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http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/15/power-rankings-heres-who-has-the-best-chance-at-being-our-next/21328103/
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POWER RANKINGS: Here's who has the best chance at being our next president
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Tuesday could be the day that defines the rest of the presidential primary race.
It could be the last shot for Republicans to stop their party's presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump.
SEE ALSO: Soros, alarmed by Trump, pours money into 2016 race
It could be a chance for Bernie Sanders to gain momentum against Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, or for Clinton to again show her strength by piling up a near-insurmountable delegate lead.
Republican and Democratic voters in five states will head to the polls Tuesday night with a swath of delegates at stake in each race.
Trump is looking for the "knockout blow" -- wins in the winner-take-all states of Florida, which awards 99 delegates, and Ohio, which allocates 66 delegates. It would provide him with a very clear path to the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
On the Democratic side, Clinton is aiming to bounce back after a stunning loss to Sanders in Michigan. She remains the Democratic frontrunner and leads Sanders by more than 200 pledged delegates.
With all that in mind, we take another look at who has the best chance of making it to the White House to succeed President Barack Obama.
Our rankings are based on the Real Clear Politics averages of national polls and those in states voting Tuesday (with the exception of Missouri, which has not been polled in months). We also factored in the candidates' delegate counts and their relative paths to the nomination, as well as their momentum (or lack thereof) over the past few weeks.
Since our most recent ranking, one more Republican candidate has dropped out of the race: retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Here's a look at where all the candidates stand.
All poll results as of Monday.
POWER RANKINGS: Here's who has the best chance at being our next president
6. Marco Rubio, Republican, senator from Florida
Rubio's fortunes have fallen by the wayside over the past two weeks, and he has fallen the most in our rankings.
He now faces a virtual must-win in his home state that he seems destined to lose.
Polls show Rubio down nearly 20 points to Trump in Florida, a state he once guaranteed he would win. If he doesn't pull off what would, at this point, be a historic comeback, he would face mounting pressure from Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and possibly Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, to exit the race.
National polling average among Republican voters: 18% (3rd) Super Tuesday state average: 12.9% (4th)
DELEGATES: 166 STOCK: Falling Last month: 3
(Photo by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)
5. John Kasich, Republican, Ohio governor
Kasich faces a similar challenge as Rubio: The primary in his home state of Ohio on Tuesday is do or die.
Unlike Rubio, he appears to have a shot at knocking off Trump in that state. Polls have shown him ahead of the mogul by about 4 points heading into the Buckeye State's primary as he tries to become the Republican establishment's latest (and perhaps final) weapon against Trump.
Those who talk up Kasich say he is a successful governor of a swing state with a record to point to, and clear bipartisan appeal. He also has a plethora of experience from nearly two decades in Congress, including foreign-policy areas and his time as chair of the US House budget committee.
But that same bipartisan brand has hurt Kasich with the GOP base. He is to the left of most GOP candidates on immigration reform, and he expanded the federal Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act — two issues that could doom him with hard-line conservatives.
National polling average among Republican voters: 12% (4th) March 15 state average: 19% (3rd)
DELEGATES: 63 STOCK: Neutral Last month: 6
(Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
4. Bernie Sanders, Democrat, senator from Vermont
Sanders not only upset Clinton in New Hampshire last month; he also achieved a gigantic, 22-point victory, a feat unthinkable to observers months ago.
He suffered a small setback in Nevada and a huge one in South Carolina, where he lost to the former secretary of state by nearly 50 points. Then he shocked again with an upset win in Michigan.
Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly clear that Sanders' path to the nomination is tightening. He faces challenging delegate math ahead, needing to win about 54% of the remaining pledged delegates to overtake Clinton.
National polling average among Democratic voters: 39.6% (2nd) March 15 state average: 38.3% (2nd)
DELEGATES: 486 STOCK: Neutral Last month: 5
(Photo credit MICHAEL B. THOMAS/AFP/Getty Images)
3. Ted Cruz, Republican, senator from Texas
Cruz has mounted something of a comeback over the past two weeks, becoming clearly best positioned among the Republican field to take on Trump.
He won three contests on Super Tuesday, two more on March 5, and Idaho's contest last week. The map gets more challenging after Tuesday, with April dominated by Northeast and mid-Atlantic contests more favorable to Trump.
Still, Cruz inspires a flood of enthusiasm among the GOP base, and he may be the best-positioned candidate from within the political sphere to back up the notion that he's not a typical politician, that he is the outsider the base wants despite his day job in Washington.
And his eye-popping fund-raising numbers mean he could be in the race for the long haul — perhaps all the way to the convention.
National polling average among Republican voters: 21.8% (2nd) March 15 state average: 23.2% (2nd)
DELEGATES: 371 STOCK: Rising Last month: 4
(Photo by Charles Ledford/Getty Images)
2. Donald Trump, Republican, businessman
Trump has lit the political world on fire since his entry into the race last summer, and he has showed surprising staying power. We're now on month No. 10 of "The Trump Show."
He has won 15 of the 25 decided contests, something unthinkable when he entered the race in June. And he appears closer than ever to finishing off his rivals: With wins in Florida and Ohio, he could amass more than 160 delegates and would see a clear path to the 1,237 majority needed to clinch the nomination.
There's a clear appetite among Republican primary voters for someone like Trump, who entered the race to controversy surrounding his position on illegal immigration. Business Insider discovered more of that when we followed him on the trail for a week.
National polling average among Republican voters: 36% (1st) March 15 state average: 38% (1st)
DELEGATES: 464 STOCK: Neutral Last month: 2
(Photo by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
1. Hillary Clinton, Democrat, former secretary of state
A new, more dominant Hillary Clinton emerged after a win in Nevada and an obliteration in South Carolina late last month.
She suffered a setback last week in Michigan but still ended that night with more pledged delegates than Sanders. The delegate math is on her side going forward.
The long-presumed Democratic nominee, Clinton has been a shakier-than-expected candidate. But she has a clear look at the nomination, and she would enter the general election with a slight advantage over the likely Republican nominee of Trump or Cruz.
National polling average among Democratic voters: 51% (1st) March 15 state average: 54.3% (1st)
DELEGATES: 712 STOCK: Neutral Last month: 1
(Photo by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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Tuesday could be the day that defines the rest of the presidential primary race. It could be the last shot for the GOP to stop their party's front-runner.
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'Glee' star Becca Tobin’s boyfriend found dead in Philadelphia hotel
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Almost a year after Cory Monteith died of a heroin and alcohol overdose, the boyfriend of cast member Becca Tobin was found dead in a Philadelphia hotel room.
The body of Matt Bendik, 35, was discovered a little after 1 p.m. Thursday by a maid at the Hotel Monaco, police said.
It’s unclear where the 28-year-old Tobin — who found fame in 2012 by playing cheerleader Kitty Wilde on the Fox series — was at the time. There were conflicting reports about whether she accompanied Bendik on the business trip.
Cops said there were no obvious signs of foul play and the medical examiner will perform an autopsy on the 35-year-old Los Angeles nightclub owner, Philadelphia media reported.
No drugs or paraphernalia were found in the room, TMZ.com reported.
Just four weeks ago, Tobin posted a black-and-white Instagram picture of herself kissing Bendik on the cheek. As word of Bendik’s death spread, Tobin’s fans posted messages of support beneath the sweet photo.
“Stay strong Becca!” wrote one, Brittany Heath. “We love you!”
Bendik, who ran Hollywood hot spots DBA and AV, was a go-getter who was just 15 when he got into the club business.
He worked as a promoter for the famed Whiskey a Go Go on the Sunset Strip before heading off to study business at Cornell University. When Bendik returned to L.A., it was back to the night life and a career that allowed him to rub elbows with celebrities.
Monteith, 31, played football player Finn Hudson on the show and was dating co-star Lea Michele when he died last July 13 in a Vancouver hotel room.
The hunky heartthrob was open about his battle with drugs, admitting he began boozing and smoking pot at age 13 and entered rehab for the first time when he was 19.
On a mobile device? Click here to watch video.
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Almost a year after Cory Monteith died of a heroin and alcohol overdose, the boyfriend of another cast member, Becca Tobin, was found dead in a Philadelphia hotel room.
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Illegal immigrants working in UK face six months in prison, ministers announce
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It means that instead of being taken to detention centres, illegal migrants will be processed through the courts before being taken to jail.
Ministers believe it will act as a deterrent and prevent thousands of migrants attempting to gain access to the UK from European ports including Calais.
• If Britain bends to pressure, where would we put a quota of migrants? • Couple wed for 45 years claim immigration officials do not believe marriage is genuine
As part of the new measures, off-licences, curry houses, Chinese restaurants and other takeaway firms will face closure if they are found to be employing illegal workers.
The Government will also consider extending these powers to cover minicab firms, the Home Office said.
It came as Eurotunnel services were on Monday hit by serious delays after migrants were found on French rail track near Calais.
Migrants in France Photo: AFP
Trains were held up by an hour after the migrants went on to the track in the area around Frethun station.
Mr Brokenshire said: “Anyone who thinks the UK is a soft touch should be in no doubt – if you are here illegally, we will take action to stop you from working, renting a flat, opening a bank account or driving a car.”
He added: “Through our new Immigration Bill, illegal workers will face the prospect of a prison term and rogue employers could have their businesses closed, have their licences removed, or face prosecution if they continue to flout the law.”
The decision to impose prison sentences on illegal immigrants is a major shift in Government policy and shows the level of concern in Downing Street about the influx of foreigners coming to the UK.
In the weeks after the general election, David Cameron vowed to make the UK a “less attractive place to come and work”.
He announced plans to allow the police to seize wages from foreign workers and said that they would face deportation without appeal if they are in the UK illegally.
However, he made no mention of potential prison sentences.
It is thought that the migrant crisis in southern Europe and well as the increasing numbers of foreigners attempting to reach the UK from Calais have forced ministers to intensify the planned crackdown.
Under the new rules, any employer suspected of flouting immigration laws could see their business closed for up to 48 hours while they prove right to work checks have been conducted on staff.
Migrants wait near the perimeter fence at Calais Photo: Will Wintercross/The Telegraph
• Calais migrants: Theresa May calls for 'urgent' security upgrade as 1,500 try to storm Channel Tunnel • French riot police in battle with Calais migrants, in pictures
The worst offenders would then be placed under special measures and could face long-term closure.
The Home Office said that any pub, off-licence or late-night takeaway that fails to comply with immigration laws or employs illegal workers could also be stripped of their licence to operate.
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The Government will unveil plans to jail illegal workers and launch a new crackdown on companies hiring immigrants with no right to be here
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'It's ugly and dangerous': the inside story of the battle to be London mayor
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Anita Vasisht was going through her junk mail when she came across a surprising letter. It was printed on headed notepaper, from the Right Hon David Cameron MP, prime minister and leader of the Conservative party, and addressed to her personally. She was excited: she had never received a letter from No 10 before. “My daughters were in the living room. I went in and said, ‘The prime minister’s writing to me!’ Then I started reading it out.”
The letter, dated 15 March 2016, was about London’s mayoral election. The first few paragraphs were standard stuff, arguing that London was the most important city in the world, and explaining why Cameron was backing Zac Goldsmith. Then things started to get weird.
Under the heading The British Indian Community Makes London Great, Cameron wrote: “The British Indian community makes an extraordinary contribution to London and to Britain. Closer ties between the UK and India have been a priority for me as prime minister. I was pleased to join Zac Goldsmith in welcoming Prime Minister Modi to the UK last year at Wembley Stadium.” Then, under the heading The Risk Of A Corbyn-Khan experiment, Cameron described the policies of “Jeremy Corbyn’s candidate Sadiq Khan” as “dangerous”. If Khan won, Cameron said, “Londoners will become lab rats in a giant political experiment”.
Cameron did not use the words Muslim or Pakistani, but he didn’t need to; Vasisht knew well enough that Khan is a British Muslim of Pakistani origin. Khan made it perfectly clear himself when campaigning: he is proud to portray himself as the upwardly mobile son of a Pakistani bus driver, making his name as a human rights lawyer before becoming an MP.
It felt like my prime minister was writing to tell me he doesn't consider he and I are part of the same community
Vasisht’s daughters laughed at the letter: it seemed such a clumsy way to win votes. But the more she thought about it, the angrier Vasisht became. The implication was that she – and other British Asians – didn’t truly belong in Cameron’s Britain. “He talked of ‘your community’. No, David, you and I are members of the same community. It felt like my prime minister was writing to tell me he doesn’t consider he and I are part of the same community. Which is not very nice, is it?”
She took a photograph of the letter and tweeted it. Yes, it was funny in a way, not least the assumption that all British Indians are fans of Narendra Modi, who was banned from entering the UK between 2002 and 2012 after failing to stop riots in Gujarat in which about 1,000 Muslims died. But she was more angry than amused.
The following Monday, Vasisht, an immigration lawyer who previously worked for Amnesty International, asked her colleagues at Wilson solicitors if they had received similar letters. Yes, said Muhunthan Paramesvaran, a lawyer of Tamil origin: he had received a letter from Goldsmith. Under the heading The Tamil Community Has Contributed Massively To London, Goldsmith wrote: “I recognise that far too often Tamil households are targeted for burglary due to families owning gold and valuable family heirlooms.” Under the heading Sadiq Khan Will Put London’s Future And Your Community At Risk, he wrote: “As a government minister, Sadiq Khan did not use his position to speak about Sri Lanka or the concerns of the Tamil community in parliament. His party are beginning to adopt policies that will mean higher taxes on your family and your family’s heirlooms and belongings. We cannot let him experiment with these radical policies.” Paramesvaran received another letter from Cameron, promising that Goldsmith would “keep our streets safe from terrorist attacks”. For him, the implication was clear: a Muslim like Sadiq Khan would not.
Vasisht began to scan social media to see what other Asian Londoners had said. She didn’t have to look far on Twitter. On 15 March, Atanu Roy tweeted: “Zac Goldsmith targeting my Hindu name to warn me about that Muzzer Sadiq Khan. Chip off the old racist block.” On the same day, Aakash Naik tweeted: “This is so wrong, racist and divisive @ZacGoldsmith needs to find who made this and sack them immediately.” On 18 March, Gurtej Sandhu tweeted: “Pls @ZacGoldsmith stop sending me racist & divisive leaflets. Shouldn’t matter that I’m Sikh/Punjabi/Hindu. #gutterpolitics #ZacGoldsmith.”
As well as Tamil families, Hindus and Sikhs (or people with Hindhu-, Sikh- or Tamil-sounding names) were sent letters warning that their jewellery was unsafe, because Khan planned to introduce a wealth tax. Cameron wrote to Barbara Patel, a retired biochemist, who replied, “Boy, have you got the wrong Patel.” White and Jewish, she pointed out that her husband’s family were lapsed Muslims, not Hindu, as whoever put them on the mailing list must have assumed.
Vasisht wasn’t naive – she knew politics could be dirty – but not like this; not in 21st-century London. “Alienating different groups within society in order to get some people to vote for you is ugly and dangerous,” she says.
She decided the campaign was not simply offensive, it could constitute incitement to racial and religious hatred, both crimes in Britain. She wrote a report: “There is... a real concern that, in targeting apparently those voters identified as ‘British Indians’... the intention of Zac Goldsmith and others including the prime minister would appear to be to deliberately incite feelings of hatred for Sadiq Khan in those believed to be of Indian (presumably Hindu) ethnicity – and this, in order to win their votes.”
Vasisht filed her report to the Metropolitan police and asked them to investigate.
A week after Cameron wrote to Vasisht, Goldsmith officially launched his campaign at a south London microbrewery. He reeled off his priorities in a lacklustre monotone: more affordable housing, better transport, clean air. It was only when he got to Khan that he became animated: “The man is so unprincipled that he will twist and turn and simply adjust his position on every big issue London faces, depending on the audience he is talking to.”
An hour later, I interviewed him. Goldsmith was quietly spoken, likable and thoroughly decent – until he started speaking about Khan. He insisted he was right to describe him as radical and dangerous, and said he would continue to do so. But he looked uncertain, chewing on his knuckles.
Goldsmith was accompanied by his media adviser, Katy Eustice, a former journalist who works for the Australian campaign strategist Lynton Crosby, famous for his “dog-whistle” politics and negative campaigning. The analogy is to those high-frequency whistles that can be heard by dogs, but are inaudible to the human ear. It’s a form of campaigning that uses coded language – euphemisms, juxtapositions – that can have one meaning to the general population and another to a specific group.
Everyone will shout, "Jeez, there's a dead cat" – and will not be talking about the issue causing you so much grief
The tactic was famously used in the campaigns of Australian prime minister John Howard, who won four terms in power partly because of his tough stance on immigration. While the language Howard used was never overtly racist, the use of words such as “illegals” and “un-Australian” appealed to those with racist leanings. Crosby was Howard’s principal strategist. In 2013, he worked on Tony Abbott’s successful bid for power in Australia, won largely on the strength of a four-word slogan: “Turn back the boats.”
Crosby’s signature move is known as “the dead cat”. Boris Johnson, who was advised by Crosby during his two London mayoral campaigns, has described the tactic like this: “There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”
When I interviewed Goldsmith, I told him I believed he was a better man than his campaign suggested. He looked uncomfortable, but stuck to his line. “I don’t agree. It’s not a dead cat.”
Eustice intervened: “Lynton’s not even involved,” she said. And, technically, this is true: the man masterminding Goldsmith’s campaign is Mark Fullbrook, co-founder of CTF Partners (alongside Crosby and pollster Mark Textor); he is also a former head of campaigns for the Conservatives, and was deputy director of Johnson’s successful 2012 mayoral campaign. But you don’t need Crosby at the helm for a campaign to bear all his hallmarks; his staff have been visible at many of Goldsmith’s campaign events. The CTF website boasts that Fullbrook was “described by Newt Gingrich as the UK’s own Lee Atwater”. Atwater, who could be said to be the forefather of dog-whistle politics, was an American strategist who famously described in a 1981 interview how Republicans could win racist votes without sounding racist. There is no suggestion that Fullbrook endorses his views.
When we met, Goldsmith insisted his use of “radical” and “dangerous” to describe Khan is purely political, and that only Khan had interpreted this as anything to do with his ethnic or religious background. “He is a fundamentally partisan figure,” Goldsmith argued. “It is obvious to anybody who is not unfair or wanting to misinterpret, the terms I was using were in a political context. I have not met a normal person who has chosen to intepret [campaign literature] like that.”
Crosby first teamed up with the Conservative party in 2005, to help out the then leader of the opposition, Michael Howard. Howard promised an annual limit on immigration and quotas for asylum seekers, together with a curb on work permits through an Australian-style points system and 24-hour security at ports. His campaign banners promised “controlled immigration”; he repeatedly said that, “Change was happening too quickly” and that, “It’s not racist to talk about immigration”. The Tory slogan became, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
The Conservatives lost to Tony Blair, but Crosby went on to lay the groundwork for future campaigns – two more general elections and two mayoral elections, all successful.
Cameron’s former speechwriter, Clare Foges, recently wrote that working for Crosby, as she did in 2015, could be jolly: “He is prone to tooting on an antique trumpet to rally the troops and blasting out Queen’s One Vision over and over again,” she wrote in the Times. And it could be “tedious, thanks to his famed strategy of ‘scraping the barnacles off the boat’: paring the message down to a couple of well-polling lines to be repeated endlessly”. For Crosby’s team, nuance is just a distraction. Cutting through to swing voters needed “brutal simplicity”, according to Foges.
I talk to veteran spin doctor Bruce Hawker, who worked for the Australian Labour party through many elections and knows first-hand how the Crosby machine works. “He’s always been very good at what we call wedge politics; where you try to drive your usual Labour followers from the candidate or the leadership.”
This wedge is heavily researched. Crosby’s business partner Textor surveys large numbers of micro groups to find out what would put them off a candidate. “In the last British election, Ukip was going to be the wedge point,” Hawker says. “But the circumstances changed and it became Scotland. They look to the weakest spot in the Labour campaign and just work and work at that weakness, till it blows up into something much more significant.” Is it possible to beat Crosby in a clean fight? Hawker laughs – he’s not so sure there is such a thing. “Campaigning is always a combination of building up the strengths of your leader and being prepared to go hard against your opponent. You don’t tend to see too much elevation of the leader as a man of great principle in Crosby’s campaigns, but you do see an effective demolition of the opposition as dangerous, out of touch, untrustworthy, extreme.”
Does he have moral qualms about the way Crosby works? “Ah, yes. It’s fair enough to say somebody is extreme or whatever, but you’ve got to back it up with the evidence, to demonstrate what that actually means to the voter, rather than just leave it hanging there like a nasty smell in the lavatory.”
I ask Hawker who tends to be the boss on a campaign, Crosby or the politician? “Oh, I think Crosby. He always makes sure he’s very close to the leader and has their confidence. You saw that with Cameron in the last election. A lot of other people had their nose put out of joint because they felt they were being squeezed out.” It has to be this way, Hawker says. “The campaign has to be run with military precision, because it is the closest thing in civil life to actually having a war.”
I contact Crosby’s team a number of times for comment. Eventually, a spokesman for CTF Partners emails to say: “Despite the Guardian’s repeated and false allegations it is well known that Lynton is not working on the mayoral campaign. This is a matter for the campaign, not Lynton or CTF.” When I ask why it is not an issue for CTF, since the campaign is led by Fullbrook, I receive no response.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Back Zac says: “This allegation [of racial profiling] is complete nonsense... The only person who has brought faith into the race is Sadiq Khan.”
Ken Livingstone knows what it’s like to be Crosbied. The Tory campaign against him for re-election as London mayor in 2008 was sustained, personal and unpleasant. As with Goldsmith, Crosby’s team decided the only way to win was to focus on the doughnut – outer London – where people tend to be more conservative.
Rather than championing Johnson, Crosby and Fullbrook rubbished Livingstone. “I was being smeared as a tax dodger – by David Cameron for God’s sake!” It was also suggested that Livingstone, who I spoke to before he was suspended from the Labour party amid accusations of anti-semitism, was overfriendly with ethnic minorities, particularly Muslims; it was implied that they would receive a disproportionate amount of public money. “Four years ago, people were telling me that a Tory canvasser had told them that if I was elected mayor, I was going to introduce sharia law. Given that the [Tory-leaning] London Evening Standard was reporting that I was an alcoholic, it was difficult to equate these two things.”
But this is nothing compared with the Goldsmith campaign, says Livingstone. “It’s poisonously divisive. Shameful.”
Livingstone says there were times during the last London mayoral election when it was obvious that even Johnson struggled to retain control of his campaign. “Crosby said, ‘We’ve got to get the issue away from transport fares.’ And on one occasion Boris said he was going to try to keep fares down, and Crosby just berated him in front of my staff for not toeing the line.” He pauses. “Zac looks as if he’s heading for a breakdown, because he’s being forced to behave in a way that isn’t natural to him. Given the cosmopolitan nature of his family, he can’t possibly believe all this crap.” Goldsmith’s father was Jewish, while his sister Jemima was married to the former Pakistani cricketer and politician Imran Khan, to whom he remains close.
Livingstone thinks this is the dirtiest campaign he has witnessed. “There’s been the occasional nasty stuff about immigration, but this makes Michael Howard’s campaign look uplifting and good-humoured.” What does he most fear in terms of consequences? “Some Muslim kids seeing this will think, ‘We’re looked at as not part of British society, and as a threat.’”
The Tories are fighting a battle more suited to the early 20th century, he argues. “I always say, never forget the Daily Mail headline in 1906: ‘Jews bring crime and disease to Britain.’ And it’s been selling papers, and unprincipled politicians have been using fear, throughout time immemorial.”
Shadow education minister Lucy Powell ran day-to-day operations for Labour’s 2015 general election campaign. That year’s dog-whistle consisted of telling the electorate, again and again, that Labour had never apologised for destroying the economy, and that Ed Miliband stabbed his brother in the back and would almost certainly do the same to Britain.
Powell says she felt much of the coded language in the Tory campaign was about Miliband being Jewish, not least the focus on him mishandling a bacon bap. Other messages about his ethnicity verged on the subliminal: repeated references to his roots in north London, a more Jewish area of the city, for instance.
While Powell thinks Crosby might well have been behind this strategy, she says she doesn’t believe for a minute that he is antisemitic or Islamophobic. It’s simply expedience: “It’s pure cynicism – he doesn’t care what the means are by which he can move swing voters. But once he finds it, he’ll just go after it, even if it’s wrong or personal or immoral, or in some cases all three.”
Powell believes the demonisation of Miliband was largely ineffectual. It was only when Crosby and the Tories found their dead cat that anything began to stick. After Miliband’s popular promise to crack down on tax dodgers and non-doms, Conservative defence secretary Michael Fallon “revealed” that the Labour leader would strike a power-sharing deal with the SNP, and was willing to sacrifice Trident to do so. Trident was the dead cat: the story came out of nowhere, says Powell, was wholly unfounded – and it worked. “They were on the back foot about tax evasion and sent Michael Fallon out there with a baseless story,” Powell says. “But with highly emotive language and a couple of splashes in their friendly press, the strategy worked, knocking the other story off the agenda.”
It was also Fallon who threw the first dead cat in the mayoral election – making a speech on 1 March that Khan was “unfit” to be mayor and describing him as a “Labour lackey who speaks alongside extremists. A man who has said Britain’s foreign policy is to blame for the terrorist threat.” (In 2006, Khan was a signatory to a letter arguing that Blair’s foreign policy in Iraq and on Israel offered “ammunition to extremists” and put British lives “at increased risk”.)
Powell believes that what Miliband or even Livingstone had to contend with was relatively benign. “Sadiq has had it worse than I’ve ever known,” she says. “I think Zac will look back with a huge amount of regret.”
If ever the gloves were on in this contest, by mid-April they were well and truly off. When asked by the London Evening Standard whether his campaign is “making racist capital out of Khan’s Muslim faith”, Goldsmith responded, “We have never, ever, referenced Sadiq Khan’s religion or ethnic background. Not once.”
But then he added, “What he is actually doing is, I think, incredibly dangerous. He is calling Islamophobia to prevent legitimate questions being asked. They are about his willingness to share platforms with people who want to ‘drown every Israeli Jew in the sea’. It’s about his having employed someone who believed the Lee Rigby murder was fabricated [Khan’s junior adviser, Shueb Salar, was sacked last month after a string of offensive tweets came to light]. It’s about his career before being an MP, coaching people in how to sue the police. He is hiding behind Britain’s Muslims in order to avoid having the spotlight pointed at him.”
Other Conservative heavyweights lent their support. On 9 April, Boris Johnson told the Conservative spring conference that “Sadiq Khan has shared platforms, to put it at its mildest, with some pretty dodgy people with some pretty repellent views”. Home Secretary Theresa May said he was “unsafe” to run London at a time when we face “a significant threat of terrorism”, because of his history of defending extremists as a lawyer. The next day, Johnson wrote in the Telegraph: “In Islam and the Labour party there is a struggle going on, and in both cases Khan – whatever his real views – is pandering to the extremists. I don’t want him running our capital.”
The message was as brutally simple as the Back Zac team could hope for: Khan could not be trusted. And few mainstream Conservatives were willing to rock the barnacle-free boat. Even the Conservative Muslim Forum has refused to be drawn on the character assassination. Mohammed Amin, chair of CMF, tells me, “I never comment on our own campaigns – or what Lynton Crosby calls process issues.”
I tell him I have not even mentioned Crosby. “What you can ask me is how I intend to vote, and what I think of the candidates. First of all, I’m going to vote for Zac Goldsmith, because I think he will be a much better mayor and Sadiq Khan’s policies on transport are terrible.”
Does he think many Muslims will have been offended at the way Khan is being portrayed? “I do not think Sadiq Khan is an extremist, but I’m not going to start commenting on Zac Goldsmith’s campaign.”
The only senior Conservative publicly to dissent is former chairman Sayeeda Warsi, who tweets, “If @SadiqKhan isn’t an acceptable enough Muslim 2 stand for London mayor, which Muslim is?”
A week after getting in touch, Vasisht emails me, full of fire. “Did you see this? It’s brilliant.” At last, she says, she has found a Conservative who has spoken out. She sends me a link to an article in the New Statesman by the Muslim businesswoman and former Conservative party parliamentary candidate for Leigh, Shazia Awan.
Awan wrote: “I am deeply upset by the intrusive, patronising and divisive tactics being used by the party in the mayoral race. To resort to, for want of a better description, ‘racially profiling’, in one of the most beautifully diverse cities... is not only a desperate and arguably foolish tactic but one that will no doubt see a Labour mayor voted in.”
Awan tells me she has found the campaign, and speaking out against it, traumatic; it has made her question her core beliefs. “I am disgusted with myself for not having the courage to speak out against the very real and deep-rooted racism in the Conservative party sooner. The silence from the Conservative Muslim Forum, and indeed all Conservatives in the party, makes them as guilty as Zac Goldsmith and his campaign team. How people like Sajid Javid and others can keep tight-lipped about this is beyond my understanding.”
But Vasisht is furious at the response from the police, who have written to tell her they will not be pursuing her complaint: “The evidence you have presented does not breach the Public Order Act, or any other offence to which I have knowledge.” If she is offended, they suggest, she should make a complaint to Goldsmith or the Conservative party.
She promises she won’t be giving up yet. With Wilson solicitors, she has presented an 80-page document to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Cameron accused Khan of sharing a platform with Suliman Gani. In fact, Gani canvassed for the Conservatives
In the weeks running up to the election, the Tory press seems to run a story linking Khan to a new extremist every day, including radical preacher Suliman Gani. One story claims that Khan shared a platform with Yasser al-Sirri, an Egyptian militant who reportedly claimed Osama bin Laden died an honourable death. Khan argues that this is not surprising: as chair of Liberty, a human rights lawyer and a politician, you often have to speak alongside people with whom you disagree.
There is less reporting of the bigger issues: the dog-whistle and dead cat strategies appear to have worked perfectly.
Or have they? At time of writing, Khan was leading by 16 points in the latest YouGov poll. And for Goldsmith, the tactic appears to have backfired. On 13 April, Gani tweeted a photograph of himself with Goldsmith. On 20 April, at prime minister’s questions, Cameron accused Khan of sharing a platform with Gani on nine occasions, stating that Gani was an Isis supporter. Gani responded that he did not support Isis; in fact, he had canvassed and voted for the Conservatives at the last general election, at their request. On 18 April, Goldsmith had to defend himself against charges of tokenism after the release of a bizarre video by grassroots organisation Conservative Connect called Goldsmith Jette Ga! (He Will Win), with lyrics in English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi and Bengali. Goldsmith’s team has denied involvement.
When the Guardian asks Cameron to respond to the accusation of racial profiling, his press team refuses to respond in his name. Instead, a Conservative spokesman says, “Zac Goldsmith has made clear he will reach out to every single part of London, and that means reaching out to every part of the community.” Asked about the concern that Cameron’s letter could constitute a race-hate crime, it does not respond.
Powell is convinced that this election will prove that dog-whistle politics has had its day. “I think the world is moving on. Jeremy Corbyn and the other anti-establishment politicians coming to the fore right now suggests the public don’t want cynical, one-dimensional campaigns any more. And they’re not going to be effective in London.”
As for Vasisht, she does not merely hope that we will see the end of dog-whistle politics; she is determined to stop it. In a letter dated 14 April, the CPS has written back to say that, as there is insufficient evidence for the police to charge, it will not be taking further action. But she is not letting it go: she has reminded the CPS of its own definition of a racist incident: “Any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.”
“I told the CPS that I was a victim of race-hate, but actually, we’re all victims of it. The Tory party is using bloody and violent political histories between groups of people to turn people against Sadiq Khan in order to get their votes. Then they’re going to go away and get on with whatever they do in their political life, and in the meantime they have left communities with all these stirred-up feelings. In my view, this is not merely offensive, it could be a criminal offence. I’ve never seen this before in Britain. And I never want to see it again.”
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The contest between Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan has been marred by accusations of racism. Has this become the dirtiest fight in British political history?
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http://www.people.com/article/lane-graves-wake-killed-alligator-walt-disney-world
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Wake Held for 2-Year-Old Killed by Alligator at Disney World : People.com
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20160621044218
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06/20/2016 AT 05:00 PM EDT
A wake was held Monday for Lane Graves, the 2-year-old boy who was
by an alligator at Disney World last Tuesday.
The 3 p.m. CT vigil service took place at the Graves' place of worship, St. Patrick Catholic Church, in Elkhorn, Nebraska. The hour-long service was open to the public.
Lane's parents, Matthew and Melissa Graves, say they are overwhelmed by the support they've received from around the country since the tragic loss of their son.
"Melissa and I continue to deal with the loss of our beloved boy, Lane, and are overwhelmed with support and love we have received from family and friends in our community as well as from around the country," the family said in a statement.
"Neither Melissa, myself or anyone from our family will be speaking publicly; we simply cannot at this time," the statement continued.
Lane was playing in a foot of water in a lagoon near the Floridian Resort & Spa on Tuesday when the alligator attacked him, according to
. The toddler's father attempted to fight off the gator, suffering lacerations on his hand as a result, but could not save his son, according to the
The parents, along with 4-year-old daughter Ella, returned home to Elkhorn on Thursday.
Neighbors had decorated their home with blue and white balloons and tied ribbons around their mailbox.
The lagoon where the tragedy happened
Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times / Getty
"There are no words to convey the profound sorrow we feel for the family and their unimaginable loss. We are devastated and heartbroken by this tragic accident and are doing what we can to help them during this difficult time," George A. Kalogridis, president of Walt Disney World Resort, said in a statement.
Lane's funeral will take place on Tuesday at 10 a.m. CT at St. Patrick Catholic Church.
The Omaha Community Foundation is
on behalf of the Graves family.
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A vigil service was held for Lane Graves in his hometown of Elkhorn, Nebraska, on Monday
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FireEye CEO apologizes after stock plunge
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After FireEye shares plunged 22 percent after reporting first quarter earnings on Tuesday, FireEye CEO David DeWalt was feeling the heat from the "Fast Money" traders on Wednesday.
"I can't control whisper numbers and what Wall Street is thinking high-growth companies can be," DeWalt said on CNBC. "One-hundred thirty-two percent growth, record numbers of new customers, expansion around the world is what we were doing. You know, we're very optimistic."
DeWalt's optimism didn't satisfy Brian Kelly of Brian Kelly Capital who had recently sold a losing position in FireEye.
Kelly pressed DeWalt on selling 485,656 shares in March at an average price of $79.54, days before announcing quarterly earnings.
"Now you're coming to us saying everything's fantastic, everything's great. Why were you selling? You've lost credibility with me. How do you get that back from Wall Street? That's why the stock is down 22 percent today. Nobody believes you anymore."
"You know, my selling was consistent with all the executives, all the insiders," DeWalt said. "I still have 90-plus percent of all my holdings in FireEye. I'm highly motivated to grow shareholder value, and for a lot of the shareholders, we're going to work very hard to improve the value of this company over the long haul. I have a lot of track record of doing so. I apologize to you if you feel like you lost faith in me, but I'm going to work hard for you. I will be there."
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After FireEye shares plunged 22 percent, FireEye CEO David DeWalt felt the heat from a Fast Money" trader.
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The Cases Against FirstEnergy
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Yesterday, as early reports suggested that it was to blame for the largest blackout in U.S. history, FirstEnergy ‘s shares fell by nearly $3, or 9.3%. Beyond the blackout, as to which the company denies responsibility, investors have noted FirstEnergy’s myriad other problems such as a federal court ruling that it violated the Clean Air Act, leaks in its Davis-Besse nuclear power plant and involvement in much more limited blackouts earlier this summer in coastal New Jersey.
Earlier this month, on Aug. 5, FirstEnergy announced it was restating its financial results for 2003 and 2002 because of accounting changes, and reduced its expected earnings for 2003. Two days later, it restated its restatement and said it would also post new numbers for 2000 and 2001. After the first restatement, shares fell from $34.25 to $31.33–as much as they did in the wake of the blackout. There was no similar market reaction to the second restatement but, soon after, investors starting suing–with at least five law firms all filing suit.
The complaints allege that the company had been improperly accounting for certain of its leased generation plants by assigning such assets inflated values and had improperly accounted for costs incurred in connection with the deregulation of certain of its businesses by employing an inappropriately long amortization schedule, thereby artificially inflating its reported earnings by material amounts. These accounting irregularities had inflated the company’s reported assets and income, the suits said. The difference between what the company said and what the plaintiff-shareholders said is whether FirstEnergy and its executives knew or had reason to know that its earlier accounting was flawed.
FirstEnergy On Aug. 7, U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus Edmund Sargus in Columbus, Ohio, ruled that FirstEnergy violated anti-pollution laws when it failed to upgrade pollution controls in an aging Ohio coal-fired power plant. The judge ruled that the company had improperly classified work on the plants as routine maintenance in order to avoid legal obligations to modernize the facility. Sargus said he would hold a trial in March to determine the civil penalties that FirstEnergy must pay.
Congress had exempted pre-1970 plants from stricter pollution controls on the assumption that they would be replaced in time. But when an owner undertakes a major renovation or expansion, the exemption becomes moot. Judge Sargus concluded that FirstEnergy unit Ohio Edison ‘s Sammis plant clearly went beyond routine maintenance with a series of 11 construction projects costing about $136.5 million and resulting in a “significant increase” in the electricity output of the plant as well as emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
The ruling led Standard & Poor’s to issue a credit warning. Buy-side analysts were generally positive about the company. Before yesterday, it garnered five “strong buy” ratings, seven “buys” and three “holds.”
On Aug. 1, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission determined in a preliminary decision that a potential clogging problem at FirstEnergy’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant merited the agency’s second-most severe safety rating. Because the company had already fixed the problem during the plant’s prolonged outage for unrelated corrosion damage repairs, there was no immediate impact on the plant’s potential reopening. The company said it would not contest the decision.
The company is contesting claims made yesterday and over the weekend that it somehow caused last week’s blackout. In a press release issued yesterday, it said that “contrary to misinterpretations that identified FirstEnergy as the cause of the widespread outage, it is clear that extensive data needs to be gathered and analyzed in order to determine with any degree of certainty the circumstances that led to the outage. What happened on Thursday afternoon is a very complex situation, far broader than the power-line outages we experienced on our system.”
Comments are turned off for this post.
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The Blackout of 2003 is just one of the myriad problems facing the utility firm.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/laura-jane-grace-burns-birth-certificate-performing-n-article-1.2638995
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160622140855id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/entertainment/music/laura-jane-grace-burns-birth-certificate-performing-n-article-1.2638995
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Laura Jane Grace burns birth certificate while performing in N.C.
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Transgender punk rocker Laura Jane Grace had a fiery message to deliver against North Carolina’s anti-LGBT law.
The Against Me! front woman — who is one of a handful of stars who decided against boycotting her concert — set fire to her birth certificate while performing in Durham, N.C. on Sunday night.
“Bye gender!” she said smiling as the crowd cheered.
The 35-year-old previously said her May 15 show would go on as a protest to “the ridiculous law” recently passed in the state — known as the so-called “bathroom bill” — which restricts the rights of trans people.
STASI: Attitudes toward LGBT haven’t changed since Stonewall
“I’m going to create an event around the show as a form of protest to say that despite whatever stupid laws they enact, trans people are not going to be scared,” she told BuzzFeed News last month.
The Georgia native announced she was transgender in 2012.
Her band’s latest album “Transgender Dysphoria Blues” includes songs highlighting issues and rights affecting transgender people.
Grace joins crooner Cyndi Lauper, who also decided to continue with her show but has blasted the law. She announced proceeds from her concert will be donated to Equality North Carolina, a local organization working to repeal House Bill 2.
Feds sue N.C. over controversial transgender bathroom law
Other stars like Demi Lovato, Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Bryan Adams have cancelled shows in the Southern state since Gov. Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2 in March.
Earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the Justice Department filed a civil rights lawsuit against the controversial legislation.
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Transgender punk rocker Laura Jane Grace had a fiery message for North Carolina’s anti LGBT law.
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Ethan Hawke & Katie Holmes -- These Are the People in Your Neighborhood
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20160622210050
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When you're in NYC, you never know who you're going to run into ... like
Ethan was hanging out on his stoop with his adorable daughter Indiana on Thursday, when who should just happen to be walking by but none other than Suri Cruise's mom. Don't you just love when that happens?
The two actors -- who both live in the Chelsea neighborhood -- chatted each other up for a bit before Katie went on her merry way.
And people think New Yorkers aren't friendly.
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When you're in NYC, you never know who you're going to run into ... like Ethan Hawke and Katie Holmes.Ethan was hanging out on his stoop with his adorable…
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http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/zeta-interactive-entrepreneurs-find-investors/
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The Best Time for Entrepreneurs to Find Investors
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20160622215951
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The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question “When is the best time to look for investors?” is written by David Steinberg, co-founder and CEO of Zeta Interactive.
It’s difficult for any startup to raise capital, but it’s a necessary step in the process of turning a concept into a profitable business. The current market is schizophrenic, with venture capitalists and private equity investors eager to pour money into the “next big thing,” while simultaneously showing extreme caution and pushing for better terms. After several years of heavy activity and high valuations, VC funding has declined in other parts of the world, and may slow in the United States. Plus, the dreaded “down round” has become more common for companies that raised capital when the market was at its frothiest.
I’ve started five companies and exited four with a combined value of almost $2 billion—not including Zeta—and all got funding from VCs and/or private equity. Most importantly, all thrived because of it, and my current company has been valued at $1 billion.
Finding investors isn’t easy, but it’s critically important. Whether you’re working with a major VC or trying to find an angel, your entrepreneurial success will be determined by your ability to raise money from the right investors.
Fitting a square peg into a round hole The best time to raise capital is when you don’t need it, especially if you can do it during a down market. That gives you the opportunity to grow even faster and more efficiently, as there’s less competition for both people and assets. This is where being an opportunist is extremely important. Some businesses need capital when the markets aren’t open or aren’t necessarily looking for what that business is doing.
In this scenario, you have to fit a square peg into a round hole. But it’s these types of challenges that will ultimately define your success. At the end of the day, the most successful entrepreneurs and businesses have the tenacity and aptitude for risk. The ability to figure out the correct “square peg” for a specific “round hole” is an important attribute for all entrepreneurs. The aptitude to do this helps determine when the time is right to raise capital.
Understanding the current climate Venture capital has changed significantly since my first startup in the early 1990s. In today’s current investor climate, it seems like seed money goes where Series A funding used to wind up and Series B rounds now take up what Series C used to. It’s a completely different game today, and it’s only going to keep changing. The pattern will continue, so it’s extremely important to cast a wide net and understand the current venture market’s temperature before looking for capital.
If you’re seeking your first external investor, the best time is often after you’ve established that you have a minimum viable product to show investors the value of your concept. Every round of fundraising should get your company from onset of accomplishments to the next, and this pattern should continue until you are no longer dependent on investment capital.
Building on past success It is fundamental for entrepreneurs to meet private capital and private investors approximately 12 months before their business actually needs the investment to get it at the next level.
If you’ve got a growing company and you’re looking for capital, my theory is to always go out and raise it when you don’t really need it. When you don’t need capital, you’ll have the best ability to get it. Confidence and willingness will help you reach your next financial milestone with enough of a buffer to achieve it before it’s truly necessary.
The key is to show proof of concept if you’re a startup, and initial traction and/or profit potential if you’re already off the ground. Remember, investors fund the growth of your company, not what you’ve already accomplished. But your past accomplishments will be the key when investors decide if you’re worth the risk. There is no right or wrong time to approach an investor as long as you’re successful in attracting the investment.
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You have to be an opportunist.
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http://www.nbc.com/chicago-med/episode-guide/season-1/derailed/101
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160623040233id_/http://www.nbc.com:80/chicago-med/episode-guide/season-1/derailed/101
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Derailed | Episodes | Chicago Med | NBC
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20160623040233
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At the opening day ceremonies for the brand-new Chicago Med Emergency Department, a devastating train crash alerts the medical professionals in attendance that they will soon be engaged in an extreme crisis.
A new staff member and trauma fellow, Dr. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell) was on the train when it happened, and he tends to victims as they roll in. Dr. Rhodes crosses paths in the hospital with Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) - Jay Halstead's (Jesse Lee Soffer) brother from Chicago P.D. - and the two disagree over the diagnosis and treatment of a comatose patient.
As nurses and doctors heal the sick and wounded, we meet other people from Chicago Med. There's Dr. Sarah Reese (Rachel DiPillo), a fourth-year medical student. Her own test in the series premiere is keeping her cool in the heat of extreme pressure... especially after breaking a young child's ribs while administering lifesaving heart compressions. Helping her make it through the day is Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt), Med's Chief of Psychiatry, with whom she shares a close bond. Dr. Charles finds a fighting chance for a young patient with cystic fibrosis when a victim of the train accident becomes a lifesaving lung donor.
The day pushes everyone to their limits, including Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto), who takes patient after patient despite being in her third trimester of pregnancy. Her best friend is ER Nurse April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta). Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee), a former navy combat doctor, loses a young immigrant patient after a tense day of lifesaving measures.
Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson), the Chief Administrator of Clinical Operations, must balance the life and death decisions made daily by her staff - and the ever-difficult role of keeping an eye on the bottom line of hospital policy.
It is a tough first day at the Chicago Med Emergency Department... but it won't be the last. Tomorrow is a new day, and no matter what it brings, this team will live to fight - and face it - together.
As the Chicago Trilogy shows intertwine, familiar faces from Chicago Fire show up - including Chili (Dora Madison), Brett (Kara Killmer) and Herrmann (David Eigenberg).
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In the series premiere, a train crash brings a flood of trauma patients to the new Chicago Med Emergency Department.
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http://fortune.com/2015/07/29/cargo-freight-thieves-cybercriminals/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160623092855id_/http://fortune.com:80/2015/07/29/cargo-freight-thieves-cybercriminals/
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Freight thieves are becoming cybercriminals
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20160623092855
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Freight trucks have always made a convenient target for thieves. Containers can be pilfered at a roadside rest stop, or a whole truck can disappear while its driver grabs a hot shower. Sometimes truckers are even hijacked at gunpoint.
But a new generation of tech-savvy truck thieves are innovating on old methods.
“One of the M.O.’s that’s on the increase is in a sense identity theft—impersonating another company,” says Nick Erdmann of the security technology firm Transport Security.
The tactic is known as a fictitious pickup. It starts with loadboards—websites like Dat.com and Truckstop.com where shipping brokers list loads in need of delivery. Though the contents of those loads aren’t listed, canny thieves can spot the valuable ones based on certain details: Loads requiring high insurance minimums, loads requiring a team of drivers, or loads coming out of particular locales, such as technology corridors.
Then, using falsified credentials to pose as legitimate truckers, criminals contract to carry the load, drive their own truck to a warehouse or distribution center, and simply pick it up. It can be days before cargo owners even know they’ve been robbed.
“People just hand it over,” says Detective Eric Dice, who heads a cargo theft task force in Florida. “It’s amazing.”
The average value of a load lost to a fictitious pickup was more than $140,000 in 2014, and fraud has played a role in much as 10% of all cargo theft in recent years, according to the freight security firm CargoNet.
Impersonating an existing company can be as simple as finding their logo and address on their website. A company’s Department of Transportation-issued Interstate Operating Authority number is also often publicly displayed—and if not, it’s just a phone call away.
“You just say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to process your invoice, we’ve got a check for you,’” says Keith Lewis, CargoNet’s vice president of operations. “Of course I’m going to give you my [number]. I think I’m getting money.”
Alternately, criminals can use a prepaid credit card to get a new DoT number online through the USDOT’s SAFER portal—thanks to deregulation, applicants are not thoroughly vetted.
Most devious of all, according to Lewis, defunct companies can be revived, along with their DoT number. Because DoT numbers are issued chronologically, an older, lower number is often an indicator of trustworthiness to freight brokers.
The ease of falsifying trucking entities is illustrated by the case of father-and-son heist team Jon and Kyle Dickerson. They operated a string of cover operations over fourteen years, with names including D&T Trucking, Night Line Trucking, and Fish and More. When one company racked up safety violations or otherwise came under suspicion, they just started a new one.
The logistics industry has moved to tackle the problem of fictitious pickups, which declined in 2014 after ticking up steadily since 2005. One part of the solution is enhanced security technology. Many truckloads now contain hidden GPS trackers, a practice pioneered nearly a decade ago by the tobacco industry, according to Erdmann. Tracking units, such as those offered by Lojack SCI, are now no bigger than a cell phone, easily attached to trucks or slipped inside packages.
Other technologies, though, are actually boons to thieves. RFID tagging has been championed by many in the logistics and transportation industry, but Lewis says criminals can use their own RFID readers to identify and target lucrative loads.
While thieves do go after high-value electronics, those are easily traceable. The biggest target, surprisingly, is food, which can be sold back into the supply chain through unscrupulous distributors. “I’ve never seen a serial number on a package of chicken,” says Lewis. “Once you eat it, the evidence is gone.”
The total cost of cargo theft nationwide is hard to measure, mostly because reporting is spotty. Lewis says that law enforcement, insurers, and carriers don’t talk enough. Most states don’t have separate criminal laws covering cargo theft. And of the theft data CargoNet gathers, less than half includes the value of the loss.
Carriers want to save face, says Lewis: “I’m embarrassed to tell anybody I’ve been burned.”
In that informational vacuum, what’s left is speculation. Some estimates put total cargo theft losses at $15 billion and up. Others say theft adds as much as 20% to the cost of consumer goods.
But Lewis, for one, has a deeper motivation than the numbers.
“My dad owned a trucking company, and I understand what this does to a small business. Even for a big company, the consequential damage is tremendous.”
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Bad guys have turned to identity theft and sophisticated fraud to steal drugs, electronics, and food right off the loading dock.
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http://fortune.com/2016/03/17/twitter-tweetdeck-windows/
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Twitter To End Support Of TweetDeck App For Windows
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Twitter will not longer support a Windows version of its popular TweetDeck app.
The social messaging company said in a blog post on Thursday that it will “no longer support a standalone Windows app” of TweetDeck as of April 15.
Twitter said it will end support of the Windows TweetDeck app in order to “better focus on enhancing your TweetDeck experience,” but it did not elaborate in more detail.
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The TweetDeck app lets users view multiple Twitter twtr feeds in one single pane. The tool is popular with journalists and other users who like to see multiple Tweets and messages than what the standard Twitter app can display.
Of course, Twitter is not leaving Windows users completely in the dark. Windows users will still be able to use TweetDeck through their web browsers.
For more about Twitter, watch:
Twitter acquired TweetDeck in 2011 in a deal that was reported to have been worth over $40 million.
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Windows users will have to access TweetDeck from their browsers.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-cards-against-humanity-donald-trump-survival-kit-bsi-20160518-story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160623165411id_/http://www.chicagotribune.com:80/bluesky/originals/ct-cards-against-humanity-donald-trump-survival-kit-bsi-20160518-story.html?
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Cards Against Humanity unpacks Donald Trump survival kit
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20160623165411
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Donald Trump has come to Cards Against Humanity, though the presumptive GOP presidential nominee has been the focus of similar card games for several weeks.
The maker of fill-in-the-blanks card games, which describes itself as “a party game for horrible people,” announced the presale of its Trump-themed expansion pack Wednesday and promptly sold out of its 10,000 sets.
It includes more than just 25 Trump cards: It comes with a full survival kit.
The Donald Trump Bug-Out Bag, $25, includes 15 items, among them food rations, water-purification tablets, a hand-crank radio, a gas mask, a harmonica, a Mexican citizenship application, seed packets and a locket with a photo of Barack Obama.
As for the cards themselves, they include prompts like “Donald Trump has nominated _________ for his VP,” and answers like “A gnawing sense of dread” and “Whipping lower-class white men into a xenophobic frenzy.”
The Donald Trump Bug-Out Bag announcement came after several groups have created their own Trump-related card games styled after Cards Against Humanity.
Ad agency Sid Lee announced an expansion pack called “Trump Against Humanity” at the end of April. Toy and housewares maker SCS Direct released a game called “Humanity Hates Trump.” Another, more general, product is the 2016 Election Game, which includes cards that reference other candidates, like Ben Carson and Bernie Sanders.
SCS Direct alleged in a lawsuit that Cards Against Humanity complained to Kickstarter about Humanity Hates Trump, resulting in the upstart card game being taken off the crowdfunding site.
Cards Against Humanity declined to comment. The company says on its website that the Donald Trump Bug-Out Bag will ship in June.
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Donald Trump has come to Cards Against Humanity, though the presumptive GOP presidential nominee has been the focus of similar card games for several weeks.
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http://fortune.com/2016/04/18/the-worlds-most-powerful-women-april-18th-2/
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The World’s Most Powerful Women: April 18
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Good morning, WMPW readers! The European Union’s top diplomat led a key mission to Iran, designer Victoria Beckham has a new business line, and three women from the University of Connecticut’s basketball team set yet another record. Got some buzz on a powerful woman? Get in touch, at: laura.cohn@gmail.com or @laurascohn. Happy Monday!
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April 18
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http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/18/are-true-entrepreneurs-born-and-not-made.html
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Are true entrepreneurs born and not made?
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People all over the world had a similar view on the question of whether entrepreneurs are born or made.
In 37 of 38 markets participating in the study, people believe entrepreneurship can be taught and that entrepreneurs can be made. Only in Japan did people believe entrepreneurs are born and not made.
Attitudes toward entrepreneurship are changing across generations. Overall, nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that entrepreneurs are made and not born. People under 35 have the strongest belief that entrepreneurship can be taught, with 70 percent agreeing, versus 65 percent of those 35 to 49 years old, and 57 percent of those older than 50.
Read MoreThe best places in the world to launch a start-up
The report also shows how much more could be done to support these potential entrepreneurs—and points to opportunities for those who want to help.
Fewer than half, 43 percent of respondents, believe existing entrepreneurship education options are satisfactory.
They cite basic business skills (42 percent), leadership and management skills (37 percent) and "entrepreneurship in practice" training and education programs as crucial in helping them launch their own businesses. People see schools, state programs and universities as institutions responsible for entrepreneurship education, in that order. Offering entrepreneurship education earlier in schools, in addition to the many university programs that already exist, may help boost entrepreneurship.
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The Amway Global Entrepreneurship report released today shows 42 percent of people from 38 countries would opt to become an entrepreneur.
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http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/russia-encryption-surveillance/
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Russian Lawmakers Call For More Surveillance and Weaker Encryption
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Russia may step up its Internet controls, if new anti-terrorism legislation passes to enable further online surveillance measures.
The country already has a vast and deeply intrusive mechanism called SORM, that allows the authorities to monitor online communications. Bloggers and online news sites have tight controls on what they can say, and there is also a law requiring web firms to store Russians’ data within the country.
Irina Yarovaya, the head of the country’s parliamentary security committee, has now proposed measures that would require Internet service providers to store metadata about customers’ activities for up to three years—and the actual contents of their communications for up to six months.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
State officials would be able to requisition this data, supposedly for anti-terrorism purposes. Currently, telecommunications providers only have to store metadata—time-stamped information about connections—for six months.
Meanwhile, senator Yelena Mizulina (the ultra-conservative behind Russia’s controversial “gay propaganda” law) has reportedly proposed measures, as part of the same package of laws, that would force online communications providers such as WhatsApp fb and Telegram to give the authorities ways to decrypt users’ messages.
Mizulina said encryption was allowing closed groups to operate in which teenagers are “brainwashed to kill police officers.”
She had previously called for the messages posted to such platforms to be “pre-filtered” in order to block out discussions about suicide, but communications minister Nikolai Nikiforov pointed out that encryption made this impossible.
For more on encryption, watch our video.
In the wake of the high-profile Apple-FBI clash, lawmakers in the U.S. also proposed forcing encrypted communications providers to give law enforcement a “back door.” However, those proposals have fizzled out (for now), after experts explained that impregnable encryption is necessary for users’ online security.
If the new Russian proposals do pass into law, they may not come into effect for another three years, Yarovaya said Monday.
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Proposals would force Internet service providers to store the contents of communications, and web firms to give authorities "back doors."
| 16.208333 | 0.875 | 2.208333 |
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Conservative Gay Columnist Is Under Fire
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Norah Vincent is a little nonplused at the rage she provokes. After all, she is hardly the only young columnist with a shopping cart of views that could stock any good Republican larder. Like her take on abortion ("Ours is a country in which you are ill-advised to be a fetus"). Or on multicultural college curricula ("those nebulous, oh-so-advanced `ways of knowing' are likely to keep you driving a cab or flipping burgers for the rest of your life"). Or AIDS (gay advocates "don't like to admit" that "gay men must bear the responsibility for the spread of AIDS.")
The rage, however, is not just about what she writes. It is about who she is and what she now writes for. Since last year, Ms. Vincent has been a freelance columnist for The Village Voice, the granddaddy of alternative weeklies and the voice of the political left. Make that the many political lefts.
She is also a lesbian, which fuels the fury of The Voice's readers and its staff. Among a sizable group of gays, she is scorned as the latest in a new breed of gay intellectual opportunists, who are said to pander to latent homophobia in the mainstream media, selling out the movement that paved the way for their success. The more successful she is — she is now a regular on the opinion pages of The Los Angeles Times — the angrier her opponents become.
Richard Goldstein, an executive editor of The Voice, bristles both at her work and her gradually increasing prominence. "The liberal press needs to ask itself why they consistently promote the work of gay writers who attack other gay people," he said. His list includes Ms. Vincent, the journalist Andrew Sullivan and the social critic Camille Paglia. "This is a kind of vaudeville for liberals," he said.
Don Forst, The Voice's editor, shot back: "I don't have secret prejudices. All my prejudice is right on the surface. And I'm not a gay basher. I know the staff is unhappy with" Ms. Vincent's column, which appears every two weeks and is entitled "Higher Ed." But, he said, "I don't put the paper out for the staff."
Mr. Forst added that The Voice's core remains "where we've been all the time — to the left. Appealing to young people from 20 to 40. I think she appeals to some of them. More than that, she gets people to read her. And if she introduces thoughts that they haven't had, that's terrific."
Ms. Vincent believes many gay men and lesbians "would dislike anyone they see as disagreeing with them. You come out of the closet and say `The world is hostile and I want to find a nice litlle enclave where everyone agrees.' "
Through the "Higher Ed" column, Ms. Vincent, while still a freelance writer, has become a cavalrywoman in what she calls the Kulturkampf, higher education's version of the Thirty Years' War, which exhausted Europe. She has pilloried Columbia University's judicial process for accused sex offenders and gleefully deconstructed postmodernism.
Since she began appearing in The Los Angeles Times earlier this year, Ms. Vincent has become one of two regular lesbian commentators on the country's op-ed pages — the other being Deb Price, who writes about gay civil rights for The Detroit News. But John Carroll, editor of The Los Angeles Times, said he was not looking for a gay columnist or a libertarian, but for someone who "would cause people to read and think. I thought she was more interesting than any particular niche."
For some gay people, most prominently Mr. Sullivan, Ms. Vincent's philosophy (call it conservative, which she does not, or libertarian, which she does, or just plain contrarian) seems like common sense. "Norah is not a contrarian gay journalist," he wrote in an e-mail last week. "She represents a large number of gay men and women who simply don't buy the outdated leftism of most of the gay press and most of gay activism. It is the gay press that's contrarian — publishing writers whose work would be interesting if it were still 1976 but who have nothing new to say."
But Mr. Sullivan himself is tagged by Mr. Goldstein and others as the prime example of the alliance of gay conservatives and liberally inclined media outlets. As Charles Kaiser, the author of "The Gay Metropolis" (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), said last week, "I certainly think that Andrew's popularity, especially on the talk-show circuit has a lot to do with his own self hatred, which makes him an especially attractive kind of homosexual to a certain kind of talk- show host. Which is the reason that his prominence is so infuriating to the rest of the community."
To which Mr. Sullivan responds: "It's a classic McCarthyite tactic of the left to question the motives and good faith of those who disagree with them." At The New Republic, Mr. Sullivan was the first editor to publish a piece by Ms. Vincent.
Whether the cause is fear or anger, it is clear that Ms. Vincent's views are not welcomed by many readers of The Voice. Her views have provoked particularly sharp anger among transsexuals, a group that feels extremely vulnerable to prejudice. Ms. Vincent's article "Suddenly Not Susan," her first for The Voice, helped spur an angry demonstration at the newspaper in November 1999. (The points of contention were Ms. Vincent's choice of pronouns — she did not always use the male pronoun for someone living as a male — and the cover artwork, which showed an anatomically correct Barbie doll edited to be more like Ken.)
She also faulted the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' plan to extend city employees' insurance coverage to cover transsexual surgery.
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The rage over columnsist Norah Vincent is not just about what she writes. It is about who she is and what she now writes for
| 44.5 | 0.923077 | 14.384615 |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/fashion/weddings/hilary-geary-and-wilbur-ross-jr.html
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Hilary Geary and Wilbur Ross Jr.
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20160624190354
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ANYONE wishing to know Hilary Geary's take on life need only gaze at the inscription on a needlepoint pillow in the living room of her home in Southampton, N.Y. It reads: "Eat, Drink and Remarry."
Ms. Geary, 54, a society writer for Quest magazine, is the kind of person who does not sound corny saying "Oh, golly." Her subjects tend to be her family and friends. "They trust me," she said.
She met Wilbur L. Ross Jr., an investment banker, at a party given by Terry Allen Kramer, a Broadway producer, in 1995, in the months before her first husband, John W. Geary II, died. Mr. Ross, a bankruptcy specialist working for the Rothschild family, was so adept at getting his way that he was known as a troubled company's "worst nightmare."
But it was his date -- Betsy McCaughey, then lieutenant governor of New York State -- who left an impression on Ms. Geary. "She was so famous," Ms. Geary said. Ms McCaughey was to become Mr. Ross's second wife that year. Ms. Geary later dated Alfonse M. D'Amato and married Peter Green, a British investment banker.
It was not until two years ago, when seated beside each other at a party given by Amanda Haynes-Dale, that Ms. Geary and Mr. Ross became acquainted. By then, Ms. Geary and her second husband had split up, and so had Mr. Ross and the lieutenant governor. "I thought they'd have a tremendous amount in common," said Ms. Haynes-Dale, a friend of both. "New York. Palm Beach. Southampton. Both love going out every night."
Mr. Ross had left the Rothschilds for a more lucrative career as an investor in the assets of bankrupt companies. He also had become an influential industrialist. (A billionaire, Mr. Ross now controls one-fifth of the country's steel production and has interests in textiles and coal. Business columnists and friends sometimes compare his influence to J. P. Morgan's.)
After that party, Mr. Ross sent Ms. Geary an e-mail message "with a very precise intelligent answer" to a financial question she had posed. She was impressed. Mr. Ross, in turn, took note of the invitation he received to a dinner party at Ms. Geary's house a few days later. "I thought I must have made a tremendous impression," he said. Later, he said, he learned that society hostesses "always need single men." Nevertheless, Mr. Ross, 66, said it was a match he pursued as tenaciously as any deal. She brought Mr. Ross into her social circle, which includes involvement with the Central Park Conservancy and the Boys Club of New York.
"Often, a woman is the one who organizes one's social life," Ms. Geary said. "The man who is working hard does not have time to pay attention to that."
Her influence could be seen in his wardrobe. "I've been redecorated," Mr. Ross said last week as he was showing off a baby-blue Hermès tie that they picked out in Paris.
About 40 guests looked on as they were married on Oct. 9 by the glow of the Tiffany windows of St. Andrew's Dune Church in Southampton. The bride wore a gold suit by Michael Kors that shimmered in the afternoon light. She was escorted down the aisle by her two sons, Ted and Jack. Alex Wilbur, 5, Mr. Ross's grandson, carried the ring.
At a wedding supper in the bride's home, the tables were adorned with white hydrangea and bars of soap labeled Vote.
A larger party for 300 friends was given on Monday at the Rainbow Room in New York. The crowd, which included Carl C. Icahn, Georgette Mosbacher and Arnold Scaasi, topped off a dinner of lobster and filet mignon with banana splits. "God is in the details," said the bride, who rented ice cream parlor dishes for their authenticity.
Ms. Mosbacher spoke for many guests when she said: "When men are as accomplished as Mr. Ross, and have built what he's built, they don't have a lot of time to enjoy it. Hilary will open his eyes to that life, to the glamour. She rounds his life out."
Whether Mr. Ross will be able to impart his negotiating skill to his wife remains to be seen. In a toast, he reported dryly, that when they went to buy the ring, they "only paid a little over retail."
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Vows column on wedding of Hilary Geary and Wilbur Ross Jr; photos (M)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/health/a-horrific-case-of-hiccups-a-novel-treatment.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160625042423id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2006/01/10/health/a-horrific-case-of-hiccups-a-novel-treatment.html
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A Horrific Case of Hiccups, a Novel Treatment
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20160625042423
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Recently, Mr. Smith decided to try a new approach. Dr. Bryan R. Payne, a neurosurgeon at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, implanted in Mr. Smith's upper chest a device that generates electrical pulses, a vagus nerve stimulator.
It sends rhythmic bursts of electricity to the brain by way of the vagus nerve, which passes through the neck.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the vagus nerve stimulator in 1997 as a way to control seizures in some patients with epilepsy.
Last year, the agency endorsed the use of the stimulator as a treatment of last resort for people with severe depression, despite controversy about its effectiveness for that.
The treatment has not been approved, or even seriously studied, as an approach to chronic hiccups.
In June 2004, Dr. Payne and a colleague at L.S.U., Dr. Robert L. Tiel, used the device to treat a Texan, Shane Shafer, 50, who had been hiccupping for almost a year.
An earlier stroke had damaged areas of Mr. Shafer's brain stem, Dr. Payne said, somehow setting off the chronic hiccupping, though the precise mechanism is unknown.
Mr. Shafer "had essentially been tried on everything," Dr. Payne said, including a major tranquilizer, chlorpromazine; a muscle relaxant, baclofen; and metoclopramide (Reglan) and domperidone, drugs for gastrointestinal disorders
Because gastrointestinal problems can cause hiccups, doctors often try drugs that act on the digestive tract.
But for Mr. Shafer nothing had worked.
Dr. Payne and his colleagues tried giving Mr. Shafer an injection of anesthesia to numb a nerve involved in breathing. That, too, failed.
But about 10 minutes later, Dr. Payne recalled, Mr. Shafer's voice grew hoarse and, to the surprise of all present, the hiccups subsided, at least until the injection wore off. What had happened, the team reasoned, was that the anesthetic had migrated and had temporarily blocked the activity of another nerve, the vagus, and that was what had quelled the spasms.
Many folk remedies for hiccups -- drinking cold water, eating a spoonful of sugar, stimulating the back of the throat and throwing up -- are actually forms of vagal stimulation, Dr. Tiel said, adding, "Many of them work, to a certain extent at least."
He also noted that a small number of patients who received vagus nerve stimulation for epilepsy developed temporary cases of hiccups, indicating a possible overlap between the nervous pathways affected by the treatment and those involved in the hiccups.
There was reason to believe that the treatment, an intense and repeated form of vagal stimulation, might help Mr. Shafer.
After the device had been implanted and activated, Mr. Shafer's hiccups disappeared.
A flurry of television news broadcasts and newspaper articles followed, featuring Mr. Shafer as a medical success story. A detailed case report also appeared in May in The Journal of Neurosurgery.
"Prior to that, we had not seen many cases" of persistent hiccups, Dr. Payne said.
Afterward, however, chronic hiccuppers from around the country began to call.
"We now have a database of over 70 people who have contacted our department," and many are interested in trying the stimulator, he said.
Few people have received the treatment, mainly because it is so expensive, about $20,000 for the device and the surgery to implant it. Neither Medicare nor most health insurers will pay for what they classify as an unproved use.
Mr. Smith said that he worked hard to persuade his insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield, to pay and that the company had agreed to cover 80 percent of the costs.
"After I explained everything to them," he said, including how much they had already paid for drugs and doctors' visits, "they called me back and said O.K."
He remains concerned, he said, about the money, approximately $4,000, that he will need to pay out of pocket, in addition to the repeated six-hour trips to New Orleans for follow-up visits.
Dr. Tiel and Dr. Payne expressed frustration that they were not able to offer free treatment to Mr. Smith and other patients. They said that they were writing grants and trying to obtain financing for a clinical trial, but that research dollars for the disorder were hard to come by.
"If it's a cardiac arrhythmia, everyone understands," Dr. Tiel said. "If it's a hiccup, people laugh."
Dr. Russell K. McAllister, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the Texas A&M College of Medicine-Scott & White Memorial Hospital, said, "There are few or no controlled studies out there on hiccups treatment."
Dr. McAllister published a case study in June in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia on a patient who began to hiccup after receiving an epidural anesthetic.
He said that vagus nerve stimulation was potentially promising for some patients.
"It certainly wouldn't be a first-line treatment," he said. "But if you've exhausted all other possibilities, it might be something to consider."
After a vagus nerve stimulator has been implanted, it is difficult to remove completely. Some wires typically remain attached to the vagus nerve.
The device can also cause patients' voices to become hoarse.
Dr. Payne and Dr. Tiel have implanted the stimulators in four hiccup patients, but the treatment's effectiveness is hard to determine, even in such a small group.
Mr. Shafer died last year.
Two other implant recipients stopped hiccupping right after receiving stimulation, but they have apparently been lost to longer-term follow-up, Dr. Payne said. Their charts are stranded in a building flooded by Hurricane Katrina that remains off limits because of rampant mold.
As result, Dr. Payne remains in contact with only Mr. Smith.
When Mr. Smith's stimulator was first turned on, "it felt like someone shocked me," he said.
Dr. Payne adjusted the settings, and then "he told me to count to 10" and the hiccups were gone, Mr. Smith recalled. "I was happy as a clam," he said, adding that he and his girlfriend went straight from the hospital to a newly opened seafood restaurant in New Orleans to celebrate.
But when he returned to Montgomery, the hiccups also returned.
"I don't guess it's as bad as before," he said. "I slept through the night for the first time in a good while. But it isn't working like I hoped."
"It changed my voice a little," he added. "I don't have a problem with that."
Dr. Payne said it could take a while to find the right setting for Mr. Smith's stimulator. If a very high current is used, he said, "we could break the hiccups, but he'd be miserable."
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In extreme cases of chronic hiccups doctors are exploring use of vagus nerve stimulator surgically implanted under skin near collarbone; device is approved by Food and Drug Administration to treat seizures and to help with severe depression, but was found to have some connection to hiccup stimulation; Dr Bryan R Payne, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center neurosurgeon, performed first procedure, described in Journal of Neurosurgery, in 2004; device described; drawing (M)
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Modern tribes: the helicopter parent
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20160625112856
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Have you done Warwick? We went, didn’t we, darling, and loved it. OK, I know Coventry isn’t the most “OMG happening” place – is that the right word, darling? – on the planet, but the politics tutor was drop-dead gorgeous and the other parents were delightful. Did you talk to any of the students, Tom, what’s wrong with “gap yah”? I could completely see myself in the library, couldn’t I, Tom? And their graduate employment figures are amazing, of course: it’s right up there in the rankings – joint 48th – not that it matters!
Well, we looked at Leeds, but it’s so far away and I’ve never much cared for that accent, no, I’m sure your Jack would love it, that’s if he doesn’t mind the dreadful weather. Same with Edinburgh – we might have gone for Edinburgh, mightn’t we, Tom, even with the poor student satisfaction, except the rudeness when I put my hand up and asked about vegan kitchen arrangements! Tom can’t be the only one. On the plus side, stunning cathedral. That’s what I, sorry, we adored about Durham, wasn’t it, lovely evensongs for our long weekends, but the grades they want are ridiculous considering they’re number 61.
Have you been to St Andrews? Well, Tom wasn’t keen, they don’t seem to do the course he wants, but I told him, didn’t I, darling, that since his father and I will be paying through the nose, he might want to bear in mind it’s golfing heaven.
Related: Modern tribes: the Hiddlestoner
If only they’d get Benedict Cumberbatch as a fellow, I’d be completely sold. Well, it’s his decision, but for me the right celebrity makes such a difference to the overall “vibe”. That’s why we’re tempted by Winchester, not just the cathedral – yes, I know Tom, you’re not going anywhere that chose Alan Titchmarsh for its public face, but really, if I’m paying £20,000 for the privilege, I’m all for a chancellor who knows something about herbaceous borders. That’s the trouble with Bath – the Earl of Wessex! I said to Tom, honestly, I think we can do a little better than a Wessex, didn’t I, Tom? Tom?
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We might have gone for Edinburgh, even with the poor student satisfaction, except the rudeness when I put my hand up and asked about vegan kitchen arrangements!
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http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/18/orange-is-the-new-black-star-opens-up-about-immigration-strugg/20995603/
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'Orange Is the New Black' star opens up about immigration struggles
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20160625151241
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Diane Guerrero, 28, is best known for her role as Maritza Ramos on the Netflix hit 'Orange is the New Black,' but
recently by sharing her family's harrowing immigration story.
In an emotional op-ed for the
this week, Guerrero told the story of how her mother, father and brother were deported to Colombia when Guerrero was just 14. She recounted how her family wanted to find a better life in America.
'Orange Is the New Black' star opens up about immigration struggles
This image released by Netflix shows Kate Mulgrew, from left, Diane Guerrero, Selenis Leyva, Jessica Pimentel, Jackie Cruz and Dascha Polanco in a scene from âOrange is the New Black.â The second season of the prison series will be available on Friday, June 6, on Netflix. (AP Photo/Netflix, K.C. Bailey)
NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA - AUGUST 12: Actress Diane Guerrero attends the Television Academy and SAG-AFTRA's presentation of Dynamic and Diverse: A 66th Emmy Awards celebration of Diversity at Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre on August 12, 2014 in North Hollywood, California. (Photo by Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic)
NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CA - AUGUST 12: Actress Diane Guerrero attends the Television Academy and SAG-AFTRA Presents Dynamic & Diverse: A 66th Emmy Awards Celebration of Diversity at the Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre on August 12, 2014 in North Hollywood, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Vicky Jeudy and Diane Guerrero attend Netflix's "Orange Is The New Black" Season 2 premiere after-party at the Hudson hotel on Thursday, May 15, 2014, in New York. (Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP)
HOLLYWOOD, CA - OCTOBER 09: Actress Diane Guerrero attends Eva Longoria's Foundation dinner at Beso on October 9, 2014 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage)
Diane Guerrero, left, and Andrea Bordeaux seen at the Television Academy's 66th Emmy Awards Dynamic and Diverse Nominee Reception at the Television Academy on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014, in the NoHo Arts District in Los Angeles. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images)
Jackie Cruz and Diane Guerrero attend Netflix's "Orange Is The New Black" Season 2 premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Thursday, May 15, 2014, in New York. (Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP)
Mishael Morgan and from left, Diane Guerrero, Andra Fuller and Abhi Sinha seen at the Television Academy's 66th Emmy Awards Dynamic and Diverse Nominee Reception at the Television Academy on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2014, in the NoHo Arts District in Los Angeles. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images)
Vicky Jeudy and Diane Guerrero attend Netflix's "Orange Is The New Black" Season 2 premiere after-party at the Hudson hotel on Thursday, May 15, 2014, in New York. (Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP)
HOLLYWOOD, CA - OCTOBER 09: Actress Diane Guerrero attends Eva Longoria's Foundation dinner at Beso on October 9, 2014 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage)
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 27: Diane Guerrero get hands on with Sunset Overdrive and the hottest games on Xbox One on October 27, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Microsoft)
The actress wrote in the
, "My parents came here from Colombia during a time of great instability there. Escaping a dire economic situation at home, they moved to New Jersey, where they had friends and family, seeking a better life, and then moved to Boston after I was born."
, Guerrero said she lived in fear of her parents being deported. Eventually, her ultimate nightmare came true when she came home from school to find her parents missing.
She explains that when she got home, their cars were there, "and dinner was started and the lights were on, but I couldn't find them."
"I broke down. I hid under the bed because I was afraid that somebody was going to come for me," Guerrero told
. "I don't know who that someone was but I was just so scared."
Nobody ever came. "Not a single person at any level of government took any note of me,"
While talking to CNN, Guerrero became very emotional, explaining how difficult it is to live so far apart from them. "I've grown up without them, and there's things about them that are new that I don't recognize, and I just, it hurts."
Because of her experience, Guerrero believes America's immigration system is flawed, and that major changes should be made. "This system didn't offer relief for them, and what I'm asking for is to create or find a solution for families," she said.
Her story is one of many fueling the fight on Capitol Hill to reform our immigration laws. President Obama is poised to
as early as this week.
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Diane Guerrero, 28, is best known for her role as Maritza Ramos on the Netflix hit 'Orange is the New Black,' but she's made headlines recently by sharing her family'
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Lorde -- Porn Awards Want To See What Dat Mouth Do
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20160625184431
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's innocent flirting with porn star,
, could land her deep in the sex-on-cam biz -- the porn industry wants her for a gig at their award show.
Porn sources tell TMZ ...
(AVN) sent an enticing email to the singer inviting her to open wide ... and sing for the AVNs (the porn Oscars) in Vegas next month.
Back in November, Deen and Lorde safely exchanged mutual love -- on Twitter -- which AVN believes is a strong enough connection for her to perform at the show.
No word on whether she'll accept the invite, but AVN is convinced her “passion for a good story” makes her a perfect fit. Barely legal bonus: Lorde just turned 18.
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Lorde's innocent flirting with porn star, James Deen, could land her deep in the sex-on-cam biz -- the porn industry wants her for a gig at…
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How One New York Coffee Bar Came to Be
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20160626023049
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ON the southwest corner of 91st Street and Broadway stands Joe Bar, a modest glass and brick testament to the dreams of a New York couple and a college friend.
This is the story of Joe Bar, which began its commercial life on Nov. 20. It is also the story of three neophytes who seized upon the American dream of owning a business, refusing to be deterred by the naysayers, who warned of recession, high rents and other formidable risks.
David and Amelia Silver. A happily married couple, both 31, both on fast tracks toward successful careers in finance and marketing in New York. On a trip to San Francisco, the Silvers stopped in for coffee at Pete's, a trendy coffee bar. Mr. Silver, a copywriter at Ogilvy & Mather, the advertising agency, turned to his wife, a manager at the Bankers Trust Company, and said, "Wouldn't a coffee bar like this be great in New York?"
Mrs. Silver was intrigued by the West Coast coffee bars, casual places for people to meet, hang out and drink great coffee. Soon they were dreaming of opening their own coffee bar.
Back in New York, sleep didn't come easy. The Silvers were jolted awake by the voices of other coffee-bar owners who cautioned them to think twice. Would New Yorkers, who like their coffee in a New York minute, at no more than 50 cents a cup, be willing to pay $2 or $3 for special brews? Was the New York market ready for coffee bars?
Nonetheless, the Silvers saw opportunity on every corner. "New York is a very sophisticated city, and the product made a lot of sense," Mrs. Silver said. "We felt we could do well because of the density, amount of buildings and pedestrian traffic." THE EDUCATION OF THE SILVERS
Mr. and Mrs. Silver spent the better part of 1992 reading about coffee and attending business seminars. They enrolled in "How to Open a Coffee Bar" at the Learning Annex, a three-hour course taught by Paul Bernstein and Alan Phillips, the owners of Cooper's Coffee, two Upper West Side coffee bars. Mrs. Silver also attended a seminar sponsored by the Specialty Coffee Association of America.
"We figured if we were really serious, we'd better study up on the coffee business," Mr. Silver recalled. Although Mrs. Silver had done some catering in high school, the food business -- and all it entailed -- was no lifelong dream. It was new to them. But "by the time we started the actual process," Mr. Silver said, "we pretty much knew what our strategy was going to be, knew the kind of numbers we wanted to hit and whether that was achievable."
Basing their figures on the industry average, the couple knew it would take about $200,000 to open a coffee bar in Manhattan. Rather than seeking financing from investors, a process that would have delayed the opening, they decided to go it alone, using their own savings and some money borrowed from relatives. Before taking the next step, another essential piece was necessary: finding someone to manage the bar.
He and his wife couldn't afford to give up their day jobs, Mr. Silver said. "We had to find someone with a solid background in business, someone we could trust, to go in with us on this," he added.
Alison Prioleau, 31, a friend of Mr. Silver's from their college days at Wesleyan University, was the first person to come to mind. When Mr. Silver telephoned, she was working on an M.B.A. at New York University, planning to teach or start her own business.
"Coffee's a great, interesting product, but it's gotten a dated image," Ms. Prioleau remembers Mr. Silver telling her. Within a few minutes, her old college buddy had convinced her that New York needed a coffee bar -- with her as its manager. THE LOCATION
With Ms. Prioleau joining them as the manager and as an investor, the Silvers were ready to scout locations. The early part of 1993 was devoted "to finding the right spot," Mr. Silver said.
Initially, they looked in the Wall Street area.
"In scouting locations there, we noticed that everything starts early, around 6:30 A.M., and by 10 A.M., it's dead," Mrs. Silver said. "Plus, most of the business down there is five days a week. The weekends are dead. We knew we weren't going to be able to make a go of this in a 'three hour a day, five days a week' business, so we decided to look in midtown."
They estimated that they would need 300 to 400 customers a day to survive, the sort of traffic not easy to come by in most locations.
The rents in midtown were in the $10,000-a-month range, more than they wanted to pay, although the rent in the location they finally chose was no lower.
They found several storefronts on the Upper East Side, some priced at half of what was being asked in midtown. But they thought volume of the pedestrian traffic was too low.
"We would stand on a corner at a certain time of day and just watch the traffic go by a location and try to gauge what it was," Mrs. Silver said. "We weren't comfortable with the numbers."
It was June when Mrs. Silver spotted a "For Lease" sign in a shop on the west side of Broadway at the corner of 91st Street.
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ON the southwest corner of 91st Street and Broadway stands Joe Bar, a modest glass and brick testament to the dreams of a New York couple and a college friend. This is the story of Joe Bar, which began its commercial life on Nov. 20. It is also the story of three neophytes who seized upon the American dream of owning a business, refusing to be deterred by the naysayers, who warned of recession, high rents and other formidable risks.
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Microsoft's New App Solves Your Business Card Overload Problem
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20160626184423
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Microsoft has an updated app that can scan and save business cards to your phone, letting you sweep your unruly stacks of business cards into the trash.
The new “business card” feature was released in an updated version of the Office Lens app for Windows Phone. Snap a photo of any business card, and the app will automatically crop the image down to the relevant text, format it for legibility and save it to OneNote, a Microsoft document management app.
Users can then search the text by keyword or automatically upload contacts to their phone — though you’ll still have to trash the paper business cards manually.
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Office Lens scans and saves contact information
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STAGE - JUDITH IVEY IN 'SECOND LADY,' MONODRAMA - NYTimes.com
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20160627050827
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IN her diverse performances Off
Judith Ivey has had a quality of total believability no matter how alien the circumstances may be to her immediate experience. She avoids artifice and mannerisms at the same time that she personalizes characters. This is very much the case in ''Second Lady,'' a monodrama written by M. Kilburg Reedy and finely tailored to Miss Ivey's exceptional talent. The play at the Production Company also represents the debut of a promising playwright.
Miss Ivey is playing a Vice-Presidential candidate's wife who is filling in for her husband with a speech to the League of Women Voters. The play, though timely in an election year, is less concerned with politics than it is with the loss of a woman's self-esteem.
Smartly attired and coiffed, Miss Ivey appears the soul of composure. However, as is often the case in politics, appearances can be deceptive. ''It may surprise you that speaking in public doesn't come easily to me,'' she says, adding with a disarming laugh, ''Then again it may not.''
As she puts on a pair of eyeglasses with a broken rim, her lovely face looks slightly askew, reflecting her own increasing sense of disorientation. To her chagrin, she discovers that she does not have the full text of her husband's speech and she looks under the podium, in her handbag and to the wings of the stage for help. Flustered, she tries to improvise.
At first the tone of the piece is gently satiric, but gradually the stream of conversation moves from self- mockery to self-exposure. The podium stands in for the analyst's couch and the audience is her auditor. Soon we realize that the woman is drowning in a debilitating marriage and that her husband is unsuitable both as a mate and as a candidate.
Miss Reedy's writing is sometimes so matter of fact as to be transparent and the conclusion does not avoid the pitfall of predictability - without harm the play could end one scene sooner - but the author does have a comprehension of the toll of campaigning and of behavior under duress. In Miss Ivey, she has an ideal spokesman. With expert timing and shifts in inflection, she describes her husband's attributes and unintentionally ends with a bill of indictment.
A self-conscious mode of playwriting would call for two women in the role, one speaking the lines her audience hears, the other acting as the character's inner voice. In her winning performance, Miss Ivey conveys all simultaneously so that we feel the insecurity, candor and emotional turmoil behind the politesse.
Carey Perloff has staged the play in front of enlarged photographs of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. Shadowed by her husband's visage for the duration of her 75-minute talk, Miss Ivey finally addresses the photograph as if it were her husband himself, demanding that he look at her. In tandem with her playwright and director, Miss Ivey turns a public address into a three-dimensional portrait.
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IN her diverse performances Off Broadway (''Pastorale'') and on Broadway (''Steaming''), Judith Ivey has had a quality of total believability no matter how alien the circumstances may be to her immediate experience. She avoids artifice and mannerisms at the same time that she personalizes characters. This is very much the case in ''Second Lady,'' a monodrama written by M. Kilburg Reedy and finely tailored to Miss Ivey's exceptional talent. The play at the Production Company also represents the debut of a promising playwright.
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Apple, Home Depot Turn to Bloom Energy As Its Tech Advances
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20160627065514
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When Apple’s new massive campus, dubbed the Spaceship, opens for thousands of its employees next year in Cupertino, Calif., a small part of it will be powered by rows of big silver boxes containing fuel cells that generate energy through a chemical reaction.
The energy technology was developed and manufactured just a few miles away from Apple’s one-mile wide, still unfinished campus by the 15 year-old Silicon Valley company called Bloom Energy, Fortune has learned. Neither Apple nor Bloom Energy would comment on the Cupertino fuel cell project.
The substantial project, at 4 megawatts, is a big deal for Bloom Energy, a company that’s seen major hype, a bevvy of critics, and a steady list of customers. Apple’s adoption of the energy technology is also an important endorsement of fuel cell technology, which has slowly gained some traction with a handful of global brands as an alternative to companies simply plugging their buildings into the power grid.
Fuel cells produce energy by running fuel like natural gas or methane, and oxygen across rows of reactive materials. The process creates a chemical reaction that generates electricity.
The excitement around fuel cells is that they can create electricity directly next to the buildings where it’s needed. That is in stark contrast to how energy has traditionally been produced far away at a coal or gas plant and then delivered long distances over power lines.
During transmission and distribution, up to 15% of the electricity can be lost. Producing power on site, therefore, can be more efficient under the right circumstances. On site power can also add an element of security for operations that really need ongoing power if the greater power grid goes down.
In addition, fuel cells can emit fewer greenhouse gases compared to grid power. Bloom Energy’s fuel cells can use natural gas, which pollutes less than burning coal, along with even “biogas” which comes from collecting methane from decomposing organic matter like on a hog or cattle farm, a waste water treatment plant, or a landfill.
Bloom Energy—which emerged publicly six years ago but was founded in 2001—generated big headlines and excitement early on for its technology that now provides local power for a smattering of global Internet giants and big box retailers. It also drew attention for its loosely discussed goal to sell a low cost version of its fuel cell to power homes one day.
The company is backed by over $1 billion dollars from investors including some of the world’s most well-known venture capitalists. The company’s board includes former Secretary of State Colin Powell, AOL founder Steve Case and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner John Doerr.
But in the past couple of years the notoriously tight-lipped company, has seen some of its bloom fade. A planned initial public offering never materialized, meaning that its early investors likely lost money. For years the company has relied on a California state subsidy, drawing ire from critics and competitors. More recently, that limited subsidy has started shifting to batteries instead of fuel cells.
In addition, industry-watchers have questioned just how green Bloom’s power really is compared to energy from the power grid. Particularly if the power plant down the road also uses natural gas, and biogas can be incredibly difficult to procure.
And forget that pipe dream of the residential fuel cell sold to regular people. It’s not even a topic of discussion anymore.
However, after 15 years of technology development and sales, Bloom Energy has survived and has continued to attract some of the world’s biggest brands to buy into its energy technology. Customers, many in California, are continuing to buy energy from the company’s new and improved fuel cells to power buildings and data centers.
Bloom Energy now says it has fuel cells at more than 300 sites, with 200 megawatts of energy capacity. That’s about the equivalent of one gigawatt of solar, given the sun only shines during the day, says Bloom Energy’s vice president of marketing and customer experience, Asim Hussain. In comparison one large coal or gas plant can generate about one gigawatt of power around the clock.
Over the past year, Bloom Energy has started selling a more efficient, more power dense, and more compact version of its fuel cell, dubbed the Energy Server 5.0, or the fifth version of its fuel cell. Hussain says the new fuel cell is 65% efficient, which is a significant increase from the 48% efficiency of its first fuel cell. It’s also almost double the power density—how much power can be produced per volume—of the previous version.
Apple, after installing early versions of Bloom’s fuel cells at its data center in North Carolina several years ago, is now using Bloom Energy’s more efficient fuel cells at its soon-to-open space age campus. The new project is smaller—less than half the size of the one in North Carolina—but it will help Apple create a microgrid, and run on local power if it disconnects from the greater power grid.
Retail giant Home Depot, too, has been installing Bloom Energy’s new fuel cells behind some of its buildings. On a visit to the Home Depot store in Westbury, N.Y., an hour outside Manhattan, earlier this year, I checked out the shining, compact row of boxy Bloom Energy’s fuel cells outside. There’s only eight refrigerator-sized boxes at the site, but they provide much of the energy needed to run the store around the clock.
By the end 2016, Home Depot plans to power 10% of its stores, at 200 locations, with fuel cells from Bloom Energy. The move is part of a plan for Home Depot to invest in batteries, solar panels, and other ways to be more creative about cleaner, cheaper and more efficient power. It’s also part of a strategic plan for the retail giant to be greener.
Home Depot’s vice president of operations, Chris Berg, told Fortune that Bloom Energy’s fuel cells can lower Home Depot’s energy costs in states like California and New York where electricity rates are high and additional incentives are available for cleaner power options. The technology also helps the company demonstrate sustainability, which can help retain and inspire employees.
Home Depot is an example of a new customer for Bloom Energy that is benefiting from its latest technology. Earlier customers that have used Bloom’s older technology include a who’s who of the tech industry and retail brands like Google GOOGL , Adobe ADBE , Verizon VZ , eBay EBAY , Walmart WMT and AT&T T .
In Home Depot’s case, it’s mostly deploying Bloom’s technology in states where subsidies can provide additional extra support. Many of Bloom’s customers are operating in the same way and installing the devices in California only.
Since Bloom Energy was founded, it’s focused on lowering its costs and boosting the efficiency of its technology. When the company debuted in 2010, an investor told me that it was looking to lower overall costs of making its fuel cells by 60% to 70%.
But it’s unclear if the fuel cells are now low cost enough on their own to compete with other forms of clean and distributed power, like solar panels, or even just grid power. Bloom Energy declined to comment on the specific costs of the fuel cells, but Hussain said that “the overall total cost of ownership is coming down and we are becoming more competitive.”
The core issue with fuel cells—that every fuel cell maker has faced for decades—is that the costs have long been high to build and maintain them. The stacks inside the fuel cell box, which are lined with reactive materials, need to be replaced periodically.
If a fuel cell company must replace those stacks frequently over the years, the overall costs of energy can be high. If a company like Bloom can design the stacks to last longer, and make replacements more infrequent, the overall cost of energy can come down.
It’s these type of costs that have plagued most fuel cell makers. For years, energy industry media site Greentech Media has kept a recurring tally of the world’s profitable fuel cell makers, with three blank spaces for number one, two and three.
Hussain wouldn’t comment on Bloom’s financials, but said “we are progressing and scaling well and still experiencing fast growth.”
Bloom has suggested that’s it’s been close to profitability at various points thanks to its regular sales. This Reuters article, which focused on a large drop in Bloom’s valuation for an early investor, quotes an anonymous longtime investor in Bloom as saying the company is “within striking distance” of profitability.
But Bloom has also historically told its investors that it would become profitable at various points, like in the second half of 2013, as reported by Fortune’s Dan Primack. Early investors in Bloom Energy are likely not so enamored with the company’s slow progress on profitability.
However, beyond venture capital returns, Bloom has survived thus far, and has sold a substantial amount of its fuel cells. So what now?
Will the company end up being like solar panel maker SunPower, which took many years of hardship to become the energy generating powerhouse it is today? Or will Bloom eventually run out of runway, if its costs remain too high for too long?
Remember, the energy business is hard. SunPower even had to sell a major chunk of itself to oil giant Total when times were hard in 2011. Will Bloom end up as a division of a much larger energy company?
When Apple’s Campus 2 switches on its power sources next year, Bloom’s fuel cells will play an important role to help Apple create a “microgrid,” enabling Apple to disconnect from the greater power grid when needed. At the same time, solar panels and batteries will play an even bigger role than fuel cells for Apple’s Campus 2 microgrid.
But that Apple is a repeat customer for Bloom Energy is actually pretty important. Apple kicked the tires on Bloom Energy’s fuel cells at one of the largest fuel cell installations in the U.S. at 10 megawatts in North Carolina. Now the third largest company in the U.S., by revenue, has returned to buy more.
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The company's fuel cells have landed at the space age Apple campus.
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The EU is a welfare Ponzi scheme-commentary
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20160627085406
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Mrs. Thatcher passed away 18 months ago, but the current UK leadership could show enormous character by responding properly to her advice this time… even if it is 25 years late.
This has all come to a head now thanks to an outrageous but predictable row between the EU and the UK. Thanks to the UK's relatively strong economic health, (and that really is a relative term, Britain is still a mess), the EU is trying to hit it up for an additional $2.65 billion dollar payment to European governing body.
Read MoreUK prime minister brands $2.65 billion EU demand 'appalling'
For those of you who don't see this for what it is, let me spell it out for you: W-E-L-F-A-R-E.
And welfare doesn't work. Europe's pathetic economic situation as a whole is as stark an example of that as there is.
So far, UK Prime Minister David Cameron is angrily refusing to make the payment and Friday he demanded an emergency meeting of European finance ministers.
That's not a bad start. But if Cameron really wants to do the right thing and show character, he needs to look inside his own country and listen now to the ever-more-popular leaders of the one party in Britain that has been promoting Thatcher's wise advice all along.
That would be the UK Independence Party, or UKIP, which is currently at record high popularity in Britain as voters there become more and more aware of the welfare Ponzi scheme the EU truly is.
So far, Cameron has not done the right thing as he has been bashing UKIP and ignoring its Thatcheresque warnings about the EU for years. He even tacitly sits by as the Leftist establishment persists in labeling the UKIP some kind of racist organization.
Even when those UKIP warnings come true as they did late last week, Cameron's positions and ruinous attitudes concerning UKIP do not change. At some point, someone other than just the UKIP supporters will make the connection that Cameron's outrage against the EU's financial demands are totally hollow. And that's because they come from the same man who's been bashing the people warning him of this all along.
But Cameron can perhaps be excused for suffering from the same disease all of Europe and so much of America is suffering from that I call "Welfare Delusional Syndrome," or WDS. That's the deadly illness that infects everyone who doesn't realize that welfare is not a virtuous form of charity, does not lift people out of poverty, and only succeeds in adding to its rolls.
Read MoreWhy Sweden could become the new Switzerland
The best and easiest cure for WDS is to read two Milton Friedman books and call me in the morning. A harsher cure is the tough medicine Cameron and the majority of Britons are being forced to take right now, and we still don't know if it will work.
Europe's "conservatives" are a far cry from conservatives here in the U.S. Most of them not only accept a massive welfare state as a fact of life, they allow elections inside the UK to be mostly about the administration of entitlement programs as opposed to offering any real alternatives to state-run systems. Cameron is one of those politicos who doesn't inspire, doesn't truly lead the way his people need him to. Thatcher was the last true European conservative of her time, but the UKIP champions of liberty and independence could be the beginning of an effective new generation of smaller government advocates.
So perhaps this $2.65 billion bill/welfare shakedown will turn out to be a good thing after all for Britain and the rest of Europe's healthier economies. Perhaps it's just the form of shock therapy they need. Perhaps Cameron will shake off the illogical and unworkable coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrat Party and seek out a natural and productive partnership with UKIP.
Or perhaps Europe, the UK, and what's left of Thatcher's constituency is already too far gone.
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The UK should've listened to Margaret Thatcher 25 years ago. Now it's finding out the truth—the EU is just a big welfare Ponzi scheme, says Jake Novak.
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Camps and Retreats for Dogs and Cats
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20160627124616
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While kids have been going to camp for years, and the number of camps for adults has been growing, where can their furry friends have fun in the sun? As pet industry spending is expected to reach nearly $60 billion in the U.S. this year, NewsFeed has decided to round-up pet summer camps and retreats nationwide and the new activities for 2014. All but one are for dogs, and while some of them have already taken place for the summer, many have late August and fall sessions right around the corner. Sit back, read up, and enjoy the dog days of summer.
At the 2014 summer camp run by Wag Hotels in San Francisco, dogs have chased bacon-scented bubbles on the rooftop terrace — ahem, “Wooftop Terrace,” to be exact. New activities include wine tasting with “doggie wine” (carrot juice), and campers get tattoos on their rumps of hearts, skull & cross bones, and butterflies. The camp also takes place in West Sacramento and Redwood City.
At this camp in the Yachats River Valley on the Oregon Coast, “Happy Hour” is called “Yappy Hour.” One of the new workshops this summer is “Bring Me a Beer,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Dogs are taught how to fetch a beer from the fridge and carry it over to their owners.
“Barn Hunt” is the newest activity at Camp Dogwood, which hosts camps in Lake Delton, Wisconsin, and Ingleside, Illinois. Live rats are put in tubes that look like hamster balls and are then hidden in hay so the dogs have to find them.
Barn Hunt was also a new activity at the Vermont retreat. There’s also square dancing and freestyle dancing for dogs and their owners who want to boogie down “doggie style.”
This upstate New York program offers workshops like “Barks & Crafts,” in which dogs do finger (paw) painting on t-shirts, and dog skateboarding, in which dogs are taught how to stand on the skateboard, get a running start, and take off. New activities offered this year are “Doga”, a form of yoga that dogs do with their owners, and a bone stacking contest.
Herding is a popular workshop at this camp near Red Lodge, Montana, which is about an hour northeast of Yellowstone National Park, just north of the Montana-Wyoming border. While agility and “search and rescue” exercises are supposed to be physically stimulating for the dogs, astronomy lectures are supposed to be intellectually stimulating for their humans.
“Canine Massage How-to” is one of the newest activities at this camp for dogs, which has locations in Asheville, North Carolina, and The Berkshires in Massachusetts. Human campers learn how to give their pets a massage “to enhance the flow of positive energy between you and your dog,” according to the orientation packet.
Based right on the beach on the south shore of Lake Tahoe in Zephyr Cove, Nevada, the camp will take dogs on hikes along different parts of the lake. This year, for the first time, the program will host a birthday celebration for the dogs, featuring various booths like bobbing for tennis balls and paw readings, the canine version of palm readings.
Lastly, we’ll throw cat owners a bone. At Morris Animal Inn in Morristown, N.J., lodging is made up of “condos”, duplexes with climbing areas, TVs, rugs, and mini versions of furniture humans use like dressers, nightstands, and sofas with wood frames. Felines feast on mahimahi, and staffers take them on “walks” along the nature trail on the grounds in strollers lined with lambswool.
Dogs can vacation here, too. In fact, the resort’s canine fitness camp for overweight pets recently made headlines, offering activities from “Barko Polo” to “pawlates.”
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From popping bacon-scented bubbles to a workshop that teaches your dog how to fetch a beer from the fridge
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How Kate del Castillo's Life Has Changed Since Meeting 'El Chapo': Part 6
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20160628112652
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Transcript for How Kate del Castillo's Life Has Changed Since Meeting 'El Chapo': Part 6
Tonight, Kate del Castillo is still a powerful actress. And not long ago, she became an American citizen. Saying she loves both countries, and considers both her home. The interview about to end. We notice something. I looked sad? Reporter: She's told us she doesn't dare go back to Mexico, afraid to be arrested and adds she never intended to hurt anyone. I. I need to deal with my legal problems. Reporter: Tonight, that drug kingpin, el chapo, is sitting in the same Mexican prison where he escaped last year. There are all these reports that he's in isolation, that he has dogs outside the door, that he has blood pressure problems. Do you feel sorry for him? No, I don't. I don't feel sorry for him. I think he's a big guy. I think he knows what he's doing. And I think he knows what's his choosing this life is like. Reporter: As he said on that videotape, even without him, the drug trade will go on. And there's something else about el chapo and Kate del Castillo that may surprise you. You're still in touch? Yeah, through our lawyers. Reporter: The film project is on. She says he's agreed. You're still going to do it? Even at this price? Yeah. More than before, you know. Yeah. It's cost me so much in so many ways. Reporter: How are you going to be changed after this? I'm going to become stronger. My adrenaline, being brave, has to be a little bit more thoughtful. Reporter: The internet is still having a field day mocking her. Someone posted Kate del Castillo as a pinata and here, like casablanca, we'll always have Paris and sinaloa. You know what's something funny that I love about Mexicans, that we have this sense of humor. Reporter: She says a dark moment, a friend sent her a reminder that Theresa Mendoza and Kate del Castillo are not girls who give up. A different take on the word fear. F-e-a-r. It's a bad word. Everything and run. Or Everything and rise. So I'm choosing the second one. With that, thank you for Two breaking stories, a
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
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"My adrenaline and my being brave ... has to be a little bit more thoughtful," Kate del Castillo said.
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Tony Awards Nominations: ‘Hamilton’ leads pack with 16 nods
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“Hamilton” has minted Tony history.
The runaway musical hit led the awards pack with an unprecedented 16 Tony nominations on Tuesday. The nods, which include one for best musical and seven for acting, break a record of 15 held previously by “The Producers” and “Billy Elliot.”
The white-hot show, already considered a front-runner in the race for best musical, will compete at the June 12 ceremony in that category with “Bright Star,” “School of Rock,” “Shuffle Along” and “Waitress.”
HAMILTON, BEYOND THE PALE: IN DEFENSE OF LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA'S MINORITY CASTING
“Hamilton” creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda congratulated his colleagues in a statement, issuing thanks “for the amazing support that has led to this unbelievable recognition.”
“I watched the nomination announcements with my mom, dad, wife, son, Quiara (Alegria Hudes, his co-writer on “In the Heights”) and dog this morning,” Miranda said. He added that “the record-breaking number of nominations is an honor so humbling it’s so far been beyond my comprehension.”
Nominees for best new play include the American works “Eclipsed” and “The Humans,” the British dramedy “King Charles III” and the French drama “The Father.”
Unlike co-star Bruce Willis, Laurie Metcalf was recognized for her performance in “Misery.” She’ll compete for best actress in a play honors against Jessica Lange for “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” Lupita Nyong’o for “Eclipsed,” Sophie Okonedo for “The Crucible” and Michelle Williams for “Blackbird.”
In response to her nomination, Nyong’o applauded the playwright, director and fellow cast members of the drama about women caught in the crossfire of civil war in Africa.
“Our hope is to awaken something in the consciousness of our audience to effect change around the world,” she said.
The four shows in the best musical revival category are “The Color Purple,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “She Loves Me” and “Spring Awakening.”
Best play revival nods went to “Blackbird,” “The Crucible,” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Noises Off” and “A View from the Bridge.”
In a year filled with great roles for women in musicals, the best actress race will be a nail-biter.
“My face is stuck in a smile,” best actress in a musical nominee Cynthia Erivo told the Daily News. “The Color Purple” star is up against Laura Benanti (“She Loves Me”), Carmen Cusack (“Bright Star”), Jessie Mueller (“Waitress”) and Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton”).
Best actor in a musical pits “School of Rock” star Alex Brightman against Danny Burstein (“Fiddler on the Roof”), Zachary Levi (“She Loves Me”) and Miranda and Leslie Odom Jr. of “Hamilton.”
Brightman told The News he’ll toast with Champagne tonight.
“Someone gave me a magnum of Dom Pérignon months ago,” Brightman said. “We put a sign on it, ‘Break in case of nominations.’ ”
Diverse acting nominations reflect a banner season for Broadway in terms of crossing color boundaries.
Still, in a Tony surprise, Audra McDonald, who’s won a record six Tonys and stars in “Shuffle Along,” didn’t earn a nomination. And Jennifer Hudson of “The Color Purple” was shut out of the race for featured actress.
A featured-actress nomination for the cash-strapped musical comedy "Disaster!" wasn't enough to keep it from sinking. Long struggling at the box office, the show closes May 8, about two months earlier than planned.
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The runaway musical hit “Hamilton” led the awards pack with an unprecedented 16 Tony nominations on Tuesday.
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Jennifer Hudson -- 'Dreamy McMug' Is Fine, BUT ...
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' wife can rest easy ... there is one woman who does not want to jump her husband's bones when he gets out of jail ...
The "Dreamgirls" star was at LAX on Monday and confessed ... Dreamy McMug is "fine" ... but definitely not for her
Good looks will only get you so far with J-Hud.
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Jeremy Meeks' wife can rest easy ... there is one woman who does not want to jump her husband's bones when he gets out of jail ... Jennifer Hudson.The…
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Billy Ray Cyrus Divorce -- He Pulled the Trigger
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20160629152715
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made the first move in his divorce from Tish -- filing divorce papers yesterday in a Tennessee court.
According to the divorce papers, obtained by TMZ, Billy Ray is asking for "shared" custody of the couple's 3 minor children.
He's also asking the court to "approve a parenting plan" to be signed by both Billy Ray and Tish ... and to make an "equitable distribution of the marital estate."
As we previously reported, Billy Ray chalked up the split to irreconcilable differences.
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Billy Ray Cyrus made the first move in his divorce from Tish -- filing divorce papers yesterday in a Tennessee court. According to the divorce papers,…
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In the City: Fireworks at Electra's Bonfire Night meeting
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20160629192246
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One of Electra’s investors suggested yesterday that the corporate raider Ed Bramson should be put on top of the bonfire. The idea raised a few laughs, but ultimately enough shareholders liked Bramson’s plot to secure him the board seats he has pursued for almost two years.
Now the hard work begins for the new directors, who were narrowly elected on a claim of unlocking £1bn of unrealised value by clearing out all of the inefficient, cosy and costly parts of Electra’s business. Maybe they’ll have a bonfire of the vanities.
Another investor in Electra pointed out that while the company could perhaps do well from a new direction, the dialogue between the firm and Bramson’s Sherborne vehicle had been “poisonous”. There’s no polite way to tell a management team that they’re doing a bad job, but the increasingly hysterical tone in the letters between the two sides has been a new and unwelcome bit of theatre for many investors.
Still, Sherborne’s approach to Electra is transparent and constructive compared to some dissident investors.
The US hedge fund Elliott Advisors doggedly pushed for meaningful change at fellow investment group Alliance Trust this year, fuelling change in an industry that can sometimes cling to quaint practices at the expense of customers, as the financial watchdog’s recent investigations into advisers and pensions have shown.
However, Elliott has also deployed some more aggressive moves in the UK market. When it bought a stake in Prezzo last year in a bid to disrupt a takeover, its motives were less about fostering value in the restaurant chain and more about needling TPG, the US private equity firm trying to secure the deal, according to advisers close to the transaction.
Elliott barely said a word about its Prezzo holding, but it bought in around the time it was squaring up to TPG in the States over the near-$30bn debt pile that was swallowing the casino giant Caesars.
In tone, at least, Sherborne’s approach to Electra is much more civilised. It wants what other shareholders want: a rise in value. The team is yet to convince most of the other shareholders of the value in its ideas, which would include lowering debts and looking again at fees and risk management in the portfolio. With Electra’s FTSE 250-listed shares already up 46pc since Sherborne first declared its stake in early 2014, it’s now up to Bramson to prove he can deliver even more.
According to figures published this week by the law firm Linklaters, there have been 860 activist shareholder actions globally so far this year, a rise of 170pc compared with 2011. The ascent has been steeper in the United States, where campaigns waged by the likes of Bill Ackman and Nathan Peltz have been a money-spinning spectacle for the rest of the market.
The research also points out that large European companies have had more than €2 trillion sitting in cash on their balance sheets for the last three years, waiting for a more useful purpose and providing the tinder for any number of activists.
British investors don’t have to look far for other powder kegs. The American activist ValueAct currently owns a stake in Rolls-Royce, leaving open the possibility that it could repeat the coup it pulled off at Microsoft, winning a board seat in 2013 with a stake of just 0.8pc. Shares in Microsoft rose more than 40pc in the ensuing years. It’s impossible to work out how much of that value was actually created by the presence of one new, disruptive board member, but in any scenario that is an impressive rise.
It’s this kind of track record of success for the activist strategy that allows such investors to make money even when they’re doing nothing.
Sherborne, for example, built up a 5pc stake in 3i, another London-listed private equity group, back in 2013. The shares subsequently jumped, as other investors started to wonder what hidden value Bramson had spotted within the company.
Less than a year later, Sherborne sold all of its stake, having never explained a thing to the 3i board. It never needed to. Simply by appearing on the register, Sherborne goaded other investors to push the share price from 266p to 367p. With fast returns like that, why bother going to the trouble of attempting a boardroom coup?
Bramson and his team have said they always have a turnaround thesis before they start buying into a company, and only focus on one target at a time (although some of their thoughts around private equity costs almost certainly applied to both 3i and Electra). Others in the market have no way of knowing when they will push for change, and when it’s a lucrative bluff. This side of the strategy is hardly creating long-term value for all investors, but then activists can hardly be blamed for the overreactions of the rest of the market when they make a move.
For all the boardroom pyrotechnics of the last few months, the real fireworks will start now. There was undoubtedly a chill in the air when the new board held its first meeting without chairman Roger Yates, who after more than a year of resisting Sherborne’s demands has resigned.
But much like big corporate takeovers, they’re only hostile until the price is right. If Bramson and Brindle can genuinely unlock £1bn of hidden value in Electra, all comparisons to Guy Fawkes will be forgotten.
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One of Electra’s investors suggested yesterday that the corporate raider Ed Bramson should be put on top of the bonfire.
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Baba, With Love From Naples
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20160630073836
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IT wasn't that I was surprised to see babas in a pastry shop in the village of Minori on the Amalfi coast of Italy. Ever since I stepped off the plane in Naples, babas, small briochelike cakes swimming in a syrup, were omnipresent: on menus at every little cafe, packed in jars lining the shelves of touristy shops along the beaches, even mixed into gelato in ice cream shops. Babas were as ubiquitous in Campanian pastry shops as molten chocolate cakes in New York City restaurants.
It was the syrup the babas were soaking in that intrigued me. Instead of the usual dousing in rum, these babas were saturated in limoncello. Though unusual, it made sense, given the context.
The Amalfi coast is justly famous for its particularly fragrant lemons, which come in several shapes, sizes and colors -- yellow, green, pink. A drive along the sea reveals acres of sloping lemon groves, the trees covered in black nets to filter out the strong sunlight. While most of the lemons are shipped around Italy and beyond, commanding premium prices, many others are made into limoncello, a sugary, greenish-yellow liqueur.
Both babas and limoncello have been local staples for decades, but putting them together is a fairly recent phenomenon.
''Traditionally, if you went into a cafe, you'd see a bunch of old guys ordering pieces of plain cake and pouring shots of limoncello over the top,'' said Arthur Schwartz, the radio show host and author of ''Naples at Table'' (HarperCollins, 1998). But, he added, ''babas soaked in limoncello is a new thing, though perfectly natural for the Campanians.''
Although most Americans associate babas with France, the dessert is arguably even more popular in southern Italy, where babas probably date back to the 18th century. This is when Marie Antoinette's sister Maria Carolina married King Ferdinand IV of Naples, Mr. Schwartz said, and there was much cultural and culinary exchange between the two sisters in France and Naples.
Rum was been part of the baba equation until now. Limoncello is quickly edging it out.
''Limoncello is getting really popular -- it's a trend all over Italy,'' said Amelia Adams, an American marketing sales consultant specializing in Italian products. ''People from the north go to the south for vacation and bring it back. They develop a taste for it.''
I discovered jars of babas in limoncello as I traveled up the boot. They were there when I got to Rome, at a tiny grocery store near the Spanish Steps. Cafes displayed them in Verona. In Venice, even supermarkets carried them. A trend, indeed.
And a good one. Compared with those packed in rum, babas in limoncello are more perfumed and generally less sweet, with a welcome tartness. The best brands, I found after much sampling, use artisanal limoncello made from the hand-peeled zest of small, gnarly, green-skinned lemons with an intense and lingering scent.
Although it's still hard to find babas packed in limoncello in New York, it's getting easier. BuonItalia, at the Chelsea Market, already has a 730-gram jar costing $11.50; (212) 633-9090. And distributors said they plan on importing it.
Bottles of limoncello are sold in better liquor stores. You can also make it yourself.
Lidia Bastianich, the owner of the restaurant Felidia, once had a dessert on the menu combining limoncello and sponge cake, but the executive chef, Fortunato Nicotra, recently changed it to a baba with limoncello and a rich lemon cream. Did he do it because it's becoming trendy?
''The baba soaks up the limoncello syrup really well and is very light,'' he said, adding: ''There are times that trends happen for a good reason. This is one of them.''
LIMONCELLO BABAS WITH LEMON CREAM
Time: 2 1/2 hours, plus cooling
1/2 cup (1 stick) melted unsalted butter, more for tins
1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) dry yeast
2 cups plus 3 tablespoons bread flour
Grated zest of 1 lemon
Grated zest of 10 lemons
5 tablespoons limoncello, commercial or homemade (see recipe).
1. Butter a 12-muffin tin. In a saucepan over low heat, warm milk. Pour it into a large bowl, and sprinkle in yeast. Stir until yeast dissolves. Whisk in 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons flour, and cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm place until mixture has doubled, 30 minutes to 1 hour.
2. In an electric mixer with paddle attachment or a food processor with dough blade, beat eggs, sugar, salt and remaining 1 1/2 cups flour into yeast mixture until very smooth. Gradually mix in melted butter, and continue to mix until smooth.
3. Spoon dough into muffin tin, filling each mold halfway. Grease a piece of plastic wrap and cover muffin tin. Set aside until dough rises just above tin, about 1 hour. Meanwhile, heat oven to 350 degrees.
4. Remove plastic wrap, and bake babas until dark golden brown on top, about 20 minutes. Transfer tin to a wire rack to cool.
5. To prepare lemon cream, bring milk, 3 tablespoons sugar, zest and salt to a boil over medium heat in a saucepan, stirring until sugar dissolves.
6. Meanwhile, whisk together cornstarch, remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, egg and yolk in a bowl. Pour hot milk mixture gradually into egg mixture, whisking constantly to combine. Return mixture to saucepan.
7. Warm liquid over medium low heat, whisking constantly, being sure to scrape bottom and sides of pan. As soon as liquid reaches a boil, take pan off heat. Whisk in butter a tablespoon at a time. Transfer mixture to a shallow bowl, and lay a piece of plastic wrap on surface of lemon cream. Refrigerate until well chilled, about 2 hours.
8. To prepare syrup, combine lemon zest, 2 cups water and sugar in a saucepan, and bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar. Simmer until liquid is yellow, about 2 to 3 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl. Stir in limoncello. Let cool.
9. Just before serving, whip heavy cream until it forms soft peaks. Whisk chilled lemon cream well, then gently fold in whipped cream.
10. Slice babas in half vertically. Submerge each baba in limoncello syrup for 10 seconds. Arrange babas on plates, cut sides up, and drizzle with more syrup. Top babas with large dollops of lemon cream, and serve immediately.
Adapted from ''Lemon Zest'' by Lori Longbotham (Broadway Books, 2002)
Time: 30 minutes, plus 15 days' resting
1 750-milliliter bottle vodka (preferably 100-proof)
1. With a vegetable peeler, remove zest from lemons, being careful not to include any white pith. Put zest in a half-gallon jar with a tight-fitting lid, and add vodka. Cover, and let stand at room temperature for 10 days, or until zest is pale and vodka is a deep yellow.
2. Strain liquid into a large glass bowl, leaving zest in strainer.
3. Bring 3 cups water and the sugar to a boil in a saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil for 3 minutes. Pour hot sugar syrup over zest in strainer into a heatproof bowl. Discard zest. Let cool.
4. Add syrup to vodka, forming a liqueur. Pour into bottles with tight-fitting lids. Let stand for 5 days. Store in freezer.
Photo: TRADITION WITH A TWIST At Felidia, babas are soaked in limoncello rather than rum. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)
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IT wasn't that I was surprised to see babas in a pastry shop in the village of Minori on the Amalfi coast of Italy. Ever since I stepped off the plane in Naples, babas, small briochelike cakes swimming in a syrup, were omnipresent: on menus at every little cafe, packed in jars lining the shelves of touristy shops along the beaches, even mixed into gelato in ice cream shops. Babas were as ubiquitous in Campanian pastry shops as molten chocolate cakes in New York City restaurants. It was the syrup the babas were soaking in that intrigued me. Instead of the usual dousing in rum, these babas were saturated in limoncello. Though unusual, it made sense, given the context.
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‘Vinyl’s soundtrack is more compelling than the series
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20160630101625
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“Vinyl” might be the first TV series made for radio.
Critics love the music of HBO’s 1970s-era drama, but the story, about one man’s search for the next great musical act, has not grabbed viewers. Underwhelming ratings for the show’s premiere (764,000 viewers for its initial 9 p.m. airing) showed the A-list names attached — Jagger! Scorsese! — to be nonstarters, mementos from a dated cultural playbook. While subsequent episodes settle down from the messily executed pilot, the show’s central story — will Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale) sign the Nasty Bits, a fictitious band styled after the famous punk bands of the ’70s, and stop Hoovering anthills of cocaine in front of his employees at American Century Records? — is not exactly compelling.
We’ve already seen the drug story in “Scarface” and “Goodfellas,” among other gangster-themed films and series. So there goes the shock value — up a nostril. Moreover, Richie is not gangster material. This is not Tony Soprano and his crew of killers cutting up bodies in the back room at Satriale’s. He’s a record-industry executive headed to the remainder pile. He’s surrounded not by intimidating henchmen but by a bunch of character actors dressed in Qiana shirts and goofy kids — interns, really — who can smuggle drugs for him.
Besides the soundtrack, which punctuates the episodes with bits of everyone from Karen Carpenter and Janis Joplin to Ruth Brown and (gasp!) Robert Goulet, the show’s reliance on nostalgia is so strong that unless you were there — at the Factory, at the Academy of Music, at Max’s Kansas City — the time evoked through some very sharp production design is not going to grab you. After all, we’ve already had “That ’70s Show.”
“Vinyl” needed to give Richie some depth, make us care about him. It’s probably too late because he’s already screwed over the series’ only prominent African-American character, soul singer Lester Grimes (Ato Essandoh), and helped to kill radio station owner Frank “Buck” Rogers (Andrew Dice Clay, “Vinyl’s” best in show). And so, like Frank Underwood on “House of Cards,” he will spend the rest of Season 1 trying to cover it up. We have been here before, everyone.
The writers also need to either overhaul the storyline they’ve given Devon Finestra (Olivia Wilde) or make the character a walk-on. We’ve seen the unhappy suburban housewife too many times now, and it was better written on “The Sopranos” and “Mad Men,” played by Edie Falco and January Jones, respectively.
Although “Vinyl” received a hasty renewal, viewers’ seeming indifference to the show cannot be lost on its creators or by the executives at HBO, who must have hoped this was the Next Big Thing. That slot’s already been taken by “The People v. O.J. Simpson” on FX, a show that has masterfully re-created a time — and a trial — that everyone remembers, whether or not you can name that tune.
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“Vinyl” might be the first TV series made for radio. Critics love the music of HBO’s 1970s-era drama, but the story, about one man’s search for the next great musical act, has not grabbed viewers. …
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Highway 1 reopens near Devil’s Slide after fatal crash
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20160630121024
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Highway 1 in Pacifica between Linda Mar and Montara Beach Southbound and Northbound lanes were closed due to a early morning traffic accident.
Highway 1 in Pacifica between Linda Mar and Montara Beach Southbound and Northbound lanes were closed due to a early morning traffic accident.
The Tom Lantos tunnels now move motorists past the once unpredictable Devil's Slide Sunday June 1, 2014. The Devil's Slide trail, the once treacherous home to rockslides and accidents, now offers hikers and bicyclists an uncommon view of the coast just south of Pacifica.
The Tom Lantos tunnels now move motorists past the once unpredictable Devil's Slide Sunday June 1, 2014. The Devil's Slide trail, the once treacherous home to rockslides and accidents, now offers hikers and
A man died Thursday night after stepping into the path of a car on Interstate 80 in Vallejo, triggering a chain reaction crash.
A man died Thursday night after stepping into the path of a car on Interstate 80 in Vallejo, triggering a chain reaction crash.
Highway 1 reopens near Devil’s Slide after fatal crash
Authorities are investigating a fatal crash that occurred Tuesday morning on Highway 1 in San Mateo County, closing the road in both directions for more than two hours near Devil’s Slide.
Just before 3:30 a.m., California Highway Patrol officers responded to reports of the wreck on the coastal highway south of the Devil’s Slide tunnel, said Officer Vu Williams, a spokesman for the CHP.
Williams said investigators believe the victim, an unidentified man in his mid-20s, was driving northbound when he drifted to the right and hit a rock embankment. The car rode up the embankment before landing back on its wheels on the road.
The driver, who was not wearing a seat belt, was ejected from the car and died at the scene, Williams said.
A traffic alert was issued at 4:21 a.m. and both directions of the highway were closed as investigators gathered evidence and worked to clear the scene, the CHP said.
The highway reopened around 6:30 a.m., but the cause of the crash remained under investigation. Williams said the coroner would perform a toxicology test to determine whether drugs or alcohol played a role in the crash.
Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale
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Authorities are investigating a fatal crash that occurred Tuesday morning on Highway 1 in San Mateo County, closing the road in both directions for more than two hours near Devil’s Slide. Just before 3:30 a.m., California Highway Patrol officers responded to reports of the wreck on the coastal highway south of the Devil’s Slide tunnel, said Officer Vu Williams, a spokesman for the CHP. Williams said investigators believe the victim, an unidentified man in his mid-20s, was driving northbound when he drifted to the right and hit a rock embankment. A traffic alert was issued at 4:21 a.m. and both directions of the highway were closed as investigators gathered evidence and worked to clear the scene, the CHP said.
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Halle Berry Has a Baby Girl
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03/16/2008 AT 09:20 PM EDT
– who only recently said, "I want to stay pregnant forever" – had a baby girl Sunday and "is doing great," her rep has confirmed.
The father is Gabriel Aubry. Berry, 41, and the 32-year-old model met while shooting a Versace ad in Los Angeles in November 2005 and first
together three months later at the February 2006 opening of a Versace boutique in New York City.
her pregnancy in September last year, when she was three months along.
During her pregnancy, the Oscar, Emmy and Razzie winner told
she felt "fantastic" thanks to eating right and keeping fit with yoga, swimming, light weights and an elliptical machine. "Right now I just have so much joy and energy," she said. "I can just go and go and go."
For his part, Aubry has been
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The Oscar winner and her model-boyfriend welcome their first child
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http://www.cbsnews.com/media/10-retailers-that-offer-year-round-free-shipping/2/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160701064301id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/media/10-retailers-that-offer-year-round-free-shipping/2/
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10 retailers that offer year-round free shipping
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When it comes to online shopping, free shipping is king. More than almost any other factor, free shipping is a major selling point for shoppers. Over the holidays, nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of shoppers took advantage of free shipping offers, and 87 percent of shoppers said free shipping is more important than fast shipping, according to a Deloitte survey.
Retailers paid attention this holiday season and made free shipping central to their promotions, with major retailers like Target and Best Buy offering free shipping on all orders for the holiday season. But even with the holiday season over, shoppers can still get free shipping from some major retailers.
Here are 10 retailers with some of the best free shipping policies that make it easy to avoid these costs year-round.
This post, Retailers that offer year-round free shipping, was originally published on GOBankingRates.
Upscale retailer Nordstrom makes it a point to offer its customers the best service, and this extends to its policy to ship every purchase for free, no matter what. "We'll ship almost anything on our site to anywhere in the United States -- even Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico -- for free," according to the Nordstrom shipping policy. "No minimums. No kidding."
Items are sent via standard shipping, with in-stock items typically arriving within three to six business days. Shipping is also free for returns, which is one of the reasons it's among the stores with the best return policies.
What started as an online shoe seller has since expanded to one of the most popular online clothiers and retailers based in the U.S. Part of Zappos' appeal is its commitment to treat customers well, including its generous shipping policy that provides "fast, free shipping on every order with no order minimums." Zappos sends items via its standard shipping option, which typically delivers items within four to five business days. Like Nordstrom, Zappos also provides free shipping on all return orders.
The retailer, which sells clothing and outdoor gear, offers free everyday shipping on all orders to the U.S. and Canada. L.L.Bean shoppers can expect items purchased by 10 a.m. ET to arrive within two to five business days for U.S. addresses, or three to 11 business days for Canadian addresses. Express shipping is also available at an additional charge.
There are some exceptions to the free shipping offer, like large items that require oversized shipping. In such cases, the L.L.Bean product page will state the shipping charges associated with such items.
Topshop, a fashion retailer, offers free standard shipping on all orders to the U.S. Items arrive in four to seven business days. Shipping is also free for all returns made through UPS. Topshop also offers an express shipping option for $15, and items arrive within three days.
Men's clothier Bonobos offers free shipping on online orders with no minimums. Purchases are shipped via UPS Ground and usually arrive within one to five business days of shipment, with addresses in the Northeast near the Bonobos warehouse getting the fastest delivery service. Orders placed after 4 p.m. ET on Friday will not be shipped until the following Monday. Shoppers can upgrade to two-day or next-day shipping for an additional cost.
Every order made through jeweler Blue Nile qualifies for free FedEx shipping for the U.S. and 43 other countries. Orders ship same day (or within two business days for items with diamonds), and will arrive within one to five days of shipment. Shoppers should note that free shipping is one-way only, and they will be responsible for all return shipping costs.
Sunglass Hut offers free UPS second-day shipping on all orders made through its online store. To receive the order within two days, make sure to order by 2 p.m. ET. Shoppers can also choose free UPS ground shipping for delivery within two to seven business days, or opt for UPS's next-business-day shipping at an added cost of $17.95. Sunglass Hut will also cover return shipping costs for returns made within 90 days.
This sunglasses brand provides free overnight shipping on all orders shipping to the 50 U.S. states and D.C. Ray-Ban.com's overnight orders typically arrive within one to two business days, though items shipping to Alaska and Hawaii might take longer to arrive. All shipments are fully insured against lost or theft.
Apple CEO Tim Cook discusses the Apple Watch during an Apple media event in San Francisco, September 9, 2015. Close
The biggest name in electronics also offers free shipping on all in-stock items. iPhones get free next-day delivery, and all other Apple merchandise will get free two-day delivery, and exact dates for estimated delivery are given at checkout. Apple.com also covers all return shipping costs.
Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas. Close
Shoppers at Dell.com will get free three- to five-day shipping on its entire stock of PCs, electronics and accessories, with no order minimum. Dell also covers shipping costs for returns made within 30 days.
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Even with the holiday season over, shoppers can still get free shipping from some of the biggest retailers
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http://fortune.com/2016/06/28/brexit-united-ireland-vote-call/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160701104555id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/06/28/brexit-united-ireland-vote-call/
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Brexit Has Revived Calls for a United Ireland
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This article is published in partnership with Time.com. The original version can be found here.
An early Independence Day garden party at the residence of the U.S. Consul in Belfast on Friday was a good occasion for Irish nationalists and Ulster unionists to sound each other out on their reactions to the Brexit vote.
Earlier that day, 52% of voters had called for the U.K. to leave the European Union. Scotland, Northern Ireland and London had voted to stay in the the EU but their votes were outweighed by English voters.
The cabaret sang Motown and the guests drank champagne but no one could avoid talking about Brexit and what it means for Northern Ireland and Ireland.
The referendum revealed new divisions in Northern Ireland. Catholic nationalists tended to be in favour of staying in the EU but Protestant Unionists were divided.
The First Minister of Northern Ireland Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) campaigned to leave the EU Her rival for leadership of that community, Mike Nesbitt of the Ulster Unionist Party, pushed to stay in.
The loss was particularly hard for Catholic nationalists, who are more likely to identify as Irish. Membership of the EU has helped suppress desires for the unification of Ireland.
The Republican party, Sinn Fein, which shares power in the Northern Ireland government with the DUP described the contradiction between the Northern Ireland vote and the U.K. as a “democratic deficit.” In a statement issued on Monday, the party said: “English votes threaten to drag Northern Ireland out of the EU. It is imperative that this democratic deficit is challenged.”
At the garden party, guests huddled to discuss the implications. Some among the unionists were cheerful. The DUP’s Nelson McCausland, a former culture minister, was ebullient on Facebook, “We are now on the road to restoring our national sovereignty, securing our borders and putting the United Kingdom on a better road.”
Other happy unionists included Lord Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party who negotiated the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. Yet, that Agreement was grounded on EU support. The EU invested millions in supporting peace in Northern Ireland. The referendum vote also illustrated that the U.K. was not a union of equals. Worse, the prospect of Scotland leaving the U.K. could make Northern Ireland’s position even more untenable.
Lord Trimble said he was not concerned by that possibility. “It will never happen. Not with oil prices so low,” he says. He conceded that if Scotland did go independent then a united Ireland would be “on the table.”
Thousands of Northern Irish and Britons showed their concerns by applying for Irish passports, which would allow them access to the E.U., if it was denied to U.K. passport holders.
Sinn Fein have responded to the vote by reviving long-quiet calls for a united Ireland. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader in Ireland told the Irish parliament that the Brexit vote presents an opportunity to continue the process of ending partition and building a United Ireland.
Adams said: “To have one part of the island inside the EU and the other side out, makes no sense. We stand by the vote of the people of the North.”
Other nationalists are more tentative. Claire Hannah of the Social Democratic and Labour Party predicts a more evolutionary approach than a “divisive” border poll. She argues that Britain pulling Northern Ireland out of the EU would be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement, which was chaired by Senator George Mitchell.
“The principle of consent would be breached by any forced withdrawal from the EU, putting Irish unity firmly back on the agenda for those who had been prepared to prioritise stability and prosperity,” she says.
First Minister Arlene Foster has rejected calls for Irish unity but the cause of a united Ireland has been revived, not by Irish nationalists and republicans, but English voters, choosing to leave the EU, without analysing the impact on other parts of the U.K.
The age-old Irish Question has now moved from the political margin to centre stage.
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The U.K.'s decision to leave the E.U. has major ramifications for Northern Ireland, Ireland and peace
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http://fortune.com/2016/06/29/vladimir-putins-china-visit-put-his-weakness-and-desperation-on-full-display/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160701235607id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/06/29/vladimir-putins-china-visit-put-his-weakness-and-desperation-on-full-display/
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Putin’s China Visit Put His Weakness and Desperation on Full Display
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Ever since Sino-Russian ties began to warm up a few years ago, observers have been wondering how Russia would get used to its junior status in this unequal partnership.
With his fifth visit to Beijing on June 25, which lasted less than 24 hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin has finally given us some clues.
Circumstances have changed for both nations since Putin’s last visit to China two years ago. The Chinese economy has been caught in a stubborn downward spiral and Beijing has been putting out fires lately, such as a stock market crash and large-scale capital flight. Russia has fared even worse. The collapse of oil prices and Western sanctions have plunged the Russian economy into a death spiral. The ruble lost more than half of its value in the last two years. Russia’s GDP shrank 3.4% last year and is expected to contract further this year. So, China may not be doing too well, but Russia is in far worse shape.
It is thus an uncommon—but unsurprising—sight to see Putin, the swaggering strongman, perform the rituals of a clear supplicant to his senior partner, the Chinese President Xi Jinping.
To be sure, Russia has billed Putin’s visit as a huge success and touted the nearly 30 commercial deals signed between various Chinese and Russian entities as evidence of a mutually beneficial partnership. But a close examination of these deals and, more importantly, the three joint communiqués signed by Putin and Xi, reveals that it is China that is in the driver’s seat in the emerging Sino-Russian strategic partnership.
Cash-strapped Russia needs Chinese investments and has to sell technology it used to withhold from its powerful neighbor (and potential threat). Among the more notable deals signed during Putin’s visit was the purchase of a 40% stake by ChinaChem, China’s largest state-owned chemical company, in a petrochemical complex owned by Rosnef, Russia’s state-owned oil giant. Another eye-catching agreement was the sale of Russia’s advanced space rocket engine, RD-180, to China.
Putin gave away even more to please China in the language of the three Sino-Russian joint communiqués. On the surface, the three joint communiqués—one on the visit itself, one on cyberspace, and another on global strategic stability—clearly show the common interests shared by Russia and China in opposing recent American policies. For instance, in the communiqué on global strategic stability, both Putin and Xi denounced the U.S., albeit without naming it explicitly, for its intent on “deploying force or the threat of force to pursue its interests without any obstruction.” They singled out planned American deployment of anti-missile systems in Northeast Asia and Eastern Europe as harmful to Chinese and Russian national security interests. They also mentioned the proposed Global Prompt Strike, currently under development by the Pentagon, as a weapon system that will change the strategic balance and trigger a new arms race.
A close reading of the communiqués on cyberspace and the visit itself belies Putin’s junior status in his partnership with Xi.
On cyberspace, Russia, which has maintained much looser control of the internet than China, formally embraced the position long advocated by China, where the ruling Chinese Communist Party has been obsessed with the threat posed by the information revolution to its survival. According to the joint communiqué, Russia and China call for the “respect for the national sovereignty in the cyberspace … and oppose the interference of other countries’ internal affairs through the cyberspace.” This text could have been lifted from the mission statement of China’s internet censors.
Even more remarkable was Russia’s unequal trade with China on the South China Sea dispute and the conflict in Ukraine. On the South China Sea, Putin has finally embraced a key Chinese position, opposing “internationalization” of the dispute and external interference (a veiled reference to the U.S.). But what did he get in return? On Ukraine, the communiqué only stated that both China and Russia do not believe there is a military solution and any political and diplomatic solution must be based on the new Minsk ceasefire agreement signed in February 2015.
Beggars cannot be choosers, and a Putin besieged by both domestic economic woes and international isolation likely has no choice but to double-down on his bet on China. Of course, Russia’s strongman may have to kowtow to his newfound Chinese friend. But if such a gesture could gain him some extra space for survival, it is worth it, particularly when one considers his lack of alternatives.
Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College and a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States
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How do you say 'kowtow' in Russian?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/travel/escapes/12trip.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160702190741id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2006/05/12/travel/escapes/12trip.html
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Tracing the Revolution Across Staten Island
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20160702190741
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From here it would have been easy to spot the 15,000-odd British troops and Hessian mercenaries crossing the Narrows in flatboats on Aug. 22, 1776, ready to land onshore and move north through Brooklyn toward the rebel defenses.
But you're heading in the other direction, on Staten Island's traffic-choked roads toward the Conference House, where Howe met Franklin and Adams. Beyond tattoo parlors, car dealerships and rows of cookie-cutter houses along Hylan Boulevard, the old building sneaks into view when the road ends. The house fronts not the road but the bay, ignoring the neighborhood as it looks out past a wide pavilion at the water's edge to Perth Amboy, N.J. If you walk around to the front, past the clapboard caretaker's residence, its true face comes into view.
THE exterior is a quilt of stones held together with mortar made with sand and ground oyster shells. Originally the family home of Captain Christopher Billopp of the Royal Navy, the house was considered a mansion when it was built around 1680.
Inside, a thick, ancient smell hangs like humidity in the air. The stairs were rebuilt during the restoration, but the extrawide, mocha-colored planks in the rooms are original, and square wooden pegs still hold them together in places.
The house wasn't always a living museum. After the Billopp family left, it was passed around, probably serving for a time as a hotel and later as a rat poison factory. Badly deteriorated, it was set to be razed until the Conference House Association, formed in the 1920's, stepped in. The group has restored the house and furnished it with antiques, many dating to the 18th century. A painting of Franklin, who was 70 years old when he was there for the conference, has been placed in the first-floor room where the meeting is thought to have been held.
John Adams later described the scene: "The house had been the habitation of military guards, and was as dirty as a stable." But, he wrote, "his lordship had prepared a large handsome room, by spreading a carpet of moss and green sprigs, from bushes and shrubs in the neighborhood."
The moss and sprigs are long gone, but the house holds some interesting artifacts. In a small room on the second floor, one of the hymnals that Edward Rutledge is said to have signed and given to the other three people at the meeting rests on a desk. In the bedroom nearby, an old oak sea chest that belonged to the Billopps sits at the foot of a bed. Almost unbelievably, the same Dutch company that made bricks used in building the house provided new ones for the restoration two and a half centuries later. They cover the floor of the basement kitchen.
During the meeting, Lord Howe did most of the talking. The Americans were not swayed. It's easy to imagine a certain tension in the air as they took their leave and headed back to the boat, crossing ground you may tread yourself as you stroll, after your tour, through Conference House Park. The park wraps around the horn of the island and has trails winding through the woods to the water.
Before taking leave of Staten Island, you can resolve any tensions of your own with local conviviality. One good spot is Trattoria Romana — try the brick-oven boscaiola pizza ($15.95), topped with broccoli rabe, sausage and fresh mozzarella. Since nearly half of Staten Islanders are of Italian descent, this is a good place to relax.
Or stop at Killmeyer's Old Bavaria Inn, not far from the Conference House, where you'll find a large outdoor beer garden, a wide variety of German and other brews and a menu with choices including a Black Forest ham sandwich ($6.50) and Wiener schnitzel with spaetzle ($9). The Hessians would have loved it.
To reach Staten Island's war sites by car, take the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from Brooklyn. Follow signs to Bay Street, which leads to Fort Wadsworth. From there, head south on Hylan Boulevard to the Conference House.
Other transportation is less convenient. The S51 bus runs from the Staten Island Ferry terminal to Fort Wadsworth and connects with the S78, which stops at the Conference House. Taxis are available at the ferry terminal but are not easy to hail on the streets.
The visitor center at Fort Wadsworth (120 New York Avenue, 718-354-4500; www.nps.gov/gate), part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, is open Wednesday to Sunday. In good weather, park rangers lead tours at 2:30 p.m. on those days and also at 10:30 a.m. on weekend days. Brochures are available for self-guided tours.
The Conference House (7455 Hylan Boulevard, 718-984-2086; www.theconferencehouse.org) may be seen by guided tour ($3 for adults) from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Friday through Sunday from April to mid-December.
Trattoria Romana (718-980-3113) is at 1476 Hylan Boulevard. Killmeyer's Old Bavaria Inn (718-984-1202) is at 4254 Arthur Kill Road.
A version of this article appears in print on , on page F9 of the New York edition with the headline: Tracing the Revolution Across Staten Island. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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With a little effort, visitors can find traces of a historic Staten Island hidden amid the suburban neighborhoods and strip malls.
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http://www.nydailynews.com/autos/news/toyota-launches-massive-recall-european-volkswagen-owners-article-1.2693515
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160703001742id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/autos/news/toyota-launches-massive-recall-european-volkswagen-owners-article-1.2693515
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Toyota's massive recall, why Euro VW owners got shafted, and more
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20160703001742
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Looking for a roundup of the latest and most important news from the automotive world? You’ve found it in the Daily Drive-Thru. Check it out every weekday to see what you missed and what you need to know.
Seeing as you’re reading the Daily Drive-Thru, you must be having a pretty good day. Certainly better than the day Toyota had this week.
FOLLOW DAILY NEWS AUTOS ON FACEBOOK. 'LIKE' US HERE.
It was a rough 24 hours for Toyota. Late Tuesday the Japanese carmaker recalled 1.43 million vehicles for potential issues with their airbag inflators. Then, Wednesday morning, the company recalled 2.87 million vehicles for an issue with their emissions controls units. Some of the vehicles were subject to both recalls, so, in total, the company called back 3.37 million cars in just one day.
Toyota announced that some Prius and Lexus CT200h models made between 2010 and 2012 were outfitted with airbag inflators that contain welding cracks. Because of the cracks, inflating gases can enter the airbag prematurely and cause it to expand. Additionally, some Prius, Auris and Corolla vehicles made between 2006 and 2015 contain evaporative fuel emissions units that are prone to cracks and, subsequently, fuel leaks.
Both issues could pose safety risks, but no injuries have reported in relation to either.
In the past week we’ve told you about the enormous settlement Volkswagen agreed to in a class action lawsuit over its diesel emissions scandal and about the European Union industrial commissioner who thinks her constituents are getting a raw deal. Well, Elzbieta Bienkowska is understandably ticked off, seeing as U.S. Volkswagen customers qualify for upwards of $9,800 in compensation on top of a buyback sum or repair cost. Europeans, on the other hand, get a free tube installed to regulate airflow—essentially the equivalent of Charlie Brown getting a rock instead of Halloween candy.
Why, you may ask, is there such a disparity between the compensations? Well, European countries don’t have the same judicial precedents that allow for combined, class-action lawsuits that the U.S. does, so individuals would have to take on Volkswagen independently. In other words: David meets Goliath, except this time it’s David’s slingshot versus Goliath’s bazooka.
Additionally, the E.U.’s standards for remedying the issue are actually much more lenient than those imposed by U.S. regulators. Volkswagen was able to present an acceptable solution relatively quickly in Europe; meanwhile it’s still trying to hammer out the details for some fixes here in the states. For these reasons, European Volkswagen customers aren’t likely to see the same cash payouts as their American counterparts.
Speaking of Volkswagen, now that the German manufacturer has grown out of its illegal emissions phase, the company has its sights set on electric mobility, namely creating 30 battery-powered models by 2025. To produce the necessary amount of batteries to power these vehicles, Volkswagen will have to build new facilities and they’ve already started scouting one location: China.
Thanks to China’s potent thirst for electric vehicles and some nifty, baked-in partnerships with state-owned automakers such as Shanghai Automotive and FAW, the Asian powerhouse seems to be an ideal fit for at least one of Volkswagen’s forthcoming plants. However, nothing is set in stone.
Automakers betting on autonomous technology in the U.S. (so pretty much all automakers) will be pleased that, like many progressive movements, the trend is feeling early support in the states of New York and California. However, like other major changes, other parts of the country are not quite as enthusiastic.
A survey conducted by Volvo revealed that roughly 90 percent of New Yorkers and 86 percent of Californians are ready for the technology while other states, such as Texas and Pennsylvania saw positive response rates in the low 60s and Illinois hovered around a 50-50 split. Nationally, 68 percent of respondents felt autonomous cars would help eliminate accidents.
The terms Mercedes-Benz and cheap don’t normally live in the same sentence, yet Mercedes-Benz USA can lay claim to the title of cheapest convertible on the market. The Smart Fortwo Cabrio, which is part of Mercedes’ U.S. lineup, will be among the most affordable drop-tops on the market with a base price of $18,900.
It’s certainly not your father’s convertible, but the open-top two-seater counts all the same. The 2017 Smart Fortwo Cabrio hits U.S. dealerships this fall.
Did you find this article helpful? If so, please share it using the "Join the Conversation" buttons below, and thank you for visiting Daily News Autos.
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We've also got news on Volkswagen's aspirations in China, public sentiment on autonomous cars, and more in today's Daily Drive-Thru.
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Isabela Santamaria
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Alexandra Meneses co-stars as over-the-top diva actress Isabela Santamaria on NBC's new comedy "Telenovela."
Meneses is an ALMA Award-nominated actress known for her smoldering bombshell characters and philanthropic commitment to a wide variety of causes. She was first embraced by audiences for playing Teresa Morales on "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." Her role as Stefania Fogagnolo - Brad Garrett's luscious Italian girlfriend on "Everybody Loves Raymond" - earned her ALMA Award and American Comedy Award nominations. Other TV roles include Joey Tribbiani's sister Cookie on "Friends" and Sophia on "The Goldbergs." She was also on "CSI," "CSI: Miami," "Prison Break," "NCIS," "Psych," "Austin & Ally" and "The Cleveland Show." On film, the Chicago native and former model appeared in "Selena," "Boyle Heights" and the New York Film Critics Circle Award-winning "Auto Focus." As president and founder of her own production company (OOLaLa Productions/LADDS Entertainment), Meneses produced the Sundance Channel hit documentary "Damned to Heaven," a gripping look at life inside the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) pluralistic community of Colorado City, Arizona. She also executive produced "Australians Hit Hollywood," an honest look at Australians and New Zealanders who have turned themselves into prominent players in Hollywood. Meneses received acclaim in the Geffen Playhouse's production of "Oscar and Felix: A New Look at the Odd Couple" by Neil Simon. In her ongoing commitment to philanthropy and volunteerism, Meneses served on the Board of Trustees at Children's Hospital Los Angeles for 10 years. She also serves on the boards for United Hope for Animals, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra and is a member of the Chicago History Museum. An alum of Chicago's Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School, Meneses frequently returns to campus and meets with students. In 2005, she established the Alexandra Meneses Endowed Scholarship to ensure young women are given the best possible careers and life opportunities. A devoted mother to her young daughter, Meneses divides her time between Los Angeles and Chicago.
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Meet Isabela Santamaria from Telenovela on NBC.com.
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10 companies working to save the planet
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Companies have always topped the list of the planet's biggest polluters. They've pumped smoke into the air and dumped dangerous toxins into rivers and lakes. They've razed forests and farmland and produced enormous quantities of greenhouse gases every year.
Environmental destruction in the name of big business is nothing new. People are so used to it, in fact, that it's newsworthy when companies work diligently to protect the environment. Some are making huge progress on that front, while others are just starting to be more environmentally responsible.
It's not enough, research suggests, especially as manufacturers in China, India and the U.S. continue to produce millions of tons of greenhouse gases each year. But it's a start. Read on to see 10 companies working to save the planet.
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These businesses are changing their ways to protect the earth, though it's not easy or cheap
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http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/07/03/02/14/nine-italians-among-bangladesh-siege-dead
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160703113212id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/07/03/02/14/nine-italians-among-bangladesh-siege-dead
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Two-day mourning begins In Bangladesh
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20 people killed by Islamist militants.
Bangladesh is observing the first of two days of national mourning, following a terrorist attack on a Dhaka restaurant that claimed 28 lives.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina declared two days of nationwide mourning after the terrorist assault on Holey Artisan Bakery-O'Kitchen - a restaurant in the diplomatic area of Dhaka popular among foreigners - that left 20 hostages dead.
Official sources said the dead hostages included nine Italians, seven Japanese, two Bangladeshis, an American, and an Indian.
Two policemen were also killed in a shootout with the assailants at the beginning of the 12-hour assault.
Six of the seven attackers were also killed, while the remaining assailant was captured alive and detained following an operation by security forces and soldiers that secured the release of 13 other hostages on Saturday morning.
The country's national flags are flying at half mast in remembrance of the victims.
The attack also left 26 people, mainly police officers, injured.
Police have confirmed all the attackers were Bangladeshis, including five wanted rebels.
"We had been searching for them in different places across the country," said Inspector General of Police AKM Shahidul Hoque.
While the attack was claimed by the Islamic State as well as the Al-Qaeda branch in the Indian subcontinent, Bangladeshi authorities maintain such assaults are the work of homegrown outfits.
Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority and highly populous country, has been hit by Islamist-style targeted attacks since 2013, but no large terrorist attacks in the past decade.
Most victims of the targeted killings, which intensified in 2015, have been members of religious minorities, gay activists, secular thinkers and foreigners.
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Nine Italians, seven Japanese and one US student are among the 20 people killed during a siege inside a restaurant in Bangladesh.
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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Tilden-s-iron-horses-Miniature-railroad-2831764.php
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160703174020id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/bayarea/article/Tilden-s-iron-horses-Miniature-railroad-2831764.php
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Tilden's iron horses / Miniature railroad celebrates 50 years in Berkeley
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20160703174020
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Tilden Steam Trains. Chronicle Graphic
Tilden Steam Trains. Chronicle Graphic
Ray Pimlott fired up the steam engine nicknamed "Fern". The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
Ray Pimlott fired up the steam engine nicknamed "Fern". The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
Genevieve Raushenbush inspected Engine No. 8 from the Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley RR which had just arrived on a flatbed trailer. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
Genevieve Raushenbush inspected Engine No. 8 from the Hetch Hetchy & Yosemite Valley RR which had just arrived on a flatbed trailer. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of
Ray Pimlott took one of the railway's trains out for a morning spin on the 1.2 mile track. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
Ray Pimlott took one of the railway's trains out for a morning spin on the 1.2 mile track. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F.
A caboose trucked in from Sonora is rolled slowly onto the tracks. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
A caboose trucked in from Sonora is rolled slowly onto the tracks. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
The steam pressure gauge on the railway's No. 5 engine. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
The steam pressure gauge on the railway's No. 5 engine. The Redwood Valley Railway steam trains celebrates its 50th anniversary of service in Tilden Park. PAUL CHINN/S.F. CHRONICLE
Tilden's iron horses / Miniature railroad celebrates 50 years in Berkeley
To those who ride the tooting miniature steam trains at Berkeley's Tilden Park, the Redwood Valley Railway is a landmark almost as timeless as the Golden Gate Bridge.
But to the initiated, the Tilden trains will always be the handiwork of one man -- the late Erich Thomsen, a career Western Pacific mechanical engineer and track inspector who realized his Old World ideals of grace and beauty by building his own railroad in his spare time.
Thomsen's hand-wrought fantasy world in the soft shade atop the East Bay hills is 50 years old this year, and his successors, led by his daughter, are marking the event this weekend with a Northern California rendezvous of Thomsen disciples and their intricately detailed iron horses.
Three Redwood Railway engines and as many as seven miniature steamers from visiting owners are expected to fire up today and Sunday to entertain the public and sing the song of steam to generations unfamiliar with the tune.
The Thomsen train world stands apart from entertainments such as Disneyland in the precision of its simulated reality. It's a tiny railroad and a giant toy train set all in one, trimmed with a modeler's attention to detail.
Thomsen, who died in 1995, based his engines on working Baldwin locomotives of the 1875-to-1910 era. He idealized reality somewhat, insisting that each of his creations start with a pretty profile. Elegant proportions also mark his buildings, tracks, tunnels and landscaping.
No ordinary park attraction, the Redwood Railway is more like an outdoor stage set. "It's kind of performance art," Thomsen's daughter, Ellen Thomsen, said.
Every live theater has its artisans and wheel-pullers behind the curtain. At the Redwood Railway, they can be found in the workshop and the roundhouse, under the guiding hand of Ray Pimlott.
Pimlott is no antiquarian. Although the rail industry abandoned steam in the late 1950s, he likes to think of it as a technology still deserving of respect.
One steam engine can do the work of five diesels.
A steam-powered automobile, he says, could win a drag race.
"It's a lost art," Pimlott said. "People don't know what these are anymore."
"They don't understand," fellow steam enthusiast Ken Brunskill of the Golden State Live Steamers club said as he stood with Pimlott in the Berkeley shops this week, "(that) there's a fire that boils water, and the boiling water makes steam."
Thomsen's frustration with the demise of steam and the industry's inability to save but a few relics drove him to begin creating his own railroad on his parents' Mountain View farm in the 1940s. He soon outgrew the space and moved to the base of Vollmer Peak in Berkeley, where Tilden Park was under development.
In 1952, the Tilden South Gate and Pacific Railway began with a modest three-quarter-mile of 12-inch-gauge track and a little puffer called the "Cricket."
It became the Redwood Railway and grew to its present mile-and-a-quarter length and 15-inch gauge over the next two decades.
Park officials let Thomsen take over an abandoned Army anti-aircraft installation. Thomsen recycled the base's concrete foundations, and salvaged building materials from a nearby Nike missile battery that the government had given up.
Railway workers added the final touch by planting 600 coast redwoods to replace eucalyptus that had been wiped out by the 1972 freeze.
Thomsen and his successors built four more engines and a fleet of cars as public demand grew. The privately owned railway now serves 160,000 customers a year, and it is adding more engines in expectation of bigger crowds.
The Redwood Railway crew has a casual, family air. Each member has a task, including volunteer Dave Livingston's dog, Danny, who often trots alongside rolling trains. But dedication to the demands of steam is the governing spirit,
"I got drafted to sell tickets the minute I could see over the counter," Ellen Thomsen said.
The railway prides itself on its craftsmanship and its taste in parts and materials. For one engine now on the bench, the boiler alone cost $19,000. The fares are low, but the crowds are big enough to cover expenses and a small payroll.
Everything is designed, machined and assembled in the Berkeley shops. With 10 unpaid workers pitching in part time, an engine can take 30 years from start to finish.
"I'm guessing if you had two guys working eight hours a day, and had your ducks all in a row, you could put one of these together in two years," Pimlott said.
Erich Thomsen's hand-tool collection is still in use, and it's a remainder that in steam, there's no such thing as instant gratification. Hanging on a pegboard is a mason's level that belonged to Thomsen's father, who fled his native Germany in the aftermath of World War I.
Little steam is growing in popularity, with various groups planning some 45 engines in Northern California. They're popular at concessions like pumpkin farms, and as the ultimate backyard toy.
"I've got three tunnels," said Ken Keagy, describing the layout he built on his ranch in Sonora. "One goes in the basement of my house. I've been picking away at it for 17 years."
The Redwood Valley, Pimlott said, is "a hobby that got out of hand."
"Now," Ellen Thomson said, "we can understand obsession in all its forms."
The Redwood Valley Railway is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and Sunday. A 12-minute ride through hill and tunnel costs $1.75, or five rides for $7. Children under 2 ride free.
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To those who ride the tooting miniature steam trains at Berkeley's Tilden Park, the Redwood Valley Railway is a landmark almost as timeless as the Golden Gate Bridge. [...] to the initiated, the Tilden trains will always be the handiwork of one man -- the late Erich Thomsen, a career Western Pacific mechanical engineer and track inspector who realized his Old World ideals of grace and beauty by building his own railroad in his spare time. Thomsen's hand-wrought fantasy world in the soft shade atop the East Bay hills is 50 years old this year, and his successors, led by his daughter, are marking the event this weekend with a Northern California rendezvous of Thomsen disciples and their intricately detailed iron horses. Three Redwood Railway engines and as many as seven miniature steamers from visiting owners are expected to fire up today and Sunday to entertain the public and sing the song of steam to generations unfamiliar with the tune. The Thomsen train world stands apart from entertainments such as Disneyland in the precision of its simulated reality. Thomsen's frustration with the demise of steam and the industry's inability to save but a few relics drove him to begin creating his own railroad on his parents' Mountain View farm in the 1940s. Thomsen recycled the base's concrete foundations, and salvaged building materials from a nearby Nike missile battery that the government had given up. Railway workers added the final touch by planting 600 coast redwoods to replace eucalyptus that had been wiped out by the 1972 freeze. With 10 unpaid workers pitching in part time, an engine can take 30 years from start to finish.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/business/technology-researchers-develop-computer-techniques-bring-blacked-words-light.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160707083748id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2004/05/10/business/technology-researchers-develop-computer-techniques-bring-blacked-words-light.html
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TECHNOLOGY; Researchers Develop Computer Techniques to Bring Blacked-Out Words to Light
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20160707083748
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European researchers at a security conference in Switzerland last week demonstrated computer-based techniques that can identify blacked-out words and phrases in confidential documents.
The researchers showed their software at the conference, the Eurocrypt, by analyzing a presidential briefing memorandum released in April to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. After analyzing the document, they said they had high confidence the word ''Egyptian'' had been blacked out in a passage describing the source of an intelligence report stating that Osama Bin Ladin was planning an attack in the United States.
The researchers, David Naccache, the director of an information security lab for Gemplus S.A., a Luxembourg-based maker of banking and security cards, and Claire Whelan, a computer science graduate student at Dublin City University in Ireland, also applied the technique to a confidential Defense Department memorandum on Iraqi military use of Hughes helicopters.
They said that although the name of a country had been blacked out in that memorandum, their software showed that it was highly likely the document named South Korea as having helped the Iraqis.
The challenge of identifying blacked-out words came to Mr. Naccache as he watched television news on Easter weekend, he said in a telephone interview last Friday.
''The pictures of the blacked-out words appeared on my screen, and it piqued my interest as a cryptographer,'' he said. He then discussed possible solutions to the problem with Ms. Whelan, whom he is supervising as a graduate adviser, and she quickly designed a series of software programs to use in analyzing the documents.
Although Mr. Naccache is the director of Gemplus, a large information security laboratory, he said that the research was done independently from his work there.
The technique he and Ms. Whelan developed involves first using a program to realign the document, which had been placed on a copying machine at a slight angle. They determined that the document had been tilted by about half a degree.
By realigning the document it was possible to use another program Ms. Whelan had written to determine that it had been formatted in the Arial font. Next, they found the number of pixels that had been blacked out in the sentence: ''An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an xxxxxxxx service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike.'' They then used a computer to determine the pixel length of words in the dictionary when written in the Arial font.
The program rejected all of the words that were not within three pixels of the length of the word that was probably under the blackened-out area in the document.
The software then reduced the number of possible words to just 7 from 1,530 by using semantic guidelines, including the grammatical context. The researchers selected the word ''Egyptian'' from the seven possible words, rejecting ''Ukrainian'' and ''Ugandan,'' because those countries would be less likely to have such information.
After the presentation at Eurocrypt, the researchers discussed possible measures that government agencies could take to make identifying blacked-out words more difficult, Mr. Naccache said in the phone interview. One possibility, he said, would be for agencies to use optical character recognition technology to rescan documents and alter fonts.
In January, the State Department required that its documents use a more modern font, Times New Roman, instead of Courier, Mr. Naccache said. Because Courier is a monospace font, in which all letters are of the same width, it is harder to decipher with the computer technique. There is no indication that the State Department knew that.
Experts on the Freedom of Information Act said they feared the computer technique might be used as an excuse by government agencies to release even more restricted versions of documents.
''They have exposed a technique that may now become less and less useful as a result,'' said Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, of the research project. ''We care because there are all kinds of things withheld by government agencies improperly.''
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David Naccache and Claire Whelan develop computer-based techniques that can identify blacked-out words and phrases in confidential documents; photo (M)
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/07/06/brexit-riles-financial-markets-once-again/nc5i3a24SeSb2sXaCnYwGJ/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160707144302id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/07/06/brexit-riles-financial-markets-once-again/nc5i3a24SeSb2sXaCnYwGJ/story.html
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Brexit riles financial markets once again
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20160707144302
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After a few days’ respite, turmoil has again hit global financial markets, the latest aftershock of Britain’s decision to quit the European Union.
The British pound touched a 31-year low, European stocks dropped, and interest rates on government bonds in the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan fell to record levels.
Blame the specter of uncertainty. No one knows how much more bad news the global economy can bear before it snaps. Ominous signs seem to be everywhere, whether it’s the growing risk of a UK recession or doubts about whether the US Federal Reserve will fight back with real urgency.
All is not lost, however. There are lots of ways this storm could blow over. The whole post-Brexit panic might ultimately be archived as another Wall Street overreaction. That does happen. To borrow a famous line from Nobel Economics Prize recipient Paul Samuelson, markets are very predictive; in fact, they’ve predicted nine out of the last five recessions.
It’s important not to read too much into the short-term movements of financial markets. They’re noisy, with lots of ups and downs unrelated to anything in the real economy.
But it’s no good sticking your fingers in your ears either. Especially when so many indicators seem to be pointing in the same direction.
Broadly speaking, investors are eager to drop their risky British bets and head for safer assets. That is why the pound is falling, and why the price of gold has shot up, because bullion is often a refuge in times of uncertainty.
Likewise, this rush to safety explains the incredibly low rates on government bonds. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury note fell to a record low of 1.32 percent, before a slight bounce back.And in some countries, government bonds descended intonegative interest rates. Investors are essentially paying governments to take their money— because all other options seem even worse.
It depends on where you are.
In Britain, the future looks quite dim. Virtually none of the big questions surrounding Brexit have been answered, including the fate of EU citizens living in Britain and the likelihood that UK companies still enjoy easy access to EU markets.
Worse, several of the leading Brexit boosters have let go of the reins, creating a power vacuum where you might expect to find sharpening plans for a post-EU future.
Elsewhere around the world, though, there’s still reason for optimism. Wall Street’s so-called fear index, the VIX, remains fairly low — far lower than it was immediately after the Brexit vote and right in line with its average over the last year.
Also, US stock markets have held up relatively well. They started Wednesday in negative territory but then rebounded, perhaps a reflection of investors’ confidence in the economy’s ability to absorb the Brexit shock.
And even if the US economy does sour, the Federal Reserve still has a few tools to exploit, including room for a slight rate cut or a return to the kinds of extraordinary measures that were used during the Great Recession.
Every bet has two sides, and it’s worth remembering that this month’s volatility has created its own cohort of winners. Think people who sold their British pounds in the days before Brexit, businesses looking to borrow, homeowners who jumped at the chance to refinance their mortgage, or anyone waiting for the right moment to buy London real estate.
Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries, though, have been governments (at least, outside the United Kingdom). With bond rates at historic lows, governments can borrow billions of dollars at virtually no cost.
In the United States, we could use that money to finance a large-scale jobs program, a big tax cut, or a massive infrastructure upgrade — like removing lead pipes from water systems across the country.
Gridlock in Washington stands in the way, but pursuing these kinds of initiatives could help boost our long-sputtering economy.
That’s one of the tricks of uncertainty; it’s sometimes so thick that you can’t see how or when it will dissipate.
British politicians aren’t helping, with their ongoing refusal to clarify plans or officially start the process of severing EU ties.
But it’s possible US markets will find their own footing. One thing to keep your eye on is Friday’s jobs report. If it’s weak, as the past few have been, that could stoke new fear. But if it’s robust, it might provide a first proof that the US economy is resilient enough to shake off troubles across the pond.
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After a few days’ respite, turmoil has again beset global financial markets in the wake of Britain’s decision to quit the European Union. A currency trader walks by the screens showing the foreign exchange rates in Seoul on Wednesday. The British pound hit a new 31-year low as investors worried about the effect of Britain's decision to leave the European Union. Lee Jin-man/AP Photo A currency trader walks by the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at the foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, July 6, 2016. Asian stock markets slumped on Wednesday led by a 3-percent fall in Tokyo stocks while the British pound hit a new 31-year low. Investors worried about the effect of Britain's decision to leave the European Union on the U.K. real estate market following the Bank of England governor's remarks. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
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http://fortune.com/2016/07/05/venus-williams-sexism/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160708045105id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/07/05/venus-williams-sexism/
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Venus Williams On Sexism in Tennis: 'I Just Want Equality'
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20160708045105
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This story originally appeared on Essence.com.
Tennis champion Venus Williams has been vocal about the glaring inequalities in the way men and women are regarded in the professional sports industry for much of her career and she recently spoke out about an issue relating to the topic yet again.
Venus took part in the first week of 2016 Wimbledon matchups held during the last week of June. When rainy weather conditions forced organizers to schedule a massive number of competitors with a limited number of courts available, Venus was displeased to learn that she’d been scheduled to play on a court much smaller than normal. “I wasn’t unhappy to play on Court 18,” she told reporters following Thursday’s win over Greece’s Maria Sakkari. “I just want equality for men’s and women’s matches. That’s what I’m unhappy about. I have no problem where I play. I’ll play on the practice courts if I need to. I have no problem with that.”
The Wimbledon organization has reportedly admitted in the past that the “attractiveness” of female players is taken into consideration when preparing the schedule and faced much scrutiny as a result.
The five-time Wimbledon champion being scheduled to play on court 18 came as shock to many fans and other competitors, but Venus says it’s the Wimbledon powers-that-be who will ultimately determine whether or not ensuring equal treatment of male and female WTA athletes is given priority at their competition. “I’m sure that the WTA supervisors have done their best to try to make the schedule equal. But also the All England Club has to have a culture where they want to have equality, as well,” Williams said. “They need to want to pursue that. I would love to see where we don’t have to talk about this anymore in the press conference.”
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Williams is a five-time Wimbledon champion.
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http://fortune.com/2016/07/06/mcdonalds-restaurant-worker-lawsuit-hiv/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160708061156id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/07/06/mcdonalds-restaurant-worker-lawsuit-hiv/
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U.S. Agency Sues McDonald's Restaurant Over Firing Worker With HIV
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20160708061156
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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said on Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit accusing the operators of a McDonald’s restaurant in Bentonville, Arkansas, of firing a worker because he was HIV-positive.
In its complaint against Mathews Management and Peach Orchard, the EEOC said the worker was fired in February 2015 after admitting to the restaurant’s general manager to having had “an interest” in a co-worker, and telling that co-worker about his HIV-positive status.
The EEOC said the fired worker had been questioned a week earlier by his shift manager, and told he might lose his job because the defendants had previously fired a female worker who was also HIV-positive.
“People with HIV face enough obstacles in their lives,” said Katharine Kores, an EEOC district director in Memphis, which has jurisdiction over Arkansas, in a statement. “The ability to work in an environment free of discrimination should not be one of them.”
The complaint dated July 1 accused Mathews of violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by firing the worker, and requiring employees to report their use of prescription medication.
Mathews operates 34 McDonald’s restaurants, while Peach Orchard operates the restaurant in Bentonville, the EEOC said. They did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McDonald’s Corp mcd is based in Oak Brook, Illinois, and was not named as a defendant. It did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The EEOC identified the fired worker as “John Doe,” said he had been hired in November 2014, and said his duties included cleaning, operating the register, working the drive-thru window, and opening and closing the restaurant.
Its lawsuit seeks to recoup back pay, recover punitive damages, and end the defendants’ alleged discrimination.
The case is EEOC v Mathews Management et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of Arkansas, No. 16-05166.
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The EEOC says restaurant owners violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/americans-held-hostage-al-qaeda-algeria/story
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160709124254id_/http://abcnews.go.com:80/Blotter/americans-held-hostage-al-qaeda-algeria/story?id=18229633
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At Least 3 Americans Held Hostage by Al Qaeda in Algeria
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20160709124254
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U.S. officials have confirmed that Americans are among the hostages being held following an attack by al Qaeda-linked insurgents on a BP joint-venture natural gas field in Algeria.
A senior intelligence official told ABC News that it currently appears three U.S. citizens are being held. However, the official cautioned that the number is subject to change as is the overall number of hostages.
The total number of hostages being held remains unclear, with reports ranging from 15 to more than 40. An official at BP told ABC News that there are approximately 700 local staff and contractors at the facility and 20 international BP staff and contractors at the In Amenas gas field in eastern central Algeria.
The attack was apparently carried out by a one-eyed jihadi leader, Mokhtar Belmokhar, who has been linked to a series of kidnappings of foreign nationals for ransom in North Africa that have earned tens of millions of dollars for al Qaeda's local affiliate, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Belmokhtar has been nicknamed Mr. Marlboro for his smuggling expertise.
In a briefing, State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland condemned the attacks and confirmed that U.S. citizens are among the hostages.
"In order to protect their safety," said Nuland, "I'm not going to get into numbers, I'm not going to get into names, I'm not going to get into any further details as we continue to work on this situation with Algerian authorities and also their employers."
"We are obviously closely monitoring the situation and in close contact with the government of Algeria and BP's security," said Nuland.
Two sources told ABC News that although public statements by the insurgents have linked the attack to French military operations in Mali, at least one foreign intelligence agency and the U.S. State Department believe the attack was too well organized and orchestrated to have been planned in that short a time frame. A senior State Department official also noted the attack was far from the Mali border.
Senior FBI officials in Washington and New York – the field office responsible for the region --are monitoring the Algerian hostage situation. They are seeing conflicting information on the number of U.S. hostages. If negotiations take place, the State Department would likely coordinate this through the host country, officials told ABC News.
The In Amenas gas field is jointly operated by BP, a Norwegian company and the Algerian national oil company and is 600 miles from Mali, where Al Qaeda-affiliated militants now control much of the country. Britons, Norwegians, and French and Japanese nationals are known to work at the facility and are said to be among the hostages. The British prime minister's office has confirmed that U.K. citizens are among those held, but did not disclose a number.
Al Qaeda linked militants called the Masked Brigade or the Khaled Abu al-Abbas Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was retaliation for Algeria letting French jets use its airspace during its ongoing military operations in Mali. The news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) said it had received a telephone call from a person or persons who described themselves as hostage takers, and said, "We are members of al-Qaeda and we came from northern Mali. We belong to the[brigade] led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar."
Bemokhtar fought alongside the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1990s and lost an eye handling explosives. He has the reputation as an expert smuggler who prefers money to jihad. Over the past decade, he has allegedly mounted multiple kidnappings of foreign nationals in North Africa and extorted $70 million or more. In 2008, his group held two Canadian diplomats hostage for four months in the Sahara desert, taking them to Northern Mali and ultimately receiving a multi-million-dollar ransom for their release.
Last fall, he broke away from AQIM after other militants questioned his possible connection to weapons and drug smuggling. Belmokhtar, who is based in Northern Mali, remains affiliated with al Qaeda. He announced the formation of his new group in a video released on the web in December.
In a statement, BP confirmed that there was an armed attack on the In Amenas field early Wednesday morning.
"The site was attacked and occupied by a group of unidentified armed people at about 0500 U.K. time," said BP. "Contact with the site is extremely diffficult, but we understand that armed individuals are still occupying the In Amenas operations site."
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he didn't know whether there was any connection between the hostage-taking and the French military operation in Mali. "I do know that terrorists are terrorists," he said. "And terrorists take these kinds of actions not just in Algeria, they take them elsewhere."
"By all indications, this is a terrorist act and the United States strongly condemns these kinds of terrorist acts," said Panetta. "It is a very serious matter when Americans are taken hostage, along with others. ... I want to assure the American people that the United States will take all necessary and proper steps that are required to deal with this situation."
Bazi Kanani and Dana Hughes of ABC News contributed to this article.
Click Here for the Blotter Homepage.
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Two U.S. officials tell ABC News that Americans are among the hostages held following the attack on a BP joint venture natural gas field in Algeria. One of those, a senior intelligence official, says that currently it appears three U.S. citizens are being held. However, this official cautions that...
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http://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-july-3-2016-schiff-graham-mccain/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160709145544id_/http://www.cbsnews.com:80/amp/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-july-3-2016-schiff-graham-mccain/
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Face the Nation transcripts July 3, 2016: Schiff, Graham, McCain
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20160709145544
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JOHN DICKERSON, CBS HOST: Today on FACE THE NATION: terrorist attacks abroad and presidential politics at home.
Sixty-five victims are dead, after two attacks at a restaurant in Bangladesh and an airport in Turkey, plus, overnight, more than 100 killed in ISIS attacks in Iraq.
Republican Senators John McCain, and Lindsey Graham join us from Kabul, Afghanistan, to discuss the global terror threat, U.S. response and choices facing the next president.
Plus, Hillary Clinton sat down for three-and-a-half-hours with the FBI yesterday to talk about her private e-mail server while secretary of state.
Bill Clinton had his own sit-down. A chance airport meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch put his wife's campaign on the defensive.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He just happened to be at the airport at this time. Think of it, just happened to be at airport.
DICKERSON: We will talk to top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff.
And in a week of shifting polls, dueling insults, and vice presidential speculation, we will have reporters covering the campaign put it all in perspective.
Finally, our Fourth of July book panel, great moments of leadership and courage in American history.
It's all ahead on FACE THE NATION.
Good morning. And welcome to FACE THE NATION. I'm John Dickerson.
We had planned to start with Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who are in Kabul, Afghanistan, but while we wait for their helicopter to land, we are going to start to the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff.
Congressman, let's start. Before we move onto national security, I want to start with the more recent news. Attorney General Lynch, who has the ultimate say in the e-mail case against -- or which Hillary Clinton is involved, had a chance meeting with Bill Clinton on a tarmac. You were a prosecutor.
Wouldn't the fact that the husband of somebody you were investigating was on the tarmac at all just set off alarm bells immediately?
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: Well, it certainly could.
Look, I think both of them wish their airplanes had never come near each other. And I think they both acknowledged that they would prefer they had never gotten together. But I do think it was a chance encounter, and I fully believe what the attorney general has said, that they discussed nothing about the case, and just talked about their grandkids and playing golf.
So I understand this was a regrettable instance, where they got together quite coincidentally, but at the same time, the attorney general said, look, she's going to let the career prosecutors and FBI make the decision about how to handle the case. And I have every confidence in her that that's exactly what will happen.
DICKERSON: And you think that's enough to put away the concerns about conflicts of interest or the shadow that she even says was brought about by this meeting?
SCHIFF: I think it is.
Look, you're never going to satisfy some people, but I have tremendous confidence, not only in the attorney general, but also in Director Comey. They're very straight shooters. They have been career prosecutors in law enforcement their entire lives.
And if they say this is what they're going to do, if they're going to conduct this investigation by the book, that's exactly what's going to happen. So, I have every confidence that they will make a completely apolitical decision and do what's in the public interest here.
DICKERSON: Let me ask you about the substance of this e-mail server before we go on. Your expertise on the Intelligence Committee, you understand cyber-espionage, we know, and you have heard about these reports of the Russians hacking into the Democratic National Committee.
That's a security matter in intelligence. Didn't having a private server at home leave a huge security vulnerability for the secretary of state?
SCHIFF: Well, using a private server was certainly a mistake, and the secretary has acknowledged that.
Using any kind of personal server, whether it was her own private or a commercial personal server, adds a security vulnerability. But we have to put this in perspective. The State Department's own dot- gov server has been hacked. We know that that has been successfully breached. We don't know that there was any successful breach of Secretary Clinton's server.
The reality is, none of these servers are immune from cyber- attack. You have to defend them the best you can, and the best practice is obviously to use a government server at all times and to make a lot of improvements to the servers, which, frankly, we are still light years from perfecting. But, yes, it was an unnecessary vulnerability to use a private server, and the secretary has acknowledged that was a mistake.
DICKERSON: Do you think, given what you know about the efforts to try and get into the personal e-mails of all kinds of people in all of government, that some attempt was probably tried, just given what you know about all the different efforts in cyber-espionage?
SCHIFF: It certainly wouldn't surprise me.
Look, we have hacks of the Democratic Party. There's obviously great interest in the secretary and in Donald Trump in terms of foreign powers, as well as criminal hackers. So, yes, you would have to expect it would be of great interest. You would have to expect, prudently, that people would try to get in.
I take the view, frankly, that everyone is going to ultimately have access to our personal accounts. None of this can be trusted. Unfortunately, it's just the reality that the cyber-offense often moves much more quickly than the cyber-defense, which has to protect and lock every door.
DICKERSON: Turning now to the terrorist attacks this week, Turkish President Erdogan said, "For terrorists, there's no difference between Istanbul, London, Ankara, Berlin, Chicago, Rome."
What's your feeling about this -- these upticks in attacks all over the world and what that means for security here in the United States?
SCHIFF: We're dealing with a vicious and adaptive enemy, and their attacks are all very strategic.
That massive attack we just saw in Baghdad is designed to pull Iraqi troops away from Mosul, where there's a hope that an offensive can be launched to retake that town. The attacks are Turkey designed to send a message to the Turkish government that to the degree that they fight along the border with ISIS, and or that they make Incirlik available to our Air Force for bombing runs, that Turkey is going to pay a price.
The attack in Bangladesh I think is a result of losing ground, literally losing ground in places like Syria and wanting to expand globally, because without the draw of an expanded caliphate, they're going to show recruitment problems, and already are showing a diminution in foreign fighters joining ISIS.
So, these are all very strategic. We're going to have to intensify our intelligence-sharing. We're going to have to intensify our homeland security. We're going to have to work with our Muslim allies on better countering this ideological draw that ISIS has, this perversion of Islam.
We are going to have to intensify all of these efforts. But I don't think it will call for us to move in some completely different direction.
DICKERSON: What's your feeling about American -- the threat here in America, but also the threat to Americans traveling abroad? Is there reason for more concern?
SCHIFF: Well, there is unfortunately reason for more concern.
And I think the CIA director, Brennan, last week listed all the reasons why ISIS is still virulent. It's very much losing territory, but at the same time expanding its global presence.
And when people are self-radicalized, as we see in the United States, and they don't share plotting with others, that makes it very tough to stop. And we're seeing these return of these foreign fighters to places like Europe.
What is also very significant about the recent attack in Turkey is that, according to the Turks, this was conducted by Russians, Uzbeks, Kyrgyzs. We're seeing a return of the Caucasus fighters. They had been considered too valuable on the battlefield to take away and send back as foreign fighters. But that is changing, I think. The emphasis is changing on this global terrorism campaign, and that introduces new risks and new vulnerabilities that, unfortunately, we all have to be very aware of.
DICKERSON: All right, Congressman Adam Schiff, thank you so much for helping us breaking down all of that.
DICKERSON: And as we wait for the senators to land, to break down the weekend in politics, we're now joined by Molly Ball, who is the politics writer for "The Atlantic," Jerry Seib, the Washington bureau chief for "The Wall Street Journal." Ed O'Keefe is a political reporter for "The Washington Post."
Jerry Seib, let's start with you.
Hillary Clinton sat down with the FBI. What is the status of that issue and her campaign at the end of this week?
GERALD SEIB, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Well, I think the interview with the FBI is an indication that the inquiry into the e- mail use, the question of whether classified information was mishandled is nearing the end.
I think it's been clear for months that a final step, if not the final step, would be the interview with the secretary herself. And I think most people have believed this is probably headed toward a conclusion that will stop short of criminal action and no indictment.
The problem is the Bill Clinton meeting means that even if that's the conclusion, there will be this little cloud hanging over a successful end, and I think in tennis, John, they call that an unforced error.
My gosh, Molly, it's true in the long term, as Jerry says.
In the short term, the meeting with Bill Clinton just put a bright light on this issue again, which is not a good one for Hillary Clinton. What do you think? It just feels like to me the Republicans, the next thing they are going to say is release the three-and-a-half-hours of testimony. And then when that doesn't happen, that will just be -- they will be able to -- how do you see this playing out?
MOLLY BALL, "THE ATLANTIC": And she keeps giving them opportunities to create new ways to highlight this issue.
As you were saying, this is a cloud over her candidacy that she has had a role in keeping alive. And, you know, the congressman talked about trusting the Justice Department to make an apolitical decision.
I don't think they can make an apolitical conclusion at this point, because any conclusion this investigation is going to be viewed through a political lens. If it ends without indictment, you have a large number of people who are still going to be suspicious, especially given things like that meeting, where we will never know what was said, know what was discussed.
We will never know that it was truly innocent. And if it ends with an indictment, that obvious is a huge problem for her candidacy.
How do you see it playing out?
ED O'KEEFE, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, I do think Comey being involved still is probably the silver lining in all this, because his reputation up on the Hill with Republicans especially is rock-solid.
Despite his history and the problems of the George W. Bush administration, he carries respect up there, and for months Republicans have been saying he will make a decision and we will trust his decision. He's going to have to go to Congress probably and explain himself in committee hearings and whatnot, but then this week, of course, threw a wrench into all that. And I think her sort of saying we will leave it to the professionals is a way of trying to preserve some sense of apolitical decision-making.
SEIB: I think the agony for political supporters has got to be that a lot of these things were heading toward a happy conclusion.
SEIB: The Benghazi committee released its report, no real bombshells in that. Depositions in a parallel private lawsuit had been held. Nothing very damaging came out of that.
This looked good. The Justice Department inquiry looked as if it was heading toward a happy conclusion for Mrs. Clinton. Now, of course, it's hard to make a clean break. That's I think a real problem.
DICKERSON: And doesn't it, Molly, bring up the issue? Campaign elections are about choices. So, it's Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump. And there are pluses and minuses for both.
But on that question of trust, at least one poll shows that his numbers are better than Hillary Clinton's. Isn't trust at the center of this, which has always been a weakness for her campaign?
And when I talk to voters out on the campaign trail, I have even met former supporters of her from 2008 who now feel that she's tainted and has too much personal baggage from this issue, from the speeches and other seeming profiteering that she did during her time since leaving office.
There's a cloud over her candidacy. But I think when you look at these polls that have Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump, both of them are under 50 percent, because a lot of the electorate, even if they don't like Trump, has a hard time going to Hillary Clinton because of that trust issue.
O'KEEFE: And this is what is causes so much pain for so many Republicans, those numbers you're referring to; 45 percent of Americans find Trump trustworthy, 37 percent find Clinton trustworthy. This is according to the Quinnipiac poll.
Republicans will tell you, imagine if it wasn't Trump. Imagine if it was Rubio or Cruz or Bush or Scott Walker. We'd be closing the deal with her right now, because all of these issues regarding decision-making, trust, whether she violated classified information, somebody, a more valid candidate or someone who was held in higher regard, would be able to make those arguments in a more reputable fashion than he can.
DICKERSON: Speaking of Trump, we're going to -- just to start with him a little bit before the commercial break. Jerry, let me start with you. He took on the issue of trade. Used to be there was a consensus in the Republican Party trade was good. Donald Trump went right after Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce, saying trade has not been good.
SEIB: This I think is the big substantive change in the Republican Party in 2016, that not only are there questions about whether free trade is an idea the Republican should embrace.
There's an emphatic statement by the presumptive nominee that we will not embrace that and we will got in the opposite direction. And I think one of the problems for the party is that that's an issue that splits it down the middle. You have the populist side of the party that agrees with Donald Trump. You have the Chamber of Commerce side of the party that equally emphatically said it disagrees this week.
I think it will be fascinating to see what the trade language in the Republican platform in Cleveland actually says. And I guess -- my guess is it will probably say very little to nothing as a result of this split.
DICKERSON: Molly, the Republicans have been saying Donald Trump needs to stay on message, give good, solid speeches. That was a good, solid speech, but not on the Republican message.
Well, I think that what we're finding with Trump is that you can professionalize the campaign, but you can't necessarily professionalize or change the candidate.
And so he does -- he has given a few of these more professional sounding speeches off teleprompters. It is not necessarily a message that a lot of the Republican establishment wants to hear, even when he is relatively subdued. And he continues to runs very frontally against that establishment, not just paper over these differences and say, I have one position, they have another.
He's calling out the Chamber of Commerce by name, and that really riles up a lot of the sort of donor class and establishment on the Republican side.
He said it's like he was running against two parties, including partially his own.
BALL: And that's what a lot of voters like, of course.
We will get back to that question in a moment. Stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DICKERSON: We're back with more from our politics panel.
Ed, just finishing here on Donald Trump and trade, this is a pitch to the Sanders voters a little bit. Does he have a shot there?
O'KEEFE: Not much of one.
I haven't seen a poll that shows me there's a wide amount of shifting that would go to Sanders to Trump. And, anecdotally, like Molly, that's the thing with voters over the last few weeks. I have had really interesting conversations. I remember two Hispanic voters out in Vegas who said, Trump makes a lot of good points on the economy, but he's racist, and so I can't vote for him.
And I think for a lot of Sander-type voters, that will be the issue, say, he's kind of singing my song on the economics of all of this, but given his tone and his style and what he's said about women and Muslims and others, it's just something that they can't tolerate.
And so I just don't see it. I think what this is more for him is a play for Pennsylvania, which Republicans try to make everybody four years.
DICKERSON: Haven't won it since 1988.
O'KEEFE: Exactly, but might actually succeed in at least getting closer this time, and then Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, places like that, where he isn't winning, but where they realize he has to if he really wants to run the Electoral College now.
DICKERSON: Jerry, let's move now to the vice presidential speculation. First, let's talk about Donald Trump. What can he do with a vice presidential pick? Can he fix some of these issues Republicans have had with him? What do you -- what is your sense?
SEIB: I think one of the things he's said he wants to do is ease some of the concern in Washington by picking somebody who can navigate Washington.
Now, that's a pretty wide definition. He met this week with -- a couple of days ago Mike Pence, governor of Indiana, who also happens to have been a longtime House member in the Republican Party and is well-known and well-trusted around Washington. So, that's the kind of pick that gives you a twofer. You please the social conservatives in your party, because Mike Pence makes them very comfortable, but you also have somebody who has Washington experience.
You can also simply try to stay out of trouble with a vice presidential pick, pick somebody safe. And that's true in both parties. I do think the Trump short list that we have been hearing, the Chris Christie, the...
SEIB: ... Newt Gingrich, Mike Pence list is the right one.
I have a feeling there's some name out there that we haven't quite heard yet that we're going to pick up in the next couple days.
DICKERSON: Molly, what do you -- let's think about Christie and Gingrich.
As Jerry was saying, one option is picking someone who kind of does no harm. Christie and Gingrich have strong personalities. Donald Trump has a strong personality. How do you think that would work in terms of everybody staying on the same song sheet, given the challenges Donald Trump has had with the song sheet so far?
BALL: We talk about this like it's all Donald Trump's decision.
But unlike like a lot years, there's been a lot of people taking themselves out of consideration. And so I think we have seen Christie and Gingrich most prominently engaged in a long audition process with Trump, where they proved that they can subordinate their personalities to his, and both of them have been doing that quite obsequiously, I don't think is too strong a word, and also showing that they will stay on his message, which can be a challenging message sometimes.
We saw Bob Corker had been very strongly in the mix, and then was critical of Trump at some times. And if you're not willing to toe the line every single time, you lose points in Mr. Trump's eyes. One more name that I have heard a little bit of buzz about behind the scenes is Richard Burr from North Carolina.
He's been mentioned once or twice, but not as prominently. I do hear that he's on the list. But who knows. Trump could wake up on a different side of the bed one day and go a totally different way.
O'KEEFE: It's funny that the guys that are all mentioned here have nothing to lose.
Gingrich isn't in office, and if this doesn't go well, he will go back to doing what he does, which is being a pundit, making money.
O'KEEFE: And, yes, being Newt Gingrich.
Christie, look, if he wins, he becomes vice president. If he doesn't, he can go back to be governor for a few years, even though outside of blood relatives and paid staff don't like him right now in New Jersey.
And Burr is another going to example, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, good friend of John Boehner, up for a tough reelection. If he doesn't win his reelection, and doesn't win vice president, as a former senator who ran the Intelligence Committee, he will do just fine in the money department. So, all of these guys, really, that are at top of mind at least don't have anything to lose, despite the fact that they will have to work with Trump.
And I think one thing to keep in mind regarding Gingrich and Christie, at different times have had favorability ratings mired in the 30s. Might be wildly popular with Republicans, but they, like Trump, may struggle to sort of transcend the party and get undecided voters to like the ticket.
If they have nothing to lose, your argument is that might be why they would go with Trump.
O'KEEFE: And it's why they haven't ruled themselves out.
O'KEEFE: All these other folks, they see futures ahead of them or they worry that they're to lose a critical seat. And they don't want to play.
DICKERSON: On the other hand, if you have got nothing to lose, it might make you harder to keep in line as a vice president, because your -- as a candidate.
Jerry, Donald Trump is meeting with the House and the Senate next week, to Molly's point in terms of trying to fix the campaign, what can he do with those meetings? Mitch McConnell said this week he wasn't a credibility candidate yet.
SEIB: Well, look, he's got some reassuring to do in Washington.
And I think the part of the concern in Washington is that the campaign doesn't feel like it's a whole yet. But I think you're going to see some things in the next week that will be designed to fix that. You're going to hear announcements of state directors, so that people know that there's a campaign organization out there.
You're going to hear some June fund-raising numbers which they're saying are going to be pretty good. You're go to have a convention program that is going to come out that I think will make it look more like a conventional convention that some people either think or fear.
So, I think part of the reassuring of Washington is to show up, hear them out. But part is also to convey to Washington Republicans, hey, we have a campaign structure here. It's sound. It will get us from here to November.
O'KEEFE: And this is a critical week for him, John, because it's the week after this coming one where delegates start heading to Cleveland to really start making the decisions about how this convention, the mechanics of it will go.
A lot of this sort of brings back the Warren Zevon song "Lawyers, Guns and Money," because you're going to have a lot of that kind of odd chaos, and the really bad feelings about the whole thing. If he doesn't do well this week in convincing those members of Congress...
DICKERSON: It won't camp down the restiveness in the party.
DICKERSON: Molly, quickly on Clinton and her vice presidential choice, what are the stakes there?
BALL: Well, I think there's a crucial signal that Hillary Clinton can send with this vice presidential choice. We have heard that she's vetting Elizabeth Warren, who obviously represents the progressive wing of the party.
Tim Kaine, the senator from Virginia, seen as the safe choice, sort of a little bit more of a centrist. And perhaps Julian Castro. There's a couple other names flying around. But, you know, she really has not yet defined which tack she's going to take as a general election candidate.
Is she going to decide that she can go sort of full-blown liberal to bring in the Bernie people and also because maybe that's where her heart is, and she doesn't feel like she has to move to the center, given what she is up against, or is she going to do the conventional thing, where she tacks to the center, tries to win some of those conservative-leaning independents, moderates, maybe suburban voters who might have otherwise voted Republican?
And so the vice presidential pick, I think, could be a powerful signal in that regard.
DICKERSON: All right, Molly, Jerry and Ed, thanks, all very much.
Apparently, the helicopter has landed. So, we will be back in a moment with Senators McCain and Graham. Stay with us.
DICKERSON: Earlier this week, we sat down with Mitt Romney at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
He spoke about the impact he thinks Donald Trump is having on the Republican Party and why he can't support the presumptive GOP nominee.
MITT ROMNEY (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Our nominee is saying, hey, look, it's these people here, it's these Mexicans coming across the border.
By the way, more Mexicans have gone home in the last five years, according to the Census Bureau, than have come in to the country.
(APPLAUSE) ROMNEY: But it's them, and it's Muslims. And, unfortunately, I'm afraid that the things that Mr. Trump has said have been, unfortunately, branding of our party in a very negative way, and one which is consistent with the image many people have of my party.
And so, yes, I think it's taken us in a direction which will be very unfortunate long-term.
DICKERSON: There are efforts afoot to try to find an independent candidate. You said you would support an independent candidate. So, make the pitch for why an independent candidate who believes as you do in American leadership, who believes as you do in the tenets of conservatism, why they should run.
ROMNEY: Well, I think it's very highly probable that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is the next president, and so an independent candidate, I would love to see someone run who I can vote for and feel good about.
I have to be honest. Hillary Clinton, in my view, is not an ideal person to be president. I disagree with her policies on a whole host of areas.
And, at the same time, as I have expressed about Mr. Trump, I believe on the basis of temperament and character, that those are areas where I feel I simply can't vote for him. And so on that basis, I'm going to -- I'm going to voting -- I will either write in my wife's name, who would be ideal president, or I will write in the name of a third-party candidate.
But most people will choose between those two. For me, it's a matter of personal conscience. And I can't vote for either one of those two people.
DICKERSON: And we will be back in a moment.
DICKERSON: Some of our CBS stations are leaving us now, but, for most of you, we will be right back with a lot more FACE THE NATION, including more politics and our presidential book panel. Stay with us.
DICKERSON: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION. I'm John Dickerson.
Joins us now from the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, is Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham.
The distance is causing a bit of a delay, but thank you, senators, for being with us.
And, Senator Graham, I want to start with you. The Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, has said she'll accept the FBI determination on Hillary Clinton's e-mail server, whatever it is. Do you feel the same way?
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Yes.
DICKERSON: Senator McCain, I'll start with you then on the question of terrorism. In Istanbul, Bangladesh, overnight, in -- in -- in Iraq, what, to this diverse set of terrorist challenges, should the U.S. policy response be?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: The U.S. response should have been a long time ago not to withdraw everybody from Iraq. And now the president is on the verge of doing the same thing here in Afghanistan, where things are not going well and he's insisting on cutting the numbers in half while the situation deteriorates. But what he should have done was to remain in Iraq. And while al Qaeda went to Syria, became ISIS, and now we see what we're seeing.
What we need to do is go to Raqqa and kill them. And you can do that with 10,000 of a hundred thousand person contingent, using American capabilities, go take them out of Raqqa where they are now basing most of these -- or at least some of these attacks, and then get into the long, ideological struggle to defeat this metastasizing evil that is afflicting all of the Middle East and parts of the world.
DICKERSON: Senator Graham, Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated again this week that he thinks this uptick in violence is related to the pressure that -- that is being put on Daesh or ISIS, and he says it's a sign that they're being put into a corner. Do you buy that?
GRAHAM: Well, you know, we have made progress on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but there is no strategy to replace Assad. And if Assad stays in power in Syria, the war in Syria never ends and you can't stabilize Iraq.
But the one thing I want people to know, if you forget about Afghanistan, you do so at your own peril. This is where 9/11 originated. The president's about to make the most consequential decision of his presidency in a long time about troop levels. Mr. President, this time around, accept sound military advice. Leave the 9,800, make it condition spaced, and let the next president, whoever he or she may be, deal with Afghanistan. Please do not cut these troop levels in half. If you do, Afghanistan's going to become Iraq very quickly.
MCCAIN: And have rules of engagement that we can utilize the full use of American military power.
DICKERSON: Senator McCain, on that Afghanistan question, the situation there, by some reports, is quite dire. The unity government is in a very shaky state and the Taliban is making advances. For an American public that has seen 15 plus years of war in Afghanistan, leaving the troops there might feel like just, you know, throwing good after bad. MCCAIN: Well, then that means we have forgotten the lesson of 9/11. And that is that where those attacks came from. And that was a base here in Afghanistan. We cannot afford to consign Afghanistan to that status again. And, of course, if we leave, and these forces take over, then there will be further attacks on the United States of America.
By the way, there is going to be further attacks on the United States of America, as long as they have a base in Syria, but then they'll have another base in Afghanistan.
DICKERSON: Senator Graham, I want to ask you about Turkey. A year ago a lot of analysts would say that Turkey was --
DICKERSON: Was sort of turning a blind eye to ISIS. A lot of the fighters went through -- almost all of them were going through Turkey, and that Turkey was an enabler, as one person put it. Where now do you think Turkey is in terms of the fight against ISIS?
GRAHAM: Moving in the right direction in order to give the administration credit for getting Turkey more on board. But this attack you saw in Turkey is just a -- a symptom of greater problem. But Turkey was antagonistic toward Israel. Now we have a new relationship between Turkey and Israel. So that's a good sign.
But I can only tell you that in Afghanistan, Daesh or ISIL is actually growing in capability. So Turkey coming to the fight will help us in Syria and Iraq. But we don't have a strategy to destroy ISIL. The next president will have to deal with that. What we're doing in Syria is buying time. President Obama's passing this on to the next president. And I hope to God we don't get hit in the United States from an attack planned in Syria, like you saw in Turkey. And I'm afraid that's going to happen if we don't speed up the demise of ISIL.
DICKERSON: Senator McCain, Senator Graham just mentioned the next president. We've talked about some pretty complex issues here which will face that next president. Would Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton be better in handling those issues?
MCCAIN: I don't think either one of them have displayed what I think is the necessary strategy and outlook, the planning that -- and reliance on our military leaders that will be necessary to succeed. I hope that whichever one is president, that they would call in the David Petraeus and Robber Fords, and the Ryan Crockers and those individuals, both military and State Department and diplomats who succeed in Iraq before the president gave it all away, who know what we need to do to defeat this -- defeat this threat, both militarily and diplomatically in other ways, and either one of them should call them in and do what they recommend, and that way we can still succeed because America is still the strongest nation on earth.
GRAHAM: If I may add, John -- DICKERSON: Hold on, let me just follow up --
GRAHAM: If I mad add, John, I think both -- both Clinton -- sorry --
DICKERSON: Senator McCain, you mentioned a number of advisers there. I noticed that a number of our advisers, Randy Scheunemann, Kissinger, Armitage, Crystal, Kagan, James Woolsey have all either had serious questions about Trump or are openly against him.
GRAHAM: I think we lost him (ph).
DICKERSON: And I wondered why you're supporting Donald Trump given our reservations and the reservations of the people you trust?
MCCAIN: Well, as I've said, I would support the nominee of the party. I have strong disagreements, and we've just been through several of them, and that's my position.
DICKERSON: All right, and, Senator Graham, as a final thing here, would you just add what you were planning to before the time delay got in our way?
GRAHAM: I think Clinton and Trump both would have a conditions based withdrawal in Afghanistan. Whether it comes to Syria, when Trump says it's OK for Assad to stay, it tells me he has no idea what that means for the region. Israel is in great threat from Iran. Iran is arming Hezbollah with precision-guided missiles. The trip from Israel was very unnerving to say the least. So the Syrian civil war is having an effect throughout the region. Mr. Trump, when you said Assad should stay, you need to rethink that.
As to Secretary Clinton, she says she wants a no fly zone in Syria. That is a great step in the great direction.
DICKERSON: All right, senators, thank you so much for being with us. Happy Fourth of July. And we'll be right back with our Fourth of July book panel.
DICKERSON: This Fourth of July weekend, we thought we'd delve into the history of the past presidents and a great military leader. Joining us to discuss their biographies are Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf, authors of "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination," Jean Edward Smith, author of "Bush," Douglas Brinkley, author of "Rightful Heritage: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Land of America," and Arthur Herman, author of "Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior."
Welcome to all of you. Thank you all for being here so much.
Annette, let me start with you.
The complexity of these people that all of you have written about, Thomas Jefferson seems to have the most complexity, and people are always kind of shifting and changing their positions about him. Just start for me, if you would, with the complexities of Thomas Jefferson and how we should think about them, about him, but then also historical figures in general?
ANNETTE GORDON-REED, "MOST BLESSED OF THE PATRIARCHS": Well, Duma Malone (ph), who's the great Jefferson biographer, described him as six or seven men rolled into one. And when you have that kind of description I think is apt, it gives a lot for people to think about. He was a multifaceted person. A statesman, a farmer, a plantation owner, a slave owner, a person who wrote the creed, all American created, all men are created equal. So once you have that, the slave owning and also the American creed, talking about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it automatically brings a complexity that people find fascinating.
DICKERSON: Arthur Herman, MacArthur, you say he was the last American hero. And so he also great extraordinary risk-taking victories and failures. Incredible vanity.
ARTHUR HERMAN, "DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: AMERICAN WARRIOR": Big failures.
DICKERSON: Talk about -- I mean could that kind of a hero exist anymore? How -- how did it work that he had both such upside and potential downside?
HERMAN: That's a great question. I think part of it -- what you have to realize about him is, is that the heroic image was to a large degree self-crafted. He's very much, we have to remember, a figure almost for the 19th century who, when you think -- we should really think about in the way we would think about a Robert E. Lee, the way we would talk about a George Armstrong Custer. The way he crafts his, you know, trademark image, iconic image, with the corn cob pipe, and the hats and the Ray-Ban sunglasses.
But he's also somebody who's, I think, and maybe this is true for everybody that we've been writing about, is, is that he occupies no fixed point in sort of the American historical imagination. He's always being seen in different lights and new ways, is often reviled, often somebody who's celebrated and revered. And this is part of MacArthur's, I think, fascination for a biographer is how you again, and I like the way you put that, how you bring all the men that he embodies together into a single -- into a single three dimensional portrait. I hope that's what I've done with this book. And I think it's -- for MacArthur, it's one that's been long overdue, frankly.
GORDON-REED: It makes it fun.
HERMAN: It makes it interesting.
DICKERSON: FDR was sometimes two different people between two different consecutive meetings. I mean wasn't that part of his genius a little bit is that he was kind of -- everybody thought he was on their side.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, "RIGHTFUL HERITAGE": Yes, they -- famously FDR said, I'm a juggler. Nobody knows what my left hand is doing compared to my right hand. He didn't even know sometimes. Anybody who took a meeting with FDR came out thinking they got what they wanted, only to find out they really didn't. He was an extraordinary politician. But the key to understanding FDR, in my view, is the Hudson River Valley, and it's a sanctified landscape and it's where he was born, where he lived has whole life and he's buried there in Hyde Park, New York. And he always had a home place, like Thomas Jefferson, that he could go to and get his energies, you know, refurbished from going over there.
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, people think my husband's not an intellectual, but the truth is, he has a map mind. He knew never county, every backroad, every creek, not just in New York state, but all over America. And that's how he was able to do the WPA and the Civilian Conservation Corp planting trees and saving historical sites and worrying about soil erosion and the dust bowl. We think of the Great Depression as the stock market crash. He saw it as about the rejuvenation of the farmers and the landscapes of America.
DICKERSON: Jean Edward Smith, you've written about a lot of presidents, and you -- you write very critically of George W. Bush and his decision making. The current president, Barack Obama, people say he doesn't make decisions fast enough. In all of the presidents you've studied, to Grant, to FDR, to Bush, talk about the decision making quality of a president? What makes a good decision making president and what makes one that's not so good?
JEAN EDWARD SMITH, "BUSH": Well, I -- I think the good decision making quality is -- is if a president looks on all sides of an issue. And -- and -- and George W. Bush did not. George W. Bush came to office with -- with a certain fixed view and -- and -- and became the decider. Did not -- now, George Bush was the decider. It wasn't Cheney and it wasn't the underlings in the White House. George Bush was making the decisions. And Bush came to office believing that he was God's agent here on earth. And when you believe that, you can get into trouble.
DICKERSON: Arthur Herman, MacArthur was -- was also pretty sure of what he believed and --
DICKERSON: And he got into some real crashes with presidents.
HERMAN: Yes, and he wouldn't be put off by the comparisons with God either. It wouldn't -- it didn't bother him in any way as a figure. He is -- he is -- and one of the reasons I have the subtitle, "American Warrior," is, he's not just at war with America's foes, he's also at war with his own leadership, including in the army, including three presidents, Hoover, Roosevelt and Truman. And it's an amazing career when you think about it because considering his enormous rise within his chosen profession, the U.S. Army, the fact that he's never able to restrain himself from telling his superiors when they're wrong, and he thinks they're wrong, and that he is, you know, grating nerves right -- it's an amazing, an amazing career. I mean basically he's driving his career through the U.S. Army with the parking brake on. The fact that he's able to achieve the kinds of things he did to be a major, decisive commander in three wars --
HERMAN: World War I, World War II and Korea is -- is really a tribute, I think, to the man's ability, but also I think to his -- the power of his vision.
DICKERSON: We're going to get back to Jefferson in a second.
BRINKLEY: But to -- to his point, you know, FDR couldn't stand Douglas MacArthur, but he needed Douglas MacArthur.
BRINKLEY: And just six days before FDR died on April 12, 1945, he made MacArthur the head of the Pacific command. And it was one of the great things that Franklin Roosevelt did, meaning he tolerated somebody that annoyed him because MacArthur was going to win the campaign against Japan in the Pacific theatre.
DICKERSON: All right, we're going to pause right there. We're going to be back with our authors in a moment. But first, this break.
DICKERSON: We're back with more from our authors.
Peter Onuf, I want to start with you. The point that Annette was making about Jefferson and slavery.
PETER S. ONUF, "MOST BLESSED OF THE PATRIARCHS": Right.
DICKERSON: Going to this point about contradiction. Where was Jefferson actually on slavery? I mean he owned slaves and then, of course, he was -- wrote about the freedom of man. So what are we to think?
ONUF: Right. Well, he thought that slavery was a radical injustice that must, in the fullness of time, be rectified. And his plan for that was that justice would be done by emancipating the slaves. So far so good. We like that. But then expatriating them, sending them to a country of their own.
The hard truth that we don't like to face is that the nation that Jefferson was creating was a white nation. It didn't mean he didn't respect the human rights, the natural rights of his enslaved people, but those could only be fulfilled elsewhere and then they could become an independent people, or a free and independent people. It's ironic that he uses the language of the Declaration of Independence when he talks about the ultimate freedom of slaves, but he says we will create them. Send them elsewhere and create them into a free and independent people. In other words, where the war for independence is an assertion of nationhood, then nationhood for enslaved people would be asserted by their white masters.
GORDON-REED: Yes. And he did not believe that this depth (ph), that there could be a multiracial country. He didn't have the confidence that whites and blacks could live together without conflict. And, of course, that is the thing that we -- you know, we're trying to do now and that's -- that's the problem that we have with them.
DICKERSON: Jean Edward Smith, I want to go -- doing a big time shift here, but I want to go back to this question of presidents and generals because, again, you've written about presidents and generals and generals who became presidents. George Bush's relationship to his military, building off of what we were saying about MacArthur and FDR, what was the relationship between Bush and the military?
SMITH: George Bush was commander in chief, and he felt very definitely that he was commander in chief and this was a superior- subordinate relationship. And I think it's fair to say that the first two chairman of the Joint Chiefs and George Bush really didn't -- didn't get along. I don't think most Americans realize it, but the Joint Chiefs are no longer really in the battle chain of command. It goes from the president, to the secretary of defense, to the area commander. And the Joint Chiefs, after the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986 are no longer the chain of command. But -- but -- but they are the Joint Chiefs. They -- they do command the army. And so it's a very complicated situation. That's all true except for General Petraeus. I think that Petraeus and Bush got along very nicely.
DICKERSON: Douglas, the -- FDR, what he did with the conservation corps, how much resistance was there? When we think about Barack Obama, remember the shovel-ready projects?
DICKERSON: It was -- the stimulus, so hard for him to pass. Conservation, as an idea at the time as stimulus, how hard was that for FDR to do?
BRINKLEY: Well, he inherited the conservation mantle from his fifth cousin, Theodore Roosevelt.
BRINKLEY: So it was in the family bloodstream. And then he was governor of New York state, FDR, in 1928. Won again in '30. And did kind of mini -- putting unemployed tree armies to work for the depression, planning in New York state. He took that program. It was FDR's pet program, the CCC, just weeks after his famous historic of -- you know, we have nothing to fear inaugural, he ending up hiring, paying a dollar a day to young men all over saving our state parks, national parks, historic sites. He would push forward things like bringing the mall here. Came into the National Park Service, the White House and all, into and, in fact, pushed forward the Jefferson Memorial. But the CCC generations been dying off. Many are in their 90s now, but they've all left diaries and things that I was able to tap into. They planted almost 3 billion trees from 1933 to 1942. Then Congress defunded the CC, and it was one of our most successful programs. And there's a call now, can we do something for our young people? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
BRINKLEY: Is there a new CCC. It's hard because --
BRINKLEY: He -- they were in -- you know, they have bugle call, they had uniforms on.
BRINKLEY: They did -- but this Four of July, if you go to Zyon (ph) or Olympic or Channel Islands, or Mammoth Cave, any of these parks, Everglades, Smokys, the CCC has a big role in making it tourist ready.
HERMAN: And they couldn't -- and they couldn't have done it without Douglas MacArthur.
HERMAN: Because Roosevelt, they needed somebody who could run the training camps for these young men and who would know something about organizational logistics with it. And there were a lot in the army when Roosevelt turned to the War Department to get them to help. There were a lot of who said -- who said, we're not going to waste our time with this kind of nonsense, and MacArthur said, no, he said, this is the perfect opportunity, in a period of time in which Army budgets had been slashed, and our prestige in the nation's in a rather at a low ebb, this is the way to prove what we can do.
Sometimes people say the CCC, that was a kind of important requisite for the U.S. mobilization of World War II, that's not quite accurate.
HERMAN: But it did help U.S. Army officers and reserve -- and ROT officers learn the ropes about commanding large numbers of young men, many of them unwilling young men, to work together and to -- and to train and to perform these kind of very, very complicated, logistical tasks all over the country.
DICKERSON: Annette, Jefferson believed in the ultimate progress of the American experiment, but went through some kind of -- some dark times where that experiment looked in danger. What would he say now, where everybody looks at the system and says, oh, it's a mess? Would he have some -- how did he retain faith in the evolution of things, even in the darkest of times?
GORDON-REED: Well, because he had a scientific bent. He sort of extrapolated from progress and science in progress to -- in everyday life. What he would say about now, people always ask me that, channeling Jefferson. I think he would be a little bit concerned about the sort of anti-intellectualism that exists in the -- in the country today, and the sort of inward looking -- I mean he certainly thought we should be involved in foreign entanglements, but he did think that Americas should engage the world. So I think he might be a little bit concerned about what is going on at this particular moment.
ONUF: And I think he's say also that maybe we know too much and we're disenchanted and disillusioned. It's hard to believe in progress when we think we know everything, and the things that are emerging now are frightening to us. That believe in progress is based on the few things you could know and then build on them. I think his relationship to nature is crucial. These things -- this imminent in nature, that God has a plan and it will work out, and that kind of sense of a providential destiny that combines, you might say, natural religion and science into this faith in the future.
DICKERSON: All right, we're going to --
BRINKLEY: FDR -- FDR had that too.
ONUF: Yes, the earth belongs to the living.
DICKERSON: I'm going to -- I'm going to have to pause this here. We're going to carry on the conversation online on the FACE THE NATION website.
Thank you all of -- all of you for being here and for the continued conversation we'll have. But for the moment, that's it for us. We'll be right back.
DICKERSON: We pay tribute this morning to Nobel Prize winning author and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel, the human rights activist lost his entire family in concentration camp and devoted his life to the message that the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. He protected Holocaust education and protested genocide around the world. Wiesel was 87 years old.
That's it for us today. Thanks for watching. Have a very happy Fourth of July. Until next week, for FACE THE NATION, I'm John Dickerson.
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This is the July 3rd edition of Face the Nation. Guests included Adam Schiff, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, Molly Ball, Ed O'Keefe, Gerald Seib, Peter Onuf, Annette Gordon-Reed, Douglas Brinkley, Arthur Herman and Jean Edward Smith.
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Saying You’re an ‘Entrepreneur’ Means Nothing
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For better or worse, the craze du jour is entrepreneurship. We live in a culture where everyone is obsessed with knowing what makes great business leaders tick. The way we fall all over ourselves trying to categorize and characterize them, you’d think they were zoo animals or a new insect species.
It’s more than a little dehumanizing, if you ask me. It’s also foolish. There’s a good reason why you never hear Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg talk about themselves. They don’t talk about themselves because they don’t think about themselves. They think about their jobs. They think about their work. That’s just what CEOs do.
Listen carefully and I’ll let you in on a little-known secret: Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about personal habits or qualities. It’s not about your personality or your background. It’s not about whether you’re a visionary, a morning person, an engaging communicator, emotionally intelligent, super productive, deliriously happy, extraverted, optimistic or some sort of millennial wunderkind.
Related: Tesla and Theranos Are Pushing the Limits of Silicon Valley’s Hype Machine
In fact, being a business leader is not about you at all; it’s about how you run your company. How do I know that? I’ve seen every stereotype you can think of shattered more often than not. I know what all the books and blogs say about personal brands, performance and habits. The books and blogs are all wrong.
Whether you aspire to be a small-business owner or the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company, this is what being a successful top executive is all about.
Managing the business. It’s great to be passionate about your trade, but if you’re not business savvy, you shouldn’t be running a business. Entrepreneurship is not a state of mind and entrepreneur is not a job. Business owner is a job. CEO is a job. And most companies fail because their bosses don’t understand the fundamentals of what it takes to run a successful business.
Practical purpose. It’s popular dogma that companies should have a defining purpose, but if your raison d’être isn’t practical, or consistent with your company’s DNA and culture, it’s just empty words. You can talk about changing the world all you want, but your company won’t survive unless you’re crystal clear on what it can do better than everyone else and you focus on that.
Tenacious culture. Founders don’t just wake up one day and say, “Gee, think I’ll start a company with free gourmet food, flexible hours and dogs – lots and lots of dogs.” Real entrepreneurs are driven to solve a customer problem they feel strongly about. Employees are inspired to do great work they believe in. Put those two together, and you’re in business. If it works, the trick is to capture the unique behavior that led to that result and replicate it as the company grows. That’s culture.
Product innovation. We live in an era where customers have more choices on how to spend their money than ever before. In a highly competitive global market, the best products and services win. Consistently innovating and delivering products customers love is the key to market share, pricing power, profit margins and all the perks that go with them.
Customer experience. Among the most important concepts of the modern business age is the customer experience. Outsourcing is fine, but whenever, wherever and however customers interact with your brand, their experience is all they’ll remember. The most successful brands in the world own the customer experience across all products, services, channels and markets.
Related: After the Theranos Mess, Can We Finally Quit Idolizing Entrepreneurs?
Organizational simplicity. Too much hierarchy creates bureaucracy and too flat an organization can result in anarchy. The most adaptive and high-performance organizational structure is one with as few management layers and rules as are needed to operate effectively and scale. The optimum structure is different for every company and it changes over time.
Beating the competition. Globalization means the world has never been more competitive. That goes for talent as well as products. As with every customer purchase, every hiring decision has just one winner and lots of losers. You can’t expect to sustain market leadership without consistently attracting and retaining the best talent.
The most important thing to remember is that business is not about you; business is about business. It’s how you run it that counts.
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The term has been diluted to the point of irrelevancy.
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With parking and a patio, Charlestown home stands out
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A home doesn’t need to be framed by green grass to be beautiful, and this staggered-shingle house in a neighborhood where lots tend toward the compact proves the point. Here, cast-iron fencing frames a brick-patio garden that leads to the columned main entry.
The home has an open layout split by the central stairwell. To the left is the dining area, which features a working wood-burning fireplace nestled in an exposed-brick wall with built-in shelving. The hearth is a dark blue ceramic tile, subdued yet elegant.
The brick wall carries the eye to the kitchen, where the white gas stove is sandwiched between a prep counter and a peninsula. The peninsula offers seating for two and a stove top. Above it hangs a cabinet with glass-front doors on each side, creating a showplace for the fancy china and another way for natural light to penetrate the space. Extensive cabinets of solid red birch with a cherry stain surround the sink and stretch down a short hallway that ends at a side door. The counters are slate, the rest of the appliances are stainless steel, and a pocket door separates the kitchen and a half bath.
Back at the main entry, a right takes you into the living room, a comfortable space focused on a working fireplace with a custom metal screen. There’s built-in shelving on one side of the wooden mantel, and the hearth is a sleek black granite. Three windows, including a south-facing bay with custom shutters, lend additional warmth to the space.
The master bedroom has oak flooring.
The master bedroom holds court on the second floor — it fits a queen bed easily — and features a working fireplace with a wood mantel and a cedar-lined closet. Across the hall is a full bath with a large whirlpool tub and a single vanity with granite countertop.
You’ll find another bedroom on this floor and two more on the third level. Each of the spacious rooms on the top floor is bright and sunny, thanks to the addition of skylights.
Closet space in all of the bedrooms is plentiful. The flooring on the first two levels is oak, while the third retains the original wide-plank pumpkin pine. The basement is unfinished.
The home sits on a 0.03-acre parcel and has a much desired off-street parking space.
Tracy Shea of Hammond Residential Real Estate in Charlestown is the listing broker.
Baths: 1 full, 1 half
All of the home’s wood windows have been replaced.
The living room fireplace works, and the shutters are custom.
The wood-burning fireplace is the focal point of this exposed-brick wall in the dining room.
The peninsula in the kitchen seats two, and the counters are a subtle slate.
Another view of the patio, which has cast-iron fencing
The whirlpool tub is the big draw of this bath.
The bedrooms on the third level feature the home’s original wide-plank pumpkin pine floors.
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This detached single-family in Charlestown has four bedrooms, three fireplaces, and a wraparound brick patio with a cast-iron fence.
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Quentin Tarantino’s anti-cop protest built on a series of lies
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Filthy-rich, weak-brained filmmaker Quentin Tarantino wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last moronic celebrity to roam through New York City, drumming up fury against police officers who risk their lives to protect his miserable hide.
Until now, the Oscar-winning auteur’s greatest contribution to cultural disintegration involved directing, co-writing and acting in “Pulp Fiction,’’ the minimally amusing 1994 cinematic ode to nihilism and ultra-violence. He jetted in from California to join hundreds of like-minded cop-bashers, including activist/academic Dr. Cornel West, at a rally in Washington Square Park put on by RiseUpOctober, part of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I’m a human being with a conscience,” Tarantino told the crowd, as his despised police made sure that no harm came to a single hair on his demented head. “And if you believe there’s murder going on, then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered.”
The weekend protest came four days after a genuine hero, NYPD Police Officer Randolph Holder 33 — posthumously promoted to the rank of detective — was shot to death on a pedestrian overpass above the FDR Drive in East Harlem, allegedly by career criminal Tyrone Howard, 30.
The fact that Holder, like his accused murderer, bore black skin seemed capable of making protesters’ heads explode.
The Rev. Al Sharpton — Holder couldn’t stand the frequent cop-basher, his grieving fiancée said — claimed, apparently falsely, that the dead officer’s father had invited him to deliver the eulogy at his son’s funeral in Queens Wednesday.
But the rev located his sense of decency and pulled out of attending the solemn gathering.
The entire celebrity-choked Black Lives Matter movement is based on a series of lies.
One lie is that bad-apple cops are hardly the exception, but the norm. Another is that police officers are bent on the “murder,’’ as Tarantino so outrageously put it, of unarmed African-American men.
When Beyoncé and Jay Z bailed out protesters who wreaked havoc in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., they aided people who contributed to black poverty by destroying businesses owned or run mainly by black people.
Basketball players LeBron James and Kobe Bryant attended pregame warmups in December wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “I Can’t Breathe,’’ the final words of Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died as he resisted arrest.
But while a report by the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office mentioned an alleged police chokehold as a probable cause of Garner’s death, it also listed health factors that contributed to his demise, including his history of obesity and hypertension.
And while protesters in Ferguson raised their hands in surrender, chanting, “Hands up, don’t shoot’’ — supposedly the last words of slain Michael Brown — the phrase was unlikely ever to have been uttered by the man in police custody. A St. Louis County grand jury could not confirm the words were said, and a US Department of Justice investigative report determined the same thing.
President Obama, too, defended a movement that targets cops for disrespect and violence. “I think the reason that the organizers used the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s lives matter,’’ he said during a panel discussion on criminal-justice reform last week. “Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a specific problem that’s happening in the African-American community that’s not happening in other communities.’’
A war has been declared on cops, but you wouldn’t know it if you listened to the denialists. In New York City alone, four police officers have been slain since December. Two, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, also posthumously promoted to detectives, were shot to death by a lunatic who, riled up by anti-cop rhetoric, traveled from Baltimore to murder police, then shot himself to death. Nationwide, 31 cops have been slain in the line of duty this year.
“There are no words to describe the contempt I have for him,’’ city Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said, ripping into Tarantino.
Members of Philadelphia’s police union are the latest to join their counterparts in New York and Los Angeles in calling for a boycott of his films.
Any lost life is a tragedy. But according to the Black Lives Matter crowd, police lives don’t matter a whit.
These are men and women, of all races, who put their lives on the line for everyone, every day. Protesters should be ashamed.
Three people crashed and burned on live television during Wednesday night’s Republican candidates’ debate: the CNBC moderators.
The liberals, who seemed hostile to the conservatives they were questioning, lost control of the event as the 10 debaters yelled and fumed.
The low point came when CNBC yakker Becky Quick asked Donald Trump about a verbal jab that she accused him of leveling against Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg over a proposal to grant American visas to highly skilled immigrants.
Trump denied he criticized Zuckerberg. He also denied slamming Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a rival for the GOP 2016 presidential nomination.
“My apologies,’’ said a flustered Quick. “I’m sorry.’’
But Trump’s campaign Web site refers to Rubio as “Zuckerberg’s personal senator.’’
Quick & Co. are not ready for prime time.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has decreed that processed meats, including bacon — lovely, scrumptious bacon — are “carcinogenic to humans,’’ like tobacco and asbestos, and that eating red meat probably increases one’s chances of growing not love handles, but colorectal tumors.
See ya, sirloin steak. Ta-ta, cocktail weenies. It seems as if every time I sit down to eat, some expert contends that the things I crave most, from coffee to red wine, either can kill me or make me live longer.
But is a rasher-free life even worth living?
I look forward to the day food rules change again, and we can all chow down.
Has a beloved character been killed off in “The Walking Dead’’?
For the 12 people still waiting to watch Sunday’s episode of the best show on television on their DVRs, I won’t put out any spoilers.
But suffice it to say that the Internet is abuzz with explanations as to why the seemingly dead apocalypse-dweller was not eaten by zombies, and will live on. I hope so.
Or is this a metaphor for the New York Mets’ somnambulant performance against the Kansas City Royals in the first two games of the World Series?
I need to get out more.
The new, must-have plastic surgery for an increasing number of psycho women is labiaplasty. Gals pay willing surgeons $5,500 to $7,500 apiece to take a scalpel to their private parts to make them look sleeker in yoga pants, The Post’s Jane Ridley reported. Seriously?
Greedy medical practitioners have no excuse for maiming women’s bodies.
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Filthy-rich, weak-brained filmmaker Quentin Tarantino wasn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last moronic celebrity to roam through New York City, drumming up fury against police officers who …
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Donald Trump’s policy plans are real, detailed - and great
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The rap on Donald Trump is he’s all bluster. The New York Times says he’s offering “incoherent mishmash.” Former GOP rival Ted Cruz claimed Trump has “no idea” how to fix the economy.
The Trump campaign is putting forward proposals to fix problems from the long waits for medical care at Veterans Affairs facilities to the impending collapse of ObamaCare.
Check out Trump’s economic plan, for starters. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s anti-business agenda, Trump’s plan would actually help unemployed Americans get back to work.
Trump slashes the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from the current 40 percent, the highest rate in the industrialized world. Not all American companies pay that staggering rate, but even after deductions and accounting maneuvers, companies in the United States end up clobbered by taxes nearly twice the global average (24 percent).
In Ireland, a magnet for tax-weary companies, the rate is only 12.5 percent and their economy is growing about three times as fast as ours. Conversely, Japan and Argentina are stuck in the doldrums along with America, partly because of their high rates.
Trump also proposes a one-time 10 percent repatriation tax on profits US companies made overseas and kept there to avoid the 40 percent rate. That bargain could lure back as much as $2.5 trillion in capital urgently needed here.
To promote investing in plants and equipment, Trump would allow companies to write off the purchases the year they’re made, rather than over several years, as current law requires.
Economist Larry Kudlow predicts that if Trump’s corporate tax plan becomes law, you’ll see “a tremendous movement of capital and labor back to the United States.”
Trump’s lower 15 percent business rate would also apply to small businesses that usually get taxed at individual income tax rates. That would give a break to mom-and-pop operations, startups and other small businesses that are the source of most jobs.
Compare Trump’s blueprint with Clinton’s nightmare scenario: Higher taxes, more tax complexity and an avalanche of new regulations. Over-regulation has depressed economic growth for the last 15 years.
The Obama administration suffocated business with 81,000 pages of new regulations in 2015 alone. Hillary is pushing for even more — with controls on hiring, pay, bonuses and overtime to promote “fairer growth.” Translation: gender and racial preferences, plus meddling in how much you get paid.
Remember Obama’s statement, “You didn’t build that.” Hillary assumes “You don’t own that.” Government will run your business. Hillary wants companies to stop maximizing quarterly earnings for shareholders — what she derides as “quarterly capitalism.” She wants “farsighted investments” (whatever that means). Companies that can get out of the United States will rush for the exits.
She’s even promising an end to “the boom-and-bust cycles on Wall Street.” As plausible as ending rainy days.
Trump’s “make America rich” plan targets impoverished cities like Baltimore with incentives for companies to move there. For African-Americans, whose unemployment rate is twice as high as the nation’s overall, Trump’s has a four-letter remedy: J-O-B-S.
For young blacks with no job experience, he’s got plans. One is borrowed from the left-leaning Century Foundation. Every summer, the State Department brings about 100,000 young foreigners into the United States to work in restaurants, camps and seaside resorts under J-1 visas. Trump says convert the program into a jobs bank for our own inner-city youth.
Meanwhile, Hillary is stoking racial hatred, telling black voters they’re victims of “systemic racism” and meeting with Al Sharpton. Hillary says public schools should stop disciplining and suspending black teenagers who misbehave. But self-discipline is precisely what’s needed to succeed at school and on the job. While Hillary panders, Trump offers specifics to get these young people on the job ladder.
Clinton’s reputed to be the policy wonk, but she’s just a cynical politician. Trump, who’s rolling out serious policies to get Americans working, is the real deal.
Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.
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The rap on Donald Trump is he’s all bluster. The New York Times says he’s offering “incoherent mishmash.” Former GOP rival Ted Cruz claimed Trump has “no idea” how to fix the economy. Don’t believe…
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http://fortune.com/most-powerful-women-europe-middle-east-africa/
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MPW: Europe, Middle East & Africa
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Botín has wasted little time remaking Banco Santander in her own style since becoming Executive Chairman after her father’s death in September 2014. She has overhauled management at the bank—which, with $100.7 billion in revenues, ranked No. 67 on the 2015 Global 500—raised capital, and strengthened its financial condition. She is also putting new focus on customer experience at Santander, which is the second largest in Europe by market value. Profits for the company increased 33% in 2014. —Erika Fry
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More than half the members of our EMEA list are heads of major companies, six are newcomers, and 10 are located in the U.K. One surprise: Nine of our MPWs—including No. 1 Ana Botín of Banco Santander—work in finance, a sector known for its dearth of women.
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http://mashable.com/2007/09/05/hireahelper/
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Don't Do It Yourself-Hire a Helper
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20160711110516
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Hire A Helper is a new site that has created a Guru-like marketplace for household labor.
The purpose of the site is actually to match up college students that need extra cash with home owners that could stand to catch a break. When exploring the site, though, I did find a good amount of businesses that don't appear to be run by college students, but are in fact established businesses for house cleaning, etc. The main categories on the site are Lawn, House Cleaning, Moving, and General help. Start with any of these categories to initiate your search, and provide your zip code. You can then pick a date that you'll need help and you'll get a list of search results in your area.
Each result has a description and a price for the labor. You can get additional details, like if there are any traveling fees included, and how much it would cost for three people instead of one. There's also a link for reviews, which shows the average rank of that individual or business, the number of jobs completed, and any comments other users have left in regards to their service.
The ranking and review system seems sub-par for this type of marketplace matching system, which I would expect to find much more information regarding jobs, and include a more in-depth ranking system. There's also no way for requested jobs to be posted, meaning the home owner will need to do all the work for finding labor, as opposed to the marketplace working the other way around. A similar, more feature-rich service is DoMyStuff.
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Hire A Helper is a new site that has created a Guru-like marketplace for household labor. The purpose of the site is actually to match up college students that need extra cash w...
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Puppies (and Kittens) Are Just the Prescription for Staff at Philadelphia Hospital
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20160711111853
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For the health care workers at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, lunch time is puppy time.
Rather than grabbing a sandwich or a cup of coffee, they decompress a little from the day's highs and lows by cuddling puppies and kittens.
The idea for the program called Pet a Pooch - though there are also some friendly felines - came from Heather Matthew, an emergency room nurse at the Philadelphia hospital. She said unwinding from a particularly overwhelming day started when she got home and spent time with her bull dog, Annabella.
"Health care is an incredibly stressful field, from the medical intensive care [unit] to the emergency [room] to the newborn nursery," Matthew said. "It's stressful."
So in 2013, Matthew came up with the program to help ease her coworkers' stress.
She recruited the Pennsylvania SPCA to bring puppies and kittens to the hospital where, during their lunch hours, anyone could drop by and hold, pet and love a furry animal.
"The pets that come, they've been abused, neglected," said Jerry Buckley, president of the PSPCA. "I think the staff has a special affinity [for them.] … The patients they deal with are also the most vulnerable."
Emergency room nurse Joyce Finnegan even adopted a pet - a chocolate Lab named Bo.
"The minute I saw him, I had to get him," she said. Ten animals have been adopted, thanks to the program.
Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a urologist working 12 to 14 hours a day, said he took an hour off once a month to hang with the animals.
"A lot of the staff need some sort of calming effect," he said.
"I've had people say to me, 'I walked in here with the worst headache and I instantly feel better,'" Matthew said. "And that's the goal. … They go out and they finish their workday and they then go on to provide even better care for their patients."
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The Pet a Pooch program lets health care workers decompress from stressful days.
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http://www.people.com/people/article/0%2C%2C20527078%2C00.html
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George Clooney, Stacy Keibler at Toronto Film Festival : People.com
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20160711121306
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George Clooney and Stacy Keibler
Jamie McCarthy/WireImage; Jason Merritt/Getty Images
09/09/2011 AT 05:00 PM EDT
and Stacy Keibler have taken
to the Great White North.
Keibler, 31, joined the actor – who's in town for the
– for a cozy night out at the city's Ritz-Carlton Thursday night, according to reports.
The pair, who were first
over the summer, spent some time in a low-lit, quiet corner of the hotel's Deq lounge.
They were part of a small group that dined on cured meats, according to reports. When Clooney, 50, and Keibler left the lounge, they exited arm-in-arm.
No word if the pair will walk the red carpet together for either of Clooney's films –
premieres Saturday at the festival.
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Keibler joins the actor, in town to support two upcoming films, for a trip up north
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http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/29/sports/nat-fein-86-pulitzer-winner-for-picture-of-ruth-s-final-bow.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160711155910id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2000/09/29/sports/nat-fein-86-pulitzer-winner-for-picture-of-ruth-s-final-bow.html
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Nat Fein, 86, Pulitzer Winner For Picture of Ruth's Final Bow
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20160711155910
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Nat Fein, who won a Pulitzer Prize for capturing one of the sports world's most poignant images, a rear-view photograph of a dying Babe Ruth receiving his final accolade at Yankee Stadium in June 1948, died Tuesday at Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood, N.J. He was 86 and lived in Tappan, N.Y.
In his three decades with The New York Herald Tribune, Mr. Fein, who called himself ''just a human-interest photographer,'' took thousands of pictures evoking life in New York. Using a bulky Speed Graphic camera, he photographed circus elephants sleeping, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia leading the Sanitation Department orchestra, and Dr. Albert Schweitzer kneeling to shake a little girl's hand.
On the rainy afternoon of Sunday, June 13, 1948, Mr. Fein was at Yankee Stadium when Ruth, terminally ill with throat cancer, appeared at home plate in his old uniform at a ceremony marking the stadium's silver anniversary season.
''When we were in the dressing room, he sat beside his old No. 3 locker and we made a picture there,'' Mr. Fein wrote in an unpublished memoir. ''Then he pulled out the belt showing how much thinner he'd got and I wanted to make a picture then, but they told me he's going to have all he can do to get out there -- he's a very sick man -- and the least bother here as possible because there's going to be a ceremony outside.
''He came over to home plate. Of course, the story was No. 3 bows out, the uniform being retired and all, and as they played 'Auld Lang Syne,' I was trying to make a picture showing No. 3, but it's only on his back. So I walked around behind with the band still playing 'Auld Lang Syne' and there was his figure, his thin legs compared to his bulky body, and his No. 3 showing. So I made the picture from his back.''
The photo of Ruth leaning on a bat he borrowed from the star pitcher Bob Feller, whose Cleveland Indians played the Yankees that day, appeared on Page 1 of The Herald Tribune. Mr. Fein sent a copy to Ruth, asking him to autograph it, but Ruth never responded. On Aug. 16, 1948, Ruth died at age 53.
Reflecting on the picture, which brought him the Pulitzer Prize for news photography in 1949, Mr. Fein once said, ''I didn't think it was a great shot,'' but he acknowledged that he ''got the feeling'' of the moment.
Nathaniel Fein was born in Manhattan, joined The Herald Tribune as a copy boy in the early 1930's and became a staff photographer in 1939. He served as a photographer in the Army Air Forces during World War II, then returned to The Herald Tribune and remained there until it went out of business in 1966.
Mr. Fein's photographs appeared in Edward Steichen's ''Family of Man'' show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, and a collection of his photos was published as ''Nat Fein's Animals'' (Gilbert Press, 1955).
He is survived by a son, David, of Tappan.
Photo: Babe Ruth died only two months after Nat Fein took this prize-winning picture in June 1948. It appeared in The New York Herald Tribune.; Nat Fein in 1992. (The New York Times)
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Nat Fein, who won a Pulitzer Prize for capturing one of the sports world's most poignant images, a rear-view photograph of a dying Babe Ruth receiving his final accolade at Yankee Stadium in June 1948, died Tuesday at Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood, N.J. He was 86 and lived in Tappan, N.Y. In his three decades with The New York Herald Tribune, Mr. Fein, who called himself ''just a human-interest photographer,'' took thousands of pictures evoking life in New York. Using a bulky Speed Graphic camera, he photographed circus elephants sleeping, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia leading the Sanitation Department orchestra, and Dr. Albert Schweitzer kneeling to shake a little girl's hand.
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http://time.com/4166260/selena-gomez-no-more-justin-beiber-questions/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160711162621id_/http://time.com:80/4166260/selena-gomez-no-more-justin-beiber-questions/?iid=sr-link4
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Selena Gomez Is Done Talking About Justin Bieber
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20160711162621
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Remember that time video footage surfaced of Justin Bieber serenading Selena Gomez with “My Girl” in a hotel, prompting a lot of are-they-back-together speculation? Well, we’ll likely never get the full story behind the encounter, because Gomez is no longer talking about her ex in interviews. Over it. Finished. Dunzo. As she recently told Rolling Stone, who inquired about the aforementioned clip: “Honestly, what I would love to be printed is that I am so beyond done with talking about that, and him.”
This is great news for anyone who thinks it would probably be quite boring, if not outright humiliating, to be asked about someone you dated as a teenager every time you wanted to talk about your work. Selena Gomez getting asked about Justin Bieber over and over again is to 2015 what Emma Stone getting asked about the Spice Girls over and over again was to 2014: all parties involved deserve better.
Sure, stars’ personal and professional lives often intersect, especially when one claims her new album is her most personal yet. But there are plenty of other more interesting things to ask her (and Bieber, for that matter) that don’t involve her dating history: What about her cameo in The Big Short, where she breaks down synthetic collateralized debt obligations with unexpected proficiency? (Odds that Gomez knows more about the financial crisis than you: pretty high.) Or about her new single “Hands to Myself,” which is pretty much a perfect pop song? Or literally anything else?
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"I am so beyond done with talking about that, and him"
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http://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/fbi-director-james-comey-grilled-dangerous-precedent-clinton/story
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FBI Director Grilled About 'Dangerous' Precedent in Clinton Case
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20160712041052
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FBI Director James Comey faced skeptical and angry congressional Republicans this morning in a hastily called hearing on Capitol Hill to question his findings in the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.
In his opening statement, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, accused Comey of setting a "dangerous" precedent that will allow officials to "sloppily" handle classified information with "no consequence."
Chaffetz said Comey's determination that charges weren't warranted in the case sent a message that "if your name isn't Clinton or you aren't part of the powerful elite ... Lady Justice will act differently" toward you.
But Comey strongly defended his recommendation that charges not be brought against Clinton or her aides for mishandling classified information by using a private email server when she was secretary of state.
"The decision was made and the recommendation was made the way you would want it to be, by people who didn't give a hoot about politics but who cared about what are the facts, what is the law and how have similar people -— all people —- been treated in the past," he told the House panel.
In explaining his decision, Comey said two things matter in a criminal probe: "What did the person do ... and when they did it, did they know they were doing something that was unlawful?"
"That is the characteristic of all prosecutions of mishandling classified information," he added.
And while there is a federal law dealing with "gross negligence," Comey said that does not mean prosecutors shouldn't consider the mindset of a subject when deciding whether to bring charges, by "American tradition."
He said that because of "grave concerns" over use of the gross negligence law, it has been used by federal prosecutors only once in its 99-year history, and that case involved espionage.
"When I look at the facts we gathered here, as I said, I see evidence of great carelessness, but I do not see evidence sufficient to establish that Secretary Clinton or those with whom she was corresponding both talked about classified information on email and knew when they did it that they were doing something that was against the law," Comey said today. "No reasonable prosecutor would bring this case ... Nobody would. Nobody did."
He called the FBI probe "apolitical," "competent, honest and independent."
Nevertheless, Chaffetz told Comey he and others were "mystified" and "confused" by the FBI's findings and recommendation.
"It seems that there are two standards, and there's no consequence for these types of activities and dealing in a careless way with classified information," he said.
In his opening remarks, the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., insisted the Republican backlash was rooted in anger that Comey's findings "conflicted with the predetermined outcome they wanted."
"In their eyes, you had one job, and one job only: to prosecute Hillary Clinton," Cummings told Comey. "In a sense, Mr. Director, you're on trial."
Cummings condemned the subsequent attacks on Comey, particularly personal attacks and conspiracy theories that have been spun, including one suggesting senior law enforcement officials may have bribed.
When announcing his findings Tuesday, Comey harshly criticized Clinton and her State Department team for being “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information. But he said the FBI recommended against charging Clinton or her aides criminally.
The decision set off a firestorm of criticism from Republicans and prompted a quick call for congressional hearings.
"The FBI's recommendation is surprising and confusing," Chaffetz said in a statement announcing today's hearing. "The fact pattern presented by Director Comey makes clear Secretary Clinton violated the law. Individuals who intentionally skirt the law must be held accountable."
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said the decision looked like "preferential treatment for Clinton.”
Here are some key areas and questions covered by Comey today:
Comey said that when looking at allegations of mishandling classified information, two things matter: “What did the person do… and when they did it, did they know they were doing something that was unlawful.”
Asked specifically whether Clinton broke the law, Comey said: “My judgment is she did not. … The question I always look at is, is there evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that somebody engaged in conduct that violated a criminal statute. And my judgment here is there is not.”
Comey said “the challenge” is that U.S. law is reserved “for people who clearly knew they were breaking the law.”
“So ‘should have known,’ ‘must have known,’ ‘had to know’ does not get you there. You must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew they were engaged in something that was unlawful.”
There is a U.S. law that makes mishandling classified information through “gross negligence” – rather than intent – a crime. But Comey said the Justice Department – through Republican and Democratic administrations – have long had “grave concerns” that the law may actually be unconstitutional, so federal prosecutors have been reluctant to use the law. In fact, in the law’s 99 years on the books, prosecutors have only charges someone once, and that involved espionage, according to Comey.
“There’s no way anybody at the Department of Justice is bringing a case against John Doe or Hillary Clinton for the second time in 100 years based on [the] facts” of this case, Comey insisted.
To the former prosecutors and “friends” who claim they would have brought charges in this case, Comey asked with a chuckle: “So where were you over the last 40 years? Where were these cases? They just have not been brought for … It’s a good thing that the Department of Justice worries about prosecuting people for being careless. … As a citizen, I want people to show they knew they were breaking the law, and then we’ll put you in jail.”
When it comes to Clinton, “certainly she should have known not to send classified information,” and, “that’s the definition of negligent,” Comey said.
“I think she was extremely careless, I think she was negligent. That I could establish,” he added. “What we cant establish is that she acted with the necessary criminal intent.”
Comey dismissed any comparisons between the Clinton case and the prosecution of Gen. David Petraeus, who ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for sharing classified information with his mistress, who was writing a book about him. Unlike Clinton, Petraeus kept “vast quantities” of what he knew was highly classified information in eight personal notebooks hidden in his home, gave that info to his mistress, and lied about it all to the FBI, in effect obstructing justice, Comey said. So what Petraeus did was “clearly intentional” and far worse, and the precisely the kind of case that warrants prosecution, according to Comey.
Comey said a team of 15-20 agent investigated the case, with help at times from other FBI personnel. He said the investigators and prosecutors involved “didn’t give a hoot about politics,” only “about what are the facts, what is the law and how have similar people – all people – been treated in the past.” He called them all “an all-star team.”
Comey said that while there’s no information to indicate adversaries successfully hacked Clinton’s personal email server, “it’s possible” that did happen. However, Comey refuted public claims by one prominent hacker, known as “Guccifer,” that he was able to break into Clinton’s server.
“He did not, he admitted that was a lie,” Comey said today.
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FBI Director James Comey faced skeptical and angry congressional Republicans this morning in a hastily called hearing on Capitol Hill to question his findings in the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.In his opening statement, the chairman of the House Oversight and...
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http://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/va-releases-results-largest-analysis-veteran-suicide-rates/story
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20 Vets Commit Suicide Each Day, According to New VA Study
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20160712041410
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Your browser doesnât support HTML5 video
WATCH: President Obama signs the Clay Hunt Bill named for a valiant Marine who went to war but lost his battle with depression.
The Department of Veterans Affairs released sobering new statistics today about veteran suicide rates in the United States.
According to the VA, an average of 20 veterans died from suicide every day in 2014.
The VA examined over 55 million veteran records from 1979 to 2014 from every state in the nation. The last time the VA conducted a study like this was in 2010, but that report included data from only 20 states.
In 2014, 7,403 American veterans committed suicide, out of 41,425 suicides among U.S. adults that year. That's just under 18 percent, down from 22 percent in 2010.
Today’s report also included comparisons between civilians and veterans. From 2001 to 2014, the VA found, suicides among U.S. adult civilians increased 23 percent while veteran suicides increased 32 percent — making the risk of suicide 21 percent greater for veterans than civilians (after controlling for age and gender).
Older veterans face a higher risk of suicide, the data showed. In 2014 about 65 percent of veterans who died from suicide were 50 years or older.
The VA said it was “aggressively” undertaking new measures to combat suicide, including same-day access for veterans with urgent mental health needs. According to the VA, techniques like predictive modeling can help determine which veterans may be at the highest risk of suicide so that health care providers can get involved earlier.
“Veterans in the top 0.1 percent of risk, who have a 43-fold increased risk of death from suicide within a month, can be identified before clinical signs of suicide are evident in order to save lives before a crisis occurs,” the VA said in a statement.
Data in this analysis supported that veterans who seek VA services may be able to decrease their risk of suicide. The report said that since 2001, the rate of suicide among veterans who used VA services increased by 8.8 percent while the rate of suicide among veterans who did not use VA services increased by 38.6 percent.
The VA treated more than 1.6 million veterans for mental health in 2015.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs released sobering new statistics today about veteran suicide rates in the United States.According to the VA, an average of 20 veterans died from suicide every day in 2014. The VA examined over 55 million veteran records from 1979 to 2014 from every state in...
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http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/07/12/01/09/uk-s-cameron-to-resign-by-wednesday
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UK's May wins PM race after rival quits
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20160712124633
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Interior minister Theresa May will become Britain's prime minister on Wednesday, with the task of steering its withdrawal from the European Union, after rival Andrea Leadsom abruptly terminated her short-lived and disastrous leadership campaign.
May, 59, will succeed David Cameron, who announced he was stepping down after Britons unexpectedly voted last month to quit the EU.
Britain's planned withdrawal has weakened the 28-nation bloc, created huge uncertainty over trade and investment, and shaken financial markets.
May and Leadsom had been due to contest a ballot of grassroots Conservative party members, with the result to be declared by September 9.
But Leadsom unexpectedly quit on Monday after a campaign dogged by ill-judged comments about her rival's lack of children and questions about whether she had exaggerated her CV.
"I am honoured and humbled to have been chosen by the Conservative Party to become its leader," said May, who favoured remaining in the EU but has made clear there is no going back on the result of the June 23 referendum.
"Brexit means Brexit, and we're going to make a success of it."
Earlier, Cameron told reporters in front of his 10 Downing Street residence that he expected to chair his last cabinet meeting on Tuesday and take questions in parliament on Wednesday before tendering his resignation to Queen Elizabeth.
"So we will have a new prime minister in that building behind me by Wednesday evening," he said.
May will become Britain's second female prime minister after Margaret Thatcher.
Her victory means that the complex process of extricating Britain from the EU will be led by someone from the losing side of the acrimonious referendum campaign.
She has said Britain needs time to work out its negotiating strategy and should not initiate formal divorce proceedings before the end of the year.
In a speech earlier on Monday in the central city of Birmingham, May said there could be no second referendum and no attempt to rejoin the EU by the back door.
"As prime minister, I will make sure that we leave the European Union," she said.
Leadsom, 53, is a junior energy minister who has never served in cabinet and was barely known to the British public until she emerged as a prominent voice in the successful Leave campaign.
She had been strongly criticised over a newspaper interview in which she appeared to suggest that being a mother meant she had more of a stake in the country's future than May, who has no children.
Some Conservatives said they were disgusted by the remarks, for which Leadsom later apologised, while others said they showed naivety and a lack of judgment.
Leadsom told reporters she was pulling out of the race to avoid nine weeks of campaign uncertainty at a time when strong leadership was needed.
She acknowledged that May had secured much greater backing in a vote of Conservative members of parliament last week.
"I have ... concluded that the interests of our country are best served by the immediate appointment of a strong and well supported prime minister," she said.
Graham Brady, head of the Conservative party committee in charge of the leadership contest, confirmed that May had been elected with immediate effect.
The pound, which has hit 31-year lows since the referendum on concern about potential damage to the British economy, bounced slightly on the news that the Conservative leadership question would be resolved much sooner than expected.
It was trading around $US1.2970, up 0.1 per cent on the day but still down around 13 per cent since the day of the vote. The FTSE 250 index of mid-sized companies rose 3.27 per cent.
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British Prime Minister David Cameron says he will hand over the office to Home Secretary Theresa May by Wednesday.
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Russell Brand Is Going to Be a Dad
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20160712225842
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Russell Brand Is Going to Be a Dad
By RICKI HARRIS Jul 8, 2016, 11:38 AM ET
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Russell Brand’s most recent Instagram did a lot of talking.
The photo confirmed that the 41-year-old and his girlfriend Laura Gallacher are expecting a child, a rumor which had been circulating since the beginning of the summer.
In the selfie, the comedian and actor is holding up the latest installation of his book club, “The Expectant Dad’s Handbook.” The caption reads, “Right then. My Mum bought me this. Time to get ready!”
Brand and Gallacher have been dating on and off since 2007, and began dating again most recently in 2015, according to People.
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The actor took to Instagram to share the good news.
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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Scientists-say-reducing-deep-seated-prejudice-is-7232399.php
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Scientists say reducing deep-seated prejudice is possible
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20160713021834
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Two young political scientists at UC Berkeley and at Stanford who exposed a major research fraud less than a year ago are now reporting the results of their own work on countering prejudice, and are being hailed for it by a leading expert in their field.
The scientists said they have found that the attitudes of voters who strongly disdain transgender people and opposed laws protecting them can be rapidly changed by brief conversations with volunteers, regardless of whether those volunteers are transgender.
The change in prejudice can be long-lasting, too, and persists for at least three months, the two investigators found.
In the cloudy field of social science inquiry, findings like those can help clear up many unknowns about the techniques and validity of opinion research, experts say.
David Broockman, 27, a newly minted assistant professor in the Stanford Business School who had earned his advanced degree at Berkeley, and Joshua Kalla, 23, a Berkeley graduate student, were working on their own research project a year ago when they detected fraudulent data in a UCLA researcher’s report on prejudice against marriage equality for gay people. The research report had just been published in the widely respected research journal Science, and the two political scientists detected major flaws in the article, finding it was based on fraudulent data.
Political science researchers David Broockman (left) and Joshua Kalla evaluated opinions.
Political science researchers David Broockman (left) and Joshua Kalla evaluated opinions.
Scientists say reducing deep-seated prejudice is possible
The editors of Science retracted the entire article a year ago, and its UCLA author lost a promising job offer from Princeton.
And now Science, the same journal, is publishing detailed new research findings by Broockman and Kalla, together with the opinion of a prominent Princeton psychologist known for her expertise in the study of prejudice.
In a separate article on the controversy, Professor Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton’s department of psychology and international affairs called the research by Broockman and Kalla a “rigorous field experiment” and said its results were based on “long-term, high-quality measurement” that clearly showed for the first time how “prejudice is subject to peer influence.”
Broockman and Kalla described how they had worked with the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Leadership Lab, whose experts helped recruit volunteers in Miami to canvass voters there who had voiced strong hostility to transgender people and had supported repeal of a city ordinance protecting them from discrimination.
The earlier, fraud-ridden report on marriage equality purported to have found that only gay interviewers could convert people prejudiced against gays.
But Broockman’s and Kalla’s data showed that regardless of the interviewer’s sexual orientation, they were all equally able to lower levels of prejudice among hostile voters during sympathetic interviews with volunteers that lasted only about 20 minutes.
The research team recruited a pool of 68,378 registered voters in Miami, and randomly selected a total of 1,825 of them to note their opinions as the volunteer canvassers interviewed them.
And in succeeding interviews up to three months later, the same voters continued expressing significantly lowered levels of prejudice than they had voiced at the start of their first interviews, the report said.
The two researchers used widely accepted social science techniques to evaluate how much the voters actually moderated their opinions, and intend to continue their opinion-changing experiment indefinitely to determine whether it’s longer-lasting, they said.
“The results indicate that the intervention was broadly successful at increasing acceptance of transgender people,” they said in their report, and also found that the hostile opponents “were more supportive of the law protecting transgender people from discrimination,” compared with opponents who had been interviewed on topics unrelated to the transgender issue.
“We’ve shown that reducing prejudice is possible, even in people with strong feelings, when a brief conversation asks them to reflect deeply and asks them to think their feelings out,” Broockman said in an interview.
“There’s so much politics about this issue,” Kalla said, “and our finding that people have the power to change others’ minds on this sensitive issue is pretty encouraging.”
“This is good news for stigmatized groups that are a demographic minority and require outsiders to help campaign” for them, Paluck said in her commentary.
David Perlman is The San Francisco Chronicle’s science editor. Email: dperlman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @daveperlman
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Two young political scientists at UC Berkeley and at Stanford who exposed a major research fraud less than a year ago are now reporting the results of their own work on countering prejudice, and are being hailed for it by a leading expert in their field. The scientists said they have found that the attitudes of voters who strongly disdain transgender people and opposed laws protecting them can be rapidly changed by brief conversations with volunteers, regardless of whether those volunteers are transgender. David Broockman, 27, a newly minted assistant professor in the Stanford Business School who had earned his advanced degree at Berkeley, and Joshua Kalla, 23, a Berkeley graduate student, were working on their own research project a year ago when they detected fraudulent data in a UCLA researcher’s report on prejudice against marriage equality for gay people. The research report had just been published in the widely respected research journal Science, and the two political scientists detected major flaws in the article, finding it was based on fraudulent data. In a separate article on the controversy, Professor Elizabeth Levy Paluck of Princeton’s department of psychology and international affairs called the research by Broockman and Kalla a “rigorous field experiment” and said its results were based on “long-term, high-quality measurement” that clearly showed for the first time how “prejudice is subject to peer influence.” Broockman and Kalla described how they had worked with the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Leadership Lab, whose experts helped recruit volunteers in Miami to canvass voters there who had voiced strong hostility to transgender people and had supported repeal of a city ordinance protecting them from discrimination. [...] Broockman’s and Kalla’s data showed that regardless of the interviewer’s sexual orientation, they were all equally able to lower levels of prejudice among hostile voters during sympathetic interviews with volunteers that lasted only about 20 minutes.
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Buy Taylor Swift’s blouse, Beyoncé’s crown with your tax return
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Back in 2001, Britney Spears dominated MTV with her sultry dance moves in the video for “Overprotected.” Part of her outfit for the clip was a hot pink bra — which, for the right price, can now be yours.
That piece is just one of 901 different items of music memorabilia that are being sold off at Julien’s Music Icons auction this week. The annual music sale takes place at the Hard Rock Café in Times Square on Friday and Saturday, but window shoppers can also check out the swag at the public display opening Tuesday.
In years past, Julien’s has fetched bank-busting prices for such pieces as the red jacket worn by Michael Jackson in the 1983 video for “Thriller,” which sold for $1.8 million in 2011. In 2014, a Rickenbacker guitar owned by Beatle George Harrison netted $657,000.
“Over the years, artists and collectors have seen the prices we get for music memorabilia, and they want to be a part of it,” explains Julien’s executive director Martin Nolan. “That’s why our inventory has expanded so much this year.”
In addition to auction standards such as guitars, records and clothing, you can pick up weirder pieces like Steven Tyler’s credit card, the Jackson family Rolodex and even a fake passport created for Beyoncé for her role in 2006’s “The Pink Panther” movie.
You don’t even need to be at the Hard Rock Café to get in on the action: A downloadable app allows you to bid from practically anywhere in the world. If you’re willing to flash the cash, here are some of the items worth seeking out.
Photo: Left: YouTube; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $1,500 to $3,000 You won’t get much closer to the pop tart than owning the lace bra she wore in the 2001 video for the song “Overprotected” (which was nominated for a Grammy). The brand and size tag have been cut off — which, according to Nolan, is not unusual. “Celebrities are often very private about their cup sizes and suppliers,” he explains. “It’s still a great conversation starter. But if you’re looking to resell down the line, it’s best not to wear it — or at least, don’t tell anyone you wore it!”
Photo: Left: Vevo; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $1,500 to $3,000 This Michael Cinco-designed crown — worn in the creepy 2013 video for “Haunted” — gives fans the chance to experience life as pop royalty (servants and minions not included). But expect plenty of competition in bidding — and be ready to pony up the cash. “Beyoncé’s very hot — her stuff usually sells for two to three times the asking price,” says Nolan.
Photo: Left: Vevo; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $2,000 to $3,000 Swift is the biggest star in the world right now, and this simple blue blouse worn in the video for 2012’s “Begin Again” will see bids flying in. “We haven’t sold any of her clothing but we get requests for her stuff all the time, particularly from places like Japan, so anything Taylor-related is a good investment,” advises Nolan.
Photo: Left: Ramey Photo; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $2,000 to $4,000 “When Gaga goes to walk the dog, she makes a statement,” says Nolan, and the New Yorker certainly did in 2012 when she was photographed in New York wearing this metal face cage embellished with gold chains that she wore en route to a Rolling Stones concert. The Hannibal Lecter-goes-glam piece was created by avant garde designer Ken Borochov of Mordekai.
Photo: Left: Rex USA; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $20,000 to $30,000 She might not set the charts alight the way she used to, but Madge is still hot on the auction block. Anything related to the New York icon still attracts interest, and this piece — worn during the songs “Human Nature” and “Don’t Tell Me” on the Material Girl’s 2001 “Drowned” world tour — is no different. “It’s only a small piece of clothing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it fetched $50,000 to $60,000,” notes Nolan.
Photo: Left: Bob King/Redferns; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $6,000 to $8,000 Believe it or not, Jacko’s groundbreaking Bad world tour (which ran from 1987 to early 1989) was his first solo concert run. This shirt was worn on the tour’s first leg and was designed by Bill Whitten, who also outfitted Jackson in his world-famous glove. “Michael’s estate has never sold any of his stuff, but Michael was very generous and gifted a lot of his things to people,” states Nolan. “This piece was originally given to someone he used to work with, who then sold it later.”
Photo: Left: REX; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $40,000 to $60,000 Hendrix’s brief solo career burned brightly for just three years before the rock star passed away in 1970, so memorabilia is very rare. “Very few of his items ever come on the market,” says Nolan, so this unique lamb-fur vest (which Hendrix is seen wearing in the interview segments of the PBS documentary “The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Hear My Train a Comin’ ”) is one of a kind.
Photo: Left: Val Wilmer/Redferns; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $400,000 to $600,000 The Beatles arrived in America in 1964, but they were honing their craft in England for years before. This Maton Mastersound MS-500 guitar was loaned to George Harrison by a Manchester shop in the summer of 1963. “He used it on a string of dates across the UK before returning it to the store,” says Nolan. The guitar was owned for decades after by Roy Barber, a member of the obscure British band Dave Berry and the Cruisers, before being sold in 2002 by Barber’s widow.
Photo: Left: AP; Right: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $25,000 to $30,000 Eight minutes was all it took for Elvis and Priscilla to tie the knot in 1967 in Las Vegas — but the staff at the Clark County Registry for Marriages was not quite as efficient with the paperwork. “Elvis and Priscilla never received this copy of the marriage certificate,” notes Nolan. “The clerk kept this original document for themselves before later selling it!” What happens in Vegas, doesn’t always stay in Vegas.
Photo: Julien's Auctions Estimated sale price: $6,000 to $8,000 and $1,000 to $2,000, respectively In the 1970s, Elvis became obsessed with martial arts and often stopped his concerts to give befuddling karate demonstrations. “When you’re the King, you can do whatever you want,” explains Nolan — and Elvis often did. The uniform was kept at his instructor’s studio in Memphis for private lessons, while the card (certifying Elvis’ black-belt status) was later gifted to the wife of Elvis’ stepbrother, Billy.
Photo: Splash News Estimated sale price: $400,000 to $600,000 This two-door coupe (which is still in working order) gives an Elvis fanatic the chance to roll like the King, although it’s probably not a good idea to mirror his recklessness. “Elvis bought this car in 1971 as a replacement for the exact same one he had totaled,” says Nolan, laughing. A year after buying it, he gifted it to his house doctor in Las Vegas.
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Back in 2001, Britney Spears dominated MTV with her sultry dance moves in the video for “Overprotected.” Part of her outfit for the clip was a hot pink bra — which, for the right price, can now be …
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Halloran says secret recording proves his innocence
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Former City Councilman Dan Halloran says he was never a crooked politician — and he has his own secret tape to prove it.
While federal officials were building a corruption case against Halloran, the Queens politician secretly made a recording of a meeting he had with a dairy executive who was allegedly trying to buy influence from him.
The February 2013 recording captured the voices of Halloran and Bob Schwartz, heir to the Elmhurst Dairy fortune, a failed candidate for Queens borough president and other local offices, who wanted to become a city commissioner.
“Bob, you’re putting me in a very bad place,” Halloran said in the recording, played for jurors Tuesday at Halloran’s corruption trial in White Plains. “No one person is buying a vote and that’s what this boils down to.
“I can’t promise you that, a particular job like a commissioner. I can’t help you violate campaign finance law. What I’m not willing to do Bob is make it look like a quid pro quo where somebody is buying their way into office.”
Halloran’s lawyer, Vinoo Varghese, said Schwartz’s brother had offered to wire Halloran $100,000 if Schwartz would be given a job in Halloran’s office, providing him entry into City Hall.
Varghese said the recording was proof that Halloran was not predisposed to accepting bribes, as the government contends.
“He knew it was a bribe, so he recorded it,” Varghese said of Halloran’s decision to tape the meeting. “Dan would not take a bribe, he never took a bribe and this is clear evidence. This shows he was not predisposed.”
Halloran is accused of pocketing $20,500 in cash bribes for masterminding cross-party negotiations to help fix the Republican mayoral primary for state Sen. Malcolm Smith.
Halloran is also facing charges of allegedly pocketing $18,300 in cash bribes and $6,500 in straw-donor campaign donations for agreeing to steer $80,000 of council discretionary funding for his district to a company he believed was controlled by those who paid him the bribes.
Halloran faces up to 45 years behind bars if convicted. Smith heads to trial in January.
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Former City Councilman Dan Halloran says he was never a crooked politician — and he has his own secret tape to prove it. While federal officials were building a corruption case against Halloran, th…
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Anaconda man speaks: Why I wanted to be eaten alive
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In his nearly 10 years studying anacondas in the Amazon, researcher and conservationist Paul Rosolie, 27, has faced his share of danger. The giant reptile is known to grow to up to 30 feet in length — and strikes its prey using its teeth and powerful jaws before crushing it with its massive body. Rosolie has been bitten by one of the snakes and seized by one in a chokehold — suffering a broken rib and a nearly popped collarbone before five people were able to pry it off him.
But none of that compares to what he endured in his first TV special, “Eaten Alive,” which premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on Discovery Channel and documents Rosolie’s attempt to get ingested by a giant green anaconda — all in the name of bringing attention to the rapid destruction of the Amazon and, of course, spiking TV ratings.
“I wanted to do something that would absolutely shock people,” says Rosolie, who is tall, dark-haired, bearded and well-spoken when it comes to his passion for the rain forest. “Environmentalists, we love to preach to the choir. What I’m trying to do with this is bring in a bunch of people that wouldn’t necessarily know what’s going on in the Amazon.
“For the type of attention that this is getting and for the type of emergency that’s going on down there — desperate times, desperate measures.”
News of the stunt swiftly went viral: A Google search for “Paul Rosolie Eaten Alive” turns up more than 250,000 results. The project has also spurred much backlash from animal rights activists — Rosolie has even received death threats — but he believes those fears will be quelled once the special airs. (Discovery has said that the snake is alive and healthy.)
“Once they see the show, these are people who are going to be supporters,” he says. “It’s a cool little dissonance there — they’re all coming out against me, but I’m the guy that’s been down there in the jungle trying to protect these things.”
A native of Wyckoff, NJ, Rosolie grew up fascinated by wildlife but hated sitting in classrooms, so at 16 he dropped out of high school in favor of saving up money to visit the Amazon. He got his GED, started studying environmental science at Ramapo College in New Jersey and, at 18, landed a research position in the Madre de Dios region of Peru.
“He was not the most traditional student, because he was always disappearing to the Amazon,” says Michael Edelstein, an environmental psychology professor at Ramapo who taught Rosolie. “This is someone who has risked his life many times, and who has a genuine sense of being an explorer and discovering things and going into situations one doesn’t know how will end. There’s a sense of pure wonder about him.”
In Peru, Rosolie learned about the Amazon from the indigenous people, which he recounts in his first book, “Mother of God,” published last March. He now splits his time between upstate New York and Bangalore, India (he’s writing a book on tiger migration in the region), and spends half the year in the Amazon jungle — going on long solo journeys or guiding groups from the eco-tourism outfit he runs, Tamandua Expeditions.
Rosolie filmed “Eaten Alive” last summer, when he and a crew of about a dozen spent 60 days hiking and camping in the Peruvian rain forest, looking for snakes in the “floating forest” (the locals’ term for dense vegetation on top of a body of water), the habitat of anacondas.
“You can’t just walk into the Amazon to find one of these things, they’re incredibly hard to find,” Rosolie says. “A lot of the most dangerous stuff that we went through was just while searching for these snakes — we came up against crocodiles, electric eels, huge falling trees, flooding rivers and poachers.”
The team had nearly run out of the time Discovery Channel had allotted for the expedition before they found the anaconda they were looking for — a 25-foot, 400- to 500-pound female that Rosolie first came across when he explored the floating forest in 2008. (Green anacondas have an average life span of 10 years in the wild.)
“I knew this snake was living in this spot, and the females don’t really move around a lot,” he says.
It took 12 people fighting in water over their heads to catch the massive reptile, and herpetologists were on site to ensure the snake was healthy and comfortable during captivity.
To withstand the anaconda’s massive force of constriction (roughly equal to having a school bus on your chest), Rosolie worked with a team of engineers to custom-design a suit made of carbon fiber using a 3-D scan of his body. It’s equipped with a three-hour oxygen supply, communication devices and several cameras. Before Rosolie went into the belly of the beast, he swallowed a high-tech pill that would transmit his vitals in case he fell unconscious.
“The most important thing was oxygen,” he says. “The idea of making it through the constriction, getting swallowed, and then suffocating inside the snake [was] terrible.”
But despite the real risk of death if something went wrong — not to mention his claustrophobia — Rosolie was more worried about the snake’s safety than his own (a sentiment echoed by his wife, Gowri Varanashi, 23, a fellow naturalist who accompanied him on the expedition).
“I didn’t want to stress [the snake] out too much. I wanted to make sure that the suit was smooth and wasn’t going to hurt the snake,” he says. “I really wasn’t scared. We tested this suit and worked on this with experts, so we knew I was going to be safe.”
The suit was doused in pig’s blood to make him smell like the snake’s normal prey of wild pig, then Rosolie imitated the movements of the prey animal, and once the snake grabbed him, he wriggled around and let it crush him — “It didn’t take long,” he says.
Rosolie is prevented from revealing what happened after that — he will only say that the stunt allowed him to feel the true power of the animal.
“Experiencing that kind of power was worth everything, because it was just amazing,” he says.
He hopes that after seeing the special, people will be spurred to action. While filming the TV show, Rosolie launched the first scientific study of anacondas in the Amazon — his team recorded the weight, length, sex and location of each anaconda they found and tested their skin samples for mercury, a byproduct of gold mining in the area. The special will promote a fundraiser to protect their habitat, the floating forest.
As for Rosolie, he has a lot of ideas for his next TV special (though he’s keeping mum on specifics) and sees himself following in the footsteps of one of his childhood idols, “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin — even though the famous nature educator died in support of his work.
“There are definitely risks in working with wildlife, but it’s totally worth it,” Rosolie says. “Today, many of the most iconic and important species we have — like tigers, elephants, rhinos, whales and so many others — are only still alive because people worked to protect them. And they will go extinct unless someone does that job.”
What are anacondas really like? We consulted with Frank Indiviglio, a herpetologist and reptile blogger for That Pet Place, who worked at the Bronx Zoo for 21 years.
Usually, anacondas are found in the northern and central parts of South America, in rain forest rivers, swampy areas and, occasionally, grasslands. “They’re just evolved for life around water,” Indiviglio says. “They’re great swimmers.”
The jaws don’t actually “unhinge,” as many people think. They remain connected, but an elastic hinge lets the lower jaw widen as the animal is swallowing. The skin is elastic too, allowing it to ingest big prey such as pigs, deer or capybara (the world’s largest rodent, which can weigh as much as a human being). “The skin is sort of like a knit sweater that you’d pull,” he says. “That’s how it walks its way over its prey.”
Though pythons can grow longer, anacondas are — pound for pound — the largest snakes in the world: Females usually range between 12 and 17 feet, but can reach lengths close to 30 feet, and they weigh as much as a half-ton. The smaller males are generally about 10 feet long and much thinner.
Don’t look up a video of anaconda sex if you’ve got a fear of snakes, because the giant mating ball of as many as 10 males battling to impregnate a female will look like a writhing nightmare machine. Researchers have evidence that anacondas’ sperm may even compete with each other inside the female.
Unless you douse yourself in pig’s blood, as Rosolie did, an anaconda isn’t likely to attack you: “They don’t go out of their way to attack people, or even large meals that they can’t handle,” Indiviglio says. “The idea that they’re predators looking for people to eat is not true.”
The only cases of anacondas eating humans have usually been children or thin-shouldered adults whom they can actually swallow.
Some people think the constriction of an anaconda serves to break bones or soften an animal for eating; the real purpose is to suffocate the animal by restricting its breath, says Indiviglio. However, evidence is surfacing that the intense pressure may cause heart or organ failure first, which would kill the prey faster than suffocation, he adds.
Way back when Teddy Roosevelt was an early supporter of the Bronx Zoo, he started a contest in 1910: $5,000 to anyone who could bring in a snake longer than 30 feet. The Wildlife Conservation Society kept the bet going until 2002 — by then the prize had grown to $50,000 — but no one ever claimed it, Indiviglio says.
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In his nearly 10 years studying anacondas in the Amazon, researcher and conservationist Paul Rosolie, 27, has faced his share of danger. The giant reptile is known to grow to up to 30 feet in lengt…
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Gross grub: 18 ingredients hiding in your food
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What it is: Yup, insects again. In your food. When it comes to food, insects are handy for other things besides their shine. They're good for color too, especially red. Carmine is a red food-coloring that comes from boiled cochineal bugs, which are a type of beetle.
There have been reports that the bug-based coloring can cause severe allergic reactions in some people, including potentially life-threatening anaphylactic reactions, so the FDA now requires that the ingredient be listed clearly on food and cosmetic labels.
Where you'll find it: Carmine can be found in ice cream, Skittles, Good n' Plenty, lemonade, and grapefruit juice.
Gross-out factor: High if you're a vegan, medium for the rest of us
More from Health.com: 11 things it's best to buy organic
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Think you know what's in your food? If recent news is any indication, think again
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'Frightening' Number of Unemployed Have Given Up on Looking: Survey
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Nearly half of unemployed Americans have quit looking for work, and the numbers are even worse for the long-term jobless, according to a poll released Wednesday that paints a grim picture of the labor market.
Some 59 percent of those who have been out of work for two years or more say they have stopped looking, the Harris Poll of unemployed Americans showed. Overall, 43 percent of the jobless said they have given up, according to the poll released in conjunction with Express Employment Professionals, a job placement service.
"This is a tale of two economies," Express CEO Bob Funk said in a statement. "It's frightening to see this many people who could work say they have given up."
Read More from CNBC: What's the Real Unemployment Rate?
The results come just a few days after a government report showed that the unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent in May, but the drop came primarily because of a sharp decline in the labor force participation rate. The number of people of all ages whom the government considers "not in the labor force" swelled by 664,000 to a record 94.7 million Americans, according to Labor Department data.
Job creation, after averaging over 200,000 for much of the recovery, has slowed considerably this year. May saw just 38,000 new jobs, part of a trend in which payrolls have grown an average of 116,000 over the past three months and less than 150,000 for all of 2016.
The greatest concentration of unemployment is in the 18-29 age group, which comprises one-third of all the jobless.
Other highlights of the poll:
While much has been made over the decline in the labor force participation rate — at 62.6 percent, it is just off its lowest level since late 1977 — some economists think the fear is overdone. They argue that the drop is due in large part to an aging population, among other causes.
Read More from CNBC: States Reduce Jobless Checks, Adding Pressure to Unemployed
"Almost all of the decline that we've seen over the last decade or so is due to three factors: retiring baby boomers just leaving the labor force, college students getting more education than ever, and disability," Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at job placement site Glassdoor, said in an interview. "I don't think it's particularly worrisome."
There was one optimistic sign in the survey: 22 percent said the reason they are out of work is because they quit, up from 15 percent in 2014, a trend economists generally equate with a more mobile labor force.
The Harris/Express poll was conducted from May 5-16 and surveyed 1,513 jobless Americans, and carries a 95 percent confidence level.
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Nearly half of unemployed Americans have quit looking for work, and the numbers are even worse for the long-term jobless, according to a new poll.
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Alexis Bledel secretly had a baby in the fall
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Alexis Bledel and husband Vincent Kartheiser sure know how to keep a secret.
The couple had a baby boy in the fall, and have somehow managed to keep it under wraps until Bledel's "Gilmore Girls" co-star, Scott Patterson, let the cat out of the bag.
"It was great to see [Alexis]. She's really blossomed as a woman and now she's a proud new mother and married and happy," Patterson told Glamour magazine. "I remember her as an 18-year-old kid, fresh out of college coming into Hollywood and being a little overwhelmed. She's just the most likable, intelligent person and adorable human being. She hasn't changed at all. She looks the same."
Bledel and the "Mad Men" actor married in 2014 -- their wedding was also "top-secret."
© 2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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The "Gilmore Girls" star sure knows how to stay out of the limelight
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Where Are They Now
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J.K. Rowling just can’t quit the Harry Potter series. The author penned an official update on her website Pottermore Tuesday, in the tabloid-esque voice of Daily Prophet gossip correspondent Rita Skeeter.
If you haven’t the time to read all 1,500 words of Skeeter’s breathless dispatch, here’s a quick guide to where your Potter favorites are today — and a little commentary on what characters she left out might now be up to:
It turns out that Harry is not quite a millennial. The famous wizard is on the cusp of his 34th birthday and his hair is actually showing signs of gray. (Why, JK? Why?) Potter has two young sons, James (after his father) and Albus (after Dumbledore), and —according to the Deathly Hallows epilogue— a daughter named Lily Luna. His marriage to Ginny is intact, although his face shows signs of fresh struggle. Potter has an ambiguous scar over his right cheekbone that he got while working in the Auror department of the Ministry of Magic.
Ron Weasley: Rowling has proven that her characters really can’t have it all in the hair department. According to the article, his “”famous ginger hair appears to be thinning slightly.” But at least he is still happily married to Hermione with two kids, named Hugo and Rose. While Ron began his career with BFFL Harry in the Ministry of Magic, he now co-manages his brother Geoge’s wizarding joke shop Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. He also shows “no obvious signs of mental illness,” so that’s good.
Hermione Granger: Unsurprisingly, Hermione kept her last name and acts as the Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. The mother of two also has to answer annoying media questions about work/life balance (and perhaps immigration law?). Even witches have to Lean In, I guess.
Ginny Potter (Nee Weasley) Too old for nicknames, Ginerva is a journalist covering the Quidditch World Cup at the Daily Prophet. Start tweeting, media scene. She’s just like us.
Viktor Krum: Still a Bulgarian seeker. Still friends with Harry. And our guess is that he is still in need of a good pair of tweezers.
Neville Longbottom: Neville became a popular Herbology teacher at Hogwarts. He is married to a woman named Hannah, who is rumored to be on the hiring track as a Matron at Hogwarts. They lived above the Leaky Cauldron and like a good Ogden’s Old Firewhisky every now and then.Editor’s Note: Neville may also do light modeling when Hogwarts is on break because LOOK AT HIM:
Luna Lovegood:Luna Lovegood married Magizoologist Rolf Scamander, whose father Newt wrote Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We wish them well on their hunt for Crumple-horned Snorkacks. They have twin sons.
George Weasley: George is the wealthy co-manager of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.
Charlie Weasley: Bachelor. A dragon wrangler. Fan fiction in 3…2…1…
Percy Weasley: Percy is the Head of the Department of Magical Transportation. Obviously.
Bill Weasley: In spite of scarring from a werewolf encounter, he married Fleur Delacour. They have a beautiful daughter named Victoire who likes making out with Harry’s godson Teddy Lupin.
But of course, Rowling couldn’t get to all of our favorite characters. Here is our own fan-fiction guess at what some unmentioneds are up to right now (with apologies to Rowling):
Dudley Dursley:Dudley is currently nursing a minor credit card debt due to excessive Candy Crush habits and Type 2 diabetes due to excessive candy eating habits. On the bright side, however, his temperament has improved and Harry is on the family Christmas card list.
Draco Malfoy: Malfoy is married with children and works as the head of a ethically precarious division of Gringotts Bank. His robes are always perfectly tailored and monogrammed.
Cho Chang: Cho is a defense against the Dark Arts tutor.
Molly Weasley:The grandmother of 12 has a booming Etsy business for her knitting.
Moaning Myrtle Still in the Hogwarts girls’ bathroom terrorizing witches about their periods (and just about everything else)
Rita Skeeter: Rita will be a “journalist” until the very end. Although the Daily Prophet gossip columnist is currently under investigation for wand tapping.
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All the updates from a tabloid dispatch from "Rita Skeeter," and some we imagined ourselves...
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http://www.sfgate.com/art/article/Frankfurt-museum-director-to-head-Fine-Arts-6969720.php
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160714030313id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/art/article/Frankfurt-museum-director-to-head-Fine-Arts-6969720.php
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Frankfurt museum director to head Fine Arts Museums
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20160714030313
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Max Hollein, new Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Max Hollein, new Director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Frankfurt museum director to head Fine Arts Museums
Austrian-born Max Hollein has been named director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, its board of trustees announced Tuesday afternoon.
The position is the top job at FAMSF, which comprises two of the Bay Area’s largest and most important cultural facilities, the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor. Job responsibilities include managing roughly 550 employees and an annual budget of about $60 million. Hollein replaces Colin Bailey, who left in April to become director of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City; he starts June 1.
The search for Bailey’s replacement was conducted by a 12-person committee of trustees led by Jack Calhoun, former president of Banana Republic and a member of the board’s executive committee.
Hollein is currently director of three noted museums in Frankfurt, Germany, a broad responsibility that should prepare him for the Fine Arts Museums’ structure. He has run the Schirn Kunsthalle, a non-collecting museum of contemporary art, since 2001. Since 2006, he has served as director of the Städel Museum, with a collection of European art from the early 14th century to the present, and the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, which encompasses ancient Egyptian to neoclassical sculpture.
Born in Vienna in 1969, Hollein has lived with art from birth: His father was the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Hans Hollein, an influential pioneer of Postmodernism; his mother was a fashion designer. He began his career at the Guggenheim Museum in New York after studies in art history at the University of Vienna and in business administration at the Vienna University of Economics. He oversaw the expansion of the Städel Museum in 2012, doubling gallery space and adding a wing for contemporary art.
“Hollein’s combined art and finance perspective, his impressive background simultaneously leading three great art institutions in Frankfurt, his fundraising acumen, and his ability to harness technology and new media to increase income and engage audiences, make him a perfect match,” Calhoun said in a statement.
In a telephone interview Tuesday, Hollein said, “I feel a certain momentum in San Francisco, within the city, within the whole cultural atmosphere there. You have these two great, seminal institutions. I feel if there’s a really strong director there, and a strong exhibition program, collection building, outreach, it’s something that can bring the institutions to another level.”
Board President Diane B. Wilsey echoed that thought. “There is a renaissance happening in San Francisco,” she said, “and we have been looking for someone who can capitalize on this energy to take us forward into our next chapter. I am excited for the fresh thinking and ideas that Max will bring to us and to the city.”
“More and more museums,” Hollein said, “especially encyclopedic ones, do not exist as solely a place to visit, but also as a center of cultural education, complex narration and contemporary discourse. Developing this further and implementing it for a diverse audience, within an environment that is already so rich and full of opportunities and flourishing platforms, will be a significant mission.”
The job of museum director these days is far from an easy one. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, as a combined entity, ranks fifth in attendance among U.S. art museums, according to the Art Newspaper. The position description distributed as part of the search ran to five pages — typical for the field — requiring expertise in personnel and facilities management, fundraising, communications, branding and marketing, audience development, government relations and more — in addition to a strong background in the various requirements of art acquisition, conservation, exhibition and scholarship.
It is widely agreed that Harry S. Parker III, who held the job for 18 years beginning in 1987, handled that juggling act well. Under his leadership, the Legion, shuttered for three years after the Loma Prieta earthquake, was refurbished and expanded, and the de Young was completely replaced by an architecturally distinguished building.
After retiring in December 2005, Parker was followed by the late John E. Buchanan Jr., a flamboyant impresario who brought in crowds but was criticized as less attentive to the traditional measures of a museum’s quality: care of collections, initiating original exhibitions, sponsoring art history scholarship. During his tenure, the FAMSF rose to fourth among U.S. art museums in admissions income. But that, of course, also made it the fourth most reliant upon admissions income to meet its annual budget: Exhibitions now account for something like 15 to 20 percent of the income in any given year.
Asked about his attitude toward the blockbuster exhibitions on which the museums have come to rely, Hollein struck the perfect tone. “Obviously, if you work on a project, you want to share it with as many people as possible. So I’m all for a very ‘popular’ response. Nevertheless, doing exhibitions solely so that they trigger popularity is not what it should be about.”
Hollein embraced the notion that an institution with the “level of collection and the level of esteem” of the Fine Arts Museums must originate its own programs, research and exhibitions, even as it collaborates with other institutions: “It’s important for the reputation of these institutions to be a relevant and interesting partner to the other peers.”
Charles Desmarais is The San Francisco Chronicle’s art critic. Email: cdesmarais@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Artguy1
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The search for Bailey’s replacement was conducted by a 12-person committee of trustees led by Jack Calhoun, former president of Banana Republic and a member of the board’s executive committee. Since 2006, he has served as director of the Städel Museum, with a collection of European art from the early 14th century to the present, and the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection, which encompasses ancient Egyptian to neoclassical sculpture. “Hollein’s combined art and finance perspective, his impressive background simultaneously leading three great art institutions in Frankfurt, his fundraising acumen, and his ability to harness technology and new media to increase income and engage audiences, make him a perfect match,” Calhoun said in a statement. “More and more museums,” Hollein said, especially encyclopedic ones, do not exist as solely a place to visit, but also as a center of cultural education, complex narration and contemporary discourse. Developing this further and implementing it for a diverse audience, within an environment that is already so rich and full of opportunities and flourishing platforms, will be a significant mission. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, as a combined entity, ranks fifth in attendance among U.S. art museums, according to the Art Newspaper. The position description distributed as part of the search ran to five pages — typical for the field — requiring expertise in personnel and facilities management, fundraising, communications, branding and marketing, audience development, government relations and more — in addition to a strong background in the various requirements of art acquisition, conservation, exhibition and scholarship. After retiring in December 2005, Parker was followed by the late John E. Buchanan Jr., a flamboyant impresario who brought in crowds but was criticized as less attentive to the traditional measures of a museum’s quality: care of collections, initiating original exhibitions, sponsoring art history scholarship. Hollein embraced the notion that an institution with the “level of collection and the level of esteem” of the Fine Arts Museums must originate its own programs, research and exhibitions, even as it collaborates with other institutions: “It’s important for the reputation of these institutions to be a relevant and interesting partner to the other peers.”
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http://nypost.com/2015/09/16/cablevision-sold-for-9-billion-to-french-telecom-giant/
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French telecom giant Altice buys Cablevision in $9.8B sale
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20160714032408
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The Dolan family is saying au revoir to Cablevision, selling the flagship cable company it founded more than 40 years ago to French telecom giant Altice.
The surprise sale for $9.8 billion, plus the assumption of roughly $8 billion of debt, was announced early Thursday by Cablevision.
The sale includes the Long Island tabloid Newsday and news Channel 12.
Altice will now inherit 2.78 million broadband customers and 2.64 million pay-TV customers on Long Island and around the New York metro area.
Altice will also gain control of the 400,000-circulation newspaper and the seven regional Channel 12 cable news networks.
Dolan family patriarch Charles Dolan, sometimes known as the father of cable TV, founded Cablevision in 1973, when the field was in its infancy.
The company took control of Madison Square Garden and its Knicks and Rangers sports teams in 1997 before spinning them off into a separate company in 2010.
The cable industry has been consolidating for years — and Cablevision, like many other pay-TV outfits, has been the subject of many sale rumors in recent years.
But now, with Charles Dolan all but retired and son James busy serving as the executive chairman of MSG and on the board of family-controlled AMC Networks, many are saying the time is right for the family to sell one of the pieces of its sports, media and entertainment empire.
“Since Charles Dolan founded Cablevision in 1973, the Dolan family has been honored to help shepherd our customers and employees through the most extraordinary communications revolution in modern history. Now, nearly half a century later, the time is right for new ownership of Cablevision and its considerable assets,” James Dolan said in a statement.
“For the Dolan family, we move forward with AMC Networks and The Madison Square Garden Company — two and, eventually, three public companies — all born of Cablevision and each with brighter prospects today than ever before,” he continued.
Together, MSG and AMC are worth more, about $11.1 billion combined, than Cablevision’s $7.9 billion value.
Cablevision stock has been on a tear of late, driven up by the wave of consolidation roiling cableland. Over the past 12 months, Cablevision has increased its stock price by 48 percent, and is up 38.3 percent year-to-date.
The offer from Altice’s owner, French billionaire Patrick Drahi, 52, is part of a wider effort by the company to expand its US holdings.
In May, Drahi shocked the pay-TV industry by acquiring a 70 percent stake in St. Louis-based Suddenlink — a deal that valued the Midwest cable company, with about 1 million subscribers, at $9.1 billion.
Altice had also approached Time Warner Cable management about buying it — but Charter Communications beat it to the punch.
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The Dolan family is saying au revoir to Cablevision, selling the flagship cable company it founded more than 40 years ago to French telecom giant Altice. The surprise sale for $9.8 billion, plus th…
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Caterpillar Expects Another Rough Year But It's Dealing With It
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20160714062213
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Caterpillar cat on Thursday reported results that showed a continued slump across most of its businesses, and warned 2016 would be another grim year, but forecast earnings above estimates for 2016, sending its stock up about 2%.
The world’s largest construction and mining equipment maker has been restructuring aggressively to cut costs in the face of slower growth in markets like China and Brazil and plunging commodity prices that have hurt demand for its products.
“Cost management, restructuring actions, and operational execution are helping the company while sales and revenues remain under pressure from weak commodity prices and slowing economic growth in developing countries,” CEO Doug Oberhelman said.
The Peoria, Illinois-based company said its outlook for 2016 “does not anticipate improvement in world economic growth or commodity prices.”
Caterpillar sees 2016 revenue falling within a range of $40 billion to $44 billion. The midpoint of that range, $42 billion, is around $3.5 billion below its forecast in October.
Caterpillar expects full-year 2016 earnings of $4.00 per share, excluding restructuring costs, compared with the average estimate of $3.48 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Including restructuring costs, Caterpillar said it expects 2016 EPS of $3.50 per share.
Full-year earnings per share in 2015 totaled $4.64.
Caterpillar said in September it would cut as many as 10,000 jobs through 2018. In October, the company raised its estimate for restructuring costs to $800 million in 2015 from $250 million.
The company said on Thursday that 2015 restructuring costs were higher than expected at $908 million. Caterpillar anticipates further restructuring costs of about $400 million in 2016.
Total sales and revenue fell to $11.03 billion in the fourth quarter, from $14.24 billion a year earlier.
Caterpillar reported a quarterly loss of $87 million, or 15 cents per share, compared with a profit of $757 million, or $1.23 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding restructuring costs, Caterpillar earned 74 cents per share, compared with the average analyst estimate of 69 cents per share.
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And making investors happy
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Super Bowl 50: Watch the ads, then vote in our polls!
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20160714072452
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PayPal: "There's a New Money in Town"
Cold hard cash is so 20th century, in this ad sporting a great soundtrack and editing. Agency: CP&B L.A.
There are those for whom uncertainty over money is akin to holding your breath -- choking, gasping, sweating, feeling really uncomfortable. Why make us feel this, SunTrust, while we're eating snacks? Happily, one can exhale and feel relief, as do those who experience the firm's financial planning expertise. Wonderfully shot, the ad appears to have nothing to do with sturdy finances, and everything. [Question to editor: Why have narrator Gary Sinise say "Let go" at the same time we see a young child being held upside-down?] Agency: Strawberry Frog.
SoFi: "Great Loans for Great People"
What happens if an advertiser insults its potential customers? The Twitterverse and trade press lets them hear about it. And so, SoFi.com cut out the last line of their Super Bowl ad after it was posted online, to remove their suggestion that some of us might not be "great" enough to qualify for one of their loans. See? THAT'S what it's like to be rejected. Agency: Muh-tay-zik Hof-fer.
Quicken Loans: "What We Were Thinking"
Quicken's commercial suggests that securing a Rocket Mortgage with your smartphone could become so easy everyone would want one, heralding a whole new era of consumerism to furnish all those newly-acquired homes. "And isn't that the power of America itself?" the narrator asks. Just what we need on the heels of "The Big Short." What were they thinking?
Sir Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for playing a cannibalistic serial killer, would NEVER sell out. And he certainly wouldn't stoop to selling something that, actually, costs nothing. Pure logic. Agency: Wieden & Kennedy.
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Check out our gallery of Big Game ads, then make your choices for the best (and worst) Super Bowl commercials
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http://www.cbsnews.com/media/homes-what-you-can-buy-for-600000/
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Homes: What you can buy for $600,000
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20160714113726
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Spending over a half-million dollars will usually get homebuyers a comfortable place to hang their hats. But depending on the city, you may get room for only a single hat rack.
In Boston, for example, $600,000 will buy 720 square feet and in-unit laundry. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it will buy 5,194 square feet and a spacious three-car garage.
As usual in real estate, buyers also have to weigh their ideal location against the price they're willing and able to pay. In some places, like Midtown Manhattan with its $1.6 million median listing price, $600,000 is a steal. In other areas, like the Spanish Trail neighborhood of Las Vegas with a $197,000 median home value, spending $600,000 may not make much sense at all.
However, amenities seem more consistent: Homes at this price point often have stainless steel appliances, a jetted bathtub and at least one fireplace. Here are 10 homes for $600,000 in cities across the U.S.
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The amount of space you get for $600,000 varies a lot depending on where you look -- but amenities are more consistent
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http://mashable.com/2007/08/01/acdc-verizon/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160714143227id_/http://mashable.com:80/2007/08/01/acdc-verizon/
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AC/DC Sells Music through Verizon-Not iTunes
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20160714143227
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AC/DC, the Australian band, has finally decided to begin selling its music in a digital format, but has shocked many with its decision to not sign with iTunes for distribution and sales.
The band has instead decided to sign a contract with Verizon V Cast for the sales and distribution of its music. This has been noted by some as a pretty dumb move—iTunes sells a lot of music. Others say it's smart, as the band can get more money from Verizon for the deal, and sign with iTunes at a later date. No matter which way you slice it, the point seems to be that some bands don't think that selling through iTunes is a fair deal.
Having more autonomy over distribution rights seems to be the central concern here, and this is even being echoed by Eminem, who is currently suing Apple for the unwarranted distribution of his content on both iTunes and iPod commercials. Will V Cast offer AC/DC all it hopes for and more? The mobile content provider is moving quickly to continually compete with the iPhone and all the perks that come along with it. Verizon announced a deal with NBC just yesterday for the provision of its content through V Cast, and is becoming more of a media portal as mobile browsing improves.
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AC/DC, the Australian band, has finally decided to begin selling its music in a digital format, but has shocked many with its decision to not sign with iTunes for distribution a...
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160714152549id_/http://nypost.com:80/2016/07/09/the-day-in-photos-july-8-2016/
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The day in photos: July 8, 2016
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20160714152549
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Five red roses are seen on the bronze medallion at The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington.
Bicyclists pass sunflowers at the Tour de France.
A pigeon flies in front of a fountain in Kiev, Ukraine.
Members representing the different Scottish clans shield their torches from the wind and rain during the opening ceremonies of the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in Linville, North Carolina.
A woman grieves at the scene of Sunday's massive truck bomb attack in the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq.
Revelers stand under a waterfall during the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the Gan HaShlosha national park near Beit Shean, Israel.
Hippopotamuses perform during a show at the circus in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia.
President Barack Obama smiles sitting next to British Prime Minister David Cameron before the first working session of the North Atlantic Council at the NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch speaks in Washington about recent shootings.
Dallas police chief David Brown, front, and Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings, rear, talk with the media during a news conference.
A blue-eyed husky gazes at tourists at a "True Love at Neverland" exhibit in Bangkok, Thailand.
Models walk on water for Fendi's 90th anniversary at Paris Fashion Week.
A boy collects washed up items at a coastal village in Manila, Philippines, following flooding rains.
Members of the congregation pray during a vigil in memory of Alton Sterling, who was shot dead by police, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
A runner is thrown by a Cebada Gago fighting bull at the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain.
A giant panda named Yuanzai enjoys a birthday treat in Taipei, Taiwan.
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The country mourns Dallas and more.
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http://www.people.com/article/million-dollar-listing-new-york-ryan-serhant-emilia-bechrakis-wedding-exclusive-details
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160714161409id_/http://www.people.com/article/million-dollar-listing-new-york-ryan-serhant-emilia-bechrakis-wedding-exclusive-details
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Inside Ryan Serhant, Emilia Bechrakis Wedding : People.com
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20160714161409
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It was the wedding of their dreams for
The Bravo star, 31, and Bechrakis, whose family is from Greece,
on July 7 surrounded by 150 close friends and family. "I didn't know happiness like this actually existed. It's like a fairy tale," Serhant tells PEOPLE exclusively. "You read about it, hear about it, and dream about it, and now it's real. Someone pinch me!"
The couple began their wedding festivities, designed by celebrity event planner Kevin Lee, with a welcome party for their guests at En Plo cafe-restaurant on July 5 before their rehearsal dinner at The Venetian Well restaurant the following evening. Bechrakis admits she was "nervous to see everyone come together. This is our family for the rest of our lives! I just wanted to spend as much time together as possible."
Ryan Serhant and Emilia Bechrakis Serhant
On July 7, guests, including Serhant's former Bravo costar
, journeyed by boat to the ceremony, which began around 7:30 p.m. – Serhant, wearing a Mediterranean blue tux by VK Nagrani, and his brothers and friends arrived by pirate ship.
Luis D. Ortiz (left) and Ryan Serhant
Bechrakis, who wore a champagne strapless gown by Romona Keveža, and Serhant led their guests into the Pontikonisi church, where they were wed with Greek traditions including exchanging crowns.
"During the ceremony as the sun was setting, I looked around to see who was in the crowd and I was overjoyed to see family and friends that had traveled from all around the world," Bechrakis adds. "Especially my elderly grandmother who I am named after."
Ryan Serhant and Emilia Bechrakis Serhant
After the ceremony, the wedding party and guests adjourned to a reception at the private Villa Kanoni. Surrounded by olive branches, white peonies and soft candlelight, the couple were introduced for their first dance to
's "Photograph," a moment Serhant says he "will remember until the day I die. We were dancing as fireworks went off behind us and it was like we were all alone, dancing through the crazy. I will never forget that kiss."
Following dinner, which included chilled soup, risotto with summer truffle, goat cheese salad and roasted lamb, guests danced around a pool overlooking the Ionian Sea to music by DJ Spartakos.
Emilia Bechrakis Serhant and Ryan Serhant
After the couple cut their cake, Serhant jumped into the pool with his two brothers, Jack and Jim, "with all of our clothes on. As I came up for air, I saw everyone jumping in with us, with all of their clothes on!" he recalls. "And we swam together until 6 a.m. with cake and champagne. It was insane. I had developers and billionaire clients being dunked by my brothers and sisters."
Now with the wedding behind them – it will be featured in Bravo's new spin-off,
this fall – the newlyweds, who met in 2011 and got engaged in 2015, are anxious to begin their life together in New York City.
"I'm looking forward to starting a family, it's the next stage of our life," says Bechrakis, a lawyer and title insurance representative. "Coming home and being husband and wife, it's a different chapter. But no matter what happens, you're a team."
As for her real estate broker husband? "Not having to plan another wedding that's for sure," Serhant says, laughing. "Babies. That's my gut answer. And getting started on real life. We have a ton of things to start and it hasn't even begun. But it's about to begin with the best person ever."
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The couple were married on July 7 surrounded by 150 close friends and family
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http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Ex-Stanford-Football-Player-Sentenced-S-F-2922014.php
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160714214254id_/http://www.sfgate.com:80/bayarea/article/Ex-Stanford-Football-Player-Sentenced-S-F-2922014.php
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Ex-Stanford Football Player Sentenced / S.F. could also file molestation charges
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20160714214254
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Julie N. Lynem, Chronicle Staff Writer
1999-07-01 04:00:00 PDT SAN JOSE -- Former Stanford football player Eric Abrams was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday for misconduct involving a young San Jose boy.
Dressed in brown jail garb, a clean-shaven but handcuffed Abrams stood next to his attorney, Ken Robinson, in Santa Clara County Superior Court as Judge Lawrence Terry handed down the sentence. Abrams, 25, was then taken back to the County Jail in San Jose.
"Every day, he expresses remorse," said Robinson.
Because yesterday's sentence gives credit for time served, Abrams could be set free in five days if authorities in San Francisco do not pick him up on a warrant for unrelated charges of kidnapping and attempted kidnapping.
That is unlikely, however, according to the Santa Clara County district attorney's office, which struck a deal with Robinson that includes three years of supervised parole for the former place-kicking star.
Abrams pleaded no contest Dec. 7, 1998, to felony false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of annoying or molesting a child, said Dolores Carr, supervising attorney with the Santa Clara County district attorney's office sexual assault unit.
The charges stemmed from an incident in which Abrams posed as a Nike representative and told a San Jose boy he had won prizes and Nike gear.
Abrams then persuaded the child to come to his home, where he asked the boy to undress so he could be measured for clothing.
Abrams could have received a sentence of as long as three years in prison for the offense, Carr said.
"Given the facts of the case, we feel that this was a good sentence for the prosecution and the people," said Carr, noting that Abrams has never had a felony conviction.
"We believe he is a danger to the community," she said. "We're hoping San Francisco comes down and is successful in their prosecution. We believe the most serious charges that he's facing is in their county."
San Francisco police said last year Abrams impersonated a police officer, then lured a 13-year-old Bayview boy into a car and ordered the child to undress.
They also said Abrams approached two brothers in the same neighborhood, but was interrupted when their mother showed up.
San Francisco prosecutors charged him with kidnapping, child molestation and impersonating a police officer, with bail set at $500,000. However, the district attorney's office could not move forward until Abrams' case in Santa Clara County was resolved.
Kim Brown, the mother of two San Francisco boys allegedly accosted by Abrams, is not taking the charges lightly.
After the sentencing hearing, Brown said Abrams should have gotten more time.
On the day her boys were approached, Brown said she chased Abrams across town and demanded that police question him.
Police initially told her that it was a misunderstanding.
Her sons, now 13 and 14, still have nightmares about Abrams, Brown said.
They are both in therapy.
"I hope they lock him up and keep him locked up," she said.
Abrams ended his Stanford college career in 1995 as the school's top-scoring place kicker.
The following year, he pleaded no contest in Santa Clara County Superior Court to charges that he solicited nude photos of boys.
He was placed on three years' probation.
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"Every day, he expresses remorse," said Robinson. Because yesterday's sentence gives credit for time served, Abrams could be set free in five days if authorities in San Francisco do not pick him up on a warrant for unrelated charges of kidnapping and attempted kidnapping. Abrams pleaded no contest Dec. 7, 1998, to felony false imprisonment and a misdemeanor count of annoying or molesting a child, said Dolores Carr, supervising attorney with the Santa Clara County district attorney's office sexual assault unit. "Given the facts of the case, we feel that this was a good sentence for the prosecution and the people," said Carr, noting that Abrams has never had a felony conviction. San Francisco prosecutors charged him with kidnapping, child molestation and impersonating a police officer, with bail set at $500,000.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/29/archives/despite-ages-of-captivity-the-armenians-persevere-armenia-a-hint-of.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160718061123id_/http://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/29/archives/despite-ages-of-captivity-the-armenians-persevere-armenia-a-hint-of.html
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Despite Ages of Captivity, The Armenians Persevere
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20160718061123
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We are lunching, a Russian business acquaintance and I, at this touchingly downatheel Moscow hotel, strictly for locals (it's called the Minsk). I am slightly giggly from quaffing vodka on an empty stomach—and probably from being seated too close to a motley group of earnest musicians who are playing a 1950's medley for these husky, miniskirted girls and their immaculately attired beaus prancing around the floor within inches of our table. We are sharing one of the few available tables with a short, darkcomplexioned man in an open shirt who smiles at us from time to time.
“He's an Armenian,” my Russian friend informs me. “They are a very sympathetic people.”
In an instant the Armenian is telling us (in Russian, which my friend interprets for me) about his country, the smallest of all the Soviet republics—not much bigger than the state of Maryland and with considerably fewer inhabitants (about 2.5 million in 1970). In another instant he has gone off to his room, to return almost immediately carrying a paper bag containing a small bottle of Armenian cognac.
He pours hefty snorts for us, so we begin a succession of toasts. Meanwhile, our new friend is telling us, tears in his eyes, that he left his beloved country 10 days earlier so that he could visit his son the physicist, who works in Moscow. He is homesick, and glad that he will soon be returning to Armenia. Have some more of our cognac.
Later, my Russian friend—a square young man, properly cravated —adds to his characterization: “They're all crazy, the Armenians. A sympathetic people, but crazy. You'll see.” For as it happens, we are leaving the very next day for Erevan, capital of Armenia.
The journey from Moscow's Domodedovo Airport to Erevan takes three and a half hours aboard an IL‐18 prop plane, which made this passenger yearn for the quiet smoothness of jet craft (a jet was available for the return flight). We were fed aboard the IL‐18, greasy chunks of chicken handed out picnic style. Mine was rubbery and leaped into the seat rack all by itself—well, in any case, it got there. The toilet lacked paper, towels, and running water. It was, all told, a rigorous introduction to the great Russian heartland.
On the plane, though, and at the Erevan airport, I began to notice the striking contrast between the relaxed Armenians and the reserved, often gruff Russians who are their masters. “I feel as if I'm in a foreign country when I come here,” my Russian friend remarked. And that, precisely, is the point.
The Armenians are entitled to pursue their daytoday interests, to breed, even to prosper. On the surface, Armenian culturemusic, dance, the plastic arts—thrives. But the Armenians are a captive people; they are expected to think and talk and vote by Moscow time. The only independent Armenian state in modern history was snuffed out by Lenin in 1920.
And yet, there are those who are grateful to the Russians. Several Armenians I met said as much: “It is the Russians who have protected us from the Turks.” The Turkish pogroms of the 19th century, in Armenia, culminating in genocidal deportations and mass killings during World War I, are the Armenian version of the Jewish Holocaust. The history of those traumatic years is bound to come up in a conversation of any length; it's in everybody's books and paintings, and a monument to the Armenian holocaust dominates the capital, along with Mount Ararat.
I could see the famed mountain on clear mornings from the balcony of my hotel in Erevan. It Is almost a required backdrop in paintings and prints, the inevitable trademark on local products (including the potent, velvety cognac produced from vineyards in the Ararat valley). Ararat is the Hebrew word for Urartu, an ancient kingdom Inhabited by the predecessors of the Armenians, also a. mountain warrior folk. The sacred mountain stands in the center of historical end traditional Armenia, but today it is in Turkish territory.
The Bible says that Noah's Ark ended its voyage there: “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the Mountains of Ararat” (Genesis viii: 4). Assured that the floodwaters had receded, Noah disembarked with his family and livestock and proceeded to repopulate the earth. Legend had it that bits and pieces of the ark could be seen on the top of the mountain right down to modern times. I myself saw a respectable chunk of Noah's wooden boat in a reliquary in the cathedral museum at Echmiadzin, Armenia's traditional religious capital.
Only 12 miles from the modern, broadlaned capital of Erevan, Echmiadzin is the Canterbury to Erevan's London, or the Kyoto to its Tokyo. Armenia was the first nation in the world to emb:ace Christianity as a etata religion (A.D. 301), and the Echmiadzin Cathedral and monastery were founded at that time. Like all ancient Armenian churches, the cathedral is characterized by a disarmingly naive, coneshaped steeple. With a minimum of ornament, the building (put up on the site of a pagan temple) is a solid stone construction, its arches sober romanesque curves. It is part of a large religious compound. Another large building here is the official residence of the supreme Catholicos. There are other living patriarchs of the Armenian Church (in Beirut and Istanbul), but their own Vasgin I, 130th in line from the very first spiritual leader, is considered by Soviet Armenians to be first among equals.
The Echmiadzin Cathedral has been rebuilt several times, following destructive invasions. Part of the earliest fifthcentury church still survives, now incorporated into more recent additions. But the church retains the original form of a cube, the conical roof set over the central nave. The, remains of. the pagan temple can be viewed under the main altar.
The cathedral also has its own small museum, containing a rich collection of ancient manuscripts and religious objects—chasubles, altar covers, even a spear purported to be the one that pierced Christ on the cross. And here I saw the piece of splintered driftwood found on Mount Ararat and considered to be a relic of Noah's Ark. An English ‐speaking guide at the museum told me that the original piece of wood was larger than this sliver (the size of a large cigar), but a piece had to be broken off to be given to Catherine II of Russia, in return for which she gave the cathedral silver chasuble (on view here).
The town of Echmiadzin is on the scale you'd expect to find in Armenia—low buildings, leafy trees, attractive public squares. Outside the cathedral compound there are a number of other old churches. (If there are any similar churches in Erevan, they are carefully hidden.) Two particularly beautiful Echmiadzin churches are St. Hripsime and St. Gayané, both seventhcentury. Other superb and humble churches can be seen in the fertile vineyard and fruit orchard center of Ashtarak (Karmravor and St. Marine), at Mughni (St. George), at Biurakan (Artavazdik), none of them far from the capital.
Another sacred site provides an opportunity for an even closer approach to eternal Armenia—the Armenia of the early Christian years, of the centuries of warfare and plundering. For there is no doubt that Armenia survived through its religion. Monks created the Armenian alphabet, a beautiful and unique script, at the beginning of the fifth century, and in their fortified monasteries resisted successive hordes of invaders, copying and often hiding and thus preserving not only Armenia's heritage but rare texts from Greek and other cultures. Armenia has lacked mountain hideaways.
We visited one such in a drive of less than 30 miles from the capital, on roads that, if they are not always good or even tarred, are a fitting introduction to this wild, hilly country of scrub vegetation, goatherds, peasants with multicolored caps, shirts and dresses. The car was occasionally blocked by flocks of sheep or goats. Then, deep inside a canyon, we reached Ghegard, site of the extraordinary Ayrivank monastery nestled in the gorge, below a crest of precipitous cliffs. Thanks to this remoteness, the Ghegard community has survived 1,000 years of bloody Asia Minor history.
At the entrance I watched local peasants leading lambs on rope leashes into the monastery compound. The animals were destined for sacrificial deaths. After being blessed they were taken out to the surrounding hills for slaughtering and roasting, the heads are returned to the monastery as a gift to the church. Later I saw half a dozen roastlamb barbecue picnics on the slopes just outside the monastery walls, the local people singing and dancing to the strains of Armenian tunes, a repetitious trilling reminiscent of Greek folk music. I also heard the piercing cries of newborn babies and discovered the crowded baptistery.
Ghegard means “spear"—the spear which wounded Christ. When Christianity reached Armenia in the fourth century the pagan temple on this site was replaced by a primitive church carved out of the rock. I met the head of the monastery, the velvet ‐ capped, brownrobed Bishop Vahan Terian, who speaks English. He showed me pagan carvings of a snake on ancient stones which were reutilized to build the Christian church.
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microwaves controversy revd (S)
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https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-dance/2016/07/17/company-one-the-party-transgender-experience-unfolds-shadow-and-light/ec3w57ZeqJgUDab5z4R8xK/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160718134045id_/https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theater-dance/2016/07/17/company-one-the-party-transgender-experience-unfolds-shadow-and-light/ec3w57ZeqJgUDab5z4R8xK/story.html
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In Company One’s ‘The T Party,’ the transgender experience unfolds, in shadow and light
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20160718134045
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Questions of gender identity rose to the foreground of public discourse amid the recent controversy over North Carolina’s so-called “bathroom bill,’’ spotlighting the growing refusal by the transgender community to remain silent or invisible.
Now comes Natsu Onoda Power’s contribution to that discourse — the New England premiere of “The T Party,’’ at Company One Theatre — and it is as bracingly original and head-spinning as you might expect from this singular playwright-director.
Power has devised a whirling theatrical language all her own, one that is playful, idiosyncratic, and, though self-indulgent at times, often bursting with energy, heart, and ideas. Directed by Power at the Roberts Studio Theatre, “The T Party’’ presents a series of vignettes that dramatize what the playwright calls “gender transformation,’’ including the experiences of transgender people in a culture that too often treats them as the ultimate outsiders. Rather than pretend that any one story can capture the entire spectrum of gender and sexual identity, Power’s multi-angled approach results in an expansive picture that includes people who identify as non-binary.
Structurally, the outward trappings of spontaneity in “The T Party’’ may conceal the precision of Power’s craft. There’s a cumulative power to the piece that doesn’t fully sink in until you’re on your way home after the performance. (The effect was similar with Power’s manga-inspired “Astro Boy and the God of Comics,’’ which she directed two summers ago at Company One in a production that combined live action, puppetry, animation, video, and charcoal drawings to fashion a resonant sci-fi parable about the allure and the perils of technology in the nuclear age).
A freewheeling tone is set from the start of “The T Party,’’ which kicks off with a mid-1990s prom scene, complete with a mirrored disco ball high above the stage-turned-dance-floor, with the audience seated on either side. Spectators dance along with Power’s ensemble of eight: Kadahj Bennett (excellent), David J. Castillo, Matthew Dray, Alex Jacobs, Mal Malme, Jade Sylvan, Alyssandra Taylor, and Gigi Watson (a standout).
That opening prom scene goes on far too long but does serve the purpose of introducing us to the central characters whose attempts at self-expression — sometimes buoyantly self-confident, sometimes poignantly tentative — will form the spine of “The T Party’’ from then on.
In one vignette that conveys a sense both of communion and isolation, a man chats with a female friend online, proudly showing her pictures of himself in dresses while saying he wishes he could be himself in public, not just in private. In another, an actor rapidly cycles through multiple personae in a drag routine set to Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).’’
There’s a trenchant bit titled “Non-Binary Sex Education for Kids,’’ and an uproarious scene illustrating the joyfully homosexual activities of bottlenose dolphins. Two female college students embark on a torrid fling, but their relationship ebbs after they are targeted with an epithet on a dorm room door. A glamorous, serenely content transgender woman working as an escort talks about her life to a married father of three who is an occasional cross-dresser, and who is intensely curious about her life.
Based on Power’s conversations with friends and members of the transgender community in Washington, D.C., “The T Party’’ premiered three years ago at the Forum Theatre in Silver Spring, Md. Power has added some topical updates, including last month’s massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando and the transgender public accommodations bill signed into law by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker this month.
Among Power’s strengths as a writer and director are the ways she finds to surprise you. In perhaps the most potent scene in “The T Party,’’ a performance of the famous song “One,’’ from “A Chorus Line,’’ is wrapped around descriptions of a phalloplasty, punctuated by a recitation of harrowing statistics about the rates at which transgender people experience homelessness, fall victim to homicide, or attempt suicide.
There are plenty of reminders of that kind of pain and the need to stop it, but you walk away from this play realizing that the word “party’’ is not idly affixed to Power’s title. “The T Party’’ is infused with an embracing warmth that insists on the right of all people not just to live, but to live happily.
Created and directed by Natsu Onoda Power. Presented by Company One Theatre at Roberts Studio Theatre, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts. Through Aug. 13. Tickets $25-$38, 617-933-8600, www.bostontheatrescene.com
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In a whirling theatrical language all her own, Natsu Onoda Power dramatizes questions of gender identity.
| 50.944444 | 0.944444 | 4.388889 |
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http://fortune.com/2016/07/17/pokemon-go-accounts-flipping/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160720163448id_/http://fortune.com:80/2016/07/17/pokemon-go-accounts-flipping/
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Pokémon Go Accounts are Already Selling for Hundreds of Dollars
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20160720163448
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Less than two weeks after Pokémon Go’s U.S. release, Wired reports that accounts with high-level or rare Pokémon are appearing for sale on Craigslist, Facebook, and other platforms. At the game-account marketplace PlayerUp, listings range from a level 10 account with a Pikachu offered for $25, to a level 21 account with a Dragonite for $400—a sale which was apparently successful.
The CEO of PlayerUp told Wired that the market for Pokémon Go accounts has developed more quickly than any he has seen before. He also predicted that it will grow over time, like similar markets for other games. That’s because players generally want to experience a game’s lower tiers for themselves at first, but eventually become more interested in buying high-level accounts and rare items.
Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.
How to respond to secondary markets for digital items has often been a tough call for game makers. Sales can frustrate and alienate players if they’re seen as debasing a game’s competitive elements. But stopping them has proven difficult, and capturing or even enabling the trade can be a tempting source of revenue.
Blizzard has worked for more than a decade to control the ‘farming’ and sale of gold, items and accounts in its games, including World of Warcraft, with moderate success. Blizzard eventually implemented a shop where it directly sells everything from level boosts to cosmetic enhancements, but the secondary trade persists.
Valve Software has gone much further in capitalizing on the sale of game items for games like Counter-Strike, both selling them directly and running an auction-like marketplace through its Steam service. It even helps third-party sites deal in items—leading in part to accusations that the company enables gambling.
Pokémon Go is different from those games in that it operates on a free-to-play model, allowing players to buy items and boosts for real money right from the get-go. But that doesn’t include the ability to buy specific monsters for your collection, and most current account sales seem to be driven by those rare beasts.
For more on Pokémon Go, watch our video.
That particular driver might be tamped down once the game’s maker, Niantic, implements in-game monster trading. But the trading feature is just as likely to spawn an even more active resale market, unless Niantic can somehow prevent money from changing hands as part of trades.
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The secondary market has exploded just as quickly as the game itself.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2016/05/16/there-facebook-page-devoted-reviewing-slaw-don-ask-why/5EjfWP5ufXCZ5OXGJnO9dM/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160720222003id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com:80/lifestyle/food-dining/2016/05/16/there-facebook-page-devoted-reviewing-slaw-don-ask-why/5EjfWP5ufXCZ5OXGJnO9dM/story.html
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There is a Facebook page devoted to reviewing slaw. Don’t ask why.
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20160720222003
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Survey the demolished remains of any big summer picnic table and you’ll find that one dish often survives the destruction miraculously unharmed: the coleslaw. It’s got all the flavor of raw vegetables and all the nutrition of a pint glass full of bacon fat. And somehow a single head of cabbage makes enough coleslaw to insulate the walls of a three-bedroom colonial.
But it turns out some people take their slaw seriously. A Haverhill couple, Ed Sanborn and Lisa Houle, have set out to rate the region’s cabbage concoctions on their Facebook page, the Coleslaw Review. There, they rate slaw in a variety of categories including “liquid content,” “size of veggies,” “presentation,” and “vinegary.” After a few days of ’round-the-globe publicity that was more or less inexplicable — this is essentially two pleasant but random people reviewing cups of coleslaw at roadside diners, hospital cafeterias, and fast food places — about 9,300 people have followed the page by clicking “like.”
Why? Well, as the page’s description attests: “Coleslaw has been ignored for far too long.” www.facebook.com/coleslawreview Nestor Ramos
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They take coleslaw very seriously
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/22/parents-scale-school-walls-to-help-students-cheat-in-exam-in-ind/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160721011352id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/2016/03/22/parents-scale-school-walls-to-help-students-cheat-in-exam-in-ind/
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Parents scale school walls to help students cheat in exam in India
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20160721011352
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For their ingenuity and their climbing skills, they no doubt deserved an A-plus.
But Indian parents who climbed the walls of a school to hand crib sheets to their children as they sat exams may ultimately have earned a “fail”.
Education officials in India’s eastern Bihar state have now launched an inquiry after photos of the parents and relatives perched precariously outside a four-storey school’s upper windows were published on the internet.
Some were trying to hand in answer sheets folded into paper planes. The 12th grade pupils sitting the exams could now face either forced resits or even expulsion.
“Should we shoot them?” asked Prashant Kumar Shahi, Bihar’s education minister, speaking at a news conference after television news channels aired the incriminating photo and raked up the scandal.
The pictures, which were widely circulated online, highlighted the growing problem of cheating in exams as ambitious Indian parents push their children to excel in the country’s highly-competitive education system.
Pupils face tremendous pressure at 10th and 12th grades because they must pass the exams to continue their education.
Around 600 high school students in eastern India have been expelled for cheating in the past week, many having been caught smuggling in textbooks or scraps of paper.
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For their ingenuity and their climbing skills, they no doubt deserved an A-plus.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10095159/World-War-Z-review.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160721120653id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/culture/10095159/World-War-Z-review.html
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World War Z, review
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20160721120653
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Dir: Marc Forster; Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, Sterling Jerins, Matthew Fox, James Badge Dale, Eric West. 12A cert, 116 min.
The first problem you encounter with World War Z, the new action blockbuster starring Brad Pitt, is how to pronounce the damn thing. Should the last letter be said "zee", to sound like "three", or "zed", to sound like "dead", or "zzz", to sound like the audience?
Whichever phoneme you plump for, the Z stands for zombie, and the film contains, on a rough estimate, hundreds of thousands of them. It is based on a novel by Max Brooks, son of the filmmaker and humourist Mel, and it follows Gerry Lane (Pitt), a flaxen-haired former United Nations action man who is recalled to the line of duty when a mysterious pandemic turns citizens of various countries into walking, chomping corpses.
Brooks’s novel was a thinly-veiled parable about American foreign policy and post-millennial anxiety, told from several points of view: in fact, it had much in common with Steven Soderbergh’s terrific 2011 medical thriller Contagion. Marc Forster’s film junks the satire and multiple perspectives, and instead recasts the story as an uncomplicated globe-trotting thriller. On one side we have Lane and a roster of temporary sidekicks, and on the other, an inexhaustible supply of the living dead.
What we get is a collection of moderately violent action set-pieces untroubled by humour or broader coherence. Lane travels from Philadelphia (played on-screen by Glasgow) to Nova Scotia via New York, New Jersey, South Korea, Israel and Wales, and almost nothing that happens along the way has the slightest effect on the film’s final outcome. Perhaps this should come as no surprise: shortly after filming on World War Z was thought to be complete, seven weeks of extra shooting took place in Budapest, which was followed by the writing and filming of an entirely new third act later in the year. Whatever direction the film was originally headed in, someone important obviously thought better of it.
Forster, who directed the Bond film Quantum of Solace, has done his best to piece together a story from these incompatible parts, but the final product has an elaborate uselessness about it, like a broken teapot glued back together with the missing pieces replaced by parts of a vacuum cleaner.
The Welsh finale, in particular, looks spectacularly cheap, and the screen-stretching vistas and computer-generated hordes from earlier in the movie are nowhere to be seen. In their place is Peter Capaldi, who plays a World Health Organisation director hiding out in a bunker near Cardiff, and when you first glimpse him in an otherwise empty office you wonder if Malcolm Tucker has somehow saved the day by swearing the zombies into submission.
By that point you’re well-primed for such silliness, as many of the film’s key dramatic moments wouldn’t feel particularly out of place on a horror-themed edition of The Thick Of It. In one early sequence, when Lane tries to creep past a crowd of zombies on a military base, his cover is blown when his wife Karen (Mireille Enos) unexpectedly rings his mobile. Moments earlier, an important character trips up and accidentally shoots himself in the head, and you start to question whether the planet might in fact be safer in the hands of the zombies.
At least the film has one neat trick: in the Israel sequence we see Boschian wide-shots of zombie hordes coursing down streets and sluicing over barriers like a great, monstrous flood. This chimes with the footage of swarming insects in the opening titles, and suggests that the film may have once had a point to make before the rot set in. But there’s no heart to be found amid the guts.
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There's blood and guts but no heart when Brad Pitt takes on zombie hordes, finds Robbie Collin.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/10101518/Roast-wild-duck-with-blackberry-sauce-and-celeriac-puree-recipe.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160721124410id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/foodanddrink/recipes/10101518/Roast-wild-duck-with-blackberry-sauce-and-celeriac-puree-recipe.html
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Roast wild duck with blackberry sauce and celeriac puree recipe
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20160721124410
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300g celeriac, peeled and chopped into 3cm pieces
300g wild duck bones, chopped into 2cm pieces
1 large shallot, finely sliced
100g sliced flat cup mushrooms
150ml Cabernet Sauvignon, reduced by half
500ml brown chicken stock or water if you don’t have any
1g finely ground black pepper
Pre-heat your oven to 180C.
In a large frying pan on a medium heat, colour the ducks on their side in the oil for 8 minutes per side. Turn on to the breasts and colour for 2 minutes each until golden brown all over. Transfer to an oven tray and roast in the pre-heated oven for 12 minutes.
Remove from the oven and leave to rest breast side down.
In a medium saucepan, bring the chopped celeriac and milk to the boil; simmer for 15-20 minutes until soft.
Strain and puree in a blender until smooth, using a little of the milk to help get the right consistency. Season with the salt, pepper, lemon juice. Taste. In a small saucepan, heat the butter until it foams and reaches the noisette stage. Whisk in to the puree. Cover and leave to one side.
In a medium sized casserole on a medium heat, colour the chopped duck bones in the oil for 10 minutes. Add the sliced shallots and mushrooms and continue until golden brown. Spoon of off the excess fat and add all the other ingredients.
Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain and finish the sauce with the blackberry puree. Taste, correct the seasoning and add a dash of balsamic vinegar to balance the sauce. Thicken with a little diluted arrowroot if needed.
Carve the duck as you would a roast chicken onto a flat dish and spoon the sauce over the ducks. Serve the celeriac puree in a small dish on the side.
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Blackberries and duck are a match made in heaven.
| 36.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 |
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http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2016/07/charlize-theron-aids-doesn-discriminate-160719181138131.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160721163311id_/http://www.aljazeera.com:80/blogs/africa/2016/07/charlize-theron-aids-doesn-discriminate-160719181138131.html
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Charlize Theron: AIDS doesn't discriminate on its own
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20160721163311
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It feels nonsensical to open my account at the 21st International Aids Conference in Durban to write about Charlize Theron. But here I am, sitting at my desk, looking at my notes from this landmark conference, and the Hollywood star's speech is one of the highlights of the conference so far.
It was a memorable performance.
On Monday evening, 40-year-old Theron opened the AIDS conference with an address that brought delegates, researchers, policy-makers, doctors, scientists and activists to their feet.
Charlize Theron: If we are going to end AIDS we must cure the disease in our hearts & in our minds first #AIDS2016 pic.twitter.com/da7qXlIPV2
It's not that Theron said anything that any of us had never heard before. It was not even about her delivery. It was instead the politics she espoused that left some of us a little surprised, others perhaps a little stunned.
Theron, one of South Africa's most famous daughters, told the audience that there was no honour in South Africa hosting a second conference on AIDS. She pointed out that the fight against the pandemic should have been won by now.
Theron said that the reason AIDS had not been solved was because "we value some lives more than others".
READ MORE: All you need to know about AIDS 2016
It is easy to mock the malleable conscience of celebrities who are used to front campaigns against war and disease. I mean, seriously, "a messenger for peace". Come on. But there was no mistaking the potency of Theronâs words at the conference.
"We value men more than women, straight love more than gay love, white skin more than black skin, the rich, more than the poor and adults more than adolescents," she said.
"I know this, because AIDS doesn't discriminate on its own. It has no biological preference for black bodies, for womens' bodies, for gay bodies, for youth, or the poor. It doesn't single out the vulnerable or the oppressed, or the abused. We single out the vulnerable, the oppressed, and the abused. We ignore them, we let them suffer, and then, we let them die."
The most challenging speech made at the #InternationalAidsConference in Durban so far was by #CharlizeTheron https://t.co/PaRX180vuj
Her message was not necessarily directed to her immediate audience, the best minds in the world working to end HIV/AIDS, but rather to the millions of people beyond.
It was remarkable. She diffused blame and pinned responsibility.
"It's the culture that condones rape and shames victims into silence. It's the cycle of poverty and violence that traps girls into teen marriages and forces them to sell their bodies to provide for their bodies. It's the racism that allows the white and the wealthy to exploit the black and the poor and then blame them for their own suffering," she said of AIDS.
HIV may be a virus, but the epidemic has always been an expression of disenfranchisement.
For instance, Edwin Cameron, the South African Constitutional Court Judge, who is openly gay and living with HIV, has spoken ceaselessly about how he used to spend $400 a month when the majority of South Africans could not afford the life-saving anti-retroviral treatment. He described it as "buying life".
It is little wonder that while so many gains have been made in the struggle to alleviate and contain HIV/Aids worldwide, it is still the most disenfranchised who are most at risk: young female adolescents who cannot negotiate sex, gay men, sex workers and transgender people.
The epidemic has always been borne of hate, judgement and discrimination masquerading as a mere health emergency.
"HIV is not just transmitted by sex. It is transmitted by sexism, racism, poverty and homophobia," Theron said to rousing applause.
When Theron was done, I was left in a quandary.
We ask Hollywood stars to be peace ambassadors, to draw attention to refugees, human rights and women's rights, because we hope their stardom will bring light and dollars to a cause. We all know it's mostly an act or voyeurism. It is further proof of purely conceived white saviour complex.
Of course the participation of these stars rarely brings any real change. Because their participation is not designed to change the status quo. They are simply around to pander to news values that hold celebrity as a form of divinity.
But on Monday night, Charlize Theron urged us to consider it another way.
"Let's ask ourselves why haven't we beaten this epidemic, could it be because we don't want to?" she asked.
In response, the room, filled with thousands of people, fell silent.
For more coverage on #AIDS2016, follow @azadessa
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South African actor stuns thousands in her homeland with sharp observations about society's role in failing to end AIDS.
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Shannen Doherty shaves head amid fight with breast cancer
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TV star Shannen Doherty revealed she shaved her head as she continues to move forward in her brave battle with breast cancer.
The former "Beverly Hills, 90210" actress shared a series of candid Instagram photos on Tuesday that detailed the process as she cut her hair.
Among the moving photos was one that showed the 45-year-old looking emotional, as well as several other pictures of her surrounded by loved ones.
Earlier in the day, Doherty uploaded a picture of a razor captioned with the hashtags #cancersucks and #thankgodforfriends.
Doherty battling breast cancer, sues former managers
Her close pal Anne Kortright-Shilstat, who was with Doherty as she shaved her head, shared her support for the actress on Tuesday with an Instagram post of her own.
A photo posted by ShannenDoherty (@theshando) on Jul 19, 2016 at 9:05pm PDT
"I couldn't be prouder of you today. Your strength and courage is so inspiring and I am so very lucky to have you in my life," she wrote. "Thank you for blindly trusting me today to help you with such a big step. I will forever be there for you no matter what."
Doherty's fight against the disease was revealed last year after she filed a lawsuit against her former managers claiming they allowed her health insurance to run out.
A photo posted by ShannenDoherty (@theshando) on Jul 19, 2016 at 9:07pm PDT
She claims she didn't visit a doctor until she renewed her insurance, leading to a delay in receiving her diagnosis.
The actress, who also starred on "Charmed" in the late '90s and early 2000s, opened up about her struggle with the illness last September.
A photo posted by ShannenDoherty (@theshando) on Jul 19, 2016 at 9:07pm PDT
"I am continuing to eat right, exercise and stay very positive about my life," she told People magazine. "I am thankful to my family, friends and doctors for their support and, of course, my fans who have stood by me."
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Shannen Doherty has shaved her head as she continues to move forward in her brave battle with breast cancer.
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Short Sellers Are Craving Chipotle as Shares Slump
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Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.’s marketing blitz to gain back customers and regain their confidence is on full blast. Wall Street isn’t buying it.
The burrito chain’s sales and stock price have fallen significantly following last year’s E. coli and salmonella outbreaks. A quick recovery isn’t in the cards when it reports second-quarter results on Thursday. And while Chipotle has acknowledged that it will take time to rebuild trust, the...
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Short interest in Chipotle hit its highest level since December 2009 ahead of second-quarter results.
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A Plea to Every Business That Has My Credit-Card Number
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Last week I had to attend an event that required me to look better than my regular wilted self (having left “effortless beauty” behind somewhere in my 20s), so I did what any self-respecting woman would do, which was to go for a blowout at a nearby Drybar. Drybar is one of those totally genius, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that businesses that are making someone who is not me very rich. After the visit, my hair looked much better–so much better, in fact, that I was feeling almost effortlessly beautiful until I got back to my desk to find an email from Drybar, asking if I would rate my experience. Which means there’s yet another business I have to break up with because it wants more of me than I’m willing to give.
Life is so complicated now, and I’m pretty sure it’s Yelp’s fault. Before we were all rating and reviewing everything we did, life was straightforward. Now in order to buy, visit or do anything, you need to follow this six-step process:
1. Decide and plan to do the thing
3. Take a photo of yourself doing the thing
4. Post the photo of you doing the thing on social media
5. Repeatedly check how many likes the post of you doing the thing got
Meaning just going to Taco Bell or the dentist becomes a six-step process. And sensible cranks like me would usually like to stop after step 2.
As I see it, there are two problems with our rate-everything way of living. First, the mystery-of-life issue. By my completely unscientific estimation, every time a new social-media platform is introduced, life loses about 8,500 mysteries. Before long we will all know everything about everybody, and most of it will be stuff you didn’t want to know in the first place. Ever since Kim Kardashian West’s naked derriere broke the Internet, the idea that we can “leave something to the imagination” has grown smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
O.K., millennials, I know what you’re thinking: expressing ourselves through ratings allows businesses to constantly iterate, remain in lean startup mode, do all those things that sounded supersexy and new back in, oh, 2009. Well, guess what? I’d venture to say there can be more muscle in keeping your opinions to yourself than in giving a business a lousy review. Have we forgotten that there is great power in playing your cards close to the vest? In cultivating mystery? (Thomas Pynchon, help me out here.) Would Mr. Darcy–the most captivating, mysterious man in literature–have rated his Uber driver after being dropped off at Pemberley? “My good opinion once lost is lost forever,” he avowed, and I’m not sure anyone wants to know more than that. I once worked for a legendarily scary woman whose power was all about her inscrutability. Every day involved anxious tea-leaf reading on the part of her staff. “Did she like that thing you showed her?” “I don’t know, she hasn’t responded.” “Where did she go all afternoon?” “I don’t know, she didn’t tell anybody.” She was stern, capricious, taciturn. And above all, mysterious, which both explained her allure and enabled her to keep us firmly within her control.
Second problem: the time-suck factor. No, Drybar (and Uber and Everlane and Paperless Post), I do not want to be in a committed, dynamic relationship with you. I don’t want to fill out a survey, and while I appreciate the peppy email from user-support associate Katie, I resent you for the time I spent reading it. Katie, if I need more help, I will reach out. Am I just a grumpy middle-aged lady who left effortless beauty behind in her 20s and now mostly wants to be left alone? Perhaps. And I’m selfish: I often make recipes on the basis of the number of stars they receive and choose movies by Rotten Tomatoes scores.
In summary, and to businesses everywhere: I just want you to provide me with something that I pay for, and then I want no contact with you until the next time I need you. Isn’t it enough that I gave you my credit-card number? If time is indeed money, then by taking my money and afterward making me rate the experience of your taking my money, you’re essentially double-billing me. And I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, at least in most states. All I know is that as soon as I rate the experience of writing this column, I’m getting on the horn with the FTC.
Van Ogtrop is the editor of Real Simple
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A plea to every business that has my credit-card number
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A Rockefeller Who Prefers A Rustic Life
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Growing up Rockefeller is not all finger bowls and private islands in Maine, as Eileen Rockefeller writes in her new memoir, “Being a Rockefeller, Becoming Myself,” out this month from Blue Rider Press. (Reader, don’t be dismayed: there are those accouterments, too.) Ms. Rockefeller, the youngest of David and Peggy Rockefeller’s six children, and a great-granddaughter of John D., grew up between a town house in Manhattan, a farm in Tarrytown, N.Y., a house in St. Barts and another in Maine, and struggled with shyness and undiagnosed dyslexia. Yet the star of the memoir may be Ms. Rockefeller’s mother, Peggy, who battled depression and the exigencies of her role as a Rockefeller wife with an antic wit and a passion for rural life, both of which qualities she worked hard to instill in her children. After Peggy bought a 20-acre island in Maine for $300 from a lobsterman (private island alert), she and her three youngest children built a cabin there by themselves, along with an outhouse, stone wall and vegetable garden.
The book did not come easily to Ms. Rockefeller, a philanthropist and co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, who said it took six years to write and three more to find a publisher, during which time she accrued 24 rejections. But she was moved to do so, she said, because “everyone comes from some family, and we all have the task of becoming ourselves. While material comforts are necessary, in the end I believe self worth is more important than net worth.”
Q. Of all those houses, the cabin you and your siblings built with your mother on Buckle Island seems to have had the most impact on you. What did the experience tell you about your mother, and what did it teach you?
A. It was only a place we went to stay a night or two. But it was a powerful place. My mother was trying to teach us the value of self-reliance, and through self-reliance one understands what it means to be normal. She wanted very much for us to work with our hands so we knew something of the handmade life. She felt that the handmade life and the life of the imagination were in combination with nature the greatest teachers of fundamental values.
Can you describe your home in New York City, and where is it, exactly?
My father still lives there, so let’s just say a double town house on the Upper East Side. There are four floors filled with museum-quality art, furnishings, china, rugs, you name it. The only place we could play ball was on the fourth floor, in a very narrow hallway. It’s not easy to roughhouse in a home that’s more like a museum. However I want to emphasize that despite the fact we couldn’t roughhouse, my mother made it the most cozy home. My mother would never hire decorators. She was an innate decorator. The second thing I wanted to say about how she helped us children deal with the constraints of fine art was that every single weekend without exception she insisted we were on the farm in the country. She taught us from the get-go that nature is the place to go to rebalance yourself, and caring for animals is what teaches empathy and compassion.
You now live on a working farm in Vermont with your husband, Paul Growald. Your mother, who died in 1996, must have been happy you were living a rural life.
She really appreciated the fact we had brought our sons to live there. The year she died was the year we moved full time from San Francisco, and began a five-month experiment in simple living. The children were 8 and 10, and we home-schooled them with the historical background of the 1840s, because that’s when our house was built, and because it was a great time for home crafts. I created lesson plans in the four basic areas of survival: food, shelter, clothing and community. The children helped us plant, weed and harvest our food. Then we made our own candles and used only candlelight or kerosene. We used no electricity. We cooked outside on a tripod because we didn’t have a wood stove. We boiled water and put it in a big harvest tub for their bathtub, which they would have in a mud room while I read them a book on Abraham Lincoln.
No, they seemed to love it. We made 19th-century patchwork pillows with 35 stitches to every inch. They carved their own yokes to carry water. There was a moment when our son, Adam, came running up to me. “Mommy, Mommy, I just thought of a metaphor.” He showed me how he had carved into the center of the wood, and seen how the heartwood is softer. He said, “I realized the deeper you go, the more heart you will find.” Danny, age 8, learned to blacksmith. He kept us thinking out of the box by doing such things as decorating cakes with string beans. It’s been a wonderful life. I did ask them later why they didn’t write about it for their college essays, and they said they didn’t think it was any different from any other summer.
A version of this article appears in print on September 12, 2013, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Rockefeller Who Prefers A Rustic Life. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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Of the many homes Eileen Rockefeller describes in her new memoir, she is most fond of the one that she and her siblings built as children.
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Top South Korean Prosecutor Arrested on Charges He Accepted Bribes
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SEOUL, South Korea — A top South Korean prosecutor was arrested on Sunday on charges of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the owner of Nexon, a leading online game maker, in a case that the country’s news media has portrayed as the epitome of corruption among its elite.
The prosecutor, Jin Kyung-joon, a vice ministerial-level official, is the most senior prosecutor arrested while in office in modern South Korean history.
His case has rocked the country for months, with public grievances running deep over growing income inequality and the way justice is pursued here. The local news media has reported it as the latest example of how some of the country’s business and government elites promote one another’s interests through collusive ties.
On Sunday, Justice Minister Kim Hyun-woong, who is in charge of prosecutors, apologized to the public, saying he was “embarrassed and despaired” over Mr. Jin’s “corruption and crime.”
Prosecutors said Mr. Jin received 420 million won, or about $370,000, from Kim Jung-ju, the founder of Nexon, in 2005 to buy unlisted Nexon Korea stock. The next year, they said, he sold the shares back to Nexon Korea for about $880,000.
He then bought stock in Nexon Japan and netted a fortune after Nexon Japan went public in 2011, selling the stock for $11 million last year, prosecutors said.
Mr. Jin is also accused of having received a luxury sedan from Nexon.
Investigators said on Sunday that they were also looking into an allegation that, in return for hushing up a tax investigation against Korean Air, Mr. Jin had forced the airline to give a lucrative contract to a company run by his brother-in-law. Prosecutors have summoned Korean Air officials in the matter.
Mr. Jin first said in March that he had bought the original Nexon Korea shares with his own money. Then he said some of the money had come from his mother-in-law. He later changed the story again, saying the money was borrowed from Mr. Kim and later repaid.
Last week, Mr. Jin apologized for lying but did not say whether the money he received from Mr. Kim was a bribe.
Kim Jung-ju is the largest shareholder of NXC, which controls both Nexon Korea and Nexon Japan. Nexon markets online games popular in Asia and beyond, like KartRider, MapleStory and Dungeon Fighter. He was once hailed as one of South Korea’s richest young tech entrepreneurs.
Now, lawmakers and newspaper editorials have accused Mr. Kim of using the same corrupt means the country’s traditional business tycoons and conglomerates, known as chaebol, are often accused of using to buy favors and protection. Last week, investigators raided his offices to collect evidence of crime. Mr. Kim said he was cooperating.
Mr. Jin was the second senior government official brought down in recent days. Last week, a senior Education Ministry official was fired after telling reporters that 99 percent of South Koreans should be treated “like dogs and pigs.”
The keen attention paid to Mr. Jin’s case reflects widespread mistrust of prosecutors in South Korea, which analysts said dated from the country’s days of military dictatorship, when prosecutors often used fake criminal charges to silence and even execute dissidents.
In recent years, movies featuring prosecutors kowtowing to business tycoons have become box-office hits. In last year’s “Government at a Glance” report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, South Korea ranked 38th among 42 nations surveyed on citizens’ confidence in their judiciary systems.
Since May, a retired senior prosecutor and a former judge have been arrested on charges that they collected millions of dollars from businessmen who were on trial, promising to get them lenient treatment by using connections with former colleagues still on the bench or in the prosecutor’s office.
A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 2016, on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: South Korean Prosecutor Arrested on Bribery Charges. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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Accused of taking payment from an online game maker, the official, Jin Kyung-joon, is the most senior Korean prosecutor ever arrested while in office.
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Lenny Kravitz Posts Moving Tribute to 'Musical Brother' : People.com
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04/21/2016 AT 03:00 PM EDT
took to Instagram Thursday to share his grief about
of his "musical brother," the legendary
"My musical brother... My friend... The one who showed me the possibilities within myself, changed everything, and kept his integrity until the end, is gone," he captioned a vintage black-and-white shot of Prince clad in a trench coat.
Kravitz, 51, has long been an admirer of Prince, who died Thursday at his Paisley Park compound in Minnesota at age 57.
The duo helped ring in the new millennium together when they took the stage to perform Kravitz's hit song "American Woman" at Prince's New Year's Eve Rave Un2 the Year 2000, which was broadcast on Pay-Per-View on New Year's Eve 1999.
The collaboration had a clear impact on the "Fly Away" singer. In 2014, Kravitz told the
that he dreamed of forming a band one day. When asked who would be part of it, he mentioned only one musician by name: Prince.
With that wish unfulfilled, Kravitz is now left to mourn the musician he deeply admired.
"I am heartbroken," he concluded his post.
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Lenny Kravitz praised Prince as the man who "changed everything"
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Fab or flop: Paris Hilton's sheer dress, Kristen Stewart's sneakers and more
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Before you go, we thought you'd like these...
Fab or flop: Paris Hilton's sheer dress, Kristen Stewart's sneakers and more
Sure, the heiress isn't exactly known for her understated demeanor, but her white embroidered sheer illusion dress paired with gaudy white accessories added up to a completely dizzying ensemble that lacked polish.
(Photo by SMXRF/Star Max/GC Images)
The actress, 26, flaunted some serious style in a fun striped minidress, white crop top, leather jacket and classic checkerboard sneakers. Her bleach blonde hair and a swipe of red lipstick added a touch of glam to the casual look.
The actress, 69, looked totally outrageous in a captain-inspired gown with a low-cut neckline and dangerously high slit. Not only was the dress gaudy, but the push-up bra was definitely a bit over-the-top.
(Photo by Neil Mockford/Alex Huckle/GC Images)
Longoria stunned in a simple white midi dress with a contrasting belt. Nude accessories completed her look without being too matchy-matchy.
(Photo by Marc Piasecki/GC Images)
We usually love matching sets, but Jenner totally put the "mom" in momager when she rocked this frumpy, striped set complete with bermuda shorts.
(Photo by Neil Mockford/Alex Huckle/GC Images)
The actress, 37, looked totally put-together in navy flared pants, a blazer-inspired cape and platform heels. A fresh blowou,t, simple sunnies and a box clutch completed her fabulous look.
(Photo by Alo Ceballos/GC Images)
The cold-shoulder neckline, sheer panels and feathered mermaid skirt all added up to one big hot mess.
"90210" actress and stepsister of the Gigi and Bella Hadid stunned in a gorgeous emerald sweater and matching pleated skirt. Statement earrings and sandals completed her ensemble.
The actress looked tacky in a feathered miniskirt and cheesy top that looked like it came from the early 2000s.
(Photo by Robert Kamau/GC Images)
The dancer looked absolutely adorable in a flouncy gray strapless minidress that drew attention to her toned arms and collarbones.
The actress' outfit was totally confused with a sheer black top with yellow details, a chainmail-esque cardigan and satin bow-adorned slacks.
Posh Spice stunned in a sleek pair of black wide-legged pants featuring sporty white stripes down the sides. A crisp white buttondown and gorgeous black satchel completed her fabulous ensemble.
(Photo by Neil Mockford/Alex Huckle/GC Images)
We love the cold shoulder neckline on Lewis, but the bell sleeves added the illusion of bulk around her hips -- and we're not too keen on the styling, either.
Munn channeled her inner mermaid -- and totally pulled it off -- in this stunning scale-like metallic midi skirt and halter crop top.
The layered bottom of Beckinsale's look was just frumpy and confused.
The actress stunned in a very '70s-inspired houndstooth skirt and floral top in a matching palette. A wild 'do and shoulder bag completed her effortlessly stylish look.
Roberts' jumpsuit had the potential to be very chic, but the pinstripes made it veer into waitstaff territory.
The model totally stunned in a gorgeous white jumpsuit with a slim, cropped leg and sexy halter-esque neckline. Retro-looking black and white sunnies completed her flawless look.
(Photo by Pierre Suu/GC Images)
Black Chyna's silver sequin-dotted black Grecian dress didn't do her any favors.
The model stunned in a flirty knit knee-length dress with chic silver stripes.
(Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
Moretz is absolutely adorable, but her themed look was a bit too costume-y. We love each item individually, but nor all together.
(Photo by Demis Maryannakis/Star Max/GC Images)
The talented actress wowed in a fun, boho off-the-shoulder floral midi dress with blouson sleeves.
(Photo by Donato Sardella/Getty Images for HL Group)
Swift usually nails it on the red carpet, but she has yet to figure out how her new, grungy style translates into formalwear. This acidic-looking velvet gown was a lackluster first attempt.
(Photo by Mark Davis/Getty Images)
Watts looked perfectly pretty in a gorgeous lilac gown with fun, sparkly embellishments. A matching statement necklace completed her stunning look.
The funny man looked outdated in a gray suit, silly hat and mismatched pink accents.
Farrell looked modern and chic in skinny black pants, a simple gray crewneck sweater and black blazer.
Kendrick's bright blue lace midi dress was a little matronly for the 30-year-old starlet.
(Photo by Neil P. Mockford/GC Images)
We can't get enough of Stewart in this totally chic yet totally her look! The actress wowed in a sophisticated white pencil skirt paired with a casual cropped T-shirt. Dainty chains and sleek pumps completed her edgy look.
(Photo by Danny Martindale/GC Images)
The British singer looked outrageous in head-to-toe lemon print, down to her bag and shoes.
(Photo by Marc Piasecki/GC Images)
The gorgeous actress wowed in a simple printed maxi dress, leather bag and suede booties.
(Photo by Marc Piasecki/GC Images)
Between Cannes, premieres and everything in between, there was no shortage of stunning celebrity styles this week. But while some stars like Kristen Stewart hit high note after high note, others like Paris Hilton totally flopped.
Sure, the heiress isn't exactly known for her understated demeanor, but a white embroidered sheer illusion dress she rocked to airport -- paired with gaudy white accessories -- added up to a completely dizzying ensemble that lacked polish.
SEE ALSO: Sexy Stars: Kate Moss, Gigi Hadid stun in hot styles
Stewart, on the other hand, flaunted some serious style in a fun striped minidress, white crop top, leather jacket and classic checkerboard sneakers. Her bleached blonde hair and a swipe of red lipstick added a touch of glam to the casual look.
The actress wowed again at Cannes in a sophisticated white pencil skirt paired with a casual cropped T-shirt. Dainty chains and sleek pumps completed her edgy, totally her ensemble.
See these looks and more hits and misses in the slideshow above.
RELATED: Top fashions at 2016 Cannes Film Festival
More on AOL.com Pregnant Behati Prinsloo shares latest adorable 'growing' baby bump pic Nicky Hilton Rothschild has luxurious baby shower at Hotel Bel-Air -- See the pics! Princess Sofia and Prince Carl Philip of Sweden release stunning family portraits
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While some stars like Kristen Stewart hit high note after high note at Cannes and beyond, others like Paris Hilton totally flopped.
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7 That Will Save You Money
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Shopping expert Lisa Lee Freeman has some great smartphone apps that can help you save money when you’re out shopping.
For general coupons on everyday items, there’s the Coupon Sherpa app, which allows you to search for store coupons while you’re standing in the checkout line.
ShopSavvy allows you to find out where a certain item is sold for the least amount. This can help you negotiate prices when you’re in a store.
Target and WalMart customers, take note: Each store has a proprietary app that lists big deals that you might not find otherwise.
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Shopping expert Lisa Lee Freeman explains how to get great deals.
| 9.25 | 0.75 | 2.416667 |
low
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low
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mixed
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