around the country at the time of the anniversary. A year later, 25 people were killed, including a woman poet who tried to lay a wreath of flowers in the square.\n\nIn the days before his disappearance, computer records show that Regeni had laid low, mostly staying inside his apartment. He probably knew that the Egyptian authorities were working themselves up to a fever pitch in anticipation of the anniversary. Police had reportedly searched 5,000 apartments in Cairo, in an effort to intimidate anyone who might be planning a demonstration. The raids were mostly concentrated in downtown Cairo, and did not include Regeni\u2019s apartment in the Dokki neighbourhood of Giza, a separate city that includes the site of the ancient pyramids.\n\nAlthough Regeni\u2019s mother had asked him to remain at home, where it was safe, he decided to attend the birthday party of a friend on the evening of 25 January. Downtown Cairo appeared to have returned to normal by nightfall and he and another friend agreed to meet at their usual place, not far from Tahrir Square. And so, Regeni walked into the force field of police activity in central Cairo, at its point of greatest alert.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Tahrir Square is almost deserted and heavily policed on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the 25 January uprising. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi\/EPA\n\nOn 21 April, Reuters reported that Regeni had been picked up on the night of his disappearance by Egyptian police in downtown Cairo, near the Nasser metro stop. The news agency claimed that he was taken to a local police station for half an hour, then transferred to a Homeland Security compound in the area. The Egyptian government categorically denied the story, insisting that Regeni had never been in police custody. Reuters has stuck by its story, citing six independent but anonymous sources \u2013 three in the police and three in the security services. After publishing the report, Reuters\u2019 Cairo bureau chief was threatened with criminal prosecution and left the country. Egyptian police recently detained an Egyptian Reuters reporter for unspecified reasons.\n\nIn May of this year, the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior accidentally leaked an internal memo proposing a ban on all press coverage of the Regeni case.\n\nIt is unclear whether Regeni\u2019s arrest was planned, or the result of a random sweep, but once they had him in custody, Egyptian authorities would have been quick to realise that they already had a file on him. \u201cThere is no question that he would have been monitored,\u201d said Marie Duboc, a French scholar who now teaches at the University of T\u00fcbingen, in Germany. Like Regeni, she has studied Egyptian labour unions. \u201cEven historical research that would seem harmless to any outsider, is still extremely sensitive in Egypt.\u201d\n\nDuboc lived under surveillance from 2008 to 2010, when she was in Cairo, working on her own PhD. \u201cI would get strange phone calls from the Ministry of Higher Education, asking about my research,\u201d she told me. Later, when she visited Egypt to do follow-up work, she was turned away at the airport and barred from entering the country. Clearly, her name had been placed on a blacklist. (She has subsequently been allowed to return, she said.)\n\nIndependent labour unions are a particularly sensitive topic in Egypt under the Sisi government, because unions were seen as a key galvanising force in the 2011 revolution. Traditionally, labour unions were government-run \u2013 more a means of controlling workers than representing their interests. The first independent trade union was formed in 2009, but the movement truly took flight after Tahrir Square. A thousand independent labour unions sprouted up after the fall of Mubarak and, within days of the 2011 revolution, the first federation of independent unions was formed. Many democracy advocates in and outside Egypt, including Giulio Regeni and his Cambridge supervisor, the Egyptian political scientist Maha Abdelrahman, regarded the independent trade union movement as a positive development, with the potential to strengthen civil society, democratic participation and workers\u2019 rights \u2013 all things that seem threatening to a military regime determined to repress autonomous sources of power.\n\nOn 11 December, six weeks before he disappeared, Regeni attended a public meeting of the independent unions. He was impressed by their combative energy and wrote an enthusiastic article about it, together with a friend, which they published (in Italian) under a pseudonym. But something disconcerting happened at the meeting: although Regeni sat to the side and was not on the roster of speakers, a woman in a headscarf came over and photographed him. Regeni was shaken and told several friends about it. It was the first sign that he might be being watched.\n\nRegeni\u2019s particular area of research was a nascent independent union of street vendors, a large group that was difficult to control and a cause of considerable concern to the government. Egypt has an estimated five million street vendors, who sell everything from snacks and drinks to cheap clothes and kitchen utensils. In a country of 80 to 90 million people, as many as a quarter of Egyptian families depend to some degree on the income of a street vendor.\n\nThe Sisi government regards these workers with clear suspicion. Street vendors moved rapidly into Tahrir Square during the massive demonstrations of 2011. Most were simply looking to make a little money, selling food and drink to protesters, but their very presence was viewed by the authorities as aiding and abetting the revolution. Since then, the government has sought unsuccessfully to remove street vendors from the centre of Cairo, using fines, prison sentences and violence.\n\n\u201cAfter repeated failures to clear Cairo\u2019s city centre of street vendors \u2026 the Cairo governorate issued a shrewd decree,\u201d wrote Abdelrahman, in an article she published last year. The decree required store owners to report any street vendors working near their shops, or risk losing their own trading licenses. This served a dual purpose of forcing shopkeepers to keep tabs on street vendors for the government and pushing the vendors into the hands of the police.\n\nIn order to remain on the street and avoid police harassment, street vendors were themselves expected to let police know of anything or anyone unusual or suspicious. \u201cOne of the things that has happened in Egypt in the past few years, which we didn\u2019t fully recognise, is that the street pedlars are frequently used as police informants,\u201d said one Cambridge scholar, who preferred not to be named. Scattered around the city, present on nearly every block and square, the street vendors form a natural surveillance network.\n\nFor his doctorate, Regeni was engaged in what is known as \u201cparticipatory research\u201d \u2013 a method that involves spending substantial amounts of time in the field with one\u2019s subjects. While this is standard practice, a young Arabic-speaking foreigner, hanging out for hours in street markets, and asking about unionisation, future organising plans and attitudes toward the government, is likely to have looked extremely suspicious to most Egyptians \u2013 who have been told over and over to be on the lookout for foreign agents.\n\nRegeni\u2019s good intentions may also have blinded him to how his actions could have been interpreted. During the autumn of 2015, he had learned of a grant of up to \u00a310,000 issued by a British foundation to fund a development project. He was interested in applying because he could use the money to support his own PhD research and help the people he was studying. He mentioned his idea to a leader of the independent street vendors\u2019 union, Mohamed Abdallah. Abdallah\u2019s level of interest \u2013 in the money, rather than the project \u2013 worried Regeni. As a result, Regeni dropped the idea. Still, news of a young well-funded foreigner, ready to finance an internal Egyptian movement, may have struck police as exactly the kind of foreign conspiracy they wanted to stamp out.\n\nThose most familiar with Regeni\u2019s work in Egypt dismiss the idea that he could have discovered anything valuable or threatening to the Egyptian government. \u201cGiulio had been out doing field work, talking to street pedlars, maybe six or seven times,\u201d says one of his close friends in Cairo. \u201cHe would have known only a fraction of what any of the Egyptian government\u2019s informants would have been able to tell them.\u201d Even the independent union meeting that he attended and wrote about was a well-publicised event, authorised and monitored by the authorities.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest A street vendor near Tahrir Square, in 2013. In recent years, the Egyptian police have recruited some of them as informants. Photograph: Khaled Desouki\/AFP\/Getty Images\n\nWhile the independent unions were certainly regarded by the Sisi regime with extreme suspicion, the government had already gone a long way to rendering them toothless. One of Sisi\u2019s first moves was to make the chief of the federation of independent unions his minister of labour, an appointment intended to co-opt the movement and bring it under government control. Just this summer, in a further threat to their independence, a new measure was introduced, forcing the independents to re-register or risk decertification.\n\nAnd yet, to a government on constant alert to security threats, there may have been much in the meeting that Regeni attended \u2013 and in the article he wrote about it \u2013 that the government would have found alarming. One of the proposals was for a \u201cseries of regional conferences that lead after a few months to a large national assembly and perhaps a unitary protest (\u201cTo Tahrir!\u201d said several of those present.)\n\nRegeni\u2019s article ends with a few sentences that look like fighting words. \u201cIn the repressive context of the Sisi government, the fact that there are popular and spontaneous initiatives that break the wall of fear is significant and represent in and of themselves an important push for change.\n\n\u201cTo challenge the state of emergency, the government\u2019s appeals to stability and social harmony in the name of the \u2018war on terrorism\u2019, means today, even indirectly, to challenge the very basis on which this regime bases its existence and its repression of civil society.\u201d\n\nOn 7 January, just a month after the union meeting, Mohamed Abdallah denounced Regeni to the authorities. After Regeni\u2019s death, he told the Arabic-language newspaper Aswat Masriya that he became suspicious of Regeni because his questions \u201cwere not about street vendors \u2026 and had other intentions \u2026 I am not an informant but I believe I am protecting my country.\u201d\n\nThe Egyptian government says that as a result of Abdallah\u2019s tip-off, it placed Regeni under investigation, but decided after a few days that his research was of \u201cno interest to national security\u201d.\n\nDuring the nine days after his disappearance, Regeni\u2019s case became an international cause celebre, inspiring the Twitter hashtag #whereisgiulio? It was also a source of serious concern at the Italian Embassy in Cairo, which was preparing for the visit of a major business delegation, led by the Italian minister of economic development, Federica Guidi. On 3 February, while Guidi was meeting with Sisi and other Egyptian officials, a mini-van driver got a puncture on the road from Cairo to Alexandria. While fixing his flat tyre, he discovered Giulio Regeni\u2019s body.\n\nThe Egyptian forensic expert who first examined the corpse initially said that the multiple signs of torture suggested Regeni had suffered a \u201cslow death\u201d. This claim, however, was quickly retracted. The deputy head of criminal investigations in Giza, the city where the body was found, told the Associated Press that initial investigations showed Regeni was killed in a road accident.\n\nMeanwhile, the Regeni case had become a huge story in Italy. In the following days, as pressure mounted, Egyptian officials began floating various theories in the local press: that Regeni was gay and the victim of a crime of passion, that he was involved in a drug deal gone bad, or that he was a foreign spy.\n\nUpon further investigation, these theories fell apart. The digital record in the possession of Italian investigators showed that Regeni had a girlfriend in Ukraine, and there were Skype logs, emails and texts to prove it. His computer, email and bank records showed no trace of contact with any intelligence services. \u201cWe had his bank accounts, which showed he had almost no money,\u201d said Alessandra Ballerini, the lawyer for the Regeni family. \u201cThis is a boy who wore his father\u2019s old bathing suit and used his mother\u2019s old backpack because he didn\u2019t want to be a financial burden to his family.\u201d\n\nMost important was the rigorous second autopsy carried out in Italy, using Cat scans and tissue analysis. The Egyptian pathologist\u2019s report had said that Regeni was killed by a blow to the head. More detailed analysis in Italy showed that he had been hit repeatedly on the head, but that these blows were not fatal. Blood had coagulated around the points where he had been hit, and other cuts, bruises and abrasions on his body showed different stages of healing. This indicated that Regeni had been tortured more than once \u2013 and that days had passed between his initial torture, later sessions, and the moment of his death. He was covered with cuts and burns, and his hands and feet had been broken. Even his teeth were broken. His torturers appear to have carved letters into his flesh, a well-documented practice of the Egyptian police.\n\nThe forensic doctors at the University of Rome used a highly accurate technique for determining time of death, which measures potassium levels in the vitreous fluid of the eyes. They established that Regeni died between 10pm on 1 February and 10pm on 2 February. \u201cThis is important because it means that he was alive for at least six or seven days and tortured repeatedly during that time,\u201d said one Italian investigator. The cause of death was a broken neck. Regeni\u2019s mother believes that this was the work of professional torturers.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Giulio Regeni\u2019s mother, Paola, believes he was murdered by professional torturers. Photograph: Remo Casilli\/Reuters\n\nThe strength of the autopsy evidence forced the Egyptian authorities to abandon the implausible theories of accidental death and begin a new public relations offensive. Sisi suddenly granted an interview to the editor-in-chief of the Rome newspaper La Repubblica, which was published on 16 March and dominated by the Regeni case. As the autopsy evidence implicated the Egyptian police, Sisi seemed to suggest that Regeni\u2019s death was part of an elaborate conspiracy.\n\n\u201cWhy was the body found right when the minister of economic development and the Italian delegation were here to strengthen our cooperation?\u201d he asked. Sisi also mentioned the shooting down of a Russian tourist airliner in October 2015. \u201cRussian tourism and Italian tourism [in Egypt] have collapsed to nothing \u2026 Fill in the dots of these different episodes and you have a clear picture of an attempt to strike the Egyptian economy and isolate Egypt.\u201d\n\nJust days later, in early March, a witness stepped forward with a new hypothesis. An Egyptian engineer claimed that he had seen Regeni, on the afternoon before his disappearance, having a furious argument with another foreigner near the Italian consulate. The engineer, Mohammed Fawzy, then appeared on a popular Egyptian TV programme to say that he thought that the Italian government knew who killed Regeni, but was hiding the evidence. Echoing Sisi, Fawzy speculated that whoever killed Regeni was trying to sabotage commercial relations between Egypt and Italy.\n\nRelatives of the alleged criminal gang have insisted that its members were killed in cold blood at close range\n\nThe engineer\u2019s story collapsed when the Italian prosecutors\u2019 digital archive showed that Regeni had been at home all afternoon on 24 January. He had been on Skype with his girlfriend, chatting as they streamed the same movie and watched it together, 3,500km apart. Mobile phone records also showed that the engineer was not in the neighbourhood of the Italian consulate in Cairo at the time of the alleged quarrel.\n\nAnd then, suddenly, on 24 March, the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior announced a definitive resolution to the case. The ministry announced on its Facebook page that the perpetrators were a gang of four men \u201cspecialised in impersonating policemen, kidnapping foreigners and stealing their money\u201d.\n\nAs proof, the government displayed a tray of objects that included Regeni\u2019s passport, Italian identity card, a credit card and his ID card from Cambridge University. Not only had the Egyptian police found the culprits, they had already killed them. \u201cIn an exchange of fire between police forces and the men,\u201d the ministry explained, \u201call the gang members were killed.\u201d\n\nHowever, phone records placed the leader of the gang more than 100km away from Cairo at the time of Regeni\u2019s disappearance. Relatives of the alleged criminal gang have insisted that its members were killed in cold blood at close range, rather than in a shootout. The government\u2019s scenario also made little sense: why would a band of thieves keep Regeni\u2019s identity cards, given that they would provide incriminating evidence that tied them to the crime? Why would they torture a robbery victim for a week without ever asking for ransom money or using his credit card? Egyptian officials have now accepted that it is unlikely the dead men had anything to do with Regeni\u2019s death. In fact, by producing Regeni\u2019s passport and identity cards, the Egyptian police have apparently incriminated themselves.\n\nThe string of improbable cover stories was becoming an embarrassment even in Egypt. In a rare public rebuke, Mohammed Abdel-Hadi Allam, the editor-in-chief of al-Ahram, a government-owned newspaper, wrote: \u201cThe naive stories about Regeni\u2019s death have hurt Egypt at home and abroad and offered some people grounds to judge what is going on in the country now to be no different from what went on before the 25 January revolution.\u201d He compared the Regeni case to that of Khaled Said, a young Egyptian who had been seized by police in an internet cafe in 2010, and beaten to death. Photographs of Said\u2019s body taken by his brother were posted on Facebook and became an important rallying cry for the protesters who helped bring down Hosni Mubarak.\n\nDespite clear indications of involvement by the nation\u2019s security forces, the Egyptian government is left with what might be called the stupidity defence. As the Egyptian ambassador to Rome put it: \u201cWe\u2019re not so naive as to kill a young Italian and throw away his body the day of Minister Guidi\u2019s visit to Cairo.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere are two theories,\u201d said Karim Abdelrady, an Egyptian human rights lawyer. \u201cOne is that there is a feud between the Egyptian secret services, and one branch dumped the body in order to embarrass the other.\u201d A long, detailed anonymous letter that was sent to the Italian embassy in Bern, Switzerland and published by La Repubblica described complicated machinations within different branches of the Egyptian secret services, and reported that Regeni\u2019s body had been wrapped in an Egyptian army blanket, as if to direct suspicion towards the military police. But Italian investigators say that they have no way to confirm or deny the information in this document.\n\n\u201cThe other theory,\u201d explained Abdelrady, \u201cis that the Egyptian police thought they could get away with it by blaming a band of criminals, and that people would not think the Egyptian police would be so stupid as to leave the body where it could be found.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis case cannot be understood without understanding the context of generalised paranoia in the country,\u201d said one foreign scholar who has lived in Cairo for many years. \u201cFor the last three years, many high-level government officials, including members of the military, have spoken publicly about foreign conspiracies to undermine Egypt. This is bound to seep down to all levels of the police and military.\u201d\n\nThe Egyptian government put Giulio Regeni\u2019s possessions on display in an attempt to prove they had found his killers. Photograph: Uncredited\/AP\n\nAlmost immediately after taking over during the summer of 2013, the Sisi regime seemed anxious to stress that the 2011 revolution was not the result of popular dissatisfaction, but collusion between outside powers and Egyptian subversives.\n\nSince then, the human rights situation in Egypt \u2013 which was never good under Mubarak \u2013 has continued to deteriorate. There are now an estimated 40,000 political prisoners. Between late January and November 2015, Egypt\u2019s Al Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence documented 281 extrajudicial killings, 119 murders of prisoners in detention, 440 cases of torture in police stations, and 335 forced disappearances. After documenting these cases, the Nadeem Center was forced to shut down, allegedly for violating its charter as a medical organisation.\n\nWhile in the past, Egypt had tried to avoid trouble with foreigners, it now seemed intent on making public examples of them. \u201cGiulio died like an Egyptian,\u201d says Ballerini, the Regeni family\u2019s lawyer.\n\nThe climate of xenophobia and police brutality in Egypt has raised questions for Italian prosecutors as to whether it was appropriate for Cambridge University to allow a young foreign student to go Cairo and undertake field research into such a delicate topic. Regeni\u2019s supervisor, Maha Abdelrahman, is very knowledgeable on this subject: she has been a vocal critic of Egypt\u2019s military governments and has written extensively about the country\u2019s unions and protest movements. In early 2015, she wrote about the tendency of turning ordinary citizens into police informants and the increasing criminalisation of previously harmless activities.\n\nRelations between the Italian investigators and Cambridge University got off to a bad start when Abdelrahman declined to hand over her emails and text messages after the funeral. She also kept the police waiting for three hours, turning up for her interview at the police station at 10pm. Abdelrahman\u2019s reluctance to hand over her personal data is understandable, given her background \u2013 she had grown up in Egypt under a military regime, when a person would never have given anything to the police if they could help it. Abdelrahman has chosen not to speak to the press since Regeni\u2019s death, but told colleagues at Cambridge that she cooperated with the Italian police the day of the funeral.\n\nThe Italian prosecutors have been keen to find out whose idea it was that Regeni should write his PhD dissertation on independent unions, and the street vendors\u2019 union especially. When detectives asked her whether she had pushed Regeni to pursue his research into that particular topic, or if she had been aware that he might have felt in danger, Abdelrahman felt that she was being treated like a suspect.\n\nThe lead prosecutor, Sergio Colaiocco, travelled to England in June, having sent a request to two Cambridge professors for an interview. The university says it received no notification from the Italian government, but learned of the request informally from Cambridge police. The two professors initially agreed to meet with the prosecutor, but then declined to be interviewed. This prompted a brief firestorm, with the Italian deputy foreign minister, Mario Giro, taking to Twitter to shame Cambridge for its lack of cooperation. An Italian professor who teaches at Oxford, Federico Varese, also criticised Cambridge in an interview with La Repubblica: \u201cThe university bears some measure of moral responsibility for not protecting [Regeni] and not grasping that the kind of \u2018participatory research\u2019 he was doing increased the risk. It seems that their priority is only to protect Cambridge from possible legal responsibility and a request for damages.\u201d\n\nIn June, Cambridge\u2019s vice-chancellor and a number of academics signed a letter stating that the university had not received any request for help from the Italian authorities, and that Regeni had no particular reason to be afraid for his safety, since \u201cno foreign student, researcher or academic\u201d had ever been murdered in Egypt. The university subsequently hired an Italian attorney to facilitate relations with the Italian government and has received, and fully complied with, a request for various documents in the Regeni case.\n\n\u201cI think this polemic with Cambridge has been overblown,\u201d said one close friend of Regeni\u2019s in Egypt. He pointed out that Abdelrahman had continued to do the same kind of field research that Regeni was pursuing. \u201cShe was not a professor who remained in the library and sent out her students to do field work. The truth about Giulio\u2019s murder is in Egypt, not Cambridge, in the increasing paranoia of the regime.\u201d\n\nIn December, 2015, he said, Egyptian police detained a young French scholar who was conducting research on a workers\u2019 movement, keeping her in jail overnight. \u201cThese kinds of things had been happening more often \u2013 but they go unreported because the scholars don\u2019t say anything, so that they can return to Egypt in the future.\u201d\n\nThe Egyptian government\u2019s softer and more cooperative approach in the last few months suggests, however, that it now accepts an urgent need for reputation management. The government and the Regeni family have agreed, in principle, to meet, which the family hopes will push the investigation another few steps closer to the truth.\n\nRegeni\u2019s death is a mystery hiding in plain sight: his seemingly inexplicable, brutal torture and killing reflects the demise of Egyptian democracy, the stripping away of already limited liberties and protections, the brutal crackdown on dissent, the increase in torture and forced disappearances, the tendency to blame the country\u2019s problems on outside conspiracies. In this closed world, Giulio Regeni, with his ability to speak five languages, his mobile phone full of foreign and Egyptian contacts, might look like a spy, and police, in a system with little or no accountability, might make reckless mistakes.\n\nThe Egyptian prosecutors seemed unable to understand why their Italian colleagues did not accept the evidence they were given. \u201cThe Egyptian authorities seemed shocked that our police kept asking questions after they came up with the \u2018gang\u2019 of killers and the tray with Regeni\u2019s documents,\u201d said one Italian investigator. \u201cTheir attitude seemed to be: \u2018hey, we found the criminals, we have even killed them. This should put an end to it.\u2019\u201d Surely, they thought, concerns of state \u2013 the close relations between two nations, billions of dollars of commercial ties \u2013 should count more than the life of one person, who had been killed by mistake. They seemed to find it impossible to understand that the Italian government would have to account to public opinion and could not, even if it had wanted to, accept a flimsy, implausible account of Regeni\u2019s death.\n\n\u201cThis didn\u2019t happen in a vacuum,\u201d Heba Morayef, an Egyptian human rights advocate, said. \u201cIt came after three years of almost constant rising xenophobic propaganda, fed by the security services, encouraging citizens\u2019 arrests of foreigners, and so on \u2026 There are so many people in the Egyptian security forces that talk about this foreign conspiracy, that more and more people start to believe it. This is how a deeply paranoid police state operates.\u201d\n\n\u2022 Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly email here."} -{"text":"In the threadbare upstairs room that passes for an owner's office at the Lakeshore Theater, original LPs from 1960s comedy giants Dick Gregory and Mort Sahl lean against a window.\n\nChris Ritter, the club's owner, had bought the records in order to have Gregory and Sahl sign them this week, when they were to play his art house comedy club in a converted movie theater on Chicago's North Side.\n\nInstead, along with the broken and plastic-bag-covered urinal in the men's room, they stand as a symbol of what went wrong at the Lakeshore, which hosted some of comedy's most cutting-edge acts and had Robin Williams show up on its stage more than once, but could never live any better than hand to mouth.\n\nAlready reeling from a big loss on a Sandra Bernhard show in February, and faced with more five-figure losses in the weeklong stand by Sahl and Gregory that wasn't selling well, Ritter pulled the plug on the Lakeshore on April Fools' Day.\n\n\"Stupid, three-legged dog,\" he says, comparing the 330-seat theater at Broadway and Belmont to \"a pet you have to put down that is deformed in some way, has some sort of terminal illness. But she just looks at you with those eyes.\"\n\nRitter, 42, was a theatrical producer who fell into comedy not out of some master plan, but because that, he says, is what worked in the room he has held together \"with paper clips and rubber bands\" for eight years, the last three as a comedy house.\n\nLetting it go, clearly, is difficult. We are talking in the theater, the afternoon before a raucous farewell show featuring many of the local comics the Lakeshore has nurtured. The seats, he points out, need replacing. The running lights along the aisle went out not long ago, a fire code violation.\n\n\"There's just so many mixed feelings,\" Ritter says, then blinks hard and looks away, down toward the stage where national stars including Jim Jefferies, Demetri Martin, Mike Birbiglia, Maria Bamford, Doug Benson and more found a Chicago home.\n\nUpstairs is the small apartment where Ritter, his wife, Jessica, and son, Joey, now 10, lived for six years. The family hasn't had health insurance for at least three years, and a few months ago, he says, Jessica was found to have breast cancer.\n\n\"It really gave me a personal jolt: OK, you've got an artistic mission and you're really dedicated to the place, but what are you really doing with your life?\"\n\nHe adds: \"I know in the core of my heart I'm doing the right thing, for myself and for my family. And I'm utterly convinced that in a month, six months, a year from now, I will have this incredible sense of relief in my life, where I'm not running around, panicked about how I'm gonna cover payroll next week, or whether the plumbing's about to explode.\n\n\"What I really want to do is work with artists and do shows. I know that that is going to be my endpoint, so there's a certain comfort in that. But the, uh\" \u2014 another long pause, another look into the emptiness of a theater in the afternoon \u2014 \"it's hard.\"\n\nHe repeats the phrase: \"Stupid, three-legged dog.\"\n\n\u2022\u2022\u2022\n\nThere were final shows Friday and Saturday from Jefferies, the budding Australian superstar whose career arc exemplified Lakeshore's strategy of building an audience for cutting-edge artists. His first show at the theater did $198 in box office in November 2007, and a lot of tickets were given away; his last ones sold out, four shows, some $6,000 per show.\n\nBut before Jefferies, on Thursday night, there is \"Closing Acts,\" a hybrid open-mic night\/Irish wake\/jazz funeral.\n\nFor 61\/2 hours, two dozen stand-ups take turns eulogizing the Lakeshore, roasting Ritter, taking potshots at the much more conventional Zanies comedy clubs, bemoaning Chicago's busy but undernourished comedy scene and, mostly, because there was a microphone and stage time, doing their own acts.\n\n\"Welcome to the end of any hope you ever had,\" says James Fritz, the night's first emcee, speaking to an audience of mostly comedy insiders.\n\n\"I'd be less upset if my parents got a divorce. Honestly, this place means more to me than my blood.\"\n\nFritz also suggests that Bert Haas, the executive vice president of Chicago's Zanies outposts, is \"dancing a jig\" over the closing, the first (and least derogatory) of several mentions of Haas by name.\n\n(Haas, reached by phone, gives it right back. \"It's just another venue,\" he says of the Lakeshore, one whose closing \"means there will be other places popping up\u2026 I've been with Zanies since 1980. In those 30 years I have seen at least 60 different establishments open, try stand-up comedy and close.\")\n\n\"Chris Ritter tried to be an artist on top of being a businessman,\" says Dan Telfer, who runs Chicago Underground Comedy, one of the alternative options that will pick up some Lakeshore slack with local acts. \"This place filled a void that the country was lacking, not just Chicago.\"\n\nAt some point the national anthem is sung. After most everyone remaining at 1:30 a.m. gets onstage to sing it again, Roseanne Barr is officially forgiven.\n\n\"I called Ritter a couple of weeks ago about opening up for Nick Thune,\" says the comic Prescott Tolk. \"He said, \u2018Yes. Do you know anyone who has $200,000?'\"\n\n\u2022\u2022\u2022\n\nThe numbers, actually, were moving in the right direction, Ritter says, bearing out, he believes, the validity of the idea that he and comic Paul Provenza, an adviser, hatched in early 2007: Showcase comedy as an art form (and stop the financial bleeding).\n\nIn 2007, the first year as a comedy-only venue, he and his partners lost $404,000, according to Ritter. In 2008, the venue lost $268,000. And last year, as attendance continued to grow and Ritter cut payroll by 55 percent, it actually made a profit, of about $65,000.\n\nBut his salary kept shrinking; he took home $30,000 last year, he says. And it seemed there would never be enough to pay down the $200,000 in debt remaining (after his partners covered the bulk of the losses) or give the building the more than $150,000 in repairs he says it needs.\n\nSince the closing announcement, Ritter has been gratified by the support and has come to believe people understood the club's mission in a way he wasn't sure they did while it was running."} -{"text":"OTTAWA \u2014 Canada\u2019s democracy would benefit best under an electoral system of proportional representation, a leading authority on voting systems told parliamentarians Monday.\n\nBut no matter what Parliament finally decides, it should avoid a referendum on the question and the danger of a vote based on voter confusion and misinformation, Arend Lijphart told a special committee on electoral reform.\n\n\u201cThe outcomes of referenda are often highly volatile and unpredictable, often involve a lot of emotionalism and outright lies,\u201d he warned. \u201cThe recent Brexit referendum shows how much damage a referendum can do. It\u2019s been a disaster for the whole world.\u201d\n\nLijphart, research professor emeritus of political science at the University of California, said proportional representation (PR) and the coalition governments the system typically produces, \u201cwork better because there is more negotiations, there is more compromise, therefore it builds stronger consensus.\u201d\n\nYears of extensive research, he said, show the most beneficial, statistically significant outcomes that correlates with PR is the quality of the democracies it produces.\n\n\u201cProportional representations (was) not only slightly better, but a whole lot better, there was simply no comparison between PR and FTTP (first-past-the-post),\u201d the system Canada has always used.\n\nPR systems and consensus democracies also have better records for effective policy-making, he said, though FTTP is often mistakenly considered the best system to represent democratic, majority rule.\n\nBut \u201cif you\u2019re a majority government, one-party government, it is based on just between 30 and 40 per cent of the voters. This (type of) government actually struggles constantly with the fact of being a kind of illegitimate majority government,\u201d he told the all-party committee of MPs.\n\nFTTP governments really only represent a large minority\n\n\u201cIt may seem ironic or paradoxical that, in fact, you have in PR better majority rule than with so-called majoritarian governments. FTTP governments really only represent a large minority.\u201d\n\nLijphart acknowledged a legitimate complaint about PR is that parties\u2019 election platforms and promises can be compromised or lost in the negotiations to form a coalition government . Still, in mature multi-party systems, such as in Germany\u2019s, it is often clear prior to an election which parties (and policies) are going to work together in government, he said.\n\nPR models have been adopted by many nations and, with a few exceptions, without holding referendums. Lijphart warned the MPs against doing so in Canada.\n\n\u201cIf one can avoid a referendum, please avoid a referendum,\u201d he urged. While changing the electoral system is an important decision, the problem with referenda is that other issues can come to fore, too, \u201cincluding people just expressing a general dissatisfaction with the government.\u201d\n\nThe Conservative party has argued that there may be no better way to test \u201cbroad-based support\u201d for a new system than some kind of referendum. Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef has expressed apprehensions.\n\nLijphart\u2019s criticism of referenda was countered by committee witness Benoit Pelletier, a University of Ottawa constitutional expert on electoral reform and former Liberal Quebec cabinet minister in the Jean Charest government.\n\n\u201cIf we want to do a reform of our voting system, it\u2019s normally for the population itself, so that the population has greater faith in its democratic institutions,\u201d he said. \u201cI would have a hard time seeing how we could do a significant electoral reform without calling on Canadians and asking them for their opinion.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen you change the electoral system significantly, you change the political culture of a country. It is not just an issue of modalities, it is not a technical issue, it is also a cultural issue, an issue of values. The electoral system is choosing the values that we as a country want to emphasize.\u201d"} -{"text":"Would you be alright, he asked me, in a dream. Would you be able to hold it together, he said, a question in his eyes. I lifted my shoulders, maybe shrugging, maybe tucking my head and my neck in my sweater for warmth, as I feel the cold start to seep into my bones. It doesn\u2019t matter now, does it, is the only thing I could reply. It hardly ever matters now.\n\nEveryone Who Left Us\n\nSteven Cramer\n\nEveryone who left us we find everywhere.\n\nIt\u2019s easier now to look them in the eyes \u2014\n\nAt gravesites, in bed, when the phone rings.\n\nOf course, we wonder if they think of us.\n\nIt\u2019s easier, now, to look them in the eyes,\n\nImagine touching a hand, listening to them talk.\n\nOf course, we wonder if they think of us\n\nWhen nights, like tonight, turn salty, warm.\n\nImagine touching a hand, listening to them talk \u2014\n\nHard to believe they\u2019re capable of such coldness.\n\nWhen nights, like tonight, turn salty, warm,\n\nWe think of calling them, leaving messages.\n\nHard to believe they\u2019re capable of such coldness \u2014\n\nNo color, no pulse, not even a nerve reaction.\n\nWe think of calling them, leaving messages\n\nVivid with news we\u2019re sure they\u2019d want to know.\n\nNo color, no pulse, not even a nerve reaction:\n\nWe close our eyes in order not to see them.\n\nVivid with news, we\u2019re sure they\u2019d want to know\n\nWe don\u2019t blame them, really. They weren\u2019t cruel.\n\nWe close our eyes in order not to see them\n\nReading, making love, or falling asleep.\n\nWe don\u2019t blame them. Really, they weren\u2019t cruel,\n\nThough it hurts every time we think of them:\n\nReading, making love, or falling asleep,\n\nEnjoying the usual pleasures and boredoms.\n\nThough it hurts every time we think of them,\n\nLike a taste we can\u2019t swallow, their names stay.\n\nEnjoying the usual pleasures and boredoms,\n\nThen, they leave us the look of their faces\n\nLike a taste we can\u2019t swallow. Their names stay,\n\nDiminishing our own, getting in the way\n\nAt gravesites, in bed, when the phone rings.\n\nEveryone who left us we find everywhere,\n\nThen they leave us, the look of their faces\n\nDiminishing, our own getting in the way."} -{"text":"Columbus Crew SC, the New York Red Bulls, FC Dallas and the Portland Timbers have all reached the Conference Championship after an arduous 34-game season and at least two Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoff games (three for Portland).\n\nThe ways in which they have been able to make it this far are varied. Each have relied on a particular style of play that has defined their season and ability to get this far.\n\nYou can see those styles of play in some statistics that these four teams have been able to produce throughout the course of the season. Here's one for each:\n\nColumbus Crew SC: Crosses from Open Play\n\nWhen you have Kei Kamara on your team, it is no surprise that Crew SC led the league in crosses attempted from open play.\n\nAs you can see from the table above, Columbus attempted 115 more crosses from open play than any other team in the league. The difference between Crew SC and the No. 2 ranked Portland Timbers is about the same as the difference between Portland and the No. 12 ranked Toronto FC.\n\nGregg Berhalter's team wasn't just attempting a ton of crosses but they were completing them at a high rate. Crew SC completed 27.26 percent of their open play crosses, the second highest rate in the league. The only team to complete a higher percentage is FC Dallas (27.46), who attempted almost 400 fewer crosses than Columbus.\n\nNew York Red Bulls: Opponent Passing Accuracy in Own Half\n\nWhen Jesse Marsch was hired as the new head coach of the New York Red Bulls, he built his team to do one thing.\n\nHigh press.\n\nAnd they have been successful in that endeavor as the Red Bulls won the Supporters' Shield this season and were able to do so largely because of their style of play.\n\nWith their high-press system, the Red Bulls haved allowed their opponents to complete just 84.14 percent passes in their own half. That may not sound all that impressive but consider that is the lowest percentage any team has held their opponents in that statistic since 2010. It was also easily the lowest this season.\n\nPortland Timbers: Shot Conversion Rate\n\nThis stat is a bit different as we are only taking a look at portions of the Timbers' season.\n\nPortland's late-season surge to the No. 3 West and ultimately the Conference Championship was at least in part sparked by the formation shift to put Darlington Nagbe in the center of midfield.\n\nThe main reason they were unable to collect maximum points before this time came down to their inefficient finishing. Despite taking the second-most shots per game in the league, they had the second-fewest goals.\n\nBut since the formation switch, all that has changed.\n\nDespite taking fewer shots, the Timbers have actually seen their goals scored per game skyrocket. Their shot conversion rate, which is goals divided by totals shots, has gone from a miserable 6.98 percent to a respectable 17.07 percent.\n\nTimbers Before\/After Formation Switch Period Shots\/Game Conversion Rate Before 14.32 6.98% After 13.67 17.07%\n\nFC Dallas: Dribbles\n\nEver since Fabian Castillo joined FC Dallas back in 2011, he has been the most prolific dribbler in MLS. That did not change this season.\n\nOpta defines a dribble as \"an attempt by a player to beat an opponent in possession of the ball.\" Basically it's when a player tries to take on another player in a 1v1 situation.\n\nLike Crew SC, not only did they exceed other teams in a specific area, they also were efficient.\n\nEven though they attempted the most dribbles of any team, they completed those dribbles at a rate of 43.08 percent, good for the fourth highest rate in MLS.\n\nCastillo led the way attempting 265 dribbles just by himself and completed them successfully 43 percent of the time.\n\nMichael Barrios (92), Mauro Diaz (79) and Ryan Hollingshead (62) also attempted more than 50 dribbles individually."} -{"text":"Plenty of industry experts, psychologists and body-positive activists have criticized the big, bad magazine industry for its undying love of Photoshop.\n\nBut hearing it from \"real women,\" aka not fashion models, on camera is powerful stuff on its own.\n\nA new video by advocacy T-shirt company FCKH8 showcases women of various ages, races and body types giving Photoshop the middle finger, after unashamedly stripping off the brand's \"This Is What a #Feminist Looks Like\" shirts and showcasing what real female bodies, untouched by airbrushing, can look like.\n\nOf course, even the models featured in magazines are \"real women.\" But the airbrush that tweaks and tones their bodies, touches up their stray hairs and smooths over their little imperfections contributes to making the bodies we see less real.\n\n\"The retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that,\" is how Kate Winslet so perfectly put it about a decade ago, when her own body was airbrushed to the hilt.\n\nOver 10 years later, the airbrushing has gotten way more subtle and less offensive, but it's still happening all the time. \"Things are never, ever as they seem,\" model Chrissy Teigen told the Cut earlier this year, adding, \"Oh, the retouching.\"\n\nThanks to that retouching, we end up not seeing quite so many curves, nor many wrinkles.\n\nFCKH8's video calls out Photoshop for that deception and the shame it can cause women (and men) about their own bodies.\n\nOf course, as SheKnows points out, no video campaign is perfect. FCKH8.com is itself guilty of embracing a single body type on its website, showcasing slender white women; it's also a for-profit company, which some have said conflicts with its social justice mission to take on sexism, racism and other injustices.\n\nStill, seeing women flip the bird to beauty standards is pretty damn awesome \u2014 especially if it can get other women, those who aren't modeling T-shirts or making viral videos, feeling inspired to do the same.\n\nWatch the full video below.\n\nh\/t The Huffington Post"} -{"text":"A mural of Kevin Spacey will soon vanish from the side of a building in the northwest England city of Manchester.\n\nAnonymous street artist Akse revealed via Facebook on Friday that he will replace his 2015 piece \u201cas a result of the recent allegations\u201d of sexual misconduct against the Oscar-winning actor.\n\nThe decision to remove the mural, which shows Spacey as \u201cHouse of Cards\u201d character Frank Underwood, was made jointly with the wall\u2019s owners, Akse added.\n\nAkse painted the mural on the building, owned by Nurhbai and Co. Accountants, in May 2015.\n\n\u201cWe love it!\u201d the company said via Facebook on its completion:\n\nBut as sexual misconduct claims mounted against Spacey, owner Hussain Nurbhai was \u201cadamant\u201d it be replaced, the BBC reported.\n\nAkse has not revealed when or how he will paint over the piece, which formed part of his \u201cPsychopaths\u201d series. HuffPost has reached out for comment.\n\nBryan Cranston\u2019s \u201cBreaking Bad\u201d character of Walter White, and Christian Bale\u2019s character of Patrick Bateman from \u201cAmerican Psycho,\u201d also are featured in Akse\u2019s project in Manchester.\n\nA post shared by Akse P19 Crew (@akse_p19) on Aug 2, 2017 at 3:11am PDT"} -{"text":"This is the same Oklahoma team. The same Sooners that this time last year were on the verge of disaster.\n\nThat couldn\u2019t win a big game anymore under coach Bob Stoops. That no longer ruled the Big 12. That was set up for a spectacular fall after an embarrassing 34-point loss in a bowl game to a team playing a backup quarterback.\n\nSN AWARDS: Coach of the year: Dabo Swinney | All-America teams | Freshman All-Americans\n\nThen Baker Mayfield got eligible, Stoops hired a new offensive coordinator (Lincoln Riley) and OU is now the hottest team in the game heading into the College Football Playoff.\n\nThe reason is simple: the play of Mayfield, the Sporting News 2015 Player of the Year.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think you can overstate how important Baker has been to this team,\u201d Stoops said.\n\nMaybe even the difference between playing for it all and playing out the string \u2013 both the season and a spectacular coaching career in Norman for Stoops. Fair or not, Stoops was feeling heat heading into this season, and had made changes to the staff in the offseason to address some glaring problems.\n\nMORE: Best bowl games | Most intriging matchups | Bowl gift guide\n\nAt the top of the list was the quarterback spot, where OU had struggled the previous two seasons and where the Sooners hadn\u2019t had a game-changer in the most important position on the field since Sam Bradford won the Heisman Trophy in 2008. Mayfield transferred from Texas Tech last season, and despite OU\u2019s significant efforts with the NCAA, he wasn\u2019t granted an appeal to play immediately.\n\nOn the outside looking in, OU\u2019s desperation to get Mayfield eligible seemed strange, especially considering the Sooners were coming off a big win over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl \u2013 a game where quarterback Trevor Knight played well and gave a hint of big things to come in 2014.\n\nNow we know why OU was so intent on getting Mayfield eligible in 2014: he\u2019s a game-changer. He\u2019s a program-defining player whose spirit, intensity and moxie rub off on others around him, forcing them to perform at his level.\n\nMORE: Follow Oklahoma's path to the playoffs\n\n\u201cI never had an idea of changing the way we do things around here,\u201d Mayfield said. \u201cI just wanted to fit in and do whatever I could to help.\u201d\n\nAll he did was make OU a national power again, and lead the Sooners to the College Football Playoff \u2013 something that seemed like a pipedream this time last season. Mayfield threw for 35 touchdowns, and rushed for seven more, had 3,383 yards passing and completed nearly 70 percent of his throws.\n\nLast season, with essentially the same two-deep depth chart, Oklahoma\u2019s quarterbacks threw for 17 TDS and 17 INTs and the Sooners lost five games. But the impact of Mayfield goes far beyond numbers.\n\nHis magnetic personality and carefree style helped loosen up a team that at times played much too tight over the last two seasons. OU played tight, made mistakes, lost games and lost its mojo.\n\nMayfield brought it all back, from the way he immediately connected with teammates when he first arrived last season, to how he handled his responsibility after winning the starting job in fall camp \u2013 to how he played week after week.\n\n\u201cFootball should be fun,\u201d Mayfield said. \u201cWe\u2019re playing a game. We can be serious and we can be focused on what we have to do every single play. But the bottom line is we\u2019re having fun playing a game.\u201d\n\nNo one played it better in 2015."} -{"text":"St. Lawrence Island (Central Siberian Yupik: Sivuqaq, Russian: \u041e\u0441\u0442\u0440\u043e\u0432 \u0421\u0432\u044f\u0442\u043e\u0433\u043e \u041b\u0430\u0432\u0440\u0435\u043d\u0442\u0438\u044f) is located west of mainland Alaska in the Bering Sea, just south of the Bering Strait. The village of Gambell, located on the northwest cape of the island, is 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Chukchi Peninsula in the Russian Far East. The island is part of Alaska, but closer to Russia than to the Alaskan mainland. St. Lawrence Island is thought to be one of the last exposed portions of the land bridge that once joined Asia with North America during the Pleistocene period.[1] It is the sixth largest island in the United States and the 113th largest island in the world. It is considered part of the Bering Sea Volcanic Province.[2]\n\nGeography [ edit ]\n\nThe United States Census Bureau defines St. Lawrence Island as Block Group 6, Census Tract 1 of Nome Census Area, Alaska. As of the 2000 census there were 1,292 people living on a land area of 1,791.56 sq mi (4,640.1 km2).[3] The island is about 90 miles (140 km) long and 8\u201322 miles (13\u201336 km) wide. The island has no trees, and the only woody plants are Arctic willow, standing no more than a foot (30 cm) high.\n\nThe island's abundance of seabirds and marine mammals is due largely to the influence of the Anadyr Current, an ocean current which brings cold, nutrient-rich water from the deep waters of the Bering Sea shelf edge.\n\nTo the south of the island there was a persistent polynya in 1999, formed when the prevailing winds from the north and east blow the migrating ice away from the coast.[4]\n\nThe climate of Gambell is:\n\nJanuary April July October Daily max 12 \u00b0F (\u221211 \u00b0C) 20 \u00b0F (\u22127 \u00b0C) 50 \u00b0F (10 \u00b0C) 34 \u00b0F (1 \u00b0C) Daily min 3 \u00b0F (\u221216 \u00b0C) 10 \u00b0F (\u221212 \u00b0C) 41 \u00b0F (5 \u00b0C) 29 \u00b0F (\u22122 \u00b0C)\n\nVillages [ edit ]\n\nThe island contains two villages: Savoonga and Gambell. The two villages were given title to most of the land on St. Lawrence Island by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. As a result of having title to the land, the Yupik are legally able to sell the fossilized ivory and other artifacts found on St. Lawrence Island.\n\nThe island is now inhabited mostly by Siberian Yupik engaged in hunting, fishing, and reindeer herding. The St. Lawrence Island Yupik people are also known for their skill in carving, mostly with materials from marine mammals (walrus ivory and whale bone). The Arctic yo-yo may have evolved on the island.\n\nPrehistory [ edit ]\n\nSt. Lawrence Island was first occupied around 2,000 to 2,500 years ago by coastal people characterized by artifacts decorated in the Okvik (oogfik) style. Archaeological sites on the Punuk Islands, off the eastern end of St. Lawrence Island, at Kukulik, near Savoonga and on the hill slopes above Gambell have evidence of the Okivik occupation. The Okvik decorative style is zoomorphic and elaborate, executed in a sometimes crude engraving technique, with greater variation than the Old Bering Sea and Punuk styles.\n\nThe Okivik occupation is influenced by and may have been coincident with the Old Bering Sea occupation of 2000 years ago to around 700 years ago,[5] characterized by the simpler and more homogeneous Punuk style. Stone artifacts changed from chipped stone to ground slate; carved ivory harpoon heads are smaller and simpler in design.\n\nPrehistoric and early historic occupations of St. Lawrence Island were never permanent, with periods of abandonment and reoccupation depending on resource availability and changes in weather patterns. Famine was common, as evidenced by Harris lines and enamel hypoplasia in human skeletons. Travel to and from the mainland was common during calm weather, so the island was used as a hunting base, and occupation sites were re-used periodically rather than permanently occupied.\n\nMajor archaeology sites at Gambell and Savoonga (Kukulik) were excavated by Otto Geist and Ivar Skarland of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Collections from these excavations are curated at the University of Alaska Museum on the UAF campus.\n\nHistory [ edit ]\n\nFalse color NASA Landsat image of St. Lawrence Island\n\nThe island was called Sivuqaq by the Yupik who lived there. It was visited by Russian\/Danish explorer Vitus Bering on St. Lawrence's Day, August 10, 1728, and named after the day of his visit. The island was the first place in Alaska known to have been visited by European explorers.\n\nThere were about 4,000 Central Alaskan Yupik and Siberian Yupik living in several villages on the island in the mid-19th century. They subsisted by hunting walrus and whale and by fishing. A famine in 1878\u20131880 caused many to starve and many others to leave, decimating the island's population. A revenue cutter visited the island in 1880 and estimated that out of 700 inhabitants, 500 were found dead of starvation. Reports of the day put the blame on traders' supplying the people with liquor causing the people to \u2033neglect laying up their usual supply of provisions\u2033.[6] Nearly all the residents remaining were Siberian Yupik.\n\nReindeer were introduced on the island in 1900 in an attempt to bolster the economy. The reindeer herd grew to about 10,000 animals by 1917, but has since declined. Reindeer are herded as a source of subsistence meat to this day. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt established a reindeer reservation on the island.[7] This caused legal issues in the indigenous land claim process to acquire surface and subsurface rights to their land, under the section 19 of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) as they had to prove that the reindeer reserve was set up to support the indigenous people rather than to protect the reindeer themselves.[8]\n\nWorld War II [ edit ]\n\nDuring World War II, islanders served in the Alaska Territorial Guard (ATG). Following disbandment of the ATG in 1947, and with the construction of Northeast Cape Air Force Station in 1952, many islanders joined the Alaska National Guard to provide for the defense of the island and station.\n\nCold War [ edit ]\n\nThe former Northeast Cape Air Force Station at St. Lawrence Island\n\nOn June 22, 1955, during the Cold War, a US Navy P2V Neptune with a crew of 11 was attacked by two Soviet Air Forces fighter aircraft along the International Date Line in international waters over the Bering Straits, between Siberia's Kamchatka Peninsula and Alaska. The P2V crashed on the island's northwest cape, near the village of Gambell. Villagers rescued the crew, 3 of whom were wounded by Soviet fire and 4 of whom were injured in the crash. The Soviet government, in response to a US diplomatic protest, was unusually conciliatory, stating that:\n\nThere was an exchange of shots after a Soviet fighter advised the US plane that it was over Soviet territory and should leave (the US denied that the US plane fired at all). The incident took place under heavy cloud cover and poor visibility, although the alleged violation of Soviet airspace could be the responsibility of US commanders not interested in preventing such violations.\n\nThe Soviet military was under strict orders to \"avoid any action beyond the limits of the Soviet state frontiers.\"\n\nThe Soviet government \"expressed regret in regard to the incident,\" and, \"taking into account... conditions which do not exclude the possibility of a mistake from one side or the other,\" was willing to compensate the US for 50% of damages sustained\u2014the first such offer ever made by the Soviets for any Cold War shoot-down incident.\n\nThe US government stated that it was satisfied with the Soviet expression of regret and the offer of partial compensation, although it said that the Soviet statement also fell short of what the available information indicated.[9]\n\nNortheast Cape Air Force Station, at the island's other end, was a United States Air Force facility consisting of an Aircraft Control and Warning[10] (AC&W) radar site, a United States Air Force Security Service listening post; and a White Alice Communications System (WACS) site that operated from about 1952 to about 1972. The area surrounding the Northeast Cape base site had been a traditional camp site for several Yupik families for centuries. After the base closed down in the 1970s, many of these people started to experience health problems. Even today, people who grew up at Northeast Cape have high rates of cancer and other diseases, possibly due to PCB exposure around the site.[11] According to the State of Alaska, those elevated cancer rates have been shown to be comparable to the rates of other Alaskan and non-Alaskan arctic natives who were not exposed to a similar Air Force facility.[12] In any event, the majority of the facility was removed in a $10.5 million cleanup program in 2003. Monitoring of the site will continue into the future.[13]\n\nTransportation [ edit ]\n\nThe airports are Gambell Airport and Savoonga Airport.\n\nBibliography [ edit ]\n\nNotes\n\nReferences"} -{"text":"Expectations for Netflix's third quarter couldn't have been higher, but the company still managed to wow Wall Street Monday -- and shares jumped 10% as a result.\n\nNetflix cynics have been waiting for the company's stock bubble to pop: Netflix shares are up a shocking 440% in the past 12 months, and analysts expected third-quarter earnings nearly to quadruple over the year.\n\nBut Netflix (NFLX) delivered. The company reported third-quarter earnings of 52 cents a share, well above the 49 cents that analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting.\n\nSales came in at $1.1 billion, in line with estimates.\n\nNetflix expects more happy news for the current quarter. The company predicted earnings of 47 cents to 73 cents per share. That's an extremely wide range -- common for Netflix -- but it's far above the 46 cents a share that Wall Street expected.\n\nShares of Netflix jumped 10% after-hours immediately after the news and continued their run in premarket trading on Tuesday.\n\nNetflix CEO Reed Hastings isn't comfortable with the huge stock run-up, however. On a post-earnings conference call with analysts, he said Netflix thinks \"momentum investors\" are \"driving the price more than we like normally\" -- but that it's out of the company's control.\n\nSubscriber growth and original content: Hastings was happier with Netflix's third-quarter subscriber growth, which also impressed. Netflix added nearly 1.3 million new American subscribers during the third quarter, near the top range of the 690,000-1.49 million range the company predicted in July.\n\nInternational subscriber growth was even more striking: 1.44 million new overseas streaming customers. That pushed Netflix above the 40 million subscriber mark for the first time. But Netflix warned of a surge in free-trial signups in Latin America that artificially boosted the international additions figure.\n\nIn order to continue that user-base growth, Netflix has spent years transforming itself into not only a purveyor of other studios' content, but a creator of original content as well.\n\nNetflix CEO Reed Hastings and other company executives have repeatedly said Netflix \"wants to become HBO faster than HBO can become Netflix.\" (HBO is owned by CNNMoney parent company Time Warner (TWX).)\n\nRelated story: RIP television, hello mobile gaming\n\nThat original-content strategy has included a new season of \"Arrested Development,\" a U.S. remake of \"House of Cards,\" and -- most notably -- the new series \"Orange is the New Black.\" Netflix called the comedy-drama \"one of the most critically well received TV shows of 2013\" and said it will end the year as Netflix's most watched original series to date.\n\nThree of those original series netted Netflix a total of 14 Emmy nominations and three wins (all for \"Cards\") this year, but some analysts are still concerned about Netflix's mounting costs. The company reportedly spent $100 million producing and shooting two seasons of \"House of Cards,\" the first of which was released in February.\n\nNetflix appears unfazed by that criticism. The company said it expects to double its spending on original content in 2014. Content chief Ted Sarandos said on the earnings call that the company is actively looking for documentaries to debut on Netflix and will keep an open mind about feature films -- but Netflix still isn't interested in airing sports.\n\nMeanwhile, the content licensing side of Netflix's business is also expensive. Studios have demanded more money for their content as rival services proliferate: Amazon (AMZN), Hulu and Redbox (OUTR) are only a handful of the competitors. Premium channels like HBO and CBS' (CBS) Showtime are also expanding their streaming offerings."} -{"text":"Baton-wielding and helmeted police have clashed with tens of thousands of protesters taking part in a demonstration against Monday's inauguration of Vladimir Putin, Russia's president-elect, arresting at least 400 in Moscow.\n\nThose arrested on Sunday included Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption crusader, liberal leader Boris Nemtsov and ultra-left wing activist Sergei Udaltsov.\n\nThe three men are key leaders of the nascent protest movement against Putin, who served as president and prime minister before he was re-elected in March.\n\nPolice said they detained the protesters after they threw stones and water bottles at officers and blamed the violence on opposition leaders who attempted to stage a sit-in protest in the middle of the crowd.\n\nEarlier, reports said at least 20,000 opposition protesters took part in the demonstration, which had been billed as a \"March of Millions\".\n\nThe protesters marched shouting \"enough lies\" while helmeted police, using batons, beat back dozens of mostly young protesters at the event across the river from the Kremlin.\n\nThe turnout appeared smaller than most of the winter's unprecedented wave of protests, some of which attracted crowds estimated at 100,000 or more.\n\nNational parliamentary elections were marred by fraud, but Putin won the vote easily and another round in March, returning to the Kremlin seat he held in 2000-2008.\n\nSome of the demonstrators acknowledged that Putin's election win and his inauguration have been a blow to morale.\n\n\"It's true that some have been disappointed,\" said Yuri Baranov, a 46-year-old information technology specialist. But \"the most important thing is that people have awakened\".\n\nOthers admitted some doubts about whether the protests would spur any long-term change.\n\n\"I would like to think that our voice will be heard, but I am not totally sure of this,\" said Yelena Karpsova, 47, who came to the rally from Tula, about 200km south of Moscow.\n\nRival demonstrations\n\nSupporters of the ex-KGB spy meanwhile planned to hold a gathering with some 50,000 people.\n\nA senior city official said Putin's group did not need permission to bring out such large numbers onto a public square because \"what they will be having is not a rally or a march or a protest\".\n\n\"It will be a mass cultural event,\" Alexei Mayarov, a Moscow regional security department head, told Russian news agencies.\n\n\"What is important is there is still a constituency, and the most modernised constituency in Russia, that does not see Putin as a desired president\" - Maria Lipman, political analyst\n\nOrganisers said the demonstration along a main Moscow thoroughfare towards Bolotnaya Square opposite the river from the Kremlin was to conclude with a meeting that city authorities officially limited to 5,000 people.\n\n\"It's called the march of millions and I suspect they wish they had not named it that name because it's going to be interesting to see just how many people do turn up to this protest,\" Al Jazeera's Sue Turton reported from Bolotnaya Square.\n\n\"They have got permission for 5,000 people to congregate in Bolotnaya Square, but the march starts further across Moscow and then they will walk here and then congregate and later on ... move to another square next to the Kremlin and have some sort of sit in overnight until the inauguration.\n\n\"Now we don't even know how many people would contemplate doing that. There has definitely been a wane in the momentum of the protest movement,\" she said.\n\nMaria Lipman, a political analyst from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Al Jazeera from Moscow: \"The rally that has been authorised implies that 5,000 will take part. Maybe more can be expected, however not the many tens of thousands that we saw in Moscow streets and squares in December, February and March.\"\n\nProtests 'on decline'\n\n\"The mass protests are maybe losing momentum and may be on decline, however what is important is there is still a constituency, and the most modernised constituency in Russia, that does not see Putin as a desired president.\n\n\"I think that part of society will not reconcile to the fact that Putin holds power for the next six years, and we may see more eruptions of discontent in the following years over various kinds of developments,\" she said.\n\nPutin's return to the presidency will technically give him greater powers than he previously wielded as prime minister.\n\nHe has dismissed the allegations that widespread fraud helped him win the presidential election and secured victory for his United Russia party in a parliamentary poll in December.\n\nThe inauguration ceremony will include a booming 30-gun salute and a special blessing from Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill."} -{"text":"School crossing patrollers, public toilets, community centres and libraries are all under threat in a savage council savings plan that has caused a senior Tory councillor to quit the party.\n\nSpeyside Glenlivet member and planning committee chairman Walter Wilson dramatically walked away from the party yesterday following a row with colleagues.\n\nThe shock departure came as it emerged that council chiefs are looking at mothballing every community centre and public toilet in Moray, along with every library other than Elgin.\n\nIt is understood that the ruling group is also examining plans to axe every lollipop man and woman at schools.\n\nCouncillor Wilson branded his former allies \u201cright wing extremists\u201d as he accused them of sacrificing public safety in the penny-pinching drive.\n\nBut last night the Tories fired back, saying Mr Wilson had balked at making tough decisions and questioned whether he belonged in politics.\n\nMr Wilson said: \u201cI am no longer a Conservative, which was a tough decision to make.\n\n\u201cBut I couldn\u2019t just sit there and listen to extreme right-wing views, and it all came to a head when my colleagues were discussing what they wanted to cut.\n\n\u201cIt felt like Speyside Glenlivet was going to be badly affected, and it led to a big argument and some irreconcilable differences.\n\n\u201cI just said that was it, I couldn\u2019t vote for a budget like that.\n\n\u201cThere are a core of right-wing extremists who have made life difficult for some of the Conservatives in the group and the Independent members of the administration.\u201d\n\nMr Wilson was one of eight Conservatives elected in May\u2019s council elections, who later formed a coalition administration with six independent members.\n\nLocal authority leader George Alexander last night confirmed that a series of \u201cunpalatable\u201d cuts is expected to be made public next month.\n\nThe independent councillor said: \u201cNone of these cuts have been decided but we will make our proposals public in December and I don\u2019t think that will be a nice Christmas present for people.\n\n\u201cMr Wilson is the first councillor to balk at having to do this, but we were all aware of how unpleasant a task balancing the budget would be.\u201d\n\nMr Wilson said he was horrified when colleagues suggested ward constituents affected by a change in road gritting \u201ccould just move house\u201d.\n\nHe added: \u201cThose are the kind of views I was trying to go up against.\u201d\n\nConservative councillor for Fochabers Lhanbryde, Marc Macrae, said the remark in question was a \u201cflippant\u201d one which Mr Wilson had overreacted to.\n\nHe added: \u201cIt has started to get hot and Mr Wilson has left the kitchen, you need to have a thick skin in politics.\n\n\u201cThis will be a tough budget for Moray, but no ward will be disproportionately affected and we will consult on the proposed cuts.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m disappointed in Mr Wilson, I would question whether politics is for him.\u201d\n\nMr Wilson \u2013 who is still owed thousands after his former employer went bust \u2013 will suffer a \u00a310,000 pay cut as a result.\n\nHe said he hoped to continue as an independent but would \u201clisten to constituents if they feel that I should resign my position\u201d.\n\nMoray MSP Richard Lochhead said Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson should launch an inquiry into the group.\n\nThe SNP representative said: \u201cThe extraordinary resignation of a councillor due to the repugnant and extremist views of his colleagues lifts the lid on the ugly politics at the heart of Moray Conservative Party\n\n\u201cMany local people will be troubled that some of the elected representatives who run Moray Council are deemed to be extremists by a colleague who sat in meeting after meeting with them behind closed doors and has now decided he simply can\u2019t stomach their vile views any longer.\u201d"} -{"text":"Large lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada\n\nFor the lake in Alberta, Canada, see Lesser Slave Lake\n\nThe Great Slave Lake (French: Grand lac des Esclaves) is the second-largest lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada (after Great Bear Lake), the deepest lake in North America at 614 metres (336 fathoms; 2,014 ft),[1] and the tenth-largest lake in the world. It is 469 km (291 mi) long and 20 to 203 km (12 to 126 mi) wide.[2] It covers an area of 27,200 km2 (10,502 sq mi)[1] in the southern part of the territory. Its given volume ranges from 1,070 km3 (260 cu mi)[4] to 1,580 km3 (380 cu mi)[1] and up to 2,088 km3 (501 cu mi)[5] making it the 10th or 12th largest.\n\nThe lake shares its name with the First Nations peoples called Slavey of the Dene family by their enemies the Cree. Towns situated on the lake include Yellowknife, Hay River, Behchok\u01eb\u0300, Fort Resolution, \u0141utselk'e, Hay River Reserve, Dettah, and Ndil\u01eb. The only community in the East Arm is \u0141utselk'e, a hamlet of about 350 people, largely Chipewyan Indigenous peoples of the Dene Nation and the now abandoned winter camp\/Hudson's Bay Company post, Fort Reliance. Along the south shore, east of Hay River is the abandoned Pine Point Mine and the company town of Pine Point.\n\nHistory [ edit ]\n\nIndigenous peoples were the first settlers around the lake after the retreat of glacial ice. Archaeological evidence has revealed several different periods of cultural history, including: Northern Plano Paleoindian tradition (8,000 years before present), Shield Archaic (6,500 years), Arctic small tool tradition (3,500 years), and the Taltheilei Shale Tradition (2,500 years before present). Each culture has left a distinct mark in the archaeological record based on type or size of lithic tools.[6]\n\nGreat Slave Lake was put on European maps during the emergence of the fur trade towards the northwest from Hudson Bay in the mid 18th century. The name 'Great Slave' came from the Slavey Indians, one of the Athapaskan tribes living on its southern shores at that time. The name was influenced by Cree disdain for this rival tribe, with whom they shared a sordid history. As the French explorers dealt directly with the Cree traders, the large lake was referred to as \"Grand lac des Esclaves\" which was eventually translated into English as \"Great Slave Lake\".[7]\n\nBritish fur trader Samuel Hearne explored Great Slave Lake in 1771 and crossed the frozen lake, which he named Lake Athapuscow. In 1897-1898, the American frontiersman Charles \"Buffalo\" Jones traveled to the Arctic Circle, where his party wintered in a cabin that they had constructed near the Great Slave Lake. Jones's exploits of how he and his party shot and fended off a hungry wolf pack near Great Slave Lake was verified in 1907 by Ernest Thompson Seton and Edward Alexander Preble when they discovered the remains of the animals near the long abandoned cabin.[8]\n\nIn the 1930s, gold was discovered on the North Arm of Great Slave Lake, leading to the establishment of Yellowknife which would become the capital of the NWT. In 1960, an all-season highway was built around the west side of the lake, originally an extension of the Mackenzie Highway but now known as Yellowknife Highway or Highway 3. On January 24, 1978, a Soviet Radar Ocean Reconnaissance Satellite, named Kosmos 954, built with an onboard nuclear reactor fell from orbit and disintegrated. Pieces of the nuclear core fell in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake. 90% of the nuclear debris was recovered by a joint Canadian Armed Forces and United States Armed Forces military operation called Operation Morning Light.[9]\n\nGeography and natural history [ edit ]\n\nMackenzie River drainage basin showing Great Slave Lake's position in the Western Canadian Arctic\n\nThe Hay, Slave, Lockhart, and Taltson Rivers are its chief tributaries. It is drained by the Mackenzie River. Though the western shore is forested, the east shore and northern arm are tundra-like. The southern and eastern shores reach the edge of the Canadian Shield. Along with other lakes such as the Great Bear and Athabasca, it is a remnant of the vast glacial Lake McConnell.\n\nThe lake has a very irregular shoreline. The East Arm of Great Slave Lake is filled with islands, and the area is within the proposed Thaydene Nene National Park Reserve. The Pethei Peninsula separates the East Arm into McLeod Bay in the north and Christie Bay in the south. The lake is at least partially frozen during an average of eight months of the year.\n\nThe main western portion of the lake forms a moderately deep bowl with a surface area of 18,500 km2 (7,100 sq mi) and a volume of 596 km3 (143 cu mi). This main portion has a maximum depth of 187.7 m (616 ft) and a mean depth of 32.2 m (106 ft).[10] To the east, McLeod Bay ( ) and Christie Bay ( ) are much deeper, with a maximum recorded depth in Christie Bay of 614 m (2,014 ft)[1]\n\nOn some of the plains surrounding Great Slave Lake, climax polygonal bogs have formed, the early successional stage to which often consists of pioneer black spruce.[11]\n\nSouth of Great Slave Lake, in a remote corner of Wood Buffalo National Park, is the Whooping Crane Summer Range, a nesting site of a remnant flock of whooping cranes, discovered in 1954.[12]\n\nBodies of water and tributaries [ edit ]\n\nRivers that flow into Great Slave Lake include (going clockwise from the community of Behchok\u01eb\u0300);[13][14]\n\nEmile River\n\nSnare River\n\nWecho River\n\nStagg River\n\nYellowknife River\n\nBeaulieu River\n\nWaldron River\n\nHoarfrost River\n\nLockhart River\n\nSnowdrift River\n\nLa Loche River\n\nThubun River\n\nTerhul River\n\nTaltson River\n\nSlave River\n\nLittle Buffalo River\n\nBuffalo River\n\nHay River\n\nMosquito Creek\n\nDuport River\n\nMarian Lake\n\nNorth Arm\n\nYellowknife Bay\n\nResolution Bay\n\nDeep Bay\n\nMcLeod Bay\n\nChristie Bay\n\nSulphur Cove\n\nPresqu'ile Cove\n\nRocher River\n\nFrank Channel\n\nIce road [ edit ]\n\nGreat Slave Lake has one ice road known as the Dettah ice road. It is a 6.5 km (4.0 mi) road that connects the Northwest Territories capital of Yellowknife to Dettah, a small First Nations fishing community also in the Northwest Territories. To reach the community in summer the drive is 27 km (17 mi) via the Ingraham Trail.\n\nApril 28, 2012 on Yellowknife Bay. The surface melt begins to make transportation more difficult to and from the houseboats near Jolliffe Island.\n\nIce Lake Rebels [ edit ]\n\nFrom 2014 to 2016, Animal Planet aired a documentary series called Ice Lake Rebels. It takes place on Great Slave Lake, and details the lives of houseboaters on the lake.[15]\n\nGallery [ edit ]\n\nDettah ice road on Great Slave Lake\n\nUtsingi Point (East Arm) on the eastern edge of the proposed Thaydene Nene National Park\n\nNorthern Bay, Great Slave Lake\n\nHay River, one of the tributaries of Great Slave Lake\n\nForest fires in northern Canada, southeast of Great Slave Lake\n\nSee also [ edit ]\n\nReferences [ edit ]\n\nFurther reading [ edit ]\n\nCanada. (1981). Sailing directions, Great Slave Lake and Mackenzie River . Ottawa: Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans. ISBN 0-660-11022-9\n\n. Ottawa: Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans. ISBN 0-660-11022-9 Gibson, J. J., Prowse, T. D., & Peters, D. L. (2006). \"Partitioning impacts of climate and regulation on water level variability in Great Slave Lake.\" Journal of Hydrology . 329 (1), 196.\n\n. 329 (1), 196. Hicks, F., Chen, X., & Andres, D. (1995). \"Effects of ice on the hydraulics of Mackenzie River at the outlet of Great Slave Lake, N.W.T.: A case study.\" Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering . Revue Canadienne De G\u0310\u01b0enie Civil. 22 (1), 43.\n\n. Revue Canadienne De G\u0310\u01b0enie Civil. 22 (1), 43. Kasten, H. (2004). The captain's course secrets of Great Slave Lake . Edmonton: H. Kasten. ISBN 0-9736641-0-X\n\n. Edmonton: H. Kasten. ISBN 0-9736641-0-X Jenness, R. (1963). Great Slave Lake fishing industry . Ottawa: Northern Co-ordination and Research Centre. Dept. of Northern Affairs and National Resources.\n\n. Ottawa: Northern Co-ordination and Research Centre. Dept. of Northern Affairs and National Resources. Keleher, J. J. (1972). Supplementary information regarding exploitation of Great Slave Lake salmonid community . Winnipeg: Fisheries Research Board, Freshwater Institute.\n\n. Winnipeg: Fisheries Research Board, Freshwater Institute. Mason, J. A. (1946). Notes on the Indians of the Great Slave Lake area . New Haven: Yale University Department of Anthropology, Yale University Press.\n\n. New Haven: Yale University Department of Anthropology, Yale University Press. Sirois, J., Fournier, M. A., & Kay, M. F. (1995). The colonial waterbirds of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories an annotated atlas. Ottawa, Ont: Canadian Wildlife Service. ISBN 0-662-23884-2"} -{"text":"New Delhi: Noted jurist Ram Jethmalani, 94 on Saturday announced his retirement from over seven-decade-long career as advocate. He referred to the present status of governance as \"calamity and said he would continue to fight corrupt politicians.\n\n\"I am here just to tell you I am retiring from the profession but I am taking on a new role as long as I am alive. I wish to combat the corrupt politicians that have been brought into the position of power and I hope the condition of India will take good shape,\" Jethmalani said.\n\nJethmalani alleged that the present NDA government has \"let down\" the nation like the previous UPA dispensation.\n\nHe was speaking at a function organised by apex bar body, the Bar Council of India, to felicitate new Chief Justice of India Justice Dipak Misra.\n\n\"The country is not in a good shape. The previous and the current governments, both have let down the nation very badly. \"It is the duty of the members of the bar and all good citizens to rise to this great calamity,\" he said adding that they should do their best to see that those in positions of power are shown the exit door as soon as possible.\n\nFirstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com\/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button."} -{"text":"Saturday December 12, 2015\n\nEast Carolina: Duke offensive coordinator Scottie Montgomery will be the next head coach at ECU, per Bruce Feldman.\n\nEast Carolina: Brady Hoke and Everett Withers were widely reported to be interviewing again today and we mentioned that there were whispers of a third potential candidate. We hear that Duke offensive coordinator Scottie Montgomery is still be involved in the process.\n\nHanover College (D-III \u2013 IN): Franklin College offensive coordinator Matt Theobald has been named head coach at his alma mater.\n\nPenn State: Fordham head coach Joe Moorhead will be Penn State\u2019s offensive coordinator according to multiple reports.\n\nTexas: Texas has officially announced Sterlin Gilbert as offensive coordinator\/quarterbacks coach and Matt Mattox as offensive line coach\/run game coordinator. Gilbert will earn $850,000 per year over a three-year contract; Mattox will make $550,000 a year over his three-year contract. Shawn Watson and Joe Wickline will not have their contracts renewed.\n\nTulsa: Quality control assistant\/assistant offensive line coach Matt Bloesch has been promoted to offensive line coach. The Hurricane\u2019s other open position will be filled after the Dec. 26 Independence Bowl.\n\nVirginia: Bronco Mendenhall has added Ruffin McNeill as assistant head coach \/ inside linebackers. To recap, UVA retained Marques Hagans as receivers, added Ruffin and is bringing six assistants from BYU: Robert Anae (OC), Mark Atuaia (RBs), Jason Beck (QBs), Garret Tujague (OL), Nick Howell (DC) and Kelly Poppinga (STC).\n\nOklahoma State: We continue to hear that Gundy will fill Robby Discher\u2019s special teams role in the same capacity. The hire is expected to be a grad assistant, not one of the nine full-time positions.\n\nGeorgia: Sources confirmed to us Pitt offensive coordinator Jim Chaney will be the offensive coordinator at Georgia. Sources also now have confirmed Arkansas offensive line coach Sam Pittman will join him at Georgia.\n\nTexas: It took the President of the University, the AD, the head football coach and others to go to Tulsa last night; but UT wound up getting their guys. Sterlin Gilbert is coming as offensive coordinator and Matt Mattox will be the new offensive line coach at UT.\n\nJackson State (FCS \u2013 MS): If Mississippi State\u2019s Tony Hughes can\u2019t get a deal done, sources tell FootballScoop that North Carolina Central head coach Jerry Mack could have further discussions with JSU."} -{"text":"Rep. David Schweikert David SchweikertThe Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race House Dems release 2020 GOP 'retirements to watch' for Ethics committee expanding investigation into GOP rep over finance questions MORE (R-Ariz.) on Thursday suggested that a lack of rhetorical discipline may be responsible for any appearance that President Trump attempted to obstruct a federal investigation.\n\n\"I'm at the point where we also have to be real careful from the standpoint that we have a president that's not from the political class,\" Schweikert said on NPR's \"Morning Edition.\"\n\n\"The learning of the disciplined use of language and what certain words mean in our context \u2014 if you're not from this world, you may not have developed that discipline,\" he added.\n\nADVERTISEMENT\n\nSchweikert's comments came after The Washington Post reported Wednesday that special counsel Robert Mueller was investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice, signaling a major change in the federal investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow.\n\nAt issue is Trump's reported requests to top intelligence officials to downplay or shut down investigations involving his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.\n\nIn a February meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey, the president reportedly told the law enforcement official, \"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.\" Trump abruptly fired Comey early last month amid the Russia probe.\n\nTrump also reportedly pressed Dan Coats Daniel (Dan) Ray Coats58 ex-national security officials rebuke Trump over emergency declaration DNC unveils new security checklist to protect campaigns from cyberattacks Overnight Defense: Trump to leave 200 troops in Syria | Trump, Kim plan one-on-one meeting | Pentagon asks DHS to justify moving funds for border wall MORE, the director of national intelligence, and Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to publicly deny the existence of evidence suggesting collusion between his campaign and Russia."} -{"text":"Ed Davis was a popular player on some truly terrible Toronto Raptors teams from 2010 to 2013. An athletic big man that could rebound, block shots and finish around the rim, but wasn\u2019t changing the fact his team couldn\u2019t win. Traded away in a last ditch effort to save then President and General Manager Bryan Colangelo\u2019s job, Davis has bounced from Memphis to the Lakers and is expected to decline his NBA minimum salary player option for next season to become an unrestricted free agent for the second time. So, should the rebounding challenged Raptors attempt to bring him back?\n\nThere are a lot of free agent big men available this year and Toronto has to make decisions on Amir Johnson, Tyler Hansbrough, Chuck Hayes and Greg Stiemsma before looking at the numerous possibilities available.\n\nThe issue with Davis in Toronto and elsewhere hasn\u2019t been his production. His per 36 minute numbers have averaged right around 12.1 points, 10.6 rebounds, 1.7 blocks and 0.9 steals in each of his five NBA seasons with three different teams and his average minutes bouncing between 15 and 24. This past season in Los Angeles was his best season and the analytics looked good, but it really wasn\u2019t out of line with what he\u2019s done in the past and the old hard to shake \u2018soft\u2019 label continued to follow him.\n\nSB Nation, Silver Screen and Roll, Free Agent Forecast: Ed Davis raises some all too familiar observations:\n\nJameson Miller: Davis has had a great year in limited minutes on an awful team, so valuing him accurately comes with all sorts of potential pitfalls and caveats. Trevor Lane: He is a fantastic player but his shortcomings limit his usefulness. His slim frame kills his effectiveness as a center by making it tough for him to stand his ground defensively against bigger players, while his complete lack of a jump shot makes it difficult to play him at power forward.\n\nDavis has looked at his best on bad teams that were willing to give him minutes. What should concern his next team looking to invest more than the NBA minimum contract the Lakers handed to him is what happened in Memphis. The Grizzlies gave him a good look, but after January 2014 he only averaged 11 minutes per game interspersed with numerous DNPs. Then Memphis let him walk as a free agent at the end of the season.\n\nThe soon-to-be 26-year-old did average 8.3 points, 7.6 rebounds, 1.2 blocks and 23.3 minutes while shooting an impressive 60.1 percent from the field with the Lakers \u2013 although 96 percent of his shots were within 10 feet of the rim. Davis has done enough to be noticed in a crowded field of free agent big men this summer and could be a nice addition off the bench in the right situation.\n\nToronto might be that situation \u2013 maybe. Ideally Davis would be playing beside a stretch-four\/five with the physical presence needed to not get pushed around in the paint by bigger players, someone like the Raptors Patrick Patterson or Amir Johnson. It isn\u2019t an easy call and Toronto may be able to find better options, but if Davis can convince Head coach Dwane Casey that he could help the Raptors rebound better, then there could be a role for him on the roster.\n\nDavis should attract a little more attention in free agency this summer than he did in 2014 when he had little choice but to accept the Lakers minimal offer, but he really didn\u2019t show any more potential this past season than he did when he was in Toronto. Davis\u2019 agent still has a sales job to do in order to get his client a better deal. In the end it may come down to choosing between more money and a smaller role in a better\/winning situation.\n\nStephen Brotherston covers the Toronto Raptors and visiting NBA teams at the Air Canada Centre and is a member of the Professional Basketball Writers Association."} -{"text":"A Rohingya Muslim refugee woman holds her child as they wait to go to refugee camps near the Thankhali refugee camp in Bangladesh\u2019s Ukhia district after fleeing Burma. (Dibyangshu Sarkar\/AFP\/Getty Images)\n\nThe Weinstein Effect is rippling out across the globe. It\u2019s no longer just women in the United States who are speaking up about sexual harassment \u2014 their counterparts in many other countries are, too. And we\u2019re once again seeing confirmation of a truth that is often overlooked in discussions of sexual misconduct or assault: These stories are often more about power than they are about sex. Specifically, for men in positions of power, it\u2019s often about demonstrating the extent of their control over the vulnerable.\n\nThe same principle applies \u2014 albeit in more extreme form \u2014 when sexual violence is used as a weapon of war. The aggressor aims to impose the most extreme humiliation on his victims, to destroy their dignity, to devastate their souls. This isn\u2019t about pleasure. It\u2019s about the calculated and vicious exercise of power over a helpless target. This is the absolute negation of love \u2014 the exact opposite of what sex should be about.\n\nYou will be reminded of this if you can bring yourself to delve into the latest report on Burma from Human Rights Watch. It makes for a harrowing read. One of the group\u2019s researchers has carefully documented the use of rape as an instrument of terror during the Burmese military\u2019s recent ethnic cleansing campaign, which since August has driven more than 600,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority into neighboring Bangladesh.\n\n\u201cIn every case described to us, the perpetrators were uniformed members of the security forces, almost all military personnel,\u201d the report carefully notes. Most of the documented attacks involved gangs of soldiers attacking individual women. Nura Begum, 35, tried to prevent her four children from seeing what was happening to her. \u201cI kept screaming and saying not to rape me in front of the children. But they did what they wanted to my body.\u201d Akash Abdul described how she and her younger sister tried to flee after watching security forces kill the other members of their family. \u201cAs we got to the edge of the village two soldiers grabbed me,\u201d she said. \u201cThey threw me to the ground and then raped me.\u201d She was 14 years old.\n\nYou might think that such crimes are outliers. You would be wrong. The use of rape as a weapon of war is widespread. Thousands of women have fallen victim to it in South Sudan\u2019s civil war. The reign of ISIS in Syria and Iraq has resulted in the wholesale sexual abuse of young women from the ancient religious community of the Yezidis. Women were also raped during the recent ethnic unrest in Burundi.\n\nSri Lanka\u2019s civil war ended in 2009, but members of its Tamil minority say that they still often face torture, including rape, when targeted by security forces. Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have all experienced sexual violence in recent memory; all these countries have their communities of survivors.\n\nMen in conflict zones also fall victim to sexual violence. According to a recent story in the Guardian, post-revolutionary Libya has seen a spate of such attacks, usually involving militias from groups persecuted by the old regime taking revenge on their enemies.\n\nWomen are never exempt, though. the Guardian story also quoted one female survivor of sexual violence in Libya: \u201cThe worst thing they did to me,\u201d she whispered, \u201cis to rape me in front of my eldest son. Since then, he won\u2019t speak to me.\u201d\n\nIn the sick logic of war, rape is a highly effective weapon. Its crippling effects can last for years. By creating shame and humiliation it destroys ties within families and communities. It silences and paralyzes.\n\nWe know it\u2019s a crime. It\u2019s been defined as one in international law. But it\u2019s still happening. And it will continue to happen until we can make the perpetrators truly accountable.\n\nThe case of Burma would be a good place to start. Pramila Patten, the U.N. special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, has directly accused the Burmese military of responsibility for the campaign of rape. Last week the Burmese military issued a report denying all related allegations \u2014 in terms similar to those of a Burmese officer, Col. Phone Tint, who in early September was already dismissing reports of sexual violence: \u201cWhere is the proof?\u201d he asked. \u201cLook at those women who are making these claims \u2014 would anyone want to rape them?\u201d\n\nThe international community should act while these crimes are still fresh. We must demand that the Burmese government cease its ethnic cleansing campaign. Western governments should stop supplying the Burmese military with arms and aid. We must target the responsible generals with personal sanctions and move to ensure that they face justice. (The International Criminal Court is only one option.)\n\nBut let\u2019s not forget the other victims of similar atrocities around the world. And above all, let\u2019s make a concerted global effort to marshal money and resources for the medical and psychological care the survivors so urgently need. We should not compound past crimes by the sin of neglect."} -{"text":"For other people named David McKean, see David McKean (disambiguation)\n\nDavid McKean (born 29 December 1963)[1] is an English illustrator, photographer, comic book artist, graphic designer, filmmaker and musician. His work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art and sculpture. McKean's projects include illustrating books by amongst others Neil Gaiman, Heston Blumenthal, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, and directing three feature films.\n\nCareer [ edit ]\n\nComics [ edit ]\n\nAfter a trip to New York City in 1986 during which he first showed his work to editors at Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and Continuity Comics, McKean met writer Neil Gaiman, and the pair collaborated on a short graphic novel of disturbing childhood memories, Violent Cases, published in 1987.[2] This was followed in 1988 by a Black Orchid miniseries[3][4] and Hellblazer covers for DC Comics.[5][6]\n\nIn 1989, he illustrated the Batman graphic novel, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, with writer Grant Morrison.[7] Comics historian Les Daniels observed that \"Arkham Asylum was an unprecedented success, selling 182,166 copies in hardcover and another 85,047 in paperback...McKean produced 120 pages of paintings for Arkham Asylum, offering powerful visual reinterpretations of the classic characters.\"[8] From 1989\u20131997 McKean produced the covers for Gaiman's celebrated series The Sandman, all its collected editions, and many of its spin-offs.[9][10] In 1998, the cover images from The Sandman were released as one compiled volume titled Dustcovers: The Collected Sandman Covers.[11] Further collaborations with Gaiman produced the graphic novels Signal to Noise in 1992 previously serialised in The Face magazine, about a dying filmmaker and his hypothetical last film; and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, which explored similar themes as Violent Cases through the imagery of the Punch and Judy show. In 1995 McKean wrote and illustrated a book for The Rolling Stones called Voodoo Lounge to tie-in with the release of their album of the same name.[6]\n\nBetween 1990 and 1996, McKean wrote and drew the ten issues of Cages, an ambitious graphic novel about artists and creativity, illustrated in a stripped-down pen-and-ink style influenced by Alberto Breccia, Jos\u00e9 Antonio Mu\u00f1oz and Lorenzo Mattotti.[12] Cages was published as single volume by Kitchen Sink Press in 1998, and in a new edition by NBM Publishing in 2002. In 2010, Cages was released by Dark Horse Comics in paperback. An anniversary edition was released in 2016 by the same publisher, featuring a new introduction by Terry Gilliam.[6]\n\nMcKean's collections of short comics Pictures That Tick, and Pictures That Tick 2: Exhibition[13] were published by Dark Horse Comics in 2009 and 2015. Pictures That Tick won the Victoria and Albert Museum Illustrated Book of the Year award.\n\nMcKean created a wordless erotic graphic novel called Celluloid[14] for Delcourt, which was published in the United States by Fantagraphics Books.\n\nBlack Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash, which was a commission by the 14-18 Now Foundation, The Imperial War Museum and The Lakes International Comic art Festival, was released as an artist's edition in June 2016, and was published in October 2016 by Dark Horse Comics as an oversized hardback and regular paperback. The project was also a live performance featuring cellist\/singer Matthew Sharp and violinist Clare Haythornthwaite, and was performed in Amiens, Kendal, London, Rye and Ashford.\n\nIllustration [ edit ]\n\nMcKean designed the posters for the Raindance Film Festival[15] for five consecutive years between 1996\u20132000. In 1997 he wrote, directed and edited a ninety-second trailer for the festival. In 2005, McKean designed the poster for the 32nd Telluride Film Festival. In 2006, he designed projections, sets and directed film clips for the Broadway musical Lestat, adapted from Anne Rice's novels, with music and lyrics by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.\n\nMcKean has created a few books documenting his travels using only illustrations. Examples include Postcards from Vienna, Postcards from Barcelona, Postcards from Paris (2008), Postcards from Brussels (2009), Postcards from Perugia (2011), Postcards from Bilbao (2012). He created another book of 200 pages called Squink (\u00e9ditions BdArtist(e)) that gathered a number of drawings in 15 chapters.\n\nC.D. and book covers [ edit ]\n\nMcKean created C.D. covers for many artists, amongst others for Alice Cooper, Altan, Tori Amos, Download, Frontline Assembly, Paradise Lost, Dream Theater, Skinny Puppy,[16] Toad the Wet Sprocket and Steve Walsh. He made book covers for Jonathan Carroll, Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore.\n\nBooks of photography [ edit ]\n\nHe has published four books of photography:\n\nA Small Book of Black and White Lies (1995)\n\n(1995) Option: Click (1998)\n\n(1998) The Particle Tarot: The Major Arcana\n\nThe Particle Tarot: The Minor Arcana\n\nWork with John Cale [ edit ]\n\nMcKean designed and illustrated John Cale's autobiography What's Welsh for Zen, a further biography called Sedition and Alchemy, a box set of C.D.s called Circus Live, and used John's Welsh-by-way-of-New York voice as the narrator for his short film N[eon].\n\nChildren's picture books [ edit ]\n\nMcKean has collaborated with Neil Gaiman on four children's picture books, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (1998), The Wolves in the Walls (2003), Crazy Hair (2009), and Mirrormask (2005), and illustrated Gaiman's children's novels Coraline (2002) and The Graveyard Book (2008), as well as S. F. Said's Varjak Paw (2003), Outlaw Varjak Paw (2006) and Phoenix (2013). The Wolves in the Walls: a Musical Pandemonium premiered as a play in Glasgow in 2006 with Improbable and the National Theatre of Scotland. The National Theatre of Scotland adapted The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish into a promenade performance for young people in 2013. He illustrated David Almond's The Savage published in April 2008, Slog's Dad published in September 2010, and Mouse Bird Snake Wolf (2013). In 2011, McKean collaborated with Richard Dawkins on The Magic of Reality, an introduction to critical thinking and science for children.[17] McKean also illustrated Ray Bradbury's The Homecoming (2006).\n\nThe Fat Duck Cookbook [ edit ]\n\nIn 2008, McKean collaborated with Heston Blumenthal on The Fat Duck Cookbook, an autobiography, compilation of key recipes and insight into Blumenthal's scientific method. The book was nominated in the James Beard Foundation Awards for Cooking from a Professional Point of View and won the Photography\/Illustration award. In 2014, McKean collaborated again with Blumenthal and writer Pascal Clariss on Historical Heston, a collection of historically inspired recipes. The book won two James Beard Foundation Awards. McKean is the Director of Story at The Fat Duck, and helped to relaunch the restaurant after its refurbishment in 2015. He has created package designs, maps, menu designs and murals for The Fat Duck, as well as Dinner by Heston Blumenthal in London and Melbourne.\n\nStamps [ edit ]\n\nMcKean created six images for the Royal Mail's Mythical Creatures collection, which featured depictions of mythical creatures found in British folklore, including dragons, unicorns, giants, pixies, mermaids, and fairies. The collection was released in the UK on 16 June 2009. The Presentation Pack contains short descriptions of each subject by author Neil Gaiman.[18]\n\nFilms [ edit ]\n\nMirrorMask, McKean's first feature film as director, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2005. The screenplay was written by Neil Gaiman, from a story by Gaiman and McKean. A children's fantasy which combines live action and digital animation, MirrorMask was produced by Jim Henson Studios and stars a British cast Stephanie Leonidas, Jason Barry, Rob Brydon, and Gina McKee. Before MirrorMask, McKean directed a number of television intros and music videos as well as several short films, such as The Week Before (1998) and N[eon] (2002),[19] which are included in the compilation DVD of McKean's work Keanoshow from Allen Spiegel Fine Arts. McKean has directed The Gospel of Us, a film of the National Theatre Wales's Passion play in Port Talbot which stars Michael Sheen.[20] A new feature film, Luna,[21] written and directed by McKean and starring Stephanie Leonidas, Ben Daniels, Dervla Kirwan and Michael Maloney debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2014.\n\nMcKean was a concept artist on the TV mini-series Neverwhere (1996), which was created and co-written by Neil Gaiman, and the feature films Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).\n\nTheatre and Live Performance [ edit ]\n\nMcKean wrote and performed a song cycle called Nine Lives[22] at the Sydney Opera House as part of the Graphic Festival. This was also performed at the British Library and at LICAF.\n\nMcKean wrote the text for Wildworks' Wolf's Child[23] site-specific theatre work as part of the Norwich Theatre Festival in 2015.\n\nAn Ape's Progress [24] was a commission by the Manchester Literature\/Jazz Festivals in 2015, and was created by poet Matthew Sweeney, composer\/saxophone player Iain Ballamy, cellist Matthew Sharp, singer Emilia Martensson, accordionist Stian Carstensen, and pianist Kit Downes, with McKean providing film projections and keyboards. A book of the work accompanied the show.\n\nBlack Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash [25] is a multi-media, music, song and performance work commissioned by 14-18 Now Foundation and LICAF. McKean performs as narrator and pianist, Matthew Sharp as performer, singer and cellist, and Clare Haythornthwaite as violinist\/performer. It was premiered in Amiens, and has been performed in Kendal. In 2016 it was performed in Rye, Ashford and at Tate Modern.\n\nJazz label [ edit ]\n\nMcKean founded the record label Feral Records[26] with saxophonist Iain Ballamy.\n\nAwards [ edit ]\n\nMcKean has won numerous awards and accolades. Over the years, he has been nominated five times for a World Fantasy Award in the category of \"Artist\", and he won the award in 1991.[27] His graphic novel Cages won the Alph-Art, Pantera, and Harvey Awards for best Graphic Novel.[28] He has been nominated six times and won three Spectrum Awards in the categories of \"Advertising\", \"Book\", and \"Comic\".[29] His collection of short comics, Pictures That Tick won the V&A Museum Illustrated Book Awards Overall First Prize.[28] In 2004, McKean won a BSFA Award in \"Short Fiction\" along with Neil Gaiman for their work, The Wolves in the Walls. His film MirrorMask was nominated for the William Shatner Golden Groundhog Award for Best Underground Movie, the other nominated films were Green Street Hooligans, Nine Lives, Up for Grabs and Opie Gets Laid.[30] Luna won Best British Feature at the Raindance Festival Awards,[31] and also the Raindance Award at the M\u00f6et British Independent Film Awards.[32] In 2017 Mckean was the inaugural recipient of the \"Sergio Aragones International Award for Excellence in Comic Art\", given as part of The Lakes International Comic Art Festival.[33]"} -{"text":"Scotland's leader Alex Salmond will on Saturday urge Scots to put aside party politics in the vote on independence, as he tries to win support from Labour rivals for his bid to leave the United Kingdom.\n\nIn an address to the Scottish National Party's (SNP) last conference before a September 18 referendum, Salmond will stress that a vote for independence is not a vote for him or his party but a way to put Scotland's future in its own hands.\n\nHis appeal comes after a narrowing in opinion polls that has for the first time made a vote for independence look a possibility, with both sides trying to persuade the up to 15 percent of voters who remain undecided.\n\nSalmond will promise to set up an all-party \"Team Scotland\" group after any \"Yes\" vote, to negotiate the terms of independence by March 24, 2016.\n\nHis promise is an appeal to Scottish Labour voters, many of whom bitterly oppose the SNP, which won the first majority government of Scotland's devolved parliament in a landslide victory in 2011.\n\n\"A Yes vote in September is not a vote for me, or for an SNP government in 2016 (at the next Scottish election),\" Salmond is expected to tell 1,200 party faithful gathered in Aberdeen, the oil capital of Scotland, for the two-day conference.\n\n\"It's a vote for a government in Scotland that the people of Scotland choose, pursuing policies the people of Scotland support.\"\n\nKeep updated: Sign up to our newsletter Email * Please enter a valid email address Sign up Please wait\u2026 Thank you for signing up. We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting. Click here Oops. Something went wrong. Please try again later. Try again Thank you, The email address you have provided is already registered. Close\n\nRallying call against conservatives\n\nSalmond will stress that the reason to vote for independence and end the 307-year-old tie to England is so that oil-rich Scotland can decide its own policies and not have its fate determined by politicians in London.\n\nHe will say that any government of an independent Scotland would be in control of tax, the economy, social security, employment, immigration, oil and gas revenues, European policy and a range of other areas now under Westminster's control.\n\n\"That may be the SNP. It may be Labour. It may be a coalition,\" he will say.\n\n\"I tell you what it won't be. It won't be a government led by a party with just a single MP in Scotland,\" he will add, referring to the Conservative Party which is unpopular in Scotland but the major partner of Britain's ruling coalition.\n\nIn the Scottish Parliament the SNP holds 65 seats while Labour has 38 and the Conservatives 15. The rest are held by Liberal Democrats, Greens and independents.\n\nSalmond's appeal for cross-party support comes as opinion polls this week showed support for independence at about 40 percent, up from 30 percent a year ago, and compared to 45 percent opposition.\n\nThe pro-union Better Together campaign said the polls showed they were still ahead, citing a YouGov survey on Friday that found 57 percent of Scots supported Scotland staying in the UK but with increased powers for the Scottish Parliament.\n\nBusinesses have raised concerns about the risks of independence and the uncertainty regarding what currency would be used in an independent Scotland, financial regulations, taxation and European Union membership.\n\n\"As part of the UK we can have the best of both worlds - a strong Scottish Parliament, with the guarantee of more powers, backed up by the strength, security and stability of being part of the larger UK. Only separation would put that at risk,\" said the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland Margaret Curran."} -{"text":"When cognitive psychologists talk about testing, and when the rest of the population uses that word, they mean different things. For educators and parents, testing means standardized testing: a tool wielded by politicians and administrators to terrify children and teachers. When cognitive psychologists hear the word testing, they think immediately of \u201cthe testing effect\u201d \u2014 one of the best learning strategies. This may seem like semantics, but it\u2019s a problem.\n\nThe testing effect is the idea that trying to remember something leads to greater learning than just re-reading information. In one famous experiment, participants tried to learn information from a textbook either by repeatedly re-reading, or repeatedly writing out everything they could remember after reading the information only once. The strategy of writing from memory led to 60 percent correct recall of the material one week later, compared to only 40 percent in the repeated reading condition.\n\nBut despite its effectiveness as a learning strategy, the testing effect had to be rebranded to the less scary\/more fun-sounding \u201cquizzing\u201d and we have had to come up with more and more subtle ways to produce the effect without students realizing that they are being tested \u2014 somewhat akin to hiding broccoli in brownies.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nAs champions of the testing effect, we find it awkward to hear bemoaning of standardized tests. So, let\u2019s tackle a few of the most common critiques:\n\nTests cause anxiety\n\nGet Today in Opinion in your inbox: Globe Opinion's must-reads, delivered to you every Sunday-Friday. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here\n\nThere\u2019s no doubt that challenging, high-stakes tests can provoke anxiety in some students. But, perhaps counterintuitively, the solution to this problem is not to get rid of testing; instead, it is to encourage more testing \u2013 particularly frequent, lower-stakes testing. With many tests spread out across the year, each individual test will be worth less and thus necessarily lower stakes; students will become more accustomed to testing, and thus, less afraid of it. What\u2019s more, every time they bring information to mind during a test, students are creating new memories from the cognitive effort involved. So more testing will lead to more learning and could decrease anxiety.\n\nTeachers and parents can also try to redirect some of that anxiety, a tactic that makes students feel more confident and actually perform better on high-stakes tests. Researchers have found one promising method in which students are told that the anxiety they feel before a test is actually helpful \u2013 not harmful \u2013 to their test performance.\n\nFinally \u2013 and this is something that ought to be examined empirically \u2013 the negative views of testing repeated by teachers and parents may be feeding into kids\u2019 anxiety and test-aversion. Just like public speaking, tests are an aspect of education that kids tend not to like even though it\u2019s good for them. Our job as parents is to realize that the benefits of testing outweigh the inconvenience of dealing with kids\u2019 complaints.\n\nTeaching to the test\n\nThe idea that teaching to a test isn\u2019t really teaching implies an almost astounding assumption that standardized tests are filled with meaningless, ill-thought-out questions on irrelevant or arbitrary information. This may be based on the myth that \u201cteachers in the trenches\u201d are being told what to teach by some \u201cexperts\u201d who\u2019ve probably never set foot in a \u201creal\u201d classroom. What these defiant teachers fail to realize \u2013 or simply choose to ignore \u2013 is that these experts are groups of carefully selected individuals that always include well-seasoned \u201creal classroom teachers\u201d, who guide the decision-making on what material should be assessed by the tests. For those wanting to find out more about how tests are made, here\u2019s an informative video by the Educational Testing Service which develops, administers or scores more than 50 million tests.\n\nStandardized tests are biased\n\nAdvertisement\n\nStandardized tests are not the great equalizer that will eliminate discrimination. But it is highly unlikely an individual teacher alone could create a more fair, unbiased test than many experts with access to a lot of resources, a huge amount of diverse data, and the ability to refine tests based on those data. As stated in the ETS video, once a new question is introduced, statisticians work to figure out whether it\u2019s performing equally well for different groups.\n\nUnfair, biased questions are certainly an important ongoing issue for the makers of standardized tests to address, but much work is going into the refinement and improvement of these questions, with the goal of avoiding and, hopefully, eventually eliminating such biases. All individuals have implicit biases that are almost impossible to override, so leaving assessment to individual instructors can only worsen the problem. The crux of the matter is trust \u2013 can we trust a board of experts that includes experienced teachers to act in our best interest as a nation of educators, parents, and children? And if the answer is no, then how can we trust individual teachers, and how would we hold them accountable?\n\nTests don\u2019t provide prompt feedback\n\nHere standardized tests have a lot of room for improvement. Feedback on standardized tests is tardy and often incredibly confusing, and doesn\u2019t include information on which specific questions the student answered incorrectly. By the time it comes, the feedback is just a meaningless score. Although students can learn from tests even without feedback, it is clear that feedback increases the benefits of testing. Tests can be expected to improve on this front as they transition from paper to online, where rapid feedback is more viable on a large scale.\n\nStandardized tests were created to track students\u2019 progress and evaluate schools and teachers. Griping abounds about how these tests are measuring the wrong thing and in the wrong way; but what\u2019s conspicuously absent is any suggestion for how to better measure the effect of education \u2014 i.e., learning \u2014 on a large scale. In the absence of direct measures of learning, we resort to measures of performance. And the great thing is: measuring this learning actually causes it to grow. So let\u2019s reclaim the word testing, so that the first word that comes to mind when we see it is \u201ceffect\u201d.\n\nYana Weinstein is an assistant professor in the Psychology department at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Megan Smith is an assistant professor in the Psychology department at Rhode Island College. They are the co-founders of Learning Scientists (@AceThatTest on Twitter)."} -{"text":"It turns out that the millionaire GOP establishment donor who bankrolled the anti-Donald Trump skywriting at the Rose Bowl parade on New Year\u2019s Day isn\u2019t just any ordinary donor-class millionaire. He\u2019s backing Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the man who is emerging as the anti-conservative establishment and donor-class candidate for president in 2016.\n\nAccording to the Center for Responsive Politics, Luther Stan Pate IV\u2014an Alabama real estate developer worth millions\u2014has donated thousands of dollars to Rubio\u2019s electoral efforts.\n\nOn Jan. 29, 2015, Pate donated $5,200 to Rubio\u2014who, at the time, hadn\u2019t yet officially launched a presidential campaign but was acting as if he were running for president.\n\nJust days earlier, ABC News\u2019 Jonathan Karl reported exclusively that Rubio had hired Anna Rogers, then the finance director for Karl Rove\u2019s American Crossroads, to lead \u201cthe effort to raise the $50 million or more he\u2019ll need to run in the Republican primaries.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has told us to proceed as if he is running for president,\u201d a senior Rubio adviser told ABC News for the piece, which ran on Jan. 23, 2015\u2014six days before Pate\u2019s donation to Rubio.\n\nA couple months later, Pate gave another $2,500 to Rubio, according to the Center for Responsible Politics. Later in the year, after Rubio launched his presidential campaign, the Rubio campaign returned $5,000 of the $7,700 total that Pate had donated to him. That is standard operating procedure because the Federal Election Commission (FEC) only allows donors to make a total of $2,700 to an individual presidential candidate.\n\nPate is the man who set up, on Dec. 29, a new anti-Trump Political Action Committee. FEC filings show that Pate is listed as the Treasurer and Custodian of Records for the new group entitled the \u201cWeThePeople Foundation.\u201d\n\nThat organization wrote messages like \u201cAmerica is great. Trump is disgusting\u201d and \u201cAnybody but Trump\u201d and \u201cIowans dump Trump\u201d in the sky at the Rose Bowl with at least five skywriting planes on Friday. Skywriting is a fairly expensive endeavor, and doing so with five planes makes it even more expensive.\n\nThe skywriting also directed viewers to the Rubio campaign-donor Pate\u2019s new PAC website, http:\/\/anybodybuttrump.us\/, a crudely designed site that viscerally attacks the 2016 GOP frontrunner.\n\nThe website allows visitors to donate to the Rubio campaign-donor Pate\u2019s new PAC, to buy anti-Trump items from the organization\u2019s online store, and to display various videos and anti-Trump materials.\n\nPate is an eccentric establishment GOP figure who\u2019s been associated with behavior similar to this before.\n\nLagniappe, a weekly newspaper in Mobile, Alabama\u2014Pate is based in Tuscaloosa\u2014devoted an August 2007 cover story to Pate\u2019s sharp-elbowed political tactics.\n\n\u201cIn mid-2005, Pate sought $16 million in public funds for a real estate development, a shopping center to be named Midtown. The Tuscaloosa City Council declined [to grant] the aid with Council President Jerry Plott and Councilman Kip Tyner being the most vocal opponents,\u201d said the article, which was also picked up by various local bloggers.\n\nIt wasn\u2019t Pate\u2019s first difficulty with the councilmen and he was frustrated. \u201cHe [Pate] fought us tooth-and-nail to get that money,\u201d Plott said. \u201cBut I didn\u2019t think public dollars should be spent on a private business. He began a public crusade to try to destroy me.\u201d Pate apparently conceived a Web site aimed at fomenting discord against Plott. Amidst the many charges of corruption on www.theplottthickens.com, a dormant discussion board asks for feedback on the councilman and a line on the site declares, \u201cI am Stan Pate and I approve this message,\u201d then gives a Northport post office box address. Pate admits to having founded the site and claims good reason for such. \u201cI filed an ethics complaint that is a matter of public record against Mr. Plott,\u201d Pate said, \u201cand I made it very clear in multiple ads and in the newspaper and in Tuscaloosa and on various publications that I feel like Mr. Plott\u2019s dealings while he was on the city council were unethical and corrupt.\u201d\n\nAt this time, Rubio\u2019s team is not disavowing the efforts his donor Pate has taken against Trump. Alex Conant, Rubio\u2019s communications director, has not responded to a request for comment when presented with evidence that the Rubio campaign\u2019s donors are behind this attack on Trump.\n\nWhile Trump has battled with pretty much everyone in the entire GOP field in 2016, he\u2019s crushed a few candidates: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) are among those still running. And outgoing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), former New York Gov. George Pataki and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are among those not running anymore.\n\nBut there are a few candidates that Trump is treating carefully.\n\nRubio is one of them. Trump has been very critical of Rubio\u2019s pro-amnesty positions on immigration, his work on trade, and Rubio\u2019s horrendous attendance record when it comes to votes and national security briefings in the U.S. Senate. But he hasn\u2019t gone as aggressively after Rubio as he has gone after, say, Bush.\n\nRubio is the last remaining establishment-backed candidate who\u2019s got a clear shot at the nomination.\n\nBush and Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie all could bounce back, but each of them is struggling and Rubio is the only non-conservative in the top-tier of polling along with Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Dr. Ben Carson.\n\nThat means Rubio presents basically the only threat to conservatives\u2019 chances in 2016\u2014and now that Rubio\u2019s team is coming after Trump this aggressively, with the skywriting above the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Rubio may have just inadvertently wandered into the bear\u2019s den."} -{"text":"A MELBOURNE woman has been reunited with her dog 10 years after it went missing.\n\nLatte disappeared from Anne Quach\u2019s Reservoir home in 2004, sparking a fruitless search.\n\n\u201cI bought Latte and her brother Cappuccino in 2003, and a year later Latte went missing from our yard,\u2019\u2019 Ms Quach said.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re not sure if she was stolen or snuck out, but I was devastated and Cappuccino whined for weeks afterwards.\u201d\n\nAt the time, Ms Quach put up posters in the hope someone would recognise the much-loved pooch, but she eventually gave up hope of being reunited.\n\nUntil now, when she turned up at the City of Whittlesea Pound in Epping where a microchip scan revealed the identity of her owner.\n\nLatte was unkempt and slightly malnourished, but otherwise OK.\n\nMs Quach said Latte didn\u2019t recognise her or respond to her name, but she was settling in well.\n\n\u201cCappuccino is very happy and my son Vin, who was only a month old when she went missing, loves his new friend,\u2019\u2019 she said.\n\nWhittlesea Council animal management team leader Rod Thickins said Ms Quach\u2019s story was a timely reminder to microchip pets.\n\n\u201cMicrochipping our cats and dogs has led to many happy reunions at the pound. Latte\u2019s case is extraordinary \u2014 10 years is definitely our council record,\u2019\u2019 he said."} -{"text":"With NES Classic Edition Discontinued, Hyperkin's Retron HD Could Take Its Place\n\nWith NES Classic Edition Discontinued, Hyperkin's Retron HD Could Take Its Place\n\nShare. Doing what Nintendoesn't. Doing what Nintendoesn't.\n\nHyperkin wants to pick up where NES Classic Edition left off with the Retron HD, a new console that plays 8-bit classics from Nintendo's home system.\n\nThe Retron HD works with original NES cartridges \u2014 from both NTSC and PAL regions \u2014 displaying them at 720p on screen. The console comes with a controller with a 10-foot cord and HD cable, plus a micro USB charge cable.\n\nMeet the Retron HD 6 IMAGES Fullscreen Image Artboard 3 Copy Artboard 3 ESC 01 OF 06 Hyperkin's Retron HD plays NES cartridges at 720p. 01 OF 06 Hyperkin's Retron HD plays NES cartridges at 720p. Meet the Retron HD Download Image Captions ESC\n\nAnnounced earlier this month, the Retron HD looks like an attempt to build off the success of Nintendo's mini console. The Big N discontinued the NES Classic Edition in April, with a company representative at the time stating that the system \"wasn\u2019t intended to be an ongoing, long-term product.\"\n\nNow this isn't the first time Hyperkin has released an HD console that plays NES cartridges. The Retron 5 actually supported 10 different systems, such as SNES, Genesis and Game Boy Advance.\n\nThe Retron HD will release May 25 for $40\/\u00a350 in gray and black.\n\nExit Theatre Mode\n\nEvan Campbell is a freelance writer who scripts the Daily Fix, streams games on his Twitch channel, and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter."} -{"text":"NEW YORK (PAI) \u2013 With sights set on the November 2014 elections, Graphic Communications Conference and International Brotherhood of Teamsters leaders are pledging to work tirelessly for pro-labor candidates and assure there is no repeat of the disastrous midterm contests of 2010.\n\nWhat they aim for is to prevent a repeat of the mid-term results four years ago. That\u2019s when, analysts say, a Tea Party-fueled backlash against Democratic President Barack Obama and his signature Affordable Healthcare law ousted 63 Democrats from the U.S. House and six from the Senate.\n\nThe GOP momentum spread to states like Wisconsin, where right winger Scott Walker was elected governor and, with Republican state legislative colleagues, quickly enacted legislation that stripped basic bargaining rights from public employees.\n\nGCC\/IBT leaders vow not to be caught flatfooted this time around.\n\n\u201cWe let down our guard in 2010,\u201d said union President George Tedeschi. \u201cIt won\u2019t happen again.\u201d Other union leaders voiced similar sentiments.\n\n\u201cI would tell people that labor should reward its friends and punish its enemies,\u201d said Frank Golden, business representative and organizer for District Council 4 in the Chicago area, quoting American Federation of Labor founder Samuel Gompers. \u201cI use that as a stepping stone and tell these people, because we got a little time to go, and just throw that straight at them as a reminder.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s a general rule of politics that midterm election results are largely determined by a president\u2019s job approval rating. If the chief executive is well-regarded, voters are apt to favor his party. A president with low public opinion scores can be a detriment.\n\n\u201cUsing the president\u2019s approval rating, even in a midterm election, is useful because, for better or worse, a president is the face of his party,\u201d wrote Charlie Cook, editor of The Cook Political Report and one of the nation\u2019s leading political analysts. \u201cAlthough voters rarely reward a party for having a popular president, they are quick to register their displeasure with a chief executive by voting against the candidates of that party in a midterm election.\u201d That\u2019s especially true in a president\u2019s second mid-term.\n\nIn 2006, GOP President George W. Bush was struggling and Republicans lost 30 House seats, six Senate seats and majorities in both houses of Congress. Polls show history may repeat itself.\n\nThat\u2019s because Obama also has lost ground recently. By mid-June, an average of 49 percent of those surveyed, in dozens of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics, said they disapproved of the president\u2019s performance.\n\nObama\u2019s slide was tied to several embarrassing episodes \u2014 Internal Revenue Service agents allegedly hounding tea party-affiliated groups, secret collection of data from Associated Press reporters, and the National Security Agency\u2019s surveillance of phone calls and overseas Internet use.\n\nNext year, all 435 seats in the GOP-dominated U.S. House are up for election in the president\u2019s second mid-term. And 33 Senate seats, a majority of them Democratic-held, will be contested.\n\nOverall, Democrats hold 52 Senate seats, Republicans hold 45, and independents, two. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who died in June, held the other. GOP Gov. Chris Christie appointed a Republican to replace Lautenberg until a special October election, upping the GOP\u2019s Senate total, temporarily, to 46.\n\nThere will be 36 statehouse battles in November 2014, with most in GOP hands. Among the most closely watched will be the gubernatorial race in Wisconsin, where Walker is running for re-election. The GOP governor beat back a recall election in 2012 despite efforts by organized labor to oust him after Walker pushed legislation virtually killing collective bargaining for most of the Badger State\u2019s 200,000 public workers.\n\nSimilar pieces of legislation also were proposed in Ohio and Michigan, now a right-to-work state.\n\nGolden said that Democrats must be held accountable, too. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of Democrats out there who made a lot of promises that they haven\u2019t really been stepping up on either,\u201d he said.\n\nThe fights over worker rights, in both the states and over the NLRB, show the stakes are high in 2014 even though midterm elections lack the fanfare \u2013 and turnout \u2013 of presidential contests.\n\n\u201cWe need to find and support the candidates that serve our members interests,\u201d said Ronnie Pineda, president of GCC Local 140-N in Los Angeles. \u201cIn the last 10 years we\u2019ve gotten people elected and they\u2019ve betrayed us. I for one am a big believer in education. We need to educate ourselves completely with every one of the candidates and any other new laws that may be on the ballot.\u201d\n\nJack Noone, president of Local 241-M in Scranton, Pa., said union leaders must help members \u2013 and their families \u2013 stay focused.\n\n\u201cRight off the bat we have to try to educate people so they understand what the really important issues are, and not be distracted by these scandals,\u201d he said, adding some of Obama\u2019s performance must be attributed to the Republicans\u2019 willful obstruction of his efforts.\n\n\u201cWe have to try and get them involved and help them understand the issues,\u201d Noone said. \u201cWe have to get people on board.\u201d\n\nZachary Dowdy writes for the Graphics Communicator.\n\nPhoto: Unions found it necessary to occupy the Capitol in Madison Wisconsin after Scott Walker, who was swept into office in the last mid-term tea party wave, attacked the collective bargaining rights of workers. Blake Deppe\/PW"} -{"text":"Duke University's decision to scrap plans to allow the Muslim call to prayer to emanate from its chapel bell tower raises controversy on campus. (Reuters)\n\nDuke University canceled plans Thursday to begin a weekly Muslim call to prayer from the campus chapel this week, an initiative that had set off debate on social media. A school spokesman and a Duke Muslim leader said that a serious and credible security threat played a role in the decision.\n\nThe university had announced that Muslim students would chant the \u2018adhan,\u2019 the call to a weekly prayer service, from the Duke University Chapel bell tower each Friday. The sound of the call to prayer in Muslim communities is a standard part of ritual life on Muslims\u2019 main prayer day. Theologically, it reminds Muslims \u201cto worship God and serves as a reminder to serve our brothers and sisters in humanity,\u201d Imam Adeel Zeb, Muslim chaplain at Duke, said in a news release.\n\nBut reaction to the story off campus was swift. Some celebrated the decision.\n\nI support the #DukeCalltoPrayer. Because religious inclusivity is more important than xenophobia. \u2014 Erin Howett (@EHowett) January 15, 2015\n\nBut many strongly opposed it.\n\nFranklin Graham, president of Samaritan\u2019s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, called on donors and alumni to withhold support from Duke until the policy was reversed. The hashtag #boycottduke spread quickly, and many of the reactions on Twitter referred to recent terrorist attacks, and interpreted it as an anti-Christian move.\n\nGraham posted strong words about it on his Facebook page: \u201cAs Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn\u2019t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism. I call on the donors and alumni to withhold their support from Duke until this policy is reversed.\u201d\n\nImmediate growing backlash momentum \u2013 people to #BoycottDuke \u2013 attend #AmericanFlashmob on Duke Campus starting 12:30 on Fri with #airhorns \u2014 Rolliby (@rolliby) January 15, 2015\n\nMuslim call to prayer to begin at Duke University. But Jesus isnt welcome @DukeU #boycottDuke \u2014 Shannon Catoe (@shannoncatoe) January 14, 2015\n\nFranklin later praised the reversal.\n\nI am glad to hear that @DukeU reversed its decision to allow Muslim call to prayer from its chapel bell tower. They made the right decision! \u2014 Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) January 15, 2015\n\nIn discussing the change Thursday, Duke officials said the response to the decision was not what the university had expected.\n\n\u201cDuke remains committed to fostering an inclusive, tolerant and welcoming campus for all of its students,\u201d said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, in a news release. \u201cHowever, it was clear that what was conceived as an effort to unify was not having the intended effect.\u201d\n\nSchoenfeld said Thursday night that a \u201cserious and credible\u201d security threat was one of the reasons for the decision. University officials declined to elaborate.\n\nOmid Safi, director of Duke\u2019s Islamic Studies Center, said Thursday evening that the call to prayer was scaled back because of \u201ca number of credible threats against Muslim students, faculty and staff.\u201d The school, he said \u201cis treating this as a criminal matter\u201d and that the threats are \u201cexternal.\u201d\n\nMuslim students, Safi said, have been advised not to speak and be identified, \u201cand are scared and disappointed.\u201d Asked if he personally had been threatened, he said he had been advised by officials to say \u201ca number of credible threats have been made.\u201d\n\nOn Friday, he said, there would still be a new addition to the weekly service: A call to prayer, but it would be from the steps of the chapel instead of amplified from the tower. The initial decision to have a call, he said, came last semester upon the urging of the Office of Religious Life \u2013 the overall chaplains\u2019 office with clergy from various faiths \u2013 and Muslim students, together. He said Duke is considered a leader in Islamic studies and hospitable for Muslims. More than 100 people show up each Friday for prayer, he said.\n\n\u201cWe had hoped for a symbolic action that would shine a light on how a leading international university in the American South can be a place where the symbol of the Christian heritage of the university is demonstrating hospitality to its Muslim community members. And instead we\u2019re having to talk about crazy people,\u201d Safi said.\n\nWhen the idea of holding the call from the tower was pitched, he said, no one thought it would be a problem. He blamed \u201cgeography\u201d and Duke\u2019s proximity to influential evangelical leader Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham.\n\n\u201cDuke has been committed to Islamic studies for decades,\u201d he said.\n\nThe university has held the weekly jummah prayers in the basement of Duke Chapel for many years, starting with the traditional chanted call to prayer. More than 700 of the 15,000 students at Duke identify as Muslim, according to school officials.\n\nDuke today is non-sectarian but has historic and symbolic ties with The United Methodist Church. Its bylaws were recast last year to say its purposes are grounded in the Christian tradition of intellectual inquiry and service to the world. Sapp described the chapel as \u201ca church.\u201d\n\nOn Wednesday, a Duke dean of religious life published an essay in the News & Observer touting the decision to hold the call, a common sound in Muslim communities around the world.\n\n\u201cThis opportunity represents a larger commitment to religious pluralism that is at the heart of Duke\u2019s mission and connects the university to national trends in religious accommodation,\u201d wrote Christy Lohr Sapp, associate dean for religious life at Duke University.\n\nIn her essay, Sapp noted that \u201cthere is much negative press\u201d today touching Muslims, \u201cfrom ISIS to Boko Haram to al-Qaida.\u201d The call, she wrote, would be the antithesis, and \u201cmight help students feel more at home in a world marred by weekly acts of violence and daily discriminations. Perhaps, too, this small token of welcome will provide a platform for a truer voice to resonate: a voice that challenges media stereotypes of Muslims, a voice of wisdom, a voice prayer and a voice of peace.\u201d\n\nNow Muslim students and others on campus wishing to take part in the prayer will meet on the quadrangle outside the Chapel before gathering in the Chapel for prayers.\n\n\u201cOur Muslim community enriches the university in countless ways,\u201d Schoenfeld said. \u201cWe welcome the active expression of their faith tradition, and all others, in ways that are meaningful and visible.\u201d\n\nPresident Obama said Friday that United States' \"one big advantage\" against terrorism was the feeling of belonging that American Muslims have to the country. He said some Muslims in European countries did not have these same national ties. (AP)\n\nThis story has been updated."} -{"text":"\u201cHi, it\u2019s me.\u201d For Australians living in isolation and doing it tough this Christmas, making that phone call may be the first step they take to reconnect with friends and loved ones.\n\nBut in a world of smart phones and the nbn\u2122, being connected is something a lot of us take for granted. It\u2019s easy to forget that there are many Australians who don\u2019t have the technology or financial means to access a phone line, or a way to connect with their loved ones at Christmas.\n\nFor some of these community members, not being able to come together with family, friends and loved ones at Christmas time only heightens feelings of loneliness, personal hardship and isolation.\n\nTo help those separated by distance or circumstance to get in touch with one another this festive season, we are again opening up our national payphone network and providing free local, national and standard mobile calls from Telstra payphones around Australia from December 24-26. We will also be offering free Telstra Air\u00ae Wi-Fi access from selected public hotspots.\n\nWe\u2019re really pleased to be working alongside our long term partner, The Salvation Army, to help spread the word about our offer. Their mission is to bring hope to those facing personal hardships, such as homelessness, all year, every year, and especially at Christmas.\n\n\u201cWith many vulnerable people suffering from feelings of social isolation, a free phone call removes financial barriers and gives everyone \u2013 regardless of their personal circumstance \u2013 the chance to make a positive emotional connection,\u201d said Major Brendan Nottle, The Salvation Army.\n\nAs a company with connection at its heart, we want to play a genuine role in connecting people at Christmas and all year round through the technology and experiences we provide. Our ability to open up our network gives all Australians the opportunity to pick up the phone and call their friends, families and loved ones at a time of year when social connection is really important.\n\nLast year, 170,000 calls were made from our payphone network across the same period, with our data revealing NSW residents and visitors to be the biggest payphone users overall.\n\nOver the three days, nearly 31,000 unique connections were made via our free Telstra Air Wi-Fi access, at sites across the country. Swanston Street and Bourke Street sites in Melbourne\u2019s CBD received the greatest number of users. Collective data usage across all Telstra Air Wi-Fi hotspots also reached 5.6 TB over the course of the campaign, with sites in Southport, Currumbin and Surfers Paradise in Queensland the top locations.\n\nNothing beats the sound of hearing a loved one\u2019s voice, especially at a time like Christmas when a focus on families coming together is really heightened. It\u2019s an important opportunity for those in the community who might be feeling isolated at this time, and we hope that even more Australians take up the opportunity to connect with their loved ones this year.\n\nAustralians will be able to call anyone in Australia across Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day free of charge from any of the 16,000 Telstra branded payphones around the country.\n\nThings you need to know:\n\nFree calls around Australia to local, national and standard mobiles from Telstra payphones from 24-26 December 2018. Free calls exclude international calls and premium services (19x), Mobile Satellite, and 1234, 12456 directory services. Excludes Telstra rented payphones. Free Wi-Fi data at select Telstra Air payphones and Telstra Stores, in Australia only. Telstra Air available for Wi-Fi enabled devices only."} -{"text":"2013 05 20 Joint Letter to Sec Hagel (PII Redacted) (PDF)<\/a>
2013 05 20 Joint Letter to Sec Hagel (PII Redacted) (Text)<\/a>\n\nMilitary attorneys representing former CIA captives detained in a top secret camp at Guantanamo have called on Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to examine whether the head of the prison\u2019s guard force is fit for command.\n\nCol. John Bogdan, the commander of Guantanamo\u2019s Joint Detention Group, has been singled out by the defense lawyers for revamping dormant policies, such as inspections of Qurans and genital patdowns, that gave rise to a hunger strike, now entering its fourth month.\n\n\u201cAlthough we represent so-called \u2018high value detainees, many of our concerns relate to the treatment of all prisoners, to include men whose internment appears to be indefinite\u201d states a 13-page letter and signed by nineteen attorneys, including several who represent self-professed 9\/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the alleged architect behind the USS Cole bombing, sent to Hagel on Monday. \u201cThere has been a serious degradation in the quality of life for detainees in Guantanamo Bay over the past year. This change appears to have coincided with the arrival of the new Joint Detention Group Commander, Col. John V. Bogdan.\u201d\n\nArmy Captain Jason Wright, who is defending Mohammed before a military tribunal and also represents an Afghan prisoner named Obaidullah, one of the hunger strikers, told Al Jazeera the letter was prompted by \u201cyears of inaction by the US government.\u201d\n\n\u201cSadly, no none has been watching Guantanamo, much less responding to repeated concerns of uniformed service members about what is really happening down there,\u201d Wright says. \u201cIt is important to highlight that this is a peaceful, political protest by the majority of the men in Camps five and six who have been cleared for release and who are otherwise innocent until proven guilty by a competent court of law. It is shameful that [Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, which operates the prison] has responded to the hunger strike, not only by forcibly feeding [prisoners] in violation of international law, but by punishing them and placing them in conditions tantamount to solitary confinement. America is better than this.\u201d\n\nInspecting Qurans\n\nThe letter was sent to Hagel three days before President Obama is due to give a major speech about his counterterrorism policies, which will include a discussion about Guantanamo.\n\nBogdan became the warden of the prison last June. Three months after he settled in, a Yemeni prisoner named Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif was found unconscious in his cell and was pronounced dead at the detention hospital. An autopsy report concluded that Latif committed suicide by ingesting mass quantities of anti-psychotic medication. However, his death is still under investigation.\n\nFollowing Latif\u2019s death, according to the accounts several prisoners\u2019 communicated to their attorneys, Bogdan ordered a shakedown of their cells and guards confiscated personal items, which included pictures, legal papers, eyeglasses and isomats.\n\nIn January, an Afghan Taliban prisoner was shot in the throat in the recreation yard with a non-lethal round for allegedly trying to climb a fence. In early February, the prisoners\u2019 Qurans were inspected for contraband. The handling of the holy books immediately led to the hunger strike.\n\nPrisoners have told their attorneys since they launched their protest they have been physically abused by guards, subjected to sleep deprivation and forced cell extractions, denied potable water and have had the temperature in their prison cells turned down to freezing cold temperatures.\n\nIn mid-April, on Bogdan\u2019s orders, guards staged a pre-dawn raid at the communal camp and isolated all of the prisoners into single cells in what was seen by attorneys and human rights groups as an attempt to break the hunger strike. If that was the hope it had the opposite effect as the number of prisoners who joined the protest doubled.\n\n\"Death...is imminent\"\n\nThe military has vehemently denied the allegations. But the attorneys said in their letter if steps are not immediately taken to improve the quality of life for the prisoners, \u201cDeath - whether by suicide, starvation, organ failure, or associated complications - is imminent.\u201d\n\nAlong with their letter, the attorneys also sent Hagel an August 2011 report prepared for the United Nations General Assembly by the UN\u2019s special rapporteur for torture, which said solitary confinement rose to the level of inhumane and degrading treatment.\n\nUS Military attorneys say detainees are not being treated humanely [Jason Leopold\/Al Jazeera]\n\nReached for comment late Monday, Army Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman, told Al Jazeera, \"The Department does not discuss correspondence addressed to the Secretary, in the press.\u201d\n\nThe attorneys\u2019 letter said in addition to the inhumane living conditions hunger-striking prisoners residing in the two main prison camps - 5 and 6 - have been living under, 14 high-value detainees residing in Camp seven, a classified facility, are also not being treated humanely, an issue the attorneys raised with the Pentagon in a dozen previous letters that have gone unanswered. They have called for Hagel to immediately authorize an independent monitoring committee to investigate conditions of confinement at Guantanamo.\n\n\u201cYou could change the course and the consequences of the hunger strike right now Secretary Hagel by taking ownership of these issued during the political stalemate\u201d between President Obama and Congress over how to shutter the prison, the letter says. \u201cAt stake, as you know, is not just the inalienable right to human dignity - to be treated like a human being - but America\u2019s standing in the world.\u201d\n\nSeparately, the attorneys, citing a law school investigation, said Bogdan may have perjured himself when he testified before the military commissions earlier this year in Mohammed\u2019s case about secret listening devices designed to look like smoke detectors that were placed in the rooms where attorneys meet with prisoners, but were never turned on. The investigation by Seton Hall University\u2019s Center for Policy and Research concluded that Bogdan\u2019s testimony was inconsistent about what he knew and when he knew it. The Seton Hall report was co-written by former Guantanamo guard Joseph Hickman.\n\n\u201cWhile Seton Hall\u2019s finding are sufficient grounds to examine COL Bogdan\u2019s fitness to command the Joint Detention Group, his leadership should warrant further scrutiny based on the rapidly deteriorating conditions under his command and his heavy-handed response to the current hunger strike,\u201d the attorneys wrote.\n\nFollow Jason Leopold on Twitter: @JasonLeopold"} -{"text":"It\u2019s not hard to see how, in a Japanese-dominated society, pop art might have extended its global popularity with no Campbell\u2019s Soup cans in sight. Illustration: Chloe Cushman\n\nPop art without Andy Warhol? Iconic cartoon mice repping the underground comic scene? These are the possibilities in a world where Japan defeated the United States in 1945.\n\nHere\u2019s an alternate look at art history, reimagining movements, tropes and trends that could have evolved much differently had the Allies lost the second world war.\n\nJ-pop \u2026 art?\n\nOne of the most influential postwar creative movements, pop art elevated advertising and mechanical reproduction to the level of fine art. Combining splashy, intense colors with recognizable, everyday subjects, the style forced viewers to reconsider the sophisticated techniques underlying seemingly mundane comic books, magazine advertisements and other objects.\n\nGiven Japan\u2019s rich ad and comic culture, it\u2019s not surprising the country developed a pop art style of its own. Before 1945, the popularity of propaganda kimonos hinted at the movement. Since the end of the war, the style has flourished as artists like Yayoi Kusama, who inspired Andy Warhol, used advertising\u2019s bright colors, while others like Lady Aiko and Mr have adopted comic imagery. It\u2019s not hard to see how, in a Japanese-dominated society, pop art might have extended its global popularity with no Campbell\u2019s Soup cans in sight.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest In a Japan-dominated postwar world, American cartoonists probably would have been repressed and manga characters reaching US shores likely would have looked more realistically Japanese. Illustration: Chloe Cushman\n\nManga: underground no more\n\nContemporary manga is a hybrid of Japanese and American comic art, says Stephen Salel, the Honolulu Museum of Art\u2019s Robert F Lange Foundation curator of Japanese art. Many manga elements, like characters\u2019 large eyes and exaggerated expressions, owe their origin to US cartoon pioneers like Walt Disney.\n\nIn a Japan-dominated postwar world, American cartoonists probably would have been repressed, particularly those who contributed to wartime propaganda. Manga reaching US shores likely would have looked more realistically Japanese. And, Salel points out, as the preferred style of the victors, manga probably wouldn\u2019t have conveyed the underground chic that\u2019s made it so popular among US comic aficionados today. Imagine outlaw teens and proud geeks in a different world: would they have clustered around smuggled copies of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse?\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest R\u014dnin did find fertile ground in postwar American western films, but in an alternate timeline we might have seen an Old West r\u014dnin carrying a sword alongside his six-shooter, fighting a cattle-rustling gang headed by the yakuza. Illustration: Chloe Cushman\n\nR\u014dnin characters roam the big screen\n\nThe r\u014dnin, or \u201cwave man\u201d, the masterless samurai forever cut off from mainstream society, is a powerful Japanese icon. Freed of traditional hierarchies, he wanders from place to place, using his skills to survive \u2013 and, in some tales, to protect the innocent and punish the wicked. Sound familiar? R\u014dnin did find fertile ground in postwar American culture, particularly in westerns, with characters ranging from the squeaky-clean Lone Ranger to Clint Eastwood\u2019s grim \u201cman with no name\u201d.\n\nSometimes the r\u014dnin-gunslinger relationship is explicit: The Magnificent Seven was a western remake of Akira Kurosawa\u2019s The Seven Samurai, and the 1971 movie Red Sun united veterans of both movies in a unique \u201csamurai western\u201d. If Japanese aesthetics had dominated postwar Hollywood, we might have seen an Old West r\u014dnin carrying a sword alongside his six-shooter, fighting a cattle-rustling gang headed by the yakuza.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest Can you imagine a postwar Ivy League alum cooling down after a tennis match wearing a yukata? Illustration: Chloe Cushman\n\nEast meets East Coast: the new preppy\n\nIn the late 1800s, Japan began adopting Western clothing; by the 1940s, it was the standard wardrobe for daily life. But if Japan had won the war, it seems likely that many of its traditional textiles and designs would have filtered into Americans\u2019 style. Can you see a postwar Ivy League alum cooling down after a tennis match wearing a Japanese robe called a yukata? Or a CEO\u2019s suit lined with flashy, kimono-inspired fabric?\n\nIt\u2019s not that hard to imagine, since similar looks have made it into American stores in the real world. Japanese retailer Uniqlo, renowned for its preppy clothes, also carries yukatas and Japanese-patterned shorts in its lineup. And Harajuku style, which merges American design and theatrical Japanese aesthetic, shows how the east Asian nation\u2019s culture has impacted western clothing today.\n\nFacebook Twitter Pinterest California wines might have had fanciful names written in the most elegant kanji, hiragana and katakana. Translations: Mako Ishikawa. Illustration: Chloe Cushman\n\nTypography takes a turn\n\nIn the 1900s, increased industrialization and the rising cult of efficiency in the west signaled the end of flowery, Spencer-style penmanship. The efficient Palmer method streamlined handwriting, while the widespread adoption of the typewriter in the late 1800s and early 1900s accelerating the process. In Japan, on the other hand, pictographic kanji and the syllabic writing systems of hiragana and katakana had thousands of characters, which slowed the progress of one writing machine: the first Japanese typewriter had 2,400 keys.\n\nEmojis before the smiling poop: New York museum acquires world's first set Read more\n\nWhile it\u2019s hard to picture a postwar Japanese occupation forcing Americans to adopt Japanese \u201calphabets\u201d, it\u2019s probable that signs and other public messages would have been printed in Japanese in certain regions, especially California. And this would likely have bled out into mainstream American writing, with Asian-inspired fonts and advertisements gaining popularity. \u201cBrush-written calligraphy on elongated formats such as poetry cards [tanzaku] and hanging scrolls might have regained far more popularity than it currently enjoys,\u201d Salel says.\n\nAs for pictographic writing, it\u2019s not hard to see how it could have slowly worked its way into common usage \u2013 not unlike the emoji, which originated on Japanese cellphones in the 1990s and has since traversed the world.\n\nThis content is paid for by Amazon Prime Video"} -{"text":"previously on MeFi: 1 - 2 - 3\n\nalso previously: Bren\u00e9 Brown on shame & vulnerability (one, two)\n\nOne: No good role modelsTwo: Can you be \u2018bad\u2019 and yet still \u2013 overall \u2013 good?Three: It will hurt you too much to hear thisFour: No one can understand me Effectively communicating your feelings : \"I know that it can be hard to talk about your feelings. We\u2019re not taught to do it, and we\u2019re certainly not taught that it\u2019s an important thing to learn. But it\u2019s definitely a skill worth practicing. Because you\u2019re worth being heard. I promise.\" Effective Communication - Improving your Social Skills \"People aren\u2019t born with good communication skills; like any other skill, they are learned through trial and error and repeated practice.\"BakadesuyoSucceed Socially Some Common Conversation Mistakes and Core Listening Skills How Self-Awareness Leads to Effective Communication : \"Our previous experiences, believes, values, assumptions, judgments and bias influence the quality of our listening. Whenever we listen to something, we evaluate what we are hearing and this in turn triggers our emotional reactions and our judgment. If we hear something that contradicts our values or our interests, we tend to react, by becoming defensive; our ability to be effective listeners is hostage of our own filters.\" Are You a Poor Communicator? How to Improve : \"...communicating with others can be a difficult and frustrating experience. There are times when we mean well, but because of the way we say what we say, our message is misunderstood, with unintended and undesirable consequences.\"Raptitude"} -{"text":"An LGBT pride march in Scotland has banned \u201ccis\u201d drag queens from marching out of the fear that it could offend transgender people.\n\nFree Pride Glasgow is scheduled to take place in August, and bills itself as an alternative to the city\u2019s main Pride event, which has allegedly become too commercialized.\n\n\u201cIt was felt by the group within the Trans\/Non Binary Caucus that some drag performance, particularly cis drag, hinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke, however transgender individuals do not feel as though their gender identity is a joke,\u201d organizers said in a statement.\n\nAccording to the statement announcing the policy, some transsexuals found drag performances offensive because it \u201chinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke.\u201d\n\nInitially, the policy was also going to ban transsexual drag queens, on the grounds that it would be inappropriate to ask individual queens whether they identified as transgender or not. But then that policy offended the transgender drag queens, who complained, leading to a new policy where trans drag queens are welcome but wicked cis queens are banned (\u201cCisgender\u201d means a person who identifies with their actual, physical sex).\n\nFree Pride Glasgow justified its decision in a Monday Facebook post, saying they were deliberately choosing to desires of transgender women more than others.\n\n\u201cOur event aims to represent those underrepresented in our community, including but not limited to trans and non-binary people, women, People of colour, intersex people, asexual people and people with disabilities,\u201d the post said. \u201cAs such we have decided to prioritise the needs of trans women to feel safe and included in our event.\u201d\n\nThe decision earned a rebuke from the main Glasgow Pride event.\n\n\u201cPride Glasgow believes that any community group should be given their place to flourish but that success should not be built on the negativity and ignorance towards other events, groups and like minded people and we are saddened to see that this is the direction that Free Pride has chosen to take.\u201d\n\nOpposition to drag queens is surprisingly common, at least on the British left. Earlier this year, the National Union of Students officially condemned drag and cross-dressing as forms of \u201cfancy dress.\u201d\n\n\u201cTransphobic fancy dress should be met with the same disdain with which we meet other prejudiced or appropriative costumes,\u201d the group said at the time.\n\nFollow Blake on Twitter\n\nContent created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@ dailycallernewsfoundation.org.\n\nContent created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org."} -{"text":"Labor is a hot topic in Paris. (Loic Venance\/AFP via Getty Images)\n\nThe French government recently faced huge protests against unpopular changes to the country's labor law.\n\nMost of its critics would argue that French workers increasingly face burnout and exhaustion. But one employee has had far different problems: He sued his former company because his job was allegedly extremely boring.\n\nThe plaintiff, 44-year-old Parisian Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Desnard, is demanding more than $400,000 from his former employer, a perfume enterprise, as compensation for the boredom it allegedly caused. According to the Frenchman, the company should be held responsible for mental and other health damages as well as the financial consequences of him missing out on a promotion.\n\nDesnard claims that he was removed from his previous high-profile position in the company, which included managing certain contracts and travel expenses. For the next four years, he was asked to carry out much duller tasks.\n\nSpeaking to French newspaper Le Monde, Desnard said his company wanted to bore him \"to death\" in order to convince him to quit voluntarily and therefore limit severance payments. But amid a sluggish French economy, Desnard simply decided to stay and do nothing. In the following four years, he reportedly earned more than $90,000 per year -- but the money did not fulfill him, he said.\n\n\"I was ashamed to be paid to do nothing,\" Desnard was quoted as saying by AFP. In an interview, he described the time as \"hell\" and \"a nightmare,\" which caused multiple health issues, including \"epilepsy, ulcers, sleep problems and serious depression.\"\n\nThe Frenchman was fired two years ago after a car crash forced him to go on sick leave for more than half a year. After having paid him a salary of about $360,000 over four years, his employer stated that his prolonged absence was interrupting work processes and ended their relationship.\n\nA verdict is expected July 27.\n\nRead more:\n\nFrench shop run by Muslim convert refused to sell merchandise to women on weekdays\n\nThese students wore hijabs for a day to promote tolerance. It didn\u2019t go well."} -{"text":"In 2010, Rachel Bradshaw-Bean \u2014 17 at the time \u2014 was raped in the band room of her Texas high school, Henderson High. When she reported the assault to the assistant band director, he told her to \"work it out with the boy.\" Two days later, she and a friend tried to report the assault to the assistant vice principal. She then received medical exam that showed lacerations to the hymen and bleeding \"consistent with information given per the victim.\" A day later, she was told by the police that no criminal charges would be filed. The school did not launch its own investigation \u2014 although it was legally obligated to do so under Title IX \u2014 and instead sentenced her and her rapist to 45 days in a special disciplinary school. Their charge: \"public lewdness.\"\n\nTwo years after her rape, Bradshaw-Bean has decided to speak out to NBC because she doesn't want anyone else \"to have to go through what I did,\" she told reporter Abigail Pesta. She feels that her case was egregiously mishandled. Firstly, she believes that the fact that she didn't cry in her forensic interview caused the police to take her accusation less seriously. \"I'm sorry, am I supposed to cry? Am I supposed to feel the emotions you tell me to?... Am I supposed to feel these emotions right now and not go into shock and not [not] know what's happening?\" she asked in a taped segment with the channel. According to her account, the police were eager to push her case under the rug; she was told by the police that the sex was consensual and that there was no evidence to prove otherwise. The District Attorney of her county told NBC that she had used language that \"implied consensual sex instead of forcible rape\" when the police interviewed her, but he doesn't have any record of the context in which she made that statement in his notes. \"I was reporting a rape,\" Bradshaw-Bean insisted in response. \"It sounds like my words are getting twisted. If you have to twist someone's words to make your case, then something's not right.\"\n\nShe adds that she felt \"like a prisoner\" \u2014 at the disciplinary school she'd been exiled to, she saw her rapist in the hallways, when she was arriving in the morning and going to the bathroom. She tried to transfer to a different high school and was denied because the \"public lewdness\" charge was a stain on her record. Other students taunted her, threatening her and insinuating that she had \"asked for it.\" After graduation, she says, \"My personality changed. I didn't want to do anything. I blamed myself for the longest time.\" In June 2012, though, things started to look up. Bradshaw-Bean's mother, Colleen Chevallier, had filed a Title IX complaint against the school with the ACLU. And in June, a little over a year and a half after her rape, Bradshaw-Bean finally got word that the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights had ruled that Henderson High School was in violation of Title IX for failing to independently investigate the case and for its inability to provide \"a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason\" behind their decision to send Bradshaw-Bean to the disciplinary school.\n\nThe ED outlined and instituted a 13-point plan to bring Henderson High in line with its Title IX obligations. As part of that, the faculty was made to undergo extensive training \u2014 which was very necessary because, as Pesta points out, most high schools' Title IX coordinators don't have a real, firm grasp of what the law entails. The disciplinary actions taken against Bradshaw-Bean were also scrubbed from her record, and the school had to pay for her to undergo counseling.\n\n\"The counselor really helped,\" said Bradshaw-Bean. \"Finally, I thought, there are some smart people in the world\u2014rational people with levelheaded thoughts. It restored my faith in humanity.\" As of December 4, 2013, the school is in compliance with all 13 requirements mandated by the ED, and ED officials are still monitoring the school at the present moment. As for Bradshaw-Bean, she plans to go on to study criminal justice and criminal psychology. \"I can help others facing injustice of their own,\" she said.\n\nAdvertisement"} -{"text":"WASHINGTON \u2014 One by one, President Barack Obama ticked through the names on the Spurs\u2019 roster during Monday\u2019s ceremony in the East Room of the White House.\n\nHe mentioned Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, of course. Kawhi Leonard, Boris Diaw and Tiago Splitter. He named Patty Mills and Marco Belinelli, lamenting that the latter no longer played for the president\u2019s beloved Chicago Bulls.\n\nObama even brought up Matt Bonner, calling him \u201ca sandwich blogger named 'Red Mamba.\u2019\u201d\n\nCory Joseph\u2019s name never came up, and for good reason. In his first three mostly forgettable seasons with the Spurs, the backup point guard has been easy to miss.\n\n\u201cI felt coming into this year I had something to prove,\u201d he said. \u201cI still have something to prove.\u201d\n\nThirty-six games into a make-or-break season for him, Joseph has shown he can be a solid NBA point guard.\n\nWhether the free-agent-to-be still will be doing it in San Antonio at this time next season remains to be seen.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m always going to feel like I deserve a job in the NBA,\u201d said Joseph, averaging career highs in points (10.3) and assists (3.1) heading into Tuesday\u2019s game at Washington. \u201cI put in the work. I\u2019m always going to compete to the best of my abilities. Whatever happens on that end, I leave to my agent.\u201d\n\nWhen the Spurs declined to extend Joseph\u2019s rookie-scale contract in October, opening the door for him to become a restricted free agent this summer, it appeared he would not be back because the team had no need for him.\n\nNow it looks like he might not be back because the team won\u2019t be able to afford him.\n\nWith Parker and Mills missing chunks of the season with injuries, Joseph has been something of a savior for the Spurs\u2019 backcourt.\n\nThe last time the Spurs played Washington, on Jan. 3, Joseph held his own against All-Star John Wall, going for 17 of his 19 points in the first half of a 101-92 win.\n\nAnother moment: With the Spurs teetering late in a comeback win over Phoenix on Friday, Joseph put his head down and bulldozed for six consecutive points.\n\n\u201cHe always impressed me with the way he plays,\u201d coach Gregg Popovich said. \u201cHe is not blessed with the most talent in the world, but I don\u2019t think there is anybody on the planet who gets more out of what he\u2019s got.\u201d\n\nStill, until this season Joseph was a fringe NBA player. One reason Obama didn\u2019t mention him Monday: Joseph totaled only eight minutes against Miami in last season\u2019s Finals.\n\nSo when the Spurs declined to extend him in the fall, Joseph was hardly surprised.\n\n\u201cI knew I didn\u2019t play much in my first few seasons,\u201d said Joseph, a 23-year-old Texas-ex. \u201cI didn\u2019t even ask my agent about it (an extension). I just assumed they wouldn\u2019t.\u201d\n\nInstead, Joseph put on his hard hat and went to work, determined to grow himself into an NBA player.\n\nIt was the approach Joseph took from the beginning, when the Spurs selected him 29th in the 2011 draft, 14 spots behind the more heralded Kawhi Leonard.\n\nDevoid of playing time his first few seasons, Joseph occasionally requested to be demoted to the Spurs\u2019 Development League club in Austin to get minutes.\n\nFor Joseph, much of the work involved in becoming an established NBA player was accomplished in solitude.\n\n\u201cThere were times when I was in Austin, in the gym by myself, maybe with nobody to rebound for me,\u201d Joseph said. \u201cI would go to to the gym a lot \u2014 a lot \u2014 and just work out.\u201d\n\nThe work seems poised to pay off for Joseph in a literal sense. He just might have to leave San Antonio to get paid.\n\nThe Spurs have $44.4 million committed to Parker after this season and another $7.1 million to Mills.\n\nJoseph is probably due a raise from the $2.02 million he is earning this season, but it is hard to envision the Spurs paying a third point guard much beyond that.\n\nFor now, the Spurs will take whatever they can get from Joseph. With Parker and Mills easing back into the rotation, look for Popovich to seek creative ways to keep all three point guards in the mix.\n\nThe president might have forgotten Joseph, but the Spurs have not.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s stepped up and really taken the opportunity and run with it,\u201d Duncan said. \u201cI\u2019m really proud of him. He\u2019s showed he can play in the league and really play well.\u201d\n\njmcdonald\n\n@express-news.net\n\nTwitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN"} -{"text":"A woman who slashed another woman\u2019s face in a \u201cmoment of madness or jealousy\u201d, leaving her permanently disfigured, has been given a six year sentence.\n\nKinsi Abdullah Dirir (33) was convicted of assault causing serious harm to mother-of-five Habiba Songolo (40) at a house on Foxborough Rise, Lucan, Co Dublin on May 17th, 2008.\n\nDirir had denied the charge at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, however she admitted causing criminal damage to a car outside the house on the same day.\n\nDirir, who was born in Somalia and came to Ireland aged six, has no previous convictions. A probation report put her at high risk of re-offending.\n\nThe court heard the attack happened after Dirir discovered that her former husband was in a relationship with the victim.\n\nDirir, a mother-of-three of Hollybrook Park, Clontarf, was acquitted by a jury of carrying a razor blade on the same occasion.\n\nJudge Desmond Hogan said the victim had suffered very serious injuries and continued to suffer traumatic effects, bordering on depression.\n\nHe suspended the final 18 months of the sentence for four years, after hearing Dirir\u2019s family had offered the sum of \u20ac2,000 as compensation to the victim.\n\nJudge Hogan took into account Dirir\u2019s long history of mental illness and ordered that she receive appropriate medication in custody."} -{"text":"window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-c', container: 'taboola-interstitial-gallery-thumbnails-3', placement: 'Interstitial Gallery Thumbnails 3', target_type: 'mix' });\n\nPhoto: Getty Images Image 1 of \/ 4 Caption Close Image 2 of 4 Chris Dominguez of the San Francisco Giants is congratulated after hitting a two-run home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park September, 21, 2014 in San Diego. less Chris Dominguez of the San Francisco Giants is congratulated after hitting a two-run home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park September, 21, 2014 in San ... more Photo: Getty Images Image 3 of 4 Chris Dominguezof the San Francisco Giants sits in the dugout after an 8-2 loss to the San Diego Padres at Petco Park September, 21, 2014 in San Diego. Chris Dominguezof the San Francisco Giants sits in the dugout after an 8-2 loss to the San Diego Padres at Petco Park September, 21, 2014 in San Diego. Photo: Getty Images Image 4 of 4 SF Giants rookie hits first home run, gets cute messages on ball 1 \/ 4 Back to Gallery\n\nChris Dominguez was beaming despite Sunday\u2019s 8-2 loss, and nobody could blame him. Making his first major-league start, the 27-year-old rookie homered against Ian Kennedy for his first big-league hit.\n\nThe ball went over the fence down the left-field line, hit off the Western Metal Supply Co. building and wound up in the hands of a little girl named Estella who was celebrating her birthday.\n\nThe Padres dispatched an employee to retrieve the ball, but before a swap could be completed, the little girl\u2019s sister got ahold of the ball and wrote on it, \u201cHappy birthday, love M.\u201d\n\nThe girl agreed to give the ball to Dominguez, but not before she added her own missive. She wrote, \u201cCongratulations, (heart) Estella.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is awesome,\u201d Dominguez said when he saw the inscriptions. \u201cI think it\u2019s great for the memories.\u201d"} -{"text":"Israeli Occupation Forces Kill Two Palestinians, Kidnap 370 In May\n\nIn its monthly report on Israeli violations, the Ahrar Center for Detainees\u2019 Studies and Human Rights has reported that Israeli soldiers killed two Palestinians in May, and kidnapped 370.\n\nThe Center said that the army shot and killed Nadim Nuwwara, 17, and Mohammad Abu Thaher, 20, near the Ofer Israeli military roadblock, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah. The two were killed on May 15, during Nakba Day protests.\n\nIsraeli army sharpshooters killed the two following clashes with the army as the Palestinians marked the Nakba Day. Video footage showed the two walking away, with their backs to the army location, when they were killed.\n\nAs for arrests carried out by the Israeli occupation army, the Center said that 370 Palestinians were kidnapped in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.\n\nIn Jerusalem, soldiers kidnapped 118 Palestinians, the highest number of arrests in May, while 86 Palestinians were kidnapped in the Hebron district, 40 in Nablus, 30 in Bethlehem, 27 in Ramallah, 27 in Jenin, 16 in Qalqilia, 8 in Salfit, 4 in Tulkarem, and two in Tubas.\n\nIn addition, 12 Palestinians were kidnapped in the besieged Gaza Strip; three of them were kidnapped near the border fence, and nine were Palestinian fishers were kidnapped by the Israeli Navy in Palestinian territorial waters.\n\nAlso in May, the army kidnapped five Palestinian women in different parts of occupied Palestine, and released three of them, while two remained under interrogation.\n\nHead of the Ahrar Center, Fuad al-Khoffash, stated that Israel is escalating the arrests, especially amongst young Palestinians, and that Israeli interrogators continue to use cruel interrogation methods, and extreme torture, in direct violation of International Law and all related human rights treaties.\n\nHe added that the arrests are happening while Administrative Detainees, held by Israel under arbitrary orders without charges or trial, are ongoing with their hunger strike despite the fact that many detainees are facing life-threatening conditions, and serious complications."} -{"text":"The following table contains the main stats for all ADVENT units present in version 1.4 of Long War 2, including the units introduced by Shen's Last Gift and Alien Hunters DLCs.\n\nThe stat values can be influenced by the difficulty level (Rookie\/Veteran\/Commander\/Legendary) and those are also displayed accordingly.\n\nOther Stats\n\nIn addition to the stats listed above there are others that have very limited use. Here's a list of those stats and the specific situations where they are used\n\nFlank Aim - only used by the Sidewinders with a value of 5, 0 for all other units\n\nFlank Crit - default of 33\/33\/40\/40 for each difficulty level, Elite Sidewinders have the values at 40\/40\/50\/50\n\nStrength - propose\/use unknown, has a default value of 50, and higher values for units like Mutons and Stun Lancers\n\nItems - default value of 1 of nearly all units, with the exception of the ADVENT Engineer\/Grenadiers, which is set for 9\n\nSources"} -{"text":"You may recall that of all of the games I saw at E3, Eador: Masters of the Broken World was the one that caught my eye despite the lack of a huge booth and go-go dancers. Of course I have no idea how the game will come together in the end but if Snowbird Games hits its target \u2014 this is going to be something special.\n\nWhen you are developing a game and tossing about words such as Master of Magic, Civilization and Heroes of Might and Magic you immediately draw the usual cries of, \u201cOh great another attempt at a MoM sequel\u201d but Eador has the foundation in place and looks like it just might pull it off.\n\nI had a chat with Vladimir Tortsov of Snowbird to talk about the game, its design, and a host of other goodies.\n\nThis one is long. Bring a snack.\n\nFirst off, can you clear something up for us? I read an article recently which describes Eador as a \u201creal- time strategy game\u201d and yet the demo I saw at E3 looked clearly like a turn-based game. Is Eador real-time or turn-based?\n\nYou saw it correctly, of course it\u2019s turn-based. It was some kind of misinterpretation in that other article.\n\nOK, now that we have that out of the way, can you tell us what Eador is all about? What exactly will you be doing in the game \u2013 how do you \u201cwin\u201d?\n\nFrom the very beginning of the game Eador poses a challenge: try to unify the shattered pieces of a planet under your rule, or lose. By invading the other shards (that\u2019s how we call these pieces of firmament floating in the astral void) and conquering them, your alter-ego, the Master, becomes more powerful and better able to shape the world as he wants.\n\nThus, Eador. Masters of the Broken World is all about achieving ultimate power and using it to do good or evil, depending on the player\u2019s choice. In this sense, it\u2019s pretty similar to the idea behind Sid Meier\u2019s Civilization, except that in our game there are concepts of evil and good and you have to make a choice all the time.\n\nTechnically speaking, the gameplay consists of three connected levels: astral, strategic and tactical. Having invaded a shard (the astral level), the players land on its surface (strategic level) and, after a series of battles (tactical level), they conquer the shard and literally attach it to their homeland. Add in diplomacy, army and hero management, internal affairs and moral dilemmas to the mix, and you get the game.\n\nI came away from the E3 demo excited to see more because it looks like Eador is borrowing from so many turn-based strategy staples, but this is such a large game \u2013 how challenging is it to combine so many different gameplay elements into one package? It looks like there are so many moving parts with the design.\n\nYeah, it\u2019s a clockwork with a huge number of details. I have to give the full credit for this amazing work to our lead game designer Alexey Bokulev, who is an extremely creative person and a huge fan of old-school strategy games.\n\nIn fact, Eador was born from Alexey\u2019s wish to play a perfect strategy game combining all the best features from his favorite games such as Master of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Civilization. Designing that dream game was a very complicated task indeed, but he succeeded. You can check some screenshots from the 2D version of Eador (released in 2010 in CIS countries only) here: http:\/\/www.eador.com\/eador1\/gallery.html. With this 3D remake we\u2019re working on, we\u2019re trying to introduce this extraordinary strategy game to the worldwide audience.\n\nThe combat model based off the E3 demo reminded me a lot of Heroes of Might and Magic and King\u2019s Bounty. What makes Eador\u2019s combat mechanic special? When readers see the screenshots they think, \u201cOh a HoMM clone.\u201d Can you explain some of the differences between the two?\n\nYeah, it\u2019s true \u2013 the tactical screen is the most \u2018classic\u2019 of them all. Well, the difference lies in the details. Our battleground isn\u2019t just a field with a grid \u2013 it represents the real location with different types of terrain and obstacles. It matters a lot, because terrain affects the performance of your troops providing various bonuses and penalties. Unlike HoMM, our units don\u2019t stack, so you couldn\u2019t \u201ccheat\u201d by amassing a huge army of dragons on a single hex and eradicating all resistance. Finally, each unit has dynamically changing attributes like morale and stamina, which makes this combat system closer to the tabletop games with miniatures than to HoMM or King\u2019s Bounty.\n\nCan you talk a little about the various hero types that lead your armies? How do they differ fro one another and can you guide them down various paths by spending experience points?\n\nThere are four basic types of heroes in the game. They serve as generals for your armies and participate in battles alongside other units.\n\nA Warrior is a strong melee fighter, relying on his physical strength and equipment. He is a \u2018one man army\u2019, requiring only limited support from other units.\n\nA Scout is a skilled archer, also possessing a broad variety of non-combat utility skills such as a possibility to sabotage enemy army before the battle.\n\nA Commander is weak in melee, but he can lead a larger army than any other hero of comparable level, granting an assortment of bonuses to his troops as he leads them into battle.\n\nA Mage is, naturally, a very skilled spellcaster who can easily turn the tide of battle with a couple of powerful magic tricks.\n\nEvery unit in the game (including heroes, of course) gains experience points and progresses in levels. When a hero reaches level 10, he ascends to new class, either an advanced version of his initial specialization or a combination with any of the three remaining base classes. For example, our Warrior could keep his initial focus on melee and become a Berserker possessing some exciting new perks, or he can turn into a Dark Knight, able to cast deadly necromantic spells.\n\nWhen you attack a shard, what sort of things will you have to manage? This \u201coverland\u201d portion of the game looked meaty at E3 but I was hoping to get some more information about some of the tasks and gameplay mechanics that are involved with it. What do you have to do to run your economy, for example? Do you obtain gold, wood, etc?\n\nThe strategic level is the most complex one in the game, as there is lot of stuff to take care about \u2013 economics, politics, warfare, etc. First of all, the players should expand their capital, which is their main base of operations on the shard. By choosing which buildings he needs most and constructing them, the player shapes up his strategy. Military buildings allow him to hire stronger troops; financial buildings help to increase his income, while entertainment buildings assist him in keeping the population happy.\n\nConcerning resources, there are two basic ones: gold and magic gems. The gems are required for all our magical needs, while gold is needed for pretty much everything else. There are also nine rare resources in the game such as mithril or redwood lumber. Each rare resource has its specific purpose: for instance, mithril is used to create the most powerful artifacts with magical effects and lumber is required for the construction of some advanced buildings in the city.\n\nWhat are some of the role-playing mechanics at work in Eador? I seem to recall something about hero quests during the E3 demo? Can you give me some examples of how that works?\n\nYeah, as I\u2019ve said before \u2013 not just your heroes, but all units in the game level-up and get some new perks and abilities. For instance, your knights can acquire the passive ability to deal more damage to evil units starting from level 8, while your ogres may learn how to stun the enemy troops on level 3.\n\nSpeaking of quests, each hero can be assigned with an exploration task instead of a military one. It means our hero could spend his time in an allied province, wandering around and looking for places of interest. Each province has a number of dungeons, crypts, caves, magic shops etc., and our hero could visit all these beautiful places in order to gain some experience fighting the guardians and to plunder their treasures. Even if our hero was unable to find anything unusual during his search, exploration is a great way to increase tax income of that province (we can imagine that our hero is actually looking for more taxpayers to rip off, rather than for the monsters to slay?)\n\nYou mentioned unit stamina and morale? How do those affect gameplay?\n\nStamina represents the unit\u2019s ability to carry out our orders \u2013 i.e. move or attack. Each action costs a specific amount of stamina points, and when the unit is attacked by the enemy, his stamina suffers as well. The unit with zero stamina is considered utterly exhausted and becomes completely useless. Therefore, the player should review the state of his troops and give his tired units a break to catch their breath.\n\nMorale works a little bit different, but the effect is quite similar. The unit\u2019s morale depends on many factors, including the general\u2019s stats, magical effects, army composition and current battlefield situation. A demoralized unit cannot fight and will most probably try to flee the battle.\n\nHow does diplomacy work? What can be accomplished by talking to your opponents and not just stabbing them?\n\nThe diplomacy system is working on two levels \u2013 astral and strategic.\n\nOn the astral level, we can learn more about our competitors \u2013 the other Masters \u2013 by speaking to them. There is a strong chance that we\u2019d want to ally ourselves with a fellow Master who shares our views and beliefs. These \u2018astral\u2019 alliances lead to different story paths, eventually providing us with different endings.\n\nThere is also a strategic level diplomacy, which takes place during the war over some particular shard. It is possible that some other Masters also chose this shard as their target during their turn, and in this case, diplomacy becomes a powerful tool of survival. Instead of fighting the war on two or more fronts, we can negotiate with some of our adversaries and convince them to leave this shard for good. We can also sign a trade agreement with other Masters and sell or buy resources.\n\nWhat sort of creatures are you able to recruit in the game? Do you play a specific race such as the \u201cUndead\u201d or can you mix and match your unit types within an army or on various shards?\n\nIn Eador, you play as yourself \u2013 meaning that you don\u2019t represent elves, orcs or humans when you\u2019re hiring them. You\u2019re the Master, a demigod, and these puny mortals are nothing but pawns in your great game. Thus, you can mix & match units from different races as you want, but you have to pay attention to the chemistry. Goblins and elves don\u2019t really get along together, so you can expect a penalty to the troops\u2019 morale on a battlefield.\n\nThe player may ally with any of the races populating a particular shard, thus gaining access to its warriors (but you have to construct a specific building in your capital before that). Alternately, some particular units may join your ranks as a result of a completed quest.\n\nThe game looked enormous at the show \u2013 how \u201cbig\u201d of a game is Eador? Can you customize the options for a shorter game or is that set in stone?\n\nIf we\u2019re talking about hours of gameplay, I\u2019d say the first playthrough of Eador could take you about 60 hours to beat the game. Once you\u2019ve learned the tricks and understood the basics, you can finish the game in half that time. Thus, the duration of the story-driven campaign is more or less set in stone, but in the \u2018skirmish\u2019 mode (strategic + tactical levels) you can adjust all the settings as you wish.\n\nLet\u2019s talk a little about the random events that pop up from time to time. How involved are these events and are there enough in the game that you won\u2019t see the same ones too often?\n\nAccording to our latest inspection, there are 1,264 different \u2018event dialogues\u2019, so there shouldn\u2019t be a problem with their variety. Some of them are simple and last only for one round, while some others are more complex and may lead to unexpected outcomes a few turns later. Some of them are connected to your heroes, while others could happen anytime and anywhere.\n\nLastly, are you still on track for a 2012 release?\n\nSo far \u2013 yes, we\u2019re still aiming for this year. Wish us luck with that!\n\nI\u2019d like to thank Vladimir for talking with us and you can hopefully grab Eador sometime in 2012 on a PC near you."} -{"text":"As feathers settle at the end of yet another Edinburgh Fringe Festival, this year's event\u2014celebrating its 69th birthday\u2014showed that, despite its staunch old age, material at the fest is increasingly relevant to contemporary discourses on social media, research, science, and technology.\n\nThese topics underpinned many of the performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. One such example was The Sick of The Fringe conceived by artist, performer, and Wellcome Trust engagement fellow Brian Lobel.\n\nHe explained the rationale behind the show to Ars: \"As a performer in Edinburgh for the last eight summers, I found myself frustrated by the lack of nuanced conversation, particularly about issues of health, the body, trauma, illness, and disability.\" He added:\n\nI hope that The Sick of the Fringe is a safer platform for artists making work on their body, providing spaces for nuanced conversation, and opportunities for connections among artists making work on subjects which are difficult, and identities that are marginalised by differences in health and presumed capacity. I also hope that The Sick of the Fringe provides space for those working in health, medicine, and research\u2014both here in Edinburgh and abroad\u2014to engage with the ideas put forward by artists at the Fringe, which we hope will inspire new research, new policy, and a renewed sense of purpose.\n\nAs a member of the Sick of the Fringe team of writers in Edinburgh this year, I was asked to become part of the discourse among artists who are making work that deals directly with their own experiences relating to, say, sickness, racism, or discrimination.\n\nWe were asked to diagnose their performances by looking beyond the production quality or entertainment value of the piece, and to instead analyse the ideas presented in the work and its context within scientific and medical inquiry\u2014often pushing writers beyond their comfort zone. While undertaking my diagnosis, I was surprised by the preponderance of performances surrounding social media and sexuality, which suggested an emerging trend in how artists' experiences of new technological platforms are being reflected upon and filtered through to the diverse audiences that attend the Fringe.\n\nPerformers would often do their best to turn audience members into collaborators by asking them to tweet or blog questions or reaction.\n\nOne such performance was Blush\u2014created by Snuff Box theatre in association with Underbelly Untapped\u2014which presents the primal responses to those whose lives have been affected adversely by online porn.\n\nIt included stories that address revenge porn, porn addiction, and looked at how seeking validation and approval through sexual activity online can be harmful. Characters created by Charlotte Josephine were all defined by exposure to sexually explicit online content. A desk bell is used to simulate online notifications of venomously sexist comments. Every so often a blinding camera flash lit the stage to remind the audience that any intimate selfie can instantly become common digital property. And those targeted are left with little in the way of justice as revenge porn laws struggle to be enforced.\n\nBlush certainly brought together familiar narratives and cautionary tales for the technological age.\n\nContinuing that theme, Infinity Pool: A Modern Retelling of Madame Bovary by Bea Roberts explored technology and sexuality by updating Gustave Flaubert\u2019s enduring narrative on adultery for the sexting age. The performance had no actors but\u2014with the use of a TV, a soundboard, several projectors, an animated Powerpoint presentation, and a variety of physical props\u2014it managed to be an immersive performance. Roberts showed staggering flexibility and skill in exploring how tech can lead to loss of sexual intimacy while lubricating virtual betrayal. The evolution of online relationships is detailed here in a flurry of flirtatious e-mails and suggestive sexting.\n\nThe vast programme of the Fringe, ensures that\u2014for every serious reflection on the dark side of humanity and technology\u2014there\u2019s some light relief, often taking place in minuscule, dimly lit catacomb cellars with an alternative context for tackling scientific themes. Stand up performances strangely included reason and critical thinking in The Fringe of Reason\u2014Undiluted Brilliance, while Dan Simpson's Artificial Ineloquence warned audiences of the imminent world domination by deep learning AIs, and Dissecting the Joke saw scientists and sceptics take to the stage.\n\nGareth Morinan\u2019s performance, Graph Giraffe, used Venn diagrams and bell curves to call out \"heightism,\" privilege, and what he believes would be the benefits of living in a \"Dataocracy.\" Using some slightly suspicious statistics to educate the audience about lanky privilege, he suggested height wasn't a simple linear scale because it must be a function of gender, and in fact all privilege factors are also functions of something else. All of which led to some impressive privilege based equations.\n\nA government ruling through evidence based policy instead of being 99 percent ideologically based, he reckoned, would lead to more data that is recorded and openly available. I\u2019m sure Edward Snowden would approve.\n\nThe Wellcome Trust has said that it wants to spend \u00a35 billion on research projects over the next five years\u2014an important shot in the arm for projects such as The Sick of the Fringe, which will be back in Edinburgh in 2017. Meanwhile, a mid-February festival in London is planned.\n\nLobel told Ars that he has separately been working on There is a Light, a theatrical adaptation of the BRIGHTLIGHT study\u2014the largest research ever undertaken with young adults who suffer from cancer.\n\n***\n\nLucy Orr grew up close to CERN and Fermilab, while her father was busy searching for the Higgs boson (which he eventually found). While waiting for her mutant powers to manifest, Lucy kept herself occupied programming BASIC, reading comics, and playing MUDs. With an extensive career in digital art and animation, she still finds time to pet ferrets, listen to pop punk, and drink cider."} -{"text":". --- Georgia juniorhas become the first Bulldog to win the Butkus Award, given to the nation's best collegiate linebacker.Smith, a native of Montezuma, Ga., garnered 60 percent of the first-place votes and 40 percent of the overall weighted vote, which is a greater margin than any linebacker in the past decade. He was chosen from the other finalists of Michigan's Devin Bush, Virginia Tech's Tremaine Edmunds, Wisconsin's T.J. Edwards and Clemson's Dorian O'Daniel, according to an announcement from the Butkus Foundation.Smith is the first Georgia player to win the Butkus Award in its 33-year history since 1985. There have been three other Bulldog finalists four different years in recent history, including Leonard Floyd (2015), Jarvis Jones (2011, 2012) and Justin Houston (2010).proved to be the overwhelming favorite in this year's collegiate linebacking class,\" according to the award selection committee. \"He's always around the ball and is very tough, fast and instinctive, with exceptional football reflexes. He makes his presence felt all over the field and hits with the type of explosion that has come to define the Butkus Award. As terrific of a football player as he is, Roquan is highly regarded by teammates, coaches and support staff for his intelligence, intensity and leadership traits.\"Also a finalist for the Bronko Nagurski Trophy and the Chuck Bednarik Award, Smith has earned midseason All-American honors by leading the team for a second year in a row with 113 tackles (8.7 tackles\/game) during Georgia's 12-1 campaign, highlighted by its 13Southeastern Conference title and first since 2005 this past weekend.Smith has added 10.5 tackles for loss, a team-leading 5.5 sacks, two fumble recoveries and a forced fumble to lead the Bulldogs. With the help from Butkus Award semifinalist, Georgia ranks second nationally in Passing Yards Allowed (158.3 yards\/game), third in Scoring Defense (13.8 points\/game) and fourth in Total Defense (270.9 yards\/game).Georgia has held its last three opponents to a combined seven points in the second half, including the Bulldogs' 28-7 rout of second-ranked Auburn in the SEC Championship Game. In addition, Georgia blanked Tennessee 41-0 during the regular season, snapping the nation's fourth-longest active scoring streak and the sixth-longest streak in college football history.The third-ranked Bulldogs (12-1) travel to Pasadena, Calif., to face second-ranked Oklahoma (12-1) in the College Football Playoff's semifinal round in the Rose Bowl on Monday, January 1. Kickoff is at 5:10 p.m. ET.The Butkus Award selection committee is comprised of 51 football coaches, recruiters, talent scouts and journalists who study football talent yearlong. Selectors are asked to recognize qualities that defined Butkus' career; toughness, on-field leadership, competitiveness, football character, and linebacking skills. Selectors follow a 3-2-1 voting procedure for five named finalists or any linebacker they choose to write in.The 2017 high school winner is Solomon Tuliaupupu of Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif. The 2017 pro winner will be announced after the NFL season, succeeding 2016 winner Khalil Mack of the Oakland Raiders.The Butkus Award is presented by the Butkus Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit organization which advances health and wellness through special initiatives including the I Play Clean\u00ae program. The Butkus Award is part of the National College Football Awards Association (NFCAA), which includes 23 awards honoring 800 individuals since 1935."} -{"text":"A new video shows lots of cops restraining a suspect. Is it police misconduct or necessary force? One thing is clear: You'll only see the video here.\n\nThis is something we don't normally get to see -- what happens when a drunk driving suspect refuses to give his blood to police.\n\nBut there's a video inside the Pasadena jail, last July. Nine cops will get in the action.\n\n\"It almost looks like each officer that runs through the door is wanting to get a piece of the action, more so than stopping to look and see if their assistance is even needed,\" defense attorney Jim Medley said.\n\n\"They were beating on this guy excessively, stomping his broke leg,\" Defense Attorney Sam Cammack said. \"He was basically begging for mercy.\"\n\nIt's video that's creating more tension.\n\n\"It looks like police held a whoop-a-black-man party that was held and sponsored by law enforcement officers,\" Community Activist Quanell X said.\n\nCurtis Nelson was questioned by Houston police after a traffic wreck that wasn't his fault. The Houston police officer doesn't do a full sobriety test. Instead, Nelson is taken to the Pasadena jail. With a search warrant, his blood will be drawn there whether he likes it or not.\n\nYou hear Nelson begging for another way.\n\n\"Can I do a sobriety test?\" he says in the video.\n\n''He's been afraid of needles since he was old enough to talk,\" said Nelson's attorney.\n\nBut the cops will try to put him in the restraint chair, and Curtis Nelson doesn't want to go.\n\n\"This is what happens to citizens, that people don't get to see all the time, if you say, 'I don't want you to draw blood,'\" Cammack said.\n\n\"We got a fighter,\" you hear an officer saying in the video.\n\nOne officer will grab him around the neck, and he'll be taken to the floor. Then a total of nine officers join in.\n\n\"You got nine officers on one man who's got a broke leg, who's already on the ground,\" Quanell X said. \"You can see one officer clearly kneeing the young man as he was lying down on the ground, kneeing him on his side; then you saw him punching him at the same time.\"\n\nOne officer appears to step on Nelson's broken leg. You hear at least one officer using profanity.\n\nThe officers tell him to stop resisting.\n\n\"'Stop resisting' was nothing more than stage rhetoric to justify what they were doing to him,\" Quanell X said.\n\nThe male nurse positions himself right between two chairs in the middle of the room, maybe just a coincidence that it blocked a full camera view of the incident; maybe not.\n\n\"I don't care if he was black, green, red, but it makes you pause to think that this would have happened to a 16-year-old white female,\" Cammack said.\n\nAfter he's restrained, Nelson is not put back in the chair to get the needle. The nurse sticks him right there on the ground.\n\n\"Why would you just take a needle and ram it in somebody's arm on a dirty, dusty floor inside of a jail, which is not one of the cleanest places anybody could be in,\" Quanell X said.\n\nA judge threw out the needle results this week after lawyers argued it was done with excessive force and in unsanitary conditions.\n\nBut they now want you to see what happened to Curtis Nelson.\n\nComing after the Tolan verdict and the suspension of eight Houston cops for an alleged beating, this video won't help calm tensions.\n\n\"This city is on the verge of erupting in a full scale riot against police officers,\" Quanell X said.\n\nWe reached out to Pasadena police tonight, and they couldn't comment until Friday.\n\nBut you can see the entire incident caught on camera -- from theto the\n\nThe DA's office tells us Nelson was intoxicated because blood alcohol content was 1.9."} -{"text":"Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Dragan Vasiljkov, centre, has been convicted of war crimes\n\nA former Serbian paramilitary commander with Australian dual citizenship has been sentenced to 15 years in jail for war crimes.\n\nDragan Vasiljkovic, also known as \"Captain Dragan\", was convicted of torturing prisoners and a deadly attack on a village during the Croatian war of independence in the early 1990s.\n\nHe had been living in Australia prior to his extradition to Croatia in 2015.\n\nVasiljkovic, 62, was convicted by a court in the town of Split on Tuesday.\n\nThe court heard that Vasiljkovic had directed his subordinates to torture captured Croat soldiers in a makeshift prison he had set up in the rebel Serb stronghold of Knin.\n\nHe was also found guilty of orchestrating an attack on the town of Glina which killed two civilians and forced others to flee their homes.\n\nVasiljkovic was acquitted of the 1993 torture and murder of two Croat soldiers in another village.\n\nLong process\n\nDuring the year-long trial, witnesses told the court of the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Vasiljkovic and his unit.\n\nThe former commander has maintained his innocence, calling the trial an \"oppressive fascist process\".\n\nVasiljkovic moved to Australia in 1969 and later spent four years in the nation's army reserves before being courted by Serbian intelligence chiefs, The Australian reported.\n\nHe was arrested in Australia in 2006, where he had been working as a golf instructor under the name Daniel Snedden.\n\nVasiljkovic fought for almost a decade to prevent his extradition from Australia, arguing he would not receive a fair trial in Croatia.\n\nHis lawyers have said they will appeal the sentence."} -{"text":"26 Long Sleeve Shirt Design Template Uploaded by . We have 26 great resume of 26 Long Sleeve Shirt Design Template.\n\nWe've compiled 30 free illustrator resume templates that let your credentials shine. ... Ideal for those working in a creative field, this resume template lets you display ... We have zipped all the resumes in a convenient-to-download file, just enter ... Create a memorable business card with one of these free Illustrator business ... 26 Long Sleeve Shirt Design Template.\n\nCreate a job-winning resume template in 5 minutes! ... CVs Senior ... Land your dream job in the creative industries by using this creative resume template which ... These modern CV templates for Word, Pages, and InDesign are the perfect ... Create a build your own resume template with this simple template. ... Another creative and stylish resume template especially suitable for writers, ... 26 Long Sleeve Shirt Design Template"} -{"text":"Yumeroh Administrator\n\nJoin Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 317\n\nRyzom Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and at the Paris Game Festival and the German IRL\n\nIn this last year, we have rolled out four patches. Now we are in September and it's time to get things rolling on the Ryzom front again. One of the areas that we will be working on is something you've all been asking for: Communication!\n\nYes, that's right. We still think actions speak louder than words, but now we're going to give you more words as well. We're going to keep you better informed of our thoughts, plans and actions and to make this possible and as dynamic as possible we have set up accounts on some social networking sites:\n\nFacebook : Come join the Official Ryzom Group on Facebook.\n\n: Come join the Official Ryzom Group on Facebook. Blog : You can now read the Official Ryzom Blog. We will communicate there exclusively in English for reasons of simplicity and speed, but please feel free to translate what we say there and post it on Facebook.\n\n: You can now read the Official Ryzom Blog. We will communicate there exclusively in English for reasons of simplicity and speed, but please feel free to translate what we say there and post it on Facebook. Twitter: Join us on Twitter. We will \"tweet\" in English, usually, but you are free to re-tweet in your language if you want.\n\nIt's also possible to come meet and talk to members of the Ryzom Team:\n\nIn Paris, France, we will be attending the Paris Game Festival on September 19th and 20th. We won't have an exhibit there but Ryzom CTO Vianney Lecroart (vl), as well as other members of the dev and CSR teams will be roaming around the festival laden with goodies. You can find more information about this event on\n\nIn Bochum, Germany, on November 14th, one of Ryzom's biggest fans, Acridiel, will be organising an IRL. Leanon's Senior Game Master Boar will attend and bring some goodies with him. You can find more information about this IRL on\n\nWednesday, 16 September is the 5th anniversary of Ryzom. So that we can spend pleasant time together in celebration, we will be running small fun events during the (European) evening. Dear Players,In this last year, we have rolled out four patches. Now we are in September and it's time to get things rolling on the Ryzom front again. One of the areas that we will be working on is something you've all been asking for: Communication!Yes, that's right. We still think actions speak louder than words, but now we're going to give you more words as well. We're going to keep you better informed of our thoughts, plans and actions and to make this possible and as dynamic as possible we have set up accounts on some social networking sites:It's also possible to come meet and talk to members of the Ryzom Team:In, France, we will be attending the. We won't have an exhibit there but Ryzom CTO Vianney Lecroart (vl), as well as other members of the dev and CSR teams will be roaming around the festival laden with goodies. You can find more information about this event on the French forums In, Germany, on, one of Ryzom's biggest fans, Acridiel, will be organising an IRL. Leanon's Senior Game Master Boar will attend and bring some goodies with him. You can find more information about this IRL on the German forums Wednesday, 16 September is the 5th anniversary of Ryzom. So that we can spend pleasant time together in celebration, we will be running small fun events during the (European) evening."} -{"text":"A silly copyright notice is sweeping Facebook today, with users attaching pseudo-legalese to their status updates in a misguided effort to prevent Facebook from owning or commercially exploiting their content. Facebook has issued a formal \u201cfact check\u201d statement refuting the legalese.\n\nThe viral copyright notice last spread on Facebook in May and June. Now it\u2019s back and garnering lots of attention.\n\nThe notice incorrectly implies that Facebook has recently changed the copyright provisions of its user agreement. It then unnecessarily asserts a user\u2019s copyright over his Facebook posts (you retain such copyright without posting a notice) and cites the \u201cBerner Convention,\u201d an irrelevant international treaty properly spelled \u201cBerne Convention.\u201d The notice then instructs Facebook to get written permission to make commercial use of the user\u2019s content, which is pointless as Facebook users agree to let the social network make money off their posts when they sign up for the service. (The full text of the bogus copyright notice is below.)\n\nPopular hoax-debunking site Snopes addressed this copyright notice in the spring and updated their refutation today. Also, Facebook has taken the further step of putting out a statement of its own:\n\nThere is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.\n\nA blunter way of summarizing the situation is to explain that if you want to use Facebook, you must play by Facebook\u2019s rules, even when they change. If you don\u2019t want to play by Facebook's rules anymore, you must quit Facebook. The idea of remaining on Facebook but playing by your own rules via magic spells is a fantasy. Stay on Facebook or leave Facebook. There is no third option \ufffd not even during the holidays.\n\nFull hoax copyright notice:"} -{"text":"A coalition of lawmakers in the Senate have penned a letter to the Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission and the Attorney General, urging the Obama administration to scuttle a deal that would lead to high market concentration in the telecoms industry.\n\nAs representatives of Comcast and Time Warner Cable prepared to meet with the Department of Justice on Wednesday to discuss concerns related to the proposed merger between the two companies, liberal senators urged federal regulators to block the deal.\n\n\u201cWe believe that Comcast-TWC\u2019s unmatched power in the telecommunications industry would lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and poorer quality services for Americans,\u201d they wrote.\n\n\u201cWe urge you to defend American competition and innovation and\u2026take a stand for US consumers and businesses and reject Comcast\u2019s proposed acquisition of TWC,\u201d the lawmakers added.\n\nThe letter was signed by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).\n\nIt\u2019s ultimately up to the FCC and the DOJ to sign off on the $45 billion merger. If successful, it would result in a single company controlling 57% of the broadband market and 30% of the cable market.\n\nThe senators warned that the deal could have an adverse impact on upstart video streaming services, which are increasingly replacing pre-packaged cable offerings\u2014a transition known as \u201ccord cutting.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith Comcast\u2019s ownership of NBCUniversal and the numerous popular TV networks it controls, the combined company would have incentives and means by which to extract higher prices from other multichannel video programming distributors,\u201d they wrote.\n\nSome of their concerns related to paid prioritization were alleviated earlier this year by the FCC, when it approved of stronger \u201cNet Neutrality\u201d rules. However, the senators warned that the merger could lead Comcast to \u201cprioritize its own programming over that of competitors.\u201d\n\nBloomberg reported last week that staff attorneys with the Department of Justice\u2019s Antitrust Division are likely to recommend blocking the merger. Meanwhile, the FCC, according to the Wall Street Journal, could be planning on referring approval of the deal to an administrative judge\u2014a move that, people familiar with the process say, would amount to killing the acquisition.\n\nThe FCC\u2019s own market data proves right many of the concerns already issued by opponents of the merger. Last December, the commission released a report showing that consumers in competitive media markets paid less, had a smaller rate of increase in their bills, and received more channels in their cable TV packages versus consumers who lived in markets with only one provider."} -{"text":"Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2017 July 25\n\nInt-Ball Drone Activated on the Space Station\n\nImage Credit: JAXA, ISS, NASA\n\nExplanation: What if you were followed around by a cute floating ball that kept taking your picture? Then you might be an astronaut on today's International Space Station (ISS). Designed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the JEM Internal Ball Camera -- informally \"Int-Ball\" -- is a bit larger than a softball, can float and maneuver by itself but also be controlled remotely, can take high resolution images and videos, and is not related to Hello Kitty. Int-Ball was delivered to the ISS in early June and is designed to allow ground-control to increase the monitoring of ISS equipment and activities while decreasing time demands on human astronauts. Int-Ball moves by turning on small internal fans and sees with a camera located between its two dark eyes."} -{"text":"A COLLEGE ESSAY ON POK\u00c9MON (649 words, complerted September quitetheoresama Nov 5th, 2014 792 Never 792Never\n\nNot a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up , it unlocks many cool features!\n\nrawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 3.92 KB Every time I look back on what makes me who I am, the roots of my personality always traced themselves to one video game franchise\u2014Pok\u00e9mon. The Pok\u00e9mon franchise, developed by Game Freak, is a series of role-playing games for portable Nintendo consoles, such as the Game Boy and Nintendo DS. Now, my love for this franchise contributed to my desire to major in game design in college. The portable nature of the games in the Pok\u00e9mon franchise encourages players to communicate with each other in real-life. Pok\u00e9mon fans learn how Pok\u00e9mon creatures develop from other like-minded Pok\u00e9mon trainers by trading and battling with each othe. As a result, players didn\u2019t just catch \u2018em all, but learned how to exchange their ideas through their Pok\u00e9mon creatures! In short, Pok\u00e9mon games encouraged people to communicate and express their ideas with each other. I fell in love with the aspect of expressing oneself through play. I was just two years old when that game made me who I am. At that age, I owned a Game Boy Color which I brought wherever I went while playing Pok\u00e9mon. I was using my Game Boy Color all the time, to the point where it would sometimes be confiscated by teachers or parents. If ever I wasn\u2019t eating my food or paying attention to what my parents were saying\u2014swipe!\u2014it would be taken away. But the Pok\u00e9mon games themselves captured my attention only because I was captivated by how Pok\u00e9mon worked. More importantly, it made me fall in love with video games, and I wanted to know how I could use that technology to express my ideas. I ended up taking Japanese language classes when I was six just so I could communicate with game developers and learn from them, especially those of Nintendo, whose headquarters were based in Kyoto. Nintendo was responsible for publishing Pok\u00e9mon, The Pok\u00e9mon Company making it known the world over. I couldn\u2019t help but feel the need but bring my ideas to their table! As a bonus, I learned how to read, write and converse fluently in Japanese. As I learned about how Pok\u00e9mon\u2019s art was inspired by Japanese manga comics, I ended up studying manga drawing techniques and how artists crafted their characters. I worked hard to analyze the styles of various artists so I could incorporate them into my own. Lo and behold, did my drawings improve! I then became the budding manga artist in my circle of friends, presenting my drawings to others and expressing my creativity and desire to improve. Manga in itself along with Japanese language classes gave me a high degree of exposure to Japanese culture. I learned about the subtle nuances in their crafts, their attention to detail and how orderly their societies worked. And even then, it gave me a thirst to learn about other cultures, and it encouraged me to understand how people express themselves. That thirst for learning made me absorb ideas like a sponge, making school much more enjoyable as I loved seeing what ideas people had to offer. Be it a discussion, presentation or even as simple as a conversation during lunch, I made sure to let others express themselves. That exchange and expression of ideas seemed like battles between Pok\u00e9mon trainers, and it only made communicating with each other all the more fun. However, you can\u2019t communicate if you can\u2019t express yourself! What ideas would there be to learn from? Being able to exchange and express your ideas like Pok\u00e9mon battles makes quite an impact on the world around us. After all, self-expression is what solves problems, what bridges faraway societies together and what enables human beings to break ground and evolve, much like Pok\u00e9mon. It\u2019s no wonder I\u2019m known for being so talkative\u2014I value self-expression. Pok\u00e9mon, art, video games, language and communication all share one underlying thread, and that common thread is\u2026 \u2026self-expression! By Ryen Raftery, for submission to NYU (this portion not included in the word count of 649)\n\nRAW Paste Data\n\nEvery time I look back on what makes me who I am, the roots of my personality always traced themselves to one video game franchise\u2014Pok\u00e9mon. The Pok\u00e9mon franchise, developed by Game Freak, is a series of role-playing games for portable Nintendo consoles, such as the Game Boy and Nintendo DS. Now, my love for this franchise contributed to my desire to major in game design in college. The portable nature of the games in the Pok\u00e9mon franchise encourages players to communicate with each other in real-life. Pok\u00e9mon fans learn how Pok\u00e9mon creatures develop from other like-minded Pok\u00e9mon trainers by trading and battling with each othe. As a result, players didn\u2019t just catch \u2018em all, but learned how to exchange their ideas through their Pok\u00e9mon creatures! In short, Pok\u00e9mon games encouraged people to communicate and express their ideas with each other. I fell in love with the aspect of expressing oneself through play. I was just two years old when that game made me who I am. At that age, I owned a Game Boy Color which I brought wherever I went while playing Pok\u00e9mon. I was using my Game Boy Color all the time, to the point where it would sometimes be confiscated by teachers or parents. If ever I wasn\u2019t eating my food or paying attention to what my parents were saying\u2014swipe!\u2014it would be taken away. But the Pok\u00e9mon games themselves captured my attention only because I was captivated by how Pok\u00e9mon worked. More importantly, it made me fall in love with video games, and I wanted to know how I could use that technology to express my ideas. I ended up taking Japanese language classes when I was six just so I could communicate with game developers and learn from them, especially those of Nintendo, whose headquarters were based in Kyoto. Nintendo was responsible for publishing Pok\u00e9mon, The Pok\u00e9mon Company making it known the world over. I couldn\u2019t help but feel the need but bring my ideas to their table! As a bonus, I learned how to read, write and converse fluently in Japanese. As I learned about how Pok\u00e9mon\u2019s art was inspired by Japanese manga comics, I ended up studying manga drawing techniques and how artists crafted their characters. I worked hard to analyze the styles of various artists so I could incorporate them into my own. Lo and behold, did my drawings improve! I then became the budding manga artist in my circle of friends, presenting my drawings to others and expressing my creativity and desire to improve. Manga in itself along with Japanese language classes gave me a high degree of exposure to Japanese culture. I learned about the subtle nuances in their crafts, their attention to detail and how orderly their societies worked. And even then, it gave me a thirst to learn about other cultures, and it encouraged me to understand how people express themselves. That thirst for learning made me absorb ideas like a sponge, making school much more enjoyable as I loved seeing what ideas people had to offer. Be it a discussion, presentation or even as simple as a conversation during lunch, I made sure to let others express themselves. That exchange and expression of ideas seemed like battles between Pok\u00e9mon trainers, and it only made communicating with each other all the more fun. However, you can\u2019t communicate if you can\u2019t express yourself! What ideas would there be to learn from? Being able to exchange and express your ideas like Pok\u00e9mon battles makes quite an impact on the world around us. After all, self-expression is what solves problems, what bridges faraway societies together and what enables human beings to break ground and evolve, much like Pok\u00e9mon. It\u2019s no wonder I\u2019m known for being so talkative\u2014I value self-expression. Pok\u00e9mon, art, video games, language and communication all share one underlying thread, and that common thread is\u2026 \u2026self-expression! By Ryen Raftery, for submission to NYU (this portion not included in the word count of 649)"} -{"text":"We don\u2019t see it in our Gmail settings (yet), but Webmonkey reports that Gmail Labs has added a very useful opt-in feature for sending text \/ SMS messages to mobile phones using the built-in Chat functionality.\n\nUpdate: the Labs team found a glitch and is pushing the release back a bit (\u2018probably within two weeks\u2019).\n\nUpdate 2: make sure you read the open letter the Webmail team at AOL writes to Google. It\u2019s supposed to be funny, I guess, but it\u2019s really not and quite unprofessional to boot.\n\nTurning the option on in your Gmail account settings apparently enables you to send an SMS as soon as you start typing a phone number into Chat\u2019s search box. When you enter new phone numbers, it will save the digits in your contact entries as well. This means that when contacts go offline, the chat window will give you the option to switch to SMS.\n\nOur invitation for a live demo was lost in the mail, but Webmonkey has been given a demonstration of the experimental feature by Gmail product manager Keith Coleman and adds:\n\nThe first time you send a text message, it will appear on the person\u2019s phone as coming from a number in the 406 area code. Google has made several thousands of these numbers available for Gmail users, and once a number is associated with your account, all of the text messages you send through Gmail will come from that number. The 406 number works both ways, so your friend can reply to you via text message. Also, your friend can save that number in their phone as belonging to you, and they can even use it to initiate new chats with you.\n\nWe haven\u2019t been able to try this out ourselves yet, but Google does list the text messaging feature on its \u2018What\u2019s new in Gmail Labs\u2018 page (only for US phones, for now).\n\nThis is probably one of the first results we\u2019re seeing from Google\u2019s acquisition of GrandCentral (dating back to June 2007 already).\n\nNo official word yet on the Gmail blog (the GrandCentral blog has been silent since last April), but we suspect an announcement and general roll-out to follow soon.\n\n(Image credit: monkey_bites)"} -{"text":"It is the most humble of vessels for New York City foodstuffs, ubiquitous at Chinese takeout joints and halal street carts. In pre-Starbucks days, coffee came packaged in its puffy embrace.\n\nBut the plastic-foam container may soon be going the way of trans fats, 32-ounce Pepsis, and cigarettes in Central Park.\n\nMayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose regulatory lance has slain fatty foods, supersize sodas, and smoking in parks, is now targeting plastic foam, the much-derided polymer that environmentalists have long tried to restrict.\n\nOn Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg, in his 12th and final State of the City address, will propose a citywide ban on plastic-foam food packaging, including takeout boxes, cups and trays. Public schools would be instructed to remove plastic-foam trays from their cafeterias. Many restaurants and bodegas would be forced to restock."} -{"text":"Early interviews mentioning The Blue Album and Pinkerton. Check. A lead single that promised we\u2019d be rocking out like it was '94. Check. It was clear what Weezer were trying to tell us: Honestly, we mean it, for real this time, this one\u2019s going to be the one you\u2019re waiting for. But put aside all of that and Everything Will Be Alright In the End is pretty much what you expect it to be: a record which, while sharing similarities with records from their earlier periods, is another predictably uneven entry in the Weezer discography.\n\nIt\u2019s not actually anywhere near as much of a return to the sound of the Nineties that they\u2019ve made it out to be. Within bars of the opener \u2018Ain\u2019t Got Nobody\u2019, it\u2019s clear that there\u2019s just as much overlap with the crunch and flex of Maladroit as with the chugging fuzz of Blue. It\u2019s a dense sound with glamorous guitar runs and, by blending the strengths of their career high points, they hit on some of the greatest moments of their recent output. The hooks of the opening track are genuinely reminiscent of Rivers\u2019 golden age of song writing: \u2018The British Are Coming\u2019 sees a lilting turn of Rivers Cuomo\u2019s falsetto morph into a solo which wanders from the main melody in the soulful, colourful way of Blue\u2019s instrumental breaks. But sadly these moments of inspiration are fleeting.\n\nOne of the oddest problems with Weezer\u2019s recent output is how blindly contradictory Cuomo can be on record nowadays in comparison to the robust character portraits he painted on his earliest records. Everything\u2026 is no different, and finds him sounding as oddly insincere as he has since on every record since 2005. After coming back on hands and knees to the audiences of the mid-nineties, he spends \u2018I\u2019ve Had It Up To Here\u2019 rallying against those who want him to compromise some odd notion of integrity (\u201cI\u2019M NOT A HAPPY MEAL\u201d, he proudly announces us in the album\u2019s best wincer of a Cuomoism). How he squares this circle is unclear, but it totally undermines the seriousness of something like \u2018Foolish Father\u2019. Does he even mean this? Is he talking about himself? Is it all made up?\n\nBut beyond the continuation of Cuomo\u2019s increasing incoherence, what\u2019s perhaps most damaging is the general sense of low ambition across the record, despite gimmickry like the album\u2019s title recurring through the lyrics, and suites of songs in trilogies. The chorus of \u2018Eulogy For A Rock Band\u2019 is lifted \u2013 almost completely intact \u2013 from Hurley\u2019s lead single \u2018Memories\u2019. The 2D hooks of \u2018Lonely Girl\u2019 and \u2018Go Away\u2019 circle for a while, wandering out of your head immediately. Sure, it escapes outright disgrace. But that\u2019s a pretty low benchmark for the band that wrote \u2018Say It Ain\u2019t So\u2019, on an album based on a publicity cycle promising a return to that era to boot. In spite of its moments of charm, it\u2019s a far cry from being either a fun retreat into 20 years ago, nor is it any indication that Weezer's reputation will be in better health 20 years from now.\n\n![97956](http:\/\/dis.resized.images.s3.amazonaws.com\/540x310\/97956.jpeg)"} -{"text":"August 10, 2000\n\nFor the New College B.M.O.C., 'M' Is for 'Machine'\n\nBy LISA GUERNSEY\n\nLeft, Jim West\/Impact Visuals for The New York Times; above, Barbara Martin for The New York Times WIRED - College students like, left, James L. Carey, and Shaun Encinias use computers for things like music, e-mail and homework.\n\nHow 20th century, college students today might say.\n\nThe computer, they declare, is the only item that could deserve to be first on any list of dorm necessities. In fact, the computer not only displaces other technology in importance but also replaces the need for some other appliances.\n\nIt serves as the stereo for students who listen to MP3 files and radio Webcasts. It makes answering machines less necessary because so much communication occurs via e-mail and instant messages. It can even substitute for televisions and alarm clocks.\n\nThe computer has also become the portal through which students do everything they need to do on campus. Using the Internet, they register for classes, turn in assignments, order books, browse the library catalog, listen to music, talk to friends, read the news, write papers, play games, pay bills, watch movies and carry on heated political discussions. Alumni returning to their alma maters will find that the quads and classrooms still exist, but the computer has become almost more central than the physical campus.\n\n\"It is an invisible change,\" said Matthew Pittinsky, co-chairman and founder of Blackboard, a software company that serves more than 3,300 colleges. \"But it is probably the most profound change that colleges have seen since the G.I. Bill.\"\n\nThe computer's immense impact on the social and academic lives of college students is just beginning to become apparent. Some students say they are carrying on fewer conversations with their dorm mates and more conversations with friends across the country. Many students say that while they still hit the bars and coffee shops, they rarely go to the library. One study shows that students spend less free time watching television, now that they can be entertained online.\n\nAs students pivot toward online information, \"something clearly has to give,\" said Eric Weil, managing partner in Student Monitor, a market research company that polls college students. In the latest Student Monitor survey, conducted in the spring, 56 percent of the 1,200 respondents at colleges across the country said that they had spent less time watching television in the previous six months.\n\nWhat were they doing instead? About 42 percent said they were spending more time surfing the Web and 49 percent said they were spending more time sending and receiving e-mail. Academics played a role too: 57 percent said they were spending more time doing homework. In many cases, Mr. Weil said, that homework was probably being done on a computer, often online.\n\nBut some students say that it is not television that they neglect. Instead, they are spending less time on the telephone or talking face-to-face with their peers on campus. It is not that they are being antisocial, the students say. They are simply communicating with people in a different way, using e-mail, online chats and streams of instant messages.\n\nEric Kelson, a junior at Syracuse University, said he frequently chatted online with his parents, his sister, his grandmother in Florida and his friends at other colleges. \"It helps because calling is expensive,\" Mr. Kelson said. \"And e-mail is good but it is not as personal.\"\n\nHe and his friends often watch television while they chat, he said. And more often than not, he said, he is chatting with people in his dormitory, even though they may be only a few paces away. Instead of picking up the telephone or knocking on his neighbors' doors to see what they are up to, he will send them instant messages.\n\nStudents who once said, `See you on the quad,' now say, `Meet you online.'\n\nMr. Kelson's case is not unusual, said Bennett Fisher, vice president for community at CollegeClub.com, a social site for students that has attracted nearly three million users. \"We used to sit in the hallway and talk to students in the dorm,\" Mr. Fisher said. \"Now they do that on the Web.\"\n\nEven conversations with professors, those moments of stimulating intellectual discussion that some baby boomers may recall with nostalgia, are often supplanted by online communication.\n\n\"Office hours are being replaced with e-mail discussions,\" said Gary Gigliotti, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rutgers University. Some regret the loss, but instead of waiting for those few hours a week when professors open their doors, students would rather talk online, Mr. Gigliotti said. \"It is more convenient for them,\" he said.\n\nThe seeds of this shift were planted in the early 1980's, when technologically adept students started taking computers to campus. But back then, the machines were by no means essential. They were primarily used for typing papers, and most students relied on the word-processing programs in computer laboratories instead of buying their own machines. Computer science and statistics students were often the only ones to use computers for more than writing papers.\n\nIn the mid-1990's, when the Internet caught on beyond the halls of engineering and computer science departments, that started to change. Large universities began to invest tens of millions of dollars in wiring dormitory rooms in the hope of providing high-speed Internet access to every student. It was the beginning of the race to provide what administrators call \"one port per pillow.\" On average, campuses have wired about 63 percent of their dormitories, according to the Campus Computing Project, an annual survey of more than 500 institutions across the country. Private research universities have gone the furthest: Of those surveyed, all said they offered high-speed access in every dorm.\n\nThe availability of Internet access has become a deciding factor for students who are trying to decide where to apply to college. Yahoo Internet Life magazineproduces an annual ranking, \"The 100 Most Wired Colleges.\" EduCause, a nonprofit organization that promotes technology in higher education, has created an online guide to help applicants determine which universities measure up to their needs ( www.educause.edu\/consumerguide).\n\nIn a sign of how important Internet access has become, students at Michigan State University, where most dormitories are wired, lined up seven hours in advance last spring to make sure that they were assigned to wired housing. To help those who missed out, the college installed voice mail. Everyone in those dorms uses the telephone lines for dial-up access, said James L. Carey, a sophomore, \"and students would be online so much they would never get phone calls.\"\n\nOne of the latest challenges facing administrators is whether to require all entering students to bring a computer to college, and if so, whether the computer should be a laptop or desktop. Reports on the Educause Web site show that about 100 universities have such a requirement, which in some cases is imposed only on students in certain programs.\n\nNext fall, the number will probably increase; about 11 percent of the institutions surveyed by the Campus Computing Project last fall said they would have a laptop computer requirement in place by 2001.\n\nOhio University is one of the universities that have decided to tackle the issue another way. Every Ohio University undergraduate dorm room is equipped with at least one new $1,000 Gateway computer and printer. The cost of the equipment is covered in an annual student fee.\n\nExactly how much time do students spend on these machines? An increasing amount, according to surveys. In the fall of 1998, according to Student Monitor, students spent an average of 5.6 hours a week online. That rose to 7.2 hours in the fall of 1999 and 8.1 hours this spring.\n\nBut many students say those numbers are even higher among students with computers in dorms that have high-speed access to the Internet. Shaun Encinias, a student at San Diego State University, said he spent hours online each day, checking e-mail before leaving his room in the morning, between classes, after classes and after dinner.\n\nE-mail, though, is not necessarily the most important reason for going online, according to the students polled by Student Monitor. More than 44 percent said that \"schoolwork-related research\" was their No. 1 priority.\n\nMost courses now have an Internet component, professors say, whether it is a Web-based syllabus, an e-mail-based discussion board, an online repository of required reading or an interactive quiz. Some instructors set up online chats with experts and colleagues at other universities across the country. And many students use the Internet and online library resources to do most, if not all, of their research for papers and projects. When they are done, many send their papers via e-mail or click through Web pages during presentations in class.\n\nThe presence of the computer can sway some students away from academics, however. Mr. Carey, the sophomore at Michigan State, said he had failed all his classes his first semester. \"I was shellshocked,\" he said. \"I stayed in my room all the time.\" He would log on to the Internet as soon as he woke up and hung out with friends he had made online instead of doing homework or talking with friends on campus. This year, he said, he is doing much better and uses his computer mainly for homework.\n\nhe warned, it can also lead to more isolation. If students choose to interact online with people who are just down the hall, for example, they are missing the chance to see other people's facial expressions, how they look when they are joking and what their body language says about their personalities.\n\nKaycee Swenson, a high school senior in Wichita, Kan., who took several courses at her local college last year, said she talked to people online every day, most of whom were not at her campus. But she said she also hung out with friends in the physical world, listening to music and playing basketball. \"You have to balance it,\" she said.\n\nThis fall, she will enroll full time at the University of California at San Diego, and she plans to take a new computer with her, even though she already has one equipped with a Pentium II processor. \"It's fast,\" she said, \"but not fast enough.\"\n\nIn fact, she said, when she talks to her mother about what she took to college decades ago, she cannot believe what students had to put up with. \"She thought it was great,\" Ms. Swenson said, \"that she was able to take a calculator to college or a cassette player to tape lectures.\" And when her mother said she had to stand in line to register for classes and to wait for professors to open their offices, she said she could hardly imagine it. \"I laugh at those things,\" Ms. Swenson said, \"but I'm sure it wasn't fun, you know?\"\n\nThese sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability."} -{"text":"Route of the M11 link road overlaid over an older map of the area, with key protest sites marked\n\nThe M11 link road protest was a major anti-road protest in Leytonstone, London, United Kingdom, in the early to mid-1990s opposing the construction of the \"A12 Hackney to M11 link road\", also known as the M11 Link Road, which was part of a significant local road scheme to connect traffic from the East Cross Route to the M11, avoiding urban streets.\n\nThe road had been proposed since the 1960s, as part of the London Ringways, and was an important link between central London and the Docklands to East Anglia. However, road protests elsewhere had become increasingly visible, and urban road building had fallen out of favour with the public. A local Member of Parliament Harry Cohen, representing Leyton, had been a vocal opponent of this scheme.\n\nThe protests reached a new level of visibility during 1993 as part of a grassroots campaign where protesters came from outside the area to support local opposition to the road. The initial focus was on the removal of a tree on George Green, east of Wanstead, that attracted the attention of local, then national media. The activity peaked in 1994 with several high-profile protesters setting up micronations on property scheduled for demolition, most notably on Claremont Road in Leyton. The final stage of the protest was a single building on Fillebrook Road in Leytonstone, which, due to a security blunder, became occupied by squatters.\n\nThe road was eventually built as planned, and opened to traffic in 1999, but the increased costs involved in management and policing of protesters raised the profile of such campaigns in the United Kingdom, and contributed to several road schemes being cancelled or reviewed later on in the decade. Those involved in the protest moved on to oppose other schemes in the country, while opinions of the road as built have since been mixed. By 2014, the road had become the ninth most congested in the entire country.\n\nBackground [ edit ]\n\nThe origin of the link road stems from what were two major arterial roads out of London (the A11 to Newmarket and Norwich, and the A12 to Colchester, Ipswich and Great Yarmouth) and subsequent improvements. The first of these was the Eastern Avenue improvement, that opened on 9 June 1924, which provided a bypass of the old road through Ilford and Romford.\n\nProposals for the route first arose in the 1960s as part of the London Ringways plan, which would have seen four concentric circular motorways built in the city, together with radial routes, with the M11 motorway ending on Ringway 1, the innermost Ringway, at Hackney Marsh.\n\nThe planned London Ringways.\n\nA section of Ringway 1 known as the East Cross Route was built to motorway standards in the late 1960s and early 1970s and designated as the A102(M). A section of the M11 connecting Ringway 2 (now part of the North Circular Road) and Eastern Avenue to Harlow was completed in the late 1970s,[4] opening to traffic in 1977.\n\nThe Ringways scheme met considerable opposition; there were protests when the Westway, an urban motorway elevated over the streets of Paddington, was opened in 1970, with local MP John Wheeler later describing the road's presence within 15 metres of properties as \"completely unacceptable environmentally,\" and the Archway Road public inquiry was repeatedly abandoned during the 1970s as a result of protests. By 1974, the Greater London Council announced it would not be completing Ringway 1. The first Link Road Action Group to resist the M11 link road was formed in 1976, and for the next fifteen years activists fought government plans through a series of public inquiries. Their alternative was to build a road tunnel, leaving the houses untouched, but this was rejected on grounds of cost. Drivers travelling in the areas where the new roads would have been built had to continue using long stretches of urban single-carriageway roads. In particular, the suburbs of Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead suffered serious traffic congestion.\n\nThe Roads for Prosperity white paper published in 1989 detailed a major expansion of the road building programme and included plans for the M12 Motorway between London and Chelmsford, as well as many other road schemes. Although Harry Cohen, MP for Leyton suggested in May 1989 that the government should scrap the scheme, a public enquiry was held for the scheme in November.\n\nThe protest campaign in East London [ edit ]\n\nThe Humble Petition of The Stop the M11 Link Road Action Campaign sheweth: That the A12 Hackney Wick to M11 Link Road will be injurious to the health and well being of the Petitioners insofar as it will cause homelessness through their homes being demolished with in many instances no replacement being offered, it will cause ill health through noise and pollution and will be unfavourable to the community at large. Petition submitted to the House of Commons, June 1990\n\nBy the 1980s, planning blight had affected the area and many of the houses had become home to a community of artists and squatters. Eventually, contractors were appointed to carry out the work and a compulsory purchase of property along the proposed route was undertaken. In March 1993, in preparation for the construction of the road, the Earl of Caithness, then the Minister of State for Transport, estimated that there would be 263 properties scheduled for demolition, displacing 550 people, of which he estimated 172 were seeking rehousing. Several original residents, who had in some cases lived in their homes all their lives, refused to sell or move out of their properties.\n\nProtesters from the local area against the link road scheme were joined by large numbers of anti-road campaigners from around the UK and beyond, attracted by the availability of free housing along the route. These experienced protesters, who had participated in earlier events such as the Anti-Nazi League riots in Welling, gave impetus to the campaign. The new arrivals used the skills they had developed during prior protests to construct \"defences\", blocking the original entrances to the houses and creating new routes directly between them.\n\nSophisticated techniques were used to delay the construction of the road. Sit-ins and site invasions were combined with sabotage to stop construction work temporarily. This led to large numbers of police and constant security patrols being employed to protect the construction sites, at great expense. By December 1994, the total cost of construction had been estimated at \u00a36 million and rising by \u00a3500,000 every month.\n\nThe protesters were successful in publicising the campaign, with most UK newspapers and TV news programmes covering the protests on a regular basis. Desktop publishing, then in its infancy, was used to produce publicity materials for the campaign and send out faxes to the media. When the government began evicting residents along the route and demolishing the empty houses, the protesters set up so-called \"autonomous republics\" such as \"Wanstonia\" in some groups of the houses. Extreme methods were used to force the engineers to halt demolition, including underground tunnels with protesters secured within by concrete.\n\nThe chestnut tree on George Green [ edit ]\n\n[28] The chestnut tree on George Green, Wanstead became a focal point and a symbol for anti-M11 Link Road protesters.\n\nUntil late 1993, local opposition to the M11 extension had been relatively limited. While opposition had been going for nearly ten years, institutional avenues of protest had been exhausted, and local residents were largely resigned to the road being built. When outside protesters arrived in September 1993, few residents saw their mission as \"their campaign\".\n\nOne section of the M11 extension was due to tunnel under George Green in Wanstead. Residents had believed that this would save their green, and a 250-year-old sweet chestnut tree that grew upon it, but because this was a cut and cover tunnel, this required the tree to be cut down.\n\nSupport for the protests started to extend to the local community when Jean Gosling, a lollipop lady in Wanstead, upon learning of the tree's impending destruction, rallied the support of local children (and was later fired from her job for doing so while wearing her uniform), who in turn recruited their parents into the protests. It was then that the non-resident radicals realised that they had significant local support. When local residents gathered for a tree dressing ceremony on 6 November, they found their way barred by security fencing. With support from the protesters, they pulled it down.\n\nProtesters continued to delay the destruction of the tree. Solicitors for the campaign had even argued in court that receipt of a letter addressed to the tree itself gave it the status of a legal dwelling, causing a further delay. In the early morning of 7 December 1993, several hundred police arrived to evict the protesters,[a] which took ten hours to carry out.[b] Protesters made numerous complaints against the police;[36] police, in turn, denied these allegations, attributing any misbehaviour to the protesters.[c] Media attention started to increase regarding the protest, with several daily newspapers putting pictures of the tree on their front pages.\n\nHarry Cohen, MP for Leyton, started to become critical of the scheme and its progress. In March 1994, he said \"the Department of Transport's pig-headed approach to the M11 link road has been a shambles, and a costly one at that,\" and described the ongoing police presence as \"a miniature equivalent of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.\" According to him, local resident Hugh Jones had been threatened by demolition men wielding sledgehammers and pickaxes, adding \"the project has cost \u00a3500,000 in police time alone, to take over and demolish a 250-year-old chestnut tree and half a dozen houses\".\n\nClaremont Road [ edit ]\n\nThe view from the tower in Claremont Road, Leyton.\n\nBy 1994, properties scheduled for demolition had been compulsory purchased, and most were made uninhabitable by removing kitchens, bathrooms and staircases. The notable exception was in one small street, Claremont Road, which ran immediately next to the Central line and consequently required every property on it to be demolished. The street was almost completely occupied by protesters except for one original resident who had not taken up the Department for Transport's offer to move, 92-year-old Dolly Watson, who was born in number 32 and had lived there nearly all her life. She became friends with the anti-road protesters, saying \"they're not dirty hippy squatters, they're the grandchildren I never had.\" The protesters named a watchtower, built from scaffold poles, after her.\n\nA vibrant and harmonious community sprung up on the road, which even won the begrudging respect of the authorities. The houses were painted with extravagant designs, both internally and externally, and sculptures erected in the road; the road became an artistic spectacle that one said \"had to be seen to be believed\".\n\nIn November 1994, the eviction of Claremont Road took place, bringing an end to the M11 link road resistance as a major physical protest. Bailiffs, accompanied by the police in full riot gear, carried out the eviction over several days, and the Central line, running adjacent to the road, was suspended. As soon as eviction was completed, the remaining properties were demolished. In the end, the cost to the taxpayer was over a million pounds in police costs alone. Quoting David Maclean, \"I understand from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis that the cost of policing the protest in order to allow bailiffs to take possession of the premises in Claremont road was \u00a31,014,060.\" Cohen complained in parliament about police brutality, stating \"were not many of my constituents bullied\u2014including vulnerable people, and others whose only crime was living on the line of route?\" The then Secretary of State for Transport, Brian Mawhinney, pointed out that there had already been three public enquiries at which protesters could have lodged their objections against the line of the route.\n\nTowards the end [ edit ]\n\nFollowing the Claremont Road eviction, non-resident protesters moved on to other sites such as Newbury. Meanwhile, Fillebrook Road near Leytonstone Underground station had already had several houses demolished on it due to problems with vandalism. By 1995, the only house left standing was number 135. The house was originally scheduled for demolition at the same time as the others, but had been left standing in order to give the tenant additional time to relocate. After they had done so, on 11 April 1995, the Department for Transport removed the water supply and part of the roof, and left two security guards on duty. When the guards decided to sleep overnight in their cars that evening, leaving the house unoccupied, the protesters moved in. The house was renamed Munstonia (after The Munsters, thanks to its spooky appearance). Like \"Wanstonia\", they proclaimed themselves a micro-nation and designed their own national anthem and flag, though author Joe Moran mentions their legitimacy was complicated by the protesters continuing to claim unemployment benefits from the \"mother country.\"\n\nThe eviction on Fillebrook Road, Leytonstone in June 1995\n\nA tower was built out of the remains of the roof, similar to one that had existed at Claremont Road, and a system of defences and blockades were built. A core of around 30 protesters ensured that there were always people staying there (a legal requirement for a squatted home, as well as a defence against eviction). They were finally evicted on 21 June 1995, whereupon, as at Claremont Road, the building was immediately demolished. The total cost of removing the protesters from Munstonia was given to be \u00a3239,349.52, not including additional costs of security guards.\n\nConstruction of the road, already underway by this stage, was then free to continue largely unhindered, although systematic sabotage of building sites by local people continued. It was completed in 1999 and given the designation A12; its continuation, the former A102(M), was also given this number as far as the Blackwall Tunnel.\n\nThe official opening of the road in October 1999 took place without fanfare, being opened by the Highways Agency Chief Executive rather than a politician, with only journalists with passes being admitted to the ceremony.[50]\n\nConsequences of the protest campaign [ edit ]\n\nThe M11 link road protest was ultimately unsuccessful in its aim to stop the building of the link road. The total cost of compensation for the project was estimated to be around \u00a315 million.\n\nProposals for the M12 motorway were cancelled in 1994 during the first review of the trunk road programme. The most significant response from the government occurred when Labour came into office following the 1997 general election, with the announcement of the New Deal for Trunk Roads in England. This proposal cancelled many previous road schemes, including the construction of the M65 over the Pennines, increased fuel prices, and ensured that road projects would only be undertaken when genuinely necessary, stating \"there will be no presumption in favour of new road building as an answer.\"\n\nSome protesters went on to join the direct action campaign Reclaim the Streets. A protester arrested and detained on the grounds of breach of the peace unsuccessfully challenged the UK Government's legislation at the European Court of Justice.\n\nIn 2002, in response to a major new road building programme and expansion of aviation, a delegation of road protest veterans visited the Department for Transport to warn of renewed direct action in response, delivering a D-lock as a symbol of the past protests. One such protestor, Rebecca Lush went on to found Road Block to support road protesters and challenge the government. In 2007, Road Block became a project within the Campaign for Better Transport. The M11 Link road protests inspired the launch of the video activism organisation Undercurrents. Training activists to film the protests, they released You've got to be choking in 1994, a 40-minute documentary about the M11 link road campaign.\n\nIn 2007, the BBC reported that the cost of the M11 link road had doubled due to the intervention of protesters. Residents in Leytonstone have complained that, following the completion of the road, their streets became rat runs for commuters trying to get ahead of queues.\n\nSee also [ edit ]\n\nNotes [ edit ]\n\n^ The BBC give the figure as two hundred; Wall gives the figure as four hundred. ^ According to the BBC; Wall gives a figure of nine hours. ^ The BBC quotes then-Chief Superintendent Stuart Giblin as saying \"My officers acted professionally despite some of the comments and behaviour of the protesters.\"\n\nReferences [ edit ]\n\nCitations [ edit ]\n\nBooks\n\nNews articles\n\nWebsites\n\nHansard\n\nFurther reading [ edit ]\n\nCoordinates:"} -{"text":"FRANKFURT, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Nokia NOK1V.HE needs to speedily boost its offering of mobile internet solutions, marketing head Anssi Vanjoki told a German magazine.\n\nNokia, the No. 1 global cellphone maker, needs to catch up with the rivals Apple (AAPL.O), Google (GOOG.O) and Blackberry-maker RIM RIM.TO in offering online solutions, Vanjoki was quoted as saying by weekly Wirtschaftswoche in an excerpt of an interview to be published on Monday.\n\nVanjoki did not rule out a sale of its core handset manufacturing business in the long term.\n\nNokia\u2019s mobile-device factories offered an important competitive advantage but one should \u201cnever say never\u201d should a sale at some point be warranted as part of Nokia\u2019s transformation, he was quoted as saying. (Reporting by Ludwig Burger, editing by Mike Peacock) ((ludwig.burger@thomsonreuters.com; +49 69 7565 1311; Reuters Messaging: ludwig.burger.reuters.com@reuters.net))"} -{"text":"Kevin Yakes spends so much time trying to keep his Golden Valley construction firm staffed, he sometimes feels like a full-time recruiter. During a recent family getaway in Florida, Yakes hopped in the car and drove more than an hour to have beers with a refrigeration technician he wanted to attract to Minnesota.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like dating,\u201d Yakes said. \u201cI\u2019ve never, ever, had such a hard time trying to find people.\u201d\n\nNearly a decade after the U.S. economy collapsed and construction workers fled the industry, Twin Cities builders and contractors are in the midst of one of their busiest years. But a shortage of skilled workers means that new projects \u2014 from modest office renovations to soaring new apartment towers \u2014 are costing more and taking longer to complete. The situation has contributed to a housing shortage in the region.\n\nEven last year\u2019s completion of U.S. Bank Stadium, a project that kept thousands of workers busy for nearly three years, hasn\u2019t fully replenished the pool of construction help. \u201cWe have more work than we know what to do with,\u201d said Robert Heise, president of the Minnesota-North Dakota chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors.\n\nAs of May, there were more than 125,000 construction workers in Minnesota, the most for that month since 2006. And the latest tally of construction job openings was the highest in at least a decade. Electricians, carpenters and plumbers are among the most scarce.\n\nLabor leaders say the industry has struggled to attract young people to replenish the pool of workers drained by the 2008-2009 recession, even though construction jobs pay above-average wages and most require just a high school diploma.\n\nOne reason for that, says Tim Worke, chief executive of the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota, is that vocational training has been devalued. \u201cEveryone has been told that you have to have a four-year degree to be prosperous at life,\u201d Worke said.\n\nBut it\u2019s a fine line, he added, because the old notion that construction is a field only for those with a \u201cstrong back and a strong body\u201d isn\u2019t the case anymore. The work is more technical and workers need advanced training, Worke said.\n\nJames Mahler, a 35-year-old project manager for River City Tile & Underlayment in Chanhassen, joined the trades at age 19. \u201cCollege was never something that appealed to me,\u201d he said. \u201cI was eager to begin working and making my own career path.\u201d\n\nIn the recession, as others fled the industry, he stayed the course and is glad he did. He has never been without work and has been able to pick and choose jobs.\n\n\u201cWe make extremely good money, work reasonable hours, get to be active and build actual communities within the Twin Cities,\u201d he said. \u201cI want young people to realize that it is not a step down to go into construction.\u201d\n\nWith costs and job openings on the rise, the industry is getting more creative. This summer a consortium of industry groups will launch one of its most comprehensive efforts yet to help fill jobs: Project Build Minnesota, a marketing campaign aimed at \u201cmaking construction sexy again,\u201d said David Siegel, executive director of the Builders Association of the Twin Cities. The goal is to sweep as many trainees into both union and nonunion jobs. The consortium plans to raise $800,000.\n\nEarlier this year, a collective of labor unions launched its own PR campaign dubbed Elevate Minnesota to promote union construction jobs.\n\nA third group called the Twin Cities Construction Sector Initiative, which includes the Associated General Contractors, the Minnesota Building Trades Council, educational institutions and other stakeholders, is taking a higher-level look at workforce needs. That group hopes to roll out a multiyear plan by end of the summer.\n\nUntil those efforts gel, the effects of the tight labor market are rippling through Twin Cities property markets.\n\nCommercial construction costs are increasing two to five times the rate of inflation, local analysts say. Jim Durda, executive vice president of the local office of Zeller Realty Group, which manages the Fifth Street Towers and LaSalle Plaza in Minneapolis, said that 10 years ago it might have cost $25 per square foot to build out or remodel a commercial space. Today, it\u2019s $35 to $50 per square foot, partly because of labor costs.\n\nSuch increases can be even more detrimental for new buildings, which employ hundreds of workers from many trades. Last month, plans to build a Hy-Vee store in White Bear Lake were scuttled. High labor costs contributed to the decision not to build, according to both John Johannson, a manager in the local development company on the project, and Tara Deering-Hansen, a spokeswoman at Hy-Vee\u2019s Des Moines headquarters.\n\nHomebuilders are facing similar issues. Some builders have painted \u201chelp wanted\u201d and phone referral numbers on their trucks.\n\nTwo weeks before the start of a luxury house tour in the Twin Cities, Scott Busyn and several other custom homebuilders were scrambling to finish in time for it. Busyn paid overtime and offered other perks to discourage subcontractors from jumping ship to work with other companies.\n\nAt CPM Cos., one of the biggest apartment developers in the Twin Cities, the situation is making it difficult to finish buildings on time.\n\nConstruction manager Troy Wenck of Reuter Walton Commercial said that he\u2019s spending valuable time trying to recruit employees, and the company has had to turn away projects.\n\nMark Scherer, an owner of the one of the largest lumberyards and truss-building plants in the region, has managed to keep his staffing levels steady by regularly raising wages. At a plant in Albertville, he gave workers a nearly $1 an hour raise last fall. \u201cThat seemed to take care of the problem,\u201d he said.\n\nHe hasn\u2019t, however, been able to solve a more serious problem: Timing. He said it normally takes 90 days to build a house, but it\u2019s now taking 120 to 180 days in some cases.\n\nHouses are also more expensive. Scherer said an upscale house used to cost $175 per square foot, but increases in labor and other inputs means the price is now $250 to north of $300 per square foot.\n\nFor Yakes, the chief executive of Summit Commercial Facilities Group, a fix couldn\u2019t come soon enough.\n\nHe has a handful of openings to add to his current staff of 30 \u2014 and he wasn\u2019t able to persuade the Florida technician he met for drinks to join his company.\n\n\u201cIt is a whole lot of work,\u201d Yakes said. \u201cYou just always have to be ready to hire that next top talent.\u201d\n\nNicole Norfleet \u2022 612-673-4495 Twitter: @nicolenorfleet\n\nJim Buchta \u2022 612-673-7376 Twitter: @JustListedBlog"} -{"text":"The advantage of a hazelnut rod ... is the possibility to attach test-nodes (Testnosoden) at the tip. This allows to search more aimed at different oscillation patterns. \u2026 on my left pinky finger, there is a polarization ring made from ferrite material; this serves the determination of polarization, which means, whether the water vein spins right or left handed.\n\nThis is from a diploma dissertation presented to the faculty for landscaping architecture at the University Weihenstephan-Triesdorf in Bavaria. The German diploma is equivalent to the Master level. It was not forwarded to the campus health center\u2019s mental health division to ensure that the student receives help. Professor Doctor F. Luz evaluated with the highest possible grade! The student now uses his 'dowsing expertise' to earn a living. No, not relieving cat-ladies of their money, but with urban planning, paid for by tax payers.\n\nThis was two years ago. Everything sorted out now? You bet. The university has officially opened the course \u201cLandscape aesthetics&geomancy and Feng-Shui in Landscape Architecture\u201d. Diploma certified Engineer S. Broennle teaches whenever Luz is out in the field dowsing. According to all we know, grades are established with pendulum and Ouija board.\n\nThis updates Germany ranks first in Internationalism, the one where I told you the secret about that studying in Germany is still free. Now you don\u2019t even need to care about the science that traditionally was in the way of academic degrees. Pack your stuff, lazy students of the world. Germany Abolishes Itself.\n\n--------------------------------------------\n\nMore from Vongehr Topic for Topic"} -{"text":"JOE SCHMIDT HAS rejected the notion that the inclusion of Tommy Bowe in Ireland\u2019s matchday squad is a \u2018nostalgia\u2019 call.\n\nThe 33-year-old wing was used off the bench in Ireland\u2019s defeat to Scotland on the opening weekend of the Six Nations, after which Schmidt\u2019s selection was criticised.\n\nBowe is now back on Ireland\u2019s bench for tomorrow\u2019s clash with Wales, with more eyebrows being raised by the decision.\n\nBowe is back on the Ireland bench for tomorrow. Source: Inpho\/Billy Stickland\n\nFormer Ireland wing Shane Horgan, who played under Schmidt with Leinster, told the Second Captains podcast that Schmidt\u2019s decision to include Bowe against Scotland had been an error.\n\n\u201cThat looked like a nostalgia call, having him in the team,\u201d Horgan said. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t been playing well. I was very surprised that he was in the 23.\u201d\n\nBowe was subsequently left out of Ireland\u2019s matchday squad for the trip to Italy and missed out on the home win over France.\n\nThe Ulster wing was then ommitted from Schmidt\u2019s extended 36-man squad for the closing two rounds of the championship.\n\nHowever, a hand injury for Andrew Trimble saw Bowe called in as an injury replacement last weekend and he has jumped ahead of Tiernan O\u2019Halloran, Andrew Conway, Craig Gilroy and Jared Payne for the 23 shirt ahead of tomorrow\u2019s clash with Wales in Cardiff.\n\nWhen Horgan\u2019s suggestion that Bowe\u2019s inclusion during this Six Nations was a nostalgic decision was put to the Ireland head coach, Schmidt rejected it outright.\n\n\u201cLook, I think Shane hasn\u2019t spent any time in our environment, so he\u2019s never seen Tommy train, so I think it\u2019s a typically external opinion that is purely opinion based,\u201d said Schmidt.\n\n\u201cWe try to base our decision on how a player is performing. I\u2019ve coached Shane and there\u2019s probably been times when people have questioned my selecting him in the past. There\u2019s always going to be people questioning selection.\n\n33-year-old Bowe will win his 69th cap if used off the bench. Source: Ryan Byrne\/INPHO\n\n\u201cI feel that we\u2019re best placed. There\u2019s no way I\u2019d say we get it right every time, because again, there\u2019s a human factor in coaching, just as there is in playing, as I referred to with George North.\n\n\u201cI think he\u2019s a super player, and if somebody has a slightly off day, there\u2019s no guarantee that off days continue, in fact it\u2019s potentially going to be the reverse, they\u2019re going to revert to type and be outstanding in their next performance.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not sure whether, over the last three and a half, four years, how many nostalgic decisions I\u2019ve made. But I can\u2019t really remember many.\u201d\n\nHaving included Bowe as the 23rd man for a second time in this championship, Schmidt backed the 68-times capped Ulsterman to deliver for Ireland tomorrow night at the Principality Stadium.\n\nThe Ireland head coach also indicated that Bowe\u2019s aerial strength was one of the key reasons for picking him.\n\n\u201cI think if you look at his last two Ulster performances, you can see his ability to read the game, to run a good line, to be in the right place at the right time,\u201d said Schmidt.\n\n\u201cHis aerial game is a real strength for him, and for us. That\u2019s where they came after us last time with Dan Biggar and Liam Williams, George North is such a big man, Leigh Halfpenny got a couple of good aerial takes early in the game.\n\n\u201cTherefore, you cut your cloth, you account for how somebody\u2019s training, you calculate what they bring to the game, and then you make decisions.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s where I\u2019d challenge anyone to do as much work looking at how people are preparing themselves, and then make decisions. The caveat of all that is \u2013 I\u2019m not claiming that we\u2019ve got it right, we\u2019ve just worked hard to try to make the best decisions.\u201d\n\nSubscribe to The42 Rugby Show podcast here:"} -{"text":"Thoughts\n\nI\u2019ve made some pretty bad mistakes in my past, and I\u2019ll \u201cfess up\u201d to them at any point.. not because I\u2019m proud that I messed up at something but because acknowledging your faults, weaknesses and most importantly stupidity in the past has taught me to be a better human being. And you see, being a better human being, by bettering yourself from your own mistakes is a concept that most can\u2019t even dream of.\n\nSo, by doing this, as my \u201cnew year\u2019s resolution\u201d \u2013 Whatever kind of meaningless dribble people throw up on their facebook walls, as if to tell the world that this year they\u2019ll be different, this very year they\u2019ll increase their own self esteem by sorting after other peers appreciation of their own divisiveness to change. When in the very, very sad reality people don\u2019t change \u2013 You never really change, you can regret a decision and improve on that decision but your mistakes WILL \u201chaunt\u201d (as if to say your past and your previous decisions were a different beings choices, and not your own which you didn\u2019t, for even a slight second think of the repercussions) you for the rest of your life.\n\nAs a person, if you kill or hurt another person \u2013 You may face the repercussions and realize you can\u2019t do it again or you\u2019ll face the same music, but your head is still not screwed on right, and you know deep down in your head that every second of your life is a methodical plan to commit another\u2026 of whatever it is you\u2019re ashamed (or maybe just scared of showing society, or a loved one, or any number of people or entities) of.\n\nI used to be a \u201chacker\u201d but it was more than that, and it was because of a few stupid mistakes I made that I got caught and won\u2019t ever be doing anything stupid, like that again. That\u2019s not because I don\u2019t still think in my head (which is currently the only place of privacy we have) of what I could be doing, or that the women in front of me at the line of the grocery store just entered her pincode as 3782 or that my friend who works for the government just left her emails logged on in her computer. It\u2019s because of the fear that I don\u2019t want to \u201cface the music\u201d as some may say, and anyone who isn\u2019t scared of that then I\u2019ll look up to as a hero, hence my reference to Edward Snowden earlier.\n\n\u201cPeople aren\u2019t as evil as you may think, but temptation pushes most to the brink.\u201d\n\nYou might be asking yourself (or perhaps in your head, you\u2019re asking me) wtf the point of this article even is, and why I\u2019ve so far, refused to even give you a title (Not referring to the meta title here) well it\u2019s to do with the subtitle of my blog \u201cpolitically pissed off\u201d and it has even more to do with a YouTube video I found on the front page of Reddit today \u2013\n\nThis clip, and my entire rant here is about one specific thing and it\u2019s a phrase that I\u2019m sure has been used millions of times.\n\nThe World doesn\u2019t owe you anything, but you owe it the world \u2013 It\u2019s a slight alteration to \u201cthe world doesn\u2019t owe you anything\u201d which according to Google has been brought up over 55,000,000 times across the indexed web.\n\nMr Feenie proves this point even more. When most of you have a device in your pocket that could break most security precautions on the internet in minutes (with the right \u201cpush\u201d of course) yet you decide to use it to take photos of yourself to create a falsified image of yourself on some random social networking site. That shows how pathetic of a life you\u2019ve gotten yourself ravelled up in.\n\nThis extends to more than just the average joe as well. Justin Bieber has over 48,000,000 twitter followers (granted a lot will be fake\/bots) as of writing this. If he were to, for example: tweet a small pizza restaurants website\u2026 Within minutes it\u2019d more than likely crash. For a kid who put a song on YouTube this one time, he holds an unbelievably large amount of power \u2013 With the help of the internet of course.\n\nYet he decides to tweet selfies and him downloading his own tracks of iTunes.\n\nThen again, I\u2019m a paradox of my own stance on hypocrisy \u2013\n\nI\u2019m sitting on a i7 3.4 ghz CPU, 16gb ddr3 ram and a 4gb DDR5 Graphics card\u2026 Whilst using about a percent of the CPU\u2019s power and typing into an open source CMS, on a site that pretty much no one reads.\n\nMy moral of this story, and the question I bet you were asking yourself earlier is then?\n\nSpend your time wisely, and spend your time learning \u2013 Because for though it may seem like an eternity in hell, your life is almost irrelevant in the grand scheme of things."} -{"text":"Hillary Rodham Clinton\u2019s determination to reconnect with voters in localized, informative settings is commendable, but is in danger of being overshadowed by questions about the interplay of politics and wealthy foreign donors who support the Clinton Foundation.\n\nNothing illegal has been alleged about the foundation, the global philanthropic initiative founded by former President Bill Clinton. But no one knows better than Mrs. Clinton that this is the tooth-and-claw political season where accusations are going to fly for the next 19 months. And no one should know better than the former senator and first lady that they will fester if straightforward answers are not offered to the public.\n\nThe increasing scrutiny of the foundation has raised several points that need to be addressed by Mrs. Clinton and the former president. These relate most importantly to the flow of multimillions in donations from foreigners and others to the foundation, how Mrs. Clinton dealt with potential conflicts as secretary of state and how she intends to guard against such conflicts should she win the White House.\n\nThe only plausible answer is full and complete disclosure of all sources of money going to the foundation. And the foundation needs to reinstate the ban on donations from foreign governments for the rest of her campaign \u2014 the same prohibition that was in place when she was in the Obama administration."} -{"text":"Battle lines are being drawn for a fight over the future of rooftop solar energy in Maine, as the Public Utilities Commission prepares to hold a hearing Monday in Hallowell on proposed rules that would cut financial incentives for homeowners with solar panels.\n\nSimilar fights are taking place across the country, as utility regulators and politicians try to define the value and benefits of small solar-electric installations, as well as who should pay, and how much, to help expand their use.\n\nZach Good of ReVision Energy prepares a roof for solar panels at a home in Cape Elizabeth last year. The cost of solar technology has fallen dramatically. Shawn Patrick Ouellette\/Press Herald file SOLAR PANEL HEARING WHEN: Monday, 1 p.m. WHERE: Worster Room of Maine Public Utilities Commission building, 101 Second St., Hallowell\n\nThe outcome of these skirmishes matters because thousands of jobs are tied to these home-scale installations, and shifting policies about compensation have led many residents to put off investing in solar. Maine installers say that began happening last spring, after the Legislature failed by two votes to override Gov. Paul LePage\u2019s veto of a bill that would have restructured the financial incentives.\n\nWhat\u2019s happening this fall at the PUC is likely to be only a prelude to a rematch next year in the Legislature. Clean-energy advocates are talking about drafting another bill, all but assuring that the matter won\u2019t be settled in the near future.\n\nAt issue is a decades-old rule that requires utilities to credit the bills of small energy generators for the full retail price of all the electricity they send into the grid. Those credits chiefly help homeowners recover the investment in solar-electric panels, which can average $10,000 or so. They continued to be paid as long as the power\u2019s being generated.\n\nThis arrangement, called net-energy billing or net metering, was set up in the 1980s to help jump-start solar when the technology was new. But panel costs have fallen sharply in recent years, and utilities and some policymakers say it\u2019s time to trim the incentive. As solar\u2019s popularity grows, they say, the payments are shifting the cost of serving homes with solar panels onto other customers.\n\nLast month, the three PUC commissioners \u2013 all appointed by LePage \u2013 proposed a change that would grandfather net-metering credits for 15 years for residents who already have solar panels installed at their homes, and limit benefits for new solar owners to 10 years.\n\nDISPUTING VALUE OF HOME SOLAR\n\nThe PUC review was triggered by a requirement that net metering be revisited once peak solar power production hit 1 percent of Central Maine Power Co.\u2019s installed capacity. But reducing the net-metering incentives drew immediate fire from solar installers and clean-energy supporters. They countered that the value of this energy actually is greater than the cost of service. And they pointed to a study done for the PUC in 2015, and updated last summer, to prove it.\n\nThe updated study concluded that the value of distributed solar \u2013 power produced near its point of use \u2013 is worth roughly 27 cents per kilowatt hour over 25 years. In Maine, the average home electric rate today is less than 16 cents per kilowatt hour, so solar advocates see a clear benefit.\n\nBut teasing out the components that contribute to that 27-cents figure paints a more-complicated picture. The PUC\u2019s consultant found that just over 17 cents of the total value was from avoiding \u201cmarket costs,\u201d largely by not needing power from large generators. The other 9 cents or so were \u201csocietal benefits,\u201d linked to emitting less climate-changing carbon dioxide and pollutants into the air.\n\nIn testimony filed Wednesday, Portland-based ReVision Energy, the state\u2019s largest solar installer, reiterated its view that the cost-shifting claim isn\u2019t supported by the study. It also criticized the PUC for proposing changes to net metering before any investigation of the facts.\n\n\u201cThe failure to fairly, fully and rigorously evaluate the overall impact of net metering delegitimizes the proposed rule and this proceeding,\u201d ReVision said. \u201cThe commission has made critical findings of fact and proposes to fundamentally change the existing, legislatively approved rule based on these findings \u2013 yet there is no sworn testimony in the record.\u201d\n\nResponding to this criticism, PUC spokesman Harry Lanphear said the commission laid out its reasoning in a notice of rulemaking last month. In it, the commissioners acknowledged that net metering supports state energy policies to promote renewable, clean electricity supplies, and that there may be environmental values to ratepayers. But they added that \u201cprograms that involve the cross-subsidization of ratepayer funds among customer groups should be reviewed periodically,\u201d especially when the cost of the technology is falling sharply.\n\nCMP is expected to amplify that point Monday. John Carroll, a spokesman, said the cost of rooftop solar has fallen by roughly half over the past decade, yet it\u2019s still being subsidized at the same level as it was in the 1980s. He said CMP gets little benefit from rooftop solar because the values cited in the PUC study are largely tied to generation and energy supply, not to the cost of delivering power to homes. CMP contends that the cost of crediting solar homeowners shifted $1.3 million in expenses to other ratepayers in 2015, although solar advocates say CMP hasn\u2019t substantiated those figures.\n\nCMP has hired an expert witness to testify about the value of solar. Ashley Brown is a former Ohio PUC commissioner and executive director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group, which studies power issues. He is expected to make a case for why net metering should be discarded and replaced with market-based pricing.\n\nLePage, through his Governor\u2019s Energy Office, will make a similar plea. The office has filed comments that say the PUC\u2019s proposed rule should be scrapped. A system should instead be adopted that uses CMP\u2019s smart meters to compensate small generators for the value of their power in real time, because costs vary hour by hour.\n\nThe office wrote: \u201cDuring the duration of the proposed rule that extends through 2040, there are companies proposing the colonization of another planet \u2013 yet the proposal is stuck in 20th-century thinking and fails to utilize modern metering technology that has already been deployed across the state.\u201d\n\nSOLAR DEBATE IN OTHER STATES\n\nThese opposing views, in various forms, underpin the debate nationwide. The Solar Energy Industries Association website has posted links to cost-benefit studies from 17 states that are studying or have examined the value of solar. They include California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii. Various interest groups and think tanks also have weighed in with national studies.\n\nBut in Maine, as elsewhere, value studies are ammunition for larger political battles. In their filed testimonies, clean-energy advocates such as ReVision, the Natural Resources Council of Maine and SunRun, a national solar installer, urge the commission to hold off on any rule change and let the next Legislature set solar policy.\n\nIn a recent email message, ReVision also encourages its supporters to vote for candidates who will advance solar.\n\n\u201cWe are confident that Maine\u2019s Legislature can do the right thing for solar,\u201d ReVision says, \u201cand we will work to make the facts clear despite ongoing campaigns of misinformation and bullying on the side of anti-solar advocates.\u201d\n\nTux Turkel can be contacted at 791-6462 or\n\n[email protected]\n\n[email protected]\n\nShare\n\nfiled under:"} -{"text":"Secretary of State Jon Husted today defended use of the word \"monopoly\" in ballot language describing state Issue 3, which seeks to legalize marijuana in Ohio. \"We are trying to use simple, plain language that accurately describes the issue,\" Husted said during a Columbus Metropolitan Club luncheon, where, when asked, he also said he is interested in being governor someday.\n\nSecretary of State Jon Husted today defended use of the word monopoly in ballot language describing state Issue 3, which seeks to legalize marijuana in Ohio.\n\n\ufffdWhat we tried to use is simple, plain language that we believe the average voter will understand and that accurately describes the issues,\ufffd Husted said during a Columbus Metropolitan Club luncheon, where, when asked, he also said he is interested in being governor someday.\n\n>>Like Dispatch Politics on Facebook\n\nSupporters of Issue 3 strongly disagree with ballot summary and title that uses the word monopoly and seems to stress that aspect of the issue over the marijuana legalization.\n\n\ufffdThe ballot title and language Jon Husted has assigned to Issue 3 is deceptive and misleading,\ufffd said Ian James, executive director of ResponsibleOhio, the group of investors pushing to legalize marijuana in Ohio and set up 10 exclusive commercial growing sites.\n\n\ufffdIt's unthinkable that Ohio's chief elections officer is waging a campaign against Issue 3 from his elected office and using taxpayer dollars to confuse voters and rig the system.\ufffd\n\nResponsibleOhio wants the Ohio Supreme Court to overturn ballot language approved by Husted and the state Ballot Board.\n\nHusted said ResponsibleOhio wants to use poll-tested language to describe the issue in a way voters will support, but he doesn\ufffdt want to use \ufffdweasel words\ufffd that mask what the issue really does.\n\n\ufffdThe folks who wrote this, if they didn\ufffdt want it called a monopoly, then they shouldn\ufffdt have created a monopoly,\ufffd Husted said, as both he and moderator Mike Thompson broke out the dictionary.\n\nHusted also reiterated his position that if both Issue 3 and Issue 2, a legislative anti-monopoly proposal, pass in November, the marijuana issue would be invalidated, regardless of which issue gets more votes. The language of Issue 2, plus the fact that it would take effect immediately, makes it the dominant issue.\n\nHowever, if both issues pass, that interpretation is likely to be challenged in court.\n\nHusted also indicated his support for state Issue 1, altering the legislative redistricting process, which currently allows the majority party to gerrymander districts to its benefit. The new process would require minority-party votes in order to pass a 10-year map.\n\nOutside the Athletic Club, more than a dozen protesters held signs and chanted largely in opposition to Husted\ufffds decision in August to deny an effort to place fracking ban charter proposals on the ballot in Athens, Fulton and Medina counties. Three protesters later came into the luncheon, holding signs and chanting \ufffdlet the people vote\ufffd after the program concluded.\n\nTish O\ufffdDell, a community organizer with the Community Legal Defense Fund and a leader in organizing the protest, said the courts should be allowed to weigh in on the charter proposals, rather than Husted deciding they should be banned from the ballot.\n\n\ufffdResidents are upset that they do not have a vote,\ufffd O\ufffdDell said.\n\nHusted argued that the Supreme Court has already ruled that the state, not local communities, have the authority to regulate fracking, and the proposals violated that law.\n\n\ufffdThat doesn\ufffdt mean we took the democratic process away from them,\ufffd he said. \ufffdThey just need to use it in the proper venue.\ufffd\n\nHe suggested that supporters could go to the legislature, or use the initiated statute ballot process, to get the law changed.\n\nHusted also discussed his continuing push to get online voter registration enacted in Ohio.\n\n\ufffdI spoke to the speaker of the House (Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville) the other day, and he indicated he thought it was something they\ufffdd be able to do this year,\ufffd Husted said.\n\njsiegel@dispatch.com\n\n@phrontpage"} -{"text":"Why would Sinn F\u00e9in go into an executive in which the DUP has a disproportionate degree of influence over the British government \u2013 an alleged, joint-guarantor with the Irish government of the Belfast Agreement\n\nSinn F\u00e9in won seven seats in the Westminster general election, running on an abstentionist ticket, which has been the party\u2019s policy for at least one hundred years.\n\nThe SDLP, which boasted about sitting in Westminster but had nothing to show for it, lost its three seats \u2013 seat held by three former party leaders and two of which have now been taken by Sinn F\u00e9in.\n\nAnd yet despite the wishes of the electorate which had been heavily exposed to all the arguments, Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s critics, including the SDLP and southern political parties, and many in the media, few of whom wish Sinn F\u00e9in well, continued to criticise the party for keeping to its manifesto commitment.\n\nI was at the Belfast count on Thursday night\/Friday morning and was asked by a succession of journalists about whether in the circumstances of a hung parliament Sinn F\u00e9in would not drop its policy and help Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s Labour Party or, at least, make it more difficult for Theresa May to form a government with the help of the DUP.\n\nI said, No, it was not going to happen.\n\nMany arguments have been advanced in defence of abstentionism including that the oath or affirmation of allegiance to a foreign monarch and her heirs presents a difficulty and is inimical to one\u2019s republicanism; or that one\u2019s influence is miniscule and dwarfed by the major parties with few from the North able to demonstrate worthwhile achievements commensurate with their attendance.\n\nThese arguments, whilst valid, are not at the core of abstentionism. For example, the oath could be completely removed. Or, imagine Britain a republic. It might well be possible for some of the parties which take their seats to point to pieces of legislation that they have influenced or initiated. In the circumstances of a hung parliament it is undeniable that a tail might be able to wag the much bigger dog for a time.\n\nEven if the oath was removed and I was an MP I would still not take my seat.\n\nEven if Britain was a republic I would still not take my seat.\n\nEven if I held the balance of power and could get through bits and pieces of legislation (while flattering myself as to the magnitude of my importance) I would still not take my seat.\n\nFor me, it is quite simple.\n\nHow can I object to Britain interfering in Irish affairs if I go over and interfere in theirs?\n\nOnce I took my seat, with or without an oath, I have lost the moral high ground on that question of Irish sovereignty. I have already conceded Britain\u2019s right to govern on this shore \u2013 a claim that was demonstrably rejected in December 1918 by the majority of people in Ireland in a democratic election.\n\nEven though for reasons of pragmatism I support Agreements which were passed into law in the House of Commons, this does not mean that I recognise Britain\u2019s claim to rule over me as being legitimate.\n\nLeinster House and Stormont, for all their many flaws, are assemblies of the people of this island. Furthermore, the state in which I live is not the state in which I grew up. Much has changed; often beyond recognition. Much has clearly still to be changed. I am in the business of building a new society in Ireland out of the two states which currently exist. To do that I need to win over a significant body of support from the unionist community, as well as winning over people in the South who have lived for a century under successive partitionist governments which have never acted in truly national terms.\n\nThe establishment in the South distances itself from us by increasingly in its discourse conflating the Twenty-Six Counties with \u2018Ireland\u2019; although the threat of Brexit to the southern economy, and to the security of the peace process, has suddenly produced fresh \u2013 some might say, opportunistic \u2013 interest in reunification.\n\nOn Friday, the day after the general election, I tweeted: \u201cIn interfering in British affairs the DUP will gather many enemies.\u201d I hadn\u2019t appreciated how quickly that would happen nor the scale of the revulsion.\n\nThe British, especially the English, deeply resent anyone else telling them what to do.\n\nIn simplistic terms it explains their dislike of Europe and the way they voted on Brexit.\n\nAs an exercise, imagine that the Labour and Tory wins were reversed and that Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s seven seats would be enough to support a Labour minority government, and that the party, out of the blue, took its Westminster seats.\n\nMake no mistake about it: the British public and the British media would be just as scathing of republicans as they are now of the DUP; although the DUP because of its homophobic, racist and sectarian proclivities present much more fertile ground for ridicule and attack.\n\nAnd that is because the British, especially the English, do not like outsiders interfering in their affairs.\n\nAlthough the SNP would also have faced criticism were it to prop up, say, a Corbyn minority government, the criticism and the type of condemnation would not be as visceral as the attacks on the Irish unionists because Scotland and Wales are unquestionably viewed differently from the Six Counties.\n\nIncidentally, those famous Irish politicians who did take their oath and seats in Westminster failed abysmally in their objectives.\n\nDaniel O\u2019Connell failed to achieve the Repeal of the Union. Charles Stewart Parnell and his Irish Parliamentary Party after decades in Westminster, and his successor, John Redmond, failed to achieve Home Rule, but did manage to sacrifice the lives of 50,000 Irish Volunteers in WWI who were fooled into believing they were fighting for the freedom of a small nation, Ireland.\n\nI\u2019m not including one major success at Westminster by the original Ulster Unionist Party because their exclusion of the Six Counties and the abandonment of the Home Rule Act has proved to be one unmitigated disaster for everyone.\n\nBy abstaining from Westminster Sinn F\u00e9in is making a powerful statement \u2013 that the people who vote for it reject British rule and British interference.\n\nAnd that is something that should give British people pause for thought: if you are livid at the prospects of a party from here, going over there to interfere and make your laws, how do you think we feel after all these centuries?\n\nThis sordid Tory\/DUP arrangement, if it comes off, may not last long, will ultimately damage both parties, but more immediately will jeopardise the prospects of a return to devolution.\n\nWhy would Sinn F\u00e9in go into an executive in which the DUP has a disproportionate degree of influence over the British government \u2013 an alleged, joint-guarantor with the Irish government of the Belfast Agreement?\n\nOne, perhaps unforeseen consequence of the DUP\u2019s willingness to go into coalition with a British government is that the DUP is effectively relinquishing any objection it might make in the future to Sinn F\u00e9in doing exactly the same in Dublin.\n\nFor the DUP I hope that the demonization they are facing (and which must appear as unjust and unfair to them) is a chastening experience and one which will make them or their supporters reflect on the antediluvian nature of their policies which encroach on the freedom of others.\n\nI also hope it makes them realise that in actual fact they belong here more than over there.\n\nIt is here, not over there, they should be entering into a true pact with their fellow Irish people."} -{"text":"Decided to wait until I had the other three done before uploading them all. Here we have Pinkie Pie as Hawkeye. Again, a difficult choice for me to make with who would fit with Pinkie Pie (considering Deadpool is not an Avengers). Still, I kind of consider Hawkeye sort of the comic relief of the group (though he wasn't much of a joker in the movie). Plus, I like the wordplay, Pinkeye. - Ew. Nothing really funny about Pink Eye. Heard that a nurse was using pinkie crust to make....Okay! Pinkie! No need for the details!Pinkie Pie own and (c) by HasbroHawkeye own and (c) by MarvelArtwork (c) Kenichi-ShinigamiMy Little Avengers -Shining Fury- [link] Captain Equestria- [link] Twilight Widow - [link] Ironmare - [link] Pinkeye - HereRainbow Thor - [link] Flutterhulk - [link]"} -{"text":"It\u2019s been a while since I last took part in the Peanut Butter Bash Group but its time to join in again! Because of my job I have had to sit the last few months out but this is fate because the month I could join in again was banana month\u2026\u2026. seriously anyone who has read this blog for a while will know just how obsessed with all things banana I am, so I could\u2019t wait to try these two together. And I came up with this Light and Fluffy Peanut Butter Banana Layer Cake.\n\nThis is everything a cake should be and oh so much more, let me explain \ud83d\ude00\n\nLayer Cake\u2019s & Banana\n\nI don\u2019t often make layer cakes, I find them too much to eat and can occasionally be just a little bit too dry for my liking. Hence why I tend to make traybake\u2019s, snack cakes and cupcakes. It\u2019s just a personal preference of mine. But I got it into my head that I wanted a layer cake. Banana cake is almost always a moist cake but it can make a sponge dense and heavy.\n\nTo make sure there were no dense heavy sponge issues with this cake I added buttermilk to the batter. Buttermilk is almost a wonder ingredient in cakes. It ensures a light and fluffy tender crumb. Ensuring the banana did not weigh the sponge down.\n\nPeanut Butter Overload\n\nBecause banana can be a strong flavour I wanted to make sure the peanut butter was an equal partner and not a side show. To do this I included a healthy amount into the cake batter, I also smothered the cake in a light and creamy peanut butter cream cheese frosting and to finish if off I added a handful of peanut butter chips.\n\nMaking sure that each bite had that peanut butter goodness in it \ud83d\ude00 The peanut butter chips are completely optional as I know they are not the easiest thing to come by, especially in the UK. I have to order mine online, so chocolate chips will work fine instead.\n\nOr leave them off all together. All in all this a light and fluffy cake that is equally flavoured with banana and peanut butter. It\u2019s simple to make and comes together in one bowl so there aren\u2019t too many dishes to wash up afterwards \ud83d\ude00\n\nHonestly you will love this Light and Fluffy Peanut Butter Banana Layer Cake as much as me. It really is a tea time treat for the whole family!\n\nLight and Fluffy Peanut Butter Banana Layer Cake A light and fluffy peanut butter and banana layer cake. Peanut butter and banana sponge filled and covered with a light and creamy peanut butter cream cheese frosting. 0 from 0 votes Print Pin Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time: 35 minutes Total Time: 55 minutes Servings: 8 -10 slices Author: Emma Ingredients For the cake\n\n125 grams unsalted butter (1 stick & 1 tablespoon)\n\n250 grams light brown sugar (1 & 1\/8 cup)\n\n125 grams smooth peanut butter (1\/2 cup)\n\n2 large eggs\n\n1 teaspoon vanilla extract\n\n2 medium sized ripe bananas - mashed\n\n120 millilitres buttermilk (1\/2 cup)\n\n1 teaspoon baking soda\n\n1 teaspoon baking powder\n\n1\/2 teaspoon salt\n\n290 grams plain \/ all purpose flour (2 & 1\/4 cups)\n\nFor the frosting\n\n212 grams unsalted butter (1 cup)\n\n65 grams smooth peanut butter (1\/4 cup)\n\n400 grams icing sugar (3 cups)\n\n155 grams full fat cream cheese (3\/4 cup)\n\n50 grams peanut butter or chocolate chips (1\/4 cup) Instructions Preheat your oven to 190C \/ 375F \/ Gas mark 5 and either line or lightly grease two 8inch round tins that are at least 2 inches deep and place to one side.\n\nCream the butter, sugar and peanut butter together until they are light and fluffy. About 2-3 minutes if you are using a stand or electric mixer.\n\nThen add the eggs one at a time beating in-between each addition then add in the vanilla extract and mashed bananas. Mix until everything is well combined about another minute.\n\nSieve in the baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour.\n\nThen gently fold in the dry ingredients into the batter.\n\nDivide the batter equally between the two tins and gently spread it out in the tin so it is level. Then pop the tins in the middle of your oven.\n\nAfter 25 minutes you need to reduce the temperature of your oven to 170C \/ 325F \/ Gas mark 3 and bake your cake for a further 10 minutes.\n\nAfter this 10 minutes check you cake for doneness, it should just be starting to pull away from the sides of your tins be a light golden colour and be firm to the touch. If you have a pick press it into the middle and it should come out clean. If it doesn't pass these tests give your cake a further few minutes and test again.\n\nTake the cakes out of the oven and let them rest in their tins for 5 minutes then transfer them to a wire rack to fully cool down.\n\nOnce the cakes are fully cooled down its time to make the frosting.\n\nUsing an electric mixer or stand mixer beat the butter until it is light and fluffy, this will be about 5-7 minutes.\n\nMix in the peanut butter and beat for another minute or two until it is well mixed into the butter.\n\nTurn your mixer off and pour in half of the icing sugar, on a low speed start to mix it in. When its fully combined repeat with the remaining icing sugar.\n\nAdd in the cream cheese and beat on a medium speed for a minute until it is well mixed in.\n\nYour cake is now ready to decorate.\n\nPut half of your frosting on top of one of your cakes and gently spread it out over the sponge but keep it a few centimetres from the edges and then sandwich it together with the other half.\n\nThen place the remaining frosting on the top of the cakes and gently work in over the top and down the side of the sponges until everything is fully covered.\n\nIf using sprinkle your peanut butter chips or chocolate chips over the top.\n\nSlice and serve.\n\nKept in an airtight tin in cool temperatures this cake will last 4 days. Tried this recipe? Mention @BakeThenEat or tag #BakeThenEat Share this recipe Mention @BakeThenEat or tag #BakeThenEat\n\nDo you want to join in on the peanut butter bash fun? If so, email Miranda and request to join the Peanut Butter Bash facebook group! The first Thursday of each month we post a dessert with peanut butter and a mystery ingredient. There is also a Facebook group if you want to join in the fun but don\u2019t run your own blog The Peanut Butter Recipe Box. Here are the other peanut butter and Banana creations!"} -{"text":"In Israel, open discourse and dissent appear to be among the casualties of the monthlong war in Gaza, according to stalwarts of what is known as the Zionist left \u2014 Israelis who want the country to end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and help create a sovereign Palestinian state.\n\nIsraeli politics have been drifting rightward for years, and many see that trend sharpening and solidifying now. Several polls find that as many as nine out of 10 Israeli Jews back the prosecution of the war by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When that support slipped a bit last week, it seemed to be because more people wanted an even more aggressive assault on Hamas, the militant Islamist faction that dominates Gaza. Israelis who question the government or the military on Facebook, or who even share photographs of death and devastation in Gaza, find themselves defriended, often by people they thought were politically like-minded.\n\n\u201cOne of the victims of war is any nuance,\u201d said Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, who emigrated from New York in 1979. \u201cThe idea of having a nuanced position that recognizes the suffering on both sides and the complications is almost impossible to maintain.\u201d\n\nRabbi Weiman-Kelman is the founder of Kol Haneshama, one of Israel\u2019s largest and best-known Reform congregations, where every service ends with an adaptation of a traditional Hebrew prayer for peace that includes a line in Arabic borrowed from a traditional Muslim prayer. (Disclosure: I have occasionally attended those services.)\n\nWhen Rabbi Weiman-Kelman recently circulated a petition condemning racist comments by a right-wing rabbi, a member of the synagogue\u2019s board whose son was fighting in Gaza said the congregation should stay out of the matter and \u201cfocus on our boys,\u201d he recalled. And during services Friday night, another leader of the congregation with lengthy leftist credentials stood up and said he no longer felt comfortable with a different prayer, which included a wish for \u201cshalom\u201d \u2014 peace \u2014 for \u201call who dwell on earth.\u201d \u201cThe man said, \u2018There really are bad people out there who I don\u2019t wish shalom,\u2019 \u201d the rabbi recounted. \u201cIt was a devastating moment.\u201d"} -{"text":"WASHINGTON \u2014 As commercial spaceflight company Blue Origin prepares for another suborbital test fight, company founder Jeff Bezos said he thinks the next administration should assign NASA a mix of large-scale prizes and technology development programs.\n\nBezos, in an on-stage interview as part of the John H. Glenn Lecture in Space History at the National Air and Space Museum here, offered his views when asked what he would do if the next president called him and asked for space policy advice.\n\n\"I think big prizes would be an interesting thing to do,\" he said. NASA has run a prize program, called Centennial Challenges, for a decade, offering prizes of up to several million dollars for aviation and space technology achievements.\n\nBezos, though, believes NASA should go after something bigger, such as a prize for a Mars sample return mission. \"One thing that the government could do is just offer a very large prize to whoever first brings back some Mars samples,\" he said. \"It would be very interesting. That kind of horserace would create lots of attention. People would compete for it.\"\n\nBezos didn't offer an estimate of how large the prize should be for a Mars sample return competition. NASA is currently working on the first element of its own sample return effort, the Mars 2020 rover, to collect samples. That mission has an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. Later missions are proposed to launch the samples into Martian orbit and return them to Earth, but NASA has not disclosed a schedule or cost for them.\n\nIn conjunction with large prizes, Bezos suggested NASA also pursue ambitious technology development efforts. \"I would also advise that NASA needs to go after gigantic, hard technology goals,\" he said, that would be too difficult for private industry to do on its own. Examples he gave were in-space nuclear reactors and hypersonic passenger aviation.\n\n\"I think prizes and then really hard technology programs\" are what NASA should pursue, he concluded.\n\nBezos didn't weigh in on a particular destination for NASA human spaceflight efforts, but the other guest speaker at the lecture, Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, did. \"To me, the focus should be on Mars,\" he said.\n\nCollins said his views contrasted with those held by the late Neil Armstrong, who had advocated for a return the moon prior to going to Mars. \"I disagree with that. I think we ought to just go,\" he said. \"I used to joke that NASA should be renamed NAMA \u2014 the National Aeronautics and Mars Administration \u2014 and I would still to some extent like to see that.\"\n\nBezos didn't object to someone, be it NASA or a private venture, sending humans to Mars, although he thought it would be more for the achievement of doing so rather than any science crewed missions there might do. \"I don't think you can justify sending men to Mars for science reasons. I think we have reached a state where robots can do that task, probably better than people can,\" he said.\n\nInstead, he said people should go because it's \"cool.\" \"I hope somebody goes to Mars because I want to watch it. I think it would be glorious,\"he said.\n\nBezos' near-term space focus is on Blue Origin, the company he founded to develop reusable launch vehicles that promise to reduce the cost of space access. Bezos announced on Twitter June 13 that the company would perform another test flight of its New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle on June 17, which, for the first time, will be webcast live on the company's website.\n\nBezos said Blue Origin, which now has about 700 employees, is on track to begin commercial New Shepard flights, carrying people, in 2018. \"We'll fly our first test astronauts in late 2017, hopefully, if the test program continues to go well,\" he said.\n\nThe company has not yet started to sell tickets for those flights. \"We don't know yet what exactly we're going to charge,\" he said, but suggested Blue Origin would charge a price similar to Virgin Galactic, which is offering seats on its SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle for between $250,000 and $300,000 a person. \"We're going to be in the same range, to start with, and then keep working over time to make it cheaper.\"\n\nBezos has previously indicated he has invested at least $500 million of his own money into Blue Origin. At the event, Bezos said Blue Origin remains in \"investment mode\" and will eventually be profitable, but \"it's going to take a long time.\"\n\n\"It's for-profit,\" Bezos said of Blue Origin when asked if it was a for-profit or not-for-profit company, but stressed it is not yet profitable. \"Well, it's not yet. That's an intention for the glorious future.\"\n\nOriginally published on Space News."} -{"text":"Excellent accuracy!\n\nI got it from the FFL dealer 12\/23\/14 and when I got it home, measured the chamber with a Hornady C.O.A.L gauge. I reloaded 50 cartridges with IMR 7828 SSC, 80 gr. and seated the bullets so the length was 3.779\" I mounted a Vortex Viper PST 6-24X50 with the MRAD reticle and 2 days later took it to the range. I started with 100 yards, and my 5th, 6th, and 7th shots were in a 1\" bullseye, 2 going through the same hole. I switched to a 3\" target at 100 yards and had a 3 shot group .5\" just high and to the left, made the adjustments to center in the small bullseye and noticed the scope rings had loosened even using locktite, so I stopped. I've ordered Vortex's Precision Matched 30mm rings and am waiting to receive them. Once I remount the scope using the new rings, I'm going to zero it for 200 yards and post another review, but initially I'm VERY pleased! Oh, this is my 4th Savage rifle. I have a model 114 in 7mm magnum and can hit golf balls all day long at 100 yards. Dropped a large doe at 70 yards and she never even kicked because I shot the top of her heart off."} -{"text":"Time to stock up on the antidote for rattlesnake bites and boost blood supplies.\n\nMore than 1 million visitors are expected to flood the state for the solar eclipse Aug. 21 and hospitals in its path are ramping up for the massive influx.\n\nFor hospital systems from central Oregon to the coast, it will be all-hands on deck in the run-up and aftermath of the eclipse.\n\nWithout a precedent, planners have turned for advice to their counterparts in Sturgis, a town in South Dakota that attracts about a half a million people for a yearly motorcycle rally in August.\n\n\"One of the key things that we learned was that the need for acute care services oftentimes just mimics the increase in the population,\" said Dr. Jeff Absalon, executive vice president of St. Charles Health System in Bend.\n\nThat means more patients with food poisoning, broken bones, strokes and heart attacks. It also means more emergency surgeries for traumatic injuries.\n\nHere's what's planned:\n\nCENTRAL OREGON\n\nSt. Charles Health System, with hospitals and clinics in Bend, Redmond, Prineville and Madras, has an emergency plan for Aug. 16 to 23. It expects the local population to increase by 280,000, more than doubling.\n\nTo meet the demand, the hospital system has canceled elective surgeries, such as hernia operations and joint replacements. It has limited time off and contracted to bring in nearly 60 traveling nurses. Administrators have also moved staff around, shifting doctors and nurses from nonclinical positions to the emergency room.\n\nThe hospital system has stocked up on supplies, buying everything from extra gauze and saline solution to pharmaceuticals. It also received extra blood from the Red Cross in Portland, nearly doubling its supply.\n\nThe Red Cross declined to provide any details about its contingency plans but said it would have the need for blood covered.\n\nSt. Charles Health System also purchased extra antidote for rattlesnake bites.\n\n\"It's a little tricky because it has a short shelf life, said Lisa Goodman, spokeswoman for the hospital system.\n\nClinics in Bend, Redmond, Prineville and Madras will welcome walk-ins, with hours extended from 6 to 10 p.m.\n\nMadras, home to about 6,700 people, is expected to be ground zero.\n\n\"It is largely considered to be the very best place in the country to watch the eclipse because of geography and weather patterns,\" Goodman said.\n\nHospital staff expect a sixfold increase in patients in the Madras ER around the eclipse.\n\nThe hospital will have five physicians, nurse practitioners or physician assistants on duty at the hospital instead of the usual three. But the hospital has only 25 beds.\n\nThat means patients will have to be transported to other hospitals in the area or out of the region and the roads are expected to be clogged.\n\nUsually, two air ambulances serve the area. Two more will be added during the eclipse period, Absalon said. The Oregon Army National Guard also will make a Black Hawk helicopter available to transport patients.\n\nAdministrators will open hospital parking lots to staff, allowing them to camp out in their recreational vehicles to be closer to work.\n\nProviders have urged pregnant women due around the eclipse to be prepared but the hospital isn't altering due dates by inducing labor or doing C-sections\n\n\"There will be some instances where people may need to make alternate living arrangements,\" Absalon said. \"We won't be delivering babies outside the standard time for delivery.\"\n\nSALEM AREA\n\nSalem Health administrators have been planning for a year for an expected 500,000 visitors to their vicinity.\n\n\"We're expecting everything to be up by 25 percent,\" said Wayne McFarlin, emergency preparedness administrator for Salem Health, with hospitals in Salem and Dallas and clinics in Marion and Polk counties.\n\nThe hospital system has increased supplies across-the-board, hired contract nurses, moved staff from nonclinical positions and shifted schedules to ensure that more physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses and technicians are available.\n\n\"We've increased our emergency department and hospital staff,\" McFarlin said. \"We've boosted nurses in every unit that has in-patients.\"\n\nIn concrete terms, that means an extra 10 professionals in the ER, compared with 65 to 70 usually, to treat perhaps an extra 100 extra patients a day at Salem Hospital.\n\nAdministrators will allow staff to sleep onsite if they choose. Salem Hospital has about 70 cots; half have been reserved so far.\n\nThe hospital also has available floor space, if needed, for doctors and nurses to sleep over.\n\nElective surgeries haven't been canceled but only about a third the usual number are booked because patients and providers have selected other dates, McFarlin said.\n\nOn the Wednesday before the eclipse, Salem Hospital will set up three air-conditioned tents outside the ER to handle the demand. They will be used as triage centers and sobering stations. Patients will also be treated in the tents, as appropriate, and discharged.\n\nA command center will be set up in the hospital to track patients and to work with 11 other hospitals in the region.\n\nCORVALLIS TO THE COAST\n\nSamaritan Health Services has five hospitals -- in Corvallis, Newport, Albany, Lebanon and Lincoln City \u2013 and expects more patients at each.\n\nThere could be 150,000 visitors on the coast and as many as 300,000 in the Willamette Valley. Administrators hope to shift demand to urgent care clinics when possible to save ERs for more complicated care.\n\nThe hospital system is closing dozens of specialty clinics to move staff to 18 urgent and family care clinics from Sweet Home to Albany to Depoe Bay. From Friday through Monday, some of those clinics will have extended hours. Of the 18, 15 will be converted to walk-in clinics. Details are posted online.\n\nThe hospital system has asked staff to work extra hours if possible. They'll be able to sleep overnight at the hospitals or camp in parking lots, provided there's space.\n\nAdministrators are also hiring contract nurses.\n\nBut with so many other hospitals in need of professionals, there's a limit to how many extra professionals they can hire on a temporary basis, said Joseph Hutchinson, director of emergency management, safety and security for Samaritan Health Services.\n\n\"Would we like more? Absolutely,\" Hutchinson said. \"Can we get more? No.\"\n\nSamaritan Health Services has canceled elective surgeries and bought more food, medications and other supplies.\n\nLike central Oregon, the area serving Samaritan Health facilities will have four air ambulances instead of the usual two and more medical transport vehicles on the ground.\n\nProviders have urged pregnant women to be prepared. But the hospital system has refused requests by women who want to deliver the day of the eclipse.\n\n\"If a person is ready to deliver \u2013 they will deliver a baby,\" Hutchinson said. \"We are not encouraging or accommodating anyone who wants to have a baby born on the eclipse.\"\n\nEmergency managers are stationing extra security guards at clinics and they're activating emergency communications, with satellite phones and a network of volunteer ham radio operators.\n\nPlanners have tried to think of everything as if they were preparing for a major earthquake or disaster.\n\n\"It's an invaluable exercise,\" Hutchinson said. \"You can't get better training for emergency preparedness.\"\n\n-- Lynne Terry"} -{"text":"Hugo Schwyzer explains why guys are so preoccupied with getting women\u2019s sex stats\u2014and why they should just let it go.\n\nJudging from what I read online and hear from my students, the question of the \u201cnumber\u201d is as compelling as ever. This month, Marie Claire ran an article, \u201cWhat\u2019s Your Number?\u201d in which five women (whose numbers ranged from zero to 100) told their stories. The March issue of Cosmopolitan Australia features the same discussion, noting that 59 percent of readers surveyed thought knowing a partner\u2019s exact number was important, and that 33 percent of those same readers had lied about their own pasts, claiming fewer sexual partners than they\u2019d actually had.\n\n(A quick note: most people use \u201cthe number\u201d to refer to the count of people with whom they\u2019ve had heterosexual intercourse. Any kind of sex that doesn\u2019t involve a penis inside a vagina usually \u201cdoesn\u2019t count.\u201d A lot of us are like Bill Clinton in that regard, not seeing oral sex as real sex. This is a very limited\u2014and limiting\u2014understanding of what sex really is. But that\u2019s a topic for another day.)\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\nIt\u2019s understandable to be curious about the sexual lives of our peers. It makes sense to want to know what the averages are. (According to the experts at the Kinsey Institute, the average number of lifetime sexual partners for men aged 30 to 44 is around seven, while for women in that same age group, it\u2019s four\u2014both lower than you might think).\n\nDon\u2019t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free\n\nBut the number has different meanings for men and women. The old double standard is still alive and well: a man with more sexual partners than his buddies may be teasingly called a \u201cman whore,\u201d but the epithet is a compliment, not an insult. Ask a woman who has dared reveal her number to someone who considers it too high, and she\u2019ll surely tell you a story of being \u201cslut-shamed.\u201d\n\nIt\u2019s quite common for a guy to worry about a girlfriend\u2019s sexual past. Too many men are still raised to see sex as crude competition, in which bedding a woman who has already had a lot of lovers counts less than scoring with a woman who is \u201chard to get.\u201d But I think the average guy\u2019s worry is simpler than that. The more men his girlfriend has slept with, the greater number of lovers to which she can compare his skills. It\u2019s easier to win a contest against two than against 20, he figures. And even easier to rank first when he\u2019s the only one to have ever played the game. No wonder so many men\u2014in this country and around the world\u2014are obsessed with finding a virgin.\n\nThis is the real reason why so many men get so filled with rage at sexually experienced women. And of course, it\u2019s the real reason so many women feel compelled to lie about their number.\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\nToo many women have told their boyfriends their real number, only to be nagged incessantly for explicit details. (One friend of mine recounted to me in horror how her current boyfriend stopped one day in the middle of giving her oral sex to ask how his technique compared.) Other women find that their boyfriends endlessly psychoanalyze the reasons for a number that they think is too high: \u201cDid you sleep with so many men because your father left you when you were a child?\u201d (If I had a dollar for every woman I know who\u2019s been asked that question, I could buy everyone reading this a Slurpee. Seriously.)\n\nAt this point, some men are probably protesting: \u201cBut I don\u2019t slut-shame or endlessly analyze. For me, it\u2019s not all about competing with other guys. Isn\u2019t the number an important thing to know about someone you might be serious about? Isn\u2019t it something I have a right to know?\u201d\n\nThat sounds reasonable. But again, why is it so important to know an exact number? What difference does it make? Knowing whether a potential girlfriend has ever been in love before is important; discovering (slowly and patiently) how her past experiences have impacted her view of men (for better or worse) is important. But really, what\u2019s the difference whether she\u2019s slept with four or 14 men? She isn\u2019t defined by her number\u2014and if there\u2019s a chance you might change how you see her when you discover the truth (should she tell you), why ask?\n\nThis has nothing to do, by the way, with asking about sexual health. It\u2019s a great idea to talk about sexually transmitted infections; it\u2019s a great idea for a new couple to get tested before having unprotected sex. We have a right to know if a potential partner has herpes. But the exact number itself is altogether different.\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\nI lost my virginity at 17 to my high-school girlfriend. She was a year younger but much more sexually experienced. She was my first for anything that went below the waist; I was the fifth guy she\u2019d had sex with. I\u2019d asked her number, of course, and then fought hard not to obsess about the four boys who had \u201cbeen there\u201d before me. But I saw the pain my questions caused her. And I came to realize that it didn\u2019t matter.\n\nI don\u2019t know my wife\u2019s number. I\u2019ve never asked her. She\u2019s never asked for mine. I know enough from the stories she\u2019s told to know that there was more than one guy before me; she knows enough about my past to figure out that she can\u2019t count my lovers on her fingers. Beyond that, we\u2014who have shared so much sexually and emotionally in our nine years as a couple, six years as spouses, and two years as parents together\u2014don\u2019t need to know more specifics.\n\nWhen we\u2019re in a monogamous relationship, what we have a right to insist on is that no names get added to the list after our own. It doesn\u2019t matter if I\u2019m number five or 55. I\u2019ll be crushed if my wife adds a number six or a 56 behind my back.\n\nDon\u2019t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free\n\nBut the right to ask to be last is not the same as the right to know how far we are from the first. And for me, part of being a good man is knowing what I don\u2019t need to know.\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\nOther Stories From the Good Men Project Magazine:\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\nDon\u2019t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free\n\n\u2666\u25ca\u2666\n\n\u2014Photo by eflon\/Flickr\n\nWhy Does It Matter How Many Partners She\u2019s Had?"} -{"text":"You drift towards a pastel island where everything sings as you pass.\n\nThe sky begins to darken and something in the distance catches your eye\u2026\n\nI\u2019m Ed Key, one of the developers of Proteus along with composer David Kanaga. Proteus came out for the PC and Mac in January 2013 and had a fantastic reception from Edge, Eurogamer, IGN and many more. For something that started out as a weird experimental project between me and David, this was pretty mind-blowing, and it\u2019s even crazier to now have the chance to bring it to PS3 and PS Vita with some brand new features that take advantage of Sony\u2019s hardware.\n\nProteus is something like a constantly-remixing ambient album in the form of an immersive island world. It\u2019s all about a particular feeling of wandering through nature alone, taking it in and getting pleasantly lost. Maybe it\u2019s a little bit about magic and mortality too. Don\u2019t expect tasks and scores and checklists \u2013 perhaps Proteus lurks somewhere on the shady fringes of what it means to be a game.\n\nWith the PS Vita and PS3 version we\u2019ve been adding new ways to engage with \u2013 and remix \u2013 the world. Previously, all Proteus islands were purely random, but on PS Vita, you can now choose to generate an island based on your current geographical location and on both platforms you can generate an island for the current date.\n\nBoth features have a chance of generating an especially \u201cwild\u201d island with various tweaks and twists. The island at my house, for example, has weird purple sea, green sky in the evening and some pleasant (but still very purple) inland lakes.\n\nWe\u2019ve also added a way for users to interact with the environment using the back touch screen, and we\u2019ll be talking more about this closer to release.\n\nCurve Studios is doing a fantastic job bringing the game to PlayStation, adding a lot of love and polish along the way. Playing it hand-held on the Vita\u2019s bright OLED screen is so nice, as is the experience of playing it a on big television through the PlayStation 3. We\u2019ve had a very positive response to the PlayStation version from people I\u2019ve shown it to, and I\u2019m happy to quote a friend here and say that it\u2019s the best version of Proteus there\u2019s ever been!"} -{"text":"5 TV Shows I Wish I Could Unsee\n\nLike everyone else, I\u2019ve seen my share of television shows I disliked.\n\nSome simply weren\u2019t my taste while others were objectively awful, and usually it\u2019s not a big deal. No harm, no foul; I just move on to something else.\n\nOnce in a while, though, a show hits me so wrong that it sticks with me, burrowing into my brain like an irritating bug until I want to scoop it out with a melon baller.\n\nHere are five such shows that I wish I could go back in time and unsee.\n\n[Warning: There are some spoilers in the following discussion]\n\nJOEY\n\nI loved Friends. I laughed (and occasionally cried) with them through ugly naked guy poking, the endless Ross-Rachel rollercoaster (I don\u2019t care that you were on a break, Ross!) and God knows how many cups of coffee at Central Perk. When it was announced that Matt LeBlanc was spinning off Joey, I thought it had a chance since it had worked for Frasier when Cheers ended. Wishful thinking on my part; obviously, but I wasn\u2019t quite ready to let go.\n\nA few episodes of Joey later, and I couldn\u2019t run away fast enough.\n\nThe show wasn\u2019t funny and Joey was no longer loveable-just dumber, more deluded, and much more grating. I wished I hadn\u2019t made the move to LA with him because it made me miss Friends even more.\n\nCOUPLING (USA)\n\nAs a fan of the original Coupling, I had to check out the American version despite, shall we say, less than stellar reviews. I ended up only watching two episodes, but that was more than enough (and it didn\u2019t last much longer than that, anyway).\n\nWhy were the jokes I had laughed at uproariously in the UK version suddenly so unfunny, and how is it possible that none of the actors had any chemistry?\n\nIn an especially cruel trick, BBC America showed the UK version of the Coupling episode immediately after NBC aired its version. The difference in quality between the two was embarrassing and made me suspicious of any future American remakes.\n\nHOARDERS\n\nThis one is my fault.\n\nI have clutter issues\u2013I know this, and yet one night while flipping through the channels, I landed on a Hoarders marathon and couldn\u2019t look away.\n\nThis show is both disturbing and riveting on so many levels. While I squirmed at the disgusting \u201cliving\u201d conditions with the piles upon piles of paper, trinkets, and garbage, the people destroyed me. This is a serious illness on display for everyone to gawk at as if it were a train wreck. I know I couldn\u2019t look away. At least not until an episode involving animals came on and the sheer horror of that broke the spell.\n\nI had nightmares for a week, and I\u2019ve never watched another episode, but I wish I could forget the ones I did see.\n\nVIVA LAUGHLIN\n\nI hadn\u2019t seen Viva Blackpool, the British miniseries upon which Viva Laughlin was based, but Hugh Jackman in a musical murder mystery show? Come on! I thought it would be delicious.\n\nInstead it was bland, clich\u00e9d, almost incomprehensible, and flat-out terrible with some of the worst dialogue ever uttered. And don\u2019t get me started on the not quite lip synching but not really singing, either.\n\nThis show made Cop Rock look Emmy-worthy .\n\nPERSONS UNKNOWN\n\nNot only do I wish I could unsee Persons Unknown, I wish I could forget it ever existed.\n\nI originally thought it was a fascinating idea for a show-seven strangers wake up in a strange hotel in a deserted town with no idea how they got there. So many possibilities, and while the pilot was just okay, there was a tremendous amount of promise, so I created a season pass.\n\nBig mistake. Huge.\n\nIt went steadily downhill after the pilot meandering down blind plot alleys and never quite settling on a tone with characters who became less interesting as the show wore on. I still stayed with it because I had to know how it would end, and NBC promised we would get answers.\n\nHa! Persons Unknown spun its rusty wheels, looping back and forth and creating giant plot holes in the process, until the finale when we got\u2013nothing. We still didn\u2019t know what the \u201cProgram\u201d was and the characters we had hoped would escape were once again stuck. Sure, some of them had made it to level two in the middle of the ocean, but I didn\u2019t spend thirteen hours to find out the whole show was just a video game.\n\nMost maddening finale I have ever seen.\n\nWorse, I had to listen to my husband complain about \u201cthat God awful show you made me watch\u201d for a month and he still brings it up if I suggest a new show. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be like that terrible Persons Unknown, is it?\u201d Sigh.\n\nIf I had Hermione\u2019s time turner, those are the shows I would go back and unsee. What about you? Are there any shows that you wish you could erase from your memory? Let me know in the comments."} -{"text":"About\n\nScroll down to just below the last Stretch-Goals to PLAY The Selfie Board Game NOW!\n\nYou'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with\n\nsound 00:00 00:00\n\nPRESS RELEASE (scroll down for additional languages)\n\nPress Release (Version 1):\n\nAt 10am EST USA on 6th January 2016 (2am 7th January Australia), The Selfie Board Game will go live on Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) Launched by Aussie toy and game designer\/manufacturer Ken Howard, this is your chance to catch the vision of this exciting new game and genre. People will be able to pledge support for the game, in return for STARRING IN THE GAME plus ordering first copies. The object of The Selfie Board Game, is simply, to describe someone's appearance JUST from the sound of their voice BEFORE their selfie is revealed. This is a game for the whole world, for every language, every culture and every race, so that The Selfie Board Game builds these bridges internationally. The game headquarters will be based in Philadelphia, USA.\n\nKickstarter link: https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG\n\nOr go to Kickstarter and search for The Selfie Board Game to pledge \/ order your copy or to preview the game.\n\nOur Facebook page is: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/SelfieBoardGame\n\nOur Web Page: www.TheSelfieBoardGame.com\n\nPress Release (Version 2):\n\nAustralian Ken Howard, in partnership with American Mark Mercer, launched Ken\u2019s Selfie Board Game on Kickstarter on the 6th January. The game aims to address issues of race and colour from an angle that has not been addressed before. Namely from our voices. Ken, who develops toys and games for clients all over the world, knows firsthand, the reaction to his Aussie accent in other countries. Having lived in Europe, Africa and the USA, he has come to appreciate his friends from all over the world. Ken says he sees \u2018features\u2019 not colour. In fact, Ken\u2019s mission is to do away with the \u2018colour\u2019 word altogether. He argues that if you went to a paint store after something BLUISH for your bedroom, you\u2019d go to the blue swatch which ranges from dark and royal blue down to pale, almost, white blue. He contends it is the same with human skin. We humans are in the brown range and therefore TONE should be used as a reference instead of colour. He jokes being Australian that he is in fact pink, getting burnt easily from the sunny weather down under. He addresses these issues in his new game, called The Selfie Board Game, where the object is to describe someone\u2019s appearance, just from the sound of their voice, before their selfie is revealed.\n\nUsing only your voice, which will be uploaded into an App, this VOICIE, as he calls it, tells a lot about you and who you are. From your gender to the language that you speak, to your accent, which can even lead you to guessing someone\u2019s eye colour. Howard makes some valid arguments in his thesis-like presentation where he has an Essay on Heritage as well as going into the linguistics of language. He certainly has done a lot of research and gone into great detail for the game. He says he is using Crowd Funding as a means to quickly \u2018get\u2019 the voicies and selfies he needs for the game. In short, it is a unique take on \u2018Guess Who\u2019 and with the inclusion of an App. He hopes this social media board game will evolve into its own product range including music, a toy hover car and even a TV game show. His experience in developing thousands of toys and games over the years, certainly puts this Aussie in the can-do bracket. We wish him all the best. Just search for The Selfie Board Game on Kickstarter.com is you wish to secure an EARLY copy of the game.\n\nPress Release (Version 3):\n\nDo you ever listen to the radio and wonder just what does that person look like? We all do it and make mental images of the person on the other end of the microphone. Australian Toy and Game Manufacturer Ken Howard, in partnership with Mark Mercer of Philadelphia USA, are launching Ken\u2019s new Selfie Board Game on Kickstarter, a game which addresses this exact issue. Ken says that in his travels all over the world, he was always fascinated meeting new clients he has only spoken to on the phone. He said that, in listening more, he honed in on what he thought the person would look like when he met them in person. He said being a designer, he has always noticed features and sounds first. and has taken this to a level not thought of before in his new game. Mary Couzin, owner of Discovery Games and the Chicago Toy and Game Fair commented: \u201cWow you wrote a thesis\u201d, referring to his Kickstarter page after being shown a preview. In fact, former Vice President of Hasbro, Mike Hirtle, even lent Ken his \u201cvoicie\u201d and \u201cselfie\u201d for the game which you can actually play within the Kickstarter web site. I am sure you will be surprised what you can learn about someone\u2019s voice. I certainly was, in reading Ken\u2019s Essay on the subject of linguistics on the site. It honestly looks like a hit with his new social media board game. Check it out on Kickstarter, search for The Selfie Board Game.\n\nPress Release\n\nUm 10 Uhr EST USA am 6. Januar 2016 wird die Selfie Brettspiel live auf Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) gehen Durch Aussie Spielzeug und Spieldesigner Ken Howard ins Leben gerufen , ist dies Ihre Chance, die Vision von diesem aufregenden neuen Spiel und Genre zu fangen. Die Menschen werden in der Lage, Unterst\u00fctzung f\u00fcr das Spiel f\u00fcr immer erste und fr\u00fche Kopien verpflichten , im Gegenzug . Die Aufgabe der Selfie Brettspiel, ist einfach , um jemandes Aussehen gerade aus dem Klang ihrer Stimme zu beschreiben , BEVOR ihre selfie wird enth\u00fcllt. Dies ist ein Spiel f\u00fcr die ganze Welt , f\u00fcr jede Sprache , jeder Kultur und jeder Rasse , so dass die Selfie Brettspiel baut Br\u00fccken international . Die Spiel Hauptsitz in Philadelphia, USA basieren. Gehen Sie zu Kickstarter und die Suche nach der Selfie Brettspiel zu verpf\u00e4nden \/ bestellen Sie Ihre Kopie oder , um das Spiel\n\nComunicato Stampa\n\nAlle ore 10 EST USA il 6 gennaio 2016, il Selfie Gioco di societ\u00e0 andr\u00e0 in diretta su Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) Lanciato da giocattolo Aussie e game designer Ken Howard , questa \u00e8 la tua possibilit\u00e0 di prendere visione di questo nuovo ed entusiasmante gioco e il genere . Le persone saranno in grado di impegnarsi il supporto per il gioco , in cambio di ottenere prime e prime copie . L'oggetto del Selfie Gioco di societ\u00e0, \u00e8 semplicemente , per descrivere l'aspetto di qualcuno solo dal suono della loro voce prima che i loro selfie \u00e8 rivelato. Questo \u00e8 un gioco per tutto il mondo , per ogni lingua , ogni cultura e ogni razza , in modo che il Selfie Board Game costruisce ponti a livello internazionale . La sede di gioco sar\u00e0 basato a Filadelfia , Stati Uniti d'America . Vai a Kickstarter e cercare Il Selfie Board Game di pegno \/ ordinare la propria copia o per visualizzare in anteprima il\n\nCommuniqu\u00e9 de presse\n\n\u00c0 10h HNE USA le 6 Janvier 2016, Le Jeu de soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Selfie ira en direct sur Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) Lanc\u00e9 par jouet Aussie et game designer Ken Howard , ceci est votre chance d'attraper la vision de ce nouveau jeu passionnant et le genre. Les gens vont \u00eatre en mesure d' engager \u00e0 soutenir le jeu , en \u00e9change de l'obtention premi\u00e8res et au d\u00e9but des copies . L'objet de la planche de jeu Selfie , est tout simplement , pour d\u00e9crire l'apparence de quelqu'un seulement du son de leur voix avant leur selfie est r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9. Ceci est un jeu pour le monde entier , pour chaque langue , chaque culture et chaque course , de sorte que le plateau de jeu Selfie construit des ponts \u00e0 l'\u00e9chelle internationale . Le si\u00e8ge social de jeu sera bas\u00e9 \u00e0 Philadelphie , USA . Aller \u00e0 Kickstarter et de recherche pour Le Jeu de soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Selfie \u00e0 gage \/ commander votre copie ou de pr\u00e9visualiser le jeu .\n\n\u05e9\u05e2\u05ea 10 \u05d1\u05d1\u05d5\u05e7\u05e8 EST \u05d0\u05e8\u05d4\"\u05d1 \u05d1 -6 \u05d1\u05d9\u05e0\u05d5\u05d0\u05e8 2016,\u05e2\u05dc \u05d4\u05d3\u05d9\u05d5\u05e7\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05e2\u05e6\u05de\u05d9\u05d9\u05dd \u05dc\u05d5\u05d7 \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 \u05d9\u05dc\u05da \u05d1\u05e9\u05d9\u05d3\u05d5\u05e8 \u05d7\u05d9 \u05d1 Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) \u05d4\u05d5\u05e9\u05e7\u05d4 \u05e2\u05dc \u05d9\u05d3\u05d9 \u05e6\u05e2\u05e6\u05d5\u05e2 \u05d0\u05d5\u05e1\u05d9\u05d5\u05de\u05e2\u05e6\u05d1 \u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 \u05e7\u05df \u05d4\u05d5\u05d5\u05d0\u05e8\u05d3 , \u05d6\u05d5 \u05d4\u05d4\u05d6\u05d3\u05de\u05e0\u05d5\u05ea \u05e9\u05dc\u05da \u05db\u05d3\u05d9 \u05dc\u05ea\u05e4\u05d5\u05e1 \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05d7\u05d6\u05d5\u05df \u05e9\u05dc \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 \u05d4\u05d6\u05d4 \u05de\u05e8\u05d2\u05e9 \u05d4\u05d7\u05d3\u05e9\u05d5\u05d6'\u05d0\u05e0\u05e8 . \u05d0\u05e0\u05e9\u05d9\u05dd \u05d9\u05d5\u05db\u05dc\u05d5 \u05dc\u05e9\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \u05ea\u05de\u05d9\u05db\u05d4 \u05d1\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 , \u05d1\u05ea\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d4 \u05dc\u05e7\u05d1\u05dc\u05ea \u05e2\u05d5\u05ea\u05e7\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05e8\u05d0\u05e9\u05d5\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd\u05d5\u05de\u05d5\u05e7\u05d3\u05de\u05d9\u05dd . \u05d4\u05d0\u05d5\u05d1\u05d9\u05d9\u05e7\u05d8 \u05e9\u05dc\u05d4\u05d3\u05d9\u05d5\u05e7\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05e2\u05e6\u05de\u05d9\u05d9\u05dd \u05dc\u05d5\u05d7 \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 , \u05d4\u05d5\u05d0 \u05e4\u05e9\u05d5\u05d8 , \u05db\u05d3\u05d9 \u05dc\u05ea\u05d0\u05e8 \u05d0\u05ea \u05d4\u05d4\u05d5\u05e4\u05e2\u05d4 \u05e9\u05dc \u05de\u05d9\u05e9\u05d4\u05d5 \u05e8\u05e7\u05de\u05d4\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc \u05e9\u05dc\u05d4\u05dd\u05dc\u05e4\u05e0\u05d9 \u05e9\u05d4\u05d3\u05d9\u05d5\u05e7\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05e2\u05e6\u05de\u05d9\u05d9\u05dd \u05e9\u05dc\u05d4\u05dd \u05de\u05ea\u05d2\u05dc\u05d9\u05dd . \u05d6\u05d4\u05d5 \u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 \u05dc\u05db\u05dc \u05d4\u05e2\u05d5\u05dc\u05dd ,\u05dc\u05db\u05dc \u05e9\u05e4\u05d4 , \u05d1\u05db\u05dc \u05ea\u05e8\u05d1\u05d5\u05ea \u05d5\u05d1\u05db\u05dc \u05d2\u05d6\u05e2 , \u05db\u05da\u05e9\u05e2\u05dc \u05d4\u05d3\u05d9\u05d5\u05e7\u05e0\u05d9\u05dd \u05d4\u05e2\u05e6\u05de\u05d9\u05d9\u05dd \u05dc\u05d5\u05d7 \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 \u05d1\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4 \u05d2\u05e9\u05e8\u05d9\u05dd \u05d1\u05d9\u05e0\u05dc\u05d0\u05d5\u05de\u05d9\u05d9\u05dd . \u05d4\u05de\u05d8\u05d4 \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 \u05d9\u05d4\u05d9\u05d4 \u05de\u05d1\u05d5\u05e1\u05e1 \u05d1\u05e4\u05d9\u05dc\u05d3\u05dc\u05e4\u05d9\u05d4 , \u05d0\u05e8\u05d4\"\u05d1 . \u05e2\u05d1\u05d5\u05e8 \u05dcKickstarter\u05d5\u05dc\u05d7\u05e4\u05e9 \u05d0\u05ea\u05d4\u05d3\u05d9\u05d5\u05e7\u05df \u05d4\u05e2\u05e6\u05de\u05d9 \u05dc\u05d5\u05d7 \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 \u05dc\u05e9\u05e2\u05d1\u05d3 \/ \u05dc\u05d4\u05d6\u05de\u05d9\u05df \u05d4\u05e2\u05d5\u05ea\u05e7 \u05e9\u05dc\u05da \u05d0\u05d5 \u05dc\u05e6\u05e4\u05d5\u05ea \u05d1\u05ea\u05e6\u05d5\u05d2\u05d4 \u05de\u05e7\u05d3\u05d9\u05de\u05d4 \u05e9\u05dc \u05d4\u05de\u05e9\u05d7\u05e7 .\n\n\u0641\u064a 10:00 EST \u0627\u0644\u0648\u0644\u0627\u064a\u0627\u062a \u0627\u0644\u0645\u062a\u062d\u062f\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0645\u0631\u064a\u0643\u064a\u0629 \u0641\u064a \u064a\u0646\u0627\u064a\u0631 6th \u0639\u0627\u0645 2016\u060c \u0641\u0625\u0646 \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 Selfie \u0627\u0644\u0645\u062c\u0644\u0633 \u064a\u0630\u0647\u0628 \u0648\u064a\u0639\u064a\u0634 \u0639\u0644\u0649 Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) \u0627\u0644\u062a\u064a \u0623\u0637\u0644\u0642\u062a\u0647\u0627 \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0627\u0633\u062a\u0631\u0627\u0644\u064a \u0648 \u0645\u0635\u0645\u0645 \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 \u0643\u064a\u0646 \u0647\u0648\u0627\u0631\u062f \u060c \u0647\u0630\u0647 \u0647\u064a \u0641\u0631\u0635\u062a\u0643 \u0644\u0644\u0642\u0628\u0636 \u0639\u0644\u0649 \u0631\u0624\u064a\u0629 \u0647\u0630\u0647 \u0627\u0644\u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u062c\u062f\u064a\u062f\u0629 \u0648\u0627\u0644\u0645\u062b\u064a\u0631\u0629 \u0648\u0627\u0644\u0646\u0648\u0639 . \u0648\u0627\u0644\u0646\u0627\u0633 \u0633\u0648\u0641 \u062a\u0643\u0648\u0646 \u0642\u0627\u062f\u0631\u0629 \u0639\u0644\u0649 \u0627\u0644\u062a\u0639\u0647\u062f \u0628\u062a\u0642\u062f\u064a\u0645 \u0627\u0644\u062f\u0639\u0645 \u0644\u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629\u060c \u0641\u064a \u0645\u0642\u0627\u0628\u0644 \u0627\u0644\u062d\u0635\u0648\u0644 \u0639\u0644\u0649 \u0646\u0633\u062e \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0648\u0644\u0649 \u0648 \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0628\u0643\u0631\u0629. \u0648\u0627\u0644\u0647\u062f\u0641 \u0645\u0646 \u0627\u0644\u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 Selfie \u0627\u0644\u0645\u062c\u0644\u0633 \u060c \u0647\u0648 \u0628\u0628\u0633\u0627\u0637\u0629 \u060c \u0644\u0648\u0635\u0641 \u0645\u0638\u0647\u0631 \u0634\u062e\u0635 \u0645\u0627 \u0641\u0642\u0637 \u0645\u0646 \u0635\u0648\u062a \u0635\u0648\u062a\u0647\u0645 \u0642\u0628\u0644 \u0643\u0634\u0641 selfie \u0628\u0647\u0645. \u0647\u0630\u0647 \u0647\u064a \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 \u0644\u0644\u0639\u0627\u0644\u0645 \u0643\u0644\u0647\u060c \u0648 \u0644\u0643\u0644 \u0644\u063a\u0629 \u060c \u0643\u0644 \u062b\u0642\u0627\u0641\u0629 \u0648\u0643\u0644 \u0639\u0631\u0642 \u060c \u0628\u062d\u064a\u062b \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 Selfie \u0645\u062c\u0644\u0633 \u064a\u0628\u0646\u064a \u0627\u0644\u062c\u0633\u0648\u0631 \u062f\u0648\u0644\u064a\u0627 . \u0633\u064a\u062a\u0645 \u0628\u0646\u0627\u0621 \u0645\u0642\u0631 \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 \u0641\u064a \u0641\u064a\u0644\u0627\u062f\u0644\u0641\u064a\u0627 \u060c \u0627\u0644\u0648\u0644\u0627\u064a\u0627\u062a \u0627\u0644\u0645\u062a\u062d\u062f\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0623\u0645\u0631\u064a\u0643\u064a\u0629 . \u0627\u0644\u0630\u0647\u0627\u0628 \u0625\u0644\u0649 \u0643\u064a\u0643 \u0633\u062a\u0627\u0631\u062a\u0631 \u0648\u0627\u0644\u0628\u062d\u062b \u0639\u0646 \u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629 Selfie \u0627\u0644\u0645\u062c\u0644\u0633 \u0646\u062a\u0639\u0647\u062f \/ \u0637\u0644\u0628 \u0646\u0633\u062e\u062a\u0643 \u0623\u0648 \u0644\u0645\u0639\u0627\u064a\u0646\u0629 \u0627\u0644\u0644\u0639\u0628\u0629.\n\nPress Release:\n\nSa 10:00 EST USA sa Enero 6, 2016 , Board Game Ang Selfie ay magiging live sa Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) Inilunsad sa pamamagitan ng Aussie laruan at laro designer Ken Howard, ito ay ang iyong pagkakataon upang mahuli ang paningin ng kapana-panabik na bagong laro at genre. Ang mga tao ay maaaring makapag upang nangako ng suporta para sa mga laro, sa bumalik para sa pagkuha ng una at unang bahagi ng kopya. Ang object ng Board Game Ang Selfie , ay lamang, upang ilarawan ang hitsura ng isang tao JUST mula sa tunog ng kanilang mga boses BAGO kanilang selfie ay mahayag. Ito ay isang laro para sa buong mundo , para sa bawat wika, ang bawat kultura at sa bawat lahi, kaya na ang gagawa ng Board Game Ang Selfie tulay internationally. Ang punong-himpilan ng laro ay batay sa Philadelphia, USA. Pumunta sa Kickstarter at paghahanap para sa Board Game Ang Selfie upang isangla \/ order ang iyong kopya o para\n\nTiskov\u00e1 zpr\u00e1va:\n\nV 10 hodin EST USA dne 6. ledna 2016 , bude Selfie Board Game j\u00edt \u017e\u00edt na Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) Zah\u00e1jena Aussie hra\u010dky a hern\u00ed design\u00e9r Ken Howard , to je va\u0161e \u0161ance chytit vizi t\u00e9to vzru\u0161uj\u00edc\u00ed nov\u00e9 hry a \u017e\u00e1nru. Lid\u00e9 se budou moci p\u0159isl\u00edbit podporu pro hru , na opl\u00e1tku pro z\u00edsk\u00e1n\u00ed prvn\u00ed a \u010dasn\u00e9 kopie. P\u0159edm\u011btem Selfie Board Game , je prost\u011b , popsat n\u011b\u010d\u00ed vzhled JUST od zvuku jejich hlasu p\u0159ed jejich selfie je odhaleno . To je hra pro cel\u00fd sv\u011bt , pro ka\u017ed\u00fd jazyk , ka\u017ed\u00e9 kultu\u0159e a ka\u017ed\u00e9m z\u00e1vod\u011b , tak, aby se Selfie Board Game stav\u00ed mosty v mezin\u00e1rodn\u00edm m\u011b\u0159\u00edtku. Hra \u00fast\u0159ed\u00ed budou zalo\u017eeny ve Philadelphii , USA. P\u0159ejd\u011bte na Kickstarter a hledat Selfie Board Game do z\u00e1stavy \/ objednejte si kopii , nebo zobrazit n\u00e1hled hru.\n\n\u041f\u0440\u0435\u0441\u0441-\u0440\u0435\u043b\u0438\u0437:\n\n\u0412 10 \u0443\u0442\u0440\u0430 EST \u0421\u0428\u0410 \u043d\u0430 6 \u044f\u043d\u0432\u0430\u0440\u044f 2016 \u0433. Selfie \u041d\u0430\u0441\u0442\u043e\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0438\u0433\u0440\u0430 \u043f\u043e\u0439\u0434\u0435\u0442 \u0432 \u043f\u0440\u044f\u043c\u043e\u043c \u044d\u0444\u0438\u0440\u0435 \u043d\u0430 Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) \u041d\u0430\u0447\u0430\u0442\u0430\u044f \u0430\u0432\u0441\u0442\u0440\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0439\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0438\u0433\u0440\u0443\u0448\u043a\u0438 \u0438 \u0438\u0433\u0440\u043e\u0432\u043e\u0439 \u0434\u0438\u0437\u0430\u0439\u043d\u0435\u0440 \u041a\u0435\u043d \u0425\u043e\u0432\u0430\u0440\u0434 , \u044d\u0442\u043e \u0432\u0430\u0448 \u0448\u0430\u043d\u0441 , \u0447\u0442\u043e\u0431\u044b \u043f\u043e\u0439\u043c\u0430\u0442\u044c \u0432\u0438\u0434\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u044d\u0442\u043e\u0439 \u0437\u0430\u0445\u0432\u0430\u0442\u044b\u0432\u0430\u044e\u0449\u0435\u0439 \u043d\u043e\u0432\u043e\u0439 \u0438\u0433\u0440\u044b \u0438 \u0436\u0430\u043d\u0440\u0430. \u041b\u044e\u0434\u0438 \u0441\u043c\u043e\u0433\u0443\u0442 \u0437\u0430\u043a\u043b\u0430\u0434\u044b\u0432\u0430\u0442\u044c \u043f\u043e\u0434\u0434\u0435\u0440\u0436\u043a\u0443 \u0434\u043b\u044f \u0438\u0433\u0440\u044b , \u0432 \u043e\u0431\u043c\u0435\u043d \u043d\u0430 \u043f\u043e\u043b\u0443\u0447\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0432\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0438 \u0440\u0430\u043d\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u043a\u043e\u043f\u0438\u0438 . \u041e\u0431\u044a\u0435\u043a\u0442 Selfie \u041d\u0430\u0441\u0442\u043e\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0438\u0433\u0440\u0430 , \u044d\u0442\u043e \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441\u0442\u043e , \u0447\u0442\u043e\u0431\u044b \u043e\u043f\u0438\u0441\u0430\u0442\u044c \u0447\u044c\u044e-\u0442\u043e \u0432\u043d\u0435\u0448\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044c \u0442\u043e\u043b\u044c\u043a\u043e \u043e\u0442 \u0437\u0432\u0443\u043a\u0430 \u0438\u0445 \u0433\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0441\u0430 \u0434\u043e \u0438\u0445 selfie \u0440\u0430\u0441\u043a\u0440\u044b\u0432\u0430\u0435\u0442\u0441\u044f . \u042d\u0442\u043e \u0438\u0433\u0440\u0430 \u0434\u043b\u044f \u0432\u0441\u0435\u0433\u043e \u043c\u0438\u0440\u0430 , \u0434\u043b\u044f \u043a\u0430\u0436\u0434\u043e\u0433\u043e \u044f\u0437\u044b\u043a\u0430 , \u043a\u0430\u0436\u0434\u043e\u0439 \u043a\u0443\u043b\u044c\u0442\u0443\u0440\u0435 \u0438 \u043a\u0430\u0436\u0434\u043e\u0439 \u0433\u043e\u043d\u043a\u0435 , \u0442\u0430\u043a \u0447\u0442\u043e Selfie \u041d\u0430\u0441\u0442\u043e\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0438\u0433\u0440\u0430 \u0441\u0442\u0440\u043e\u0438\u0442 \u043c\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044b \u043d\u0430 \u043c\u0435\u0436\u0434\u0443\u043d\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0434\u043d\u043e\u043c \u0443\u0440\u043e\u0432\u043d\u0435. \u0418\u0433\u0440\u0430 \u0448\u0442\u0430\u0431-\u043a\u0432\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0440\u0430 \u0431\u0443\u0434\u0435\u0442 \u043d\u0430\u0445\u043e\u0434\u0438\u0442\u044c\u0441\u044f \u0432 \u0424\u0438\u043b\u0430\u0434\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0444\u0438\u0438 , \u0421\u0428\u0410 . \u041f\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0439\u0442\u0438 \u043a Kickstarter \u0438 \u043f\u043e\u0438\u0441\u043a Selfie \u041d\u0430\u0441\u0442\u043e\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0438\u0433\u0440\u0430 \u0432 \u0437\u0430\u043b\u043e\u0433 \/ \u0437\u0430\u043a\u0430\u0437\u0430\u0442\u044c \u043a\u043e\u043f\u0438\u044e \u0438\u043b\u0438 \u043f\u0440\u0435\u0432\u044c\u044e \u043d\u0430 \u0438\u0433\u0440\u0443 .\n\nOp 10:00 EST VSA op 6 Januarie 2016 , sal die Selfie Board Game gaan woon op www.Kickstarter.com . Van stapel gestuur deur Aussie speelgoed en spel ontwerper Ken Howard , is dit jou kans om die visie van hierdie opwindende nuwe spel en genre te vang. Mense sal in staat wees om ondersteuning belowe vir die spel, in ruil vir die kry van die eerste en vroe\u00eb kopie\u00eb. Die doel van die Selfie Board Game , is eenvoudig , om iemand se voorkoms te beskryf net uit die klank van hul stem voor hul selfie geopenbaar word. Dit is 'n spel vir die hele w\u00eareld , vir elke taal, elke kultuur en elke ras, sodat die Selfie Board Game bou br\u00fbe internasionaal. Die spel hoofkwartier sal gebaseer word in Philadelphia , VSA. Gaan na Kickstarter en soek vir die Selfie Board Game pand \/ bestel jou kopie of om 'n voorbeeld van die spel.\n\nNa na 10am Est USA on 6 January 2016, The selfie Board Game ga-aga -ebi nd\u1ee5 na Kickstarter (https:\/\/goo.gl\/bMnwkG) Agbam onya site Aussie ji egwuri egwu na egwuregwu mmebe Ken Howard , nke a b\u1ee5 g\u1ecb ohere enwetagh\u1ecb \u1ecdh\u1ee5\u1ee5 nke a na-akpali akpali \u1ecdh\u1ee5r\u1ee5 egwuregwu na genre . Nd\u1ecb mmad\u1ee5 ga-enwe ike nkwa nkwado maka egwuregwu, na nloghachi n'ihi na mb\u1ee5 na n'oge mbip\u1ee5ta. Ihe The selfie Board Game, b\u1ee5 nan\u1ecb, na-ak\u1ecdwa onye eketie naan\u1ecb \u1ee5da nke olu-ha TUPU ha selfie na-ekpughe. Nke a b\u1ee5 egwuregwu maka nke \u1ee5wa dum , nke \u1ecd b\u1ee5la as\u1ee5s\u1ee5 , \u1ecd b\u1ee5la omenala na agb\u1ee5r\u1ee5 nile , nke mere na The selfie Board Game ewuli \u00e0kw\u00e0 mmiri mba. Egwuregwu n'isi \u1ee5l\u1ecd \u1ecdr\u1ee5 ga-dabere na Philadelphia, USA. Gaa Kickstarter ma ch\u1ecd\u1ecd The selfie Board Game ka nkwa \/ \u1ecbt\u1ee5 g\u1ecb Detuo ma \u1ecd b\u1ee5 ka \u1ecbh\u1ee5chal\u1ee5 egwuregwu."} -{"text":"A U.S. Navy sailor arrested on a charge of raping a Japanese woman in Okinawa has admitted to the crime, investigative sources said Wednesday. They said he reversed an earlier denial.\n\nJustin Castellanos, 24, who is based at the U.S. Marines\u2019 Camp Schwab in northern Okinawa, was arrested on March 13 on suspicion of raping the woman in her 40s at a hotel in Naha early that morning.\n\nPolice allege Castellanos took the woman, a tourist from Fukuoka Prefecture, into his room after finding her asleep in a hotel corridor and raped her.\n\nThe suspect and the woman were both staying at the hotel but were not acquainted, the police said.\n\nThe alleged incident resulted in protests by thousands of people in Okinawa, which hosts the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan."} -{"text":"The US is playing catch up to Australia when it comes to regulating trans fatty acid, but that doesn't mean our food is trans-fat free, some of the country's peak nutritional experts say.\n\nThe Obama Administration on Tuesday ordered ordered food companies to phase out artificial trans fats over the next three years, calling them a threat to public health.\n\nTrans fats are more likely to be found in processed foods including pastries, doughnuts and cakes at the cheaper end of the market. Credit:M. Spencer Green\n\nTrans fats are a particularly nasty fat that increases LDL, or 'bad' cholesterol levels and decreases 'good' HDL cholesterol levels, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes.\n\nTrans-fatty acids are created by treating vegetable oils with hydrogen, which causes the liquid oil to hold its solid form at room temperature, which helps food products like doughnuts, biscuits and cakes hold their shape and extends their shelf life."} -{"text":"Every student dreams of reading these words: \"Congratulations on your acceptance!\" But Elsik High School senior Amina Mabizari read them 15 times.\n\nShe applied to 16 universities, including eight Ivy League institutions.\n\n\"I didn't think I'd get accepted to any of them. By casting a wide net I thought someone would take the bait and take me,\" Mabizari said.\n\nBut when every letter had been opened this spring, seven of those Ivy League universities wanted her.\n\n\"I can't even put into words how big of a moment that was for me,\" Mabizari said.\n\nThe proud daughter of Algerian immigrants is about to graduate from Alief ISD. Mabizari's road to success wasn't an easy one. As a young student, she was last in her class in ready, even suffered with a speech impediment.\n\n\"To go from there to here being accepted to all these schools, it's incredible,\" Mabizari said.\n\nMabizari said she couldn't have done it without her parents.\n\n\"At that moment, I almost cried. It was just an unbelievable moment for me,\" said Mabizari's father, Bachir Mabizari.\n\nAnd if you thought applying to 16 schools was tough, deciding which one to go to was even harder. But this fall, Amina Mabizari's heading to Yale.\n\n\"I never imagined any of this would happen,\" she said.\n\nAmina Mabizari is as humble as they come. A proud, hard-working Muslim-American who now hopes her success story in Alief sends a loud message across the country.\n\n\"We represent a large community of people, the majority, the mass majority of which are positive and want to change the world,\" Amina Mabizari said.\n\nThis year, the Ivy League schools had an acceptance rate anywhere from 5 to 12 percent. Amina Mabizari plans to study political science and then go on to law school. She said she may also one day run for public office."} -{"text":"\"Anybody not reading [Tim Carney] regularly doesn't understand what's truly going on in DC or in the GOP,\" tweeted Michael Needham, CEO of Heritage Action. Since Heritage Action is driving quite a bit of what goes on in the Republican Party these days that's a strong endorsement.\n\nCarney, a columnist at the Washington Examiner and author of \"The Big Ripoff\" and \"Obamanomics,\" is the foremost chronicler of the idea that Republicans should become a populist party at war with favor-seeking business interests in Washington. And he's argued that that's part of what's going on in this shutdown fight. We spoke on Thursday, and a lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.\n\nWhat's that pig thinking? (Flickr\/CC)\n\nEzra Klein: You\u2019ve been developing this theme that what\u2019s happening in the Republican Party is a battle between the Tea Party and K Street, which is shorthand for business interests that work in Washington and often support the Republican Party. Expand on this a bit.\n\nTim Carney: I think, historically, K Street has been the most powerful pull in the Republican Party. It\u2019s also powerful in the Democratic Party. But Republicans don\u2019t have unions as a counterpull. K Street is really the only place for Republicans to go for funding. So if something came up where the free market position was different than the pro-business position Republicans would often side with business. This was the case with TARP and Medicare Part D and big spending in the Bush era.\n\nNow there\u2019s this ideological money coming into Heritage Action and the Senate Conservatives Fund and Club for Growth. They\u2019re donating because of what they believe. And so now there are these elected Republicans who don\u2019t care what K Street has to say about them. The business community says we need to end this government shutdown and stop flirting with the debt ceiling and a lot of Republicans can say they don\u2019t care.\n\nEK: But the money in the Tea Party isn\u2019t exclusively small-donor. The Koch brothers, to use the most high-profile example, are key Tea Party donors and also sit atop a vast empire of business interests that depend, in various ways, on government decisions. So, how do you know you\u2019re not just exchanging one set of business interests for another?\n\nTC: Anytime money is coming from a few sources, it\u2019s problematic. Ideally any movement in any party has a vast variety of sources and money because otherwise they\u2019re afraid of upsetting their funders. If Republicans ended up in a position where they were completely dependent on Koch money that would be very bad for Republicans. Heritage Action gets Koch money. But if you look at Freedom Works, for instance, they\u2019re definitely not getting Koch money. They were created as a splinter off the Koch world. Club for Growth gets a lot of rich conservative investors. They\u2019re not Obama\u2019s 20-year-old small donors, but they\u2019re a different source of money. And I\u2019ll say this: I think ideological money is better than money coming in to support the corporate bottom line.\n\nEK: This is an interesting question. The business money is transactional. It wants a change in law, a tax break, a regulation. But business also has a general interest in stability, in growth. The ideological money is also transactional. It wants something, too. But it often has an interest in conflict, in extreme tactics. The people who donate it are not representative of the average voter. They want something much different than the average voter. So, how do you decide which is better?\n\nTC: I don\u2019t agree. I think ideological money is more likely to be more representative than business money. Business money will have certain things in common. It\u2019s coming from businesses big enough to hire lobbyists, as opposed to just people interested enough to give money. Now, for individuals, it\u2019s so much easier to give money. The Senate Conservatives Fund was just a Web site when it started.\n\nEK: Let me rephrase that. Put aside who\u2019s more representative. What the ideological money wants is very different than what most voters want. Over the period of time that you kind of identify as seeing the rise of this money, Congress in general -- and Republicans in Congress, in particular -- have become less popular than at any time in history. So whatever that money is buying doesn\u2019t represent what most people want.\n\nTC: I do think it\u2019s possible that the rise of the Tea Party groups and similar groups on the left can lead to a lot of instability because the more ideological you are the less open you are to compromise. Democrats handled that by [Rep.] Nancy Pelosi saying she\u2019d work to end the Iraq War, and then she really didn\u2019t. The pragmatists won in the end there.\n\nI think that a lot of the way [Sen.] Ted Cruz and the Tea Party groups have handled the current shutdown fight has been bad politics; they\u2019ve at times mistaken tactics for principles. Cruz has burned bridges he didn\u2019t need to burn. There hasn\u2019t been enough experience among the people planning tactics. So the question I\u2019m curious about is: Can you use this inside-outside game where the Beltway groups sends messages to the grass-roots and the grass-roots applies pressure to lawmakers -- can you use that in a way that\u2019s less combative and more prudent than the groups have been using it in the last months?\n\nEK: You\u2019ve noted that this was a shutdown that began with Tea Party arguments over Obamacare but that the Republican Party\u2019s leaders are now trying to end with more traditional concessions, like repeal of the medical-device tax or budget negotiations. Expand on that a bit.\n\nTC: That\u2019s the standard Republican playbook. Something happens. Conservatives get excited. And K Street walks out with the victory. Now Heritage Action is onto that. They\u2019re saying [that] if all we get out of this is medical device tax repeal then how detached is the Republican Party from the base? I think the medical device tax is bad policy but just doing that would really sow dissatisfaction in the Republican base.\n\nEK: But isn\u2019t a lot of this that these Tea Party groups and politicians basically told the base something that was false? I mean, I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time in conservative Twitter and on Red State and it\u2019s just this weird, bizarro-world march of shutdown triumphs, where the shutdown is going great, Democrats are terrified, Republicans are ascendant. I don\u2019t know if they buy it or if it\u2019s cynical, but they\u2019re setting their people up for fights they can\u2019t win.\n\nTC: When I\u2019m in a hopeful mood, I see this as a pendulum swinging from one extreme to another and coming towards the middle. The old extreme was the Bush way of doing things. Republican leaders told the base they were doing something conservative, and then they\u2019d do something like prescription drugs and sell it to the base as a tactical move to get reelected. That was basically a lie the Republican leadership told the base.\n\nSo now, if you try to tell involved conservatives that this is just a difference in tactics, even if you\u2019re right, people are skeptical. [Sens.] Tom Coburn and Mike Lee don\u2019t have seriously different principles; they disagree on tactics. But the Republican base has been burned too may times to believe it even when it\u2019s true. I\u2019m hoping things can swing back to the middle and the methods of guys like Cruz and Mike Needham can move in more tactically intelligent ways then they\u2019re being used right now.\n\nEK: When I came to Washington in the mid-2000s the conventional wisdom was that Republicans had this follow-the-leader approach to politics and Democrats, in the old Will Rogers line, weren\u2019t even an organized party. Now it seems to have flipped. Democrats are comfortable following their leaders, and Republicans seem not just disorganized, but actively suspicious of anything their leaders come up with. It seems sometimes that the way the Tea Party shows it hasn\u2019t sold out is to almost reflexively oppose what [House Majority Leader John] Boehner comes up with.\n\nTC: I think a lot of the base, having gone through the Bush era, has come out with an innate distrust of the establishment. One of the symptoms of this was Christine O\u2019Donnell winning the Republican Party primary in Delaware in 2010. She wasn\u2019t particularly conservative. But she could rail against the establishment. When you saw Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann and these people rise up, it wasn\u2019t about ideology. It was about being anti-establishment.\n\nThe Republican Party needs to abandon some of these identity politics. So I hope guys like Cruz who can really talk to the base can build up a sense of both what the goals are ... and of here\u2019s what\u2019s possible, and move away from the knee-jerk, anti-establishment instincts in the base right now.\n\nEK: So, what do you think their endgame is here?\n\nTC: I think the goal has always been to try and win the shutdown in one way or another. That\u2019s not happening now. The question is can something change so Republicans start winning the shutdown? When you see Boehner talk about punting on the debt limit, remember, he previously wanted to fight on the debt limit. That reflects conservatives believing that maybe if the shutdown keeps going we can win. How that happens is not clear to me. But the necessary condition is that the shutdown somehow needs to be hurting Obama more than it\u2019s hurting Republicans. The reason I\u2019m skeptical of that is Republicans will never get the kind of fair or positive media treatment they\u2019d need for that to be the case.\n\nEK: So, Republicans are trying to split the debt ceiling and the shutdown, as you say. But what comes out of that, exactly? Democrats aren\u2019t going to defund Obamacare.\n\nTC: I think it\u2019s possible then that you see something like an actual strategy or potential path towards victory coming out of this. If it\u2019s not going to be Obamacare, I hope the Republican ask will be something like eliminating a corporate welfare subsidy Obama likes -- something like the sugar subsidy or the subsidies for Boeing. That would show a very new side of the Republican Party, it would weaken Democrats, and it would give something conservatives could bring home to their base."} -{"text":"TORONTO \u2014 Social media posts encouraging people to visit southern Ontario's wineries by bicycle has prompted a regional public transit service to apologize for the \"misunderstanding.\"\n\nIn May 10 Facebook and Twitter postings, GO Transit said \"Niagara's wineries are best enjoyed responsibly and on two wheels.\"\n\nThe posting encouraged people to take their bicycle on the GO for \"a cycling weekend adventure in Ontario's wine country\" in a promotion for its seasonal service to Niagara Region.\n\nThat prompted numerous replies on social media that suggested Go Transit was endorsing mixing cycling and drinking.\n\nOne poster said she \"wouldn't encourage biking while under the influence of alcohol. That's an accident waiting to happen.\"\n\nGO responded on Wednesday with a Facebook post saying it's sorry if the message suggested anything but responsible enjoyment, adding it does not \"encourage biking when intoxicated or impaired.\"\n\n\"Unfortunately some thought this post was intended to encourage biking and drinking. That was not our intention at all; quite the opposite,\" Anne Marie Aikins, a spokesperson for GO Transit parent organization Metrolinx, said in an email.\n\n\"We apologize if the post on Facebook caused any misunderstanding. We should have clarified it sooner,\" Aikins said.\n\nThere are many interesting things to see and do on winery bike tours, but Metrolinx's position is that customers who wish to drink should plan ahead and take one of the winery buses, she said."} -{"text":"Three days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was assassinated, Jay Carney told the White House press corps it had been the work of a flash mob inflamed by an insulting video about the Prophet Muhammad.\n\nAs the killers had arrived with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons, this story seemed noncredible on its face.\n\nYet two days later, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice doubled down.\n\nAppearing on five Sunday talk shows, she called the massacre the result of a \u201cspontaneous\u201d riot that was neither \u201cpreplanned\u201d nor \u201cpremeditated.\u201d\n\nAdvertisement\n\nCarney and Rice deceived us. But were they deceived?\n\nIt is impossible to believe that Carney would characterize the Benghazi, Libya, massacre as the result of a protest that careened out of control unless he had been told to do so by the national security adviser, the White House chief of staff or President Barack Obama himself.\n\nWho told Carney to say what he did? Who arranged for Rice to appear on five shows to push this line?\n\nThrowing a rope to Rice and Carney, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said last week that only recently had his team concluded that Benghazi was the work of terrorists.\n\nYet intelligence insiders were leaking to the press the day after Stevens was murdered that it was terrorism.\n\nNow that the cover story\u2013that the murder of Stevens and the other Americans was the result of a spontaneous outburst the Obama administration could not have foreseen or prevented\u2013has collapsed, the truth is tumbling out.\n\nAnd the truth is more alarming. For it calls into question the credibility and competence of Obama\u2019s security team and the judgment of the president himself.\n\nWhat do we now know?\n\nStevens believed he was on an al-Qaida hit list and so wrote in his diary. He was concerned about a rise in Islamic extremism in the city. \u201cDays before the ambassador arrived from the embassy in Tripoli,\u201d The Washington Post reported Sunday, \u201cWesterners had fled the city, and the British had closed their consulate.\u201d\n\nRice insisted that the act of barbarism arose out of a protest, but there may not even have been a protest, just a military assault with RPGs, machine guns and mortars that hit a safe house a mile from the consulate, killing two former Navy SEALs, while other U.S. agents fled to the airport.\n\nSo dangerous is Benghazi, The New York Times reported Friday, FBI agents investigating the ambassador\u2019s assassination have yet to venture into the city.\n\nWas U.S. intelligence oblivious to how dangerous Benghazi was when Stevens went in? Was not Benghazi\u2019s reputation as a haven for Islamic jihadi known to us all before we \u201cliberated\u201d Libya?\n\nThis is the city U.S. air power saved when Moammar Gadhafi\u2019s forces were closing in. It now appears to be an al-Qaidaville where U.S. diplomats and agents dare not tread.\n\nLate last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conceded that the Benghazi murders were acts of terror perpetrated by extremists associated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. She alluded to Mali, where an al-Qaida affiliate, the Ansar Dine, has taken over half the country.\n\nHow grave is that threat?\n\nOn Thursday, The Associated Press reported that Gen. Carter Ham, head of the U.S. Africa command, met with Mauretania\u2019s president to discuss \u201ca possible military intervention \u2026 in north Mali against al-Qaida-linked group members and their allies.\u201d\n\nYet Vice President Joe Biden still campaigns through the Rust Belt bellowing, \u201cGeneral Motors is alive, and Osama bin Laden is dead,\u201d and Obama still recites his mantra, \u201cal-Qaida is on the path to defeat.\u201d\n\nThe reality. Al-Qaida affiliates have taken over a region of Mali the size of France. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb may have been in on the Benghazi massacre. Al-Qaida is in Syria fighting for a cause, the overthrow of Bashar Assad, Obama supports. Al-Qaida has helped reignite sectarian war in Iraq. Al-Qaida remains in Pakistan. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is in Yemen.\n\nWe failed to cut out or kill the cancer at Tora Bora in 2001, and it has since metastasized and spread across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.\n\nAs for the Arab Spring Obama embraced, that has given us the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and jihadi in Sinai. Our departure from Iraq paved the way to a new sectarian war. The surge troops are out of Afghanistan, and the remaining U.S. troops no longer partner with the Afghan soldiers who are to take over the war.\n\nAny doubt about the outcome there when we\u2019re gone?\n\nWithin the past month, anti-American riots, flag burnings and the raising of Islamist banners atop U.S. embassy facilities have occurred in too many countries and capitals to recite.\n\nIf this is the fruit of a successful engagement with the Islamic world, what would a debacle look like? Rep. Paul Ryan said Sunday, \u201cThe Obama foreign policy is unraveling literally before our eyes on our TV screens.\u201d\n\nIs he wrong?\n\nPatrick J. Buchanan is a founding editor of TAC and the author of \u201cSuicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?\u201d Copyright 2012 Creators.com."} -{"text":"Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world\n\nA US study suggests that LGBT people are more concerned about the environment than their straight counterparts.\n\nAccording to a poll by Harris, 55 per cent of LGBT adults say they \u201cpersonally care a great deal about the current state and future of the environment,\u201d compared with 33 per cent of heterosexuals,.\n\nFurthermore, the survey found that 40 per cent of LGBT adults say they \u201cencourage others to be more environmentally friendly\u201d, compared with 24 per cent of straight people.\n\nIn other results, it was found that LGBT people were more likely in 2010 to say they were \u201cenvironmentally conscious\u201d than the year before. The opposite was seen in straight respondents.\n\nForty-seven per cent of LGBT adults described themselves as \u201cenvironmentally conscious\u201d in the 2010 survey, up from 38 per cent in the 2009 one. Twenty-eight per cent of straight people described themselves as such in 2010, down from 30 per cent in 2009.\n\nThe poll surveyed 2,352 adults in December, 347 of whom described themselves as LGBT."} -{"text":"For the similarly-named personality trait distinct from the disorder, see Sensory processing sensitivity\n\nSensory processing disorder Synonyms Sensory integration dysfunction Specialty Psychiatry\n\nSensory processing disorder (SPD; also known as sensory integration dysfunction) is a condition where multisensory integration is not adequately processed in order to provide appropriate responses to the demands of the environment.\n\nSensory integration was defined by occupational therapist Anna Jean Ayres in 1972 as \"the neurological process that organizes sensation from one's own body and from the environment and makes it possible to use the body effectively within the environment\".[1][2] Sensory processing disorder has been characterized as the source of significant problems in organizing sensation coming from the body and the environment and is manifested by difficulties in the performance in one or more of the main areas of life: productivity, leisure and play[3] or activities of daily living.[4]\n\nSources debate whether SPD is an independent disorder or represents the observed symptoms of various other, more well-established, disorders.[5][6][7][8] SPD is not recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association[9][10], and the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended that pediatricians not use SPD as a diagnosis.[9]\n\nSigns and symptoms [ edit ]\n\nSymptoms may vary according to the disorder's type and subtype present. SPD can affect one sense or multiple senses. While many people can present one or two symptoms, sensory processing disorder has to have a clear functional impact on the person's life:\n\nSigns of over-responsivity,[11] including, for example, dislike of textures such as those found in fabrics, foods, grooming products or other materials found in daily living, to which most people would not react, and serious discomfort, sickness or threat induced by normal sounds, lights, movements, smells, tastes, or even inner sensations such as heartbeat.\n\nSigns of under-responsivity, including sluggishness and lack of responsiveness; and Sensory cravings,[12] including, for example, fidgeting, impulsiveness, and\/or seeking or making loud, disturbing noises; Sensorimotor-based problems, including slow and uncoordinated movements or poor handwriting.\n\nSensory discrimination problems, that might manifest themselves in behaviors such as things constantly dropped.\n\nCritics have noted that what proponents claim are symptoms of SPD are both broad and, in some cases, represent very common, and not necessarily abnormal or atypical, childhood characteristics. The checklist of symptoms on the website of the SPD Foundation, for example, includes such warning signs as \"My infant\/toddler has problems eating,\" \"My child has difficulty being toilet trained,\" \"My child is in constant motion,\" and \"My child gets in everyone else's space and\/or touches everything around him.\" -- \"symptoms\" which read much like the day-to-day complaints of an average parent.[13]\n\nRelationship to other disorders [ edit ]\n\nSensory processing issues represent a feature of a number of disorders, including anxiety problems, ADHD,[14] food intolerances, behavioral disorders, and particularly, autism spectrum disorders.[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] This pattern of comorbidities poses a significant challenge to those who claim that SPD is a identifiably specific disorder, rather than simply a term given to a set of symptoms common to other disorders.[22] Dr. Catherine Lord, a leading autism expert and the director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, argues that sensory issues are an important concern, but not a diagnosis in themselves. \"I do think there's a value in attending to how a child is perceiving sensations, thinking about whether he could be uncomfortable. Where I get concerned is labeling that as a separate disorder.\"[23]\n\nTwo studies have provided preliminary evidence suggesting that there may be measurable neurological differences between children diagnosed with SPD and control children classified as neurotypical[24] or children diagnosed with autism.[25] Despite this evidence, the fact that SPD researchers have yet to agree on a proven, standardized diagnostic tool undermines researchers' ability to define the boundaries of the disease and makes correlational studies, like the ones about structural brain abnormalities, less convincing.[13]\n\nCauses [ edit ]\n\nThe exact cause of SPD is not known.[26] However, it is known that the mid-brain and brain stem regions of the central nervous system are early centers in the processing pathway for multisensory integration; these brain regions are involved in processes including coordination, attention, arousal, and autonomic function.[27] After sensory information passes through these centers, it is then routed to brain regions responsible for emotions, memory, and higher level cognitive functions. Damage in any part of the brain involved in multisensory processing can cause difficulties in adequately processing stimuli in a functional way. Sensory processing is viewed as a spectrum and how individuals process stimuli varies from person to person. Individuals with SPD tend to fall on the extreme ends of the sensory spectrum[28], either hyposensitive or hypersensitive.\n\nResearch [ edit ]\n\nCurrent research in sensory processing is focused on finding the genetic and neurological causes of SPD. EEG[29] and measuring event-related potential (ERP) are traditionally used to explore the causes behind the behaviors observed in SPD. Some of the proposed underlying causes by current research are: EEG recording\n\nDifferences in tactile and auditory over responsivity show moderate genetic influences, with tactile over responsivity demonstrating greater heritability. Bivariate genetic analysis suggested different genetic factors for individual differences in auditory and tactile SOR. [30]\n\nPeople with Sensory Processing Deficits have less sensory gating (electrophysiology) than typical subjects. [31] [32]\n\nPeople with sensory over-responsivity might have increased D2 receptor in the striatum, related to aversion to tactile stimuli and reduced habituation. In animal models, prenatal stress significantly increased tactile avoidance. [33]\n\nStudies using event-related potentials (ERPs) in children with the sensory over responsivity subtype found atypical neural integration of sensory input. Different neural generators could be activated at an earlier stage of sensory information processing in people with SOR than in typically developing individuals. The automatic association of causally related sensory inputs that occurs at this early sensory-perceptual stage may not function properly in children with SOR. One hypothesis is that multisensory stimulation may activate a higher-level system in frontal cortex that involves attention and cognitive processing, rather than the automatic integration of multisensory stimuli observed in typically developing adults in auditory cortex. [34]\n\nRecent research found an abnormal white matter microstructure in children with SPD, compared with typical children and those with other developmental disorders such as autism and ADHD.[35][36]\n\nDiagnosis [ edit ]\n\nAlthough sensory processing disorder is accepted in the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders of Infancy and Early Childhood (DC:0-3R), it is not recognized as a mental disorder in medical manuals such as the ICD-10[37] or the DSM-5.[38]\n\nDiagnosis is primarily arrived at by the use of standardized tests, standardized questionnaires, expert observational scales, and free play observation at an occupational therapy gym. Observation of functional activities might be carried at school and home as well.\n\nDepending on the country, diagnosis is made by different professionals, such as occupational therapists, psychologists, learning specialists, physiotherapists and\/or speech and language therapists.[39] In some countries it is recommended to have a full psychological and neurological evaluation if symptoms are too severe.\n\nStandardized tests\n\nSensory Integration and Praxis Test (SIPT)\n\nDeGangi-Berk Test of Sensory Integration (TSI)\n\nTest of Sensory Functions in Infants (TSFI)[40]\n\nStandardized questionnaires\n\nSensory Profile, (SP) [41]\n\nInfant\/Toddler Sensory Profile [40]\n\nAdolescent\/Adult Sensory Profile\n\nSensory Profile School Companion\n\nIndicators of Developmental Risk Signals (INDIPCD-R) [42]\n\nSensory Processing Measure (SPM) [43]\n\nSensory Processing Measure Preeschool (SPM-P)[44]\n\nOther tests\n\nThe large number of different forms and tools of assessment listed here reflects what critics have argued is a fundamental problem with the diagnosis process: SPD researchers have yet to agree on a proven, standardized diagnostic tool, a problem that undermines the ability of researchers to define the boundaries of the disorder.[13][23]\n\nClassification [ edit ]\n\nSensory processing disorders have been classified by proponents into three categories: sensory modulation disorder, sensory-based motor disorders and sensory discrimination disorders [50] (as defined in the Diagnostic Classification of Mental Health and Developmental Disorders in Infancy and Early Childhood).[51][52]\n\nSensory modulation disorder (SMD) Sensory modulation refers to a complex central nervous system process[50][53] by which neural messages that convey information about the intensity, frequency, duration, complexity, and novelty of sensory stimuli are adjusted.[54]\n\nSMD consists of three subtypes:\n\nSensory over-responsivity. Sensory under-responsivity Sensory craving\/seeking.\n\nSensory-based motor disorder (SBMD) According to proponents, sensory-based motor disorder shows motor output that is disorganized as a result of incorrect processing of sensory information affecting postural control challenges, resulting in postural disorder, or developmental coordination disorder.[50][55]\n\nThe SBMD subtypes are:\n\nDyspraxia Postural disorder\n\nSensory discrimination disorder (SDD)\n\nSensory discrimination disorder involves the incorrect processing of sensory information.[50] The SDD subtypes are:[56]\n\n1. Visual 2. Auditory 3. Tactile 4. Gustatory (taste) 5. Olfactory (smell) 6. Vestibular (balance) 7. Proprioceptive (feeling of where parts of the body are located in space)\n\nTreatment [ edit ]\n\nSensory integration therapy [ edit ]\n\nVestibular system is stimulated through hanging equipment such as tire swings\n\nThe main form of sensory integration therapy is a type of occupational therapy that places a child in a room specifically designed to stimulate and challenge all of the senses.[57]\n\nDuring the session, the therapist works closely with the child to provide a level of sensory stimulation that the child can cope with, and encourage movement within the room. Sensory integration therapy is driven by four main principles:\n\nJust right challenge (the child must be able to successfully meet the challenges that are presented through playful activities)\n\nAdaptive response (the child adapts his behavior with new and useful strategies in response to the challenges presented)\n\nActive engagement (the child will want to participate because the activities are fun)\n\nChild directed (the child's preferences are used to initiate therapeutic experiences within the session)\n\nSensory processing therapy [ edit ]\n\nThis therapy retains all of the above-mentioned four principles and adds:[58]\n\nIntensity (person attends therapy daily for a prolonged period of time)\n\nDevelopmental approach (therapist adapts to the developmental age of the person, against actual age)\n\nTest-retest systematic evaluation (all clients are evaluated before and after)\n\nProcess driven vs. activity driven (therapist focuses on the \"Just right\" emotional connection and the process that reinforces the relationship)\n\nParent education (parent education sessions are scheduled into the therapy process)\n\n\"joie de vivre\" (happiness of life is therapy's main goal, attained through social participation, self-regulation, and self-esteem)\n\nCombination of best practice interventions (is often accompanied by integrated listening system therapy, floor time, and electronic media such as Xbox Kinect, Nintendo Wii, Makoto II machine training and others)\n\nThe treatments themselves may involve a variety of activities and interventions (for example, prism lenses). Children with hypo-reactivity may be exposed to strong sensations such as stroking with a brush, vibrations or rubbing. Play may involve a range of materials to stimulate the senses such as play dough or finger painting. Children with hyper-reactivity, on the other hand, may be exposed to peaceful activities including quiet music and gentle rocking in a softly lit room. Treats and rewards may be used to encourage children to tolerate activities they would normally avoid. While occupational therapists using a sensory integration frame of reference work on increasing a child's ability to adequately process sensory input, other OTs may focus on environmental accommodations that parents and school staff can use to enhance the child's function at home, school, and in the community.[59][60] These may include selecting soft, tag-free clothing, avoiding fluorescent lighting, and providing ear plugs for \"emergency\" use (such as for fire drills).\n\nEvaluation of treatment effectiveness [ edit ]\n\nSome of these treatments (for example, sensorimotor handling) have a questionable rationale and no empirical evidence. Other treatments (for example, prism lenses, physical exercise, and auditory integration training) have had studies with small positive outcomes, but few conclusions can be made about them due to methodological problems with the studies.[61] [62] [63] In its overall review of the treatment effectiveness literature, AETNA concluded that \"The effectiveness of these therapies is unproven.\",[64] while the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that \"parents should be informed that the amount of research regarding the effectiveness of sensory integration therapy is limited and inconclusive.\"[65] A 2015 review concluded that SIT techniques exist \"outside the bounds of established evidence-based practice\" and that SIT is \"quite possibly a misuse of limited resources.\"[66]\n\nEpidemiology [ edit ]\n\nIt has been estimated by proponents that up to 16.5% of elementary school aged children present elevated SOR behaviors in the tactile or auditory modalities.[67] This figure is larger than what previous studies with smaller samples had shown: an estimate of 5\u201313% of elementary school aged children.[68] Critics have noted that such a high incidence for just one of the subtypes of SPD raises questions about the degree to which SPD is a specific and clearly identifiable disorder.[13]\n\nProponents have also claimed that adults may also show signs of sensory processing difficulties and would benefit for sensory processing therapies,[69] although this work has yet to distinguish between those with SPD symptoms alone vs adults whose processing abnormalities are associated with other disorders, such as Autism Spectrum Disorder.[70]\n\nControversy [ edit ]\n\nThere are concerns regarding the validity of the diagnosis. SPD is not included in the DSM-5 or ICD-10, the most widely used diagnostic sources in healthcare. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) states that there is no universally accepted framework for diagnosis and recommends caution against using any \"sensory\" type therapies unless as a part of a comprehensive treatment plan. In fact, in a 2012 statement, the AAP states that \"Because there is no universally accepted framework for diagnosis, sensory processing disorder generally should not be diagnosed.\" When an occupational therapist does recommend sensory integration therapy, the AAP instructs that the therapist is aware that, \"parents should be informed that the amount of research regarding the effectiveness of sensory integration therapy is limited and inconclusive.\" As such, most health insurance considers sensory integration therapy to be \"investigational\" and will not cover it. In the United States and UK, sensory processing disorder is not likely to qualify an individual for disability benefits, so the supporters of sensory processing disorder recommend having a child diagnosed for a related disorder that will qualify them for disability insurance. As was noted above, a 2015 review of research on Sensory Integration Therapy (SIT) concluded that SIT is \"ineffective and that its theoretical underpinnings and assessment practices are unvalidated\", that SIT techniques exist \"outside the bounds of established evidence-based practice\", and that SIT is \"quite possibly a misuse of limited resources\".[66]\n\nManuals [ edit ]\n\nSPD is in Stanley Greenspan's Diagnostic Manual for Infancy and Early Childhood and as Regulation Disorders of Sensory Processing part of The Zero to Three's Diagnostic Classification. but is not recognized in the manuals ICD-10 or in the recently updated DSM-5. However, unusual reactivity to sensory input or unusual interest in sensory aspects is included as a possible but not necessary criterion for the diagnosis of autism.\n\nMisdiagnosis [ edit ]\n\nSome state that sensory processing disorder is a distinct diagnosis, while others argue that differences in sensory responsiveness are features of other diagnoses and it is not a standalone diagnosis. The neuroscientist David Eagleman has proposed that SPD may be a form of synesthesia, a perceptual condition in which the senses are blended.Specifically, Eagleman suggests that instead of a sensory input \"connecting to [a person's] color area [in the brain], it's connecting to an area involving pain or aversion or nausea\".\n\nResearchers have described a treatable inherited sensory overstimulation disorder that meets diagnostic criteria for both attention deficit disorder and sensory integration dysfunction.\n\nSociety [ edit ]\n\nThe American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) supports the use of a variety of methods of sensory integration for those with sensory processing disorder. The organization has supported the need for further research to increase insurance coverage for related therapies. They have also made efforts to educate the public about sensory integration therapy. The AOTA's practice guidelines currently support the use of sensory integration therapy and interprofessional education and collaboration in order to optimize treatment for those with sensory processing disorder. The AOTA provides several resources pertaining to sensory integration therapy, some of which includes a fact sheet, new research, and continuing education opportunities.[71]\n\nHistory [ edit ]\n\nSensory processing disorder as a specific form of atypical functioning was first described by occupational therapist Anna Jean Ayres (1920\u20131989).[72]\n\nOriginal model\n\nAyres's theoretical framework for what she called Sensory Integration Dysfunction was developed after six factor analytic studies of populations of children with learning disabilities, perceptual motor disabilities and normal developing children.[73] Ayres created the following nosology based on the patterns that appeared on her factor analysis:\n\nDyspraxia: poor motor planning (more related to the vestibular system and proprioception)\n\nPoor bilateral integration: inadequate use of both sides of the body simultaneously\n\nTactile defensiveness: negative reaction to tactile stimuli\n\nVisual perceptual deficits: poor form and space perception and visual motor functions\n\nSomatodyspraxia: poor motor planning (related to poor information coming from the tactile and proprioceptive systems)\n\nAuditory-language problems\n\nBoth visual perceptual and auditory language deficits were thought to possess a strong cognitive component and a weak relationship to underlying sensory processing deficits, so they are not considered central deficits in many models of sensory processing.\n\nIn 1998, Mulligan found a similar pattern of deficits in a confirmatory factor analytic study.[74][75]\n\nQuadrant model\n\nDunn's nosology uses two criteria:[76] response type (passive vs active) and sensory threshold to the stimuli (low or high) creating 4 subtypes or quadrants:[77]\n\nHigh neurological thresholds\n\nLow registration: high threshold with passive response. Individuals who do not pick up on sensations and therefore partake in passive behavior.[78] Sensation seeking: high threshold and active response. Those who actively seek out a rich sensory filled environment.[78]\n\nLow neurological threshold\n\nSensitivity to stimuli: low threshold with passive response. Individuals who become distracted and uncomfortable when exposed to sensation but do not actively limit or avoid exposure to the sensation.[78] Sensation avoiding: low threshold and active response. Individuals actively limit their exposure to sensations and are therefore high self regulators.[78]\n\nSensory processing model\n\nIn Miller's nosology \"sensory integration dysfunction\" was renamed into \"Sensory processing disorder\" to facilitate coordinated research work with other fields such as neurology since \"the use of the term sensory integration often applies to a neurophysiologic cellular process rather than a behavioral response to sensory input as connoted by Ayres.\"[50]\n\nSee also [ edit ]\n\nReferences [ edit ]"} -{"text":"University, vocational training debts to skyrocket costing budget billions, documents show\n\nUpdated\n\nThe Federal Government is preparing to write off billions of dollars of higher education loans as the number of bad debts soar.\n\nKey points: Government forecasting losses of more than $13.5 billion on four years worth of loans\n\nEducation Minister this week recommitted to university funding cuts and fee deregulation\n\nUniversities Australia open to changes for loans, but only if HECS-HELP scheme remains fundamentally intact\n\nAn ABC Freedom of Information (FOI) investigation has revealed the Government is forecasting losses of more than $13.5 billion on just four years' worth of loans.\n\nThe figures come after the Government recommitted to university funding cuts and fee deregulation.\n\nThe Coalition is also considering changes to the scandal-plagued vocational education sector, which is helping fuel the bleak fiscal predictions.\n\n\"The costs to taxpayers of higher education have, over recent years, grown dramatically,\" Education Minister Simon Birmingham said.\n\nThe HELP loan system, including for university courses and vocational training, allows students to defer course payments and subsidises the interest rate on debt.\n\nThe amount never to be repaid on loans issued in 2018-19 is predicted to exceed $4.4 billion \u2014 a budget hit nearly four times higher than expected from loans issued last financial year.\n\n\"Funding of university students has essentially grown at twice the rate of the economy,\" Senator Birmingham said.\n\n\"I welcome all ideas from the sector, experts and students on how to make university funding sustainable as I continue to consult widely on higher education reform.\"\n\nRising student numbers drive 'doubtful debt'\n\nLosses include people not reaching the $54,000 a year income threshold and the Government subsidising the interest on the debt.\n\nThe amount owed on student loans rises in line with inflation \u2014 not the rate of interest paid by the Government.\n\nPredicted losses on debt issued each financial year: 2014-15: $1.29 billion\n\n2015-16: $2.59 billion\n\n2016-17: $2.99 billion\n\n2017-18: $3.78 billion\n\n2018-19: $4.44 billion\n\nTotal = $15.1 billion\n\nA recent Government budget update showed more than 20 per cent of debt issued in 2018-19 was not expected to be repaid, with the average amount of debt tipped to be $22,500.\n\n\"This is principally driven by what we call doubtful debt, that is student debt we don't expect to get back,\" Grattan Institute higher education director Andrew Norton said.\n\n\"Driven by expanding student numbers in the higher education system and the extension of HELP loans to students doing vocational education diplomas, which has been very much in the news for lots of malpractice in that industry.\"\n\nHigher education student numbers continue to rise, in part due to the removal of caps on university places in 2009 to create the current \"demand-driven\" system.\n\n\"But also there are trends in the labour market which mean that students are less likely to reach the $54,000, such as increased part-time work and simply because diploma graduates don't earn as much as bachelor degree graduates,\" Mr Norton said.\n\nStudent loan scheme a 'central feature' of higher education\n\nUniversities Australia chief executive Belinda Robinson is open to changes for university loans, but only if the HECS-HELP scheme remains fundamentally intact.\n\n\"To ensure that those with the ability to study at university are not impeded and not deterred from doing so,\" she said.\n\n\"It's really important to understand the value of the student loan scheme that we have in Australia.\n\n\"It has been an absolutely central feature of the success of higher education policy in Australia for many, many years.\"\n\nThe total cost to the Federal Government of higher education is tipped to be nearly $20 billion in two years time \u2014 nearly double the 2008 cost.\n\nStudents currently pay just over 40 per cent of university course fees \u2014 often through HECS-HELP loans \u2014 with the Government paying the rest.\n\nThe ABC obtained Senator Birmingham's incoming ministerial brief, with the probe also revealing:\n\nCommonwealth-supported university places will have jumped by 50 per cent over the 10 years to 2018 to 712,200\n\nThe uncapping of university places under the former Labor government has cost the Commonwealth at least $3.8 billion since being introduced\n\nThe demand-driven system is expected to cost more than $10 billion over a decade, compared to the previous regime\n\nFocus should be on cleaning up vocational training: Opposition\n\nSenator Birmingham earlier this week confirmed the Government was sticking with its plan to cut university funding.\n\nHe also confirmed the Government would implement its deregulation plan from next year, after delaying the controversial 2014 budget measure.\n\nThe Senate previously rejected the bid, which Labor claimed would see degrees cost $100,000 or more.\n\nThe Opposition's higher education spokesman Kim Carr said the focus should be on cleaning up vocational training.\n\n\"Personal trainers, and people that are undertaking diplomas of digital interactive gaming, those types of courses are being used running up big debts with no capacity to graduate and no real prospect of repaying,\" Senator Carr said.\n\n\"We can't allow these phoney training colleges to be able to inflict this sort of suffering on so many students.\"\n\nTopics: university-and-further-education, federal-government, money-and-monetary-policy, australia\n\nFirst posted"} -{"text":"April is Pet First Aid Awareness Month. How prepared are you for an emergency situation with your pet? What if you can\u2019t get your little buddy to the vet quick enough? Do you know what to do in some of the most common emergencies? Pet first aid is important for any pet owner to know, it can help save your pets life if you are unable to seek professional care. This time of year is starting to get warmer outside. That means longer walks, traveling to the beach, mountain climbing and more. Heat exhaustion can be dangerous, even fatal, for dogs. It is important to be able to act quickly and be able to recognize symptoms of heatstroke\/exhaustion. Dogs suffering from heat stroke will normally exhibit some or all of the following symptoms:\n\nRestlessness\n\n\u2022 Panting\n\n\u2022 Increased respiratory rate\n\n\u2022 Increased heart rate\n\n\u2022 Excess salivation\n\n\u2022 Vomiting\n\n\u2022 Diarrhea\n\nHeatstroke- Excessive panting and bright red gums or tongue are two major signs of overheating, as well as any temperature above 104 degrees. The normal body temperature for your pet should be between 99-102.5 degrees. As the symptoms progress and the dog\u2019s temperature rises, signs become more serious.\n\nWeakness\n\n\u2022 Staggering\n\n\u2022 Gasping\n\n\u2022 Gum color may become brick red, then purple or blue (cyanosis)\n\n\u2022 Seizures\n\n\u2022 Coma\n\n\u2022 Death\n\nThis can be devastating for uninformed or unsuspecting pet owners. Having the proper knowledge and skills to react to these situations will help alleviate much of the panic and stress pet owners often experience. Fortunately, there are some simple things that you can do to protect your dog from the dangers of heat exhaustion.\n\nThe very first thing you need to do, is remove your pet from the heat and place them in a cool area.\n\nCheck their temperature.\n\nUse a hose to spray your pet with cool water, or place your pet in a cool bath. While doing this, re-check their temperature to see if it\u2019s going down. You can also try placing water soaked towels on their head, neck, feet, and\/or abdomen area. Provide cool drinking water for your pet. Keep this up until your pets temperate is back to normal and seek immediate veterinary care afterwards.\n\nWarm weather is here and remember to never leave your pets in a parked car, and watch for signs of overexertion. Being well equipped for the heat when you have your pet with you is also important. The H-Duo travel cup made by Dexus makes that a breeze. This bottle is split in half, one side is for you, and one side is for your pet.\n\nAttached is a removable, and collapsible companion cup to ensure your pet stays hydrated on those warm days.\n\nAnother item that is important to keep handy this summer is the Chillz Cooling Wrapz. This washable, durable cloth will stay cool for hours once it\u2019s been wet with cool water. Make sure you\u2019re prepared for the heat we\u2019re sure to endure this summer. Be sure to stop by the store if you need any of these items. Or throw them in your shopping cart right now.\n\nLook for next weeks blog. We will give you tips on wound care."} -{"text":"Palestinian activist Issa Amro\n\nIssa Amro is committed to peaceful resistance to the Israeli occupation in his native West Bank city of Hebron, despite frequent arrests, attacks by settlers and other unrelenting efforts to sabotage his work.\n\n\u201cNonviolence is the best tool because it strengthens civil society and it gives a role to each person: the kids, the women, the elders and the youth. With nonviolent activities you get more international support and you neutralize the violence of the oppressor,\u201d he explained.\n\nIssa Amro speaks at a press conference marking the beginning of the annual Open Shuhada Street campaign in Hebron.\n\nIn Hebron, several hundred hostile settlers, many of them armed, live within close quarters of Palestinians under the guard of the Israeli army. Soldiers severely restrict Palestinians\u2019 movement and do little to prevent settler violence against Palestinians and their property.\n\nAmro, 36, founded the direct action group Youth Against Settlements.\n\n\u201cWe go to universities, we go to schools and we organize activities within our community to teach the youth how to resist the occupation using nonviolence,\u201d he said.\n\nIsraeli soldiers fire rubber-coated steel bullets and stun grenades at Palestinian boys throwing stones.\n\nEvery year, Youth Against Settlements organizes a week of activities as part of the Open Shuhada Street campaign, calling for the reopening of one of Hebron\u2019s former main commercial thoroughfares, which the Israeli army has shuttered and closed to Palestinians since 1994.\n\nAccess to the street for Palestinians was restricted after the massacre of 29 worshippers inside the Ibrahimi mosque by American Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein that same year.\n\nStudents paint a canvas outside the Shuhada Street checkpoint.\n\nThis year\u2019s Open Shuhada Street campaign included an art event in front of an Israeli checkpoint involving students from the nearby Palestine Polytechnic University.\n\n\u201cThrough art, we send a message to the occupiers and tell them that they cannot occupy our imagination and dreams of freedom and justice. Art can reach out to more people,\u201d Amro said.\n\nThe event was violently dispersed by Israeli soldiers who fired stun grenades at the students after a few boys threw stones towards the checkpoint.\n\nIssa Amro speaks with an Israeli soldier while Ofer Yohanna, a settler, records the exchange on his phone. Responding to an order from Yohanna, the soldier stopped Amro and a delegation from Breaking the Silence from passing through.\n\nAmro gives regular tours of Hebron to delegations from around the world, showing the reality of life under military occupation. The tours are often targeted by settlers seeking to intimidate both Amro and the visitors.\n\nJewish settler Ofer Ohana frequently interrupts tours conducted by Amro. He is an ambulance driver in Hebron and has been known to delay or even deny the provision of medical attention to Palestinians.\n\n\u201cThere is no law enforcement on the Israeli settlers or soldiers. As a Palestinian I am under Israeli military law and my Israeli settler neighbors are under Israeli civilian law. We are under different laws even though we are living in the same neighborhood,\u201d Amro explained.\n\nPalestinians in Hebron commemorate the anniversary of the Ibrahimi mosque massacre.\n\nAs part of this year\u2019s Open Shuhada Street campaign, Youth Against Settlements members and volunteers were invited to join residents of Hebron in an evening of commemoration for the victims of the 1994 Ibrahimi mosque massacre.\n\nIsraeli soldiers detain four Palestinians, including a child, on their way home after a vigil commemorating the Ibrahimi mosque massacre.\n\nAs people started to make their way home after the evening\u2019s commemorative activities, Israeli soldiers detained Amro together with three other Palestinians, including a 10-year-old girl.\n\nAnat Cohen, a settler living in Hebron, drives her car into a group of Palestinians.\n\nWhile Amro was detained, one of the settlers approached him. \u201cHe told me that each dog has his own day to be killed, meant to intimidate me and to describe me as a dog,\u201d Amro recalled.\n\nAs people gathered, waiting for Amro and the other Palestinians to be released, the infamously violent settler Anat Cohen drove her car directly into the crowd.\n\nA Palestinian man talks to an Israeli soldier who refused to intervene when a settler drove her car into a crowd.\n\nSeveral military units were called to the scene but none made any attempt to restrain Cohen. Yet in recent months soldiers have shot dead numerous Palestinians who Israel said used their cars as weapons against Israelis.\n\n\u201cAs Palestinians we are under the military law; we don\u2019t have any rights and they don\u2019t take our testimonies and our words into consideration. Soldiers are believed to always say the truth; they don\u2019t need to show evidence. We, on the other hand, need to show evidence that we are not guilty,\u201d Amro said.\n\nA Palestinian man collapses after a settler attacked a crowd that had gathered to commemorate the Ibrahimi mosque massacre.\n\nA Palestinian man collapsed during the incident. Many Israeli soldiers stood around, making no effort to provide assistance. An ambulance was called but its arrival was delayed.\n\nTwo days later, during a demonstration marking the end of the week\u2019s Open Shuhada Street campaign, Israeli soldiers broke up the crowd and arrested a human rights lawyer and a journalist. Approximately 50 people were injured when soldiers fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated bullets at the crowd.\n\nIssa Amro speaks to a group of young Israelis during a Breaking the Silence tour. At the end of his conversation with the group, Israeli soldiers appeared and arrested Amro.\n\nAmro was arrested a few days later at the end of a meeting with a delegation from Breaking the Silence, a group which publishes anonymous testimonies by former Israeli soldiers to expose the army\u2019s rights abuses.\n\nHe was charged with incitement, organizing an illegal demonstration and evading arrest \u2013 allegations which he rejects.\n\n\u201cIt is a kind of intimidation to stop the nonviolent activities and to stop any person from speaking out against the occupation and human rights violations,\u201d Amro, who was released one day later, said.\n\nThe constant harassment doesn\u2019t deter Amro.\n\n\u201cI will continue fighting them until they leave Hebron and they end their human rights violations,\u201d he added.\n\nClaire Thomas is a freelance photographer from the UK whose work focuses on social, political and humanitarian issues in the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook."} -{"text":"PARIS -- Pepe is set to become Paris Saint-Germain's first summer signing once his Real Madrid contract comes to an end, a source close to the French capital outfit told ESPN FC.\n\nThe Portugal international is still on Confederations Cup duty and will be until the third-placed playoff on Sunday, just two days before PSG coach Unai Emery and his non-international players report to Camp des Loges for preseason training, but the 34-year-old is close to signing a contract.\n\nAccording to the source, Pepe has been in talks with Les Parisiens for some time over a potential move to Parc des Princes -- before and after compatriot Antero Henrique's arrival as sporting director.\n\nHowever, it is mainly because of the former Porto man that this deal has been pushed to the brink of completion after the Portuguese transfer guru and Emery agreed the squad require greater experience and a stronger winning mentality.\n\nThe source said Pepe is set to sign a one-year contract with PSG, which includes an option for a second, and that the Ligue 1 giants' medical staff have already examined the Brazil-born Portugal star's troublesome knee.\n\nAlthough he will go on holiday post-Confederations Cup, the former Maritimo and Porto man -- who has won the Champions League three times as well as the 2016 European Championship among other titles -- is almost certain to be Henrique's first signing since he joined PSG at the start of June.\n\nPepe is expected to sign with PSG after he's finished with Portugal this summer.\n\nAnother boost for the sporting director and the recently deposed former French champions is the news that Thiago Motta is set to extend his stay by one more campaign.\n\nThe source claimed that although there are still a few details left to be taken care of in terms of how the 34-year-old transitions into a staff role at the end of his proposed new deal -- and which position he will occupy -- the Brazil-born Italy international will prolong his playing career by one more term.\n\nMotta's contract extension should be taken care of by the end of the week, and along with Pepe, he will be the main source of experience in the dressing room.\n\nOnce Pepe and Motta are sorted, PSG's next objective will be to lure Fabinho from French rivals and current champions Monaco to the capital.\n\nThe Brazil international is currently attracting interest from the likes of Manchester United but the source says the 23-year-old -- who was has been a revelation with Les Monegasques under Leonardo Jardim since switching from right back to defensive midfield -- has given his word to Henrique that he will hold out for a move to PSG.\n\nAssuming Fabinho gets his wish, he will take over the deep-lying midfield role Motta has made vital to the team's now trademark possession-based 4-3-3 formation, enabling Marco Verratti and Adrien Rabiot to occupy the more advanced berths with Blaise Matuidi likely to be moved on this summer.\n\nJonathan Johnson covers PSG and the French national team for ESPN FC. Twitter: @Jon_LeGossip."} -{"text":"2009 film based on Alice Sebold's 2002 novel\n\nThe Lovely Bones is a 2009 supernatural drama film directed by Peter Jackson, and starring Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Michael Imperioli, and Saoirse Ronan. The screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson was based on Alice Sebold\u2019s award-winning and bestselling 2002 novel of the same name. It follows a girl who is murdered and watches over her family from the in-between, and is torn between seeking vengeance on her killer and allowing her family to heal. An international co-production between the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand,[2] the film was produced by Carolynne Cunningham, Walsh, Jackson, and Aimee Peyronnet, with Steven Spielberg, Tessa Ross, Ken Kamins, and James Wilson as executive producers. Principal photography began in October 2007 in New Zealand and Pennsylvania, United States. The film's score was composed by Brian Eno.\n\nThe Lovely Bones was first released on December 26, 2009, in New Zealand, and then internationally in January 2010. The film's North American release date was changed multiple times, with a limited release on December 11, 2009, and a wider release on January 15, 2010.[3] It was released to mainly mixed reviews from critics; the story and its message were generally criticized, with praise mainly aimed at the visual effects, Peter Jackson's direction, and the performances of Ronan and Tucci. In the film's opening weekend, in limited release, it grossed $116,616, despite only having been screened in three theaters, placing it at 30th place on the box office chart.[3] The Lovely Bones grossed over $44 million in North America.[4] The film also received numerous accolades, including Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA, and Academy Award nominations.\n\nPlot [ edit ]\n\nIn 1973, 14-year-old high school freshman Susie Salmon dreams about becoming a photographer. One day, Ray, a boy she has a crush on, approaches her at school and asks her out. As Susie walks home through a cornfield, she runs into her neighbor, George Harvey, who coaxes her into his underground den. Inside, Susie becomes uncomfortable and attempts to leave; when he grabs her, the scene fades until she is seen rushing past classmate Ruth Connors, apparently fleeing Harvey's den.\n\nThe Salmons become worried when Susie fails to return home from school. Her father, Jack, searches for her, while her mother, Abigail, waits for the police. In town, Susie sees Jack, but he does not respond to her when she calls. Susie runs home to find Harvey soaking in a bathtub. After seeing her bracelet hanging on the sink faucet near a bloody shaving razor, Susie realizes she never escaped the den and was murdered by Harvey. Screaming, she is pulled into the \"In-Between\", that is neither Heaven nor Earth. From there, Susie watches over her loved ones, unable to let go despite the urging of her new afterlife friend, Holly.\n\nInvestigating Susie's disappearance with Detective Fenerman, Jack thinks Susie was murdered by someone she knew. He researches neighbors and comes to think Harvey is the killer. Fenerman is unable to find any evidence pinpointing Harvey as a suspect, as Harvey cleaned up. Susie's sister, Lindsey, agrees with Jack's suspicions, but their casework takes a toll on Abigail, and Jack invites Abigail's alcoholic mother, Lynn, to move in with them. Feeling alienated from her husband, Abigail leaves for California. Susie, in her afterlife, learns that Harvey, who has now targeted Lindsey as his next victim, has murdered six other girls, including Holly, and that he stuffed Susie's body into a safe in his basement.\n\nOne night, Jack, carrying a bat, trails Harvey into the cornfield. However, Jack accidentally stumbles across Susie's friend, Clarissa. Her boyfriend, who mistakenly thinks his girlfriend is being assaulted, nearly bludgeons Jack to death as Harvey watches from a hiding spot. As Jack recuperates, Lindsey breaks into Harvey's house looking for evidence that he killed Susie. Upstairs, she finds a notebook containing a sketch of the den, a lock of Susie's hair, and news articles about Susie's disappearance. Harvey returns home and almost catches Lindsey in his house, but she escapes and rushes home to discover that her mother has returned. Not wishing to spoil her parents' reunion, she gives the book to her grandmother, who contacts the police. Harvey has already fled, having seen Lindsey running from his home \u2013 he takes the safe containing Susie's remains with him.\n\nSusie's afterlife begins expanding into a larger heaven, and she is greeted by Harvey's other victims\u2014now showing nine, including Susie. She resists Holly's urging to enter Heaven along with the others, claiming she has one final thing to do. Meanwhile, Susie's classmates Ruth and Ray are present when Harvey drives up to dispose of the safe at a sinkhole dump site. Susie returns to Earth and enters Ruth's body, causing Ruth to faint. Ray rushes to Ruth's aid only to realize she has become Susie. They kiss, completing Susie's last wish, and she returns to Heaven. Meanwhile Harvey dumps the safe in a sinkhole, leaving it to disappear in the muddy water as he drives away.\n\nSometime later, Harvey meets a young woman outside a diner and offers her a ride, but she rejects him and leaves. A large icicle falls from an overhead branch, hitting Harvey on the shoulder. He loses his balance on the ice and falls backward over a cliff to his death. Time passes, and Susie sees that her family is healing, which Susie refers to as \"the lovely bones\" that grew around her absence. As the film concludes, Susie finally enters Heaven, telling the audience: \"My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was 14 years old when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. I was here for a moment and then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life.\"\n\nCast [ edit ]\n\nProduction [ edit ]\n\nIn May 2000, Film4 Productions acquired feature film rights to Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones,[25] when it was a half-written manuscript. Producer Aimee Peyronnet had sought to attract studio interest to the manuscript, and an insider informed Film4's deputy head of production, Jim Wilson, of the project.[26] The company attached Luc Besson and Peyronnet's production company Seaside to the project, two years before the novel's release.[25] By February 2001, Lynne Ramsay was hired to direct and write the film adaptation of the novel.[27] In July 2002, Channel 4 shut down Film4, causing Hollywood studios and producers to pursue acquisition of feature film rights to The Lovely Bones, which had spent multiple weeks at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. The film adaptation, which had been estimated at a budget of $15 million, remained with Channel 4 under its newly developed inhouse film unit, with Ramsay still contracted to write and direct. By October 2002, Ramsay was writing the script with fellow screenwriter Liana Dognini, with filming planned for summer 2003.[26] Author Sebold was invited by the producers to provide input on the project.[28]\n\nRamsay, who had read the novel in manuscript prior to publication, said in 2012 that her adaptation departed from it significantly. The scenes with Susie in heaven would have been depicted purely as her father's imagination. He would have become friends with Mr. Harvey, never suspecting him of having killed his daughter. \"I really didn't like the My Little Pony, she's-in-heaven, everything's-O.K. aspect\", she told The New York Times in 2012.[29]\n\nIn July 2003, the studio DreamWorks negotiated a first look deal with producer Peyronnet,[30] after DreamWorks co-founder Steven Spielberg expressed interest in the project.[31] DreamWorks did not acquire the rights to the novel, and Ramsay was eventually detached from the project as, she says, FilmFour wanted a version more faithful to the novel.[29] In April 2004, producers Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens entered negotiations to develop the project.[32] Jackson described the book as \"a wonderfully emotional and powerful story. Like all the best fantasy, it has a solid grounding in the real world.\"[33] By January 2005, Jackson and Walsh planned to independently purchase film rights and to seek studio financing after a script had been developed. The producers sought to begin adapting a spec script for The Lovely Bones in January 2006, with the goal of script completion and budget estimation by the following May.[34]\n\nJackson explained he enjoyed the novel because he found it \"curiously optimistic\" and uplifting because of the narrator's sense of humor, adding there was a difference between its tone and subject matter. He felt very few films dealt with the loss of a loved one.[35] Jackson foresaw the most challenging element in the novel to adapt was the portrayal of Susie, the protagonist, in her heaven, and making it \"ethereal and emotional but not hokey.\"[33] Saoirse Ronan explained Jackson chose to depict the afterlife as depending on Susie's emotions. \"Whenever Susie feels happy, Heaven is sunny and there's birds and everything. Whenever it\u2019s not so great, it's raining or she\u2019s in the middle of an ocean.\"[36] Jackson described the book's description of \"heaven\" as being an \"In-Between\" rather than a true heaven and said he was not trying to paint a definitive picture of Heaven itself.[35] \"[W]hen Jackson created Susie's heaven, in a 1973 world, he went through the Partridge Family television show archives as a reference.\"[37]\n\n\"[I] basically [added] more violence and suffering, [the audience] wanted far more violence [...] They just weren't satisfied [...] We got a lot of people telling us that they were disappointed with this death scene, as they wanted to see [the character] in agony and suffer a lot more, we had to create a whole suffering death scene just to give people the satisfaction they needed.\" \u2014Jackson to Reuters on re-shooting Harvey's death scene, November 2009[38]\n\nA 120-page draft of the script was written by September 2006.[39] In April 2007, the script was completed by Jackson, Walsh and Boyens; Jackson intended to direct. The three producers began seeking a studio partner to finance the film adaptation. Besides the major studios, smaller companies including United Artists were also contacted. New Line Cinema was excluded from negotiations because of Jackson's legal dispute with the studio over royalties from his The Lord of the Rings trilogy.[40] Jackson sought a beginning $65 million budget for The Lovely Bones, also requesting from studios what kind of promotional commitments and suggestions they would make for the film adaptation.[41]\n\nBy May, four studios remained interested in the project: DreamWorks, Warner Bros., Sony, and Universal.[42] The Lovely Bones was sold to DreamWorks for $70 million.[43] Paramount Pictures received the rights to distribute the film worldwide. Production began in October 2007 in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and New Zealand.[5][44] Shooting in parts of Delaware, Chester and Montgomery counties, including Hatfield,[45] Ridley Township, Phoenixville, Royersford, Malvern and East Fallowfield,[46] lasted a few weeks, and most of the studio shooting was done in New Zealand.[39]\n\nIn December 2008, Brian Eno signed on to compose the film's score. Fran Walsh, a big fan of his work, suggested him to Jackson.[47] Jackson had called Eno to request use of two of his early tracks to evoke atmosphere for the 1970s scenes in the film. When Eno asked if he could compose the whole score, Jackson was surprised, since he had heard Eno did not like working on films. For the film's ending, Eno uncovered a demo he had done in 1973 and reunited with the vocalist to create a proper version for the film, commenting: \"That song from 1973 was finally finished in 2008!\"[48]\n\nIn November 2009, Jackson stated that he re-shot new footage of Harvey's death scene after test audiences said it was not violent enough and wanted to \"see more of Harvey in pain.\"[13][38] Jackson said it was important to him that the movie receive a PG-13 rating so that the film could appeal to the widest possible audience, despite the necessarily violent nature of some scenes.[13]\n\nRelease [ edit ]\n\nStrategy [ edit ]\n\nThe Lovely Bones and screened a clip from it. Jackson at 2009 Comic-Con film festival . At the festival Jackson discussedand screened a clip from it.\n\nThe Lovely Bones was originally scheduled for release on March 13, 2009, but it was delayed to December 11, 2009, as the studio became interested in releasing the film for \"awards season,\" which gave Jackson an opportunity to make some effects shots larger in scope.[49] The film then received a limited theater release on December 11, 2009, in the United States.[50] The film was originally set to have a wider United States theater release on December 25, 2009 (Christmas Day), as part of a campaign to build its momentum into January 2010.[52] In early December it was confirmed that the United States release date had been pushed back by three weeks to January 15, 2010.[53] Paramount and DreamWorks did not give a reason for the change of the release date. The film premiered in New Zealand on December 26, 2009, and was released in the United Kingdom on January 29 and in other countries in January 2010.\n\nAccording to the Los Angeles Times, Paramount invested $70 million in production and an additional $85 million in worldwide marketing and distribution.[53] In December 2009, the Los Angeles Times described the marketing and promotion of The Lovely Bones as having been a \"heavy advertising campaign.\"[52] In late July 2009, as part of the promotion, Jackson talked about the film and screened a 4\u200b1\u2044 2 minute clip at the San Diego Comic-Con International film festival.[37]\n\nAs part of marketing for the film, in August 2009, people were allowed to enter a contest to win a trip to Wellington, for the film's New Zealand premiere on December 14, 2009.[54] The offer included, if the winner lived outside of Wellington, one night\u2019s accommodation and a voucher for flight or petrol to Wellington.[54] A teaser trailer was released in August 2009, days before the film's official trailer.[55] The official trailer debuted on the television series Entertainment Tonight and was released online shortly afterwards.[37][56] In August 2009, Jackson offered a \"behind-the-scenes look\" at the film and discussed elements (mainly violence) in the film's plot line.[57]\n\nThe Los Angeles Times reported that Paramount had originally expected the film to appeal to a \"sophisticated, adult audience,\" but after poor revenue and average reviews, the studio decided to redirect the film to an audience in another age group.[52] Surveys showed that the film was favored more by females aged 13\u201320 than by any other demographic. Paramount began to screen the movie \"aggressively for high school- and college-age girls\" during its three-screen limited release.[52]\n\nBox office [ edit ]\n\nOn December 11, 2009, the film was released on three screens in Los Angeles and New York. As of January 4, 2010, the film had grossed over $389,000 in the US.[3] Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz of the Los Angeles Times felt that it did poorly at the box office in the first few weeks of its release because of average reviews and negative word-of-mouth.[52] During its opening-weekend release on three screens, it earned over $116,616, an average of estimated $38,872 per-theater revenue.[3] The film's revenue placed it at thirtieth place on the box office chart.[3] In the film's second and third weeks of release, the film saw a decrease; in the fourth week, it had a 54.3-percent increase.[58]\n\nWhen put into wide release on January 15, 2010,[18] it grossed $17,005,133 that weekend, ranking number three at the domestic box office. By the end of its run, The Lovely Bones had made $44,114,232 domestically, and $49,507,108 overseas, for a worldwide total of $93,621,340.\n\nHome media [ edit ]\n\nThe film was released in the US on DVD and two-disc Blu-ray April 20, 2010 and in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2010.[59]\n\nReception [ edit ]\n\nCritical reception [ edit ]\n\nAlthough Ronan and Tucci were praised for their performances, The Lovely Bones received mixed reviews from critics.[60] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 32%, based on 238 reviews, with an average rating of 5\/10. The site's critical consensus reads, \"It's stuffed full of Peter Jackson's typically dazzling imagery, but The Lovely Bones suffers from abrupt shifts between horrific violence and cloying sentimentality.\"[61] Metacritic gave the film a score of 42 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating \"mixed or average reviews\".[62] It is Peter Jackson's lowest rated film to date.[citation needed]\n\nIan Freer of Empire gave the film 4\/5 stars.[63] Freer emphasized the \"bold, daring original filmmaking, with arguably more emotional and intellectual meat to chew on than either the Rings trilogy or Kong.\"[63] Freer noted that, like The Lord of the Rings, the film \"does a fantastic job with revered, complex source material\" and that, since it is \"as terrific on terra firma as it is audacious in its astral plane\", it is \"doubtful\" that there would be a \"more imaginative\" and \"courageous film\" in 2010.[63]\n\nRichard Corliss of Time wrote that \"through [Peter] Jackson's art\" and Ronan's \"magic\" the \"obscenity of child murder has been invested with immense gravity and grace\" and \"like the story of Susie's life after death, that's a miracle.\"[64] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone felt that the film was \"conveyed\" in a \"remarkable performance\" by Ronan and described Tucci as being \"magnificent as a man of uncontrollable impulses\" to \"help Jackson cut a path to a humanity that supersedes life and death.\"[65] Travers praised Jackson for building \"jolting suspense.\" Despite praising the film, however, Travers noted that while the book \"never flinched,\" the film does, and while the \"business is being transacted\" by Jackson with a \"Lord of the Rings fantasy\" the film \"attunes himself to a family tragedy.\"[65]\n\nClaudia Puig of USA Today gave the film 2\/4 stars, remarking that while \"[Peter] Jackson gets the thriller scenes right\", the \"conceit of Susie trapped in a DayGlo world between the one she left and her final resting place, imparting lessons on coping with death, feels preachy.\"[66] Puig also described the film as having \"clashing tones\" that veer from \"lightheartedness to heavy-handedness.\"[66] Puig also criticized the film's computer-generated imagery, describing it as being \"cheesy\" and felt that it broke \"no ground.\"[66] Kirt Honeycutt, of the Hollywood Reporter, described the film as telling \"a fundamentally different story\" which is \"one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details\", but that \"it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original.\"[67] Honeycutt also described Jackson as having transformed Sebold's \"startling, unique novel about the aftermath of a terrible murder\" into a story that's more \"focused on crime and punishment.\"[67]\n\n\"[Alice] Sebold's book would've had a tough leap to the multiplex no matter who guided it. But [Peter] Jackson is too enamored with the idea of mixing heaven and the heebie-jeebies, so he's made the skeevy equivalent of a Mitch Albom book with some pulp fiction pressed between its covers.\" Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News[68]\n\nStephanie Zacharek, of Salon.com, viewed the film as being \"an expensive-looking mess that fails to capture the mood, and the poetry, of its source material\" because \"good actors fighting a poorly conceived script, under the guidance of a director who can no longer make the distinction between imaginativeness and computer-generated effects.\"[69] Todd McCarthy, of Variety, felt that Jackson had undermined the \"solid work from a good cast\" with \"show-offy celestial evocations\" that \"severely disrupt the emotional connections with the characters.\"[70] McCarthy stated that he felt that the film, overall, was a \"significant artistic disappointment.\"[70] Joe Neumaier, of New York Daily News, described Jackson as having \"siphoned out all the soulfulness\" that made the author's \"combination thriller\/afterlife fantasy a best-seller\" and that the film was \"a gumball-colored potboiler that's more squalid than truly mournful.\"[68] Neumaier also wrote that the film and Jackson \"wasted\" a \"good cast.\"[68] Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 1.5 stars out of 4, calling it \"deplorable\", and criticizing the apparent message that Susie's murder eventually made her happier. He was also critical of the film's portrayal of Heaven, which he compared to \"a happy gathering of new Facebook friends\". However, he praised the acting, stating that \"this whole film is Jackson's fault\".[71]\n\nAccording to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the rating given to The Lovely Bones received 24 objections, more than any other movie in 2010. The BBFC report states, \"Many found the film to be a shocking and upsetting experience. The scene in which young Susie is entrapped by the killer, and the subsequent sequence in which the killer soaks in a bath after the murder, were compared by some complainants to scenes in \u201818\u2019 rated horror films.\" The BBFC rated the movie a 12A, and many complained that the movie was upsetting for a younger audience. Nevertheless, the BBFC defended its rating: \"The Lovely Bones lacked any explicit detail of the murder and any sexual elements were downplayed. The audience\u2019s sympathies remain entirely with the family and the film had many positive messages about life.\"[72][73][74][75][76]\n\nAccolades [ edit ]\n\nSee also [ edit ]"} -{"text":"There are still fences up all over the Splash Park and Issak Kendal Ker Plaza on Princes Island this weekend. These Fences make it impossible for me to do my job. On the busiest weekend of the year celebrating 150 years of Canadain History one tradition was forgotten and several Magicians, Jugglers, Acrobats and Clowns are unable to work.\n\nEver since the park was built there has been street performance in that plaza. In it\u2019s height there were dozens of entertainers emigrating to Calgary so they could perform on that beautiful amphitheater. For generations there has always been some kind of performance there every weekend. People who saw a one-man band there as a child, bring their kids back to watch the new generation of magicians and jugglers. Especially on Canada Day.\n\nNot this year. The fences wont allow the passing people to step off the path, out of traffic and enter the theatre to sit on the grass or the stones or the 3 tiers of steps for seating. When people walk past and see someone performing on the stage they don\u2019t have the option to stop and watch.\n\nOn Canada Day we moved our shows to Stephen Ave because there were all kinds of events and fun things bringing people to the core. The next day we went back to the amphitheater, THE FENCES ARE STILL UP!?! Our permits are very clear about where we are allowed perform. Because we gather crowds and perform full shows we are restricted to ONLY work in side that amphitheater. As soon as we gather a crowd anywhere else Bylaw or the Police shut us down.\n\nIs this just a negative result of bureaucracy? Or is Calgary Parks trying to get rid of us. Because right now they are acting like a partner who wants to break up me but would rather manipulate me into doing it for them."} -{"text":"Prabhat Kumar Jha\n\nRautahat, August 6\n\nPolice today arrested contractor Prahlad Sah of Durga Construction Service after four girls of a family drowned in a ditch that was dug by Sah\u2019s men to expand the Ring Road in Garuda Municipality, Rautahat.\n\nRam Ekwal Sah\u2019s daughters \u2014 Sangita Kumari, 12, and Sunita Kumari, 9, his brother Jogendra Sah\u2019s daughter Sunaina Kumari, 9, and his other brother Prem Sah\u2019s daughter Susmita Kumari, 9, of Ramjanaki Temple Tole of Garuda Municipality died in the tragic incident yesterday. Police arrested Prahlad after the victims\u2019 family demonstrated against the incident.\n\nThe locals protested with the bodies at Methur Chowk for four hours after relatives of the minors received the bodies from district hospital after the post-mortem today. They demanded stern action against the staffers at Road Division Office, Chandrapur, and the contractor.\n\nPolice assured the victims\u2019 kin that action would be taken against the guilty. SP Yagya Binod Pokhrel of Rautahat District Police Office said an immediate relief amount of\n\nRs 25,000 was offered to families of each girl for their final rites.\n\nRautahat Chief District Officer Uddab Bahadur Thapa has sought documents related to road construction from Road Division Office Chief Yogesh Suman.\n\nSuman said he was unaware of ditches being dug on the road. \u201cWe called a tender for road construction, giving all responsibilities to the contractor,\u201d he added. He said the contractor should be held responsible for the incident.\n\nThe road division office had called the tender for expanding the road. Sah signed the contract for Rs 1.4 million, which was one-third of the tender price. Locals accused the contractor of using soil dug out from sides of the road for construction of the road.\n\nA local, Manoj Chaudhary, said ditches were dug on both sides of the road using dozer. He said minors fell into a ditch filled with rainwater as they were oblivious of the ditches.\n\nRam Ekwal has sought action against staffers of the road construction company who had left the ditches unattended.\n\nA version of this article appears in print on August 07, 2017 of The Himalayan Times.\n\nFollow The Himalayan Times on Twitter and Facebook"} -{"text":"The Association of American Universities released the results of its 27-school \u201cclimate survey\u201d on campus sexual assault on Monday, and officials explained on a conference call with reporters why this one is the gold standard.\n\nUnlike earlier surveys, the AAU survey included both a large number of campuses and a large sample size at each participating school, said Bonnie Fisher, a consultant for survey design firm Westat and professor at the University of Cincinnati.\n\nPrior surveys were \u201cplagued\u201d by differences in definitions and methods, how they were administered and how they were designed, Fisher said. The AAU survey precisely measured how many students said they were sexually violated by clearly defined methods of contact (penetration and touching) and \u201ctactics\u201d (physical force, drugs and alcohol, coercion, absence of affirmative consent).\n\nYou would think with this careful design spread across more than two dozen large research universities, the AAU survey results would differ notably from previous surveys that suffered from vague definitions, small samples and \u201cselection bias,\u201d meaning an overrepresentation of people with strong views on the subject in the survey pool \u2013 all of which contributed to implausibly high levels of reported assault.\n\nNope. This survey found slightly more sexual violence than the well-known but questionable statistic that 1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted in college:\n\nThe incidence of sexual assault and sexual misconduct due to physical force, threats of physical force, or incapacitation among female undergraduate student respondents was 23.1 percent, including 10.8 percent who experienced penetration.\n\nThis result made no sense to me, so I flipped to the section of the report that defines \u201cincapacitation\u201d (page viii of the executive summary), a concept that is so poorly explained on the average campus that it\u2019s practically meaningless:\n\n\u201c\u2026.unable to consent or stop what was happening because you were passed out, asleep or incapacitated due to drugs or alcohol\u201d\n\nYou\u2019ll notice that is not a definition of incapacitation \u2013 it\u2019s a tautology (incapacitation means being incapacitated) \u2013 and it\u2019s not meaningfully different from how other surveys have treated incapacitation, as something you just know when it\u2019s happening (to yourself or your partner).\n\nIndeed, students are now repeatedly warned at many campuses that they or their partners can\u2019t consent if they are \u201cincapacitated,\u201d \u201cintoxicated\u201d or just \u201cdrunk\u201d (we\u2019re looking at you, Coastal Carolina), and judging whether an accuser was in a state of mind to be able to consent to sex (and whether the accused should have known) is one of the central tasks of campus adjudications.\n\nRELATED: If you don\u2019t have the best sex of your life at Coastal Carolina University, it\u2019s rape\n\nSince everyone agrees that alcohol (at the least) is involved in a significant number of campus sexual experiences, if not most of them, you\u2019d think that telling students the precise conditions for incapacitation would be indispensable for getting accurate answers.\n\nWhen I asked officials on the call why the definition was so loose, and how it could lead students to think they were incapacitated when they were drunk but still cognizant of their actions, they basically shrugged.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a fairly standard phrase that\u2019s used on a number of other surveys\u201d and it was taken from the White House\u2019s task force on sexual violence, Westat Vice President David Cantor said. \u201cWe actually modified that statement a bit to make it more strict,\u201d and \u201cit\u2019s not just talking about being drunk.\u201d\n\nEnd of story.\n\nNo one seemed to appreciate the irony that the AAU and Westat were bragging about designing a survey that avoided the pitfalls of all its predecessors, and yet it made the same giant honking mistake as every survey before it: treating incapacitation as something self-evident.\n\nThere\u2019s every reason to suspect that students who were already uneasy about prior sexual encounters \u2013 perhaps because they were drinking at the time \u2013 would identify in retrospect as \u201cincapacitated,\u201d if prompted, unless they were told in detail that it\u2019s more than just acting stupid when you\u2019re drunk.\n\nBrett Sokolow of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, which advises schools how to design sexual-misconduct policies and proceedings, gave a thorough definition of incapacitation 10 years ago that could have been useful to AAU and Westat:\n\nOne becomes under the influence of alcohol as soon as one has anything to drink. Impairment begins as soon as alcohol enters the bloodstream, and increases with consumption. Intoxication and inebriation are synonyms, as is drunkenness, and corresponds to a .08 blood alcohol concentration. Incapacitation is a state beyond drunkenness or intoxication. What is confusing about incapacity is that it has nothing to do with an amount of alcohol or a specific blood alcohol concentration. In fact, some drunk people will be incapacitated, and some will not. Incapacity can be defined with respect to how the alcohol consumed impacts on someone\u2019s decision-making capacity, awareness of consequences, and ability to make fully-informed judgments.\n\nThough his discussion goes on to give colleges far too much leeway to judge that what appeared consensual, to both parties, at the time of sex, was actually not consensual in retrospect, at least those conditions put some intelligible limits on the concept of incapacitation.\n\nI\u2019ll have more thoughts on this report, and a review of other skeptical reactions, in a future post.\n\nLike The College Fix on Facebook \/ Follow us on Twitter\n\nIMAGE: RogaMuffin\/Flickr"} -{"text":"Subtle changes are made all the time in college football, but it's the wholesale changes that really help separate the men from the boys. Sometimes you have to revolutionize your approach in order to improve your product.\n\nSee: recruiting, the expansion craze, offensive philosophies, offseason schedules, rejuvenation tactics away from the field and satellite camps.\n\nYou simply can't fight change. Doing so is foolish. That's one reason the SEC has been so successful during the past decade. Those eight national championships in 10 years didn't just materialize overnight. Careful planning and excellent business sense from league officials, universities and coaches have helped the SEC rise above the rest in college football.\n\nThanks to the skillful mind of former SEC commissioner Mike Slive, the SEC has stayed ahead of the curve for most of the 2000's. New commissioner Greg Sankey is in the infancy of his reign as league commissioner, but if he wants to give the SEC another leg up on the competition, he could take a radical step into future planning.\n\nPetition the NCAA to get rid of divisions in college football ... even though the SEC created them in 1992.\n\nHonestly, what's the point? They are outdated, and hurt the conference more than help it.\n\nBut, Edward, what about traditional division rivalries? Why do you hate the fact that Missouri is on the western side of the conference, but plays in the Eastern Division?\n\nFor starters, yes, it makes no sense to have Missouri in the East. Secondly, this is a great way to make sure that traditional rivalries are preserved and respected.\n\nI love traditional division rivalries so much that I think the league is bleeding real conference rivalries dry with its silly format. Nine conference games aside, the 6-1-1 conference scheduling model (one permanent and one rotating opponent in the opposite division) does no one any favors. It's bad for the players, bad for the fans and really leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to league play.\n\nObviously, people above my pay grade would have to dissect this more thoroughly, but if the SEC pushes the NCAA to get rid of divisions, conferences can keep their rivalries and even invest in older ones. Example: Florida and Auburn began play in 1912 and played for 58 consecutive years (1945-2002). The additions of Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 further extinguished this rivalry by eliminating another cross-divisional opponent. Florida and Auburn aren't slated to play until 2019 in Gainesville, and at Auburn in 2024.\n\nWithout divisions, Florida could keep Georgia, Tennessee and LSU (the current permanent West opponent) on its schedule, and add Auburn. The Tigers could keep Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, and add Florida.\n\nProtect all the key in-conference rivalries for schools and set four or five permanent opponents for each team. Rotate the others with a home-and-home series, mix and match, whatever. If you have four permanent opponents and four different rotators or five permanent opponents and three rotators, players would see each SEC team in three years. Doing home-and-homes would push that to five years in either format.\n\nOf course, time between rotators decreases with nine conference games.\n\nPlayers would see every school in four years and you're keeping the most important games each season. Two wins right there. And disproportionate permanent crossovers would be gone.\n\nYou're welcome, LSU.\n\nElimination of divisions would also ensure that the two best teams would play in Atlanta every year. The West has won seven straight conference titles, six by 14 points or more. Florida (2008) is the last East team to win the conference. Let's not act like there hasn't been an imbalance of power in the SEC, thanks to divisions. There is an obvious disparity, creating more worry for teams and their true playoff hopes.\n\nThe SEC title game has mostly gotten the pairings right by overall record, but there have been instances in the past where a ho-hum title game would have been replaced by a more deserving matchup, like Alabama and LSU in 2011 and Auburn-Arkansas in 2010.\n\nNothing wrong with getting the most competitive game possible in your most important game every year by guaranteeing No. 1 vs. No. 2, which -- wait for it -- increases playoff hopes even more!\n\nOn the outside, this looks simple. With the sport evolving more and more, you might as well make sure you can get the best product on the field more and more. This is a step in that direction, and it serves the league, its teams and its fans well."} -{"text":"In October, the US Intelligence Community, which includes 16 American intelligence agencies, announced that they were \u201cconfident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.\u201d Controversy broke out last week over the disputed conclusion that the Russians were attempting to push Donald Trump to victory, as opposed to attempting to undermine the electoral system generally \u2013 but there\u2019s been little controversy about whether Russia was behind the WikiLeaks hacks.\n\nExcept on the right.\n\nThere, many commentators have insisted that there\u2019s no evidence whatsoever that Vladimir Putin and the Russian government were behind the hacks. Sean Hannity, who used to believe that Julian Assange should go to jail, hosted Assange (whom, Hannity assured his audience, had \u201cdone us a favor\u201d by hacking the Democratic National Committee) and kvelled as Assange said that the Russians had nothing to do with the hacks. Trump mouthpiece Bill Mitchell dutifully tweeted Putin\u2019s challenge to the United States, and that tweet received nearly two thousand likes and well over a thousand retweets from sympathetic Trump fans.\n\nHere\u2019s the actual story, from CNN:\n\nThe United States must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its elections or prove it, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was \"indecent\" of the United States to \"groundlessly\" accuse Russia of intervention in the US election campaign, Russian state news agency Tass reported. \"They should either stop talking about that or produce some proof at last. Otherwise it all begins to look unseemly,\" Peskov reportedly said about the latest accusations that Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.\n\nThe celebratory glee from Trump advocates \u2013 see, Putin\u2019s denying it, so it must all be a Democratic plot in coordination with the CIA! \u2013 is odd, considering that Putin has a long record of lying blatantly about his nefarious activities. In 2012, Russia denied that a spy ring allegedly working for Russia was working for Russia. In May 2015, for example, as Russian troops motored into Ukraine, the government denied that its troops were in Ukraine at all \u2013 even as the Russian government issued an order covering up all deaths of Russian troops in the country. In October 2015, the Russian government denied that it or pro-Russian separatists had anything to do with the shooting down of MH17 \u2013 and Trump naturally bought Putin\u2019s explanation, stating, \u201cPutin and Russia say they didn\u2019t do it, the other side said they did, no one really knows who did it, probably Putin knows who did it, possibly it was Russia but they are totally denying it.\u201d Last month, Russia denied reports of an air offensive in Aleppo \u2013 even though human rights groups reported the airstrikes.\n\nRussia, in other words, lies all the time. It\u2019s a dictatorship run by a former KGB operative.\n\nYet Republicans seem to parrot Putin\u2019s line as the truth, so long as that truth benefits Donald Trump. Kellyanne Conway\u2019s ridiculous line that questions about Russian hacking should end if President Obama loved \u201cthe country enough\u201d are a shoddy way of shutting down a discussion about the hacking itself.\n\nThat\u2019s pretty disgusting. But it makes sense from a utilitarian perspective, if not a moral one \u2013 many Trump supporters are happy to praise one of the planet\u2019s worst human beings so long as he helps their agenda, and top members of the Trump administration think of Russia as part of the anti-jihadist team, and have some admiration for Putin\u2019s nationalist ambitions (see Bannon, Steve).\n\nIt\u2019s sad to watch the party of Reagan mimic the Putin party line. But partisanship now trumps decency and truth, obviously."} -{"text":"Share\n\nYesterday, Twitter took the lid off its recent acquisition Vine. It\u2019s a social app that allows you to make six-second, looped, GIF-like videos. It has an interface very reminiscent of Instagram, primarily because for the time being it\u2019s mobile-only (although its deal with Twitter means its content is embeddable in Twitter cards, so Vines are showing up there plenty).\n\nVine is fun, creative, simple, social, and as it turns out, something news outlets are busy experimenting with. It isn\u2019t anything revolutionary, however. It\u2019s not a threat to all that many apps or platforms out there \u2013 but Facebook shut it off anyway.\n\nYes, within a day of Vine\u2019s launch, Facebook pulled the ability for Vine users to find Facebook friends who were also using the new app.\n\nWhen asked for comment, a Facebook rep pointed me to this just-posted blog entry:\n\n\u201cFor the vast majority of developers building social apps and games, keep doing what you\u2019re doing. Our goal is to provide a platform that gives people an easy way to login to your apps, create personalized and social experiences, and easily share what they\u2019re doing in your apps with people on Facebook. This is how our platform has been used by the most popular categories of apps, such as games, music, fitness, news and general lifestyle apps.\n\nFor a much smaller number of apps that are using Facebook to either replicate our functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook, we\u2019ve had policies against this that we are further clarifying today (see I.10).\u201d\n\nVine isn\u2019t the only app to feel Facebook\u2019s cold shoulder: Mobile text and voice messaging app Voxer also lost Facebook access recently, because after its update to Messenger, Facebook now sees it as a competitor. Voxer says that while Facebook isn\u2019t where it\u2019s getting user growth from, it is a disappointing development. \u201cWe are sorry that a channel for engagement is being shut down by Facebook to the detriment of our community. But we aren\u2019t alone, and it is both a lesson and a warning for other companies to be careful about counting on third party services that can be easily taken away.\u201d Russian search giant Yandex\u2019s Wonder app \u2013 essentially a mobile, voice-activated version of Graph Search \u2013 is yet another product that found itself on the outs with Facebook.\n\nWhat is the deal?\n\nWhat\u2019s maybe most upsetting about this series of events is that it\u2019s not even surprising anymore. For the last year, social-networking platforms have been cutting off varying levels of access to one another. A quick recap of all the most unfriendly moments in social networking that have been going on:\n\nIt didn\u2019t use to be like this. I fully realize how \u201cI remember when a gallon of gas used to cost a nickel\u201d that sounds, but it\u2019s true. In their infancy, social-networking platforms had a share-and-share-alike attitude, where you could cross-post and import contacts and find friends and use apps that were pulling mass amounts of useful data from outside APIs. It was a beautiful, brief moment in time.\n\nOf course, these platforms weren\u2019t what they are now. They were more basic, features were limited, content wasn\u2019t embedded as richly, there was less to interact with. As they\u2019ve grown, so too have their databases of social information, and thus their worth. Twitter has a tight grip on the interest graph, Facebook on the social graph, Google on the information graph. They want bits and pieces of what the others have. But instead of trading, and sharing, the walls have gone up and silos have been erected. Power grabs are being made. And we lose. Every time, we lose.\n\nThese moves are perfectly within the rights of the companies making them, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s right, or that we have to like it. These outlets can\u2019t call themselves Open Platforms anymore; they can\u2019t just reinterpret that phrase to mean that they invite developers to work with them, under their rules, on their terms \u2013 and that if you\u2019re an app with a major competitor, it\u2019s game over.\n\nIt\u2019s also a bit confounding, because it\u2019s not as if Vine is going to challenge Facebook for social network dominance, or Instagram is going to be the new Twitter.\n\nThe slippery slope here is bigger than just losing contact-finding abilities. Cross-posting could get killed off; developers will become warier about working with a platform, and the goal will be to get acquired, a la Instagram and Vine, to assure compatibility. There\u2019s also fear that if you do happen upon something that really connects and inspires users, the dominant networks are simply going to clone it (although, that largely hasn\u2019t worked out well).\n\nWith great power comes great responsibility, and a handful of social networks are finding themselves in this position right now. But instead of doing what Spider-Man would do and creating an open, thriving, connected social Web, they are building walls and cutting off ways for us to create and share various types of content. Social networking won\u2019t work if platforms and apps exist as their own solitary islands of wonderful, unshareable, unfindable content.\n\nThere are hints of very monopolistic behavior. But what can we do? Right now, we\u2019re just watching the big platforms get bigger. We\u2019ll be left wondering what could have become of the small startups that never had a chance to grow.\n\nThe views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the beliefs of Digital Trends."} -{"text":"As a professor of literature, rhetoric, and writing at the University of California at Irvine, I\u2019ve discovered that one of the biggest lies about American culture (propagated even by college students) is that Americans don\u2019t read.\n\nThe truth is that most of us read continuously in a perpetual stream of incestuous words, but instead of reading novels, book reviews, or newspapers like we used to in the ancien r\u00e9gime, we now read text messages, social media, and bite-sized entries about our protean cultural history on Wikipedia.\n\nIn the great epistemic galaxy of words, we have become both reading junkies and also professional text skimmers. Reading has become a clumsy science, which is why we keep fudging the lab results. But in diagnosing our own textual attention deficit disorder (ADD), who can blame us for skimming? We\u2019re inundated by so much opinion posing as information, much of it the same material with permutating and exponential commentary. Skimming is practically a defense mechanism against the avalanche of info-opinion that has collectively hijacked narrative, reportage, and good analysis.\n\nWe now skim everything it seems to find evidence for our own belief system. We read to comment on reality (Read: to prove our own belief system). Reading has become a relentless exercise in self-validation, which is why we get impatient when writers don\u2019t come out and simply tell us what they\u2019re arguing. Which reminds me: What the hell am I arguing? With the advent of microblogging platforms, Twitter activism, self-publishing companies, professional trolling, everyone has a microphone now and yet no one actually listens to each other any more. And this is literally because we\u2019re too busy reading. And when we leave comments on an online article, it\u2019s usually an argument we already agree with or one we completely reject before we\u2019ve read the first paragraph. In the age of hyper-information, it\u2019s practically impossible not to be blinded by our own confirmation bias. It\u2019s hard not to be infatuated with Twitter shitstorms either, especially when we\u2019re not the target practice.\n\nE-novels, once the theater of the mind for experimental writers, are now mainstream things that look like long-winded websites. Their chapters bleed into the same cultural space on our screen as grocery lists, weather forecasts, calendar reminders, and email messages. What\u2019s the real difference between reading a blog post online by an eloquent blowhard and reading one chapter of a Jonathan Franzen novel? We can literally swipe from one text to another on our Kindle without realizing we changed platforms. What\u2019s the real difference between skimming an informed political critique on a political junkie Tumblr account and reading a focused tirade on the Washington Post\u2019s blog written by putative experts?\n\nWhat\u2019s the real difference between skimming an informed political critique on a political junkie Tumblr account and reading a focused tirade on the Washington Post\u2019s blog written by putative experts?\n\nThat same blog post will get reposted on other news sites and the same news article will get reposted on other blogs interchangeably. Content\u2014whether thought-provoking, regurgitated, or analytically superficial, impeccably researched, politically doctrinaire, or grammatically atrocious\u2014now occupies the same cultural space, the same screen space, and the same mental space in the public imagination. After awhile, we just stop keeping track of what\u2019s legitimately good because it takes too much energy to separate the cr\u00e8me from the foam.\n\nAs NPR digitizes itself in the 21st century, buries the \u201cR\u201d in its name, and translates its obsolete podcasts into online news features, every one of its articles now bleeds with its comment section, much of it written by posters who haven\u2019t even read the article in question\u2014essentially erasing the dividing lines between expert, echo chamber, and dilettante, journalist, hack, and self-promoter, reportage, character assassination, and mob frenzy.\n\nOne silver lining is that the technological democratization of social media has effectively deconstructed the one-sided power of the Big Bad Media in general and influential writing in particular, which in theory makes this era freer and more decentralized than ever. One downside to technological democratization is that it hasn\u2019t lead to a thriving marketplace of ideas, but a greater retreat into the Platonic cave of self-identification with the shadow world. We have never needed a safer and quieter place to collect our thoughts from the collective din of couch quarterbacking than we do now, which is why it\u2019s so easy to preemptively categorize the articles we read before we actually read them to save ourselves the heartache and the controversy.\n\nThe abundance of texts in this zeitgeist creates a tunnel effect of amnesia. We now have access to so much information that we actually forget the specific nuances of what we read, where we read them, and who wrote them. We forget what\u2019s available all the time because we live in an age of hyperabundant textuality. Now, when we\u2019re lost, we\u2019re just one click away from the answer. Even the line separating what we know and what we don\u2019t know is blurry.\n\nWe now have access to so much information that we actually forget the specific nuances of what we read, where we read them, and who wrote them.\n\nIt is precisely because we now consume writing from the moment we wake until the moment we crash\u2014most of it mundane, redundant, speculative, badly researched, partisan, and emojian\u2014that we no longer have the same appetite (or time) for literary fiction, serious think pieces, or top-shelf journalism anymore, even though they\u2019re all readily available. If an article on the Daily Dot shows up on page 3 of a Google search, it might as well not exist at all. The New York Times article we half-read on our iPhone while standing up in the Los Angeles Metro ends up blurring with the 500 modified retweets about that same article on Twitter. Authors aren\u2019t privileged anymore because everyone writes commentary somewhere and everyone\u2019s commentary shows up some place. Only the platform and the means of production have changed.\n\nSomeday, the Centers for Disease Control will create a whole new branch of research dedicated to studying the infectious disease of cultural memes. Our continuous consumption of text is intricately linked to our continuous forgetting, our continuous reinfection, and our continuous thumbs up\/thumbs down approach to reality, which is why we keep reading late into the night, looking for the next place to leave a comment someone has already made somewhere. Whether we like it or not, we\u2019re all victims and perpetrators of this commentary fractal. There seems to be no way out except deeper inside the sinkhole or to go cold turkey from the sound of our own voices.\n\nJackson Bliss is a hapa fiction writer and a lecturer in the English department at the University of California, Irvine. He has a BA in comp lit from Oberlin College , a MFA in fiction from the University of Notre Dame, and a MA in English and a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC. His short stories and essays have appeared in many publications.\n\nPhoto via Raysonho\/Wikimedia Commons"} -{"text":"Print Article\n\nFirst-year student Carson Huey-You wants to become a quantum physicist. He scored a 1770 on the SAT, and he was co-valedictorian of his senior class.\n\nThis semester he is taking 14 hours. His class load, which includes calculus and physics, has him moving between Beasley, Bass and Winton-Scott Halls.\n\nHis mother, Claretta Huey-You, is never far away.\n\nThat\u2019s because Carson is 11 years old. He was admitted to TCU when he was 10.\n\nDean of Admission Ray Brown said he cannot recall ever having an applicant so young.\n\nCarson couldn\u2019t even apply online because the software is not set to accept someone born in 2002, Brown said.\n\nDuring his admission interview, Carson\u2019s many talents were impressive. Brown said Carson spoke Mandarin Chinese, and played piano in the Admissions Center.\n\nPrior to Carson, Brown said the youngest student to enroll at the university during his tenure was Sam Hong, who graduated in 2011 at age 17.\n\nCarson\u2019s parents expect him to graduate in four to five years, when he is 15 or 16.\n\nBrown said he is pleased to have Carson at the university.\n\n\u201c[Carson] is at a place that will genuinely care about him as a person,\u201d Brown said.\n\n\u201cA strong ability to focus\u201d\n\nCarson\u2019s mother said the first sign that Carson might be gifted came when he was three months old.\n\nShe said she brought him with her to an eye appointment and the doctor was impressed with Carson\u2019s ability to focus.\n\nIn fact, Carson was reading chapter books at the age of two, before being potty-trained. He started a Kumon math and reading learning program before he was three.\n\nHis mother said he could add, subtract, multiply and divide by age three. He was working at an eighth grade level by the age of five.\n\nIt was at this time Carson\u2019s mother and father began searching for a school for Carson.\n\nHis young age and advanced intellect made finding a school for Carson challenging, she said. He was rejected several times before enrolling at Accommodated Learning Academy in Grapevine, Texas.\n\nALA principal and teacher Melissa McGowan said the school caters to all students no matter what learning style they prefer. The school has 16 teachers and 55 students, and 30 to 40 percent of the students end up graduating early, McGowan said.\n\nCarson graduated from ALA with a 4.0 GPA. He said his cumulative SAT score was 1770 (critical reading: 580, math: 620, writing: 570).\n\nWhen asked about Carson in the classroom, McGowan said, \u201c[Carson] was empathetic for others, and was the kind to help others in a humble way.\u201d\n\nMcGowan said the high school students adored him.\n\nA young Horned Frog\n\nCarson and his parents were keen on selecting a college that was a perfect fit for him.\n\nHe visited the university last fall and met with Dr. Magnus Rittby, the senior dean for the College of Science and Engineering. The purpose of the meeting was to see if he was prepared for college.\n\nBy the time Carson left, Rittby said he considered him to be \u201cextremely gifted\u201d and ready for college.\n\nCarson\u2019s parents said they are supportive of his decision to attend the university.\n\nWhen asked if they were concerned about their son attending the university at such a young age, there was little to be said.\n\nCarson\u2019s father, Andre Huey-You, a former pilot, said he is \u201cnot pushing [Carson], but trying to hold on to his son, so he doesn\u2019t get too far beyond him.\u201d\n\nHis mother Claretta is a stay-at-home mother but plans to return to school and enroll in a nursing program.\n\nCarson is not the family\u2019s only over-achiever, too.\n\nHis brother, Cannan, 7, is studying at the eighth grade level. His parents expect him to graduate from high school by age 13.\n\nCarson\u2019s mother and father describe their childrens\u2019 intelligence as a blessing.\n\nCarson doesn\u2019t want to limit his experiences at the university to the classroom. He is interested in science clubs or foreign language clubs since he is close to mastering Mandarin Chinese.\n\nHe said he taught himself to play the piano using online videos, books and any resources he could find. Now, he has a teacher to help him develop his musical skills. The teacher made a deal with Carson, saying that she would teach him to play the piano if he would teach her son Mandarin Chinese. He is learning \u201cF\u00fcr Elise\u201d by Beethoven.\n\nLife outside the classroom\n\nLike other children his age, Carson hangs out with friends, plays video games and enjoys being active.\n\nHe and Cannan enjoy playing MineCraft, an online video game. They are also Star Wars fans and have watched every movie. Carson said Star Wars Three, Five and Six are his favorite. His favorite Jedi is Master Windu, and his favorite Sith is Darth Maul.\n\nHe said his favorite television show is \u201cMyth Busters.\u201d He said he enjoys the physics aspect of the show and \u201cwhen they blow stuff up.\u201d\n\nCarson, who is still learning to swim, enjoys throwing the football, playing basketball and roughhousing with his brother.\n\nRittby said Carson joked that he wanted to join the TCU basketball team.\n\nCarson said he is \u201cstill trying to find his groove\u201d as he settles into college.\n\nHe said when he arrives home from classes, he grabs a snack and then begins his homework. When he is finished, he helps his brother with his homework. In every class, Carson managed to find a seat in the front.\n\nWhen asked how his first week went, Carson said, \u201cIt was overwhelming but exciting and fun.\u201d\n\nIf he graduates in four years, he will have a diploma in his hands before he even has a driver\u2019s license."} -{"text":"Kuno Wittmer will take part in the new Pirelli World Challenge SprintX Series, with the Canadian driver having been confirmed at Mills Racing.\n\nHe\u2019ll join team owner\/driver Michael Mills at the wheel of the team\u2019s BMW Z4 GT3 in the three-round championship, which kicks off at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park next month.\n\n\u201cI am really looking forward to the inaugural SprintX race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.\u201d Wittmer said.\n\n\u201cRacing in my home country is always as nice thing, especially in front of family, friends, and representing the BMW brand.\u201d\n\nWittmer, a BMW of North America factory driver, is a former IMSA GT Le Mans class champion, and will bring a wealth of experience to the upstart team, which made its debut at Circuit of The Americas last month.\n\nThe Texas-based team, with the support BMW of North America, has shifted its focus entirely to SprintX for the remainder of the year.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m honored to have the opportunity to participate with Kuno for this new series,\u201d Mills said.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true to be included in the BMW family, and we are excited to pursue a championship with Kuno and BMW behind us.\u201d\n\nBMW of North America Motorsports Manager Victor Leleu added: \u201cMichael had a very successful weekend at COTA in the GTA class, showing great pace and quick adaptation to the BMW Z4 GT3.\n\n\u201cThe car is fast and reliable, and Michael and Kuno will form a very strong and complementary pair.\u201d\n\nThe inaugural SprintX weekend takes place at CTMP on May 20-22, with the championship also including stops at Utah Motorsports Campus and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca."} -{"text":"After sticking to their \u201cnever-say-die\u201d attitude on and off the field, the San Francisco Giants have broken the mold for the archetypal play-off team on the club\u2019s way to capturing the greatest victory a team can win for each other and its city, the World Series title.\n\nAnd it\u2019s not the first time in less than a decade we\u2019ve seen this club take it all. Just two seasons ago, the 2010 incarnation of the team shocked the world and showed everyone without a doubt, that pitching beats good hitting.\n\nBut even with the two extraordinary post-season runs the club has now pulled off twice in the last three years, should the Giants be welcomed into the fold of team\u2019s that many would consider a \u201cdynasty\u201d ?\n\nWell, you\u2019d be hard pressed to find anyone in the Bay Area who wouldn\u2019t say yes without hesitation, myself included. But when bringing the term dynasty to the plate, one must stop and consider what a dynasty actually is.\n\nIn baseball\u2019s colorful, storied history, many teams have come together and pulled off amazing feats to capture championship after championship.\n\nFrom the Oakland Athletics (who won the World Series from 1972-1974), to the St. Louis Cardinals and Stan Musial, who, in his twenty-two year career with the club, helped the team win three of St. Louis\u2019 eleven titles in 1942, \u201944, and \u201946.\n\nAnd then of course, there\u2019s the New York Yankees, who sit at the top of the title class with a ridiculous twenty-seven championships. In fact, during Mickey Mantle\u2019s seventeen seasons with New York, the team won seven titles. And if you count the year he was drafted (1949), they won nine titles while he was part of the team. They also hold the MLB record for most World Series championships won in a row, winning consecutively from 1949-1953 (they actually almost did it a first time when they were champions from 1936-1939). And it doesn\u2019t hurt that besides the 1980\u2019s, they are the only team in the MLB to win a title in every decade since the 1920\u2019s, where New York won it all for the first time in 1923.\n\nSo what determines a dynasty?\n\nA dynasty is commonly referred to when speaking of monarchs, handing down the torch of crown from heir to heir. Fathers and sons belonging to the same college fraternity, or even a political family that spans generations.\n\nWell, it\u2019s kind of the same thing in baseball, only the difference is that things are changing all the time. Players rarely stay with the same team for more than a few years, often making it impossible to classify many winning teams as dynasties due to the many moving pieces, and how different one championship team of the same franchise could look different from another even the next year.\n\nThis was half the case for the San Francisco Giants this time around.\n\nIn 2010, the team featured a lights-out pitching staff, bullpen included. The one through five rotation was as such:\n\nTim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Barry Zito, Jonathan Sanchez, and Madison Bumgarner.\n\nPosition players such as:\n\nAubrey Huff, Freddy Sanchez, Edgar Renteria, Juan Uribe, Cody Ross, Nate Schierholtz, and Andres Torres headed the team\u2019s offense, which didn\u2019t turn any heads. But as most are aware, the clutch and timely hitting of these players proved to be just enough to go all the way.\n\nAnd then 2011 came along, a season full of high expectations for San Francisco. Unfortunately, despite keeping most of the team in tact (bye bye Juan Uribe and Edgar Renteria), the offense took a turn for the worse during most of the season. Players like Aubrey Huff, Miguel Tejada, Eli Whiteside, Cody Ross, and Andres Torres just weren\u2019t getting it done.\n\nSo what did the team do? They brought up a couple of minor leaguers, Brandon Belt and Brandon Crawford, a first base-man and short-stop, respectively.\n\nIn addition, they also gave a former organizational pitcher, Ryan Vogelsong, a second chance to pitch with the club, something he hadn\u2019t done since the 2001 season.\n\nThis helped the team stay afloat despite a lack of offense, and the Giants pitching was still as dominant as ever. But with Buster Posey out with season ending injuries, and the heroes of the previous year not stepping up, the teams playoff hopes quickly vanished and finished eight games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West.\n\nFast forward to 2012. With Ryan Vogelsong joining the team for a second consecutive year and replacing Jonathan Sanchez, the revamped rotation looked poised to dominate yet again.\n\nDuring the off-season, the team cleaned house, getting rid of the likes of Aaron Rowand, Cody Ross, Andres Torres, Carlos Beltran, Miguel Tejada, Jeff Keppinger, and Orlando Cabrera. This enabled the club to bring back rookies Belt and Crawford, as well as bring in the highly-anticipated switch-hitting outfielder Melky Cabrera, and speedy center-fielder Angel Pagan.\n\nAlso joining the squad was outfielder Gregor Blanco and infielder Joaquin Arias, with Hector Sanchez re-joining the club to back-up a healed Buster Posey behind the plate.\n\nAnd it didn\u2019t stop there. Brian Sabean surprised the critics and fans alike when at the July trade deadline, he traded Nate Schierholtz to the Philadelphia Phillies for fellow outfielder Hunter Pence, finally tossing his aging-vet recruitment philosophy to the side.\n\nWhat did this teach us?\n\nIt shows that the team might be headed in a different, more promising direction, as bringing in talented, young, fast players with high ceilings is definitely a turn-around from what we\u2019ve seen of this clubs players during the last decade or so.\n\nNot everyone on the team is a youngster, and shouldn\u2019t be, as having veteran leadership on a club is always important. And the club absolutely had it this year. One of the best, possibly THE best, pickups of the season, saw second base-man Marco Scutaro join the ranks of the Giants, a move most thought nothing more than a typical acquisition for Sabean. How wrong they were.\n\nThey also brought in veteran Ryan Theriot, who had just won the World Series with St. Louis the previous season.\n\nIn 2012, the Giants looked very different when comparing them to their 2010 incarnation. Most of the pitching looked exactly the same, with some tweaks here and there, but it was their offense that had changed drastically, and for the better. Instead of holding on to aging vets, the team opted to go for youth and speed.\n\nThis didn\u2019t mean they got rid of everyone, of course. Returning at third base to prove himself once again, Pablo Sandoval manned the corner in-field position with stunning range, despite his size. Buster Posey put together one of the most impressive seasons a young player has ever had. And of course, you had pitchers Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Madison Bumgarner, all of whom (besides Sandoval in 2010) played key roles in the teams 2010 and 2012 post-season runs. These five players (but not limited too) are this teams cornerstones, and when you add in a budding super-star first-baseman (Brandon Belt) with the potential to be a perennial home-run king, along with the short-stop of the Giants future in Brandon Crawford, the word dynasty definitely starts sounding more and more realistic.\n\nSo maybe you don\u2019t have to have the same players on the team year in and year out to be considered a dynasty. What the Giants are doing \u2013 I think, supports the idea of what a \u201cdynasty\u201d should be in baseball.\n\nIt\u2019s not about buying the biggest, baddest, most expensive free agents, or having the biggest payroll in all the land.\n\nIt\u2019s about developing young players. Playing as a team. Doing your research, and not always going along with what everyone else is doing. It helps when your city is also one with a rich history in the game, and featured many of the greats like Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Barry Bonds, and Gaylord Perry.\n\nSan Francisco\u2019s style is anything but traditional, and has proven they can get things done. Two World Series championships in a span of three years is pretty good, and both under manager of the year finalist Bruce Bochy, who has been a integral part to this teams recent success. But when you add in the fact that the franchise had not seen a title since 1954, it makes things a little clearer when realizing just what this team is doing.\n\nBesides, they are tied for the fourth most World Series titles in major league history (7), and that sounds pretty good to me."} -{"text":"Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate and former secretary of state, will deliver a major speech on economic policy on Monday, laying out in more detail her diagnosis of went wrong with the economy and, in broad strokes, how she will approach fixing it, the campaign says.\n\nShe will make clear, according to a campaign official, that she doesn't believe wage stagnation and growing inequality are simply facts that we have to live with, caused by trends outside our control. Rather, she will say that the U.S. has the power to change these patterns if we make the right policy choices.\n\nHere are seven ways to understand why Clinton is making the case.\n\n(1) Clinton's top goal is raising median incomes\n\nAccording to a campaign official, Clinton will make clear she believes that raising incomes for average Americans is the top priority. To understand why that's become a big issue for politicians of all stripes, one doesn't need to look farther than this chart of real median income over the past 40 years. Wages have been going through a prolonged period of stagnation and decline.\n\nA related phenomenon to stagnating wages has been growing inequality. The two trends are not the same--in the 1990s, the gap between the rich and poor widened even as average workers saw pay rise.\n\n(2) She believes policy can help raise worker pay and reduce inequality\n\nThe two biggest reasons usually cited for wage stagnation and growing inequality are technology, which makes lower-skill work (like working on a factory floor or clerical duties) less valuable, and globalization, which can boost corporate bottom lines but provide less opportunity for many American workers. No doubt, these are powerful factors.\n\nBut another way to look at wage stagnation and inequality is through the prism of the financial return to work itself -- as opposed to the return on investments like stocks and bonds. And it has been declining. So shareholders and top executives, compensated in stock, may be more likely to enjoy the fruits of economic activity than average workers. Left-leaning economists like to point out, however, that this phenomenon largely reflects not just global patterns but also national choices, such as wage and labor standards and tax policies -- a view Clinton will endorse.\n\n(3) In particular, she is looking to boost women's pay\n\nClinton is going to talk about how we need to do better to help women and families in the economy. Many women take time away from the workplace to raise their children, or they stop working entirely. As a result, they lose opportunities to develop their skills and professional connections. That could be one reason that while younger men and women earn similar amounts, women in middle age and older earn substantially less.\n\n(4) And Clinton is looking to make sure more women are in the workforce\n\nClinton will call for paid leave policies to help women work while raising families. That might help raising the number of women in the labor force, which has flatlined after years of growth. How much such a policy will to close pay disparities between men and women isn't as clear. Countries with more generous parental leave polices tend to have even larger pay gaps.\n\n(5) Clinton believes the federal minimum wage should be lifted\n\nClinton will call for raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour. The chart below shows how the the minimum has changed over time, taking into account increases in prices. It's important to note that many states have already raised the minimum wage over the past few years, without federal action.\n\nA White House report showed the declining value of the minimum wage after adjusting for inflation.\n\n(6) And she believes tax policy changes that favor the wealthy are misguided\n\nClinton is expected to chide Republican presidential candidates for continuing to espouse a GOP philosophy of tax cuts that benefit the wealthy under the theory that that will trickle down to the middle class. Effective tax rates have fallen across all income groups since the 1990s, but especially for the wealthiest Americans. Tax hikes at the end of 2013 and as part of the Affordable Care Act pushed rates back up, though not nearly close to their historic highs.\n\n(7) She also wants to make corporations, particularly on Wall Street, more focused on long-term returns\n\nThe former New York senator is expected to say that our economy is too often driven by hope of a quick profit rather than more enduring and sustainable growth at benefits more people -- and she'll say this is especially a problem on Wall Street. She'll also underscore the need for more investment in things like infrastructure and research and development.\n\nAs this chart from Robin Greenwood and David Scharfstein of Harvard Business School shows, Wall Street and other financial components of the economy have dramatically grown as a percentage of total economic output.\n\nThis partly reflects how the stock market has changed. It was once a place where companies regularly went when they wanted to take on some project in order to get new money from banks and investors. Now, it's become a place where firms distribute their earnings to their owners, instead of taking money in, as the economist J.W. Mason has shown."} -{"text":"For a video that was created to fail, \u201cWhat does the Fox say?\u201d has been incredibly successful, totaling more than 120 million views \u2026 but that wasn\u2019t Ylvis\u2019 intent. They swear.\n\nBrothers Vegard and B\u00e5rd Ylvis\u00e5ker are hosts of Tonight with Ylvis, a late-night talk show in Norway. And when it came time to prepare a promo for their new season, they called on a favor they had with some guys over at Stargate, a Norwegian production company that has produced hits such as Rihanna\u2019s \u201cDiamonds.\u201d After Ylvis helped one of the guys at Stargate prepare a birthday gift, the company had promised to produce something for the comedy duo in return, and now the guys were ready to cash in their I.O.U.\n\n\u201cAs comedians, it wouldn\u2019t be a good thing if we went to pursue a hit in the States because they could potentially make something that became big, so we thought it would be more fun from a comedian perspective to come home to the talk show and say, \u2018Listen we had the chance, we could\u2019ve made it big, but the only idea we got for the song was this old idea about what the fox says so we\u2019re sorry. We screwed up.\u2019 That was the plan,\u201d B\u00e5rd said. \u201cThat would\u2019ve been funny to say on the talk show.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe had started writing the scripts for the show and we even had the introduction to this video, we wrote that as this \u2018We\u2019re sorry, we screwed up, this was all we could do,'\u201d Vegard added. So what happened when the video took off and actually became the brothers\u2019 biggest hit? \u201cWe had to rewrite the whole thing.\u201d\n\nSo let\u2019s back up: When the brothers were brainstorming ideas for possible promos, what made them think about the sounds a fox makes? \u201cIt all comes out of a genuine wonder about what kind of sounds it makes,\u201d Vegard said. \u201cFor all other known or normal animal species, you have this defined word that they say that is their sound like woof or meow or squeak. The first verse is telling this to the world in a very pretentious way: \u2018The mouse goes squeak and the cow goes moo.'\u201d\n\n\u201cIt started with us making sounds \u2013 we had other mammals as well \u2013 but we ended up thinking \u2018it would be fun with a fox,'\u201d B\u00e5rd added.\n\nSo after two days in the vocal studio and a bit of a mishap with the costumes \u2014 the brothers joke about wearing a bear and a squirrel costume in the video \u2014 they had created the video that would eventually land them on U.S. talk shows and in The New York Times. If only the duo had gone with their original idea \u2026\n\n\u201cFirst we had an idea about why every weekend there\u2019s three billion guys in the entire world that dread the fact that they have to go to a club and they have to dance and no one can actually dance. There\u2019s not one move. There used to be like cha cha cha and now it\u2019s just chaos. That was their original idea and that felt [like it was] searching for a hit,\u201d B\u00e5rd said. \u201cBut [Stargate was] pitched this idea, so that\u2019s why they gave us the songs. And I called one of the guys. I said, \u2018The whole thing changed a bit and now we want to make a song about what sound the fox makes.\u2019 I explained that it will be funny for us if we go over and misuse your talent \u2013 that will be funny for our show.\u201d Luckily, Stargate was in.\n\nIt\u2019s also worth mentioning that this wasn\u2019t Ylvis\u2019 first music video. In fact, musical comedy is something they consider to be very near to their hearts. The brothers, who grew up in Africa, found their love of music and comedy at a young age. \u201cWe grew up with the Life of Brian from Monty Python. We grew up in Africa and we didn\u2019t bring enough videos, so we only had that. We had two. We had that and a Norwegian variety guy. So we developed humor that was a mix between those two,\u201d Vegard said.\n\nAlthough they have no vocal training between them, singing is something they\u2019ve been doing for years. \u201cOur parents were always really fond of music and they encouraged us to do whatever we wanted to do. We went to choir and stuff when we were kids,\u201d B\u00e5rd said.\n\n\u201cWe sang continuously. We made small music things in our room. But it was always with a comic context. We always hide behind that. We\u2019re too much of cowards to actually mean something,\u201d Vegard said.\n\nOther things you might not know about the comedians: Vegard is a commercial pilot, or he could be if anyone hired him, and Bard enjoys having no education whatsoever and gardening. They\u2019re also big Tenacious D fans. But most importantly, the success of this video does not mean that fame is now their priority.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re not chasing the next hit. We\u2019re just making stuff that we think is funny. Some will get like 100,000 views and some obviously got 100 million, but it\u2019s the same recipe,\u201d B\u00e5rd said. \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be three minutes for a Norwegian talk show and this one traveled. Maybe we\u2019ll make another song with them maybe not. It\u2019s just a month old, this song.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ll see when it reaches a billion,\u201d Vegard joked.\n\nWatch one of the guys\u2019 improvised bits, \u201cThe Intelevator,\u201d below:\n\nAnd here\u2019s another one of their music videos, about Stonehenge no less:\n\nWill you continue to follow Ylvis\u2019 comedy, PopWatchers?"} -{"text":"Hannah Bonser, who stabbed a 13-year-old to death in Doncaster, is reportedly living as a man named Adam at HMP Low Newton\n\nA female child killer is living as a man at a women's prison, where the murderer has been boasting about an upcoming sex-change operation on the NHS.\n\nHannah Bonser, who stabbed 13-year-old Casey Kearney to death, has changed her name to Adam while serving time at HMP Low Newton in County Durham.\n\nSources say the 31-year-old's gender switch has angered fellow inmates on the high-security F Wing.\n\nGuards now address the wing's prisoners as 'ladies and gentleman' instead of just 'ladies', according to a former inmate who said: 'It's put an end to the call of, \"Cells, ladies, please\".\n\n'Hannah now insists they use \"ladies and gentleman\".\n\n'Hannah's not physically a man yet, but is on her way. She has asked to be called Adam and changed her name with officials. She says she is going the whole hog.'\n\nThe move has led to accusations of preferential treatment at the prison, where serial killer Rose West and Baby P's mother, Tracey Connelly, are also serving time.\n\nCasey Kearney was stabbed to death when she was aged just 13 by Hannah Bonser, who is reportedly living as a man in prison\n\nBonser was locked up in 2012 after stabbing her teenage victim as she made her way to a sleepover on Valentine's Day.\n\nShe was jailed for life and will serve a minimum of 22 years after her victim died from a single stab wound after the attack in Elmfield Park, Doncaster. The teenager managed to call 999 before she died.\n\nBonser, who had a history of mental health problems, had repeatedly informed medics that she thought herself to be dangerous.\n\nBonser is serving a 22-year sentence after she murdered a 13-year-old child by stabbing her to death while she was walking to a sleepover\n\nJust one month before she murdered Casey, Bonser told professionals that she was worried she would kill and said her fear caused her to stay away from people on the street.\n\nBonser first became known to social services when she was just nine years old after the death of her morbidly obese Mormon mother. She was then referred to 16 psychiatrists and 20 mental health workers.\n\nThe future killer was hearing voices and speaking to rocks by the time she was 17, developing an obsession with druids and a belief birds were people coming to get her.\n\nA Prison Service spokesperson said: 'We do not comment on individuals.'"} -{"text":"Some of Donald Trump\u2019s most passionate GOP detractors \u2014 including Sens. Lindsey Graham, left, and Ben Sasse \u2014 are now taking a more optimistic tone. (Charles Ommanney\/The Washington Post; Bill Clark\/CQ Roll Call via AP)\n\nTen months ago, Doug Heye was one of the Beltway Republicans doing their best to warn the party against getting into bed with Donald Trump \u2014 a man, he wrote in an op-ed, who would \u201ccause greater instability throughout the world at a time when the world looks to America for leadership.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe emperor doesn\u2019t have any clothes,\u201d the veteran Capitol Hill spokesman later declared on MSNBC. \u201cThere\u2019s no part of a Trump candidacy that I don\u2019t see as being a disaster for Republicans.\u201d\n\nAnd now?\n\n\u201cWell, there actually have been a number of positive signs,\u201d Heye said in a phone interview just days after Trump\u2019s surprise victory. There was that gracious acceptance speech, Heye noted. Plus, that seemingly stable meeting with President Obama. And \u201cthe fact that they took down the Muslim ban from the website was heartening to me,\u201d he added.\n\nUh, Doug. You know, the Trump team put that proposal right back up on its site hours later.\n\n\u201cOh, I didn\u2019t realize that,\u201d Heye said. \u201cBut the fact that it even got deleted is heartening to me.\u201d\n\nIf establishment Republicans are going through the stages of grief, it appears they\u2019ve reached the bargaining stage. All over town, erstwhile critics \u2014 who once described Trump as a betrayer of conservative values and an agent of chaos \u2014 are now, at least publicly, grasping for signs that maybe he won\u2019t be so bad after all.\n\nPerhaps, they say, conservatives will finally get some quality judges on the Supreme Court? Maybe Trump will focus more on unraveling Obamacare than on deporting 11 million people living in this country illegally or registering Muslims into a database? Maybe now that he\u2019s president, they say, Trump will finally pivot to acting presidential?\n\nSo many tea leaves floating around this week. You can just pick and choose the ones you like.\n\n[Obama in state of denial as Democrats work through the stages of grief]\n\nThat seems to be the new approach of Sen. Lindsey Graham \u2014 one of Trump\u2019s fiercest Republican critics during the campaign. When Trump announced Sunday that Steve Bannon, the former chief executive of the website Breitbart \u2014 a favorite periodical of white supremacists, known for taking aim at blacks, women, Muslims and Jews \u2014 would serve as his chief White House strategist, the senator from South Carolina responded only to the other half of the day\u2019s news:\n\n\u201cCongrats to @realDonaldTrump for outstanding choice of @Reince [Priebus] to be Chief of Staff,\u201d tweeted Graham, about the appointment of the Republican National Committee chair. \u201cThis shows me he is serious about governing.\u201d\n\nWishful thinking has become our new national pastime, and because no one really knows what a Trump presidency will look like, it\u2019s possible for everyone to hold out hope.\n\nElected Democrats are looking to the possibility of an infrastructure bill as a silver lining, while liberal commentators such as Nicholas Kristof ask readers to \u201cgive President-elect Trump a chance.\u201d\n\nSen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), the capital\u2019s most enduring GOP Never Trumper, is crossing his fingers that the president might work at \u201cending cronyism.\u201d Super-lobbyist Trent Lott, the former Senate majority leader, has offered up his swamp-draining services.\n\n[As GOP\u2019s anti-Trump, Sasse picked a big fight. What would it mean to win?]\n\n\u201cThis past week has reinforced that a President-elect Trump has the capacity to rise above the campaign mudslinging,\u201d said Lott\u2019s former spokesman, Ron Bonjean, now a PR strategist who does not count himself as a \u201cskeptical\u201d Republican. \u201cI\u2019ve always believed that if he can bring in a team around him of solid people and get away from the late-night Twitter accounts, this could be okay.\u201d\n\nAs it happened, Bonjean uttered these optimistic thoughts to a reporter after Trump issued a tweet blaming post-election demonstrations on \u201cprofessional protesters\u201d supposedly incited by the media but before his most recent Twitter rant about how the New York Times is supposedly failing. (It\u2019s doing quite well, actually.)\n\nErick Erickson, a conservative pundit who served as an outspoken critic of Trump from the right, is pushing back against what he sees as a lot of \u201ccrying wolf\u201d about the president-elect. So he says he\u2019s giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. Even about controversial decisions such as hiring Bannon.\n\n\u201cIf Obama got [Valerie] Jarrett, Trump can have Bannon,\u201d he wrote for the Resurgent. \u201cAnd when the alt-right goes marching through Washington or people start trying to round up Jews because of it, then we can raise the issue and provide shelter to those in need. But there is no guarantee that will happen.\u201d\n\n(\u201cNo guarantee.\u201d Whew.)\n\nHeye maintained that he doesn\u2019t see his role or his stance changing all that much from before the election: If Trump does something good, he\u2019ll compliment him for it, he said. If Trump reverts to his campaign behavior, he\u2019ll call him out.\n\n\u201cI never really called myself a Never Trump person,\u201d he said. \u201cI just said I\u2019m not voting for the guy.\u201d\n\nSomehow, though, amid the rubble, a dwindling number of unwavering Trump skeptics on the right still live and breathe.\n\n\u201cWinning the election doesn\u2019t change my opinion about him,\u201d said Ben Howe, an editor at the conservative website RedState. \u201cI\u2019ve said from the beginning that he is a sociopath, that he is unstable and dangerous, that his views on nuclear proliferation are dangerous and that he will put people in positions to influence him that are dangerous. So far, he hasn\u2019t done anything to convince me otherwise.\u201d\n\nHowe said he\u2019s not surprised that so many people have traded in their skepticism for optimism. He realizes that some people believe it is their patriotic duty to show their support for the president and that others are just so tired of the chaos of the campaign that they are desperate to make things seem normal again.\n\nAnd he understands that some critics believe they owe the unpredictable businessman the benefit of the doubt. He just doesn\u2019t see it that way.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a lot of pretending like this is an innocent-until-proven-guilty type of situation,\u201d Howe said. \u201cThe problem is, the campaign was the trial. I\u2019ve seen the evidence, and I\u2019ve made a decision based on that.\u201d\n\nThere is, however, one possibility that Howe won\u2019t rule out.\n\n\u201cThe only thing I\u2019m open to now is that I could be wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m fine being wrong. Being wrong would be great.\u201d"} -{"text":"BAFTA Awards to Feature Plant-Based Menu\n\nLike us on Facebook:\n\nThe current article you are reading does not reflect the views of the current editors and contributors of the new Ecorazzi\n\nVegan celebrities and filmmakers can rejoice; at least those attending this year\u2019s BAFTA awards in London.\n\nThe British Academy of Film and Television Arts has announced that their annual star-studded event will feature a plant-based menu for those opting out of meat and dairy. While dessert options have yet to be disclosed, entrees include \u201cquinoa salad with radishes, broad beans, asparagus, peas and a lemon and olive oil dressing,\u201d as well as a \u201croasted butternut squash and sun-blushed tomato lasagne with wilted spinach, roasted pepper and sage\u201d.\n\nPETA quickly lauded the decision. Director Mimi Bekhechi said in a statement, \u201cinterest in vegan eating is skyrocketing in the UK and beyond. With some of the world\u2019s best chefs, including Jamie Oliver and Wolfgang Puck, getting creative with cruelty-free cooking, we\u2019re sure that guests attending the BAFTAs are in for a treat.\u201d\n\nOf course, the lavish event is not exclusively plant-based. The dinner, which began preparations back in September with a team of 25 chefs, includes roughly one tonne of beef (it\u2019s a trio-of-beef main course)and variety of seafood. It also features some 2000 bottles of wine and 8,220 glasses of champagne for the nearly 2,000 guest.\n\nThere are also a pair of vegetarian course, though they contain dairy. The starter is\n\nsmoked cheese arancini, celeriac and Granny Smith apple salad, port wine glaze, walnut oil dressing; while the main features roast sweet potato, red onion and Taleggio tart, smoked garlic and chive butter sauce, gratin Dauphinoise, green beans and baby carrots.\n\nStill, serving plant-based options is a step in the right direction. Your move, Oscars.\n\nThe BAFTAs take place February 8 at Grovesnor House Hotel in London.\n\nVia The Daily Mail, Marie Claire UK"} -{"text":"...about a year ago I noticed what would be a lump in my teet, and I have been just thinking of course that it's nothing ... a week or two ago I went in [to the doctor] to get my first mammogram. I'm 41, I guess I should have started last year. So I went in and got the mammogram and the results were abnormal ... go in for a follow-up, and I was told the follow-up would take 30 or 45 minutes at most, and yesterday I spent the entire day in the hospital while they ran numerous tests ... the doctor came in and she was clearly a highly intelligent, kind but very concerned person ... and when I was going through the tests all day yesterday ... part of me thought ... there was a misunderstanding... based on already being hospitalized with a deadly illness and my mother dying, there was just no way they were going to come in and tell me anything but, \"Ok, everything looks great!\" ... And the doctor came in and her tone was very scary ... she said \"Ok, so, we have found something in both breasts,\" ... after all the explanation I said, \"Wait a minute, are you telling me that I possibly have cancer,\" and she said, \"Well, we have to get biopsies done but from what I can see with all the testing we've done today it is very probable that you do in both breasts, yes.\""} -{"text":"This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.\n\nAMY GOODMAN:\n\nIn one of his first acts as president last week, Barack Obama signed an executive order setting new rules on the role former lobbyists can play in his administration.\n\nPRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As of today, lobbyists will be subject to stricter limits than under any other administration in history. If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years. When you leave government, you will not be able to lobby my administration for as long as I am president.\n\nAMY GOODMAN:\n\nDespite President Obama\u2019s pledge, several former lobbyists are set to play key roles in the new administration. Obama has nominated Raytheon\u2019s former top lobbyist, William Lynn, to serve as Deputy Secretary of Defense. Lynn was a registered lobbyist for the defense contractor until July. Several watchdog groups, including Public Citizen and Project on Government and Oversight, have urged the Senate Committee on Armed Services to reject Lynn\u2019s nomination because of his ties to Raytheon.\n\nPresident Obama has granted a waiver to Lynn, as well as to William Corr, who has been nominated to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Until recently, Corr was a registered lobbyist for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.\n\nAt the Treasury Department, Secretary Timothy Geithner has hired former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson to be his chief of staff. Patterson was a registered lobbyist until April.\n\nThe National Journal is reporting fourteen of the 112 White House staffers that Obama has named had been registered as lobbyists at some point since 2005. The list includes Obama\u2019s senior adviser David Axelrod and Homeland Security adviser John Brennan.\n\nWe\u2019re joined now in Washington by Bara Vaida. She is a reporter covering the lobbying industry for National Journal. Her article, \u201cFormer Lobbyists Join Obama,\u201d appears in this week\u2019s issue.\n\nLay it out for us, Bara Vaida.\n\nBARA VAIDA:\n\nHi, Amy. Thanks for having me.\n\nAs Obama said, these are the most sweeping restrictions on lobbying behavior that\u2019s ever been implemented by a president, so it\u2019s important to remember that. I think what this shows is that there are \u2014 the lobbying industry is just a very big part of the culture of Washington and that there are a lot of people who have worked on policy that end up lobbying from time to time. And there\u2019s such a mix between lobbying and policy that it shows how difficult it is to draw a very bright line between lobbying and policy. Lobbyists, you have to remember, do have a lot of expertise. They have a lot of information. They do play an important role in how policy is developed. So that\u2019s, you know, an important sort of thing to remember when we talk about lobbying.\n\nObama did campaign on a pledge that he would limit the role of lobbyists in his White House. And as I noted, there are fourteen \u2014 or thirteen people, actually, who have had lobbying in their background who are now White House staff, and there\u2019s probably more at this point. But there\u2019s hundreds of positions already that he has named. So he is \u2014 he can say that he\u2019s limited so far the role of lobbyists. But it\u2019s important to pay attention to how many of these folks have had lobbying in their background and keep track of it to make sure he keeps with his pledge, you know, not to have lobbyists dominating his White House, as opposed to what we saw with the previous administration.\n\nAMY GOODMAN:\n\nWhat about Raytheon\u2019s former top lobbyist, William Lynn, serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense?\n\nBARA VAIDA:\n\nYes, I mean, that has certainly caused a lot of heartburn in the watchdog community. They\u2019re very concerned about that. They don\u2019t see how it\u2019s any way possible that Mr. Lynn can do his job without doing something that\u2019s going to have some kind of impact on the bottom line at Raytheon. And that\u2019s what they\u2019re greatly concerned about.\n\nAnd that was what happened in the Bush administration. You have to remember, a lot of these rules that Obama has implemented are a reaction to what happened during the Bush years. What we saw happen in the Interior Department, Steven Griles got embroiled in something with a former lobbyist named Jack Abramoff, who\u2019s now in jail, and that he had gotten people in the Interior Department to, you know, trade on favors for him, for his clients. And that\u2019s what this is aimed at.\n\nMr. Lynn has sent a letter, apparently, to the Hill this week, trying to lay out that whatever he does that may have some effect on Raytheon, he will run it by the general counsel\u2019s office before he does anything. And McCain and some \u2014 I think Senator Grassley, as well, have both said, \u201cYou know, that\u2019s just too vague. We want somebody more specific.\u201d\n\nAMY GOODMAN:\n\nWhite House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was questioned Wednesday about the role lobbyists will have in the new administration.\n\nREPORTER: Is the President bothered at all that Secretary Geithner has picked as his chief of staff a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, who has obviously \u2014 that company has benefited from government bailouts. Doesn\u2019t that punch a hole in what the President signed just last week in terms of preventing lobbyists like that from serving in his administration?\n\nROBERT GIBBS: No, the President \u2014 well, again, let\u2019s step back and talk about the broader issue of ethics and transparency in this administration. As I said from this podium, and as you all read in papers throughout the country, that the ethics and transparency executive orders that the President signed the first day institute a policy that covers this administration, unlike any policy we\u2019ve seen in any previous administration in the history of our country.\n\nREPORTER: But if it\u2019s a strong \u2014 even if it\u2019s a strong policy, does it mean anything if people are getting waivers to go around it?\n\nROBERT GIBBS: Those very same people that labeled that policy the strongest of any administration in history also said they thought it made sense for a limited number of waivers to ensure that people can continue to serve the public.\n\nAMY GOODMAN:\n\nAnd that was Robert Gibbs, the new press secretary. Bara Vaida, what about Treasury Department Secretary Tim Geithner hiring former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson to be his chief of staff? Patterson, a registered lobbyist until April.\n\nBARA VAIDA:\n\nAgain, I mean, it\u2019s a good question. I mean, Patterson was lobbying up until about March of 2008, and there is definitely a question: how can he do his job without doing something that may have an impact on Goldman Sachs? It\u2019s almost impossible. So I think it\u2019s totally fair to raise these questions.\n\nAnd I think the administration is going to keep getting hit with these questions until they explain how they\u2019re deciding how they\u2019re implementing these waivers. They haven\u2019t explained that, what their standard is. I have asked them that. They don\u2019t want to answer it. You heard the response. That\u2019s the response we tend to get, which is, \u201cWe\u2019ve said we\u2019ll do a few waivers in the cases where we think there\u2019s unique experience of this person and that a waiver should be granted.\u201d I guess, you know, people will be watching this very carefully, and people will have to decide: are the exceptions OK or not? I think the administration really needs to explain what standard they\u2019re using, and that is not clear.\n\nAMY GOODMAN:\n\nBara Vaida, I want to thank you very much for being with us, reporter covering the lobbying industry for National Journal."} -{"text":"Vincent Kessler\/Reuters French apiarist Andre Frieh holds a sample of normal honey (right) besides a blue colored one (left) at his home in Ribeauville near Colmar, Eastern France, October 5, 2012.\n\nMars Incorporated has proclaimed that \u201cChocolate is better in color\u201d with its M&Ms. But French beekeepers may beg to differ on that.\n\nSince August, beekeepers near the town of Ribeauville, in the northeastern region of Alsace, have been reporting their bees are producing blue and green honey, according to Reuters. And they\u2019ve traced the cause back to a biogas plant that processes waste from an M&Ms factory.\n\n(PHOTOS: Bee Beard Contest in China)\n\nBees are apparently picking up vibrantly colored, sugary waste from the plant, operated by the company Agrivalor some 2.5 miles away from their apiaries. A statement from Agrivalor that appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde said the company would clean its containers and store waste in airtight containers to prevent bees from reaching it.\n\n\u201cWe quickly put in place a procedure to stop it,\u201d Philippe Meinrad, co-manager of Agrivalor, told Reuters.\n\nFrance generates 18,330 tons of honey per year, making it one of the largest honey producers in the European Union. In Alsace alone, about 2,400 beekeepers manage 35,000 colonies, which produce about 1,000 tons of the stuff per year. However, France hasn\u2019t been spared by the largely unexplained decrease in the world bee population in recent years, Reuters reported.\n\nGill Maclean, a spokesperson for the British Beekeepers\u2019 Association, told the BBC that the harsh winter of 2011-2012 may have affected bees\u2019 ability to forage. This could be a reason why the bees sought out the alternate sugar.\n\n\u201cBees are clever enough to know where the best sources of sugar are, if there are no others available,\u201d Maclean told the BBC.\n\nRest assured: Consumers won\u2019t see blue honey on store shelves anytime soon. Alain Frieh, president of the apiculturists\u2019 union, told Reuters the only similarity between regular honey and their bees\u2019 M&M-tainted byproducts might be taste.\n\n\u201cFor me, it\u2019s not honey,\u201d Frieh told Reuters. \u201cIt\u2019s not sellable.\u201d\n\nWATCH: Do City Bees Make Healthier Honey?\n\nSEE ALSO: The Big Surprise of Martin Luther King\u2019s Speech"} -{"text":"Scatec Solar ASA, an integrated independent solar power producer, has entered into financing agreements totalling USD 157 million for construction of a 104 MW(dc) Red Hills solar power plant in Utah. When complete, the Red Hills solar project will be Scatec Solar\u2019s largest developed and constructed project in North America.\n\nTotal investment for the plant is estimated at USD 188 million\u2014with Google providing tax equity, Prudential Capital Group providing debt financing, and Scatec Solar providing sponsor equity. The power plant will be wholly-owned by a partnership jointly owned by Google and Scatec Solar, which structured and executed the financing for the project. Scatec Solar will manage and operate the plant when it goes into operation.\n\nGoogle has signed agreements to fund over $1.5 billion in renewable energy investments across three continents with a total planned capacity of more than 2.5 GW (gigawatts).This agreement represents the 18th renewable energy investment project for Google and supports its continued push towards a clean, low carbon energy future.\n\nPrudential Capital Group, a Prudential Financial asset management business, provided term financing for the project.\n\nThe Utah Red Hills Renewable Energy Park, set to be built on a site with excellent solar irradiation, will generate around 210 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year, which will be fed into the grid under a twenty-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with PacifiCorp\u2019s Rocky Mountain Power, according to the utility\u2019s obligation under the federal Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act. When operational by the end of 2015, the plant will be Utah\u2019s largest solar energy generation facility, generating enough energy to power approximately 18,500 homes annually. Based on US Environmental Protection Agency estimates, it will produce enough renewable power to prevent nearly 145 thousand tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually\u2014the equivalent to not burning 156 million pounds of coal each year.\n\nThe ground-mounted photovoltaic solar facility is being developed on approximately 650 acres of privately-owned land in Parowan, Utah, will deploy approximately 325,000 PV modules on a single-axis tracking system and will interconnect to an existing transmission line.\n\nScatec Solar is an integrated independent power producer, aiming to make solar a sustainable and affordable source of energy worldwide. Scatec Solar develops, builds, owns and operates solar power plants, and will in 2014 deliver power from 220 MW in the Czech Republic, South Africa and Rwanda. The company is in strong growth and has a solid pipeline of projects under development in Africa, US, Asia, Middle East and Europe. Scatec Solar is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol \u2018SSO\u2019."} -{"text":"One year since the military coup in Egypt\n\n5 July 2014\n\nThis week marks the first anniversary of the US-backed military coup that brought the junta of now president and de facto dictator General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to power.\n\nIn launching the coup, the army sought to pre-empt a mass movement that had developed against Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Mursi. The class struggle exploded in the first half of 2013, as workers mounted over 5,544 strikes and social protests against Mursi\u2019s government. When protests were called in late June, tens of millions of workers went onto the streets to express their anger at Mursi\u2019s free-market policies and his support for Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza and the US-led proxy war in Syria.\n\nWhile the protests showed the immense power of the working class, their outcome revealed the essential problem of the Egyptian revolution: the chasm between the elemental anger of the Egyptian population and the absence of political leadership.\n\nIn the absence of a revolutionary party fighting to rally the working class in a struggle to take power on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program, the forces that emerged in control of the movement, primarily the Tamarod (\u201cRebel\u201d) movement, worked to channel popular opposition behind the army.\n\nWhen al-Sisi launched a coup and deposed Mursi in close coordination with the American military and the Obama administration, liberal youth activists and pseudo-left political forces operating in and around Tamarod hailed it as a \u201csecond revolution.\u201d Sameh Naguib, a leader of the pseudo-left Revolutionary Socialists (RS), enthused: \u201cThis is not the end of democracy, nor a simple military coup ... People feel empowered and entitled by the events of the last few days.\u201d\n\nIn contrast, the day after the coup, the World Socialist Web Site warned the working class of the reactionary role the military would play. We wrote, \u201cThe army will seek to enforce the policies demanded by finance capital. In the final analysis, the conflict between the military on the one hand and the ousted Muslim Brotherhood on the other is a fight between conflicted factions of the ruling class. The main target of the repression that the military is preparing will be the working class. The stage has been set for the denunciation of further protest actions by the working class as harmful to the \u2018national interest\u2019 and illegitimate.\u201d\n\nThis warning has been dramatically confirmed over the past year. After taking power, the al-Sisi junta unleashed a reign of terror against its political opponents, seeking to restore the military-police state as it existed under Hosni Mubarak, before the Egyptian revolution began in 2011.\n\nThe military government violently dispersed protests and strikes, shooting thousands in cold blood in the streets of Egypt\u2019s cities. It banned Mursi\u2019s Muslim Brotherhood and sentenced over 2,000 of its members and supporters to death. According to recent figures from the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, 41,163 people were jailed between the coup and May 15 of this year.\n\nThe year following the coup was without question a major setback for the Egyptian revolution. Yet it is not over. From the beginning, the Egyptian revolution has been driven by deep objective processes: the impoverishment and exploitation of the working class internationally, and the escalating crisis of imperialism in the Middle East. A new stage of the revolution will begin, and the key task is to draw the necessary political lessons to prepare for it.\n\nThe al-Sisi coup was the culmination of three-and-a-half years of bitter revolutionary struggles that have confirmed Trotsky\u2019s Theory of Permanent Revolution. None of Egypt\u2019s bourgeois factions\u2014the army, the Muslim Brotherhood, or the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left groups that oscillated between them\u2014had any progressive perspective to solve the democratic and social demands of the masses.\n\nThe task of building a truly democratic society freed from poverty and imperialist oppression, the Theory of Permanent Revolution explains, falls to the working class in a struggle for world socialist revolution. It was on the basis of this perspective that the WSWS opposed the al-Sisi coup.\n\nThe WSWS consistently defended this position from the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, explaining on the day before the working class toppled Mubarak: \u201cThe revolutionary Marxists must counsel workers against all illusions that their democratic aspirations can be achieved under the aegis of bourgeois parties. They must expose ruthlessly the false promises of the political representatives of the capitalist class. They must encourage the creation of independent organs of workers\u2019 power which can become, as the class struggle intensifies, the basis for the transfer of power to the working class. They must explain that the realization of workers\u2019 essential democratic demands is inseparable from the implementation of socialist policies ...\n\n\u201cAbove all, revolutionary Marxists must raise the political horizons of Egyptian workers beyond the borders of their own country. They must explain that the struggles that are now unfolding in Egypt are inextricably linked to an emerging global process of world socialist revolution, and that the victory of the revolution in Egypt requires not a national, but an international perspective.\u201d\n\nIn Egypt, all the necessary prerequisites for a revolution were present save one: a revolutionary party fighting for this perspective. The central question posed in Egypt, and internationally, is the construction of such a party, a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, fighting to rekindle the struggles of the revolution, bring down the al-Sisi government, and take up the fight for socialism.\n\nJohannes Stern\n\nPlease enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus."} -{"text":"Until now, we mostly talked about how to create simple components in Angular, like a zippy or a tabs component, and we also covered some isolated parts of the framework like the new dependency injection. In this article we are going to discuss another essential part when it comes to building components: Styling.\n\nA component in Angular is basically a controller class with a template. But as all of us know, a component also needs it\u2019s own styles, especially when it comes to sharing reusable components across applications, which is what we want to achieve in the modern web anyways, right?\n\nWe can always write our CSS code in a way, that it is modular and easily extensible at the same time. However, if we don\u2019t rely on technologies like Web Components, our styles all end up concatenated and minified in the head of our HTML document, without our components actually knowing that they exist. This is actually good when we think in separation of concerns, on the other hand, if we build a component and want to share it, it should come packaged with all the needed styles, scoped to that component.\n\nAngular components are designed with exactly that in mind. A component comes with HTML, JavaScript but also has it\u2019s own styles that belong to it. All we need to do is to define the styles in our component, or at least declare, where to get those from. In fact, there are three ways to associate CSS styles to a component in Angular: Component inline styles, style urls and template inline styles. Let\u2019s explore them one by one.\n\nComponent inline styles\n\nThe easiest way to add styles to a component is taking advantage of the @Component decorators that allow us to define component inline styles. All we need to do is to add a styles property to the decorator and define the styles. To see what that looks like, here\u2019s a snippet of our zippy component that we\u2019ve built a while ago.\n\n@ Component ({ moduleId : module . id , selector : 'my-zippy' , templateUrl : 'my-zippy.component.html' , styles : [ ` . zippy { background : green ; } ` ] }) class ZippyComponent { @ Input () title : string ; }\n\nThis is pretty straight forward. You might wonder though, why the value of that property is a list and not just a (multi-line) string. Well, I wonder too. That\u2019s why I asked the question right away.\n\nOkay, so defining styles on the component is pretty clear, but where did those end up in the DOM? If we run this code in our browser, we see that there\u2019s something very interesting happening. It turns out that Angular takes the defined styles, and writes them into the head of the HTML document. Here\u2019s what that looks like:\n\n