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TRIPOLI, Libya — For Judge Jamal Bennour, one of the leaders of the Libyan uprising, the day the revolution turned sour was when his friend and fellow lawyer, Abdul-Salam al-Musmari, was shot dead in front of him. It was last July, nearly two years after the two had helped topple Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and a year since they had left government, ceding power to the General National Congress. The two friends had lingered after Friday Prayer in their mosque in Benghazi, and were walking home when a man leaned out of a passing four-wheel-drive car and shot Mr. Musmari in the chest. “It was just a moment,” his friend said. “We lost Abdul-Salam. It was very hard.” Libya has suffered widespread bloodletting in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution. Over 1,200 people have been killed nationwide in the last two years, victims of revenge, power clashes and spiraling crime. Political divisions within the elected General National Congress, with groups backed by rival militias, have rendered the appointed government almost powerless. The power struggle kept Prime Minister Ali Zeidan under threat of dismissal for months before he was voted out of office on Tuesday, and left the country without an interior minister since August, when the last one resigned.
The World Health Organization released a report last week urging China to use graphic warnings on cigarette packages to fight the tobacco epidemic. It is a sensible and effective idea that China should heed. Cigarettes kill about one million Chinese each year. That number could reach three million by 2030, if the rate of smoking is not reduced. There are more than 300 million smokers in China. Nearly 30 percent of adults smoke, including 53 percent of all men. The proportion of people who smoke has remained steady since 2006, but with the population growing, China gained almost 100 million smokers between 1980 and 2012. And with increasing wealth, each smoker consumes more tobacco, soaring from an average of 730 cigarettes a year in 1972 to 6,200 cigarettes in 2013. These numbers point to a devastating health crisis, with great cost to the government in terms of health care expenses as well as personal suffering. But the Chinese authorities have been slow to acknowledge the health crisis, in part because tobacco production and sales by the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration has been contributing 7 percent to 10 percent of total annual central government revenues. Still, the government should understand the enormous long-term economic burden of smoking and pay attention to studies that show medical and labor costs attributed to tobacco use already outweighing increased revenues.
Some may be conversant with the tale of a man claiming: “vaping burned a hole in my lungs” in The Sun. It’s a tale retold in The Telegraph under the banner: “Man left with hole in lung after e-cigarette spits out burning nicotine”. Usually we would link to the articles concerned but we won’t, you’ll have to take our word for it that quotes are accurate. Essentially, The Telegraph is a direct copy of The Sun’s shoddy piece. It’s a story so factually inaccurate it bears more similarity with a Sunday Sport feature about Elvis living on the Moon with Red Rum than anything representing journalistic integrity. We could go through the code of ethics that the News International journalist, James Mills, elected to ignore. We could, but let’s pull his miserable piece apart instead. The heading is wrong, a hole was not burned in the man’s lungs because if it had happened it would have been a miracle to rival that of giving fish and bread-based snacks to a multitude. The spit of scalding eliquid would have had to miss the mouth, the tongue and then curve around the back of the throat to vanish down the trachea. It would then have to navigate junctions at the bronchi and the bronchioles before finally coming to rest in an alveolus. It’s a series of events so improbable you are more likely to discover Santa exists and a Mercedes driver who knows what the car’s indicator switch does. In fact, it is probably easier to believe that the gentleman actually spent the claimed £100 on a 30W iStick and a Subtank Mini. His protestations are that he tasted eliquid and, after he arrived at hospital, “one of the nurses there put my vape on an oxygen tube and showed that it was spitting liquid out.” He claimed to have only 25% lung function and yet Mills didn’t obtain a quote from the hospital or the doctor. There is absolutely no corroboration for the article or how a man with lungs in such a damaged condition was allowed to leave the following day with an inhaler. So what was wrong with him? Doctor Konstantinos states on his Facebook page that the symptoms presented are those of a patient suffering from “spontaneous pneumothorax, for which smoking (current or past) is a risk factor.” Genetics Home Reference writes: “Primary spontaneous pneumothorax is an abnormal accumulation of air in the space between the lungs and the chest cavity that can result in the partial or complete collapse of a lung. This type of pneumothorax is described as primary because it occurs in the absence of lung disease such as emphysema. Spontaneous means the pneumothorax was not caused by an injury such as a rib fracture. Primary spontaneous pneumothorax is likely due to the formation of small sacs of air in lung tissue that rupture, causing air to leak into the pleural space. Air in the pleural space creates pressure on the lung and can lead to its collapse. A person with this condition may feel chest pain on the side of the collapsed lung and shortness of breath.” The likelihood is, given his prompt discharge, that it wasn’t that serious. But the story does raise questions for vapers: how should we be treating them? It is clear that the article is a combination of exaggeration and outright lies, devoid of any supporting professional statements. The only result has been to accelerate the promotion of the piece and drive people to the newspaper’s website to read it. They care little for accuracy, just for the revenue it might generate from adverts being clicked on. So should we begin ignoring such stories? Matt from Suck My Mod certainly thinks so. In the past “I would see stuff and I would post it online and debunk it,” he says, “but I’m kinda at the point now where some of these things we shouldn’t be making viral.” Could it be that the best thing to do in the interest of vaping is not to counter the falsehoods but to begin ignoring them? “I’m not saying we should never talk about it,” he continues in his video, “but maybe we shouldn’t give some things legs when they wouldn’t have had legs at all. It’s not always good to make something viral.”
The U.S. Congress is about to make a mistake. A week ago, the American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to Senate sponsors of a new bill called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, voicing concerns that the bill would punish free speech and violate the First Amendment. The bill amends the Export-Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945, which, among other things, bars United States persons, typically companies, from supporting a foreign government’s request to boycott U.S. allies, according to the ACLU. Congress enacted the legislation decades ago in response to the Arab state’s boycott of Israel and its settlement of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Violators of the law face felony charges—a $250,000 maximum civil penalty, a maximum $1 million criminal penalty or 20 years in prison. These penalties are nothing new. However, the new bill extends the scope of boycotts to include those led by intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations and European Union. As detailed in their statements, the bill’s bipartisan architects, Senator Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, frame the legislation as a response to recent U.N. calls to boycott Israel and justify it as a measure to punish discrimination against people of a national origin. Last year, the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted four resolutions regarding Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, reaffirming the national rights and dignity of the Palestinian inhabitants. Specifically, the council called on companies to “avoid, identify, assess and address any adverse human rights impacts related to their activities” in the territories, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. Many watchdog groups and lobbyists, including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, interpreted the resolutions as a U.N. call to isolate, boycott and shame Israel, calling it anti-Semitism repackaged, according to the AIPAC website. Like the ACLU, the Editorial Board takes no stance on the ethics or effectiveness of the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to pressure Israel to end its 50-year occupation of Palestinian territory. However, boycotting countries, their military occupations and even their people is a constitutional right. Courts have continually upheld that boycotts, whatever their motive, are protected under the First Amendment. For example, in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware, the Supreme Court affirmed the right of NAACP activists to organize an economic boycott of white-owned businesses in Mississippi. Boycotts have been a vital part of American democracy and collective action since the Boston Tea Party. As the ACLU noted in their letter, our founding father John Jay led a boycott against merchants engaged in the slave trade. The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 turned the tide for the civil rights movement against Jim Crow. Our nation’s universities, including IU, led a boycott campaign against apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act follows a wave of recent legislation at the local and state level to criminalize one of the only peaceful means left for Palestinians to achieve national liberation. It makes it a felony to refuse business with Israel because of one’s political beliefs. For these reasons, it is unjust, unconstitutional, imprudent and likely to fail. Critics say that boycott campaigns are motivated by prejudice and malice toward Jews and their country. Even so, the solution is not to criminalize the instruments of civil disobedience. As Louis Brandeis, eminent jurist and ardent Zionist, wrote in his concurring opinion to Whitney v. California, the remedy to bigoted speech is “more speech, not enforced silence.” Editor's note: Comments that did not adhere to the IDS's terms of use have been deleted from this story. Please refrain from commenting unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, profane or indecent information. IU Student Media reserves the right to remove any remark found to violate the terms of use policies. Like what you're reading? Support independent, award-winning college journalism on this site. Donate here.
Clive Palmer: Mining magnate denies Queensland Nickel was 'cash cow' for other companies Updated Clive Palmer has faced another federal court grilling from liquidators of his failed company Queensland Nickel, who say he failed to meet a judge's order to produce key financial documents. And Mr Palmer's Twitter account — already the cause of legal controversy — posted a bizarre cartoon just as the former federal MP was testifying from the witness box. An examination hearing on Monday heard Mr Palmer had not produced written records detailing multi-million-dollar transfers from Queensland Nickel, which liquidators alleged he used as a "cash cow" to pay other bills. At 2:40pm (AEST), while Mr Palmer was facing questioning by a lawyer for liquidators, his Twitter account posted a cartoon containing a self-referential joke. A judge last week ordered Mr Palmer to give an affidavit by Wednesday evening explaining a December 1 tweet from his account made during a federal court hearing he had failed to turn up for. Mr Palmer, dressed in a sports coat and T-shirt, did not appear to have access to any electronic device in court on Monday. The court last week ordered Mr Palmer to produce financial documents from his flagship company Mineralogy under threat of contempt charges and a raid by liquidators on his offices. Mr Palmer told the court his staff had "produced the documents we have". When John Peden, a barrister for liquidators, raised the prospect of a new production order for missing transaction records, Mr Palmer said: "I don't believe in wasting my people's time, just because you're funded by the Commonwealth and the Chinese Government." Mr Palmer gave some unusual explanations for why few people in his business empire knew of financial details apart from himself. He said transaction details were frequently not made accessible to accounts staff because "we have our phone lines tapped by the Chinese Government". He said former Queensland Nickel chief financial officer Daren Wolfe would not know of recent debt levels in Mr Palmer's enterprise as "he has been judging the world gymnastics championships in Europe". Mr Peden repeatedly upbraided Mr Palmer for "giving speeches" instead of answering questions. He put it to Mr Palmer that his flagship company Mineralogy used Queensland Nickel as a "cash cow" to pay its bills. Mr Palmer at first said this was "wrong" and that Queensland Nickel had "no money of its own" and this belonged to two holding companies. Asked if he was aware only Queensland Nickel had a bank account, Mr Palmer said: "I can't recall." Mr Peden responded: "Really? You appreciate you're under oath, Mr Palmer?" Mr Palmer then answered the same question about using Queensland Nickel to pay Mineralogy's bills by saying he would have to "get advice". His solicitor Sam Iskander stood to remind Mr Palmer he could claim privilege against self-incrimination before answering. The hearings are examining Mr Palmer's role in the 2016 collapse of Queensland Nickel with debts of $300 million and leaving almost 800 people jobless. Liquidators are targeting Mr Palmer in separate legal action to try to claw back more than $200 million they allege he recklessly drained from Queensland Nickel while acting as a "shadow director". Mr Palmer has denied all wrongdoing and is defending the action. Topics: courts-and-trials, law-crime-and-justice, company-news, business-economics-and-finance, clive-palmer, person, brisbane-4000, qld, australia, townsville-4810 First posted
But Patsos made no apologies for using a triangle-and-two defense on one player. “Anybody else ever hold him scoreless?” Patsos said. “I’m a history major. They’re going to remember that we held him scoreless, or we lost by 30?” That willingness to apparently accept defeat to shut down the nation’s most dynamic scorer was met with criticism Wednesday. “If the coach thinks that that’s what he needed to do to win the game, then I’m all for it,” said Fran Fraschilla, an ESPN analyst and former coach at St. John’s. “But if the object is to try to shut one guy down, knowing that you’re not going to have much of a chance to win, then I think it creates a problem.” Curry came in averaging 35 points a game. He scored 44 points against Oklahoma earlier this month, then followed that with 30 and 39 points against Winthrop and Florida Atlantic. “If Oklahoma can’t stop him, how is Loyola College going to stop him?” Patsos said. So Patsos put two defenders on Curry. At first, Curry was confused, but by the third possession he realized what was happening. Davidson’s coaching staff thought about trying to run Curry off screens, but he waved them off. “I think in the second huddle he said, ‘Coach, I’ll just stand in the corner and keep two guys with me and we’ll play four-on-three,’ ” McKillop said. “And that’s basically what he did.” With Davidson whipping the ball around the perimeter, somebody was always open. Andrew Lovedale scored with ease inside, finishing with 20 points and 10 rebounds. Bryant Barr hit six 3-pointers and scored 18 points. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Davidson turned a 9-4 deficit into a 22-9 lead, all with Curry hanging out in the corner. “I had all day to shoot,” Barr said. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Patsos did not budge from his strategy, even as the lead grew to 34 points. McKillop, clearly annoyed, kept Curry in the game until the final minute while his reserves continued to hit open 3-pointers. “I thought when we had reached a point of 15 points, 18 points that he was going to say: ‘O.K., there’s no need to continue this. We’re not going to leave Bryant Barr open anymore. We’re not going to leave Will Archambault and Lovedale open anymore,’ ” McKillop said. “It just seemed puzzling to me why he continued to stay in it.” Patsos, in his fifth season at Loyola and fresh off signing a contract extension, defended himself. “I’m not too worried with how people perceive me,” said Patsos, a former assistant under Gary Williams at Maryland. “Why, for playing triangle-and-two? They only had 78. The problem is we had 21 turnovers and 48 points.” It was the second time in a week that Patsos was involved in a bizarre story. In a loss to Cornell last week, Patsos allowed his assistants to coach for a stretch and sat in the stands a few minutes because he said he was being unfairly targeted by a referee after picking up a technical foul. His unorthodox decision Tuesday also took Loyola’s top scorer out of the game. Brett Harvey, one of the players shadowing Curry, was held scoreless. “So in a sense they gave up their offense to try to stymie our offense,” McKillop said. “And it actually opened up the opportunity for our offense to explode.” The game might have enhanced Curry’s image. He refused to force shots despite his predicament. He joked about having “the best seat in the house” to watch the game. “It could have been easy for me and my teammates to fall in love with the offensive end with how many open looks we had and not play defense,” Curry said. “It showed how focused we were to play both ends regardless of the coach’s style on the other side.” The Wildcats (5-1) also showed any potential Loyola copycats that they are more than a one-man show. “It’s interesting how an opposing strategy can make your team even stronger,” McKillop said.
12 SHARES Facebook Twitter Mila Kunis has finally admitted she is married to Ashton Kutcher after James Corden showed off the star’s wedding ring during an interview on his new chat show. Mila Kunis has admitted she is married to Ashton Kutcher. The couple – who started dating in 2012 – have been coy about their status for several months, but the secret was finally revealed on the first episode of ‘The Late Late Show with James Corden’. The 36-year-old chat-show host pressed the ‘Ted’ actress to speak about her secretive relationship with the 37-year-old actor, asking, “Either you’re married or you’re not,” to which she enigmatically replied: “Maybe”. However, the ‘Into the Woods’ star was not prepared to drop the topic, demanding to see her hand, on which she was wearing a wedding ring. Announcing the news to the audience, James said: “They are married, look!” Following the reveal, Mila blushed with embarrassment but insisted, “It’s fine” when asked by the host if he had offended her as the broadcast went to an ad break. As well as the relationship update, the 31-year-old beauty – who gave birth to their first child, daughter Wyatt, in October – admitted she adores everything about being a mother, saying she “loved being pregnant and really loves being a mummy” to the five-month-old tot. The ‘Jupiter Ascending’ actress also added they are such fans of parenthood they are already considering adding to their family once again. Speaking on the CBS show, she explained: “Ashton is an amazing father … [we are] thinking about baby number two.” (Bang Showbiz)
The February 13, 1975 North Tower Fire has been carefully hidden from you. Here are a few reports concerning it. This 110-story steel-framed office building suffered a fire on the 11th floor on February 13, 1975. The loss was estimated at over $2,000,000. The building is one of a pair of towers, 412 m in height. The fire started at approximately 11:45 P.M. in a furnished office on the 11th floor and spread through the corridors toward the main open office area. A porter saw flames under the door and sounded the alarm. It was later that the smoke detector in the air-conditioning plenum on the 11th floor was activated. The delay was probably because the air-conditioning system was turned off at night. The building engineers placed the ventilation system in the purge mode, to blow fresh air into the core area and to draw air from all the offices on the 11th floor so as to prevent further smoke spread. The fire department on arrival found a very intense fire. It was not immediately known that the fire was spreading vertically from floor to floor through openings in the floor slab. These 300-mm x 450-mm (12-in. x 18-in.) openings in the slab provided access for telephone cables. Subsidiary fires on the 9th to the 19th floors were discovered and readily extinguished. The only occupants of the building at the time of fire were cleaning and service personnel. They were evacuated without any fatalities. However, there were 125 firemen involved in fighting this fire and 28 sustained injuries from the intense heat and smoke. The cause of the fire is unknown. Also, from the New York Times (Saturday 15th February 1975): Fire Commissioner John T. O'Hagan said yesterday that he would make a vigorous effort to have a sprinkler system installed in the World Trade Center towers as a consequence of the fire that burned for three hours in one of them early yesterday morning. The towers, each 110 stories tall and the highest structures in the city, are owned and operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is not subject to local safety codes. As Commissioner O'Hagan stood in the sooty puddles of the North Tower's 11th floor hallway, he told reporters that the fire would not have spread as far as it did if sprinklers had been installed there. The fire spread throughout about half of the offices of the floor and ignited the insulation of telephone cables in a cable shaft that runs vertically between floors. Commissioner O'Hagan said that the absence of fire-stopper material in gaps around the telephone cables had allowed the blaze to spread to other floors within the cable shaft. Inside the shaft, it spread down to the 9th floor and up to the 16th floor, but the blaze did not escape from the shaft out into room or hallways on the other floors......... Only the 11th floor office area was burned, but extensive water damage occurred on the 9th and 10th floors, and smoke damage extended as far as the 15th floor, the spokesman said. Although there were no direct casualties, 28 of the 150 firemen called to the scene suffered minor injuries. More from the New York Times (Saturday 14th February 1975): "It was like fighting a blow torch" according to Captain Harold Kull of Engine Co. 6,........ Flames could be seen pouring out of 11th floor windows on the east side of the building.
We all have that nephew in college who spends too much money on pizza, premium beer and maybe a cruise for Spring Break -- and then comes home begging for money from his parents. Let’s call him Pat. Sadly, Pat’s plea is eerily similar to what we hear from Pentagon officials and their allies. Yes, the Pentagon has the spending habits of a 20-year-old college student, and a host of enabling relatives that ensure there is no learning or maturing. Take the recent revelations that the Pentagon ignored a report by an outside evaluator that it could save $125 billion by cutting back on “back office” staff. Or its decision to push ahead with the F-35 fighter jet program –which, with an estimated price tag of $400 billion and growing, is the most expensive weapons program in history, in addition to its extreme production delays—despite there being working weapons systems that could do the intended job without the problems. And yet, in spite of these incredible sums of potential savings, every year the Pentagon goes to Capitol Hill and asks for money. This process just played out once again, and once again, Congress acquiesced, passing a $618.7 billion defense authorization bill for 2017. With an annual budget of more than half a trillion dollars, a decade-plus of precedent-setting funding levels and an off-the-books slush fund (Overseas Contingency Operations) for war expenses, the Pentagon cannot credibly cry poverty. (In fact, this cry is even more hollow given that the Pentagon does not even know how much it spends, since it is the only federal agency that has never conducted an audit.) Nor can the Pentagon suggest any further cuts would eviscerate military readiness. To do so would be to ignore the $4 million the military spent on a single gas station, the 200 golf courses it operates including a half dozen in Florida alone, the billions that have been sunk into F-35s that do not work – the list goes on. There must be a hard look at what is necessary to have rather than what they’d like to have. And if the Pentagon cannot “self police” on this, then we must demand an outside audit. And so, like with Pat, it’s hard to swallow sky-is-falling rhetoric and complaints from the Department of Defense and its lieutenants. I, Tony, used to be there, I know all the tricks: And we know, Susan and I, having watched from inside and out, the August-to-December spending spree to make sure budget levels remain the same or higher the next year; the sleight-of-hand when asked to cut something, you offer the most important item –like the college student reminding you that he has to buy books even though he had the money before the beer and pizza—and you assign anything “number-one priority status” the second someone looks at reducing costs on it. So what to do? Like Pat, the Pentagon should stop complaining and start making realistic plans to give up the nice-to-haves to pay for must-haves. And the Pentagon and its enablers should stop playing into politics and get back to its core strength – being the best defense planners in the world. After all, America does not owe its strength or military greatness to explosive Pentagon budgets; in fact, as Admiral Mike Mullen and a blue-ribbon panel of other military authorities reiterated earlier this year, such huge budgets could be an albatross on our national security. Instead, it has been smart, often difficult, decisions about strategy and posture by U.S. military and civilian leadership that are responsible for American preeminence. Now our military and civilian leaders must step up once again. Everyone else has to live within a budget. It’s time for the Pentagon to stop whining and do the same. Taking a magnifying glass to the Pentagon budget sheet and identifying programs to terminate or slow down, bases to close and contracts to trim may not make the Pentagon popular, especially not with special-interest lobbyists and big-spenders on both sides. But it will make the Pentagon better, and will put our country on a safer and more secure path. It is time for a more effective, not more expensive, Pentagon. Susan Shaer is founder and co-chair of Win Without War and the former executive director of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), a national women's peace and security organization. Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (retired) is a CIA-trained former senior intelligence officer and New York Times bestselling author of “Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft an Special Operations on the Frontlines of Afghanistan - And The Path to Victory." His latest book is The Last Line. He is a senior fellow with both the London Center for Policy Research and the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. The opinions reflected here are those solely of Lt. Col. Shaffer -- and are not the opinion of the London Center for Policy Research (LCPR), the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (CADS) or of any other group or organization with which Lt. Col. Shaffer is affiliated. This is part of a series of pieces sponsored by the Pentagon Budget Campaign , a transpartisan campaign comprised of conservative and progressive organizations. The campaign seeks a vision for U.S. national security with less emphasis on wars and more focus on economic security. Image: U.S. Air Force
Vanishing Aircraft We have been told by much of Western MSM that Air Algerie flight 5017 (hereinafter AH 5017) and its 117 passengers (according to the airline) lost contact with the ground and subsequently crashed in Mali on 7/24due to heavy weather. A simple, tidy story that; and for all one knows the MSM soporific might even be true. And yet, true to the times, meaningful questions remain. Via CNN on 7/24 we have: “1:17 a.m. local time, Air Algerie Flight 5017 left Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso bound for Algiers. It was supposed to be a four-hour overnight flight but about 50 minutes of takeoff, it disappeared from radar over Mali close to a zone of ongoing conflict between Islamist rebels and the government.” The Guardian chimed in on 7/29 with: Radar recordings show the plane’s last contact at 1.47am local time. A witness reported seeing a ball of flame in the crash area at about 1.50am, suggesting the tragedy happened in minutes. One witness said it was “as if a bomb had fallen” on the desert, and that the plane had hit the ground at a steep angle and at full speed, ruling out any attempt at an emergency landing. Police investigators and gendarmes at the scene say the plane was “pulverised” and they have found no bodies. Even finding traces of the victims – who included one Briton and 54 French people, including entire families – is proving a challenge, with stifling heat alternating with torrential rain in a remote area. The Guardian’s reportage that the plane was pulverized echoed Le Monde’s7/26 assertion that the wreckage was indicative of disintegration. Matters are so compromised with respect to the status of bodily evidence that France now thinks it could take from three to five months for forensic processes to produce the first identifications. And then we have the facts that it took hours for airline and government officials to make AH 5017’s disappearance public, there were 51 French passengers, and France, declaring victory, had very recently terminated Operation Serval (a counterterrorism adventure in Mali). Finally, we have the pending performance on a France/Russia deal whereby Russia is to receive delivery of two Mistral warships. Maybe certain elitist elements would rather see France breach the contract? Might the demise of AH 5017 be attributable to an act of terror, and might there be additional links to the vanishing aircraft of MH 17, MH 370, and veryconceivably even Air France 447? Newsweek on AH 5017: “General Gilbert Diendere, head of Burkina Faso’s crisis cell, said radar data showed that the plane appeared to try to fly around the bad weather before reverting to its initial course, which took it back into the eye of the storm. “Perhaps the pilot thought that he had completely avoided it and wanted to return to the original route,” Diendere said, according to the website of French radio RFI. “The accident took place while the plane performed this maneuver.” Diendere said the last contact with the plane at its altitude of 10,000 meters was at 0147 GMT and the crash was reported by witnesses to have taken place at 0150. “That means that (plane) fell from an altitude of 10,000 meters to zero in about three minutes, which is a steep fall given the size of the plane,” he added.” 10,000 meters is just about 33,000 feet, so, if the preceding sentence is true, AH 5017 lost altitude at an average of 11,000 feet per minute before being ostensibly destroyed. The same thing happened to Air France 447. A quick refresher on that flight from the Huffington Post: “On the evening of May 31, 2009 [it was in the early hours of 6/1/2009 that the flight went missing], 216 passengers and 12 crew members boarded an Air France Airbus 330 at Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The flight, Air France 447, departed at 7.29 p.m. local time for a scheduled 11-hour trip to Paris. It never arrived. At 7 o’clock the next morning, when the aircraft failed to appear on the radar screens of air traffic controllers in Europe, Air France began to worry and contacted civil aviation authorities. By 11 a.m., they concluded that AF447 had gone missing somewhere over the vast emptiness of the South Atlantic. How, in the age of satellite navigation and instantaneous global communication, could a state-of-the art airliner simply vanish? It was a mystery that lasted for two years.” Air France 447, like MH 370, MH 17, and AH 5017 also “vanished without a word from the crew.” Perhaps, then, the official report regarding Air France 447, which explained the affair in terms of heavy weather, a high altitude stall, and pilot error also happens to more or less describe what occurred with AH 5017? Then again, it was reported regarding Air France 447 that: “Two pilots of an Air Comet flight from Lima to Lisbon saw a bright flash of light in the area where Flight 447 went down, the Madrid-based airline told CNN. The pilots have turned in their report to authorities. “Suddenly, we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds,” the captain wrote in the report. The flash of light contributes to the theory that an explosion is what brought down Flight 447, which was carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.” To be sure, these reports have gone down the memory hole. Intrepid readers will have little difficulty locating other disturbing claims about Flight 447, but to be honest it’s difficult to decisively separate mere rumors from plausible alternative accounts. Be that as it may, what follows may amount to nothing more than a mirage of coincidences (some of them possibly forced)—but it might also suggest something quite significant. “Numerology” An earlier contribution to Global Research on the subject of MH 17 stated: Next, here are a few other curious tidbits. The flight 17 crash shares an anniversary with the demise of TWA 800, which AT’s own Jack Cashill has compellingly argued was, in fact, brought down by a missile on July 17, 1996 and subsequently covered up by the US government. And, the maiden flight of flight 17 occurred in 1997 on the date of, you guessed it, July 17. [Moreover Russia’s last ruling monarch of the Romanov family Tsar Nicholas II, together with his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei were executed on 17 July 1918. Subliminal message to Putin? No doubt it’s another “coincidence”] So “17s” are everywhere. To be sure, though, each of the items in the last paragraph is easily ranged under the heading “coincidence.” With respect to AH 5017, we obviously encounter “17” again in the number of the flight. And, we have the fact that the flight left at 1:17 AM. Plus, some early reports indicated 117 passengers. In a related vein, as previous quotes show, “7s” and “11s” seem to reverberate around facts pertaining to Air France 447 and AH 5017. And, MH 370 was lost on 3/7/2014 at 17:20 UTC. Of course, many other numerical facts connected with the three flights have nothing to do with 7s, 11s, or 17s. It is unquestionably easy to get carried away with this sort of thing; one very serious problem is that in the absence of a consistently applied, rationally based rule for combining digits and assigning times, it is easy to mold phenomena so as to reach conspiratorial conclusions when nothing obtains other than coincidence (and perhaps not even that). In short, we do not want to consume witches’ brews or magicians’ potions; instead, we should ask whether there might be scientifically sensible reasons as to why intelligence enterprises and their associates might want to play numerological games. Rare events and events that are meaningfully singular in their description (such as the vanishing of MH 370) are next to impossible to predict statistically, especially if one is attempting to predict the precise time, date, and place of occurrence (almost by definition there’s not enough data to support valid statistical analyses). It is just such “black swan” events, though, that often exert the greatest, and most reverberating, impacts on global dynamics. Because such events are difficult to predict even with a great deal of information in hand, they are difficult to prevent—even with a tremendous amount of information. With these thoughts in mind, consider that when singular, rare events such as plane vanishings that receive intensive coverage take place, the threshold geopolitical question is really whether the occurrence was accidental or in some way planned. It is here that “numerological” factors may come into play. It may be that the numerological properties of events can function as ways of indicating human agency, even though such agency will, of necessity, be invisible to algorithms and associated databases. If human consciousness, on the basis of ironically non-quantifiable meaning, considers an event to be too significant to perfunctorily ascribe to an accident, it will react accordingly even if the “data” and surface authorities (such as certain visible bureaucrats and news anchors with far more proximate connections to the public) say otherwise. If these ruminations are accurate, it may be that the degree of brazenness of “numerological” ties functions as a measure of the danger we confront. Surface authority, in spite of its nearly universal mathematical illiteracy, has been successfully conditioned to believe that the only measures of scientific significance are those that can be quantified. Therefore, it is blind to many potential indications of agency that could indicate covert conflict. However, had a flight numbered 7077 crashed on 7/7/2014 after having disappeared from radar at 7:07 PM, even surface authorities might have been forced to acknowledge design—even if they were told in so many terms by deep authority that “Big Data” could not back it up. Since even the dimwits of surface authority would be talking design, the risk of overt hot war would rise substantially. It is for reasons such as these that the rather glaring 17s surrounding MH 17 are unsettling. The Global Elite Now consider these utterly bizarre remarks made by none other than IMF chief Christine Lagarde at a 1/15/2014 National Press Club speech: “Now, I’m going to test your numerology skills by asking you to think about the magic seven, okay? Most of you will know that seven is quite a number in all sorts of themes, religions. And I’m sure that you can compress numbers as well. So if we think about 2014, all right, I’m just giving you 2014, you drop the zero, 14, two times 7. Okay,that’s just by way of example, and we’re going to carry on. (Laughter) So 2014 will be a milestone and hopefully a magic year in many respects. It will mark the hundredth anniversary of the First World War back in 1914. It will note the 70thanniversary, drop the zero, seven– of the Breton Woods conference that actually gave birth to the IMF. And it will be the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25th, okay. It will also mark the seventh anniversary of the financial market jitters that quickly turned into the greatest global economic calamity since the Great Depression. The crisis still lingers. Yet, optimism is in the air. We’ve left the deep freeze behind us and the horizon looks just a bit brighter. So my hope and my wish for 2014 is that after those seven miserable years, weak and fragile, we have seven strong years. I don’t know whether the G7 will have anything to do with it, or whether it will be the G20. I certainly hope that the IMF will have something to do with it.” Can anyone recall the last time a global elitist of the stature of Lagarde made such bombastic reference to numerological notions during a speech, whether “jokingly” or not? That someone like her would even speak in such terms is decidedly odd—conceivably even unprecedented—irrespective of the particulars. Aside from the very audacity of even mentioning numerology, the key 1/15/2014 language may very well be the G7/G20 wording; Lagarde states the alternative pretty starkly in terms of either/or but not both—and the G20 does not include Russia. Dr. Jason Kissner is Associate Professor of Criminology at California State University. Dr. Kissner’s research on gangs and self-control has appeared in academic journals. His current empirical research interests include active shootings. You can reach him at[email protected].
Perhaps no one enjoys breaking up the monotony of game preparation more than Terrell Suggs. The Ravens outside linebacker walked into the team’s media room Wednesday afternoon while reporters were interviewing Dallas Cowboys rookie quarterback Dak Prescott via conference call. After inquiring about who was on the phone, Suggs took over. “Hacksaw Smithers here,” Suggs began. “What do you think of Terrell Suggs and how he’s been playing this year?” “Who is there?” Prescott asked. “This is Hacksaw,” Suggs replied. “Smithers.” “Oh, OK,” Prescott answered. “Yeah, Suggs is great. I mean, he’s a guy that’s been playing well in this league a long time. We know how special of a player he is.” “I appreciate you,” Suggs said, munching on a Reese's peanut butter cup. “Thank you.” Two months ago, former Ravens defensive coordinator and current Buffalo Bills coach Rex Ryan interrupted a conference call with New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman, introducing himself as “Walt Patulski from The Buffalo News” and asked Edelman if he planned to play quarterback in their game on Oct. 2. Edelman said he was willing to do whatever it took to help the team and then referred “Walt Patulski” to ask further questions to Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
The gunman who killed two Israelis and wounded five during a shooting rampage in Jerusalem Sunday is now being hailed as a “martyr” by the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Fatah party wrote on its Facebook page that “the one who carried out the operation today in Jerusalem is a pilgrim martyr, one of the most prominent people in Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and a released prisoner,” according to Israeli monitor group Palestinian Media Watch. A post on the Jerusalem branch of Fatah’s Facebook page also announced a general strike “in Jerusalem in memory of the souls of the martyrs of Palestine and this morning’s martyr,” The Times of Israel reported, adding that the leader of the militant group Hamas called the killer's parents on the phone to “congratulate” him. Israeli officials argue that support from the Palestinian Authority for Palestinians killed during attacks incites further terrorism, the newspaper adds. Husam Badran, a Hamas spokesman based in Qatar, called Monday formilitants in the West Bank to get ready "for a new phase of confrontation." He also accused Israel of "targeting" the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and promised "a response from the heroic fighters." The statement came a day after the attacks which, along with stabbings, have marked a year-long surge in violence that has killed 36 Israelis, two visiting Americans and about 220 Palestinians. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
I love you Brad I really do and I think you are genuinely well intentioned, but I also think you are significantly off target on a number of points here. First, yes, you are correct that so-called “free trade” does, depending on its structuring, benefit our partners in a way that may have tangential benefits to us like security. However, that is not in the slightest how these deals were sold to the American people. These deals were supposed to be immediately mutually beneficial and they were not sold with the inference that we would see Detroit and the rest of its middle class jobs hollowed out and sent to places like China. Are you saying that this was the design from the beginning – that industrial jobs, curiously mostly unionized, would find their way elsewhere? Are you saying our leadership knowingly passed a treaty that would destroy the middle class as it was known at the time? Are you saying the millions of Americans that lost jobs as a result, even if some have since found employment in the vaunted “technology drivers”, were willingly signing up for such a traumatic transition? I am no millennial – I was well aware of what NAFTA was being sold as and no American, no matter how generous we were, was agreeing to give up their jobs to better less affluent nations. The notion itself is perverse – who with any sanity would buy that? Maybe more importantly, who with any sanity would sell that? Secondly, yes, it has improved the living standard of say China, but Central America and South America are a mess. Mexico despite syphoning enormous numbers of auto jobs has not improved its standard of living to any significance. This is in part because while one industry has improved, its corn industry has been devastated by cheap subsidized American imports (subsidized of course hardly being in the spirit of “free” trade). Moreover Mexican workers, as with other partners, do not have the protections that American workers have, nor the same environmental protections. Many have limitations on collective bargaining as well as other workers’ rights (can you have “free trade” with countries that are not free?). This means we are effectively exporting poverty and pollution. That our workers cannot compete is no surprise given they do not play on the same playing field. To that end, why did our progressive forerunners fight so hard for gains like worker protections and environmental protections when we are willing to trade them away so easily by migrating them somewhere else? Why did workers literally give their lives to fight for these protections for Americans only to say they don’t matter in another country? Do these rights only matter for privileged Americans? Sure, someday maybe they will come up to our standards, but until then (if ever), our workers suffer unfair competition. Third, what is your definition of “industries that require[d] low wages”? Were auto workers such an industry? Steel workers? TV makers? Furniture makers? Clothes pin makers? All of these jobs once provided Americans steady jobs that on a single salary allowed people to not only have a roof over their head, but feed themselves, pay for medical care, have vacations, and even retire with guaranteed pensions. Were these “low wages”? Because if they were low wages, there are a tens of millions of millennials who would sign up for them in a heartbeat. Fourth, who are you or anyone else to play god choose what industries require “low wages” (losers) and those that don’t (winners)? And make no doubt about it, winners and losers are being chosen – the outcomes are not inevitable. These trade deals are structured to favor some over others. What you call “low wage” face international competition, while other jobs as Dean Baker has noted, like say those of academics, doctors, and others in the “credentialed class”, see no such competition. Is this because they are, using your word, more “important”? This seems an extreme value judgement, at one time people thought making ball bearings or rolling steel was important. I don’t see why that isn’t true today. When one profiles the classes that are most influential in governance, coincidentally those that make the most money, their jobs aren’t the kinds of jobs that are subject or open to free trade. Curious how that is. One has to wonder if such supportive articles would be written if the competition was in the professions of those writing in support of “free” trade. Fifth, how is it that we know that “technology drivers” are (more) “important”? Because iPhones make people happier? Because cool tech makes the world better? Because Star Trek? Sure, medical advances help the world, if you can afford them that is, but do you really feel that the “technology drivers” have made life for the average American better than it was in the 1950s? Yeah, technology may give a leg up on competition, but as I see it only so that you can spin the rat wheel of competition ever faster. We make better technology so we can outpace other countries so later they can try to outpace us, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. Does it ever end? Is this a future to be encouraging? More importantly, will technology get us what matters most, like comfort or more time with friends and family? I doubt it. Maybe I’ll check my iPhone on it. Ok, I love my toys as much as the next one, but I’d give up every last one if it were to ensure living wages, health care, and a guarantee of a decent retirement for all Americans, not just the ones who are “technology drivers”. Sure, I can Google faster than ever what I need to redo the bathroom, but is that worth sacrificing millions of what were once great jobs for? Finally, what is your plan here? We have traded some massive ratio of manufacturing for far fewer technology and professional jobs. You’re a smart guy, sincerely, how many people can be a professor at Berkley? What percentage of Americans are capable of creating a “startup” like Google? What percentage are even capable of working at a startup like Google? Let’s not pretend – there are great masses of people who have no hope of entering the “creative” or “credentialed” class, of being entrepreneurial John Galts, and no amount of education is going to change that. That is not because they are stupid, worthless, or have less value – they just they aren’t wired for the same things. They were however wired for the jobs people like you decided had less value, jobs that you call “low wage”, but weren’t “low wage” ironically until you made them low wage by foisting unregulated international competition on them. So now what are we going to do with these people? Are we to consign them to a lifetime of service jobs saying “Would you like fries with that?” Do we just give up on them because they aren’t meritorious enough to have what it takes to program, become lawyers, or found a startup? In the words of Billy Bragg, “Just because you’re better than me, doesn’t mean I’m lazy.” I sincerely don’t get it – if technology is the U.S.’s future, and the “low wage” manufacturing is somewhere else, how are we going to employee all of these people in jobs that even have some semblance of the future they once had? Even if you are right in your position here, you say the problem is ultimately a failure of policy, but I say it’s a failure of vision on those who made these trade policies. They (you?) knew what was going to happen and they knew we needed policy to make up for the damage, but they put through these trade deals without ensuring the legislation was there to mitigate the damage. So, what are you and the other supporters/architects of these deals going to do about it? I ask because it seems the milquetoast candidate you are endorsing with your dog whistle “peddling ideology over practicality” comments is only offering “incremental” care for the great hemorrhage that once was our working class.
Kashima Antlers boss Go Oiwa has sought to play down the pressure on his team ahead of Saturday’s potential J. League championship title clincher away to his former club Jubilo Iwata. With the defending champion Antlers two points clear of Kawasaki Frontale, a win against Iwata in the season’s final round will secure the Ibaraki club a record-extending ninth league title. Kawasaki, however, boasts a vastly superior goal difference and a win for Toru Oniki’s men at home to already relegated Omiya Ardija coupled with a draw or defeat for Kashima would see them clinch their long-awaited first major domestic trophy. Speaking after training on Friday, former defender Oiwa, who was part of Iwata’s title-winning team in 2002 before moving to Kashima the following season, said, “It is a massive game tomorrow but at the same time it also just another match. “This group of players has come through the good times and the bad times and tomorrow will be the sum total of their efforts. “We will just go for the win and keep fighting until the very last second, the same way we always do.” Kashima missed a chance to clinch the title last weekend after being held to a goalless draw at home to Kashiwa Reysol. In Iwata, the Antlers face a team boasting the stingiest defense in the top flight with 30 goals conceded in 33 games this season. “It is down to our attackers to break down (Jubilo’s) wall,” said Kashima striker Shoma Doi. League Cup runner-up Kawasaki capitalized on Kashima’s failure to beat Kashiwa and kept alive its title hopes with a gritty 1-0 win away to the newly crowned Asian club champion Urawa Reds on Wednesday. Despite going into Saturday’s meeting with Omiya on only two days’ rest, Frontale’s talismanic 37-year-old midfielder Kengo Nakamura believes his side’s mental fortitude can see them through. “There are times when mental toughness can pull you through physical fatigue, and if that is the case tomorrow, then we will be able to put on a good performance.” Oniki said, “It is win or nothing for us tomorrow and we have to just focus on getting three points.”
This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide. Maoist Internationalist Movement The labor aristocracy is the main force for fascism (Passed unanimously.) "The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie -- bourgeois democracy -- by another form -- open terrorist dictatorship. It would be a serious mistake to ignore this distinction, a mistake liable to prevent the revolutionary proletariat from mobilizing the widest strata of the working people of town and country for the struggle against the menace of the seizure of power by the fascists, and from taking advantage of the contradictions which exist in the camp of the bourgeoisie itself. But it is a mistake, no less serious and dangerous, to underrate the importance, for the establishment of fascist dictatorship, of the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie at present increasingly developing in bourgeois-democratic countries -- measures which suppress the democratic liberties of the working people, falsify and curtail the rights of parliament and intensify the repression of the revolutionary movement." So there is a qualitative difference says Dimitrov. "Fascism is not a form of state power 'standing above both classes -- the proletariat and the bourgeoisie,' as Otto Bauer, for instance, has asserted. It is not "the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie which has captured the machinery of the state," as the British Socialist Brailsford declares. No, fascism is not a power standing above class, nor government of the petty bourgeoisie or the lumpen-proletariat over finance capital. Fascism is the power of finance capital itself." This is correct because fascism can only occur in imperialist countries. It is not correct if Dimitrov meant to deny the agency and independent interests of the labor aristocracy. The labor aristocracy in the oppressed nations is pro-Liberal in its outlook and seeks to grow by hooking a ride with the Western imperialists with cushy jobs in multinational corporations. The labor aristocracy in the declining imperialist countries heads inevitably to fascism to provoke a change in imperialist treatment of migrant workers. Third World dictators can only be fascist as puppets. There is no genuine Third World fascism question, because there is no dominance of finance capital. So we can say finance capital dominates the system, the petri dish in which fascism grows. Middle classes cannot accomplish authentic fascism in the Third World. It is only the finance-capital dominated petri dish where fascism grows. Today, the labor aristocracy of ONLY the imperialist countries is the "main force" of fascism, as Mao said the peasants were the "main force" of proletarian revolution guided by proletarian thought in China through the CCP. The thought of finance capital guides fascism and the labor aristocracy as a wing of parasitism. It was never finance capital marching in the streets for fascism. It was once deluded proletarians and labor aristocracy. Today, fascism has a relative handful of deluded proletarian followers in the Third World who want to be imperialist puppets and who have never succeeded in liberating a country. However, the real social force for fascism in this world is First World labor aristocracy and it deserves even more focus than the Third World puppets doing imperialist bidding. Another resolution: Fascism imposed by an oppressor nation on another oppressor nation is possible even if both are majority-exploiter.
A BREXIT could lead to the “disintegration” of the UK, David Cameron has warned, despite the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson insisting that a vote to pull out of the EU would not trigger a fresh independence referendum. Nicola Sturgeon has said there will be an "almost certain” drive for another independence referendum north of the Border if Scotland votes to stay in the EU but England votes to leave on June 23. By contrast, Davidson said that even Britain leaving the EU against the wishes of a majority of Scots would not mean another referendum, as she stated such a vote was “off the table for five years” due to the SNP’s failure to seek an electoral mandate for one. However, the Prime Minister appeared to contradict his party's leader in Scotland, using a speech in London to note that the UK was in a voluntary union of four nations and urging voters to go to the ballot box with their “eyes open”. During a speech at the British Museum setting out the case for Britain remaining part of the bloc, Cameron warned that Brexit could fuel a fresh push for Scottish independence. He said: “Let me just say this about Scotland – you don’t renew your country by taking a decision that could ultimately lead to its disintegration. So, as we weigh up this decision, let us do so with our eyes open.” Cameron’s remarks came as pro-EU campaigners in Scotland warned the European referendum must not be “a contest of two different kinds of right-wing, conservative politics” following a clash between the Prime Minister and Boris Johnson over whether a Brexit would put peace in the continent at risk. Cameron said the 28-nation bloc had reconciled warring nations and was playing a crucial role in the fight against Daesh and dealing with a “newly belligerent” Russia. Former London mayor Johnson said defence alliance Nato had been the protector of Europe’s peace since the Second World War, and that the EU by contrast was “a force for instability and alienation”. However, Alex Salmond and the Scottish Greens called for pro-EU campaigners to make a progressive case against a Brexit. Scottish Green Europe spokesman Ross Greer, who was elected as youngest MSP at the age of 21, said the campaign in the run-up to the EU referendum should not be dominated be opposing factions of the Conservative Party. Greer, one of six Green MSPs elected last week, said: “The referendum cannot be a contest of two different kinds of right-wing, conservative politics. “Peace has been an under-appreciated success of Europe but we cannot lose sight of the fact that the Tories, whether under David Cameron or Boris Johnson, are in favour of more military muscle and arms deals with oppressive regimes. “The Green case for Scotland and the rest of the UK remaining in the EU is one which furthers efforts to bring about peaceful solutions to the world’s conflicts." Meanwhile, in a speech in Brussels yesterday former First Minister Salmond called on voters to ignore “projects fear” on both sides of the referendum debate, and instead focus on the positives of remaining part of the EU. Salmond, who is the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman in the Commons, said a key plank of the pro-EU case should focus on areas such as showing “solidarity and humanity” to people caught up in the refugee crisis. He said: “Europe must lead – the way it lifted itself 66 years ago and resolved to work together – to build a universal right and hope for every EU citizen so we can live in peace and harmony.”
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption LJ Rich spends a week trying to earn a living from casual crowdwork. Crowdworking is growing fast. Companies can now call on workers from all over the world to collaborate on huge tasks while simply sitting at their home computer. So how much money can you make at your keyboard? I'm not averse to a bit of hard graft, so I decided to sign up to some sites to try micro-working through the internet. I've decided on two rules. Any cash earned goes to charity. And I don't want to be paid for anything I wouldn't be happy doing on daytime television. In order to preserve the BBC's reputation, I warned my social media network that I was conducting an experiment and they should expect some strange status updates. Day 1: Surveys and Videos First up, InboxPounds, a site providing surveys and odd jobs to casual clickers. Image caption That's my first 20p under my belt I've been given a £1 bonus for signing up. Answering a 15-minute survey about an advert gets me 25p. I watched a video for 1p, and "liked" a certain brand of mobile phone on Facebook for 1p. Yes, you heard right, I got paid for a "like" - I'm not proud. Seems promising, but no cash in hand till I earn £20. Total amount earned - £3.06. Day 2: Games Swagbucks is a site offering points, which eventually add up to money that is paid either through Paypal or as vouchers. I watched a selection of videos, played casual games and earned - though the amount was negligible. A day's casual gaming and video-watching earns 102 swag bucks - roughly working out to 50p, depending on the offer used to convert them. Payout is at £5. Total amount earned - £0.50. Day 3: Transcription Next up, CastingWords. I've joined an army of transcribers, listening to audio and typing out the words. Sounds simple enough for a fast typist - so I unwisely jumped straight in with a transcription challenge. It wasn't easy - just one assignment took me nearly an hour - and my promised pay was docked heavily for not fitting house style. I was demoted, and can now only review other people's work for a few cents apiece until my score improves. Payout is at $1. Total amount earned: $0.58 (37p). Day 4: Microworking Microworking sites, such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk, pay for so-called human intelligence tasks (Hits). These can be for creative writing, coding, or more. Sadly my registration did not come through in my assigned work week. Amazon said: "Mechanical Turk works on an invitation-only registration process for workers. "Workers are asked to start the registration process and then receive an email invitation in order to complete the registration process. "This process is in effect for all workers, regardless of country. "Invitations are extended to new workers based on a number of factors including the demand within each country." Image caption Here's my work on mail-order catalogues I was able to sign up to an alternative site, Clickworker. First I passed an English test and a creative-writing test. Thanks to my 100% score I have landed a plum assignment - creative writing for mail-order catalogue entries - for tennis clothing, based on translated German text. It is a comparatively lucrative 1.25 euros (£1.05) for just over 100 words, although you're at the mercy of whoever marks your assignment. If they're not impressed, they give you nothing. This happened on my last three tasks - so much for my 100% score. Paid weekly. Total amount earned - 5.85 euros (£4.95). Day 5: Creative microworking Finally I turned to Fiverr, a site where the crowd advertises services as "gigs" for $5 (£3.20). Some services are frankly mystifying, for example - $5 to find something in a watermelon, or $5 to draw and roast a picture of a chicken. Encouraged by this, I used my existing musical and writing skills to offer paying customers poetry, music composing, and bad pun headline writing. The inevitable witty Facebook friend asked me for something virtually impossible - 30 seconds of a Miles-Davis styled piano theme. For $5 - in 4 days. Oh well, his money is as good as anyone else's. I found the horror of the countdown on my seller's page combined with the promise of $5 to be good motivation. Although these assignments took the longest to complete, I found this approach by far the most fun and enterprising. Job done - but Fiverr takes a healthy 20% cut. Leaving me with - $4 (£2.57). And the payment process is positively glacial, it takes 14 days. Total amount earned - $16 (£10.28). Conclusion So, working week over, how did I do? Total amount earned - £19.16. Total hours worked - 37 hours. Clearly not as much as I was hoping. Much of my working week was spent researching which websites paid the best- if at all. Many sites I tried to earn money through turned out not to be worth the time or effort. I learned to beware of scam websites thanks to searching the company name for worker reviews before signing up to a site. Out of the many tasks available, I thought the low-paying ones seemed the least efficient. Like the offline world, specific abilities like touch typing, fast creative writing, or something unique, such as composing, gave a better return on time spent. Anyone thinking of quitting their offline job might like to bear the following in mind - with what I have learned this week, the potential over time to earn a reasonable wage requires a lot of effort. Serious crowdworkers understand which tasks fit them, they work long hours for a number of weeks and are prepared to wait a while to get paid. So, yes, there is some money in crowdworking - but for now it looks like I'll be at my Click day job for a while longer. All the money raised will be donated towards the BBC's Children in Need appeal.
Another game, another Vikings injured offensive lineman. Minnesota lost right tackle Andre Smith in the first quarter of Monday night’s 24-10 win over the New York Giants at U.S. Bank Stadium with a right elbow injury. He was replaced for the remainder of the game by Jeremiah Sirles. “We’ll see how Andre Smith is,” said Vikings coach Mike Zimmer. “I’m not concerned.” After the second game of the season, Minnesota lost left tackle Matt Kalil for the season because of a hip injury. Left guard Alex Boone hurt his hip in the second quarter Sept. 25 at Carolina and was lost for the game but was able to return Monday. Sirles also filled in the rest of the way for Boone. Zimmer has been impressed by his versatility. “It’s guys like him that go in there, they do well and earn opportunities to play,” Zimmer said. “He made some nice plays.” Sirles says he can play all five positions on the line. “It’s next-man-up philosophy around here,” he said. “It think the guys buy into that and we work really hard during the week.” Of the five Vikings offensive linemen to start the season, only center Joe Berger and guard Brandon Fusco haven’t missed time because of injuries. Minnesota also lost several linemen during the summer. Tackle Phil Loadholt retired just before the start of training camp, guard Mike Harris has been sidelined indefinitely with an undisclosed illness and center John Sullivan was released after losing his starting job to Berger.
A five-year-old boy from Coventry has become the youngest ever Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP). Ayan Qureshi took the same Microsoft tests as IT pros after previously settting up his own computer network at home. The boy, who has now turned six, has a father who is an IT consultant. Father Asim introduced his son to computers when he was just three years old, allowing him play with his old computers, and discovered his son had a good memory after being told what to do with them. Asim told the Coventry Telegraph: “From a very early age he used to watch me on the computer. He used to sit beside me and watch very carefully. He started playing with the computer and using all my spare hardware.” Initially, after arriving to take the Microsoft exam at Birmingham City University, the examiners were concerned that he was too young to take the tests, but father Asim reassured them that he would be fine. The family moved to England from Pakistan in 2009. Ayan says he wants to start his own computer company when he grows up. The previous youngest Microsoft Certified Professional was Pakistan’s Mehroz Yawar, who passed the exam while aged six and a half. This story, "U.K. lad is youngest ever Microsoft Certified Professional at five years" was originally published by Computerworld UK .
Text size The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries may have extended a cut in oil production, but the June data show an increase in production compared to May. In OPEC's July monthly oil-market report (a PDF), the organization projected a 2% rise in non-OPEC oil supplies in 2018, with the lion's share from the United States, followed by Brazil, Canada and Russia. It sees supplies declining in Mexico and China. In June, according to OPEC's information from secondary sources, production rose the most in Libya and Nigeria, which are exempt from production cuts. But Angola and Saudi Arabia production was notably higher, as was production in Iraq and Iran. (See table for numbers.) The big exception: Venezuela, where oil production in June fell 13,600 barrels per day to 1.938 million barrels per day. Venezuela's production is higher than that in Nigeria, as has been the case historically. OPEC production overall averaged 32.61 million barrels per day in June, an increase of 393,000 barrels per day over the previous month. According to secondary sources, July oil production in the 14 main OPEC members averaged 32.6 million barrels per day in June, an increase of 393,000 barrels per day over June. The notable exception was Venezuela, where production fell. OPEC Venezuela's direct communication with OPEC indicated a production decline of 33,000 barrels per day. Russ Dallen, an attorney, publisher and "asset manager's agent" for Caracas Capital Markets writes: " ... Venezuela's rig count had fallen to 49 in July 2016. Venezuela did try and get more rigs drilling over the last year, hitting a high of 56 in April, but guess what: the rig count for Venezuela is for June 2017: back at 49. Based on its own estimates that its production was collapsing -- estimates similar to ours --Venezuela agreed with OPEC to cut production to 1.972 barrels per day (in other words giving what was already a fait accompli). Venezuela has fallen through that cut and is now 34,000 barrels per day below its quota -- while as OPEC notes, everyone else's production is going higher. Worse, if you look at the 2015 column on the chart above, Venezuela was producing 2.375 million barrels per day just a year and a half ago in 2015. That means Venezuela is producing 437,000 barrels per day less than it was 2 years ago, which at Venezuela's average 2017 oil price of $43.60 (so far), means that Venezuela is losing over half a billion dollars every month; $6.9 billion a year..." Despite all this, oil prices are higher today: the international Brent price was up 0.6% to $47.49 per barrel in recent trading, while the U.S. benchmark was up 1% to $45.49. The United States Oil Fund (USO) was up 0.8% and the Energy Select SPDR ETF (XLE) was up 0.5%. Shares of Brazil's state-controlled oil producer and refiner Petróleo Brasileiro or Petrobras (PBR) were up 3.2% after Brazil's securities watchdog reversed a decision ordering the state-controlled company to restate results, Reuters reports. Shares of China Petroleum & Chemical (SNP) were up 1.2%. South African chemicals producer Sasol (SSL) was up 2.6%. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) was up 1.8% in morning trading, with worries about higher U.S. interest rates pushed down the road after comments by Fed Chair Janet Yellen proved dovish. See our post After Yellen: A Dichotomy In China On Rates & Fed? Also see our free posts: Oil ‘Stuck In A Range,’ Buy E&Ps & Emerging Market Energy, BlackRock Says Will Total, Exxon Fund Qatar Gas Expansion? Fund Flows: Brazil, India & Saudi Arabia Gain, Russia & Oil Lag Oil Stuck at $47: Blame Nigeria, Libya & Frackers, Goldman Says What’s Next In Venezuela: Lopez Freed, Sunday Vote, Pdvsa Financials?
A TOUGHER citizenship test could be on the cards for migrants wanting to become Australians. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said revamping the test “was a debate worth having” as the federal government looks at measures to prevent terrorists from exploiting migration path ways. Mr Dutton flagged he wants to see greater focus on people’s ability to integrate into Australian society — an individual’s willingness to learn English, educate their children and employment prospects or potential welfare dependence. “My view is people who don’t embrace these tangible values shouldn’t expect automatic citizenship,” he told The Australian newspaper. The citizenship test consists of 20 questions drawn at random from a pool of questions. To pass the test, you must answer 75 per cent, or 15 out of 20 questions, correctly. This quiz below is a sample of practice questions migrants can do which are listed on the Border Force website. See how you go. Can you pass the test? Mr Dutton said that his personal view was that there was “scope to modernise the arrangements”. He said we need to look at whether we have the right test in place for future migrants coming to Australia. “The question we face is whether or not we have the right test, the right questions ... whether or not people know Don Bradman’s batting average is a true test of whether or not somebody shares an Australian value,” he told 2GB radio. “The vast majority of people come here and do the right thing... but there is a minority that are on a path way to citizenship who we need to have a closer look at in my judgement,” he told 3AW Radio. The controversial test was brought in by the Howard government in 2007 and covered Australia’s history, sporting greats, government, geography and traditions. The Rudd government tweaked the test two years later to cover civic duty and responsibilities. Topics include the significance of Anzac Day, the role of the governor-general, laws and government, and the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship. Key senate crossbencher David Leyonhjelm backed the minister’s calls. “Raising the bar on citizenship is the right response to the concern about immigration which is currently circulating in Australia,” Senator Leyonhjelm told AAP. He believes Australia should look at Switzerland as a potential model where there is a sponsorship program and fellow citizens have to vouch for applicants. He said the citizenship test should cover people’s links to the community, work history and fundamental liberal democratic values such as free speech, equality before the law, rights of women and respect for diversity.
A blinking text cursor while typing the word Wikipedia. In computer user interfaces, a cursor is an indicator used to show the current position for user interaction on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device. The mouse cursor is also called a pointer,[1] owing to its resemblance in usage to a pointing stick. Origin of the term [ edit ] Cursor is Latin for 'runner.' A cursor is the name given to the transparent slide engraved with a hairline that is used for marking a point on a slide rule. The term was then transferred to computers through analogy. Text cursor [ edit ] The cursor for the Windows Command Prompt (appearing as an underscore at the end of the line) In most command-line interfaces or text editors, the text cursor, also known as a caret,[2] is an underscore, a solid rectangle, or a vertical line, which may be flashing or steady, indicating where text will be placed when entered (the insertion point). In text mode displays, it was not possible to show a vertical bar between characters to show where the new text would be inserted, so an underscore or block cursor was used instead. In situations where a block was used, the block was usually created by inverting the pixels of the character using the boolean math exclusive or function.[3] On text editors and word processors of modern design on bitmapped displays, the vertical bar is typically used instead. In a typical text editing application, the cursor can be moved by pressing various keys. These include the four arrow keys, the Page Up and Page Down keys, the Home key, the End key, and various key combinations involving a modifier key such as the Control key. The position of the cursor also may be changed by moving the mouse pointer to a different location in the document and clicking. The blinking of the text cursor is usually temporarily suspended when it is being moved; otherwise, the cursor may change position when it is not visible, making its location difficult to follow. Some interfaces use an underscore or thin vertical bar to indicate that the user is in insert mode, a mode where text will be inserted in the middle of the existing text, and a larger block to indicate that the user is in overtype mode, where inserted text will overwrite existing text. In this way, a block cursor may be seen as a piece of selected text one character wide, since typing will replace the text "in" the cursor with the new text. Bi-directional text [ edit ] A vertical line text cursor with a small left-pointing or right-pointing appendage are for indicating the direction of text flow on systems that support bi-directional text, and is thus usually known among programmers as a 'bidi cursor'. In some cases, the cursor may split into two parts, each indicating where left-to-right and right-to-left text would be inserted.[4] Mouse cursor [ edit ] The pointer or mouse cursor echoes movements of the pointing device, commonly a mouse, touchpad or trackball. This kind of cursor is used to manipulate elements of graphical user interfaces such as menus, buttons, scrollbars or any other widget. It may be called a "mouse pointer," because the mouse is the dominant type of pointing device used with desktop computers. I-beam pointer [ edit ] The I-beam pointer. The I-beam pointer (also called the I-cursor) is a cursor shaped like a serifed capital letter "I". The purpose of this cursor is to indicate that the text beneath the cursor can be highlighted, and sometimes inserted or changed.[5] 3D cursor [ edit ] An example of a 3D cursor in a 3D modelling environment (center). The idea of a cursor being used as a marker or insertion point for new data or transformations, such as rotation, can be extended to a 3D modeling environment. Blender, for instance, uses a 3D cursor to determine where future operations are to take place. See also [ edit ] Susan Kare, designer of several of the common cursor shapes
Moncton company will allocate approximately 25 per cent of anticipated production to support the adult recreational market in New Brunswick MONCTON, NEW BRUNSWICK--(Marketwired - Sept. 15, 2017) - HIGHLIGHTS Organigram selected to supply adult-use recreational cannabis to New Brunswick market Organigram agrees to supply a minimum of 5 million grams per year The agreement is estimated to have at least a retail value of between $40 million to $60 million per year Agreement reinforces progressive leadership of New Brunswick within Canadian market, emphasizes province's commitment to New Brunswick-based businesses Organigram Holdings Inc. (TSX VENTURE:OGI)(OTCQB:OGRMF) (the "Company" or "Organigram"), a leading licensed producer of medical marijuana based in Moncton, New Brunswick, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a memorandum of understanding ("MOU") with the New Brunswick provincial authority for the distribution of marijuana to the adult-use recreational market. Through the MOU, New Brunswick secures a supply of at least 5 million grams of recreational marijuana per year from Organigram. The MOU, one of the first in Canada, is the result of positive, productive and ongoing consultation between the Government of New Brunswick and the Company. "We are excited to enter into this MOU with the Province. The Government of New Brunswick has established itself as a leader in the developing marijuana industry, working to ensure that the industry develops in a responsible and effective manner. New Brunswick's stewardship on this file has been recognized throughout Canada and we are proud to work closely and support them as a strategic partner," says Greg Engel, Organigram's Chief Executive Officer. The supply arrangement outlined in the MOU supports the financial viability and success of Organigram as a leading licensed producer in Canada. "We applaud the New Brunswick government's efforts to foster an innovative, forward-thinking economic climate that supports cannabis as a driver of growth for New Brunswick-based businesses," adds Mr. Engel. Both Organigram and the Government of New Brunswick are committed to the safe and responsible implementation of the upcoming federal legislation regarding access to adult-use recreational marijuana. As a result, as part of the MOU, Organigram will also contribute to social responsibility programs that will provide ongoing education, helping ensure public safety remains a priority. "As we move forward under this agreement, we have the opportunity not only to help build a strong and successful cannabis market within the province and beyond, but to also reinforce our company's commitment to safety and education" says Ray Gracewood, Chief Commercial Officer, Organigram. "The safety of those in our community is of the utmost importance, and we are proud to support programs that will continue to educate the public on cannabis and all of its forms". For more information, visit www.Organigram.ca About Organigram Holdings Inc. Organigram Holdings Inc. is a TSX Venture Exchange listed company whose wholly owned subsidiary, Organigram Inc., is a licensed producer of medical marijuana in Canada. Organigram is focused on producing the highest quality, condition specific medical marijuana for patients in Canada. Organigram's facility is located in Moncton, New Brunswick and the Company is regulated by the Access to Cannabis for Medical Purposes Regulations ("ACMPR"). Organigram has been ranked in the top ten Clean Technology & Life Sciences Sector on the TSX Venture Exchange 50. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release contains forward-looking information which involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual events to differ materially from current expectations. Important factors - including the availability of funds, consummation of definitive documentation, the results of financing efforts, crop yields - that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations are disclosed in the Company's documents filed from time to time on SEDAR (see www.sedar.com). Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation, except to the extent required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Aug. 5, 2015, 3:36 PM GMT By Reuters Federal regulators on Wednesday voted to require companies to reveal the pay gap between CEOs and their employees. The Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to order most public companies to disclose the ratio between their chief executives' annual compensation and median, or midpoint, employee pay. The new rule will take effect starting in 2017. The issue of executive pay has generated heated debate. The 3-2 vote came on one of the most controversial rules the agency has put forward in recent years. The SEC received more than 280,000 comments on the issue since it floated the proposal two years ago, and lobbying by business interests against the requirement was intense. The SEC acted under a mandate from the 2010 law that reshaped regulation after the financial crisis. Outsize pay packages — often tied to the company's stock price — were blamed for encouraging disastrous risk-taking and short-term gain at the expense of long-term performance. Under the SEC's final rule, companies will get some flexibility in how they find the median. For instance, they can exclude 5 percent of their overseas workers, if they have any, and use statistical sampling to arrive at the number. Smaller public companies — those with less than $75 million in total shares held externally or less than $50 million in annual revenue — are exempt from the disclosure. So are emerging growth companies and investment companies. "These are good and reasonable changes that should reduce costs for many companies" while still meeting the financial overhaul law's mandate, SEC Chair Mary Jo White said before the vote. Those changes are not likely to assuage corporate trade groups, which are widely expected to file a legal challenge. The SEC had been under mounting pressure by Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and unions, who support the rule and have lamented delays in its adoption. Why corporate CEO pay is so high, and going higher The measure was tucked into the 2010 Dodd-Frank law amid concerns about the growing disparity between compensation for chief executives and their corporate workers. Republicans and trade groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fought back against the measure at every turn, saying it will be too expensive, could mislead investors and is not material to a company's financial statements. The Rich Really Aren't Like Us: They Think We're As Loaded As They Are In a lengthy 2013 letter, the Chamber urged the SEC to defer working on the rule at all and instead conduct a pilot program and roundtable in order to come up with a different plan. It also urged the SEC not to force companies to include the ratio in formal filings and allow them to place it into an addendum to help reduce their liability. In Plain Sight: Poverty in America Companies will have to start reporting the new pay ratio disclosures in the first fiscal year beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2017.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak presides over a meeting held to ensure complete government-wide preparation in national emergency situations, as part of the Ulchi Freedom Guardian, an annual joint-military exercise by South Korea and the United States. SOUTH Korea and the United States have launched a massive joint military exercise, prompting the North to condemn the manoeuvres as provocative and warn that "all-out war" could accidentally erupt. The two allies have described the 10-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise as defensive and routine but the North habitually terms such joint drills a rehearsal for invasion and launches its own counter-exercises. "The exercise started this morning," a spokesman of the US-South Korea Combined Forces Command (CFC) told AFP, referring to the annual computer-assisted simulation command-post exercise. Read Next All of CFC's major units are taking part, involving more than 530,000 troops, including some 3,000 military personnel from the US and other bases around the Pacific region, CFC said. US General James D Thurman, Combined Forces Command Commander, said the drill was focused on "preparing, preventing and prevailing against the full range of current and future external threats" to South Korea and the region. "We are applying lessons learned out of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as those garnered by the Alliance's recent experiences with North Korean provocations on the peninsula and past exercises," he said. Pyongyang condemned the exercise as "extremely provocative", calling it a preparation for an "all-out war" against the North and the "largest-ever nuclear war exercise". "The Korean peninsula is faced with the worst crisis ever. An all-out war can be triggered by any accidents," the North's ruling communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary. Seoul and Washington wanted to use the latest exercises to build up their capability to mount surprise attacks on the North's nuclear and missile facilities, it said. "The US war-mongers are planning to carry out a realistic war drill to remove our nuclear facilities with a mobile unit led by the US 20th Support Command which was sent to Iraq to find and disable weapons of mass destruction," it said. "Our military and the people will not sit idle as US imperialists mobilise massive military forces and threaten our sovereign rights." It accused the US of seeking to bring war to the Korean peninsula after Afghanistan and Iraq as a way to "extricate itself from its worsening economic crisis". The CFC spokesman said that during the exercise, troops would train for a "wide variety of missions including those involving the location and security of chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological threats". The North's military urged Seoul and Washington last week to show their willingness to work towards denuclearisation by scrapping the exercise. In an open letter published by its official news media, Pyongyang also called for a peace-keeping mechanism to replace the current armistice that ended the 1950-1953 war. A flurry of diplomatic efforts have been under way to resume stalled six-party disarmament talks involving the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States. Senior Pyongyang officials met their counterparts in Seoul and Washington last month, raising hopes that the talks -- last held in December 2008 -- could resume. The North has repeatedly expressed a desire to return to the forum, but the US has urged it to show more sincerity and mend ties with the South first.
Get the biggest Manchester City FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Real Madrid are preparing a big-money swoop for Manchester City's star striker Sergio Aguero, according to reports in Spain. Media outlet AS says the Bernabeu giants are set to make a whopping offer 90million euros - around £63m - for the Blues striker. Aguero claimed the Golden Boot as the Premier League's top scorer with 26 goals this season. He signed a new five-year contract last season and City would resist approaches for the Argentine. But Real, who splashed out £85m on Gareth Bale last summer, have a habit of getting what they want. Aguero has been linked with the Spanish giants previously and Real club president Florentino Perez, a big admirer, was keen to sign him during his Atletico Madrid days. He moved to Atletico for 23m euros from Independiente in 2006 and City brought him to Manchester in 2011 for £35m. Aguero became a City legend in 2012 when he scored possibly the most dramatic winner in Premier League history with his 94th-minute strike against QPR to earn the Blues their first league title in 44 years. See our gallery of action from City final game of the season below
Listen here, basketball fans, and listen good: We have to get rid of charges. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but I know that it’s going to get done. It has to. I refuse to believe that it’s the current year and the greatest sport in the world — a sport that exemplifies athleticism, strength, agility, and grace — is still rewarding defenders for grabbing their balls and falling over as they undercut guys who are trying to dunk. Charges are dangerous and make the game less fun, and the only people who think otherwise are either short, unathletic dudes whose only hope on defense is to take them or stodgy traditionalists who are 4,000 years old. I wrote about this more than a year and a half ago for a website you may have heard of, and even then I wasn’t the first to have the thought. It’s just that, with a new season right around the corner, I feel compelled to reignite the charge-banning flame. Plus, when I pitch the idea of getting rid of charges to people, most react like I’m suggesting that there should be a 7-point line or that the second quarter of every game should be played with three balls. I want to make it clear this isn’t a novelty act and it sure as shit isn’t a joke. I desperately want to see charges abolished from every level of basketball. Related The Completely Absurd and Definitive Guide to NBA Free Throws Let me clarify exactly what I mean by a “charge.” I don’t want offensive fouls to be eliminated from the game. There obviously have to be measures in place that prevent offensive players from just lowering their shoulders and plowing through defenders on their way to the rim. I don’t want post defenders to be helpless against someone like Shaq backing them down with reckless abandon, nor do I believe LeBron should be allowed to steamroll Steph Curry on the perimeter. My gripe is with the plays in which help-side defenders run to a spot on the floor, plant their feet, and grab their nuts because they know they can’t make a legitimate play on the ball. In other words, the Marcus Smart defense. Here’s my proposal: I want to make the 3-point line the new restricted arc, and I want to make it so that it’s a flagrant foul if a secondary defender (or a defender on a fast break) steps in front of an offensive player inside the arc, remains stationary, and then doesn’t attempt a play on the ball. What’s a “play on the ball,” you ask? That would be up to the referee’s discretion to a certain extent, but I’d generally define it as (a) trying to strip the ball from the offensive player as he looks to shoot/dribble or (b) trying to block/alter the shot. Either way, covering your genitals and falling over is most definitely not a play on the ball. And while it might seem unwise to institute a rule that would give officials a gray area to navigate, the truth is this would be much easier to enforce than the current system, which requires officials to determine whether a defender was standing outside the restricted area, whether he moved his feet, whether he established position before the offensive player started his upward motion, and all the other factors that go into making block/charge calls the hardest thing for refs to get right. I imagine most officials would welcome a change that makes their jobs easier, although there would be a few exceptions like Ted Valentine, who seems to have an orgasm every time he emphatically makes a block/charge call in front of a packed Big Ten arena. This wouldn’t mean the end of help defense, by the way. If charges were banned, defenders could still get into the same position they already do, only now they’d have to actually play defense instead of strategically falling over. Defenders could do what Roy Hibbert does all the time, which is maintain a vertical plane, challenge guys at the rim, and even draw offensive fouls if the player trying to score is out of control. Wouldn’t it make the sport more fun if more guys followed Hibbert’s lead instead of taking charges? But, you might be saying, Hibbert can only make that play because he’s enormous. How are guards coming from the help side supposed to stop slashing small forwards from dunking on them? They aren’t! That’s the point! If a defender doesn’t have quick enough hands to strip the ball, or if he isn’t big or athletic enough to challenge the offensive player at the rim, he’s shit out of luck. We don’t give an out to slower and smaller players in any other context on a basketball court. When Russell Westbrook blows by Kirk Hinrich, Hinrich doesn’t get to grab his jersey just because Westbrook is faster. And Isaiah Thomas doesn’t get to climb on DeAndre Jordan’s back for a rebound because “it’s not fair” how much bigger Jordan is. So why do we put up with charges? We are one rulebook tweak away from living in a world where every time a player dribbles past his primary defender it means that an exciting play at the rim is coming. Either the defender wins, like Hibbert in that Vine above, or the defender loses, like Hibbert does here. Who the hell says no to that? Both of those plays are immeasurably more entertaining than whatever the most captivating charge in basketball history is. Both are safer, too. Look, I know people hate change and we’ve all had it beaten into our heads that taking a charge is one of the craftiest and most selfless plays someone can make. The charge rule is like the Second Amendment, though: It made perfect sense when it was implemented a million years ago, but the world we live in now is so different than it was back then that it’s worth re-evaluating. Do we have the rule because it’s good? Or do we have it because it’s always been there? I have no idea what the answer is for the Second Amendment (please don’t yell at me, gun people), but the answer to the charge rule is clear. If charges were never a thing and an NBA owner spent a meeting pushing for the idea of incentivizing defenders for falling over, the rest of the owners would laugh that person out of the room. Charges were first introduced before the 1928–29 college basketball season, when players wore belts, the ball had laces, jump shots didn’t exist, and the typical center was 6-foot-6. The first NBA game wouldn’t happen for another 18 years. Can you imagine how the people who created the rule would’ve reacted if they knew basketball players would one day be able to jump over 7-footers and Kias? Forget killing baby Hitler. If I had a time machine, I’d travel back to 1928 and show those guys this clip of David Stockton getting obliterated by Orlando Johnson all because their rule had been bastardized to the point that Stockton was an inch away from being rewarded for this absurdity. Think of taking charges like your grandmother going 45 miles per hour on an interstate where the speed limit is 70. Sure, it’s perfectly within her rights to do so, and you could make an argument that she’s the only safe driver on the road. But come on. Why should all the other people who are in total control of their vehicles be forced to slow down to avoid crashing into her just because she’s too scared and/or doesn’t have the ability to go faster? Similarly, why should LeBron or Kevin Durant be discouraged from attacking the rim just because there are defenders too scared to challenge them and who might take their legs out from underneath them while they’re in the air? Related Meet the NBA Shot Doctors Charges must go. I don’t think I’ve ever been so sure of anything in my life. If you disagree and feel the urge to voice your opinion, I want to take a second to remind you that you’re wrong and it’s not my fault that you sucked at basketball and had to rely on garbage tactics to have any semblance of success on the court. For those who agree, I beg you to please please please join the #BanCharges movement this season. Recruit your friends, belittle those who disagree, and become so annoying in your pursuit of change that your message gets lost and people just want you to shut up about it already. If sportswriters tweeting at airlines during their 20-minute flight delays have taught me anything, it’s that complaining on Twitter is the easiest way to get what you want. And if that plan doesn’t work, we can just get LeBron to complain for us. After all, while it’s impossible to know for certain, I’m confident that when Gandhi said, “Tweet the change you want to see in the world,” he had the #BanCharges movement in mind.
by DZ All current major or minor league players developed in European baseball are listed here. The big news this time around is the addition of Germany’s Donald Lutz within the MLB edition after he was called up for the first time in 2014 (he spent nearly two months as a reserve outfielder in the major leagues last season) as Joey Votto went on the disabled list. That the two current European major leaguers are with the Cincinnati Reds insists a tribute to Jim Stoeckel, longtime international scout and former national team manager of the Netherlands and France. Also of note, Alex Liddi was released from AAA by the Chicago White Sox, but a few days later signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He has appeared the last two days with their own Triple-A team, the Albuquerque Isotopes. He’s reunited as a Dodger with international director Bob Engle, who served in a similar role with the Seattle Mariners when Liddi first signed out of Italy. MLB- Roger Bernadina, Cincinnati Reds. Netherlands. Current team: Cincinnati Reds. After noting Bernadina was designated for assignment in the last post three weeks ago, he cleared waivers, was recalled, and was only away from the big league field for four days. He’s had 2 hits in 17 at bats since rejoining the big league squad, and now he’s joined in Cincinnati by fellow European Donald Lutz. Donald Lutz, Cincinnati Reds. Germany. Current team: Cincinnati Reds. The news has been hot and heavy for the former Bad Homberg Hornet & Regensburg Legionnaere over the past three weeks. Less than 10 days ago, he was promoted from Double-A Pensacola to Triple-A Louisville, after hitting .360 in 23 games. 15 Triple-A at bats later, including his first home run at that level, yesterday he received the call to the Major League team, as earlier reported by mister-baseball.com [insert link to call-up article]. Triple A- Didi Gregorius, Arizona Diamondbacks. Netherlands. Current team: Reno Aces (AAA) Gregorius is hitting .341 over his last 10 games, raising his season average to .309. He has 19 extra base hits to go along with his sparkling .395 on base percentage while playing shortstop. He’s been rumored in various trade scenarios, but continues to make the case for another major league chance, be it in Arizona or elsewhere. Kai Gronauer, New York Mets. Germany. Current Team: Las Vegas 51’s (AAA) Kai played 3 games, with two doubles in 13 at bats, before returning to the disabled list. His lack of health is unfortunate, as the Mets starting catcher is currently struggling with a concussion. He’s now appeared in 9 games this season. Alex Liddi, Los Angeles Dodgers. Italy. Current team: Albequerque Isotopes (AAA) Liddi is one-for-six as a minor league Dodger. He’s hitting .171 for the year, with 3 home runs. Single A- Federico Castagnini, Baltimore Orioles. Italy. Current team: Delmarva Shorebirds (A) Castagnini is hitting .233 in his last 10 games, with an on-base of .342. Through 70 at bats, he’s hitting .229/.317/.243 with 8 runs scored. Lars Huijer, Seattle Mariners. Netherlands. Current team: Clinton LumberKings (A) Huijer had two strong starts over the last 3 weeks, but his numbers are skewed by a stinker on May 20th, when he lasted less than two innings. Despite that outing in the early going, he maintains a 2-2 record and 3.96 ERA for the season, with 31 strikeouts and 16 walks in 38 innings (10 outings, 6 starts). Max Kepler, Minnesota Twins. Germany. Current team: Fort Myers Miracle (High-A) The Berlin native, with Lutz a Regensburg Academy product, is hitting .188 through his lat 10 games. He’s at .211 through 37 games overall, stealing 2 bases, hitting 2 home runs and 4 triples while scoring 18 runs and knocking in 18 RBI. Dovydas Neverauskas, Pittsburgh Pirates. Lithuania. Current team: West Virginia Power (A) Neverauskas is in the regular starting rotation in West Virginia, making three relatively strong starts without a decision in the last 3 weeks. Overall, he remains 3-1 with a 4.25 ERA. He has struck out 25 and walked 17 in 36 innings (8 games, 8 starts). Andy Paz, Oakland Athletics. France. Current team: Beloit Snappers (A) In Andy’s last game (on the 21st), he went 3-for-4, with two doubles and a walk, scoring twice and knocking in three runs. That raised his season numbers to .158/.279/.193. He’s splitting time behind the plate, having played 18 games so far in Wisconsin. Short season A – Nick Urbanus, Texas Rangers. Netherlands. Current team: Spokane Indians (Short Season A) Urbanus hit .181 with 21 strikeouts against 4 walks in A-ball for the Hickory Crawdads before being reassigned. He’ll restart with the short-season club in Washington state in a couple of weeks. Yet to appear (officially) in 2014 – Davide Anselmi, Cincinnati Reds. Italy. Current team: AZL Reds (rookie) Daniel Arribas, Pittsburgh Pirates. Netherlands. Current team: GCL Pirates (rookie) Federico Celli, Los Angeles Dodgers. Italy Current team: TBD Martin Cervenka, Cleveland Indians. Czech Republic. Current team: Mahoning Valley Scrappers (short-season A) Rodney Daal, San Diego Padres. Netherlands. Current team: Fort Wayne Tincaps (A) Maik Ehmcke, Arizona Diamondbacks. Germany. Current team: TBD Rachid Engelhardt, Baltimore Orioles. Netherlands. Current team: DSL Orioles Marten Gasparini, Kansas City Royals. Italy. Current team: TBD Misja Harcksen, Los Angeles Dodgers. Netherlands. Current team: TBD Jakub Izold, Cincinnati Reds. Slovakia. Current team: AZL Reds (rookie) Julsan Kamara, Philadelphia Phillies. Germany. Current team: TBD Mattia Mercuri, Atlanta Braves. Italy. Current team: GCL Braves (rookie) Marek Minarik, Pittsburgh Pirates. Czech Republic. Current team: TBD Alberto Mineo, Chicago Cubs. Italy. Current team: AZL Cubs (rookie) Jan Novak, Baltimore Orioles. Czech Republic. Current team: TBD Milan Post, Milwaukee Brewers. Netherlands. Current team: TBD Alex Roy, Seattle Mariners. France. Current team: AZL Mariners (rookie) Sven Schueller, Los Angeles Dodgers. Germany. Current team: TBD Artur Strzalka, New York Yankees. Poland. Current team: TBD Daniel Thieben, Seattle Mariners. Germany. Current team: Pulaski Mariners (rookie) Joel Valera, Los Angeles Dodgers. Germany. Current team: TBD Daniel Vavrusa, New York Yankees. Czech Republic. Current team: GCL Yankees 1 (rookie) Ruar Verkerk, Minnesota Twins. Netherlands. Current team: TBD
Putin is a power player who cares more about Russia’s national interests, and Russian minorities in his near abroad, than in that mythical force known as world opinion. Would that America had a president who cared more about our interests than in promoting globalism and the left’s social agenda. Vladimir Putin isn’t the Easter Bunny. On the other hand, he isn’t Joseph Stalin. It takes a truly fevered imagination to see Russian forces in the Crimea as a prelude to Russian tanks rolling across Europe toward Berlin and Paris. The Crimea’s population is 60% ethnic Russian. For most of the past 800 years, the Ukraine has been Russian. An independent Ukraine disappeared in the 12th century. It reappeared briefly after the Bolshevik Revolution, only to be crushed by the Red Army and not emerge again until the fall of the Soviet Union. All of this fuss about the “territorial integrity” of a state born yesterday. The Russian-backed government in Kiev came to power democratically, but was ousted by the Maidan mob. We’re told that the interim government is pro-Western and pro-EU. When Reagan was president, the expression pro-Western meant something. It meant pro-representative government, pro-human rights and pro-Western (Judeo-Christian) values. Today, it means a willingness to accept same-sex “marriage,” abortion on demand, an anti-religion ethos – the agenda of the EU’s cultural commissars -- and the economic dictates of the Brussels bureaucracy. Putin doesn’t want to see the EU -- and, possibly, NATO --- on his doorstep. Do you blame him? If someone overthrew a democratically elected, pro-American government in Ottawa and replaced it with an interim regime hostile to our interests, that contained neo-Nazi elements and which immediately moved against English-speaking Canadians, it would irritate us too. It would, that is, if there was an American in the White House. But don’t I care about a possible Russian annexation of the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine (with its Russian-oriented, Orthodox population), conservatives who are still fighting the Cold War ask me? Not really. I’ll tell you what does concern me: Obama’s hollowing out of our military -- Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced plans to slash the army’s active-duty personnel by at least another 70,000. Some support aircraft and cruisers are also slated for mothballs. The Marine Corps will lose 8,000 of the few/the proud. In 2013, defense spending was 4% of GDP -- taking us to pre-Pearl Harbor levels. The president doesn’t think we need a military, just a marker for drawing red lines. Obama’s life style-friendly military -- If Putin doesn’t take us seriously, is it any wonder? The headline in the March 2 Stars and Stripes beams: “Gay, lesbian troops perform in drag at Kadena Air Base” in Okinawa. The publication disclosed that the drag show was “in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered troops.” Doubtless, this will do much for the morale of the non-LGBT troops. But as then-Army Chief of Staff George W. Casey, Jr. said at the time of the Ft. Hood massacre (which the administration still refuses to call a terrorist incident), diversity is the New Action Army’s most important product. Perhaps we could deploy an elite unit, armed with vibrators, to the Crimea to counter Spetsnaz commandos. Muslims in the Obama White House -- including Arif Alikhan (Deputy Executive Director for Policy in DHS), Mohamed Elibiary (Homeland Security Advisory Council), Rashad Hussain (Special Envoy to the deeply anti-Semitic Organization of the Islamic Conference), Imam Mohamed Magid (Obama’s Sharia Law advisor, on loan from the Islamic Society of North America, with its Brotherhood ties) and Eboo Patel (on the Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships). A Muslim who takes his religion seriously must put loyalty to Dar al-Islam above allegiance to an infidel state. The suicide pact Obama and Kerry are determined to force on Israel -- Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu arrived in the U.S. Monday to the administration’s threats. If Israel doesn’t participate in a negotiated surrender (leading to Jihadistan on its borders), Washington won’t be able to contain the “international fallout,” the White House warned. Unlike the Ukraine, Israel’s territorial integrity is in our national interest, as our only friend in a region with a lot of people determined to destroy us. Obama’s metastasizing autocracy -- We fret about democracy in the Ukraine while Obama treats the Constitution as a series of suggestions. For the president, the three branches of government are him, his pen and his telephone. Putin is a strong man. Obama is a weak man (except when it comes to bullying our allies). Obama venerates multilateralism. Putin is willing to go it alone. Obama is committed to the entire LGBT agenda (including gay “marriage”). He’s also the only sitting president to address Planned Parenthood, such is his commitment to abortion without borders. Putin believes the foregoing is the road to national annihilation. Where does the threat to America lie? Don Feder is a former syndicated columnist, consultant and writer.
(Photo by Jude Joffe-Block - KJZZ) Arpaio protesters in downtown Phoenix on Oct. 11, 2016. Justice Department lawyers announced Tuesday they will prosecute Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for intentionally violating a federal judge’s orders in a racial profiling case. The sheriff will face a criminal contempt of court charge. The case began when a judge found Arpaio intentionally disobeyed a court order to stop making immigration arrests. Prosecutors with the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section announced in a court hearing they will prosecute the six-term sheriff for that violation. They said they would agree to limiting the possible penalty to six months or less in prison time due to the sheriff’s age of 84, in order to have the trial be in front of a judge rather than a jury. Arpaio’s defense lawyer Mel McDonald said the sheriff wants a jury trial and will plead not guilty. "All along he admitted mistakes were made, our position is that there was no willful violation of the judge’s order," said McDonald. It is still unclear whether three others will also face charges. Early voting begins Wednesday in the sheriff’s race for re-election.
A UK court has reprimanded Apple for adding "incorrect" details to its online statement that Samsung did not copy the iPad tablet. After losing an appeal over the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the company was required to post a notice on its site acknowledging the decision, but it added details from other cases (including a German suit and the massive US trial) in which Apple had fared better, ending with an assertion that "while the UK court did not find Samsung guilty of infringement, other courts have recognized that in the course of creating its Galaxy tablet, Samsung willfully copied Apple's far more popular iPad." According to Bloomberg, the court found that some of these details were inaccurate, and The Guardian reports that judges censured Apple for adding information that made the statement less clear. "I’m at a loss that a company such as Apple would do this," said Judge Robin Jacob. "That is a plain breach of the order." Now, Apple has 24 hours to post a corrected statement, though it originally requested 14 days — something one judge reportedly said he "can't believe... This is Apple. They cannot put something on their website?"
Looking for something new to play on your Nintendo Switch? The Nintendo Switch eShop has been updated with a pair of new games. You can now pick up the "deceptively deep roguelike" TumbleSeed ($15) and the next classic NeoGeo game, Blazing Star ($8). Both are small games, as TumbleSeed comes in at 506MB, while Blazing Star, which was originally released in 1998, is only 96MB. TumbleSeed is a single-player game, while Blazing Star supports up to two players. Last week saw the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, while Minecraft is coming on May 11, so the big games keep coming. Nintendo has said it is important for the viability of the Switch to release games at a steady clip. In other Switch news, Nintendo recently said it believes the console can reach "relative parity" with the Wii, which was one of the most successful consoles ever.
Burglary–Oct. 31, 4:05 p.m. Via San Marino. Someone forced open the front door of a residence by busting the door frame. Jewelry valued at $50,000 in total was stolen from the home. Hit and run–Oct. 31, 2:36 p.m. Stevens Creek Boulevard and Blaney Avenue. A driver was involved in a vehicle accident and fled with another suspect. The driver turned out to be unlicensed and was in possession of someone else’s credit card. The other suspect was on probation, and she was in possession of another person’s driver’s license. Identity theft–Oct. 30, 2:10 p.m. Stevens Creek Boulevard. An unknown person stole a person’s identity to submit credit card applications. Burglary–Oct. 30, 1:35 p.m. Valley Green Drive. An unknown person tampered with a lock and entered a rented storage shed sometime between Aug. 4 and Sept. 14. Computer equipment, a paintball gun and a projector were missing from the shed. Stolen vehicle–Oct. 30, 10:40 a.m. Calvert Drive and Arata Way. A 1998 Honda Accord stolen out of Santa Clara was found. Identity theft–Oct. 29, 4:48 p.m. Bianchi Way. Over a six-month period, a victim’s identity was used to apply for multiple credit cards and multiple loans. The victim did not sustain a monetary loss. Identity theft–Oct. 29, 1:30 p.m. Sorenson Avenue. A suspect tried to defraud a victim through the purchase of prepaid credit cards. Shoplifting and conspiracy–Oct. 29, 7:54 a.m. N. Wolfe Road and Stevens Creek Boulevard. A man and woman worked together to shoplift shirts from a store. The man was arrested and the woman was given a citation. Theft–Oct. 29, 7:50 a.m. Northcrest Square. Items valued at approximately $4,000 were stolen from a home garage left open overnight. Drugs–Oct. 29, 2:10 a.m. Bandley Drive. A suspicious person on a bicycle was confronted near Apple Inc. property. The bicyclist did not have a forward-facing bike light. The bicyclist fled reporting deputies. A perimeter was set up to find the suspect, who was found hiding. The suspect was under the influence of a controlled substance. Stolen vehicle–Oct. 28, 11:41 p.m. S. De Anza Boulevard and Kentwood Avenue. A 1993 Honda Civic was found. The vehicle had previously been reported stolen out of San Jose. Public intoxication and trespassing–Oct. 28, 11:21 p.m. De Anza Boulevard. A suspect walked into the Cupertino Inn and refused to leave. The suspect was seen falling into some bushes. He was arrested for being drunk in public. Shoplifting–Oct. 28, 2:45 p.m. Wolfe Road. Makeup items were stolen from a store. Counterfeit currency–Oct. 28, 10:26 a.m. N. Wolfe Road. A suspect was arrested for trying to purchase items multiple times with counterfeit currency. Stolen vehicle–Oct. 28, 8:30 a.m. Stevens Creek Boulevard. A 2003 Chevrolet Silverado was stolen during the night. Bicycle theft–Oct. 27, 8:04 p.m. Westlynn Way. An unknown person stole a Cannondale bicycle from a porch. To learn more about Cupertino’s Neighborhood Watch program, call 408.777.3177, email stephaniet@cupertino.org, or visit cupertino.org/neighborhoodwatch.
Early this year, President Barack Obama will decree whether his own library will be in Chicago, New York or Hawaii. The competition is fierce. It was reported recently that Obama’s library foundation was skeptical about a bid from the University of Chicago because the university does not own the locations where it proposed placing the building. So Chicago mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel swung into action, announcing that the city would help the university acquire the land it needs. But why should each president get his own library? Multiple libraries are wasteful, costing taxpayers millions of dollars every year. And they’re undemocratic, because they allow our presidents — not the people who elected them — to define their legacies. Presidential libraries aren’t mentioned in the Constitution or in any of our other founding documents. They date to 1938, when Franklin D. Roosevelt — midway through his second term of office — announced that he would personally construct a public archive in his native Hyde Park, N.Y. Roosevelt was worried that the records of his administration — like many prior presidents’ papers — would be lost, destroyed or sold off to private bidders. He also wanted a place to write his memoirs and, most of all, to burnish his image as a defender of democracy. In 1955, the Presidential Libraries Act converted Roosevelt’s precedent into law. Each succeeding president would raise money to construct his own library, while the federal government would pay for its operation and upkeep. But the act allowed the president to retain legal ownership of his papers, even as he deeded them to the government. That would change after Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation, when Nixon sought to retain control of secretly recorded conversations and other material from his scandal-tainted administration. Congress responded by seizing Nixon’s papers, insisting that they were public rather than private property. And four years later, in 1978, the Presidential Records Act confirmed that the government retained “complete ownership, possession, and control” of all such materials. Even so, presidents would continue to fund the libraries where the papers would be stored. That gave them the right to determine the sites of these facilities and — most of all — the stories that would be told in them. So Bill Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., gives only a brief nod to Monica Lewinsky and the sex scandal that nearly ended his presidency. And the recently opened George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas offers none-too-subtle defenses of Bush’s most controversial decisions, especially the invasion of Iraq and the interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists. All of this historical revisionism is subsidized by taxpayers, of course. The annual operating expenses of our 13 presidential libraries are almost $100 million, which is hardly chump change. If all presidential records were located in one place — say, a Center for Presidential Research — we wouldn’t have to operate 13 of them. More Americans would be able to visit the facility. And most of all, we would all participate in telling the story of our presidency. That’s how it should work, in a government of the people by themselves. Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid vows that a Democratic takeover of the Senate is fairly certain in the November elections.Speaking on "" Sunday radio show on AM 970 New York hosted by John Catsimatidis, Reid pointed out that his party only needs four seats to secure a majority.Discussing the race for president, Reid said he was confident that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton would win the party's nomination and then the general election. He stressed her intelligence and ability to grasp the issues on a wide variety of subjects.Reid harshly criticized Republican front-runner Donald Trump, saying that he "can't imagine how the establishment Republicans feel about somebody who’s about as far from anything that anyone believes in as Donald Trump. I can’t imagine this man being the nominee for any political party, let alone the Republican Party ... How he denigrates women and people who have handicaps."Reid confirmed that he will not run again for his seat and said that New York Sen. Chuck Schumer will be the next Democratic leader of the Senate.Reid has been in Congress since 1983 but said he decided to retire at the end of this term due to an injury he suffered in January 2015 that caused him vision problems.
It's not every year that classified histories of two wars and massive troves of diplomatic secrets appear in America's newspapers. So it may have surprised some to read through the list of Pulitzer prizes Monday and see no mention--among the winners or even the finalists--of WikiLeaks' revelations. But WikiLeaks wasn't dissed by the Pulitzer judges. In fact, the New York Times, which dominated WikiLeaks coverage in the U.S., never submitted its reporting on WikiLeaks for the prize. Despite its intense, often-impressive coverage of WikiLeaks' Afghan War Diaries, Iraq War Logs, and many of the thousands of the leaked State Department cables the secret-spilling organization has so far released, a source close to the Pulitzer submissions process tells me that the paper didn't offer up any of that reporting to the Pulitzer panel. Update: A source at the Times who asked not to be named tells me that some WikiLeaks reporting was actually included in a larger package, but wouldn't elaborate. Only American organizations are eligible for U.S. journalism's top prize. So WikiLeaks, which is officially based nowhere in particular, couldn't apply on its own. Other organizations that have led coverage of WikiLeaks material including the Guardian, Der Spiegel, and Al Jazeera couldn't submit their stories either. The Times won two Pulitzers for other reporting, in the categories of International Reporting and Commentary. But a major prize for the WikiLeaks material would have been a source of much-needed legitimacy for Julian Assange's organization, as it tries to avoid criminal charges and define itself as a new form of muckraking reporting rather than as a shadowy cabal of hacker-types. Earlier this month, for instance, Assange wrote an essay in the British magazine New Statesman, arguing that WikiLeaks is only part of a long media tradition. "We shouldn't be surprised by the war on WikiLeaks," the essay begins. "The elite have always loathed the radical press, from English civil war news books to early American labour newspapers." It's not clear just why the Times decided not to seek a Pulitzer for its groundbreaking WikiLeaks coverage. When I asked executive editor Bill Keller about the decision by email, he responded that "We don't generally talk about what we enter or don't enter, or why." It could be argued that the Times wanted to focus on source material that it more actively obtained and that wasn't shared with any other publications. But neither of those factors stopped the newspaper from submitting its historic reporting on 1971's Pentagon Papers and winning a Pulitzer for that coverage in 1972: There, too, the material came from a single, willing source--Daniel Ellsberg--and was shared with many other media outlets. The Times may instead be hoping to avoid owing any favors to a source with which it has feuded publicly. In December, the Times' Keller told an audience at Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab that "”I don’t regard Julian Assange as a kindred spirit,” he said. “If he’s a journalist, he’s not the kind of journalist that I am.” Assange has responded with attacks on the Times, arguing that it's cravenly allowed the U.S. government to redact its reporting on the leaks and has only distanced itself from WikiLeaks to avoid legal problems. The fact that the Times didn't deem WikiLeaks' biggest scoops worthy of the nation's top journalism award isn't likely to mend that relationship.
Updated 10.35 PM THE OUTSOURCING OF medical card reviews is part of the reason for the “bizarre judgements” being handed down according to Clare Daly TD. The Dáil this evening resumed debate on a motion calling on the Government to reverse the cuts to discretionary medical cards. As part of the debate, Daly told deputies that many of the functions of the HSE have been outsourced with the medical cards reviews being undertaken by billing and payment services company Arvato Finance. The Dublin North TD says that staff at the German owned company have no training in dealing with social care, are often on temporary contracts and are working at minimum wage levels. She asked Minister of State for Primary Care Alex White TD: Is it the case that a German company Arvato is now reviewing the medical card situation? Is it the case that they have no training at all, no backup in the community welfare or healthcare office, have no garda clearance, are on temporary contracts, are on minimum wage and lack any knowledge of our health situation? “Maybe that’s one of the reasons we’ve been getting bizarre judgements. Because the people charged with making those decisions haven’t been getting the proper training and wages,” she said. One HSE worker who spoke to TheJournal.ie said that the Arvato staff who are employed on the medical card reviews, “are barely trained with no background in social care, do not work for the HSE, have no garda clearance and are on minimum wages”. The employee also said that the Arvato team based in East Point Business Park in Clontarf also do not have access to a vital computer. One story that emerged recently concerned a woman who was asked during a review whether her son ‘still had Down syndrome’. Amanda Hughes also said that the her re-application was lost by the HSE even though she had tracked her package to the office in Finglas. The HSE employee also outlined how post is going missing because some is arriving at the Finglas office and is then supposed to be sent onto East Point but is getting lost in between. Debate The Dáil motion was tabled by Sinn Féin last night and debate continued this evening with members of the Technical Group having their say. Backbench government TDs were also present for the debate along with the minister of state. Independent TD Catherine Murphy said that some people who have received extensions have told her that they are worried they will end when the local and European elections are over. “They’re expected to pay the property tax, they’re expected to pay water charges, they’re expected to pay the Universal Social Charge, they’re expected to pay their household charge but they weren’t expecting this. They weren’t expecting their vulnerable children to be hit,” she told the Government benches. The motion was defeated when the Government’s counter motion was passed by 72 to 36.
I can’t believe how long it has been since I last posted. I stayed so busy, and even when I had a moment or two to breathe, I just couldn’t work on this story. It is like I was mentally exhausted, with my mind filled with so many things from my daily life. So many to-do lists and phone alarms so I wouldn’t forget stuff for the kids, for me. All of that noise in my head–I couldn’t make myself boot up the game and start taking the pictures. I don’t know why. But it has been in my head now for a while, and I really want to finish this story. Finally, the nagging feeling that I need to get this story out has overpowered the busy-ness of my life. I finally did something about it tonight. I took the pictures. Now I just have to set them to words, and I’ll have the next post. I just received a comment today from a reader, hoping I would come back soon–and I couldn’t believe it, because I had planned all day to devote time to taking the pictures tonight. It took ages–the system takes forever to boot up, but I stuck it out. Before, I would have thrown my hands up in irritation and said it was taking too long; telling myself that I don’t have the time to do it. But tonight, I just sat through it and played on my phone while waiting for long loading screens. I am still a little shocked that I got the pictures. But they are there, waiting to be edited for size and for the words. I’m coming back, gentle, and most patient readers. I’m sorry I have been away so long. I am so excited.
Image copyright Fotokite Image caption A tethered drone is "like a flying pet", according to developers Drones are becoming more common in our skies, performing a variety of tasks, from taking photos to monitoring crops and potentially even delivering broadband. But there are strict rules about their usage, which has led some to come up with innovative ways to fly such vehicles more safely. "I'm using a dog leash for a small dog," says roboticist Sergei Lupashin as he demonstrates a new kind of consumer-friendly drone at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver. By tethering it, he hopes the Fotokite, as it is called, can avoid some of the issues faced by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are banned without a special licence because of safety and privacy concerns. "It doesn't rely on GPS [ Global Positioning System], sophisticated machine vision, radio, it doesn't even use a compass. Most crashes today happen because of GPS, radio or piloting issues," says Dr Lupashin. "Should something happen, the leash gives a robust fail safe - the vehicle reduces thrust and it automatically comes back to the operator," he adds. The inspiration for the device came during street protests in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, when he realised it could be an invaluable tool for reporting protests around the world. "For journalists it is good to get that perspective, to show the scale of the event without adding to the tension," says Dr Lupashin. But he also sees potential for amateur and professional photographers, archaeologists, architects and even as a toy for children. His prototype device uses a shop-bought quadrocopter with "a basic action camera attached" which, in turn, is connected to a standard dog lead. It can shoot both video and stills. Flying pet Image copyright Fotokite Image caption The kitecopter could take aerial photography to a whole new level Drones have long been associated with the military, but increasingly they are finding their way into civilian life, for a wide range of uses including delivering medicines in the developing world, for farming and as a low-cost way of getting broadband to remote parts of the world - something both Facebook and Google are actively pursuing. They are also useful tools for both professional and amateur photographers, providing the opportunity for a bird's eye view of people and places. "Aerial photography is a fascinating new application for small, unmanned vehicles but the remote-controlled ones are very complex and can be difficult to use. They are also dangerous," says Dr Lupashin. The safety issue took centre stage last month when an Australian triathlete was injured by an aerial drone taking pictures of the race she was competing in. A drone on a lead is likely to be treated with far less suspicion, says Dr Lupashin. "People treat you normally - it is like a flying pet. It always has a physical connection to the operator," he says. British weather Image copyright Fotokite Image caption Such a camera could offer a unique perspective at weddings and other gatherings The BBC, along with other news organisations, already uses drones for filming, but it is constantly looking to update its kit. Andy Armstrong, a consultant looking at emerging broadcast technologies, recently tested the Fotokite for the BBC. Its ease of use and portability makes it useful for journalists in the field, he says. "Anyone who's walked a dog without losing it can operate Fotokite," he adds, although he notes that "to get really stable shots you need almost completely still air". Its lack of anonymity could also be a problem though. "There are certain scenarios where you wouldn't want to attract that much attention," he says. Jake Berger, a BBC programme manager, wanted a UAV that would be able to safely film aerial shots of the crowds at an open-air theatre show. "The fact that Fotokite was tethered - flown on a retractable dog leash - meant it was suitable," he says. "Unfortunately, the British weather confounded us on the day of the performance - it rained continuously for about six hours. "This would have both blown the electronics on Fotokite and risked electrocution from lightning." Frustrating rules Currently the use of commercial drones in the US is banned by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). Anyone wishing to use one has to obtain a special licence. The question of whether a tethered drone would be exempt from this is unclear. According to Ben Gielow, general counsel for the Association for Unmanned Vehicles Systems Internet, even a drone on a lead would be against the law. He says the FAA told one company that wanted to fly a tethered drone that "until we have new regulations in place, the only path for you to fly your aircraft in the National Airspace System (even tethered) is to obtain the special airworthiness certificate in the experimental category". Others though, who are developing similar tethered drones, say they have been told by the FAA that such UAVs would be exempt from current guidelines. The reality is that, in the US at least, there are no clear rules yet about the use of UAVs, tethered or not. "The FAA has been dragging its feet for four years and are now faced with an explosion of this technology. People can buy inexpensive, sophisticated systems off the internet and it doesn't have the resources to govern or control these unmanned aircraft," said Mr Gielow. There are guidelines governing the use of model aircraft in the US - they must always be: kept in sight never flown more than 400ft (120m) above the ground never flown within range of airports used only for personal photography This led the FAA to ban Texas-based search-and-rescue group EquuSearch from using a remote-controlled plane to help search for missing people. In response the group has launched legal action challenging the validity of an FAA ban and similar cases are also going through the courts. "Their frustration is that if they were using such an aircraft for fun it would be allowed but because they are using it for search and rescue it isn't," says Mr Gielow. The lack of clarity about the use of UAVs has led to anger among US manufacturers who fear being left behind by other countries, such as the UK, France and Israel, which have much clearer guidelines regarding drone use. The US Congress has given the FAA until 2015 to create such rules, and this month it opened its first test facility in North Dakota. But, for the time being at least, it seems that much about the use of such unmanned flying vehicles remains up in the air.
Military units in Lesotho have surrounded government and police buildings and gunfire has been heard in the small mountainous southern African kingdom. Speaking to Al Jazeera from South Africa, where he had travelled to on Friday, Prime Minister Tom Thabane said that the army had taken over government buildings and he planned to try to return to the country. The military seized control of the tiny police headquarters and jammed radio stations and phones in the early hours on Saturday, a government minister and member of the ruling coalition told the AFP news agency. The [military] commander said he was looking for me, the prime minister and the deputy prime minister to take us to the king. In our country, that means a coup Thesele Maseribane, sports minister "The armed forces, the special forces of Lesotho, have taken the headquarters of the police," Thesele Maseribane, sports minister and leader of the Basotho National Party, said. "The [military] commander said he was looking for me, the prime minister and the deputy prime minister to take us to the king. "In our country, that means a coup," he said. But Maseribane insisted the prime minister's government was still in control of the landlocked nation, which is located within eastern South Africa. An AFP photographer reported shots ringing out in the early morning hours, and said a reinforced military contingent was guarding the prime minister's official residence and that soldiers were patrolling the streets of the capital Maseru. The streets of the capital were calm, residents said, although some shops remained closed. South African radio stations also reported that private radio stations were off the air in the nation. Al Jazeera's Tania Page, reporting from Johannesburg, said: "The army is on the street in vehicles, and appear to have taken control of the police station in the capital. "This is unhappy news for South Africa's government who tried to mediate after an attempted coup in June this year, when parliament was closed. "This could be a move by the Lesotho Congress Party to demand the reopening of parliament." Feuding coalition Political tensions have been running high in the landlocked country since June when Thabane suspended the country's parliament to avoid a no-confidence vote amid feuding in the two-year-old coalition government. Deputy Prime Minister Mothetjoa Metsing had vowed to form a new coalition that would oust Thabane. South Africa and the regional Southern African Development Community, of which Lesotho is a member, have warned the political rivals in the country that any unconstitutional change of government would not be tolerated. Since independence in 1966, Lesotho has undergone a number of military coups. In 1998, at least 58 locals and eight South African soldiers died and large parts of Maseru were damaged during a political stand-off and subsequent fighting.
Exactly one year and one day ago today, a slip up by a designer at HTC essentially gave us a hardware roadmap for the company. In that and subsequent leaks, we learned about the “Ocean” line of devices, consisting of the Ocean, Ocean Note, Ocean Smart, and Ocean Master. From what we now know, the Ocean is the U11, the Ocean Note turned into the HTC U Ultra, the Ocean Smart hasn’t yet seen daylight, and the latest report details what we should expect from an upcoming Ocean Master later this year. According to Frandroid, the Ocean Master is coming this year, featuring a “borderless” design. This report is translated from French, so our assumption is that borderless might mean bezel-less. Regardless of a translation, the report goes on to detail “edge-to-edge,” similar to what we’ve seen already from Samsung and LG. A sweet looking display isn’t the only thing the Ocean Master will offer, though. Other highlightable specs include a Snapdragon 835 processor, IP68 water resistance, Edge Sense, and more. Specs 5.99″ Quad HD+ display (18:9 aspect ratio, 2880 x 1440 pixels) Snapdragon 835 4 or 6 GB RAM 64 or 128GB IP68 water and dust resistance 12MP rear-facing camera 8MP front-facing camera QuickCharge 3.0, 18 Watt Battery Edge Sense U-Type USB Headphones The report claims this device is called the U11 Plus, which makes sense. Plenty could argue that this phone sounds just like a U11 in a larger package, but that edge-to-edge design really has us interested. One of the drawbacks for the U11, at least in my eyes, is the dedicated home button/fingerprint reader flanked by capacitive buttons. Ditch those, stick a fingerprint reader on the backside, and you have my attention. According to Frandroid, we’ll see this device announced in November. Are you interested? // Frandroid (French)
There’s one thing the movie “Whip It” got right and it was that whole bit about being your own hero. The film exposed a lot of women to derby for the first time, though I myself didn’t see it until I was on an eight-hour car ride headed to the first bout I would play with my league’s A-team. Since then I haven’t thought much of the plot, but the tagline, I have. “Be your own hero.” Being your own hero doesn’t mean the world revolves around you. It doesn’t mean you are perfect or the best of anything. I think what it means is you live your life fully, you take risks, you have adventures, you do things you never thought possible, you behave in ways that might be taken as inspiration by others. Last summer outside a grocery store on the western side of a Great Lakes state, I asked a well known derby coach why she thought so many women had cottoned to derby, and why in the last 10 years. What was it about roller derby? She mentioned a quote by Victor Hugo: “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.” A lot of women in America, and, nay, the world, I think, were waiting for an opportunity to become the stars of their own lives. And derby offered an opportunity to do so. Finally. It was an idea whose time had come. I know that I myself spent a lot of time in my teens and twenties in basements listening to men, and a great fewer number of women, play punk rock songs about injustices, both pedestrian and political. I loved that scene, I loved that scene so much, but I was a spectator, a fan, a groupie. I was never a player. In derby, I became a player, both literally and figuratively. And there’s something transformative about that, I think. Especially for people who’ve never seen themselves that way, and especially women. How many people do you know who have embraced derby and gone on to have other successes in their lives? Better relationships? More meaningful jobs? New educational experiences? It’s not just a coincidence, I don’t think. I think this I’m unwrapping the skin of the onion on why the “by day, by night” metaphor for derby girls never sat well with me. I don’t think we love derby so much because it allows us to live a double life, but because it allows us to become more authentically who we are. A friend of mine that I met through derby moved to Alaska and joined an upstart league. They just had their first bout last week, in fact. A couple of weeks ago she texted me that skater bios were launching on their website and she’d listed Jackie Daniels and me as her derby idols. Jackie Daniels and me. Me? Little old me who plays for a league that no one in derbydom has heard of? I don’t approach Jackie Daniels in derby skill so it seemed almost funny to see our names together. And I got a little tear in my eye. Not from laughing. I get it. And I’ll accept it. Because through derby, my friends have become my heroes, too. Every single one of the ones I looked at and followed on the track. My big derby sister whose laterals I studied, the coach and men’s derby player who approached every drill with an intensity I tried to follow, anyone who ever did anything I wanted to learn. Also, all the freshies who came up behind me, putting their hearts in and doing more than they thought they ever could. Even the derby players I watch on wftda.tv who I don’t know, but could easily imagine knowing, because they are all real and approachable and awesome. You are all real and approachable and awesome. There’s something empowering when our friends become our heroes. When we look up away from the television, up from the pages of magazines filled with shiny people we will never meet. Our heroes become people we can know and talk to and learn from and emulate. Real people of all shapes and colors and ages and backgrounds and sizes. This can happen in many avenues of life, I surmise — I don’t think it’s exclusive to our sport — but I speak from derby because that’s my wheelhouse. When we step into the starring roles of our own lives, when recognize the heroes among us, we realize that we don’t have to be exceptional to live greatly.
Last year’s Yomawari: Night Alone was a refreshing variation of what we have come to expect from the survival horror genre. It had a fascinating approach to an innocent little girl's journey combined with the ever-present threat of demons who are based on Japanese mythology and urban legends. Although it didn’t quite reach its full potential, there was enough there to serve as a provocative experience. It certainly was a strong first effort by Yu Mizokami in her lead designer debut. I mentioned in that same review how the game was well deserving of a sequel, and I’m happy to see that desire be accommodated with Yomawari: Midnight Shadows. There’s nothing else like it, which is what makes it so important that the design is expanded upon in that capacity. It may not go far enough in some respects, but this is still a meaningful improvement on its predecessor. The story takes a different approach this time around. Instead of playing as a child trying to find her older sister and her dog, you now control the fate of two young girls, Yui and Haru, who have been separated from each other after being attacked by a mysterious monster. They now must learn how to survive against the spirits of the night while testing their courage as they attempt to reunite with one another. As I talked about in my review of Night Alone, the game opened to one of the most bone-chilling sequences I have seen from a video game. In Midnight Shadows, that feeling of dread I had was immediately eclipsed. While the look of the characters may give you the impression that this is some PG-rated “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” affair, it quickly goes into a very dark and grim direction. I could feel the color drain from my body from what I had soon witnessed; it’s clear the designers aren’t playing around. Needless to say, this series has a shocking way of betraying your expectations. Anyone who played Night Alone will be instantly familiar with the controls. As you navigate the different areas of the town, there are moments when you’ll be attacked by different spirits. With no means to fight back, you must find different objects in the environment to hide behind, such as signboards or bushes, until they abandon their pursuit. Your flashlight will also help you skirt around enemies, though there are times you want to turn it off so you’re not seen by them. Once again, you have to manage a stamina bar as you attempt to evade the enemy. As your blood pressure rises and the sound of your heartbeat increases your anxiety levels, your stamina drains faster as a result. So long as you play it cool and go from cover to cover, this is almost trivial. The only times this becomes maddening is when you’re dealing with open expanses where there’s little to protect you. Although a lot of the gameplay elements have carried over from Night Alone, there are particular differences that set it apart. For one thing, one of the new mechanics is the use of charms. Throughout the course of the game, you may come across one of these items that provide special perks which prove useful along the way. These benefits include the ability to carry extra pebbles, have increased stamina (a godsend), avoid enemies more easily, and more. It’s an ease-of-life improvement that gives the game depth in what is otherwise a fairly straightforward experience. Visually, the game looks similar to the first entry, which was already a striking look that gave it a unique personality. I never had a chance to play Night Alone for PC, but I could already tell how sharper and more detailed the sprite models are. The backgrounds are also gorgeous as they drip with perceived foreboding. Just seeing the contrast between these small, chibi-style girls and the gigantic demons you come across makes for a fantastic fusion of atmospheric storytelling. Speaking of which, enemies have gotten even more frightening. Those who have played the first entry will appreciate that, aside from a few exceptions, most of the demons you come across are original. There were several moments where I was given a nice jump scare with the inventive ways the game attempted to catch me off guard. Unfortunately, no changes have been made to the core game design. That means the same frustrations I had before, specifically the bad checkpoint system. You still get those sudden deaths which disrupt the flow of the game. To be fair, I honestly don’t know what else they can do to fit save points within the context of the game outside of manual saves or checkpoints, but there is something to be said about reliving those scary moments only because you accidentally got caught up in a choke point in the environment. There are challenging moments in the game that only make it more aggravating. It really tests your patience especially near the end where you experience a number of trial-and-error moments. However, I can’t say it bothered me as much this time around only because I had already dealt with it previously. On the other hand, it was fascinating being able to observe the fate of two different girls and see the plight from their individual perspectives. The visual and audio design shine brightly in this bleak journey that never breaks from its ambiance and distressing frame of mind. This carries all the way through to the ending which sets a somber mood. So if you’re looking for a frightening adventure that subverts your assumptions, and if you can get around the checkpoint system, the unnerving atmosphere of Yomawari: Midnight Shadows may do you in.
At least that's the assertion of Eric Yaverbaum, of Tappening, an anti-bottled water enterprise, as outlined in an interview with the excellent Wend magazine: "And if you don't buy my environmental argument, buy my financial one financially speaking if you drink 8 glasses a day you will spend $1400 a year buying bottled water. If you drink 8 glasses a day and you get it from your tap you'll spend 49 cents. This would be a really good year to save your $1400 on a product that not only hurts the environment but it hurts your pocketbook." The interviews is peppered with comments that have been expressed many a time on these pages. Like "Go to India, you name the 3rd world country and Look what they need to do to get drinking water and we get it for free in our homes and our apartments and we still buy bottled water, that's crazy." And they have the statistics to show just how loony the whole bottled water industry is.Tappening is a project of Eric Yaverbaum, whose daytime business is the public relations firm, Ericho Communications, and DiMassimo Goldstein, whose company, DIGO, specialises in being 'brand advocates.' As you might expect from such backgrounds the guys are rather adept with putting a convincing story together. In this case it is one that TreeHugger has long been vocal on. And we're rather impressed with the research Tappening has gathered to add weight to their message. (Although the stats do overlap into the soft drink market also.) Apparently Americans buy 28 billion water bottles annually, which, if we read correctly, uses the equal of 17 million barrels of oil, sufficient to fuel 1 million cars for 12 months worth of driving. With only 23% of discarded PET bottles recycled it costs American cities about $70 million to clean up the discarded bottles yearly. On the other side of the ledger, most municipal tap water has to be tested for E.coli, fecal coliform bacteria, Cryptosporidium and/or Giardia, whereas the much vaunted bottled water does not. Yet bottled water can "cost as much as $10 per gallon compared to less than a penny per gallon for tap waters." As Eric Yaverbaum puts it in the Wend Interview, "Why are we just sitting around to do nothing, waiting for the next generation to rescue us? It's my generation, I believe, that should be seriously investing itself in that process if we care at all what this planet is like after we're going." Now admittedly, as Brian pointed out when we were first mentioned Tappening, the guys are also selling their own water bottles, albeit theirs are durable and resuable BPA-free plastic and stainless steel versions. But, even with nearly 6 million page views on their website, we doubt the guys got into this gig to sell a few water bottles. Their message does seem genuine. And may we paraphrase that message thus: Stop buying bottle water, it's messing with the environment through unwarranted materials extraction and wastage, as well as contributing to climate change. Not only are glaciers shrinking, but so are the volume of readies in your wallet or purse. ::Tappening, via Wend magazine More Bottled Water on TreeHugger Bottled Water - Lifting the Lid. Tap Water or Bottled Water: Which is Better? Bottled Water Drinkers Are The New Smokers
I watched Murry Salby’s London lecture: it was awful. Salby addresses what he calls the core issue of climate change (0:2:30) “Why is atmospheric CO2 increasing?” The answer is obvious – because of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning and land-use changes – but Salby does not like the answer so repeats oft rebutted fallacies in a hopeless attempt to prove the increase is almost all natural. First he shows that the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is correlated to temperature. This is the well-known effect of El Niño which induces global temperature increases, drought over south-east Asia and changes in Pacific Ocean productivity. this relationship explains the year-to-year variability in the increase in atmospheric CO2, not the trend. This is not a novel error. Salby’s second argument is that the atmospheric life-time of a CO2 molecule is short, less than five years. This is true but irrelevant. What matters is how long a pulse of CO2 stays in the atmosphere, even though the individual molecules may be exchanged between the atmosphere and ocean or vegetation. This crucial difference has been explained many times: Salby is wantonly ignoring facts that refute his mad hypothesis, or hope that his audience is ignorant. This brings me to the interesting part of the lecture – the first questions from the audience (1:13:57) and its answer. Our favourite Viscount, Christopher Monckton, offers this fulsome praise, demonstrating that he either does not realise or does not care that the lecture was nonsense. Professor Salby, I think we all want to start by just saying thank you. You are one of a tiny band of immensely courageous genuine scientists who have had their livelihood and their professional career stolen from them, not because their science was bad, but because it was socially inconvenient, politically uncongenial, and financially unprofitable to the governing class. Your bravery with persisting with your research for so many years after this was done to you is commendable. The clarity, breadth and depth of your presentation, which has grown since I last saw it only a year ago, and grown exponentially , is breath-taking, and my question therefore is this: when are you going to publish in a journal that they cannot ignore? Salby replies Thank you for your gracious remarks. I am not worthy of them, but thank you nonetheless. The immediate answer to your question is that this material will not be published, until the material from which it is derived is published. That won’t be published until I have recovered my research files and been reinstated in the field. If Salby really believed that his work proved that CO2 emissions were natural, he would rush to publish, saving the world from unnecessary action to abate climate change, and receive the accolades not only of a lunatic lord but the entire population. A Nobel Prize awaits. Yet it would seem that Salby prefers to play the martyr to a tiny audience of climate sceptics (perhaps 12) than to submit his research to scrutiny. His conditions for publication are pathetic. He does not need his research files. None of the material Salby presented was based on his own data: the atmospheric CO2 concentration, global temperature and other datasets he used can all be downloaded within an hour. None of the analyses Salby presented were complicated: it should be possible to repeat them within a few days. He also does not need to be reinstated: if his research is valid he would not want for employment at any institute of his choice. By refusing to publish, does Salby believe he is holding the World to ransom to get his job back or is he too embarrassed to face the reality that his errors are not even novel? Advertisements
Donald Trump was tricked into an angry public outburst by a seven-month-old video of an Iranian missile launch, US officials have revealed. The President responded to claims over the weekend on Iranian state television that the Persian country had tested a medium-range ballistic missile, saying that a purported video of that test proved the country was a danger to Middle Eastern ally Israel. But, as it turns out, the videos were actually seven months old, US officials told Fox News. Iran has not launched a missile recently. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. "Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel," Mr Trump wrote in a tweet after the video was aired on television. "They are also working with North Korea. Not much of an agreement we have!" The tweet, and the faked video, came just after the President said that the Iran nuclear agreement reached by his predecessor was an "embarrassment" to the United States, and insulted the Iranian regime in front of the entire world at the United Nations General Assembly. "We cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilising activities while building dangerous missiles, and we cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear programme," he said then. The Iranian government has insisted that any missile programmes they have are only for defensive means, not to launch an offensive on another country like Israel. Shape Created with Sketch. Iran's 'Trumpism' contest Show all 10 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. Iran's 'Trumpism' contest 1/10 AFP/Getty Images 2/10 AFP/Getty Images 3/10 AFP/Getty Images 4/10 AFP/Getty Images 5/10 AFP/Getty Images 6/10 AFP/Getty Images 7/10 AFP/Getty Images 8/10 AFP/Getty Images 9/10 AFP/Getty Images 10/10 AFP/Getty Images 1/10 AFP/Getty Images 2/10 AFP/Getty Images 3/10 AFP/Getty Images 4/10 AFP/Getty Images 5/10 AFP/Getty Images 6/10 AFP/Getty Images 7/10 AFP/Getty Images 8/10 AFP/Getty Images 9/10 AFP/Getty Images 10/10 AFP/Getty Images "We never threaten anyone, but we do not tolerate threats from anyone," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said, also at the United Nations and a day after Mr Trump's speech. Mr Trump hasn't announced publicly whether he plans on keeping the Iranian nuclear agreement, which must be renewed and certified by the US periodically to ensure that Iran is following the basic tenets of the accord. A war with Iran in the Middle East could prove catastrophic for regional allies to the United States. Experts believe that the Iranian military has the largest arsenal of ballistic missiles in the region, which includes more than 1,000 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. The country has conducted more than 20 missile tests since 2015 alone. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s 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 – all with no ads. Subscribe now
Every once in a while I want to post custom figures as well as impressive collections, submitted by visitors of the site. This post is going to be the first in this series, as well as a difficult act to follow! Juanpe of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain is an avid Dragon Ball fan with a passion for custom figures and model play sets. Since I was a kid I love Dragon Ball series, to me it is unique and there will never be any other like it. Namek’s Saga is incomparable and unbeatable and my favourite character is Frieza, The Tyrant. I am also really passionate about its subordinates. I started this project in 2008 and honestly, I think this project will never end. Nowadays, I still have a lot of things to do: repainting every character, Goku and Genkidama doing the big hole in the ground… And I would also like to make KaioSama’s Planet in air, a lot more Frieza’s subordinates and more Namekians. Honestly, I still have a lot of work to do! Check out the gallery below for a glimpse at Juanpe’s work: For more of Juanpe’s work, click here. Interested in becoming the next “Featured Collector”? Contact us and tell us about your Dragon Ball collection, include some photos and a brief description of your collection.
The Witcher game franchise is built on the work of a Polish author called Andrzej Sapkowski -- neither of the games are built directly from his fiction, but it's the underpinning of everything that the games are, from their quests and story to lead character Geralt. The PC games have gone from a cult phenomenon in Sapkowski's homeland of Poland to critical and commercial successes across the globe. And with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings released for the Xbox 360 earlier this year, the developer is finding a new audience on game consoles. Lead gameplay designer Maciej Szcześnik and gameplay producer Marek Ziemak, both work at developer CD Projekt RED. Here, they share their insights into how they make The Witcher series work -- why Sapkowski's books are the wellspring for the games, why it's important to have a defined lead character, and how storytelling is the most important aspect of the franchise. One of the things I found most interesting about The Witcher 2 was the decision to split the story into two different paths, and literally, probably double the work and content. Some people wouldn't even necessarily be aware that this even happened unless they talked to other people online. Did that scare you, as a decision to make? Maciej Szcześnik: I mean, it was kind of scary, but... Marek Ziemak: It was risky, for sure. MS: It was risky, but we were sure that we were on track at least because we were sure that that would be something new. MZ: And that it will be appreciated sooner or later. MS: And it turns out it is, so after all, it was a good decision. MZ: But I think the main reason for this was that we were trying to implement this decision and consequences system in the game. MS: So if it was present in Witcher 1, obviously it had to be present in The Witcher 2, and we wanted to push it further. MZ: We wanted to play a little bit with the emotions, and we started thinking, "What can we give to the players? What can we take away from them based on their decisions?" And this seemed like a pretty cool thing -- that they will have to make their own decisions, what they want to see, and take the costs of their decisions. It seems like serious decision-making is becoming more important to games. The first phase of it was morality systems, where you get good points or evil points. That's not something that you do in The Witcher. MZ: Actually it's also one of our more core features. We're trying to make it as gray as possible. We never have choices between good and evil. MS: More like shades of gray. MZ: Exactly. That's how it was created by Sapkowski in the novels, and that's what we really liked and appreciated about the books, and we tried to have it still inside of our games. MS: Yeah obviously it's more real, but it's also more interesting. This is the main reason we are using that. I think the problem you get when you have a system like that is that people then start making the decisions because they want the cool power that they see down the skill tree of the Light, rather than because they actually care about the moral decision. MS: Yeah that's the problem of morality systems, I think. MZ: And one of our friends, a designer from CDP, often says that back in the times whenever you chose the bad character, the game was always shorter, or a little bit less interesting, because usually you were just killing everyone at the very beginning. So we tried to avoid this as well. Which came first: the grayness of the novel and wanting to adapt that, or your interest in working with a story that had shades of gray? MS: I think we were more interested in actually introducing these mechanics... this choice-making. Obviously, it's present in the novels, but I think that the true cause was to push it further, to not use those morality systems. MZ: Yeah, the mechanics, I think, was first in our heads, and then we've seen that it really goes well with the world. We believe that we're delivering something quite refreshing. It's a new type of storytelling, and a new type of gameplay in many places, so we were hoping for the best. When you say "a new type of storytelling," is that something you feel only games can do? MZ: No, definitely not. Books did it previously. How they created the world and what they were trying to do -- the emotions they were giving the reader -- I think, was there before computer games. We have possibilities to actually involve players in making choices, so [we can] take it to the next level. But I think we weren't the ones who begun this whole thing with storytelling. Obviously it was there before. Do you view the storytelling as gameplay? Do you consider that on the same level as other parts of the game? MS: Yes. Actually, for us, the storyline is the most important thing we have in The Witcher. MZ: That's always the base. That's the spine of the game. Usually, first work is on the storyline, and then add all the other elements in. MS: Every other element has to support the storyline. If not, it's not suitable for our game. Do you feel a tension between storytelling and other types of gameplay? Because obviously that is something the medium always struggles with. MZ: Yes, we definitely can see the problem, and it's very often in our discussions. For example, when we were designing the combat system, or things like this, we must be true to all the things that are present in the books. We don't want to spoil the fun for the players who know the books by heart. And we still want to keep the same feeling as people who read the books. I'm not sure if I'm clear on this -- we want to continue the trend. The gameplay is totally connected to the storyline, to the world. MS: Actually we want to motivate the player by the storyline and by quests, so we rarely make random encounters, or things like that, for example. We try to connect every fight to the storyline, if it's possible.
The country singer suffers from viral cardiomyopathy. - -Text: Randy Travis holds the award he won for best southern, country or bluegrass gospel album for his "Rise and Shine" album at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2004, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) (Via OlyDrop) (Photo11: Reed Saxon Copyright 2004;No Tennessean) Story Highlights Travis is listed in critical condition after being admitted to a Texas medical facility Sunday He is suffering from viral cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscles caused by infection He received a ventricular assist device UPDATE: Randy Travis' publicist has released a statement clarifying the singer's treatment. "Contrary to reports, Randy Travis has not undergone heart surgery," representative Kirt Webster said. "Travis was admitted into a Texas hospital on Sunday and underwent placement of an IMPELLA peripheral left ventricular assist device for stabilization prior to transferring hospitals. The Grammy winner remains in critical condition." *** Country singer Randy Travis, 54, remains hospitalized with a heart condition, according to his sister-in-law Teresa Traywick. "We have been told he has had surgery. Our prayers are going out to him because my husband just had a heart attack last year, so it is in their family," she says in a statement on People.com. "Their mother passed away at an early age with her heart, so it is like these boys are following right in their footsteps. My prayers are with them. That's all I can say right now." Travis was in critical condition at a Texas hospital after being admitted Sunday. According to a press release from his publicist, the singer of such hits as Forever and Ever, Amen, On the Other Hand and Three Wooden Crosses is suffering complications of recently acquired viral cardiomyopathy. Viral cardiomyopathy is a weakening of the heart muscles caused by a viral infection. MORE: Cardiomyopathy 'is serious and could be life-threatening' Travis, who pleaded guilty to a charge of driving while intoxicated in Texas earlier this year, was hospitalized in 2012 after a fight near a church in Plano, Texas. Meanwhile, celebrities are sending their thoughts to Travis on Twitter. Keith Urban: "Sending healing strength and love to you this morning @randytravis -KU" Tracy Lawrence: "Sending a get well message out to my buddy @randytravis tonight. Thinking of you and wishing you a speedy recovery." Lance Armstrong: "Thoughts go out to @randytravis. Heal up soon my man! One of country music's greatest voices ever." Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/12j1mIt
Julian Beltrame, The Canadian Press OTTAWA -- Canada's economy showed signs of thawing out from a long, bitter winter last month, churning out an unexpectedly high 42,900 net new jobs that helped shave the unemployment rate to 6.9 per cent -- matching a post-recession low. The Canadian jobs gain, although mostly part-time, was about double what economists had anticipated and more than wipes out February's 7,000 dip. The other surprise in the Statistics Canada report was that the vast majority of the new employment -- 32,500 jobs -- went to young Canadians, the 15-24 age group that has mostly been left behind during the recovery. March's advance helps shore up an employment picture than had turned decidedly bleak during the winter with job losses of 22,000 workers in a three-month stretch. Markets reacted by lifting the loonie 0.62 of a cent to 91.21 cents US, adding to the recent tepid rally in the currency. While not eye-popping numbers, analysts took the news as generally positive and confirming conventional belief that the economy's slowdown during the winter months, and especially December, was mostly weather-related. Also somewhat encouraging was the U.S. jobs report, which saw 192,000 jobs employees added last month. That was slightly below consensus, but it also included upward revisions to February and January's numbers and a strong 0.7 per cent pickup in hours worked. "The ice jam around Canadian employment appears to have finally broken," said Doug Porter, chief economist with the Bank of Montreal. "Combined with the recent upside surprises in inflation, the decent job gain further reduces the already very slim odds of a Bank of Canada rate cut, and provides a bit of near-term support for the loonie." The numbers weren't likely strong enough to move the central bank off it's neutral stance, though, economists noted. They still don't expect interest rates to start heating up until sometime in 2015. Over the past year, job gains are running at 1.1 per cent, or just above the growth in the labour force. March's numbers means that job creation over the past six months has averaged slightly under 10,000, a tepid pace of growth. Beneath the strong headline numbers there were some soft spots: three-quarters of the net new jobs, 30,100, were part-time and almost all were in the public sector. Hourly wage grewth was also modest. up 2.4 per cent year-over-year. As well, all the new jobs went to the services sector, mostly in the health care and social assistance category, as well as in business, building and other support services. The goods producing sector shed almost 16,000 jobs, with agriculture and manufacturing both experiencing employment losses. Tom Turpin of the Randstad Canada recruiting company said his firm has seen increased activity over last year in demand in the IT sector, particularly in Quebec. "However, with a contentious election in Quebec, a possible spring election in Ontario and Alison Redford's resignation our demand numbers are showing slower growth than usual for this time of year. Companies are waiting to see where the chips fall," he added. But the biggest factor impacting the economy recently has been the weather, analysts noted. Ice-storms in December and January in particular disrupted production and transportation. "In general the weather is going to start helping in the next few months. We're starting to see normalization across the board," said Eric Lascelles of RBC Global Asset Management. "But I think we need to wait until the second quarter (April-June) before we start to see truly normal bounce-back type figures." In a statement released by his office, Finance Minister Joe Oliver cautioned that the global economy remains fragile and said his government would continue to focus on job creation and economic growth. Regionally, most of the new jobs went to Canada's most populous provinces, with British Columbia adding 18,300, Quebec 15,100 and Ontario 13,400. There were minor job losses in Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island. Here's a quick look at March unemployment (previous month in brackets): Unemployment rate: 6.9 per cent (7.0) Employment rate: 61.7 per cent (61.6) Labour force participation rate: 66.2 per cent (66.2) Number unemployed: 1,325,400 (1,343,100) Number working: 17,833,200 (17,790,300) Youth (15-24 years) unemployment: per cent 13.6 (13.6) Men (25 plus) unemployment: per cent 6.1 (6.3) Women (25 plus) unemployment: per cent 5.4 (5.4) And here's a look at what happened provincially (previous month in brackets): Newfoundland 11.6 (11.8) Prince Edward Island 11.8 (11.5) Nova Scotia 9.3 (8.9) New Brunswick 9.7 (9.8) Quebec 7.6 (7.8) Ontario 7.3 (7.5) Manitoba 5.7 (5.3) Saskatchewan 4.5 (3.9) Alberta 4.9 (4.3) British Columbia 5.8 (6.4) Statistics Canada also released seasonally adjusted, three-month moving average unemployment rates for major cities, but cautions the figures may fluctuate widely because they are based on small statistical samples. (Previous month in brackets)
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is marking up a bill that would amend the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) in ways we think are unnecessary and potentially bad for users, giving companies new rights to share your video rental history after they get your “consent” just once. It undermines one of the strongest consumer privacy protections we now enjoy. But there is a silver lining: Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is attaching an amendment to the bill requiring that the government get a search warrant before reading our emails. That’s great and we strongly support it. But Americans shouldn’t have to give up any video privacy in order to get more email privacy. Instead of horse-trading with our freedoms, we demand that Congress do the right thing: update the law to safeguard our email privacy without undermining video privacy protections in the process. What Needs to be Protected Leahy is right in pushing to reform the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)—a law passed in 1986 meant to protect our privacy in the digital technologies of that time. However, as the New York Times noted this week, the law is painfully out of date. And while the courts have increasingly used the Fourth Amendment to ensure that the government obtain a warrant before accessing the content of private online messages, the Fourth Amendment is, and should be, supported by clear statutory protections, as Justice Alito recently noted. EFF believes that, as a start, Congress should require that the government get a warrant in order to access three types of content: documents in the cloud, email content and location information. Leahy’s amendment aims to protect two of them: Communications in the cloud : The amendment requires the government to get a search warrant before accessing electronic communications we store in the cloud like a collaborative document we store on Google. : The amendment requires the government to get a search warrant before accessing electronic communications we store in the cloud like a collaborative document we store on Google. Email: The amendment requires the government to get a warrant before accessing our email and other digital communications like private chat messages. This high standard shouldn’t depend on how old a message is or whether it has been opened—distinctions created by ECPA in the 1980s that make no sense today. Remember, a probable cause warrant is a higher legal standard than a subpoena, and so more protective of your privacy. While a government agent can issue a subpoena without any checks or balances, a search warrant generally requires the government agent to go to a neutral and detached magistrate and swear to facts demonstrating probable cause to believe that evidence of a crime will be found and describing the particular place to be searched (or in the case of digital evidence, of how the search will be conducted), and that the request is reasonable. Ensuring that the government apply for and receive a warrant before accessing our digital documents is in keeping with the Fourth Amendment, which upholds: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. While the Electronic Communication Privacy Act may be vague and outdated, the principles of the Fourth Amendment are clear: the government shouldn’t access our private communications without a judge’s explicit approval. The Fourth Amendment is Not Negotiable The Senate Judiciary Committee is engaged in high-stakes negotiations over our privacy rights this week. But compromising on our digital privacy—or horse-trading some privacy rights to gain others—isn’t right for users. Here’s what we need to guard against: Amendments to water down warrant protections . Even as Leahy is pushing to fix ECPA, other Senators (especially Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)) and law enforcement agencies are planning to introduce amendments that would create gaping exceptions to these protections. Yet an increasing number of conservatives are voicing their concerns about government agents rifling through people's communications without good cause; lawmakers should take heed. . Even as Leahy is pushing to fix ECPA, other Senators (especially Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa)) and law enforcement agencies are planning to introduce amendments that would create gaping exceptions to these protections. Yet an increasing number of conservatives are voicing their concerns about government agents rifling through people's communications without good cause; lawmakers should take heed. Compromising the VPPA. The Video Privacy Protection Act is one of the strongest consumer privacy laws we have on the books, ensuring the highest levels of privacy protection in keeping the videos you watch online and offline away from prying eyes. Tying ECPA reform to a bill that would undermine VPPA protections is the wrong approach. The Senate Judiciary Committee will be considering this matter on Thursday morning at 10 AM EST/7AM PST. We’ll be live tweeting the hearing from @EFFLive. In the interim, please join us in speaking out for privacy reform through our coalition site and our petition to Congress.
As a college student at a primarily liberal university, I am in the minority as a non-Bernie Sanders supporter. I don't oppose him in order to present myself as edgy or unconventional — and I'm sure as hell not a Donald Trump supporter — so please hear me out. Sanders is a screaming example of a demagogue. In order to flourish into leadership, he is prepared to use the emotions and fears of the people. By aligning himself as synonymous with a chance at life-long security for the American people, I believe he will be letting down his supporters — as well as the rest of the country — if he does assume the title of commander in chief in early 2021. America deserves a leader that can accurately prioritize the issues within our country and can produce a platform for the American Dream to thrive on. I am not the kind of student to fabricate empty claims though, so following is my reasoning for my lack of support for Senator Bernie Sanders. Taxation, taxation, taxation Sanders went through a large portion of his 2016 campaign without producing the numbers, nor the plans, he claimed to have compiled. When he finally did, my jaw dropped. And as I looked around, students and professionals alike were having a different reaction. "It takes money to make money," they told me. Stop. Right. There. America is over $20 trillion dollars in debt. Upon extensive research directly from Sanders' website (to prevent outside bias and propaganda), there is $9,028,250,000 worth of expenses being proposed just in his first five years — and that number doesn't even include the proposed increase in estate tax and payroll tax. This $9,028,250,000 isn't coming from just anywhere; it is coming directly from the taxpayers. Many supporters of the senator think the only people who will be influenced tax-wise will be the top one percent, but boy, do I have news for you. No matter what your income is, you will be affected. Followed is the tax information compiled from Sanders' proposed policies, compiled by Vox. It shows that, based on your income, you will have at least an 8.8% increase, with those at the higher end of income expecting an increase of 33.8%. Let me tell you one thing — that is a lot of money. You're the one who earned it, yet you will not be the one deciding how it is spent. Sound "fair?" Not in my opinion. Vox Wait! We want more! But don't worry, Sanders is here on behalf of the government to save you. Let's implement a minimum wage at starting at $15 an hour (even though the senator pays his interns a starting wage of $12 an hour) and ignore inflation — because if you've never opened an economics textbook, it doesn't affect you. First, there needs to be a clarification of who is affected by the minimum wage. According to Pew Research Center, only 4.3% of workers are currently being paid minimum wage. Fifty percent of those are under the age of 25, with a majority of those also being students. Minimum wage is intended for people with minimum skills, such as students in trade schools or universities or employees attempting to work their way up within a company. Minimum wage is not intended to be a living wage. In addition, minimum wage should not be under federal jurisdiction to this extreme degree. Cities such as Washington, D.C., and Seattle have much higher minimum wages than the national minimum wage of $7.25, but that is not because they are harder workers. It is based on the price of living in those cities, which is much higher than in rural areas. The states can handle their minimum wage without mediation by the federal government because no one knows what is better for a state than the state itself. Socialism is the answer, right? This is a humongous concern to be had with millennials — we seem to have forgotten about the Red Scare. The Red Scare, for those of you who are not aware, happened in the early 1950s and was the fear of communism or radical leftism. Socialism is radical leftism. Now that that's out of the way, we can address another issue. Socialism does not work. Democratic socialism does not work. Yes, there are places that are fiercely different than the melting pot of the United States that have introduced socialism. They have government assistance programs in which they can receive free education and free healthcare, but they are not comparable to our diverse nation. The Denmark discussion is my favorite because the differences between our country and theirs are astounding. First and foremost, we have more than 55 times as many citizens on a piece of land more than 200 times the size. If the problem was just based on size alone, there would be a possibility of success with the right means of control through technology. But a much more important issue is that Denmark has people who are very similar religiously (with over 80% of citizens being Lutheran), hence holding similar morals. It is simply not possible to promise "fairness" to Americans when, due to our distinctive differences in culture, there is a moral difference in what fair means. Beyond our model country of Denmark, socialism, as well as the more extreme of communism, have proved not to work. Just ask the citizens in places such as Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and China. They'll give you the lowdown — it doesn't work. And life for them sucks now. Equality of effort vs. equality of outcome My biggest concern with Sanders is the destruction of the entrepreneur spirit. When a government implements the idea of fairness as a right, people begin to forget about individualism. Individualism is what the American Dream is based on. People came to America to have a life better than what their home country could offer them. The United States provided the opportunity to throw away any biases that come with your country and start from the beginning. With hard work and time well spent, anyone can become and achieve anything they want to. With the introduction of socialism, the American Dream begins to deteriorate, and soon thereafter is extinguished. People can come here, automatically get all of their needs for free, while the hardworking Americans who believe in the American Dream continue to pay for it. Reference Russia, for example, the state provides access to most education, millions of Russians still live in poverty. It will continue to be the "we want more, more, more" philosophy — and there is not an end in sight. The character of our nation was founded on capitalism We are blessed to have a home that men, women, and children can come to and have the chance to succeed at the American Dream. With the implementation of democratic socialism, we are taking away that opportunity. People come to America in order to get away from the downfalls of their country. We want to grow our country to present more possibilities for all current and future citizens. A vote for Bernie is a vote against the American Dream.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Trump to Putin: "It's an honour to be with you" Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have discussed the alleged Russian hacking of last year's US presidential election during their first meeting. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described the exchanges as "robust". Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Mr Trump had accepted Mr Putin's assertions that his country was not responsible. But Mr Tillerson said it was not clear whether the two countries would ever come to an agreement on what happened. "I think the president is rightly focused on how do we move forward from something that may be an intractable disagreement at this point," he added. The US and Russian presidents held their first face-to-face talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in the German city of Hamburg, which is being held amid sometimes violent protests. Other topics discussed during their meeting - which lasted nearly two-and-a-quarter hours, longer than originally planned - included the war in Syria, terrorism and cybersecurity. "The president opened the meeting with President Putin by raising the concerns of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election," Mr Tillerson, part of the US delegation, told reporters afterwards. "They had a very robust and lengthy exchange on the subject. The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement. "President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has done in the past." Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Russian interference? No-one knows - Trump Mr Tillerson said the two leaders had "connected very quickly", adding: "There was a very clear positive chemistry between the two. There are so many issues on the table... Just about everything got touched upon... Neither one of them wanted to stop. "I believe they even sent in the First Lady [Melania Trump] at one point to see if she could get us out of there, but that didn't work either... We did another hour. Clearly she failed!" Mr Lavrov said: "President Trump said he heard clear statements... that Russian authorities did not intervene [in the US election], and he accepted these declarations." Mr Tillerson was asked as he was leaving the news conference if this was accurate, but declined to answer. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Police fired water cannon as anti-G20 protesters lit fires Earlier, as the talks began in front of the media before going into private session, Mr Trump told Mr Putin: "It's an honour to be with you." Mr Putin replied: "I'm delighted to meet you personally." Mr Trump added: "Putin and I have been discussing various things, and I think it's going very well. "We've had some very, very good talks. We're going to have a talk now and obviously that will continue. We look forward to a lot of very positive things happening for Russia, for the United States and for everybody concerned." Mr Putin, via a translator, said that while they had previously spoken by phone, that would never be as good as meeting face to face. The two men had staked out opposing views on major international issues in the run-up to the summit: On Thursday, Mr Trump used a speech in the Polish capital Warsaw to call on Russia to stop "destabilising" Ukraine and other countries, and "join the community of responsible nations" Setting out his own G20 agenda in German financial newspaper Handelsblatt, Mr Putin called for US-led sanctions on his country, imposed in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, to be lifted Mr Putin also argued strongly in favour of the Paris climate agreement, saying it was a "secure basis for long-term climate regulation" and Russia wanted to make a "comprehensive contribution to its implementation" President Trump has taken the US out of the Paris agreement Russian side happy - analysis by BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg Based on the tone and the results of the US-Russia discussions, this meeting is being lauded here in Moscow as a breakthrough. The head of the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee predicted it would "stop the rot in US-Russian relations". Essentially, Vladimir Putin has got what Vladimir Putin wanted: a US president who is focused not on confrontation but on mutually beneficial co-operation; as American leader who is not going to sit there for two hours lecturing his Russian counterpart on democracy, but instead do deals with him. And there were several agreements: to co-operate in Syria, over Ukraine, and in the area of cyber security. The Kremlin will see all of this as a first step towards a bigger goal: much wider co-operation with America and the scrapping of Western sanctions. But remember - Donald Trump is under intense pressure back home over his team's alleged links to Moscow. It's far from certain he'll be able to deliver what Russia wants. First Lady 'trapped' Climate change and trade are set to dominate the rest of the two-day G20 meeting, taking place amid clashes between protesters and police in the streets outside the venue that have left dozens injured. A huge police operation is trying to keep demonstrators - who are protesting against the presence of Mr Trump and Mr Putin, climate change and global wealth inequalities - well away from the summit venue, and water cannon have been deployed. The US First Lady was at one point unable to leave her hotel in Hamburg because of the protests. Mrs Trump had been due to take part in an excursion with other leaders' spouses, but her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said: "The Hamburg police could not give us clearance to leave." Mrs Trump herself tweeted about her concern for those injured in the protests. The G20 (Group of Twenty) is a summit for 19 countries, both developed and developing, plus the EU.
Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email GORDON Brown wants the Remain camp to come up with their own version of The Vow to help keep Britain in the EU. The former prime minister said pro-EU campaigners needed to learn the lessons of the Scottish referendum and promise major reforms to convince the voters. Brown, who was credited with shaping The Vow, told the European Parliament that negative campaigning about the dangers of Brexit was not enough. He said: “To win in the Scottish referendum, we had to do much more than elaborate the negative consequences from the break-up of Britain. “We had to set out a positive reform agenda, which eventually led to a new constitutional settlement.” Read more: Brown outlined a six-point list of EU reforms that would help persuade British voters, including an EU “solidarity fund” to support communities struggling under pressure from immigration. He said one of the public’s “greatest grievances” was that immigration was putting strain on the NHS and schools. And he said: “A dedicated EU fund would help address this issue.” Brown called for stronger measures to protect British workers at risk of exploitation, and energy market reforms to cut household bills. Read more: He said the EU should use its “collective clout” to tackle tax havens and terrorism. And he argued that EU cash and single market reforms could create 500,000 British jobs. Brown said: “Around these priorities we can, I believe, begin to fashion a British consensus on the future of Europe.”
Time Warner Cable, stung by online criticism of its paltry traffic caps (in tests, these have ranged form 5GB/month to 40GB/month) and ludicrous pricing schemes, has taken to the 'Net to defend its sullied honor. But it's hard to defend a scheme with fees so high they might well meet the legal definition of "obscene." First, the response: Time Warner Cable COO Landel Hobbs wrote earlier this week of the need for people to pay for the bandwidth they consume. "When you go to lunch with a friend, do you split the bill in half if he gets the steak and you have a salad?" he asked. Fair enough. Bandwidth costs (a little bit of) money, and there's certainly no reason for customers to demand the ability to transfer 4TB of data a month for one flat fee. But TWC's steak/salad analogy breaks down when it's crafted more accurately. The real question is whether you would even have lunch with a friend at a restaurant that charged $45 for a salad and $200 for a steak. Certainly, in a free market, most people would go elsewhere. But this sort of absurd price structure perfectly characterizes the new TWC plans. Let's take a look. Just how overpriced is that steak? As TWC expands its test markets for the data caps, it offers plans with 5GB of monthly data transfer for $30. Plans with 40GB of data go for $55. The thinking here is that most customers currently use only 4GB per month or so, and offering those customers a cheaper rate is actually doing them a favor. As Hobbs puts it, "Our current pricing plans require all users to pay the same amount, whether they check e-mail once a month or download six movies a day." But the only favors being done here are to TWC's bottom line. That base rate works out to a truly jaw-dropping $6 per GB per month, and it's so far out of line with competitors' plans as to shock even the most cynical heart. Take AT&T's DSL, for comparison. The most expensive plan on offer (unless one subscribes to the U-verse IPTV system) is $35 per month for 6Mbps DSL. AT&T has no explicit data cap, but let's use 400GB as an illustrative limit. AT&T DSL comes out to 9� per GB. Verizon's fiber-optic FiOS system can be had for as little as $44.99 a month if you're content with 10Mbps downstream. Assuming a 400GB cap (Verizon also has no explicit cap), this comes out to $.11 per GB. Upgrading to the much faster 50Mbps service for $144.95 a month still means that the charge per GB is only 36�. The situation is similar at other cable operators. Comcast offers Internet service starting at $42.95 per month and has a 250GB cap in place; this works out to 17� per GB. TWC claims that the caps are needed to "make improvements to infrastructure" that are necessary for higher speed access, but it's hard to see how. Comcast is aggressively rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades across its service area. In Chicago, it already sells a 50Mbps plan for $139.95—only 56� per GB. Besides, the dirty secret of these DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts is that they're cheap. Cable companies need to upgrade hardware at the headend and may need to send out a new cable modem, but this is hardly expensive. A New York Times piece last week quoted industry insiders who said the job could be done for between $20 and $100 (the latter figure includes a new cable modem). If TWC wants to be "fair," as Hobbs says, perhaps it can start by rethinking either its caps or its prices. Even its most generous plan, 40GB per month for $55, costs a ridiculous $1.38 per GB. (The company has heard the outraged cries of its users and will eventually offer a 100GB cap option; pricing, however, is not yet set.) As Dave Burstein, editor of trade publication DSL Prime, put it recently, "No one is going to stop Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T from practices that are truly necessary to efficiently run a network. The issue is blocking competitive video and charging 1,000 percent and higher markups on bandwidth that are unacceptable."
An online video released Friday purports to show an Islamic State group fighter beheading British hostage Alan Henning, a former taxi driver who was taken captive while travelling with an aid convoy. The video mirrored other beheading videos shot by the Islamic State group, which now holds territory along the border of Syria and Iraq. "The brutal murder of Alan Henning by ISIL shows just how barbaric these terrorists are. My thoughts are with his wife and their children," British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday on Twitter. Henning, 47, nicknamed "Gadget," had joined an aid convoy and was taken captive on Dec. 26, shortly after crossing the border between Turkey and Syria. Before he left the U.K.. to do humanitarian work, the father of two drove a taxi in the community not far outside Manchester. His wife, Barbara, had pleaded for his release, calling her husband a "peaceful, selfless man" who wanted to help those in need. "Alan had gone to Syria to help get aid to people of all faiths in their hour of need," Cameron said in a statement. "The fact that he was taken hostage when trying to help others and now murdered demonstrates that there are no limits to the depravity of these ... terrorists. We will do all we can to hunt down these murderers and bring them to justice, - British Prime Minister David Cameron "We will do all we can to hunt down these murderers and bring them to justice." The Associated Press could not immediately verify the video's authenticity, though it was released in the same manner as other Islamic State group videos. In a statement, the British Foreign Office said it was working to verify the video. "If true, this is a further disgusting murder," the statement read. "We are offering the family every support possible; they ask to be left alone at this time." Britain has been supporting U.S. military efforts against the Islamic State group by using its forces to help with logistics and intelligence gathering, as well as by recently taking part in airstrikes in Iraq. The internet video released Friday begins with a news clip announcing British strikes against ISIS. Threat against American The video ended with an Islamic State fighter threatening a man identified as an American named Peter Kassig. Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concerns of not having permission to release the information, confirmed that Kassig was being held by Islamic State militants. The officials declined to elaborate. The family of the former Army Ranger from Indiana says the man moved to the Middle East to provide humanitarian aid to refugees. Kassig's parents say their son converted to Islam while in captivity and goes by the name Abdul-Rahman. They say he served in the Iraq war and became an emergency medical technician after being honourably discharged for medical reasons. Kassig travelled to Lebanon in 2012 to work as a medical assistant in border hospitals. He has been held since October 2013. "Obama, you have started your aerial bombard of Shams [Syria], which keep on striking our people, so it is only right that we strike the next of your people," a masked militant said in the video. U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the "brutal murder" of Henning, and said the U.S. will work with U.K. allies "to bring the perpetrators of Alan's murder — as well as the murders of Jim Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines— to justice." This is the fourth such video released by the Islamic State group. The full beheadings are not shown in the videos, but the British-accented, English-speaking militant holds a long knife and appears to begin cutting the three men. Foley and Sotloff were reporters and Haines was an aid worker. The video was released the same day that Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada has offered to contribute an air combat mission to the fight against ISIS, in addition to the deployment of military advisers who are assisting in Iraq.
Latest results: Click here if you do not see election results above this line. Karen Handel defeats Jon Ossoff to win Georgia 6th District On MyAJC: Precinct map with vote totals as they are posted Most polls closed at 7 p.m. in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District , but the voting may continue at some precincts. As long as you were in line at 7 p.m., you are allowed to stay until you finish voting. How long will it take to count the vote? As long as it takes. We are reminded that it took Fulton County until after 2 a.m. to fully report during the first round of votes in April, but Fulton’s top elections official said he expects things to move smoothly today since there’s only one race on the ballot. >> Read more on the AJC Runoff Election Day live blog As the votes are counted , the AJC news team will publish live updates for the latest vote counts, along with news from the county elections office, Georgia’s Secretary of State and the candidates, Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff. Candidates for congress in Georgia's sixth congressional district Jon Ossoff (left) and Karen Handel (right) meet supporters on Election Day June 20, 2017. Photo: Chad Rhym Bookmark this page for live updates. RELATED: Georgia 6th District news headlines from the AJC RELATED: Who can vote in Georgia 6th District special election RELATED: Georgia special election polls On Election night (Tuesday, June 20), readers will find live updates at ajc.com , MyAJC.com and the AJC Breaking News app . Readers can also follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter . For in-depth coverage of the Georgia 6th District election , turn to the Politics page on MyAJC.com.
On Thursday, Ray Rice completed his pre-trial intervention program for the February 2014 incident in which he struck his then-fiancé Janay Palmer (she is now his wife) in an elevator. His third-degree aggravated assault charge has been dismissed after he successfully fulfilled all terms of an intervention program that lasted a year. With his NFL suspension overturned, Rice is available to any NFL team willing to give him a second chance. Rice will have to remain patient for that opportunity, however. It will be very difficult for a team to sign him before the start of training camp, and here's why: As we've seen over the past couple of years, the toughest thing for a team signing or drafting a player with a controversial past is the negative public reaction that comes with it. Let's say Rice signs with a team in the next week. The initial image of Rice will be the video of him striking his wife, not what he says in his first press conference with his new team or what he is doing on the football field. A signing close to the start of training camp will reduce the amount of time fans and media linger on Rice's off-field incident. Instead, they will be watching Rice the football player, and the football images can slowly replace the negative images that have been associated with him for the past year. We've seen this happen with several players in the past, including Michael Vick when he returned to the field following his imprisonment for running a dogfighting operation. Ray Rice's most recent NFL season was one of the worst of his career. Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports There are also football reasons working against Rice. The NFL is welcoming one of the best rookie running back classes of the past decade in 2015. Other teams resolved running back needs through trades or signings. And Rice was coming off one of his worst seasons as a Raven prior to his legal issues (his lowest yardage total since his rookie season, and the lowest yards per carry average of his career), leading some to question whether the 28 year old has much left to offer. Even with all of those factors working against him, however, there is still a good chance a team will bring him in at the start of training camp and give him a chance to make a roster. Here are five teams that would make the most sense for him: 1. Dallas Cowboys: Jerry Jones appears to be content with starting the season with Joseph Randle and Darren McFadden running behind the best offensive line in football, but Rice could be an option if something happens to either player (Randle has had his own off-field issues, and McFadden has an extensive injury history). As he's shown with the additions of Greg Hardy, Randy Gregory and La'el Collins, Jones is willing to take some chances on players with behavioral and/or legal issues in their past. The Cowboys are currently considering adding veteran RBs Felix Jones and Ben Tate. 2. Cleveland Browns: The Browns might want to see how their young running backs -- second-year pros Isaiah Crowell and Terrance West, and 2015 third-rounder Duke Johnson -- are performing in the preseason before considering Rice. But if one or more of those guys struggles in camp, Rice might be an option. 3. Oakland Raiders: Raiders ownership might not want to deal with the public relations implications of signing Rice -- the same can be said for the other four teams on this list -- but this is something of a need position for Oakland. Latavius Murray showed promise last season but isn't yet a sure thing as an NFL lead back, and former No. 3 overall pick Trent Richardson has struggled to a 3.3 yards-per-carry average in his young career. 4. New England Patriots: This one makes football sense, if the Patriots can look past having to deal with another potential off-field distraction. They lost Shane Vereen and Stevan Ridley in free agency and LeGarrette Blount is suspended for the opener, so they could use depth at the running back position. 5. Indianapolis Colts: This one would only make sense if the Colts wanted to add injury insurance for free-agent pickup Frank Gore; the Colts have been thrilled with adding Gore so far. Head coach Chuck Pagano knows and respects Rice from their time together in Baltimore, so there's some familiarity here.
Back to home page ISR Issue 57, JanuaryFebruary 2008 NEWS & REPORTS No friend of the Left Ron Paul, libertarianism, and the freedom to starve to death By SHERRY WOLF “POLITICS, LIKE nature, abhors a vacuum,” goes the revamped aphorism. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s surprising stature among a small but vocal layer of antiwar activists and leftist bloggers appears to bear this out. At the October 27, 2007, antiwar protests in dozens of cities there were noticeable contingents of supporters carrying his campaign placards and circulating sign-up sheets. The Web site antiwar.com features a weekly Ron Paul column. Some even dream of a Left-Right gadfly alliance for the 2008 ticket. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, liberal maverick and Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich told supporters in late November he was thinking of making Ron Paul his running mate if he were to get the nomination. No doubt the hawkish and calculating Hillary Rodham Clinton and flaccid murmurings of Barack Obama, in addition to the uninspiring state of the antiwar movement that backed a prowar candidate in 2004, help fuel the desperation many activists feel. But leftists must unequivocally reject the reactionary libertarianism of this longtime Texas congressman and 1988 Libertarian Party presidential candidate. Ron Paul’s own campaign Web site reads like the objectivist rantings of Ayn Rand, one of his theoretical mentors. As with the Atlas Shrugged author’s other acolytes, neocon guru Milton Friedman and former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, Paul argues, “Liberty means free-market capitalism.” He opposes “big government” and, in the isolationist fashion of the nation’s Pat Buchanans, he decries intervention in foreign nation’s affairs and believes membership in the United Nations undermines U.S. sovereignty. Naturally, it is not Ron Paul’s paeans to the free market that some progressives find so appealing, but his unwavering opposition to the war in Iraq and consistent voting record against all funding for the war. His straightforward speaking style, refusal to accept the financial perks of office, and his repeated calls for repealing the Patriot Act distinguish him from the snakeoil salesmen who populate Congress. Paul is no power-hungry, poll-tested shyster. Even the liberalish chat show hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar on The View gave a friendly reception to Paul’s folksy presentation, despite his paleoconservative views on abortion, which he—a practicing obstetrician—argues is murder. Though Paul is unlikely to triumph in the primaries, it is worth taking stock not only of his actual positions, but more importantly the libertarian underpinnings that have wooed so many self-described leftists and progressives. Because at its core, the fetishism of individualism that underlies libertarianism leads to the denial of rights to the very people most radicals aim to champion—workers, immigrants, Blacks, women, gays, and any group that lacks the economic power to impose their individual rights on others. Ron Paul’s positions A cursory look at Paul’s positions, beyond his opposition to the war and the Patriot Act, would make any leftist cringe. Put simply, he is a racist. Not the cross-burning, hood-wearing kind to be sure, but the flat-Earth-society brand that imagines a colorblind world where 500 years of colonial history and slavery are dismissed out of hand and institutional racism and policies under capitalism are imagined away. As his campaign Web site reads: The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence—not skin color, gender, or ethnicity. Paul was more blunt writing in his independent political newsletter distributed to thousands of supporters in 1992. Citing statistics from a study that year produced by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, Paul concluded: “Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” Reporting on gang crime in Los Angeles, Paul commented: “If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” His six-point immigration plan appears to have been cribbed from the gun-toting vigilante Minutemen at the border. “A nation without secure borders is no nation at all. It makes no sense to fight terrorists abroad when our own front door is left unlocked,” reads his site. And he advocates cutting off all social services to undocumented immigrants, including hospitals, schools, clinics, and even roads (how would that work?). “The public correctly perceives that neither political party has the courage to do what is necessary to prevent further erosion of both our border security and our national identity,” he wrote in a 2005 article. “Unfortunately, the federal government seems more intent upon guarding the borders of other nations than our own.” The article argues that, “Our current welfare system also encourages illegal immigration by discouraging American citizens from taking low-wage jobs.” The solution: end welfare so that everyone will be forced to work at slave wages. In order that immigrants not culturally dilute the nation, he proposes that “All federal government business should be conducted in English.” Though he rants about his commitment to the Constitution, he introduced an amendment altering the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing citizenship to anyone born in the United States, saying in a 2006 article: Birthright citizenship, originating in the 14th amendment, has become a serious cultural and economic dilemma for our nation…. We must end the perverse incentives that encourage immigrants to come here illegally, including the anchor baby incentive. Here we come up against the limits of libertarianism—Paul wants a strong state to secure the borders, but he wants all social welfare expenditures eliminated for those within them. Paul is quite vocal these days about his rank opposition to abortion—“life begins at conception,” he argues. He promotes a “states’ rights” position on abortion—that decades-old hobgoblin of civil rights opponents. And he has long opposed sexual harassment legislation, writing in his 1988 book Freedom Under Siege (available online), “Why don’t they quit once the so-called harassment starts?” In keeping with his small-government worldview, he goes on to argue against the government’s right “to tell an airline it must hire unattractive women if it does not want to.” In that same book, written as the AIDS crisis was laying waste to the American gay male population and prompting the rise of activist groups demanding research and drugs, Paul attacked AIDS sufferers as “victims of their own lifestyle.” And in a statement that gives a glimpse of the ruling-class tyranny of individualism, he asserts that AIDS victims demanding rushed drug trials were impinging on “the rights of insurance company owners.” Paul wants to abolish the Department of Education and, in his words, “end the federal education monopoly” by eliminating all taxes that go toward public education and “giving educational control back to parents.” Which parents would those be? Only those with the leisure time, educational training, and temperament commensurate with home schooling! Whatever real problems the U.S. education system suffers from—and there are many—eliminating 99 percent literacy rates that generations of public education has achieved and tossing the children of working parents out of the schools is not an appealing or viable option. Paul also opposes equal pay for equal work, a minimum wage, and, naturally, trade unions. In 2007, he voted against restricting employers’ rights to interfere in union drives and against raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25. In 2001, he voted for zero-funding for OSHA’s Ergonomics Rules. At least he’s consistent. Libertarians like Paul are for removing any legislative barriers that may restrict business owners’ profits, but are openly hostile to alleviating economic restrictions that oppress most workers. Only a boss could embrace this perverse concept of “freedom.” Individualism versus collectivism There is a scene in Monty Python’s satire Life of Brian where Brian, not wanting to be the messiah, calls out to the crowd: “You are all individuals.” The crowd responds in unison: “We are all individuals.” Libertarians, using pseudo-iconoclastic logic, transform this comical send-up of religious conformity into their own secular dogma in which we are all just atomized beings. “Only an individual has rights,” not groups such as workers, Blacks, gays, women, and minorities, Ron Paul argues. True, we are all individuals, but we didn’t just bump into one another. Human beings by nature are social beings who live in a collective, a society. Under capitalism, society is broken down into classes in which some individuals—bosses, for example—wield considerably more power than others—workers. To advocate for society to be organized on the basis of strict individualism, as libertarians do, is to argue that everyone has the right to do whatever he or she wants. Sounds nice in the abstract, perhaps. But what happens when the desires of one individual infringe on the desires of another? Libertarians like Paul don’t shy away from the logical ramifications of their argument. “The dictatorial power of a majority” he argues ought to be replaced by the unencumbered power of individuals—in other words, the dictatorial power of a minority. So if the chairman of Dow Chemical wants to flush his company’s toxic effluence into rivers and streams, so be it. If General Motors wants to pay its employees starvation wages, that’s their right too. Their argument is that the mechanism of the free market will take care of these things—correct the excesses, give an economic incentive to protect the environment, keep wages high enough to woo the best workers, and so on. But all evidence points to the fact that unregulated capitalism means low wages and rampant polluting, with all efforts strained toward maximization of profit no matter what the social and environmental cost. Right-wing libertarians often appear to not want to grapple with meddlesome things like economic and social power. As the bourgeois radical Abraham Lincoln observed of secessionist slaveowners, “The perfect liberty they seek is the liberty of making slaves of other people.” Too much government? Unwavering hostility to government and its collection of taxes is another hallmark of libertarianism. Given the odious practices of governments under capitalism, their repugnant financial priorities, and bilking of the lower classes through taxation it’s hardly surprising that libertarians get a hearing. But the conclusion that the problem is “big government” strips the content from the form. Can any working-class perspective seriously assert that we have too much government involvement in providing health care? Too much oversight of the environment, food production, and workplace safety? Would anyone seriously consider hopping a flight without the certainty of national, in fact international, air traffic control? Of course not. The problem doesn’t lie with some abstract construct, “government.” The problem is that the actual class dynamics of governments under capitalism amount to taxing workers and the poor in lieu of the rich and powerful corporations and spending those resources on wars (or repression at home), environmental devastation, and the enrichment of a tiny swath of society at the expense of the rest of us. Ron Paul argues, “Government by majority rule has replaced strict protection of the individual from government abuse. Right of property ownership has been replaced with the forced redistribution of wealth and property.” Few folks likely to be reading this publication will agree that we actually live in a society where wealth and property are expropriated from the rich and given to workers and the poor. Even the corporate media admit that there has been a wholesale redistribution of wealth in the opposite direction. But Paul exposes here the class nature of libertarianism—it is the provincial political outlook of the middle-class business owner obsessed with guarding his lot. As online anti-libertarian writer Ernest Partridge puts it in “Liberty for some”: Complaints against “big government” and “over-regulation,” though often justified, also issue from the privileged who are frustrated at finding that their quest for still greater privileges at the expense of their community are curtailed by a government which, ideally, represents that community. Pure food and drug laws curtail profits and mandate tests as they protect the general public. In fact, the libertarians’ opposition to the government, or the state if you will, is less out of hostility to what the state actually does than who is running it. Perhaps this explains Paul’s own clear contradiction when it comes to abortion, since his opposition to government intervention stops at a woman’s uterus. But freedom for socialists has always been about more than the right to choose masters. Likewise, Paul appears to be for “small government” except when it comes to using its power to restrict immigration. His personal right to not have any undocumented immigrants in the U.S. seems to trump the right of free movement of individuals, but not capital, across borders. Right-wing libertarians, quite simply, oppose the state only insofar as it infringes the right of property owners. Left-Right alliance? Some antiwar activists and leftists desperate to revitalize a flagging antiwar movement make appeals to the Left to form a Left-Right bloc with Ron Paul supporters. Even environmental activist and left-wing author Joshua Frank, who writes insightful and often scathing attacks on liberal Democrats’ capitulations to reactionary policies, recently penned an article citing—though not endorsing—Paul’s campaign in calling for leftist antiwar activists to reach out to form a sort of Left-Right antiwar alliance. He argues, “Whether we’re beer swilling rednecks from Knoxville or mushroom eatin’ hippies from Eugene, we need to come together” (“Embracing a new antiwar movement”). Supporters of Ron Paul who show up to protests should be challenged and won away, if possible, from Ron Paul. Those of his supporters who are unaware of his broader politics beyond the war, should be educated about them. And those who advocate his noxious politics should be attacked for their racism, immigrant bashing, neo-liberalism, and hostility to the values a genuine Left champions. The sort of Left-Right alliance Frank advocates is not only opportunistic, but is also an obstacle to creating the multiracial working-class movement that is sorely needed if we are to end this war—something no doubt that Frank wants. What Arabs, Blacks, Latinos—and antiracist whites, for that matter—would ever join a movement that accommodates to this reactionary, nineteenth-century know-nothing brand of politics? That some are turning to Ron Paul is testament to the weakness of the Left, and the serious work necessary to build a politically stronger antiwar movement that looks beyond superficial similarities (opposition to the war) to develop a deeper understanding the nature of U.S. imperialism, and is able to connect the struggle against imperialism abroad with the struggle against the twisted priorities of capitalism at home. Discontent with the status quo and the drumbeat of electoralism is driving many activists and progressives to seek out political alternatives. But libertarianism is no radical political solution to inequality, violence, and misery. When the likes of Paul shout: “We need freedom to choose!” we need to ask, “Yes, but freedom for whom and for what?” Because the freedom to starve to death is the most dubious freedom of all. Sherry Wolf is on the editorial board of the ISR. She can be reached at [email protected]
Back in early November, the 2018 California governor's race was shaping up to be a tepid affair. Even with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa poised to enter the fray, the election was expected to revolve around such issues as Gov. Jerry Brown's policy of fiscal prudence, California's role in reducing carbon emissions and managing the state's new legal marijuana economy. Then Donald Trump happened. "It changes the entire political environment, from Washington to California and back," says Sean Clegg, a political consultant who's running the gubernatorial campaign for frontrunner Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. "And I think we’re in for two years that we haven’t seen in this country since the 1960s." Continue Reading Since Election Day, politicians have been tripping over themselves to denounce Trump and his cronies. "With the appointment of Steve Bannon as 'chief strategist' Mr. Trump is effectively giving white supremacists and anti-Semites a seat at the table," Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a press release. "While I have many concerns with President-elect Trump's nominations to date, the nomination of Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions [as attorney general] is particularly troubling," said California Attorney General (and U.S. Senator-elect) Kamala Harris in a press release. L.A. city officials, meanwhile, have vowed to defy Trump should he order mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. And so it seems the governor's race could very well become a contest of who can denounce Trump the loudest. "If Hillary Clinton was in the White House, the governor's race would be a pretty much status quo election," says Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "With Donald Trump there instead, the Democratic base is going to be motivated to an unprecedented degree." Schnur says the political climate might favor the former L.A. mayor, who is also a former union organizer and a former president of the ACLU. "Villaraigosa, by virtue of his personal and professional biography, benefits from that," Schnur says. In the past few years, Newsom has campaigned for legal marijuana and gun control. State Treasurer John Chiang, who's also thrown his hat in the gubernatorial ring, is best known for docking the majority-Democratic Legislature's pay for failing to pass a budget on time. Billionaire Tom Steyer, who is said to be mulling a run for governor, campaigned to fight climate change and pass a cigarette tax. But Villaraigosa may be best positioned to stand up for immigrants and fight against mass deportations — or a wall on the Mexican border. Of course, Villaraigosa faces plenty of challenges. For one thing, he isn't all that popular in Los Angeles. By the end of his second term as mayor, voters saw him as flaky and publicity-obsessed. Many of his goals, among them education reform and planting a million trees, were left unfinished. A recent Field Poll found Newsom well ahead of the pack, with 23 percent of respondents favoring him. But that poll, which had Republican candidates Kevin Faulconer and Ashley Swearengin in second and third places, was taken before Nov. 8. California, which voted for Clinton over Trump by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, is unlikely to turn around and elect a Republican two years later. "Newsom and Chiang bring considerable heft to the race," Schnur says. "But it’s now incumbent on both of them to channel people's outrage as effectively as Villaraigosa can."
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has agreed to place “no trespassing” signs on the property beneath Interstate-45, near downtown Dallas. It’s a move, according to city council member Tiffani Young, that means police can ticket anyone who’s there. It also means the end is near for the so-called tent city, where many homeless people live. Managed by the city and local homeless advocacy groups, several council members are concerned about the city footing the bill for dumpsters and port-a-pottys under the bridge. Some downtown residents have also expressed their displeasure with the lack of safety, obvious signs of drug use and criminal element at the tent encampments. (©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Eyes like Fire Filled with Soul Always watching, waiting to see the early evening glow Running Jumping from fence to tree orange and brown coloured like leaves in an autumn tide Many names known Tod, Basil (And Vince too) It's not what you say or what sound you will make but what you all give to the world. Blazing fires though none that burn rushing right by like sunrays in the wind inspiring young minds and old Oooh oooh ooh ooh oooh oooh oooh Soaring down the fields of gold running together light as a feather Ronron Forever more (Check the link bellow to listen to the song) A little for everyone's favorite Fox RonRon, who hangs out and lives with foxalbiazul. Please check the Beatiful Song by the Amazing Foxamoore that this artwork accompanies! ~> http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15475548/ <~ ~> http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15475548/ <~ ~> http://www.furaffinity.net/view/15475548/ <~ Lead Vocals - lilypad Backing Vocals and Bass - rhubarbthebear Violin and String Quartet - kyash-tyur This artwork wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the Song and people who made it- It's a big honor to paint this artwork for it! Thank you so much Fox Amoore for the wonderful and touching song.! You are one of my biggest inspiration, its a dream come true to be able to work with you. <3 It's not what you say or what sound you will make: But what you all give to the world. <3- Fox Amoore. Edit: April 6, 2016 Rest in Peace RonRon. You will be forever in our hearts. ♥ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IrjFUzV26E (Check the link bellow to listen to the song)This artwork wouldn't be possible if it weren't for the Song and people who made it- It's a big honor to paint this artwork for it!Thank you so much Fox Amoore for the wonderful and touching song.! You are one of my biggest inspiration, its a dream come true to be able to work with you. <3- Fox Amoore.Rest in Peace RonRon. You will be forever in our hearts. ♥
Love is… The human evolution could have never been the same if we are able to complete, what’s left in the start. Valentine’s Day is just a day to remember love. But it occupies us all our lives throughout. Last night I began to ponder over the love themed films that I have watched so far, it actually grew up to a list. And my second thought was naturally to share it in Creofire. These movies are my personal favourites not compiled in order or ranked. Each of these works creates an enigmatic world where love oozes in every frame and the characters that we get to meet in these films are breathing love. Here goes the list. I feel just the titles are enough. Does love need explanation? Or could one explain?! Cyrano de Berzerag (1990, French) A Short film about Love (1988, Polish) The Road Home (1999, Mandarin) In the Mood for Love (2000, Cantonese) A Very Long Engagement (2004, French) The Notebook (2004) Titanic (1997) Facing Windows (2003, Italian) 500 days of Summer (2009) Wings of Desire (1987, German) Casablanca (1942) Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (2004) The Fountain (2006) Atonement (2007) P.S : After finishing the list, I feel I’d seen less romantic films on screen. May be, as my real life is filled with it, to the brim, my heart leans less for on screen romance. 🙂 Advertisements
In college I started two hobbies that have carried over into my life today. One of them was kickstarting projects which sparked an interest into the world of modern day designer board games. The other probably more prevalent hobby was craft beer. In college I lived next to one of the most well known craft beers stores in the area so I would constantly be in there trying new things and it got me hooked. I eventually got so into it that I considered brewing my own beer but didn't have the space because of the size of my dorm room and I didn't want to freak out my roommates by fermenting beers in a bathtub. Fast forward to modern day where I am now extremely into the board game scene and still reminisce on those days where I could be an indie craft beer brewer out of my closet. This is where my wonderful Santa's gift comes in. With BREW CRAFTERS! It's a fairly heavy (both literally and game weight) euro game with a theme based around brewing some delicious local craft brews. I haven't gotten around to playing it but all my favorite reviewers have only nice things to say about it. It's been likened to a beer themed Agricola which is an amazing compliment in my opinion. Thanks for this wonderful gift. This seriously does combine two of my biggest interests. I hope you also have a Santa as amazing as you! Happy Holidays! Frozen-Cactus
A gun owner was showered with praise last week after being credited for saving an Upper Darby cop from a violent attack and a mob of teenagers, Philly.com reported. How did the cop find himself in this unusual situation in the first place? RELATED: Muslim organization with rumored link to cop's shooting speaks out 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 Every weekday afternoon around 3:00, cops patrol the area around Upper Darby High School as thousands of kids are released from school. For the most part, Philly.com reported, things go off without a hitch. The day of the incident? Not so much. Police reportedly addressed three fights in areas around the school that day, leaving a total of eight teens charged and in custody and two officers injured. It was a fourth incident in which a cop attempted to break up a fight, but instead became the target of attacks, that drew a crowd of what was reported to be 40 or 50 teens. RELATED: Facebook pullsPhillymuseum ice cream cone image for 'offensive content' This was when an unnamed man, the gun owner, brandished his gun (without pointing it at the teens) to break up the fight. Related Articles VIDEO: Large fight at Upper Darby High School Upper Darby High School teacher attacked by outsider with hammer Upper Darby High student charged with bringing heroin to school "He had the gun in his hand, but he didn't point it at the kids. He just told them to back off," Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood explained. "If this guy didn't come out and come to the aid of the officer, this officer would have had significant problems." Chitwood credits the man, who has a concealed carry permit, with fending off the teens until help could arrive, thus saving the officer from further injury. The two teens who attacked the officer were reportedly charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, riot, harassment and other charges. “There's thousands of kids that walk to and from that school without a problem,” Chitwood explained. “But every once in awhile, you get these wannabe gangsters, and if they want to be gangsters, we'll treat them like gangsters," Matt Lee is a Web producer for Metro New York. He writes about almost everything and anything. Talk to him (or yell at him) on Twitter so he doesn’t feel lonely @mattlee2669 .
"The current rate of ocean acidification appears unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years," noted a report this week from the World Meteorological Organization. The oceans soak up one-quarter of our carbon emissions — and are turning acidic That's a big deal — and it's worth unpacking a bit further. The WMO notes that the oceans currently absorb roughly one-quarter of all the carbon dioxide that we emit from our cars, factories, and power plants each year. That process helps fend off (some) global warming, but it also comes at a cost: As that extra carbon dioxide dissolves in water, it turns into carbonic acid and decreases the pH levels in the oceans. This is called "ocean acidification" — and it could have terrible consequences for marine life in the decades ahead. More acidic seawater can chew away at coral reefs and kill oysters by making it harder for them to form protective shells. Acidification might also muck up the food supply for key species like Alaska's salmon. One recent study estimated that the loss of mollusks alone could cost the world as much as $100 billion per year by century's end. Let's break down the numbers. The oceans have already been acidifying significantly, with acidity levels increasing 30 percent since the Industrial Revolution (that is, the pH of ocean surface water has dropped from 8.18 to 8.07). And when compared against proxy reconstructions of past climates, this change appears to be unprecedented in at least the last 300 million years. And according to the WMO's most recent report, there's no sign that this process is slowing down. So what might acidification look like in the future? That largely depends on how much extra carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere. Below is a map from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looking at what would happen if emissions keep rising at their current rate. Darker blue areas suggest faster acidification (that is, their pH levels are expected decrease more sharply) — and the effect is greatest around the Arctic. The map also shows where key coral reefs and fisheries that might be affected by acidification are located: The IPCC concluded that increased ocean acidification "poses substantial risks to marine ecosystems" — particularly coral reefs and polar ecosystems. (As sea water acidifies, corals can't absorb the calcium carbonate they need to maintain their skeletons and the reefs are at risk of dissolving.) What's more, the panel noted, acidification could affect an even wider range of species when combined with conventional pollution, overfishing, and all the other stresses we're placing on the ocean. Meanwhile, there's one final twist: As the oceans become more acidic, they're less able to absorb our carbon-dioxide emissions. That means more of that CO2 ends up in the atmosphere — leading to additional global warming. The WMO says the ocean's ability to take up carbon is just 70 percent of what it was back before the Industrial Revolution. That capacity is expected to shrink to 20 percent by the end of the century. Tallying up the consequences of ocean acidification So how worried should we be about all this? As the IPCC concluded, acidification due to climate change has had relatively few impacts on ocean life so far. Most scientific research in this area is to try and figure out the future consequences. 'When it comes to how ecosystems might react, that's big and complex and messy' There are a wide range of views on this question. Some studies have warned that future ocean acidification could cost the world trillions of dollars per year as coral reefs die off and fisheries dwindle. Yet other researchers have suggested that some (though not all) coral reefs and ecosystems might remain surprisingly resilient. "We understand the physics of simple things like how oceans become acidic," Richard Norris, a paleobiologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, told me in an interview last fall. "But when it comes to how ecosystems might react, that's big and complex and messy, with all these interactions going on, both physiological and how organisms interact with each other." Scientists have a few different ways to study the impacts of ocean acidification. First, they can look at how various species respond to more acidic water in a lab setting. That's how they can tell that acidification can disrupt sharks' ability to hunt for food. Or that mussels may lose their much-needed ability to cling to surfaces in more acidic waters. The main drawback with these studies, however, is that ecosystems in the real world may respond differently than they do in controlled lab settings. Alternatively, scientists can sift through the fossil record to see how broad ocean ecosystems responded to real-life bouts of ocean acidification in the past. About 55 million years ago, carbon-dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere spiked (for natural reasons), leading to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. In a 2013 study for Science, Norris and his co-authors found that this prehistoric world had few coral reefs, poorly oxygenated oceans, and a food chain that had difficulty sustaining large predators. Not good. On the bright side, there were relatively few mass extinctions: But even this isn't a perfect analogue. Among other things, the rate of ocean acidification today appears to be even faster than it was back then — and there are other stresses on marine life, like overfishing or pollution. So the impacts could be very different. Another 2013 study in Nature Climate Change analyzed both lab studies and historical data and concluded that the overall effect on corals, molluscs, echinoderms, crustaceans and ﬁsh was likely to be negative overall, even with moderate acidification. That study wasn't entirely negative, though — it did suggest that some fish species might be able to adapt surprisingly well. Research in this area is still ongoing. What we can say for sure is that that the oceans are hugely important. The average person eats about 42 pounds of fish per year. Coral reefs provide tens of billions of dollars in economic value, from sustaining fisheries, boosting tourism, and shielding coastal areas from storms. And right now we're running an unprecedented experiment on those oceans. Further reading: The Smithsonian has an excellent guide to the chemistry of ocean acidification and its precise effects on coral and other marine life. Also note that carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere rose at a record pace in 2013.
UPDATE: It’s confirmed. Trump tried to fool the voters, did not produce his real birth certificate. ________________________ Fair is fair. What is the Donald hiding? The background: Trump has been complaining for weeks that President Obama has refused to release his birth certificate, even though Obama did in fact release his birth certificate 3 years ago – I’ll be posting it below. Trump even suggested today that Obama was possibly not even born in the US. And in order to further buttress his false claims, Trump released his own birth certificate today. Here is where it gets interesting. The crazy right is now claiming that the birth certificate Obama released a few years ago is only the “short form” (as if anyone has two birth certificates). They want to see the supposed “long form.” Which is funny, because the birth certificate that Donald Trump released today via Newsmax is just as short as Obama’s – in fact, it’s the exact same information, except that Obama’s birth certificate actually has more information than Trump’s. See for yourself: Trump’s (courtesy of Newsmax): Obama (courtesy of Snopes – note that Snopes has concluded that it’s real): President Obama’s birth certificate clearly contains more information than Donald Trump’s. If Trump thinks that Obama’s information is woefully lacking, then Trump’s own information is even worse. Why is Donald Trump hiding his long form birth certificate? I’m starting to wonder if he was even born here. (After all, his not-a-birth-certificate he just released clearly says he was born in a Jamaican hospital!) And his accent is a bit exotic. Bet he’s not even circumcised.
BEIRUT – Syrian regime forces backed by Iranian troops have reportedly clashed with residents of two Alawite villages outside Hama following an arrest campaign in the area. Alaraby Aljadeed reported that residents in the rural Hama villages of Al-Bared and Al-Qahira—which are populated by members of the Alawi sect and the Alawi-offshoot Murshidi sect—engaged in fighting Monday with Syrian and Iranian troops. A media activist from the area told the newspaper that clashes had “raged between residents of Al-Bared and Al-Qahira, and Syrian regime forces supported by Iranian [fighters] in western rural Hama’s Al-Ghab Plain, leading to one regime death and three injuries.” “After the clashes, the regime completely surrounded the two villages,” the activist, who identified himself as Anas al-Hamwi, said. The unprecedented round of fighting between the regime-supporting towns and the pro-government troops follows an arrest campaign in the area that was reportedly ordered by a local Iranian field commander. Unusual arrest campaign According to Alaraby Aljadeed, the clashes came one day after the Syrian army stormed the two villages and arrested a number of young men. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported on the regime raids in the two towns, saying that government troops had “raided the homes of citizens” on Sunday. However, the British based monitoring group added that there was no confirmation of arrests. Local activist Hamwi explained to Alaraby Aljadeed that there were two reasons for the regime’s campaign against the two villages. First, he said, young men from the area had refused to sign up for military service. Second, residents of the two villages were smuggling fuel in to rebel-held parts of the Al-Ghab Plain. “This is a profitable trade for them,” the activist explained. “They exploit the need of residents in liberated areas for fuel and ramp up the price.” Meanwhile, the activist Hama Media Center said that “a large number of civilian houses were raided in the two villages and over 40 young men were arrested.” Iranian orders Field sources told Alaraby Aljadeed that members of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps (IRGC) had originally stormed the two regime-controlled villages on Sunday with support from members of the regime’s Military Intelligence and Air Force Intelligence. “They proceeded to arrest more than 22 people and led them away to the military operations headquarters in the nearby [village of] Jourin.” “This was done at the order of the Iranian commander ‘Iffari’, the leader of military operations in Hama Air Base,” the sources added. The Hama Media Center, in turn, said that there are “signs suggesting an Iranian intention to raid other Alawite villages whose young men have refused to join the army’s ranks.” The Syrian regime in recent months has struggled to recruit young men into its armed forces as it suffers setbacks across the country. Alawites, who form the backbone of the Syrian regime, have avoided mandatory military service, forcing the regime to create a special Coastal Shield Brigade in a bid to bring in men who have skipped their compulsory military duties. The raids on the two Alawite-populated towns come weeks after Iranian officers reportedly took over operational command of the frontlines in the northwest Hama province south of Idlib, which rebels seized in full in early June. The reported handover of power to Iranian officers follows the visit Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani paid to the Jourin area south of Idlib in late May, after which he announced that a “surprise” was being prepared in Syria. The Iraqi Kurdish Bas News outlet on June 8 reported that major command changes had been conducted on the Latakia-Hama-Idlib front following Soleimani’s trip. A Hama-based media activist said that the Syrian regime’s chief of operations in the area, General Jamal Younis, had been removed from his post and replaced by an Iranian general known only by his moniker Iffari, who set up his headquarters in Jourin. In early June, reports emerged that Iranian officers had executed three regime officers in the area after they retreated from advancing rebels in southern Idlib.
Belgian police on Wednesday held two people for questioning in connection with the Paris attacks, after carrying out a series of searches in their hunt for key suspects with links to the November 13 massacre. "This morning five premises were searched in the Brussels region, concerning the ongoing federal investigation into the fugitive Mohamed Abrini and into Ahmed Dahmani who is currently detained in Turkey," the federal prosecutor said in a statement. Belgium last week issued an international arrest warrant for Abrini, 30, who was filmed along with top suspect Salah Abdeslam at a petrol station on a motorway near Paris in a car that was later used in the attacks. Dahmani, a Belgian citizen of Moroccan origin, reportedly scouted out targets for the Paris attacks and was arrested in Turkey as he was allegedly trying to make his way to Syria. The searches took place in several Brussels neighborhoods, including the troubled Molenbeek district where several of the Paris attackers resided, including suspected ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was killed in a raid by French police. CNN on Monday said Salah Abdeslam, who is Belgian, had managed to slip out of Europe and into Syria since the atrocity, though investigators believe he may still be in Europe. Belgian investigators said on Tuesday they are working on the assumption that Abdeslam is still in Belgium, where he is believed to have fled to hours after the Paris attacks. Last Update: Wednesday, 2 December 2015 KSA 16:16 - GMT 13:16
at Wikipedia ), there is still a proper place in the countryside for a well-designed outhouse. For a small cabin or prefab in the woods, especially with a dwelling occupied a few weeks each year by only a handful of people, it's a cheap solution to a human problem as old as civilization. The outhouse shown here is made entirely of recycled materials - nails included - except for the roofing. Way cheaper than a composting toilet. At night, a 12 Volt DC bulb provides inside lighting. And, during daytime, the picture window (inside view shown below the fold) enables the user to read and helps keep odors down. Plus, you get to enjoy the view...and make polite conversation regarding the impact of climate on the landscape, peer reviewed publications on preserving biodiversity, and so on, whilst both holes are occupied.[Homage to Ben Franklin] More than just a view is offered by the un-privy design. Count the advantages. Water use is zero; and no fans or pumps are needed, keeping electricity use to a minimum. Better chance of carbon sequestration than a "clean coal" plant, too. I know what you're thinking. 'In the winter you'll freeze your asparagus.' Toilet seats are hung over the wood stove back at the cabin. Each Visitor carries out a warm one: problem solved. In maybe 50 years, demolish the outhouse, have a nice bonfire, cover the hole, and build a new one with used building materials - saving the window of course. Strong Caveats. Any outhouse must be isolated by a significant distance and slope from any nearby well: check local public health code if you want guidance. Include a place to store a bucket of odor-fighting lime and a broom. Design your house or cabin to subsequently add a toilet indoors, should that become necessary in the event of your survivalist instincts causing a full time shift to the world of off-grid living. No matter what, include a picture window. Life is too short to do it in the dark. Deep Down In The Archive Hole Of TreeHugger We Found... The Hot Poop on Alternative Toilets Worlds Biggest Outhouse Test Slated for Australia: "Let's Make It ... Green Cottage Guide from Cottage Life The Selective Flush - "If It's Yellow..." Go Play Outside: Bruno Taylor Makes Cities Fun Thinking about Crap: Should Houses Have Composting Toilets ...
By Pamela McClintock The Pitches are back in a big way. Scoring one of the top openings of all time for a non-tentpole, Elizabeth Bank’s Pitch Perfect 2 opened to a massive $70.3 million at the North American box office, thanks to ardent female fans. And in only three days, it’s earned back more than twice its $29 million budget — and more than the first Pitch Perfect grossed in its entire domestic run ($65 million). The Universal film easily overshadowed George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, even though Fury Road opened to a respectable $44.4 million. Males made up the vast majority of Mad Max’s audience, while 46 percent were under the age of 25. (That’s not a bad turnout for a sequel in a film series that launched in 1980.) The issue Fury Road faces is that it cost at least $150 million to make. Warner Bros. and Village Road show partnered on the film, starring Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron. Appealing heavily to younger femmes, Pitch Perfect 2 marks the feature directorial debut of Banks and stars Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, and Hailee Steinfeld. Steinfeld is a new addition, and stands to inherit the franchise. In terms of fellow female films, the sequel is just ahead of the first Twilight and Maleficent. Pitch Perfect 2 earned an A- CinemaScore from audiences, as well as good reviews from many critics. Fury Road is an all-out hit among reviewers, sporting a 98 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while audiences gave it a B+. Heading into the weekend, tracking suggested both films would open in the $40 million range. Both Fury Road and Pitch Perfect 2 opened overseas this weekend. International numbers weren’t immediately available. Watch the cast of ‘Pitch Perfect 2′ sing your favorite songs:
The most powerful Plant on earth Many people in Lithuania see cannabis as devil's offer or something taboo, many more has cancer, Parkinson, diabetes and other diseases. But Cannabis can help you lose weight, regulate and prevent diabetes, fight cancer, help depression, provides a safer alternative to drugs and alcohol, help regulate seizures, help broken bones heal faster, helps treating serious addictions or ADHD, Glaucoma etc. You name it. Cannabis can be used in various ways to help people and . This way people could have a better and healthier life, just as we could have better . But the mainstream media is spreading disinformation, saying you feel as if you're drunk and it's a drug that shouldn't be used by anyone. Because of this propaganda people have no knowledge and becomes deceived. Just as well Lithuania is the 1st country in Europe using most alcohol and having highest suicide rates. If cannabis was legalized, people would become aware of it's benefits, because those with knowledge would have a chance to spread real information. Whole country would have a substitute and be able to beat addiction to alcohol, help to handle depression, beat diseases and get better. People lives would improve tremendously.
The US Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, is attracting millions more dollars in funding than expected, which could allow him to match the much-vaunted Barack Obama donation machine. He is on course to raise $400m (£201m) for the November election, which he said would put him roughly level with Obama. McCain surprised US political pundits by raising $22m in June, his best showing since he launched his bid for the White House early last year. Obama remains favourite to win the election, with polls showing him on average five points ahead, but McCain is showing increasing signs of making a fight of it in spite of his lacklustre campaign so far. Obama opted out of a public finance scheme - which provides $84.1m in federal funding to cover election expenses but sets that as a ceiling - in expectation of raising hundreds of millions more. But he is suffering for several reasons: a failure so far to win over the big Democratic fundraisers who bankrolled Hillary Clinton's failed campaign for the nomination; an unwillingness of his supporters to help cancel Clinton's $23m debt; and, to a lesser extent, a creeping disillusionment among sections of the party grassroots with his recent shift from left to centre. Obama's campaign team has yet to post its fundraising figures for June. His fundraising has been on a downward trend: he raised $55m in February, $41m in March, $31m in April and $22m in May. The June figures are expected to reverse that trend but still fall significantly short of the total needed to meet election budget needs. Obama's campaign team said yesterday that a Wall Street Journal report that he had raised $30m in June - $20m less than expected - was "way off the mark". A spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, said: "Some in the press still haven't realised that anyone who is talking about numbers doesn't know what our numbers are." In addition to what he raises himself, McCain will have access to the funds of the cash-rich Republican party - about $68m - while Obama will have only modest help from the Democratic party, which has about $3m at its disposal. Obama devoted much of this week to private fundraising events, courting in particular Clinton's wealthy supporters. Obama can return again and again to the small donors he has attracted on the internet but needs the big donors as well. "It's one of the reasons why the Clinton people are so important," Kirk Wagar, Obama's Florida finance chairman, told the Washington Post. "Most of us have beaten our Rolodexes [contact lists] pretty badly." Obama is hoping to raise about $500m - $300m for himself and the rest for the Democrats fighting for seats in Congress.
Despite a boost from Barack Obama — but not the absent Hillary Clinton — Democratic senators today failed to stop the Bush administration from winning legal immunity for telecom companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans. Obama voted with 30 fellow Democrats to allow the telecom companies to face lawsuits, which civil liberties groups consider a crucial chance to unearth information on the administration's programme of wiretapping without a court warrant. But the immunity survived, with 18 Democrats crossing over to support George Bush. Clinton missed the vote on a day of intense last minute campaigning as Virginia, Maryland, and the capital all held presidential primaries. Whether her absence will spark criticism from liberal Democrats, who have made the fight against so-called "telecom immunity" a high priority, remains to be seen. The next challenge for Democrats is reconciling the Senate's wiretap bill, slated for final approval today, with a version backed by the House of Representatives that contains no telecom immunity and stronger protections for US citizens who could be caught in the surveillance net. "Holding all the Democrats together on this, we've learned a long time ago, is not something that's doable," the party's Senate leader, Harry Reid, told reporters today. The current authorisation for administration wiretapping without warrants expires on Friday, and Democrats are pursuing a temporary extension to allow more time for negotiations. But George Bush, appearing confident that Republicans have the upper hand in the debate, has hinted he would veto such a move. Opponents of telecom immunity already are prodding Democratic leaders to adopt the House's approach, effectively daring Bush to kill the wiretap bill that his own administration requested. "The Senate has buckled," Democratic senator Russ Feingold said. "We are left with a very dangerous piece of legislation." Kevin Bankston, a senior attorney at the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), appealed directly to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. "It's time for Speaker Pelosi to draw a line the sand and make clear to the president that this House of Representatives is never going to pass any bill that includes immunity for lawbreaking telecoms," Bankston said in a statement. The EFF is representing a group of Americans who are suing AT&T in a California federal court, alleging mass interception of their private communications without a warrant. Granting immunity to AT&T would almost certainly halt that lawsuit. Other attempts to strengthen the wiretap bill's protections for US citizens also fell short today, but the telecom immunity vote was the most closely watched. Obama made the most of his time on Capitol Hill, chatting up undecided senators whose votes at this summer's Democratic convention could help him defeat Clinton. "There's no replacement for either of our presidential aspirants to be on the floor, talking to members," Democratic senator Dick Durbin, a close Obama confidante, said. "Senator Obama had the chance to talk to quite a few." But many of Obama's colleagues had their own political futures to worry about. Eight of the Democrats who voted to shield the telecom companies hail from Republican-leaning states, including several facing strong re-election challenges next year. Republicans are using the possibility of a future terrorist strike on the US as a cudgel in the wiretapping debate, accusing Democrats of wanting to give terrorists the same legal rights as American citizens. In fact, Democratic senator Ron Wyden added extra protections for Americans to the wiretap bill, requiring a court warrant for surveillance of US citizens while they are overseas. "The reason that the immunity issue is such a flashpoint is that the administration said for years and years, 'The [wiretapping] programme is legal'," Wyden said. "Then, after lawsuits were filed, they come back and say, 'Even though we told you the programme was legal, we need immunity'. It's very hard to square those two arguments." Democrats are conscious that a White House-backed wiretap bill they passed in August alienated liberal voters and caused consternation within their ranks. They appear more prepared this month to counter what they characterise as deliberate misrepresentations by Bush and Republicans. "This is fear-mongering, it is wrong, and it has obscured what is really going on here," Feingold said yesterday. John McCain, the Republicans' likely presidential nominee, also cast votes today in the Senate, siding with his party to preserve telecom immunity and pass Bush's preferred bill.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Mark Karpeles (centre) bows at a press conference after appearing in court The former head of MtGox, once the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange, has pleaded not guilty in a Tokyo court to charges of embezzlement and data manipulation. Mark Karpeles was chief executive of MtGox when it collapsed in 2014, following the loss of 850,000 bitcoins, then worth nearly $0.4bn (£0.3bn). In its bankruptcy filing, MtGox blamed the loss on hackers. It later said it had found 200,000 bitcoins in old digital wallets. The prosecution claims that Mr Karpeles transferred 341 million yen ($3 million) from a MtGox account into an account registered in his own name during the last quarter of 2013. Mr Karpeles' lawyers deny that this was embezzlement. "I swear to God that I am innocent," he is reported to have told the court. Today, one bitcoin is worth £1,800, or $2,300, but the digital currency is notoriously volatile. How Bitcoin works To process bitcoin transactions, a procedure called "mining" must take place, which involves a computer solving a difficult mathematical problem with a 64-digit solution. For each problem solved, one block of bitcoins is processed. In addition, the miner is rewarded with new bitcoins. Image copyright Eyewire Image caption Verifying bitcoin transactions takes a lot of computer power This provides an incentive for people to provide computer processing power to solve the problems. To compensate for the growing power of computer chips, the difficulty of the puzzles is adjusted to ensure a steady stream of new bitcoins are produced each day. There are currently about 15 million bitcoins in existence. To receive a bitcoin, a user must have a Bitcoin address - a string of 27-34 letters and numbers - which acts as a kind of virtual post-box to and from which the bitcoins are sent. Since there is no register of these addresses, people can use them to protect their anonymity when making a transaction. These addresses are in turn stored in Bitcoin wallets, which are used to manage savings. They operate like privately run bank accounts - with the proviso that if the data is lost, so are the bitcoins owned.
Intel's new Optane memory promises to help speed up traditional hard drives to near SSD speeds, but it won't be compatible with lower-end Kaby Lake processors. According to the official product requirements page, Optane only works with 7th generation Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs. This is surprising since Optane is partly aimed at the budget conscious consumers who want SSD-like speeds without the high cost associated with SSDs. Optane works by creating a bridge between fast DRAM and high capacity spinning hard drives which results in faster boot times, game launch times, and a generally more responsive system. It was positioned as a huge speed increase for low-end systems, but it turns out you'll need a new and relatively high end system to use the technology. The cheapest compatible CPU is the Core i3-7100 which costs around $120. Compared to an unsupported Pentium G4620 build with a 480GB SSD, upgrading to a barebones Optane setup costs nearly the same amount. The i3 is slightly faster and the 16GB Optane module paired with a 1TB HDD would give a larger capacity of high speed storage, but this is still a hard sell for Intel to make. Intel's decision to only allow Core series processors is a bit counter intuitive. As the platform becomes more mature though, we'll see if the caching software and performance boost is enough to entice the next generation of budget PC builders. Of course, this could just be a marketing error on Intel's part and in that case, everyone would be happy.
Thouhastmail Profile Joined March 2015 Korea (North) 876 Posts Last Edited: 2016-01-04 17:51:44 #1 I'm sorry for being late, but excuse me; it`s New Year's Day and I have rights to enjoy it. Flash (23, former player of KT Rolster) is one of the greatest players of SC. He started his career at the age of 14, then became the youngest winner in the Starleague next year. He won every tournaments that held in 2010, remaining a new milestone of esports. That Flash announced his retirement and had retire ceremony, saying that he needs a rest. We met Flash, who`s enjoying his new freedom to sleep and drink as much he wants. Is there any change in your life? "Not really. However, I often get up at noon these days; I used to get up at nine. Occasionally I skip meals for my sleeping. Sometimes uncertain future makes me nervous, but I`m fine; I`m taking a rest." What are you doing these days? "Meeting mates that I have not seen for a while. I`m drinking all the alcohol that I could not drunken. I was dry when I was in esport scene; not now, of course. I can drink Soju up to 1 and half bottles. My capacity of Beer is limitless. Love Makgeolli, too." Are you seeing anyone lately? "No. I`ve met one or two when I was in esprots but it didn`t last long because I could not reply their texts. I`m not a guy who can do love and work both; my APM isn`t that high. At the time I was just focused on my work. Let me hear your Miss. Right. "I prefer mild-tempered woman, whose appearance is quite Korean-traditional with tin makeup. I want to meet one who knows how to relax, not interrupted by works. I`m not thinking about meeting someone, though." What did your parents say when you told them your retirement? "I told them in the middle of this season. They just said, "You've done well. Do what you want." They are really proud of my career. Maybe, I suppose they`re thinking "Our son went trough arm-operation. We should understand the hardship that he feels." What makes you to decide your retirement? "I was exhausted. Kespa Teams have tight schedule; there`s no freedom. Though no one would say anything if I was late for that schedule, it was quite tough because I tried to keep it straight. That`s why." You could be a coaching staff. "KT offered me a playing coach. They said the team will care enough about me. However I want to do something unhelped. I want to challenge coaching squarely after my service. Anyway, I want to be a coach in the long run." Or you could be in a foreign team. "I`m afraid of height. 2 years ago, on the return flight from American tournament, the plain shaked due to turbulence. After that, I do not go overseas that takes more than two hours." What was the most memorable match? "Ever Starleague Ro.8. It was 2009, I was playing against JD. It was Christmas eve. I was very suprised that there were so many people out there. After that, JD and I frequently met at the match." What`s your happiest moment? "The first winning at major tournament. I won first at the 'Bacchus Starleague 2008'. It felt unrealistic, because It's only been a little over a year since my debut. "It`s good choice to be a progamer" this is what I thought. I got more fame, more money. My parents stop opposing my progaming and start supporting my passion." When was your toughest moment? "The time when I went surgery. It was 2011. It was very hard time for me, because I wasn`t sure whether I could play games again. Also I was worrying about other players clawing their way up. Moreover, I was the first player who went surgery while progaming. That`s why I worked hard at my rehab; I took rehab for 4 months at Pyeongchang, which is scheduled for football players. It was hellish, because I had to excercies 6 hours per day. Is there any regrets that you have? "It`s a shame that the transition from BW to SC2 was happened suddenly; BW was loved my many fans, and all of sudden it was gone. If the transition was a bit more smooth, SC2 would got more popularity. I had no regrets at that time, because I`m a person who enjoys changes. I thought that I could win the championship again if I did my best. I assumed that BW fans will love SC2 too, but it wasn`t. It made me started." Tell me which record you cherish most. "I won Starleague, MSL, Proleague, WCG in 2010; it was a Grandslam. It was my prime time. I had to play 4-5 days for tournaments for every week. I repeatedly practiced and played; I don't think I could've been that attainable again if I go back then. Your biggest rival was JD. "He was the motivation that made me the best. He prevented me from being soft and lazy. We used to compete fiercely; However, now we`re having fun, talking about glory days. It seems that JD is enjoying his life, not tied to the competetion. I envy him." It is known that you`ve earned quite a lot. "No.1 in BW. I think I can afford my marriage, house and future business (he said restraurant for instance.) without my parent`s help. Flash in 2016 What`s your future plan? "I took a rest in December and gonna do something in January. I was supposed to go family trips, but somehow I couldn`t. There`re some offers; most of`em are about streaming BW. Some offers are quite specific. However, I don`t wanna be tied to the things. I`m planning to try new things. For instance, I`m gonna get my drivers license." How about playing LOL? "I considered it, but there are tons of people who wants me to play BW. I think I can play LOL good as well, but my arm hurts. I can practice SC by watching VODs, but I cannot when it comes to LOL. I`m not sure about LOL." Isn`t it a bit tedious to play games? "As a player, it was. It was rather working than playing. Funny thing is, after I quit my progaming, my hands itch to play games; it`s something like retired people want to work. Even now I wanna play computer games; It`s really fun to compete with others. Military service? "In a year or two, maybe three at most. Of course I can do my service earlier, but it feels a bit sorry. I wanna do everything that I want to do before joining army. You know, road trip or going abroad, etc." Say a word to your fans. "I'd not said to my fans 'thank you' frequently; your support made me responsible for my job. I hope I can give back all the love that you gave me. I`ll see you next year in a better shape, with my keyboard and mouse." Say a word to your team, KT Rolster. "KT was a fence that protected me for nine years. KT enabled me to play with confidence. Thank you. I believe we're meant to meet again." ▶ Who's Flash? Lee Young-ho(23), a former progamer from Daejeon, started his career in 2007 with KTF MagicNs after being a practice partner of PANTECH & CURITEL in 2006. In 2008, he made a spectacular debut; he claimed the youngest winner of the Starleague at the age of 15. Since then, he has never left championships without winning trophies and MVP. In 2010, he reached his height by winning all competitions that were held in the season. In 2012, though transition from BW to SC2 stopped him from winning tournaments, he led his team to victory and proved his skills were not rusted yet. He has received many outstanding awards such as Rookie of the year, Best Terran of the year and The best player of the year. Also, he`s the money leader of BW; he got $430K for prize from 2008 to 2014. Considering this excludes his salary,[Around $200K per year] it is estimated that his income would be much larger that that. http://sports.news.naver.com/esports/news/read.nhn?oid=241&aid=0002514587 Someone asked me to translate this article.I'm sorry for being late, but excuse me; it`s New Year's Day and I have rights to enjoy it.Flash (23, former player of KT Rolster) is one of the greatest players of SC. He started his career at the age of 14, then became the youngest winner in the Starleague next year. He won every tournaments that held in 2010, remaining a new milestone of esports. That Flash announced his retirement and had retire ceremony, saying that he needs a rest.We met Flash, who`s enjoying his new freedom to sleep and drink as much he wants."Not really. However, I often get up at noon these days; I used to get up at nine. Occasionally I skip meals for my sleeping. Sometimes uncertain future makes me nervous, but I`m fine; I`m taking a rest.""Meeting mates that I have not seen for a while. I`m drinking all the alcohol that I could not drunken. I was dry when I was in esport scene; not now, of course. I can drink Soju up to 1 and half bottles. My capacity of Beer is limitless. Love Makgeolli, too.""No. I`ve met one or two when I was in esprots but it didn`t last long because I could not reply their texts. I`m not a guy who can do love and work both; my APM isn`t that high. At the time I was just focused on my work."I prefer mild-tempered woman, whose appearance is quite Korean-traditional with tin makeup. I want to meet one who knows how to relax, not interrupted by works. I`m not thinking about meeting someone, though.""I told them in the middle of this season. They just said, "You've done well. Do what you want." They are really proud of my career. Maybe, I suppose they`re thinking "Our son went trough arm-operation. We should understand the hardship that he feels.""I was exhausted. Kespa Teams have tight schedule; there`s no freedom. Though no one would say anything if I was late for that schedule, it was quite tough because I tried to keep it straight. That`s why.""KT offered me a playing coach. They said the team will care enough about me. However I want to do something unhelped. I want to challenge coaching squarely after my service. Anyway, I want to be a coach in the long run.""I`m afraid of height. 2 years ago, on the return flight from American tournament, the plain shaked due to turbulence. After that, I do not go overseas that takes more than two hours.""Ever Starleague Ro.8. It was 2009, I was playing against JD. It was Christmas eve. I was very suprised that there were so many people out there. After that, JD and I frequently met at the match.""The first winning at major tournament. I won first at the 'Bacchus Starleague 2008'. It felt unrealistic, because It's only been a little over a year since my debut. "It`s good choice to be a progamer" this is what I thought. I got more fame, more money. My parents stop opposing my progaming and start supporting my passion.""The time when I went surgery. It was 2011. It was very hard time for me, because I wasn`t sure whether I could play games again. Also I was worrying about other players clawing their way up. Moreover, I was the first player who went surgery while progaming. That`s why I worked hard at my rehab; I took rehab for 4 months at Pyeongchang, which is scheduled for football players. It was hellish, because I had to excercies 6 hours per day."It`s a shame that the transition from BW to SC2 was happened suddenly; BW was loved my many fans, and all of sudden it was gone. If the transition was a bit more smooth, SC2 would got more popularity. I had no regrets at that time, because I`m a person who enjoys changes. I thought that I could win the championship again if I did my best. I assumed that BW fans will love SC2 too, but it wasn`t. It made me started.""I won Starleague, MSL, Proleague, WCG in 2010; it was a Grandslam. It was my prime time. I had to play 4-5 days for tournaments for every week. I repeatedly practiced and played; I don't think I could've been that attainable again if I go back then."He was the motivation that made me the best. He prevented me from being soft and lazy. We used to compete fiercely; However, now we`re having fun, talking about glory days. It seems that JD is enjoying his life, not tied to the competetion. I envy him.""No.1 in BW. I think I can afford my marriage, house and future business (he said restraurant for instance.) without my parent`s help."I took a rest in December and gonna do something in January. I was supposed to go family trips, but somehow I couldn`t. There`re some offers; most of`em are about streaming BW. Some offers are quite specific. However, I don`t wanna be tied to the things. I`m planning to try new things. For instance, I`m gonna get my drivers license.""I considered it, but there are tons of people who wants me to play BW. I think I can play LOL good as well, but my arm hurts. I can practice SC by watching VODs, but I cannot when it comes to LOL. I`m not sure about LOL.""As a player, it was. It was rather working than playing. Funny thing is, after I quit my progaming, my hands itch to play games; it`s something like retired people want to work. Even now I wanna play computer games; It`s really fun to compete with others."In a year or two, maybe three at most. Of course I can do my service earlier, but it feels a bit sorry. I wanna do everything that I want to do before joining army. You know, road trip or going abroad, etc.""I'd not said to my fans 'thank you' frequently; your support made me responsible for my job. I hope I can give back all the love that you gave me. I`ll see you next year in a better shape, with my keyboard and mouse.""KT was a fence that protected me for nine years. KT enabled me to play with confidence. Thank you. I believe we're meant to meet again."Lee Young-ho(23), a former progamer from Daejeon, started his career in 2007 with KTF MagicNs after being a practice partner of PANTECH & CURITEL in 2006.In 2008, he made a spectacular debut; he claimed the youngest winner of the Starleague at the age of 15. Since then, he has never left championships without winning trophies and MVP. In 2010, he reached his height by winning all competitions that were held in the season.In 2012, though transition from BW to SC2 stopped him from winning tournaments, he led his team to victory and proved his skills were not rusted yet.He has received many outstanding awards such as Rookie of the year, Best Terran of the year and The best player of the year.Also, he`s the money leader of BW; he got $430K for prize from 2008 to 2014. Considering this excludes his salary,it is estimated that his income would be much larger that that. "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike"
Collecting The Precious – The Bridge Direct Winners and Comic-Con 2012 Coverage at 7:59 am by July 19, 20127:59 am by elessar Just before Comic-Con the amazing folks at The Bridge Direct graciously gave TORn two of their Comic-Con 2012 The Hobbit: AnUnexpected Journey ‘Invisible” Bilbo Baggins figures. Well, today we are pleased to not only announce the winners of that contest, we are also excited to share images from their booth at the 2012 HobbitCon…err…Comic-Con. The winners of the contest are T. Garner of Arlington, Tx and K. Stevens of Studio City, Ca! Congrats to both of you and your information will be passed onto The Bridge Direct. Now, about The Bridge Direct’s Comic-Con presence. The figures displayed at Comic-Con looked AWESOME! Fans got a chance to see many of the figures talked about in the line-up article we posted just before Comic-Con and these figures did not disappoint one bit. What fans also got to see where figures not shown in the line up article, including Dawlin, Balin, Fili, Kili, and Smeagol/Gollum in the 3.75 in. range of figures. We also got a look at Sting and the Dwarven Axe. Just from seeing these in person I can say fans are going to be getting some fantastic figures! According to our friends at The Bridge Direct, this is just the tip of the iceberg! Follow the break for the full gallery. [The Bridge Direct]
The city’s first underground park passed its first major hurdle Thursday after the city gave permission to start planning the Lowline on the Lower East Side. If constructed, the one acre greenspace will replace the abandoned Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal on Delancey Street between Clinton and Norfolk streets and use cutting-edge solar technology to bring natural light underground. The city’s Economic Development Corporation chose the project for its plans to lease out the terminal space and said the idea would be a great draw for the community. “The Lowline represents an incredible fusion of technology and public space,” Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Alicia Glen said in a statement. Utilizing street-level glass shields that attract sunlight, the Lowline will provide natural light to the grass, trees and people below ground. Dan Barasch, co-founder and executive director of the Lowline plans on adding art installations, seats and holding educational programing to the park. “We know with input from the community and the city, we can make the Lowline a unique, inspiring space that everyone can enjoy,” he said in a statement. In order to move forward with the project, the city requested the organizers meet three requirements: They must create a community engagement plan that includes five to 10 “ public design charrettes” and community meetings. They must raise at least $10 million and also complete design documents for approval in the next 12 months.
Microsoft held (and streamed) a major event on the future of Windows 10 today, at which they revealed a new line of affordable VR headsets. Which games should you play with a VR headset? Here’s a list of the best VR games on PC. The first wave of consumer VR headsets has rolled out, but our options on PC are eye-wateringly expensive at $599 for the Oculus Rift or $799 for HTC Vive, not to mention the cost of the rig you’ll need to run them. Microsoft aims to change that, announcing a new generation of VR headsets made with the help of third-party partners such as Acer, Asus, Lenovo, HP and Dell, many of whom are already working in VR to some degree. These headsets will be “the first and only to ship with inside-out six degrees of freedom sensors”, says Terry Myerson, executive VP of Windows and devices. This means they will have no need of a complicated setup, such as the laser sensors of the Vive. Crucially, prices will also start at $299 US. There was a demo of the consumer applications of virtual reality, with an app called Holotour that enables users to travel the world in VR. There was no gaming demonstration, so details on what Microsoft is bringing to the VR gaming scene are still sketchy. It probably involves Minecraft, though. Microsoft has been conspicuously absent from the VR scene, despite its major rival in the console market, Sony, having already launched a headset of its own. Microsoft has instead placed an early bet on augmented or mixed reality, with its Hololens headset. You can watch the webcaston-demand at Microsoft. The headset announcement happens at around 37 minutes and 34 seconds. There’s also plenty more about creating in 3D on Surface books, if that’s your thing.
For the first time in her life, Nako Nakatsuka felt hopeless. On April 6, 2014, the typically upbeat biochemistry grad student and member of the UCLA triathlon team had been making a left turn off Santa Monica Boulevard on her road bike when a car drifted into the turn lane and hit her from behind. But it wasn’t the crash that got to her—it was what came in the mail a month later: an insurance bill for damage to the vehicle that hit her, along with the threat of a lawsuit. Things had started off normal enough post-crash. According to Nakatsuka, then 23: The driver got out of the car, apologized profusely, and even fetched water for her as she lay dazed in the middle of the busy road. (Because Nakatsuka fears additional legal action from the driver, we’ve agreed to withhold the motorist’s name.) But when Nakatsuka contacted the driver’s insurance company about her medical bills—she’d suffered a concussion, severe bruising, and permanent damage to her glutes—she discovered the LAPD had never filed a report, despite issuing her a receipt for one. The driver had also told her insurance company that Nakatsuka had caused the crash by backing her bike into the vehicle. “I think they thought I was on a motorcycle,” she says. “I was like, ‘No, I was on my bicycle—how could I even do that?’” The LAPD wouldn’t put her in touch with the cops who had been at the scene. When she contacted the branch responsible for traffic collisions in the area, she was told the LAPD almost never files crash reports for incidents involving bikes. (The LAPD disputes this: A media relations rep said that any time someone reports a crash involving injuries, officers always take the report, give it a number, and file it.) Although the division was able to determine that four cop cars and an ambulance had been at the intersection at the time of the crash, there wasn’t much Nakatsuka could do but file a belated report. In the meantime, notices from the driver’s insurance company kept coming, the damages increasing until they topped out at $4,000. Two years after her crash, Nakatsuka is racing triathlon again. Shane McCauley Nakatsuka got a lawyer to help her reach a settlement with the insurance company. They dropped the lawsuit and paid her $2,000—which didn’t come close to covering the $10,000 she owed in hospital and legal fees. “My lawyer said, ‘No matter how hard you fight this, you’re going to pay for it more than she does, even if we go to court, even if we win,’” Nakatsuka says. “ ‘Her insurance will pay for her stuff, but for you everything will come out of pocket.’ It was a lose-lose situation.” Friends convinced her to start a GoFundMe campaign, which prompted an outpouring of support. “I got a lot of messages saying, ‘The same thing happened to me—what should I have done differently?’” she says. A year and a half after the crash, Nakatsuka was able to get back on the bike and return to triathlon training again. Her injuries still bother her, but the fear of being hit by a car again—without seeing it coming or having the opportunity to react—is what’s lasted the longest. That, and she’s struck by a sense of injustice—that her body, life, and finances were upended by a negligent driver who never suffered any legal consequences.
Image copyright Police Image caption Faris al-Khori, 62, had a bag of toxic beans which can be used to produce the poison Ricin A former Syrian doctor has admitted having a hoard of explosive ingredients and instructions on how to prepare bombs in Edinburgh. Faris al-Khori, 62, had chemicals, ball bearings, bolt, nuts and a bag of toxic beans which can be used to produce the poison Ricin. The haul was found after firefighters attended a 999 call over a Muirhouse tower block rubbish chute fire. Mr Al-Khori was remanded in custody ahead of sentencing next month. After the blaze was extinguished, fire crews forced entry to the flats to check no-one was inside but when they entered a property where Al-Khori was a tenant they found items that gave them "cause for concern". Firefighters discovered mustard jars containing white powder and one marked "weed killer". Al-Khori had a small quantity of a highly-volatile explosive which the forensic explosives laboratory refused to take as it was so dangerous. The High Court in Edinburgh heard a bomb scene manager was requested along with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear advisors and the building was evacuated. A search was carried out at a further block in Leith where al-Khori lived with his wife and a further haul of material was recovered. A further evacuation was later carried out at the block which was sealed off. Al-Khori admitted the items belonged to him and said acetone that was recovered was used to clean carpets and peroxide found was for clearing up after pigeons. He said a quantity of fertiliser was used for plants on the balcony, although there were none there when police searched the premises. His wife said he carried out "wee tests" and bought items from the internet retail giant Amazon. Image copyright Crown Office/PA Image copyright Crown Office/PA Image copyright Crown Office/PA Al-Khori, who trained in Iraq as a doctor, admitted a breach of the 1883 Explosives Substances Act. Between 27 December 2007 and 27 April 2014 he possessed or had under his control explosives substances under circumstances such as to give rise to a reasonable suspicion that they were not for a lawful purpose at flats at Fidra Court and Persevere Court. The maximum sentence is 14 years imprisonment. A judge rejected a defence motion to free al-Khori, who at one stage faced terrorism act charges. Advocate depute Alex Prentice QC told the court: "The plea is tendered on the basis that the accused was in possession of various items which, whilst not explosive in themselves, apart from 1g of lead picrate, could in combination be made into explosive substances. "He accepts that the circumstances give rise to a reasonable suspicion that he did not have them for a lawful purpose." 'Significant inquiry' The prosecutor added: "The Crown accepts the accused never made, or attempted to make, any explosive substance, explosive device or improvised explosive device." Det Supt David Gordon, of Police Scotland, said: "This was a significant and complex inquiry for Police Scotland, working with our partners from the outset to safely deal with the volatile items that were being stored, and to seek to establish Al-Khori's motives for keeping them. "Extensive inquiries both nationally and internationally were carried out, which did not identify any link to terrorism or extremism. We are satisfied there is no immediate threat to the community. "Counter terrorism is one of Police Scotland's highest priorities, and whilst Al-Khori has no such known links we will always treat all information received with the utmost importance where any risk to the public is identified."
Juan Mata: Has fallen down the pecking order at Chelsea Mata has won a string of honours with club and country, as well as twice being named Chelsea's player of the year, but has lost his place as the club's designated No 10 to Oscar this term. Mourinho warned the Spain international to adapt or risk being more permanently cast aside but Mata has vowed to rise to the challenge - and reckons he can have his best season yet at Stamford Bridge. "I just keep going, train well and prepare for every game," he told Chelsea's official website. "I just have to do my best in training and in games. It's important to play with the ball and without the ball, but I'm very happy and looking forward to playing a lot of games throughout the season. "I try to improve every season; my first and second seasons were fantastic but I want this one to be even better so I will try to improve, score goals, assist and do what I have to do. "I'm not the kind of man that gets down. I always believe in myself and train really hard. This is my way to behave, to be positive as much as I can. "I have really enjoyed playing for this club in the last two seasons. I know what I can give to the team and I'm just trying to do that. "I have to do this (to adapt to Mourinho's instructions). I try to do my best in every game and I think I'm doing that." Mata was an influential starter in Chelsea's 4-0 Champions League win at Steaua Bucharest on Tuesday night and the 25-year-old has urged his team-mate to end the group stage on top. "We have two games in a row against Schalke and we will try to win all six points," he added. "It's going to be difficult. They are top of the group right now, but if we do it we will be in a good position to qualify. "We have qualification in our hands. We needed to make up for the last game and we did that. Now the story continues and we have to keep winning game after game and finish top."
Lou Bloom is a creature of the 2010s, through and through. Lou, the character Jake Gyllenhaal plays in the darkly funny, terrifically smart little film Nightcrawler, at first seems like a simple riff on someone like Gordon Gekko from Wall Street or Patrick Bateman from American Psycho — a sociopath who has absorbed the lessons of his culture so thoroughly that they have become the blood running through his veins. But look a little closer, and there's a desperation to Lou that feels very post-Great Recession. He's a man who was told he would be rich, and now he's not. What is he to do with that? Related Watch Nightcrawler on Netflix right now On its surface, this is a rather ridiculous notion. Nightcrawler often feels like a film that was written in 1990, the script pulled out of mothballs when writer-director Dan Gilroy was able to secure funding to finally make it. At the center of the script (and the film's universe) is local television news, a format that decreases in importance with every year. The movie's dark satire of concepts like "if it bleeds, it leads" can seem very simplistic. And it occasionally seems as if the internet simply doesn't exist within the film's universe at all. But that's because Gilroy and Gyllenhaal are after bigger fish with Lou. Here's a character who's completely absorbed corporate doublespeak. He talks as if he's a memo trying to hide that it's announcing company-wide layoffs, and he often talks purely in buzzwords. He is a man of a world where everybody stepped up to the economic brink, then stepped back, knowing just how easy it would be to fall and quoting bland platitudes to themselves to be certain they'll be fine. A great year for film performances I found 2014 a very good year for film performances, with even movies I didn't particularly like occasionally featuring an unlikely star turn or character part that made up for other problems. And I thought Gyllenhaal's was perhaps the best performance of that year. What put Gyllenhaal either at or near the top of my list of great performances is just how unexpected Lou is, coming from him. He's a very good looking man, but he's reinvented himself into a kind of lizard creature here, his pupils wide to absorb whatever light they can find in post-midnight Los Angeles. His arc, in some ways, is about prey learning to become predator, and it's impressive to chart just how great Gyllenhaal is at making both sides of that equation seem deeply unsettling. At its heart, Nightcrawler is a "what is this guy going to do next?" movie. The plot is largely simple: Lou finds out about freelance cameramen who go looking for moments of human misery — the aftermath of violent crimes and accidents, mostly — that he can then turn around for the early morning news on local stations. He quickly proves adept at the task, crossing boundaries and putting his camera right in victims' faces, until he's shooed away like an insect. He skitters off, but not too far, lest he miss the next great shot. From there, it's a simple question of just how much Lou will manipulate tragic situations to his own advantage. The answer is almost always "as much as he possibly can," but Gilroy's script keeps upping the stakes, with a plane crash here, a home invasion there. There's a rich vein of pulp running through the film, one that keeps it from becoming too repetitive. When the movie opens, Lou is barely scraping by, thanks to theft of copper wire. He tries to con his way into a job with the man he sells that wire to, but he's rebuffed with the simple fact that he's a thief, and why would any employer trust a man he knew to be a thief? It's meant to give us a clearer picture of the movie's "hero," but it also suggests how Lou will learn to survive. If he's going to make the millions he thinks he's owed, then he's going to have to learn how to better hide. The face of the 2010s The film's most bravura scene is one where Lou has dinner with Nina, an early morning news producer played by Rene Russo. The scene is something like a date, but it's also clear Lou and Nina have very different expectations from the evening. He propositions her, but not in the sense of seduction. No, he's trying to have sex with her as a kind of business transaction. She rebuffs him. He keeps at it. She eventually gets so weary that a kind of deal is closed between them. The film largely keeps whatever relationship they consummate offscreen after that. It's very canny about the way it's always focused on Lou as he moves to whatever his next goal is. But this is as close as we've seen him to the person he truly is. He doesn't really want to have sex with Nina because he loves her, or for companionship, or even because he wants to know exactly where his footage will end up every time he pulls out his camera. No, he wants to have sex with Nina, because he wants power over her. He thinks it's owed to him. And in that moment, so much of what makes Lou such a great character — and such the perfect exemplar of this decade — swims into view. See, Lou is a white man, played by a handsome white man who's obscured his good looks a bit but can't hide them entirely. And as such, he believes he's owed some sort of fortune from the world at large, owed a kind of respect from those he meets, simply because of the status he would have had in past American decades. He uses the corporate speak he endlessly babbles as a kind of protective shield, then, as a way to connect himself to other white men, who have been much more successful at closing their deals, at vaulting their own corporate ladders. And because Lou is who he is, because he looks the way he does, he's able to just keep coming, to never be shut down in the way he should be or the way he deserves. Because he's a white man, he can get away with saying and doing things that anybody else might be rebuffed or arrested for. And because he's a white man, he always feels relatively confident that he's not going to get in trouble when he, say, stages a dramatic police chase. Nightcrawler, on its surface, is a relatively straightforward thriller, built around a slightly improbable but very effective main character, a man who starts as an antihero and plunges straight ahead toward villainy. It takes place in a world that doesn't resemble our own, and it makes no real effort to fix that discrepancy. But, then, it doesn't need to. Nightcrawler isn't a realistic story. Nightcrawler is a parable of bitter, burbling resentment, of people who think they deserve certain things just because of the accident of birth, and of a society that is simply too tired to deny them everything. Lou Bloom isn't going to win because he's particularly intelligent, or because he's a great speaker, or even because he has a brilliant idea. He's a leech, who uses other people to get ahead, over and over again. Lou Bloom is going to win because men like Lou Bloom always win. And what's more 2010s than that?
Shortly after taking office, Trump ordered to take down the Spanish-language version of the White House website. Trump has also vowed to build a wall in the Mexican border – something that Spaniards seem to disapprove of. Data collected from the Pew Research Center last July showed that Trump's approval ratings in Spain are quite low, and similar to those given to former President George W. Bush when he left office. The latter had been seriously criticized for his foreign policy decisions, including the war in Iraq. By contrast, Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, was very popular among Spaniards. According to Powell, during their joint-press conference, Rajoy and Trump will likely promise to further coordinate the fight against terrorism and there's the possibility that Trump might comment on the situation in Catalonia. The Spanish region aims to carry out an independence referendum Sunday, but the national government believes that this goes against the constitution and it is therefore illegal. The issue is not new with Catalonia calling for a clear break from the rest of Spain since 2012. "So far, Rajoy's strategy of fully relying on legal means to stop the vote seems to be working, with the Catalan police collaborating with national police forces in their actions against the referendum," Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at Teneo Intelligence said in a note last week.
Murray will host the show alongside his brother Brian Doyle-Murray. and Oso Studios announced Monday morning the premiere of their new show “Bill Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray’s Extra Innings,” an original unscripted show that will follow the Murray brothers as they journey across the country to visit minor league baseball teams. The 10-episode show will premiere on Facebook Watch on Monday, Nov. 20, and new episodes will become available every Monday after that. You can easily add the show to your watchlist by accessing the show’s Facebook page. Read More: ‘Strangers’ Is Facebook’s Lesbian ‘Room 104,’ and It’s Streaming for Free — Watch With their unique sense of humor and their passion for baseball, the Murrays visit teams like the Martha’s Vineyard Sharks, the Kansas City T-Bones, and the St. Paul Saints. They also explore the Kansas City MLB Urban Youth Academy and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in order to honor the history and future of their beloved sport. Bill Murray described the show as, “A little something to fill a baseball fan’s off-season hole in the heart.” The show will be executive produced by Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Oso founder Dub Cornett. In regards to how this show came to be, Cornett said: “I dig minor league baseball, meeting folks and having fun; and it seems that Bill does too. So when I ran into Brian Doyle-Murray at a birthday party, I thought that traveling with the Murray brothers to games around America would be a fun, cool show, and so did they. It’s as simple as that.” “Bill Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray’s Extra Innings” premieres November 20 on Facebook Watch. Check out a trailer below.
PALMA de Mallorca judge Jose Castro has made the decision to summon Spain’s Princess Cristina for a court hearing for supposed financial crimes. The alleged infractions are related to the money laundering and mismanagement of funds connected to her husband, Iñanki Urdangarin, Duke of Palma de Mallorca. Urdangarin was first implicated in November 2011 for diverting up to 5.8 million of public funds for personal benefit. The Anticorruption Bureau found the Duke to have sent significant sums of Spanish public money to tax havens abroad, including the UK and Belize. Now the Princess Cristina has been summoned to appear in a Palma court on March 8 by Castro, who has dedicated the past nine months almost exclusively to an exhaustive revision of the Princess’ bank accounts, credit cards and financial transactions. In a 227-page case document detailing Cristina’s financial activities between 2002-2012, Castro indicates sufficient evidence to suggest her direct corroboration in her husband’s financial activities. Judge Castro’s summons is in direct opposition to the opinion of the public prosecutor for anticorruption, Pedro Horrach who disagrees that sufficient evidence exists to implicate the Princess. Horrach, along with Urdangarin’s legal counsellors claim that Cristina kept clear of her husband’s dealings and that she should be exonerated. Yet Castro’s stance regarding the decision to summon the Princess is based in two convictions: first, to put an end to the perpetuity of the unknown, covert aspects of the Princess’ role and second, to not give in to his prior assertions that “justice must be the same for all.”
Right when you think things couldn’t possibly get any worse than a 20+ point blowout after having five days of rest, the Wizards lost Bradley Beal in the fourth quarter to injury when he shouldn’t have been playing. Washington looked great to start the first quarter, but it was all downhill from there. Kevin Love asserted himself as the best player on the floor, and the Timberwolves went on to blow the Wizards out in Minnesota. Here are some Bullet Points: John Wall scored 22 of his 26 points in the first half, but he unfortunately didn’t get much help from his teammates tonight. Wall knocked down several jump shots at the start of the game, which opened up the floor for him to attack the basket later on. He has a tendency to fall in love with his jump shot once he gets it going, but he didn’t do that tonight for the most part. Another good game for John Wall, but it doesn’t mean much when the team doesn’t come out on top. Washington’s bigs were obliterated on the glass by Kevin Love and Nikola Pekovic, which is essentially spoiled the Wizards’ chances of winning the game right from the start. Love and Pekovic combined for 21 of Minnesota’s 44 rebounds, and it didn’t help that they got whatever they wanted offensively. Love scored 25 points in just 32 minutes, while Pekovic contributed with 18 points on just 13 shot attempts. Marcin Gortat has to do a better job at establishing defensive position. If he’s getting handled offensively, he needs to find a way to help out once the Wizards regain possession. He missed a few easy layups off pick-and-roll situations, and he has to find a way to get it going if the Wizards are going to succeed. The Timberwolves attempted 38 free throws tonight. That is all. Tonight’s loss was definitely overshadowed by Bradley Beal’s injury. Let’s hope Beal just “bumped” his knee like some of Wizards media is indicating and it’s nothing too serious. The Wizards were already down by 20+ points in the fourth quarter, yet both John Wall and Bradley Beal were in the game. Beal gets hurt, and I can’t help but ask why he was in the game even though he’s already on a minutes limit. It was definitely a bad coaching decision by Randy Wittman and his crew. These sort of injuries hurt, especially when it probably could’ve been avoided. Yuck. The Wizards will be back in Washington tomorrow night against the Detroit Pistons, who just suffered a blow out of their own to the Orlando Magic tonight.
ctvtoronto.ca For the second year in a row, Burlington, Ont. has been deemed the riskiest city for cybercrime in the country. The report, commissioned by Symantec, the makers of the Norton anti-virus protection software, highlights the potential risk factors that make consumers potentially vulnerable to cybercrime. The annual study looked at several factors including actual cybercrimes that took place in the city including attempted malware infections, attempted web attacks, attempted spamming and attempted bots that run automated tasks over the Internet. It also studied social factors such as how much money people spend on PCs, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots in the city, prevalence of social networking within the population and access to the Internet. The 10 riskiest cities are: Burlington, Ont. Port Coquitlam, B.C. Vancouver, B.C. Langley, B.C. Calgary, Alta. Fredericton, N.B. Toronto, Ont. New Westminster, B.C. Edmonton, Alta. Victoria, B.C. "It's important to understand that you are not going to get a virus as soon as you walk into Burlington, but there are social factors that make you more at risk and those are the things that consumers need to be aware of," said Lynn Hargrove, director of customer solutions at Symantec Canada, told CTV's Canada AM. "Basically the best practice is to be surf safe." Burlington was a prime candidate for the online risks due to its growth and affluence, Hargrove said. Residents are spending money on PCs, they have numerous devices connected to the Internet and they are tech savvy. This increased activity inevitably puts them in the riskier category. The growing reliance on smartphones has also caused a problem for cybercrime, Hargrove said. "The explosion of smartphones, Internet use, instant messaging has changed the landscape. People don't understand that the things that are on your smartphone are pretty much the same as their PC and they need to protect that smartphone. They need to make sure that they can lock it down." And the burgeoning use of free Wi-Fi has also proven to be a hotbed for criminal activity as most have poor security and do not encrypt the data before its passes through cyberspace. This makes it easy for hackers to steal personal information, Hargrove said.
TRENTON-- A decorated U.S. Marine facing years in prison for a weapons offense had his sentence commuted to time served by Gov. Chris Christie Friday, the governor's office said. Hisashi Pompey's request for a full pardon remained under review, the governor's office also said. In 2011, Pompey, a sergeant still on active duty, traveled from Virginia to New Jersey to visit family. While at a Fort Lee nightclub, a friend removed Pompey's gun from its holster and had it in his possession when he confronted police following a fight. No shots were fired. The weapon was registered in Virginia, but not in New Jersey, which has some of the nation's toughest gun laws. Pompey was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and was sentenced to three years in prison, a term the married father and veteran of three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan was to begin serving next week. After losing an appeal, Pompey sought clemency from Christie. "Only help I am asking for is from the governor, that's the only one, everyone from judges to lawyers say the only person who will help me now is the governor," Sgt. Pompey said in a recent interview with WABC 7. Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Former FBI director James Comey’s testimony that provoked conflicting reactions on Capitol Hill similarly sparked diverse responses from two former high-ranking FBI agents contacted by Breitbart News. “I don’t think Comey did much to help himself,” James Kallstrom, a former assistant director of the FBI, told Breitbart News. “He showed clearly why he was not fit to be the FBI director in my view.” Comey’s admission that he surreptitiously took notes of a private meeting with the president and then leaked the contents to the press through a third party irked the FBI’s former assistant director. “This nonsense about his conversations with the president and feeling necessary to write down notes,” Kallstrom pointed out. “He didn’t write a memo when the attorney general met with President Clinton on an airplane in Arizona. He didn’t write a memo when the FBI was told to not investigate (or on their own refrained from investigating) the IRS, which was violating the rights of Americans by the thousands…. What did Comey do when he was told to shut down the investigation of the Clinton Foundation? Did he write a memo then?” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday that he construed a conversation with President Donald Trump as pressure for him to drop his investigation into Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, who resigned just weeks into his tenure as national security advisor due to undisclosed communications with the Russian ambassador to the United States. He admitted to leaking notes on a private conversation with the president to the New York Times. He also noted that Obama administration attorney general Loretta Lynch prevailed upon him to call his “investigation” into Hillary Clinton a “matter.” Retired FBI special agent Kenneth Maxwell described Comey as a “dedicated patriot.” “Jim Comey presented himself [Thursday] in front of the American people as a classic example of what integrity and honesty looks like,” Maxwell told Breitbart News. “He was forthright and spoke with a calm and professional tone that exuded ‘truth.’ I believe he proved for most clear-thinking Americans that he is not a ‘grandstander’ or ‘Hollywood showboat’ nor is he looking for some type of political award or self-aggrandizement. Rather, he was the epitome of strong and refined leadership, a model, quite frankly, that our elected officials should emulate.” The president called the former director a “grandstander,” among other unflattering terms. Trump fired Comey on May 9, citing low morale within the bureau, the director’s mishandling of the Clinton email investigation, and his zeal in investigating the administration’s ties to Russia that the president regards as a red herring. Comey cites the Russia investigation as the alpha and omega explaining his dismissal. He noted that interference in the 2016 election did not mark a first for Russia and predicted that further intrusions would follow. “The president demanded ‘loyalty,’” Maxwell explained. “How ironic is it that Jim Comey is perhaps one of the most loyal and faithful public servants our government has had in the modern era, but loyal to the things that count among all of the law enforcement profession—the rule of law and our country”? Where some saw a dedication to the rule of law, others saw a politicization of investigations that applied different rules to different parties. “The FBI is supposed to be there to investigate crimes against the citizens of the country,” Kallstrom told Breitbart News, “not to be a card to be played by the political parties of the country.”
Get me Benzema! Arsenal boss Wenger launches £27m bid for Real Madrid star By Sami Mokbel for the Daily Mail and Alex Kay for the Daily Mail Arsene Wenger will launch a £27million move for Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema in an attempt to offset the likely loss of Arsenal stars Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri. Fabregas is close to a £34m move to Barcelona while Sportsmail revealed on Wednesday that Manchester City believe they have clinched the £19m signing of Nasri, having already landed Gael Clichy from the Emirates for £7m. On his way to Arsenal? Arsene Wenger has launched a bid to sign Real Madrid star Karim Benzema Benzema is the man Wenger wants to help Arsenal forget about the pending departures of their midfield duo and he is willing to smash the club's transfer record to do it. The Arsenal boss knows losing Fabregas and Nasri will have a detrimental effect on supporter morale, although he will make one last bid to keep Nasri with the offer of a £100,000-a-week contract. In demand: Karim Benzema celebrates after scoring for France against England at Wembley last year Arsenal are expected to announce the £10.7m signing of Lille striker Gervinho on Friday. The 24-year-old passed a medical on Wednesday but confirmation of the signing has been delayed by a small problem with paperwork. However, Wenger is still keen to sign another top-class forward to take the goalscoring burden off the injury prone Robin van Persie. While Wenger recognises the goalscoring impact Benzema could have on the pitch, the Frenchman also hopes that signing his 24-year-old compatriot will prove to the club's current crop of stars that they can achieve their career ambitions with the Gunners. Likely to leave: Arsenal stars Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri are on the verge of departures Benzema was in and out of Jose Mourinho's team last season due to injuries and a lack of form. Real president Florentino Perez and his adviser Zinedine Zidane are keen for the France striker to stay in Spain. But Mourinho wants to offload Benzema to fund a move for Atletico Madrid striker Sergio Aguero. Fabregas hopes to complete his move to Barcelona by the end of Friday after making it clear to Wenger that he wants to return to the Catalan team.The clubs are still haggling over the finer details of the deal, with Barca keen to use Brazilian left back Maxwell as a makeweight. Wenger wants Leighton Baines to replace Clichy but has balked at Everton's £15m price tag and Barca hope the inclusion of Maxwell, 29, in the deal will be enough to finally land Fabregas. Making an offer: Arsene Wenger wants to bring top talent to Arsenal as he hunts for a first trophy since 2005
Get the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Real Madrid fans' antipathy towards Manchester United target Sergio Ramos is now so strong the majority want the club to sell him. In an AS poll, 55 per cent of the 25,000 Madrid supporters who voted hope the club sells the 29-year-old defender, who has told the 10-times European Cup winners he wants to join United. Of the Madrid sport dailies, AS have shown the most sympathy towards Ramos, however the result of their poll indicates the club's following is behind president Florentino Perez. Perez is uncomfortable with Madrid's player power faction of Ramos, Iker Casillas and Cristiano Ronaldo and intends to sell the former two this summer. United great Ronaldo, who pointedly expressed his support for Carlo Ancelotti days before he was sacked as club coach, has reportedly been told he will play next season up front, rather than in his preferred role on the left flank. More Manchester United news Ramos has requested Real only negotiate with United, who had an opening offer rejected for him last week. United are yet to test Real's resolve with a second offer and the Bernabeu club are believed to want £64m for their second longest-serving player. David de Gea and Ramos are due to report to their clubs' training bases for pre-season training on Monday, with both set for an awkward return after their holidays. United have demanded a world record fee for a goalkeeper for De Gea, who has had to extend the rent at his Cheshire home by a month. Real and United jet off for their pre-season tours to Australia and the United States the week beginning July 13. See pictures of Ramos in action below
Stirner's Demolition of the Sacred “In crime the egoist has hitherto asserted himself and mocked at the sacred; the break with the sacred, or rather of the sacred, may become general. A revolution never returns, but an immense, reckless, shameless, conscienceless, proud—crime, doesn't it rumble in the distant thunder, and don’t you see how the sky grows ominously silent and gloomy?”—Max Stirner I am speaking in words of things that words can only point to. This is true, of course, whenever anyone talks about anything, but there are circumstances when the limits of language become more evident and explanation becomes more necessary, though it adds more words to the mix. Stirner used words in a sharp, pointed, direct way, but what he was doing was so outside of the dominant worldviews not only of his own time, but of ours as well, that he is frequently misunderstood. Because of the clarity of his language, it is hard for me not to see this misunderstanding as intentional, as a choice. But I am speaking my language. Knowing its limits, knowing that it is the equivalent of a pointing finger, not an expression of the actual things to which it points, and knowing my desire to get something of use and significance across to you, I will strive for clarity and will offer explanations where I feel it is necessary. What I intend to talk about is an aspect of Stirner’s project that I consider essential to any genuinely anarchist endeavor, i.e., any endeavor consciously aimed at ending your and my enslavement to any master, to any authority , any ideology, any allegedly higher power or force through which you and I may alienate our lives, our activities and our worlds. I am talking about Stirner’s demolition of the sacred. Of course, this aspect of Stirner’s project cannot be separated from the whole, and I am not trying to make such a separation here. I am rather choosing this particular starting point to point to the whole project, because, starting here, I think I can show the usefulness of Stirner’s project to anarchist efforts and offer a tool—or rather a full toolbox for those willing to explore it—for others to use in the battle against enslavement and alienation. We develop our most powerful tools and weapons when on the attack, and Stirner’s attack on the sacred was devastating. Stirner’s project was not aimed at creating a future ideal society or world. He was talking about a way of encountering one’s world here and now. It seems that none of Stirner’s critics could see this aspect of what Stirner was doing, so that nearly every critique I have read has been petty and misdirected. Nearly all of them treat the unique and egoism, as Max Stirner talked about them, as definable goals to achieve and denigrate these supposed ideals. But the immanence that permeates Stirner’s project was central to his demolition of the sacred. Any ideal future for which I may strive will tend to become a sacred thing standing above and against me, unless I have first grounded myself in the immediate grasping of my life as my own here and now. Only on this basis of immediate ownness can a future ideal, a dream of totally transformed social relationships, be my property as an expression of my desire. And this means that I begin here and now to live the world I desire as an expression of myself here and now, rather than waiting for the coming of some imagined paradise. So what is the sacred? Stirner was very clear about this: the sacred is whatever has been made alien to you and me, placed above you and me as our master or owner. In other words any and all things, ideas, relationships, etc., by which you or I may be possessed. Thus, we create the sacred through processes of alienation (or estrangement) and reification , which creates ideology—fixed ideas that have you or me. Put another way, the sacred is what is not your own or my own, but rather owns you or me. What Stirner opposed to the sacred (and thus to alienation and reification) was ownness. We can also call ownness self-ownership, so long as we understand that this doesn’t refer to a reified self to which you or I lay claim, but to you and me as each of us actually is here and now, each creating ourselves, our lives and our world as our own in the moment, not owned by anything outside of ourselves. In each moment, in whatever circumstance we may find ourselves, you and I are confronted with a choice: to be owned as slaves by external forces—the forces which constitute the sacred—or to own ourselves, that is to create and consume ourselves in each moment as we see fit, regardless of the conditions imposed upon us. When I reappropriate myself, I also reappropriate my world; I make it my property. Stirner’s use of the term property puts off a good number of anarchists, and this is understandable. The economic conceptions of property that we know are very closely linked to the institutions of enslavement and exploitation. But throughout his writings, Stirner used this word to mean something far broader and deeper than its mere economic significance (though since he was talking about the here and now, he included this aspect in his broader, deeper meaning). If the sacred is what is made alien to me, then I demolish the sacred for myself when I reach out and take what has been made alien to me and make it my own, my property, and enjoy and consume it as my own—thus destroying it. The demolition of the sacred is, thus, the taking of property. But to make this clear, it is useful to look more deeply at how Stirner used the word “property.” In his book, Stirner constructed the word “alienty” (Fremdentum) to use for the opposite of property (Eigentum). And in this, Stirner was saying that my property is simply everything that has not been made alien to me either by an external force beyond my power to overcome or by my own self-alienation. But Stirner understood very well that there is another sort of “property” within the social world that surrounds us, property that can never be yours or mine, and that is sacred property. Sacred property is all property that exists through the sanction of the state, the social order or any other institutional or imaginary higher power. Thus, it includes private and public property, and every form of collective, social and communal property insofar as they are protected through the sanction of a higher power against unsanctioned individual use. And sacred property is destroyed simply by “reaching out one’s hand” and taking. As opposed to sacred property, one’s own property is what one takes and enjoys, using it up. I am supposed to respect sacred property, but as (self-) owner, I show no respect. Now, as I said above, Stirner offered no pictures of an ideal future. He was talking about confronting our worlds here and now. To criticize him because he talked of “property,” “money,” “exchange,” and so on, without carefully examining how he talks about them in light of this immanence that is a requirement for a thorough demolition of the sacred, is to miss the point entirely. This is one of the reasons why Marx and Engel’s so-called critique of Stirner is worthless drivel. Property, as Stirner used the term, is completely opposed to the bourgeois and capitalist concept of property. But in the world he lived in, one had to face the bourgeois conception of property as it was materialized in social reality, and in the world you and I live in, we have to face the capitalist conception property as it is materialized in the world—in other words, sacred property, sanctioned property, property with the protection of the state and its police, but worse yet, all too often with the protection as well of your and my moral qualms, your and my consciences, the cops you and I have created within our own haunted heads. Several times in his book, Stirner addressed himself to the condition of proletarians. And for those who still don’t get it, here his opposition between sacred and own property becomes very clear. Proletarians are propertyless within this society. As Stirner pointed out, communists do not want to put an end to this proletarian condition, but to universalize it. They claim that they will do this by abolishing property, but in fact they do it by establishing the sacred ownership of all property by whichever spook they prefer: society, humanity, “species being,” the human community—though in practice it will always be the state in some form that owns it and bestows it since these spooks require an institutional structure to manage their property. Thus, the communists would leave proletarians precisely where they are now: propertyless and waiting for what the owner will bestow. Always waiting, always destitute. Stirner pointed out that it is not property as such, but its sacredness that needs to be destroyed. And each one of us can do this here and now. There are two things that prevent proletarians from taking what they desire. The first is a continued reverence for the sacredness of property. The socialists, who would grant ownership to society as opposed to you or I, continue to encourage this reverence. The communists, who would grant it to the species or the human community, continue to encourage this reverence. But ultimately, it is the individual proletarian himself who maintains this reverence by remaining a slave to the spooks in his head, to morality, to respect for abstract ownership, to society, to humanity. To rid herself of this reverence, she needs to become her own and devour these spooks. Once the proletarian has become his own, he ceases to be propertyless, and he ceases to respect property. The only thing that continues to stand in her way from taking what she desires is the might, the power, of those who control property within this society. To the extent that he is able, he will reach out and take what he desires, and where her capabilities are less than her desires, she will seek to increase her own might. Stirner was quite clear that this is one of the uses for a union of egoists. If one person in an area claims all the land there as his property, others in the area can lament their condition, they can rise up individually and through crime (the desecration of the sacred) maintain some livelihood, or they can unite their forces (creating a union of egoists), rising up together to seize the land from the bastard. If successful, they can then decide with each other how they will deal with what is now each of their own property. But this has come about only because they have rejected the sacredness of property and don’t refrain from reaching out their hand to take what they desire, and expect the same from others. Some (including Joseph Dejacque) have thought that a form of communism would be the inevitable outcome of egoism. I do not agree, because I see communism in practice as the administration of property supposedly owned by an abstract collective being rather than by any actual, living being. Thus, it still maintains the sacred, and the egoism involved is duped egoism—the egoism of one who is convinced that his interests are best carried out in service to a higher interest. However, the practice of ownness could easily come to appear like a kind of communism. If property is not sacred, if everything that I desire and have the capacity to grasp is mine, and if I prefer to have enjoyable and pleasant relations with those around me, then I may very well work out with them ways for dealing with what is my own and your own and his own and her own and so on, so that all the necessities, many of the niceties, and so on are readily and freely accessible to every individual who desires and can reach them. But there would be no abstract concept, no spook, assumed to stand above us as the real owner of it all, nor any administration to guaranty equitable relations or the maintenance of an ethic of “from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.” It would not be communism but mutual ownness. But this is not where I am now, nor where you are now (except perhaps among small groups of friends). We are confronting a world haunted by the sacred, and we each need to demolish this sacred and take back what is ours, in every moment, immediately, destroying everything that prevents us from doing so. Each of us needs to make our lives, activities and worlds our own, against the world of the sacred. I know there are those who will complain that this word is “too ambiguous,” simply because it has several meanings, but unless you are an idiot either through genuine stupidity or through ideological blindness, you know what I mean… Reification—The treatment of abstractions (conceptions, relationships, activities) as if they had concrete existence and, thus, were themselves capable of acting upon the world and upon us. In communist theory, the essence of economy lies in property and exchange. I think that this misses the point, because (as Stirner showed) “property” can take many, sometimes opposed, forms, and simply by conversing, we exchange words. What seems necessary for economy instead is a standardized system of value, that is a system of value in which you or I do not define how we value things for ourselves, but rather accept value as defined by a higher power, and then measure and calculate in terms of this imposed, sacred value rather than creating our own values. Thus, measure and calculation are the defining activities of economy, and they are activities we do, not things. More accurately, species essence, since the German word Gattungswesen originates among Hegelians for whom the word Wesen general refers to a metaphysical essence. I consider the translation of this term as “species being” to be an attempt to hide its metaphysical nature.
Asian Cup: Organiser 'eats humble pie' over Canberra crowd numbers Updated The head of the local Asian Cup organising committee has admitted he has "eaten humble pie" over Canberra's crowd numbers, after warning fans to "put up or shut up" before the tournament. Canberra hosted seven Asian Cup games, which attracted a total of more than 82,000 people, despite not featuring any Socceroos matches. It culminated in nearly 19,000 people watching Iraq beat Iran in a thrilling quarter-final last night. Before the tournament, head of the organising committee Michael Brown said Canberrans had to "put up or shut up" and attend the matches in large numbers, if the city was to host other high-profile sporting fixtures. He said the city has played host to a remarkable series of matches. "I'm incredibly proud to see Canberra shine," he told ABC Grandstand. "I did put out the challenge, and I eat humble pie today, as 82,000 people came to the seven matches at an average of nearly 12,000 a game." Mr Brown said the highlights of the tournament in Canberra were the sold-out game between China and North Korea, and the colour and emotion of the Iran v Iraq quarter-final. "I was a doubter, but gee, you should be so proud," he said. The ACT Government spent more than $4 million bringing the games to Canberra, but Chief Minister Andrew Barr said that decision had been justified. "There was a degree of scepticism at the time," he told ABC Grandstand. "For our city, and for football, I think we can all be very proud of what has been achieved." Topics: sport, soccer, act, canberra-2600 First posted
Ah the treachery of Taco Tuesday Panel 1: There are action figures and a treasure chest on a blueprint on the table Rory (from off panel): So that's the plan. Any questions? Panel 2: Ada, Rory, Drowning Cup and Pete are standing around a pool table that's pulled out to reveal blueprints underneath it. Ada: Yeah, when are we doing this again? Panel 3: Rory is talking. Drowning Cup is writing something on a post it in her hand. Rory: 8 PM Tuesday. That's when they change shifts, and Tuesday is taco night, so the second guard is always extra sleepy. Panel 4: Drowning cup is handing Ada a post it note and looking passive aggressive. Drowning Cup: Here. I wrote it on a post-it so you won't forget. Panel 5: Rory snatches the post-it from Drowning Cup and crumples it up. Rory: No lasting evidence! We're planning a crime! Panel 6: Rory is talking to Ada Rory: You on board?
Tax minimisation brings government maximum pain Posted The anger generated by Wednesday's Senate committee hearings into corporate tax avoidance makes the government's budget and political challenges that much harder, writes Barrie Cassidy. It's problematic as to whether the national debate on taxation will lead anywhere. But one thing is certain. Every day the public is being better educated, and that spells trouble for the Federal Government. Ordinary wage and salary earners suddenly have a much better understanding of how superannuation concessions are exploited by higher income earners; and they're learning more about how negative gearing works and what capital gains tax concessions are available to business. And now they know the extent to which some of the world's largest corporations make billions of dollars in Australia and pay next to no tax in return. In short, the penny has dropped. The Australian taxation system is riddled with rorts for the rich, and yet seemingly ordinary earners alone are being asked to accept belt tightening in the national interest. That is the biggest single take out from the extraordinary events at Wednesday's Senate committee hearings into corporate tax avoidance. As one after another - Microsoft, Apple and Google executives - tried to explain away their exceptional arrangements, the Government's task of reforming the economy and breaking down the entitlement mentality in the welfare system, got that much harder. This letter to The Age was typical of many around the country: If only the Government showed as much fervour for cutting tax avoidance rorts by big business as it does for cutting welfare benefits for the poor. The evidence would not only have angered PAYE taxpayers, but Australian-based companies as well, who do the right thing and pay taxes at the high end of the market by world standards. The numbers that the executives were forced to bring to the table were bad enough - Apple Australia for example earning about $6 billion dollars in revenue and paying just $80 million in tax - but worse still was the attitude that came with it. Each one insisted they paid "all the taxes they owe, in accordance with Australian law", and there was nothing improper, illegal or even immoral about that. In other words, they're your laws we're exploiting when we shift profits overseas. It's your problem, not ours. The testimony was especially risible when Apple's Australian managing director Tony King appeared to play dumb, perhaps in the belief that it was the Australian public and not him that was the fool. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon asked him a simple question - simple enough for any managing director: of the $6 billion dollars that Apple earned in revenue in Australia "how much of that went overseas?" King: "We reported all of our revenue and all of our costs." Xenophon: "No, no. I asked you how much of that went overseas." King: "We, um, our net profit was $250 million." Xenophon: "How much of the money went overseas? How much of that $6 billion paid by Australian consumers went overseas? Can you please tell us that?" King: "I'll take that question on notice to give you a specific number." Xenophon: "You've come to this inquiry - are you serious? You've come to this inquiry on tax minimisation and aggressive tax minimisation and you weren't expecting a question like that? So $6 billion, you can't tell us how much of that's gone overseas?" King: "Ah, we pay for all our products..." Xenophon: "No, no, no, no, answer the question, please, Mr King. How much of the $6 billion that Australian consumers have paid for Apple products actually have gone overseas?" Tony King eventually conceded - or at least claimed - he didn't know the answer. He's just the managing director. The one point the executives did establish is that the problem is one for the Government. The tax laws that they dance around are the Government's own, inherited or otherwise. The buck ultimately stops with them. So what do they now do about it, because to do nothing will paralyse reforms elsewhere. The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, says the issue will be addressed in the budget framework, but it's not clear whether by that he means the tax act will be rewritten to make it unambiguously clear that those who sell products in Australia, and profit from those sales, will be liable to pay taxes like everybody else. Can the Government in just four weeks write up legislation that outsmarts some of the best lawyers in the world? And is that the best way to go anyway? Some experts are already urging the Government to exercise patience and wait for a global solution, suggesting piecemeal and unilateral action like the United Kingdom has taken will serve only to undermine the international process. But how determined is the international community to overcome the global power, the United States, who get their fair share of taxes from these home-grown technology companies and so seem prepared to frustrate the efforts of others. Wednesday's hearing made great theatre, but it was far more than that. The anger the evidence generated will have a significant impact on the domestic taxation and entitlement debate. You could sense the country saying to the Government: sort them out first; they've got the big bucks; only then can you come for us. It's a challenge for the Government no doubt, and one that this time should be met equally by the Opposition; otherwise their role in the highlighting of the issue will be seen as opportunistic grandstanding and no more. Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. He writes a weekly column for The Drum. Topics: christine-milne, abbott-tony, tax, multinationals
Search for possibly armed suspects near St. Edward's University suspended Copyright by KXAN - All rights reserved The Austin police helicopter searches for a suspect near St. Edward's University that put the campus on lockdown, May 16, 2017 (KXAN Photo/Todd Bynum) [ + - ] Video AUSTIN (KXAN) -- An alert was sent out to students and staff warning of an armed intruder on the St. Edward's University main campus in south Austin, Tuesday evening. At around 7 p.m., Austin police said they were suspending the search for the two suspects, because evidence at the scene indicates they may know one of the young men involved. Officers say they have not received any report that the suspects ever made it on campus. Students and staff were told to find a secure location on campus by the university and anyone off campus was told to avoid the area. While spring semester is mostly over, the university says there are still some adult classes being held. Austin police were looking for two suspects stemming from a possible aggravated robbery outside of a Walmart just south of campus. Officers say the two suspects met up outside of the store to discuss a transaction, which then went bad. No one was injured in the incident and no suspects are in custody. Officers say neighbors and the university community have no reason to be concerned about their safety, and that "at no time" were students or staff in any danger. The university's campus safety originally sent an alert out at 5:39 p.m. warning of police activity south of campus between Woodward Street to Ben White Boulevard. They initially said there was no threat to campus, but asked people to avoid the area. Minutes later, the university sent out a second alert, warning of an "armed intruder" on the main campus. A final alert, at 7:25 p.m., sent out an "all clear" to the university. Still, additional campus police officers are being stationed around campus. In November 2016, the campus was placed on lockdown following a report of an armed suspect running towards the university. Students barricaded themselves in classrooms as officers looked for a suspect, who was never found.
By Michael Evans Chinese architects high on ambition but low on creativity have brought the world counterfeit chateaux, shanzhai Sydney Opera Houses, and imitation English villages. But it takes a special kind of chutzpah to duplicate the seat of government of a major world power. The Jiangsu city of Wuxi is home to not one, not two, but four buildings with a less-than-coincidental resemblance to the US Capitol. Photos circulated recently by Chinese netizens show Wuxi’s four capitols, each of which houses the offices of a district People’s Court. Wuxi’s copycats are hardly alone in their oversized ambitions. Government buildings across China have been constructed in recent years sporting some variation of the US Capitol’s trademark cupola and neoclassical facade. Writing for Foreign Policy last week, archaeologist Jack Carlson speculates on the motivations behind the prevalence of these foreign landmarks in replica. He compares China’s “copycat cities” to the Qianlong Emperor’s Western-style palaces and gardens in Beijing’s Yuanmingyuan, as well as Qin Shihuang’s replicas of the capitals of his vanquished foes. To Carlson, these modern copies, like those of the past, are a “symbolic language to convey [China’s] burgeoning global primacy.” Like their quarter-millennium-old counterparts, these imitations are beacons — directed at both Chinese nationals and outsiders — of China’s worldly scientific and cultural knowledge. By appropriating the monumental trappings of power from distant places and times, the Chinese do not merely place their own country on a symbolic par with historical Western superpowers, but suggest that China has mastered and transcended their levels of achievement. Follow @shanghaiist
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A hacker who pleaded guilty last year to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment was sentenced on Thursday in Los Angeles to a year in prison, followed by home detention, federal prosecutors said. An entrance gate to Sony Pictures Entertainment at the Sony Pictures lot is pictured in Culver City, California April 14, 2013. REUTERS/Fred Prouser Cody Kretsinger, a LulzSec hacker who used the online moniker “Recursion,” pleaded guilty in April 2012 to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors. LulzSec, an offshoot of the international hacking group Anonymous, has taken credit for hacking attacks on government and private sector websites. Kretsinger, 25, was also ordered by a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles to perform 1,000 hours of community service after his release from prison, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. During last year’s plea hearing, Kretsinger told a federal judge that he gained access to the Sony Pictures website and gave the information he found there to other members of LulzSec, who posted it on the group’s website and Twitter. Prosecutors said Kretsinger and other LulzSec hackers ultimately caused the unit of Sony Corp more than $600,000 in damage. Kretsinger’s plea came a month after court documents revealed that Anonymous leader “Sabu,” whose real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur, had pleaded guilty to hacking-related charges and provided the FBI with information on fellow hackers. Prosecutors have declined to say if Kretsinger was also cooperating with authorities in exchange for leniency. Anonymous and its offshoots, including LulzSec and AntiSec, focused initially on fighting attempts at Internet regulation and the blocking of free illegal downloads, but have since taken on other targets including Scientology and the global banking system. Anonymous, and LulzSec in particular, grabbed the spotlight in late 2010 when they launched what they called the “first cyber war” in retaliation for attempts to shut down the Wikileaks website. Last week a 26-year-old British man pleaded guilty in that country to carrying out cyber attacks on targets including Sony and Nintendo as part of LulzSec while using the online persona of a 16-year-old girl named Kayla.

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