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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/05/andy-murray-says-new-regime-involving-yoga-for-dancers-exercise/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160809113205id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/2016/07/05/andy-murray-says-new-regime-involving-yoga-for-dancers-exercise/?
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Andy Murray says new regime involving 'yoga for dancers' exercise helped him hit new heights following back surgery
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20160809113205
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Murray, 29, confirmed in a question from The Telegraph that he has resorted to yoga-style exercises, like the footballer Ryan Giggs did, in a bid to extend his career.
He said: "Yeah, that was something I started doing a lot more of when I had my back surgery. Really that was sort of the time. I can't afford any more surgeries like this. I need to start looking after my body much, much better than what I was.
"I used to train extremely hard. I don't think I looked after my body as well as I should have done. That was something that changed a few years ago. My back, now that I have been looking after it, doing way more different types of stretching, sort of injury prevention work, my back is no issue whatsoever.
"Whereas for two years, I was in a lot of pain because I was training hard but not doing the right stuff to get it better. "
Gyrotronic instructor Goheen has previously performed alongside British entertainer Michael Crawford and has reportedly been in regular attendance at Murray's matches.
Murray, who underwent a back operation in September 2013, two months after winning Wimbledon for the first time, is a pioneer in trying to new exercises and regimes to give him a cutting edge.
A host of Hollywood actors and musicians, including Madonna, are said to use gyrotronic pulley towers amid a growing craze.
Experts claim the technology assists with bad posture brought on by tense back and shoulder injuries.
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Andy Murray, the in-form favourite to win Wimbledon, has revealed how a little-known "
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http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/21/jeremy-corbyn-steals-hearts-robin-hood-country-nottingham
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160809144031id_/http://www.theguardian.com:80/politics/2015/aug/21/jeremy-corbyn-steals-hearts-robin-hood-country-nottingham
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Jeremy Corbyn steals hearts in Robin Hood country
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20160809144031
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Half an hour before Nottingham’s “Jeremy for Leader” rally was due to start on Thursday night the queue snaked round the Albert Hall and down Maid Marian Way for 200 yards. Too late! The 900-capacity auditorium was already full to bursting. But the 300 people left on the pavement were not left entirely bereft. The man of the moment stopped to address them on a loudhailer for a full 10 minutes before his ecstatic reception indoors.
As everyone – even in London – now knows, similar well-organised events have been hastily arranged all over the country, including SNP Scotland, with similar results. The Labour grassroots, or a significant section of it, is in revolt against New Labour’s compromises with globalisation and the tech revolution.
It is not hard to see why grassroots revolts exist, in Britain or elsewhere. People feel let down, left behind, badly treated. It is less obvious why Jeremy Corbyn has become the improbable repository of their hopes of something better. But he has. This is love. His Iraq war apology promise in Friday’s Guardian will only intensify that feeling, at least for some.
Related: Jeremy Corbyn to apologise for Iraq war on behalf of Labour if he becomes leader
In his prime Tony Blair persuaded them grudgingly to trust him – they don’t any more – but it was never quite like this. Perhaps Neil Kinnock’s ill-fated eve of poll rally, just up the M1 in Sheffield in 1992, was the last occasion when a Labour leader hit such a soft spot with the activists.
For Labour leader Corbyn will be, when the votes are counted on 12 September. With 600,000 signed up members and union muscle behind him, there can be little doubt of it now.
As usual, the Trots were out in force last night – the SWP, Spartacist League and the rest – peddling their news sheets and a workers’ republic. At £3 a vote this is payback time for such people, who dismissed brave Kinnock as “the new Ramsay Macdonald” from day one.
But the elegant Albert Hall’s audience was clearly predominantly Labour: well scrubbed, both men and women, young and (more) old, much whiter than Nottingham’s overall demographic, probably more public sector too (it is a university city), happy to feel included again by a party which it has seen lose two elections and its way.
“Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour party, I am going to say that again,” roared Manuel Cortes, fiery leader of the white-collar transport union TSSA. And he did. The crowd roared. Several speakers also invoked “our next prime minister”. More roars: this hall believed it.
Corbyn himself was more circumspect. Don’t take victory for granted, he said several times. Don’t vote and then leave the hard work to someone else while you get angry at the TV news. Get involved via social media (“completely bypassing what Rupert Murdoch says, thinks or does”) because Labour is going to become a bottom-up, not a top-down movement again. “Together we are very, very strong ... We can make a massive difference. Let’s stay together for the long haul.”
Talk of the long haul puts him in a more honest place than Tony Benn, who used to promise that all sorts of difficult things could be achieved within two weeks of winning power, let alone Alex Salmond – whose referendum rallies were as rapturous – who glibly promised that Indy Scotland would be “one of the richest countries in the world”.
But homely modesty and self-deprecation are part of Corbyn’s appeal. He is the authentic bearded leftwinger who has never changed his views in 30 years as an MP, never been a minister or careerist. Untainted by such experience, he is the leader of many activists’ dreams.
Yet his own 35-minute, unscripted contribution was arguably the least slick on last night’s programme. Two teenage speakers, Nadia Whittome and Umaar Kazmi, attacking the “lies, deceit and warmongering” of the Blair/Brown era of their childhood, and the Cameron era’s zero-hours contracts, were startlingly fluent, New Labour even.
Annmarie Kilcline from Unite (which helped pay for the hall) spoke of 30 years of post-Thatcher struggle for decent jobs. Cortes mocked the Labour “realists” crawling out of the woodwork to say it could not be done.
Corbyn’s economic adviser, Richard Murphy, chartered accountant turned “tax justice” campaigner, made Corbynomics sound easy: investment in decent jobs and skills, in social housing and the NHS, in growth, not austerity or bankers’ bonuses. “Businesses only succeed when they satisfy the customers, Corbynomics will do the same,” he said. I’ve run businesses, George Osborne hasn’t.
Faced with scepticism – in this week’s Private Eye and elsewhere – Murphy seems to have modified the £120bn unpaid taxes a Corbyn campaign might yield (£1bn invested in 20,000 tax staff would deliver £20bn). Corbyn himself later said that raising corporation tax by just 0.5% “would be enough to pay for university [tuition] fees”.
It wouldn’t, but, as they kept admitting, Corbynomics and much of “Jeremy’s plans” are a work in progress. It scarcely matters in a euphoric atmosphere like last night’s. Corbyn is not witty, but he is warm and naturally funny. When he knocked his glass of water off the podium he remarked: “Newton was right about gravity.” He deplored personal abuse and “yah-boo politics” and kept to his word. No rival candidate got a mention. They were off the radar.
Yes, there had been good things in Labour’s election manifesto, but it had failed to acknowledge that the economic crisis had not been caused by greedy nurses but by greedy executives, unregulated banks and “crazy investments in the US and other places”. People are “thirsting” for a proper debate about all this in unequal Britain, that is why he has been doing well, he told them.
They cheered attacks on the 1% elite, on tax avoidance and evasion, on what Corbyn called “cold and nasty” campaigns against those seeking legitimate benefits or “merely trying to improve their lives” in the camps in Calais.
There were rounds of applause for the benefits of immigration, for renationalisation of rail, water (“if it’s good enough for Berlin and Paris”), for an end to zero-hours contracts and neoliberal austerity, for attacks on the war in Iraq and on Trident missiles. When Corbyn promised to bring all schools back inside “the family of local authorities” that was cheered too.
Where does all this energy go after 12 September? That is the big question and it would be unduly cynical simply to dismiss last night’s wholesome event as an aberration in hard times. Just look at Syriza or the SNP.
Camp Corbyn asks many of the right questions about the shortcomings and outright scandals that deform British society. The issue is whether it has many of the right answers, let alone ones which the wider electorate, Labour voters too, can be persuaded to embrace.
Decidedly smarter than he used to be (thinner too), Corbyn is giving it his best shot, probably as surprised as anyone to find his token candidacy on the edge of victory. Robin Hood may be a local champion of the downtrodden, but Nottingham is a mainstream Labour city – 52 of the 55 councillors, all three MPs as usual, their share of the vote increased on 7 May.
Candidates representing the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), now part of the Corbyn coalition, managed to overtake the Elvis Turns Green party this time (1,577 to 123 in council votes), but the party surging to third place this time, in Nottingham and elsewhere in the east Midlands, was Ukip. What does Jeremy say to them?
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Love for Labour’s man of the moment left hundreds locked out in Nottingham, but where will all this energy go when he becomes leader in September?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/sports/olympics/russia-doping-ruling.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160809150145id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2016/08/06/sports/olympics/russia-doping-ruling.html
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Ruling May Allow Russia to Add Seven Athletes
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20160809150145
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After weeks of debate over Russia’s participation in the Rio Games, Olympic officials announced Thursday — less than 24 hours before the opening ceremony — that 271 Russian athletes would compete in Rio. They excluded more than 100 others, branding them tainted by a government doping program.
But on the first day of the Games, the list of who would represent Russia in Rio was not necessarily final, as a new court ruling made it possible for seven more Russian athletes to be added to competition schedules at the last moment.
What is the number of Russian athletes competing in Rio?
It was 271 on Thursday. It looked likely to grow on Friday, possibly reaching 278. The seven additions could include swimmers, cyclists and a wrestler with previous doping violations who have served their punishments. Several, if not all, of those seven have traveled to Rio and are hoping for a favorable outcome, Russia’s sports ministry said.
The governing bodies for those three sports must decide whether to approve the athletes in question, after which the Olympic committee must give final approval. A decision was expected Friday night, a spokesman for the Russian Olympic Committee said.
Why the last-minute uncertainty? And hadn’t all Russians who were caught doping already been barred from Rio?
World sports’ highest court decided Thursday that Olympic officials’ decision to automatically exclude all Russian athletes who had been caught doping in the past but had served sanctions was “unenforceable.”
How did the Olympic committee react to the possibility that Russians with drug violations might compete in Rio?
The committee said in a statement Friday that it was disappointed with the court’s decision but that it respected the ruling.
Sam Manchester will guide you through the 2016 summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Hey. It’s Sam from the NYT Sports desk. I’m going to the Olympics in Rio (so you don’t have to :) ). Grab a limited spot and I’ll text you updates, answer your questions and share the behind-the-scenes stuff nobody else gets.
Thanks! Talk to you soon.
Standard messaging rates may apply. Your information is used only to deliver messages about the Rio 2016 Olympics.
How had officials justified barring Russians with doping histories, given that Olympians from other countries with past drug violations can compete?
Russia has been accused of an extensive government-run doping program that corrupted the results of recent Olympics.
After global antidoping officials said that they had strong evidence of cheating by Russia, Olympics officials said that Russian athletes would be considered guilty until proven innocent.
The Olympic committee instructed sports authorities that no Russian who had ever been caught cheating should be allowed to compete in Rio and that even those with clean histories were not necessarily to be considered clean.
Why has it taken so long to make a decision?
The debate over Russia’s participation has been hotly disputed, testing loyalties in the political world of international sports. Antidoping officials and some top athletes called for a blanket ban on the entire country, while some Russian officials decried that punishment as a conspiracy to undercut their country.
This week in Rio, the president of Russia’s Olympic committee said it was discriminatory to reverse the presumption of innocence to which athletes are usually entitled.
The president of the International Olympic Committee said on Thursday that he and his colleagues had wrestled with a “difficult” question: “Can you hold an individual responsible for the wrongdoing of his or her country?”
How many Olympians does Russia usually send to the Games?
Around 400. The country sent 436 athletes to the last Summer Olympics, at which it won 82 medals.
Russia tried to enter 387 athletes in this year’s Rio Games. Regardless of small final changes to the roster that may come, it will have at least 100 fewer athletes than it had hoped for.
Only one athlete will represent Russia in track and field, one of its strongest sports and one in which it won 18 medals at the last Summer Games.
A version of this article appears in print on August 6, 2016, on page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Russia Might Still Add Seven Athletes to Team. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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The seven additions could include swimmers, cyclists and a wrestler with previous doping violations who have served their punishments.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/do-your-friends-actually-like-you.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160809151340id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/do-your-friends-actually-like-you.html?ribbon-ad-idx=8&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article&_r=0
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Do Your Friends Actually Like You?
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20160809151340
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Yet one of the most recognized treatises on friendship is Dale Carnegie’s decidedly instrumental “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Pop stars like Taylor Swift and Drake are admired for their strategic, if not propagandist, friendships. And, of course, social media sites are platforms for showcasing friendships to enhance personal image.
“Treating friends like investments or commodities is anathema to the whole idea of friendship,” said Ronald Sharp, a professor of English at Vassar College, who teaches a course on the literature of friendship. “It’s not about what someone can do for you, it’s who and what the two of you become in each other’s presence.”
He recalled the many hours he spent in engrossing conversation with his friend Eudora Welty, who was known not only for her Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction but also for her capacity for friendship. Together they edited “The Norton Book of Friendship,” an anthology of works on the topic. “The notion of doing nothing but spending time in each other’s company has, in a way, become a lost art,” replaced by volleys of texts and tweets, Mr. Sharp said. “People are so eager to maximize efficiency of relationships that they have lost touch with what it is to be a friend.”
By his definition, friends are people you take the time to understand and allow to understand you.
Because time is limited, so, too, is the number of friends you can have, according to the work of the British evolutionary psychologist Robin I.M. Dunbar. He describes layers of friendship, where the topmost layer consists of only one or two people, say a spouse and best friend with whom you are most intimate and interact daily. The next layer can accommodate at most four people for whom you have great affinity, affection and concern and who require weekly attention to maintain. Out from there, the tiers contain more casual friends with whom you invest less time and tend to have a less profound and more tenuous connection. Without consistent contact, they easily fall into the realm of acquaintance. You may be friendly with them but they aren’t friends.
“There is a limited amount of time and emotional capital we can distribute, so we only have five slots for the most intense type of relationship,” Mr. Dunbar said. “People may say they have more than five but you can be pretty sure they are not high-quality friendships.”
Such boasting implies they have soul mates to spare in a culture where we are taught that leaning on someone is a sign of weakness and power is not letting others affect you. But friendship requires the vulnerability of caring as well as revealing things about yourself that don’t match the polished image in your Facebook profile or Instagram feed, said Mr. Nehamas at Princeton. Trusting that your bond will continue, and might even be strengthened, despite your shortcomings and inevitable misfortunes, he said, is a risk many aren’t willing to take.
According to medical experts, playing it safe by engaging in shallow, unfulfilling or nonreciprocal relationships has physical repercussions. Not only do the resulting feelings of loneliness and isolation increase the risk of death as much as smoking, alcoholism and obesity; you may also lose tone, or function, in the so-called smart vagus nerve, which brain researchers think allows us to be in intimate, supportive and reciprocal relationships in the first place.
“It’s huge to have good vagal tone, because it modulates our instinctive fight, flight or freeze response,” said Amy Banks, a psychiatrist at the Wellesley Centers for Women who specializes in the growing field of interpersonal neurobiology and is the author of “Wired to Connect: The Surprising Link Between Brain Science and Strong, Healthy Relationships.”
In the presence of a true friend, Dr. Banks said, the smart or modulating aspect of the vagus nerve is what makes us feel at ease rather than on guard as when we are with a stranger or someone judgmental. It’s what enables us to feel O.K. about exposing the soft underbelly of our psyche and helps us stay engaged and present in times of conflict. Lacking authentic friendships, the smart vagus nerve is not exercised. It loses tone and one’s anxiety remains high, making abiding, deep connections difficult.
So it’s worth identifying who among the many people you encounter in your life are truly friends. Who makes time for you? Whose company enlivens, enriches and maybe even humbles you? Whom would you miss? Who would miss you? While there is no easy or agreed upon definition, what friendships have in common is that they shape us and create other dimensions through which to see the world. This can be for better or worse depending on whom we choose as friends. As the saying goes, “Show me your friends and I will show you who you are.”
Kate Murphy is a journalist in Houston who writes frequently for The New York Times.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 7, 2016, on page SR7 of the New York edition with the headline: Do Your Friends Actually Like You?. Today's Paper|Subscribe
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Recent research suggests that only about half of perceived friendships are mutual.
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http://zachary-roth.people.msnbc.com/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160810021846id_/http://zachary-roth.people.msnbc.com:80/
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Zachary Roth | MSNBC
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20160810021846
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Zachary Roth is a national reporter for MSNBC Digital. He has previously worked at Yahoo News, Talking Points Memo, and the Washington Monthly, and has written for The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Slate, Salon, The LA Times, and The Guardian, among other outlets. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.
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Catch up with the latest contributions from Zachary Roth on MSNBC
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http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/corbett-lands-big-prize-ncis-role-article-1.1258106
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160811150956id_/http://www.nydailynews.com:80/entertainment/tv-movies/corbett-lands-big-prize-ncis-role-article-1.1258106
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Corbett lands a big prize with 'NCIS' role
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20160811150956
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He’s about to become Mr. Big.
John Corbett, whose character Aidan dated Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City,” has landed the role of his life as the star of the latest spinoff of CBS’ “NCIS” franchise.
The crime drama starring Mark Harmon has quietly become the most-watched program on television, drawing an average of 21.8 million viewers this season. Its first spinoff was “NCIS: Los Angeles,” with LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell.
“It’s incredible,” said TV Media Insights editor in chief Marc Berman. “The amazing thing about this franchise is that ‘NCIS’ is a spinoff of ‘JAG,’ which started on NBC but was canceled after one season. CBS was wise enough to pick up the show and it ran for another eight seasons there,” he said.
Technically, the new show will be a spinoff of a spinoff — of a spinoff.
“ ‘NCIS’ has become one of the most successful franchises on TV,” Berman said. “On par with ‘Law & Order’ and ‘CSI.’ ”
On the new, still untitled show, Corbett will play a member of a small mobile group of agents called the Red Team. The group lives and works together as they crisscross the country solving crimes. His character, Roy Quaid, is a former NCIS special agent forced to retire from active service who now works as an analyst.
While he’s no longer an active agent, Roy is the most experienced investigator working for Red Team. The pilot episode will air as a special “NCIS: Los Angeles” episode later this season.
Corbett’s first breakout role came on another CBS hit series, 1990’s “Northern Exposure.”
“ ‘NCIS’ is an unbelievable, underrated success,” said Berman. “This is a show that could easily last for 20 years, and the weird thing about all of these shows is that they get absolutely no buzz.”
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John Corbett, whose character Aidan dated Carrie Bradshaw on “Sex and the City,” has landed the role of his life as the star of the latest spinoff of CBS’ “NCIS” franchise.
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http://london2012.nytimes.com/athletes/victoria-azarenka
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160812084643id_/http://london2012.nytimes.com:80/athletes/victoria-azarenka
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Victoria Azarenka
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20160812084643
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MADRID, May 8 (Reuters) - Victoria Azarenka will arrive for the London Olympics with her eyes on a gold medal rather than swapping pins.
In Beijing four years ago she admits she was a wide-eyed and distracted teenager enjoying her first taste of the Olympics.
Now, the elegant Belarussian has rocketed to the top of the world rankings after winning her first grand slam singles title at the Australian Open this year.
A 26-match winning streak also secured triumphs at Sydney, Doha and Indian Wells plus more than $4 million in prize money.
At the Madrid Open on Tuesday, Azarenka told Reuters she had not been fully concentrating on her tennis in China in 2008 when she was knocked out by Venus Williams in the third round but will be deadly serious this year on Wimbledon's grass courts.
"I don't really remember too much about playing (in Beijing) as I wasn't too focused on the tennis back then," the 22-year-old said.
"I was more focused on the experience and running around exchanging pins and stuff.
"It was a really great experience to feel that atmosphere in the stadium and being in the village with all the different athletes.
"I wasn't that curious back then which is a little bit disappointing but I have another opportunity to represent my country at such an event and it's just something unexplainable in words."
Azarenka said she will not be staying in the London Olympic village with other members of the Belarussian team as it is too far from the All England Club.
A tournament at Wimbledon in which players are sporting their national colours instead of the traditional white will be a novel experience, she added.
"Just the thought of playing at Wimbledon not dressed in all-white is already an extreme change," she said. "I just cannot picture the image of how it's going to be.
"It's very important for me to represent my country because you realise that there are so many people behind you and rooting for you to do well.
"People don't care about whatever else is going on they just gather together and watch the event. It's just an unbelievable feeling and I remember how I used to watch the Olympic Games on TV, the swimming, the runners it was just amazing."
If Azarenka manages to claim the French Open crown before heading to London, she will remain on course for a golden slam, the holy grail of professional tennis that has only been achieved once before, by Steffi Graf in 1988.
As well as the Wimbledon title, the German, who retired in 1999, won the Australian, French and U.S. Opens and claimed the singles gold in Seoul.
Minsk-born Azarenka, who moved to the U.S to train in her early teens and now lives in Monte Carlo, said it was much too early in the season to be thinking about matching Graf's feat.
"It's one of the hardest things to do on the planet," she said. "So you don't want to put yourself in a position that if you fail you haven't achieved what you wanted.
"I always take things step by step and match by match. It's a really, really long road but I do know now what it takes to win those seven matches in a row (at a grand slam) and I can tell you for sure that it's a lot."
Known for the piercing shrieks that accompany each of her strokes, Azarenka attributes her rise to the top to a new maturity and the hard work of her team, including coach Sam Sumyk and physio Jean Pierre Bruyere.
She also has a new member of her entourage in former world number one Amelie Mauresmo, who joined last month just before Azarenka played the clay event in Stuttgart, where she lost in the final to world number two Maria Sharapova.
"She's here so that she can hopefully bring something that will help us push forwards," Azarenka, who is making her fourth appearance in Madrid, where she lost in last year's final to Petra Kvitova, said.
"She looks, she gives her opinion and she is the same as any other member of my team. She doesn't have a specific role."
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Victoria Azarenka athlete news, results, photos and video from the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
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http://time.com/money/4394842/free-slurpee-7-eleven-six-flags-admission-deal/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160812085305id_/http://time.com:80/money/4394842/free-slurpee-7-eleven-six-flags-admission-deal/?
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7 Eleven Free Slurpee Day Coming July 11
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Next Monday is July 11, a.k.a. 7-Eleven Day, one of the most anticipated freebie days of summer. As usual, 7-Eleven is celebrating its big day by giving away free Slurpees.
Specifically, the plan for the 2016 edition of 7-Eleven Day, or Free Slurpee Day as many people call it, is that each customer can get one small-size Slurpee anytime between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. In previous years, the free Slurpee was limited to a 7.11-ounce size, but starting in 2013 the company bumped up the freebie to the standard 12-ounce small size, and that’s what they’re giving out this year.
The convenience store chain has introduced a new Birthday Cake Slurpee flavor Slurpee this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Slurpee, but customers can pick any flavor they want for their freebie on July 11. The company estimates that stores will give away 11 million Slurpees on Monday.
In addition, Six Flags theme parks, which first struck a partnership to sell 7-Eleven Slurpees in 2012, have a special deal for 7-Eleven Day. Anyone who makes a purchase at 7-Eleven on July 11, or who simply downloads the 7-Eleven mobile app, can get admission after 7:11 p.m. to Six Flags for only $7.11.
Read Next: 10 Best Freebie Days of Summer To repeat, the offer of $7.11 entrance is only valid after 7:11 p.m., and only on Monday, July 11. Check the opening hours at your local Six Flags to see if the deal is worth it. Many of the company’s theme parks stay open until 10 p.m., but some close at 9 p.m., in which case it would be a real scramble to get in a few rides before being ushered back out of the gates.
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7-Eleven Day is coming!
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http://www.people.com/article/khloe-kardashian-kris-jenner-spiritual-reading-tyler-henry
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160812090414id_/http://www.people.com/article/khloe-kardashian-kris-jenner-spiritual-reading-tyler-henry
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Khloé Kardashian Hijacks Kris Jenner's Spiritual Reading: 'I Want to Scream, "Shut Up Mom!" '
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20160812090414
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08/11/2016 AT 01:50 PM EDT
just doesn't know when to be quiet, according to
In a sneak peek at next Wednesday's episode of
, the momager sits down with the celebrity clairvoyant medium for the first time, but she isn't alone. Her 32-year-old daughter is watching the reading from inside the kitchen on dual screens eagerly awaiting the reading.
"Khloé is going to join me, I need two sets of eyes and ears to help me remember," Jenner says in an interview.
Kris Jenner and Tyler Henry
In the clip, Jenner, 60, and Henry are in the reality star's living room chatting and she begins to practically interview him about his life.
"You're 20? You're my daughter Kendall's age," she says. "How long have you been doing this?"
While watching from the kitchen, Kardashian gets annoyed and says, "why is she interviewing him?"
Meanwhile, Jenner continues to question Henry and asks him "how did you know that your gift helped somebody else?"
"What the f--- is her problem?" Kardashian says from the other room. "I want to scream, 'Shut up mom!' "
With no end in site for Jenner's questions, Kardashian finally snaps and yells, "Can he read for you, please? You're just chatting like it's Sunday brunch! Let him do his, like, he's so magical."
Jenner jokingly says, "Oh, wow. She's losing her mind. Don't give her any more alcohol!"
"I'm just so excited to hear what he's going to say," Kardashian says back.
airs Wednesday (8 p.m ET) on E!
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Hollywood Medium With Tyler Henry airs Wednesday (8 p.m ET) on E!
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/business/dealbook/aba-prohibits-sexual-harassment-joining-many-state-bars.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160812232014id_/http://www.nytimes.com:80/2016/08/10/business/dealbook/aba-prohibits-sexual-harassment-joining-many-state-bars.html?_r=0
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Goodbye to ‘Honeys’ in Court, by Vote of American Bar Association
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20160812232014
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It is official. The American Bar Association says it is professional misconduct to discriminate against or harass opposing counsel, or anyone else for that matter, in the course of practicing law.
The ethics rule now forbids comments or actions that single out someone on the basis of race, religion, sex, disability and other factors. Nearly two dozen state bars and the District of Columbia bar have similar rules. But there has been no national prohibition of such behavior, which, many female lawyers complain, results in too many “honeys,” “darlings” and other sexist remarks and gestures toward them while they are trying to practice their profession.
Without a flat prohibition, advocates of the rule said, using demeaning and misogynistic terms and actions to undermine opposing counsel and others too often does not have consequences.
Any penalties would be determined by state bar associations and might include fines or suspension from practice, depending on the severity of the offense.
While critics argued that such a broad rule would impair free speech while representing clients and impinge on the freedom to reject potential clients, no lawyers signed up to speak against the revised rule, which was passed Monday afternoon by a voice vote at the A.B.A.’s annual meeting in San Francisco.
To address objections by litigators who argued that the change could hinder vigorous representation of clients, the drafters added qualifiers. The amended ethics rule now bans the offensive conduct only if the lawyer knows or reasonably should know it is harassment or discrimination, and does not apply to “legitimate” legal advice or advocacy. That gives offenders some wiggle room to contend that they did not know their conduct or remarks were prohibited.
The guidance that comes with the rule, however, defines discrimination as “harmful verbal or physical conduct that manifests bias or prejudice toward others.”
As the American Bar Association took up this issue, we asked female lawyers on Facebook about their personal experiences. We received dozens of responses and hundreds of comments. Below are a handful. Read More »
“Harassment includes sexual harassment and derogatory or demeaning verbal or physical conduct,” the guidance says.
The guidance also spells out what constitutes sexual harassment and the settings that are included while practicing law. Those settings not only include the courtroom, but also “interacting with witnesses, co-workers, court personnel, lawyers and others” and “managing a law practice or law firm” or “participating in bar association, business or social activities in connection with the practice of law.”
Myles V. Lynk, a law professor from Arizona who leads the association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, which pushed for the change, said during the debate at the annual meeting that the American Bar Association needed “to catch up” with the states, which had already adopted such a prohibition.
“The states have not waited for the A.B.A. to act. They have been laboratories of change,” Mr. Lynk said. “It is time for the A.B.A. to catch up.”
A version of this article appears in print on August 10, 2016, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: No More ‘Honey’ in Court: A.B.A. Says Harassment Is Professional Misconduct. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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The American Bar Association revised its ethics rule to forbid lawyers from using demeaning or misogynistic terms or actions.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10172627/Most-children-will-be-born-out-of-wedlock-by-2016.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813102128id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/politics/10172627/Most-children-will-be-born-out-of-wedlock-by-2016.html
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Most children will be born out of wedlock by 2016
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20160813102128
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"The government needs to send a very clear message that it supports marriage. That's why married tax breaks are so important."
David Cameron has pledged to introduce legislation to give couples tax breaks worth £150 by the end of the year.
The Prime Minister has been forced to put a timetable on government plans to recognise marriage in the tax system amid growing Conservative unrest over the failure to act.
Last year a total of 346,595 babies were born outside marriage and civil partnerships in England and Wales, equivalent to 47.5 per cent.
In 2002 the proportion was 40.6 per cent, and if the trend continues at the same rate more than half of children will be born out of wedlock by 2016.
According to the 2011 Census, the number of people who are married in England and Wales has fallen from just over half of the population a decade ago to 45 per cent.
The figures represented the first time since the Census was founded in 1801 that married couples have been in a minority.
More than 11 million people in England and Wales are single, reflecting the growing number who have chosen not to marry, while more than 5million unmarried people live with their partners.
A total of 150,000 declared themselves to be in civil partnerships.
The Centre for Social Justice, a think tank founded by the Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, has raised repeated concerns about the decline in marriage.
Christian Guy, director of the think tank, said: "Marriage is not a right wing obsession, but a crucial social justice issue. People throughout society want to marry but cultural and financial barriers faced by those in the poorest communities thwart their aspirations.
"Evidence shows quite clearly that children growing up with married parents tend to have better life chances. The Government must deliver on its family friendly pledge."
The official figures show that 729,674 children were born in 2012 and mothers now have an average of two children each, the highest fertility rate since the 1970s.
The rise in the birth rates has been driven by immigration and women chosing to have children later in life.
The number of women aged over 40 having children reached a record 29,994, up from just 6,519 in 2002.
The average age of mothers has risen to 29.8 years in 2012, compared to 27 in 1982. The ONS said: “These trends reflect the increasing numbers of women delaying childbearing to later ages.
“This may be due to a number of factors such as increased participation in higher education, increased female participation in the labour force, the increasing importance of a career, the rising opportunity costs of childbearing, labour market uncertainty, housing factors and instability of partnership.”
The figures also show that one in four new mothers were born outside the UK in 2012, compared to 17.7 per cent a decade earlier.
The ONS said that foreign-born mothers have a higher fertility rate, and are likely to increase their chance of conceiving by having children earlier.
The rising birth rate has been fueled by high levels of immigration from Eastern Europe after accession countries joined the European Union in 2004.
The number of women aged over 40 having children reached a record 29,994, up from just 6,519 in 2002.
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Most children will be born out of wedlock within three years because of the decline in marriage, according to official figures.
| 26.25 | 0.791667 | 3.041667 |
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-economy-that-sputtering-sound-returns-1465799414
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813112631id_/http://www.wsj.com:80/articles/china-economy-that-sputtering-sound-returns-1465799414
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China Economy: That Sputtering Sound Returns
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20160813112631
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The worry with China is that it may be time to start worrying again.
A trove of official economic data released Monday showed the economy is, at best, moving sideways, if not sputtering. Signs of meaningful improvement China bulls seized on a couple of months ago are harder to find.
The brief bounce in the industrial parts of the economy that excited commodities markets is fading. Fixed-asset investment—spending on things like property and factories—grew just 7.4% in May from a year earlier, a sharp drop from the 10%-plus growth in the first four months of the year. The slowdown was particularly acute for private enterprises, notes Capital Economics.
Concerning data also emerged from what had been a relative bright spot, the all-important housing market, which drives a third of the economy when counting impacts on ancillary industries. Housing sales and new starts grew in May, but at a reduced pace compared with previous months. The nascent property boom, driven by looser lending, may be showing signs of turning over as local governments clamp down on overheated markets.
China hasn’t cut benchmark lending rates since October, nor has it reduced banks’ reserve requirement ratio since February. On the fiscal side of things, growth in central government spending has been somewhat subdued, up 12% through April compared with a year earlier, but slower than the 20%-plus growth in the second half of last year. And a local government bond-swap program was less active in May than previous months.
Having not made any overt easing moves in recent months leaves policy makers with several options to choose from. The trouble is, with debt and overcapacity high, all these choices face diminishing returns compared with past years. The best investors can hope for is a Chinese economy that continues to slow slowly. But even that may be asking too much.
Write to Alex Frangos at alex.frangos@wsj.com
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Any meaningful traction that China bulls thought the economy was gaining a couple of months ago is harder to find.
| 17.285714 | 0.857143 | 2.571429 |
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http://time.com/4046522/hillary-clinton-miley-cyrus-snl/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813113414id_/http://time.com:80/4046522/hillary-clinton-miley-cyrus-snl/
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Hillary Clinton Appears as Val in SNL Skit With Miley Cyrus
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20160813113414
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Hillary Clinton took on the role of Val the bartender last night in a Saturday Night Live skit, and let’s just say it wasn’t her smoothest performance yet.
In the skit, which kicked off with Miley Cyrus moaning about the lack of choices in the field at a nondescript bar as a nondescript woman, Hillary Clinton (Kate McKinnon) and her aide, Huma Abedin (played by Cecily Strong), are grabbing a drink and talking strategy. Huma steps aside and “Hillary” has a vision of chatting up her bartender Val (played by the real Hillary Clinton).
“So, Hillary,” Clinton asks “Clinton.” “What brings you here tonight?”
“Well, I needed to blow off some steam,” McKinnon says. “I’ve had a hard couple of 22 years.”
Clinton attempts to wisecrack about being a grandmother, the Keystone XL pipeline, and awkwardly stumbles on the words gay marriage. Shining briefly in a moment when she does a Donald Trump impression, Clinton closed out her performance with a sing-along with McKinnon to the tune of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me.”
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"So Hillary, what brings you here tonight?"
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http://time.com/4426783/paul-ryan-republicans-donald-trump-russia/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813115256id_/http://time.com:80/4426783/paul-ryan-republicans-donald-trump-russia/
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Russia Should 'Stay Out of This Election'
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20160813115256
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GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans on Wednesday denounced Russia’s potential involvement in the U.S. presidential election without specifically criticizing GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, who earlier called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election,” said Brendan Buck, spokesman for Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, in an email.
Trump’s press conference on Wednesday morning came amid an FBI investigation into a hack of Democratic National Committee files by the Russian government.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said at the press conference in Doral, Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”
He later repeated a more refined argument on Twitter.
If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clinton's 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2016
Ohio Governor and former presidential candidate John Kasich criticized Clinton’s use of a private email server as Secretary of State, while also cautioning that “Putin is not our friend.”
“.@hillaryclinton put our security at risk, but Putin is not our friend; foreign meddling in US elections cannot be tolerated,” Kasich said on Twitter.
Newt Gingrich, a Trump supporter, called the statement a “joke” and refuted the notion that it was a “national security issue,” as Clinton’s campaign quickly argued.
“The media seems more upset by Trump’s joke about Russian hacking than by the fact that Hillary’s personal server was vulnerable to Russia,” Gingrich said on Twitter. “Since Hillary promised us she only deleted 33,000 personal emails how can it be a national security issue if someone releases them?”
Trump communications adviser Jason Miller, meanwhile, sought to clarify Trump’s comments and accused Democrats of “trying to change the subject.”
“Trump was clearly saying that if Russia or others have Clinton’s 33,000 illegally deleted emails, they should share them w/ FBI immed,” he said, arguing that Trump did not “call on, or invite, Russia or anyone else to hack Hillary Clinton’s e-mails today.”
Trump’s running mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence took a different tack, promising “serious consequences” if Russia was, in fact, responsible for the hack.
“The FBI will get to the bottom of who is behind the hacking,” Pence said in a statement. “If it is Russia and they are interfering in our elections, I can assure you both parties and the United States government will ensure there are serious consequences.”
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The comment came after Trump encouraged Russian hackers to target Clinton.
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http://www.thepostgame.com/hurdles-bobsled-lolo-jones-olympic-break
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813140144id_/http://www.thepostgame.com/hurdles-bobsled-lolo-jones-olympic-break
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Hurdles Bobsled Lolo Jones Olympic Break
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20160813140144
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You love Lolo Jones because she says what's on her mind. Or you hate Lolo Jones because she's never won an Olympic medal and acts like the most popular Olympian of this generation.
No matter what you think of Jones, the Summer Olympics is lacking one aspect of its intrigue from Beijing and London. Jones withdrew from this July's U.S. Olympic Trials due to hip surgery recovery and a hamstring injury. She has not competed since Feb. 14.
"I've gone to the last three in a row, like not even just summer." Jones says of the Olympics. "We're talking about summer and winter. To be honest, if anybody needs a break right now from the Olympics, it would be me."
Technically, Jones has competed in three of the last four Olympics, going to Beijing in 2008 and Athens in 2012 as a member of the track team. In 2014, Jones qualified for the Sochi Winter Olympics as a bobsledder.
"It gives me time to recover from my hip surgery, and then gives me time to just figure out what I want to do -- focus more on summer, go back to winter -- so it's actually kind of nice."
For the last eight years, Jones has had a flair for the dramatic. In the 2008 Olympics, she posted the top semifinal time in the 100-meter hurdles. Jones led the final at a potentially world-record breaking pace when she tripped over the second-to-last hurdle and finished seventh. She returned to the final in 2012, but finished fourth. In her Olympic bobsled debut, Jones and teammate Jazmine Fenlator finished 11th in the two-woman.
Jones has a sense of humor about her unfortunate Olympic events. Speaking to ThePostGame at the Audi Player Index Pickup Soccer Match on Aug. 2, Jones shared that she gets confused for U.S. Soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo.
"All the time," she says of the prevalence of the mix-up with Solo. "On planes, out in public, and I'm like, 'No, she's the one with the medals. I'm the one with no medals. That's how you tell us apart.'"
Solo has two gold medals from 2008 and 2012.
Jones says she is watching her "friends" in Rio from home, and in a June Instagram post, she set a goal for Tokyo in 2020. In the meantime, Jones turns her attention back to bobsled and PyeongChang in 2018. It's too early for Jones to say if she will definitely make a run at another Winter Games, but she says she is training in bobsled again.
"What a lot of people don't know is bobsled training and track training are very similar."
Jones was accompanied in Sochi by two-time sprinting medalist Lauryn Williams, who also made the transition from track to bobsled brakewoman. Williams won 2014 silver with Elana Meyers.
For the 2018 Games, Jones urges more former track and field athletes to consider her path.
"I was just texting Wallace Spearmon a couple days ago, so I don't know," she says, using the 2008 and 2012 Olympian Spearmon as an example. "I can convince people with like, 'Oh, it's very similar training to track.' Where I lose them is when [I'm] like, 'Yeah, you might crash and that hurts.'"
Jones has gained extensive popularity outside of the hurdles and bobsled tracks thanks to her social media activity. Her 426,000 Twitter followers get a taste of her candid opinions and her 312,000 Instagram followers visually witness her high-energy lifestyle.
But social media is an undefined space, and Jones has clipped some hurdles in her critics' minds.
"If a joke is misread or misinterpreted on Twitter, at the end of the day, I'm just trying to make people laugh, so I think that sometimes, people think I'm out there for malicious intent," Jones says. "Every joke has a fine border, and it's a hard line even for comedians to navigate. And I'm an athlete, so I'm going to make mistakes."
So is Jones a funny person?
"Uhhh…I've been told," she laughs. "I'm funny as in sarcastic, and sometimes, it doesn't come off good."
Before the Olympics, Jones explained she has jokes ready for the Olympics. Most of her content involves her track background, and those tweets will come about next week. In the meantime, she does have swimming material.
"Ryan Lochte just changed his hair color and I had some solid jokes," she says. "But I just made a joke about him the other day, so I'm going to give him a few more days and then I'll probably post it."
Lochte claims his hair is a shade of blue. ThePostGame noted it may be silver.
"He's one of the older Olympic athletes, so if it is silver, he's a silver fox," Jones says with a straight face.
Jones spoke to ThePostGame from the Audi Soccer Pickup Match at New York's Chelsea Piers Golf Club on Aug. 2. The event served as a showcase for the Audi Player Index app, a real-time MLS player tracker that allows fans to follow and evaluate player's on-field movements. Jones was among a group of journalists, athletes, models and influencers who tested the program, using an LED screen built into each jersey. When the Audi Player Index app is incorporated into MLS, unfortunately, players will not be strapped with LED screens and battery packs.
Jones did not have hurdles or bobsled-like success in soccer. Her Audi Player Index was actually negative at the end of the match.
When it's your first time playing soccer and you're so bad they change your jersey name from Lolo to Hope NoNo. pic.twitter.com/7imFmDONl5
— Lolo Jones (@lolojones) August 3, 2016
The 100 m hurdles goes on without Jones. Heats are Tuesday morning with the semifinals and final on Wednesday afternoon.
More Olympics: -- 5 Weirdest Jobs At This Year's Olympics -- We Never Understood How Great Ryan Lochte Was -- Michael Phelps' 20th Gold Medal Is His Most Emotional
-- Follow Jeffrey Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband.
100 m hurdles, 2008 Olympics, 2012 Olympics, 2014 olympics, 2016 Olympics, 2018 olympics, 2020 Olympics, audi player index, Bobsled, Hope Solo, Hurdles, Instagram, Lolo Jones, MLS, Olympics, Rio Olympics, Ryan Lochte, Soccer, Social Media, Summer Olympics, Track And Field, Twitter, two woman bobsled, US Bobsledding Team, US track and field team, Wallace Spearmon, Winter Olympics
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Hurdler/bobsledder Lolo Jones pulled out of the 2016 Rio Olympics, and after participating in both Summer and Winter Games, she needs the rest.
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http://www.people.com/article/3-year-old-falls-from-rollercoaster-fourth-amusement-park-accident
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813142101id_/http://www.people.com/article/3-year-old-falls-from-rollercoaster-fourth-amusement-park-accident
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Child, 3, Rushed to Hospital after Falling from Roller Coaster in Pennsylvania : People.com
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20160813142101
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updated 08/12/2016 AT 11:00 AM EDT
•originally published 08/11/2016 AT 09:00 PM EDT
A 3-year-old Pennsylvania boy was airlifted to a Pittsburgh hospital and is in critical condition after falling from a roller coaster at the Idlewild and SoakZone amusement park in Ligonier on Thursday, according to reports.
The boy, from Jeannette was in critical condition and underwent surgery on Thursday,
reports, citing sources. Park spokesman Jeff Croushore told the
that the child "was talking" and "was alert with his family" after the fall.
The incident reportedly occurred on a wooden ride called the Rollo Coaster, which reaches 40 feet at its peak and extends for 1,400 feet, with speeds of 10 to 25 miles per hour.
, the boy fell off about halfway through the ride, which was built in 1938 and is not equipped with seat belts, however the ride does have a height requirement of 36 inches and mandates that any riders under 48 inches be accompanied by an adult.
, the toddler was riding with his 7-year-old brother when he fell about 10 feet off the wooden ride and hit his head.
While a 911 dispatcher described the boy as falling, a statement from the amusement park obtained by the
said only that "a boy riding the Rollo Coaster with his brother was injured while riding the attraction."
It's reportedly unclear exactly how high the ride was at the time the injury occurred.
The roller coaster was last inspected and received a passing grade on Aug. 6, CNN reports. The ride was closed following the accident.
Thursday's event marks fourth accident at a U.S. amusement park in the last five days. According to CNN, three kids
on Monday, leaving a 6-year-old with a critical brain injury and 16-year-old initially in critical condition, but doing better as of Thursday.
On Sunday, two park-goers were reportedly injured when a launch cable separated from a roller coaster at Cedar Points park in Ohio.
when he flew out of his raft while riding Verrückt at Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas. An investigation into his death continues, although many former riders have told PEOPLE that the only thing keeping them in the raft as they descended the 17-story slide was
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The toddler was air-lifted to a nearby hospital.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/cigna-earnings-beat-raises-outlook-1462531367
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813162819id_/http://www.wsj.com:80/articles/cigna-earnings-beat-raises-outlook-1462531367
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Cigna Earnings Beat, Raises Outlook
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20160813162819
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Cigna Corp. on Friday boosted its outlook for the year as earnings easily beat Wall Street expectations in the first quarter of the year, helped by more favorable medical costs in the health-care provider’s government and commercial employer businesses.
For full-year 2016, the company now expects earnings of $8.95 to $9.35, up from its previous...
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Cigna boosted its outlook for the year as earnings easily beat Wall Street expectations in the first quarter of the year, helped by more favorable medical costs in the health-care provider’s government and commercial employer businesses.
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http://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/29/ari-levy-named-senior-technology-reporter-for-cnbc-digital.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160813170519id_/http://www.cnbc.com:80/2014/05/29/ari-levy-named-senior-technology-reporter-for-cnbc-digital.html
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Ari Levy Named Senior Technology Reporter for CNBC Digital
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20160813170519
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Englewood Cliffs, NJ, May 29, 2014– Ari Levy has been named Senior Technology Reporter for CNBC, it was announced today by Xana Antunes, CNBC Digital Executive Editor & Vice President. Starting on Monday, June 9, Levy will be based in San Francisco and responsible for day-to-day coverage of the biggest technology stories and trends in this dynamic and ever-changing industry for CNBC.
"Ari is a seasoned and well-regarded technology reporter and we are very excited to have him join the team," said Antunes. "His insight will be essential in helping us further advance our critically important technology coverage."
Levy most recently worked at Bloomberg News as a Technology Editor. There for over eleven years, he has reported on breaking news and enterprise stories in finance, markets and technology, with a focus in venture capital and emerging Web companies. Levy contributed to all Bloomberg outlets, including Bloomberg Businessweek, Bloomberg Markets, TV and helped manage coverage of IPOs including Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga and Twitter.
Before joining Bloomberg, Levy was an analyst at Thacher Associates, a New York-based corporate investigations firm. He holds a Master of Arts in History from Baruch College and a Bachelor of Arts in Government and History from Clark University.
Levy joins the CNBC Digital organization as CNBC continues to focus on its coverage of the technology industry. On air, CNBC recently added Squawk Alley to the network's business day programming line-up. Anchored from the New York Stock Exchange by Carl Quintanilla, Squawk Alley zeroes in on the intersection of Wall Street and technology, with coverage of new ideas, new technologies and breaking news and analysis on the titans of the industry.
In April, CNBC Digital posted 12.9 MM uniques, up 23% compared to last year at this time. (Source: April '14 comScore Multi-platform Report US).
With CNBC in the U.S., CNBC in Asia Pacific, CNBC in Europe, Middle East and Africa, CNBC World and CNBC HD , CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news and provides real-time financial market coverage and business information to approximately 371 million homes worldwide, including more than 100 million households in the United States and Canada. CNBC also provides daily business updates to 400 million households across China. The network's 15 live hours a day of business programming in North America (weekdays from 4:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's global headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and includes reports from CNBC News bureaus worldwide. CNBC at night features a mix of new reality programming, CNBC's highly successful series produced exclusively for CNBC and a number of distinctive in-house documentaries.
CNBC also has a vast portfolio of digital products which deliver real-time financial market news and information across a variety of platforms. These include CNBC.com, the online destination for global business; CNBC PRO, the premium, integrated desktop/mobile service that provides real-time global market data and live access to CNBC global programming; and a suite of CNBC Mobile products including the CNBC Real-Time iPhone and iPad Apps.
Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBC Universal Media Village Web site at http://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/networks/cnbc/.
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Ari Levy Named Senior Technology Reporter for CNBC Digital
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/e3/7832280/E3-2010-Nintendo-briefing-analysis.html
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E3 2010: Nintendo briefing analysis
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20160814011950
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However, all the classic elements for a great Zelda adventure look like they’re in place and for fans of the series, its 2011 release date can’t come soon enough.
The new Zelda title was just the first in an impressive line-up of video games which covered all of Nintendo’s bases. All of the games which made an appearance in the briefing easily lived up to Nintendo’s stated remit; to make entertainment which crosses the culture, age and gender barriers. Among the games announced were Wii Party and Just Dance 2, which are squarely aimed at the social and family gaming crowd. The resurrection of the fantastic NBA Jam was announced, and sports fans also have Mario Sports Mix to look forward to, which sees the portly plumber and his cast of friends playing games such as volleyball, basketball, dodgeball and hockey.
The briefing also saw the return of two more iconic Nintendo characters, Donkey Kong and Kirby, who are both set to star in the brand new side-scrolling adventures, Donkey Kong Jungle Returns and Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Another title familiar to gamers was GoldenEye; the groundbreaking shooter is being re-imagined for the Wii, with Pierce Brosnan being swapped out for Daniel Craig, and certain story elements being changed. Its shooter action, and the multiplayer for which it became renowned, remain intact.
Another title which prompted sighs of wistful nostalgia is Disney’s Epic Mickey. Featuring the world’s most famous mouse, this family friendly adventure has the cross-generational appeal of a Pixar animated film. Set in a universe made up of rejected Disney characters and retired Disneyland rides, the game sees Mickey trying to save the inhabitants by using paint and thinner to solve puzzles and battle enemies. The characters and world in the game change depending on whether players choose to create with paint or erase parts of the environment with thinner. The choices the player makes dictate how they’re perceived by the world’s characters and it’s hinted that the game contains multiple endings.
Of course, while the announcements for the different gaming titles were met with cheers and applause, the audience were waiting with bated breath to see if the rumours about the 3DS were true. When they were confirmed by the sight of the console rising up through the stage on a platform surrounded by smoke, the atmosphere became electric. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata didn’t have to work too hard to hold the audience’s attention as he talked us through the device’s specifications.
The Nintendo 3DS is the first ever portable gaming console to offer players a 3D gaming experience, and also the first device to offer a 3D experience that doesn’t require 3D glasses. It’s equipped with two screens – one 3D screen and one touch-screen – along with a depth slider so players can toggle between 3D and 2D screen settings. The 3DS also boast several features to enhance the user’s gaming experience, such as a motion sensor, a gyro sensor, and an analogue pad. The device comes equipped with a two cameras which allow its user to take 3D pictures. Iwata said that the 3DS is also able to download new data from other 3DS systems, and this functionality is “always-on”.
Almost as impressive as the device was the list of titles Nintendo had planned for it. The announcement that Kid Icarus: Uprising would be a 3DS launch title almost brought the house down and the list of third-party developers lining up to make games for the 3DS read like a roll-call of the industry’s biggest hitters. Capcom, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, Konami, Ubisoft and THQ were among those mentioned and their planned contributions included some of the biggest franchises in video games such as Street Fighter, Assassin’s Creed, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Fifa and Saints Row.
The presentation ended with a brief hands-on for some lucky audience members while the rest left the Nokia Theatre in a daze. If this year’s E3 briefing shows one thing, it’s that if Microsoft and Sony plan to try and seduce members of Nintendo’s massive audience away from it, they will certainly have their work cut out for them.
In the meantime, it’s just great to see Nintendo back to doing what it does best; creating ground-breaking technology and designing incredible games.
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Nintendo’s launch of its 3DS hand-held gaming console capped off a strong presentation at E3, which was a marked improvement on last year’s keynote
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Hapag-Lloyd Swings to Loss on Tumbling Freight Rates
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20160814054741
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German container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd AG said Wednesday it swung to a loss in the first half of the year as tumbling freight rates weighed on revenue.
The loss before interest and tax was €39.7 million ($44 million) in the January-to-June period compared with a profit of €267.7 million a year earlier. Revenue declined to €3.79 billion from €4.67 billion.
The results came amid a wave of consolidation sweeping the...
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German container shipping company Hapag-Lloyd said it swung to a loss in the first half of the year as tumbling freight rates weighed down revenue.
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Body of Google Employee Found in Princeton
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20160814214413
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A 27-year-old Google employee who was found dead in the woods on Sunday had been stripped naked and partially burned, according to multiple reports.
Vanessa Marcotte, who lived and worked in New York City, was visiting her mother in Princeton, Massachusetts – a rural town about an hour west of Boston – when she disappeared during a Sunday jog, CBS Boston reports.
Authorities reportedly located her naked body with burns to the face, hands and feet Sunday evening about a half mile from her mother’s home, CBS Boston reports, citing law enforcement sources.
The Worcester Telegram & Gazette and WCVB also quoted police sources as saying that Marcotte’s body was found stripped and damaged.
“People should be concerned,” Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said Monday, CBS Boston.
Early announced the death is being investigated as a homicide based on evidence at the scene.
“I must stress that we do not know if this is a random act,” he said. “We’re asking the residents of Princeton to use an abundance of caution.”
According to the WCVB, police were focusing their investigation on the hours of 1 p.m., when she first left her mother’s home, and 4 p.m. Marcotte’s body was reportedly found at 8:20 p.m.
Investigators were also looking into the possibility of sexual assault, the The Boston Globe reports.
The Google team mourned the loss of the Boston University graduate.
“Vanessa Marcotte was a much loved member of the Google team, working in our New York office for the last year and a half, and known for her ubiquitous smile, passion for volunteer work, and love of Boston sports,” a spokesperson for Google said in a written statement, according to CBS Boston. “We are deeply shocked and saddened, and our thoughts are with her family and friends.”
In addition to warning residents to be vigilant, police are also asking for the public’s help with the case and are urging anyone with information to contact them at 508-453-7589.
Marcotte’s death comes less than a week after a 30-year-old woman was strangled to death during a run in Queens, New York.
Karina Vetrano’s father called police she didn’t return from her daily jog through Gateway National Park, which is a few blocks from her home. He went out with police and discovered her body 15 feet from the jogging trail.
Authorities said there’s evidence to suggest Vertrano was sexually assaulted before being strangled to death.
This article originally appeared on People.com
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Vanessa Marcotte was found dead on Sunday in Princeton, Massachusetts
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Premier League 2016-17: Who will finish where?
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It is the most difficult task of the season - trying to predict who will finish where in the Premier League.
Last term I was only 19 places out with my prediction for champions Leicester City, although I suspect I was not on my own getting that one badly wrong.
After a summer of change in the top flight - with a whole host of new managers and top-quality players - it is a task that remains as painful as ever.
But with the new season starting on Saturday, here is how I think the season will look at the very end - with the caveat that what happens in the remainder of the transfer window could yet have a significant impact.
The arrival of the world's most celebrated coach, Pep Guardiola, is the fulfilment of a long-held dream for Manchester City's owners - he is the man they have always wanted at the head of their football organisation. The Etihad house has been built waiting for him to move in.
City's run to the Champions League semi-final and a Capital One Cup final win barely covered up a campaign of Premier League under-achievement with Manuel Pellegrini in charge last season. They were left hanging on until the last game of the campaign to secure a Champions League place.
Guardiola is the perfect choice to get more out of a quality squad that has too often seemed short of inspiration and motivation. He is a fiercely driven perfectionist who will not let standards slip.
Midfielder Ilkay Gundogan will add guile when he is fit while winger Nolito is a shrewd capture from Celta Vigo.
Now that City have signed defender John Stones from Everton, responsibility will lie with him for curing the defensive ills caused by the poor form of Eliaquim Mangala and Nicolas Otamendi, as well as captain Vincent Kompany's injuries.
I'm backing a Guardiola-inspired City to reclaim the Premier League title.
Players in: Ilkay Gundogan (Borussia Dortmund), Nolito (Celta Vigo), Oleksandr Zinchenko (FC Ufa), Leroy Sane (Schalke 04), Aaron Mooy (Melbourne City), Gabriel Jesus* (Palmeiras) *will join in January 2017, Marlos Moreno (Atletico Nacional), John Stones (Everton).
Players out: Martin Demichelis (released), Seko Fofana (Udinese), Aaron Mooy (Huddersfield Town on loan), Marlos Moreno (Deportivo La Coruna on loan).
Manchester United are a club with something to prove - and they have appointed a brilliant, albeit highly-divisive manager who also has something to prove in Jose Mourinho after his sacking at Chelsea just seven months after his team won the title.
Dutchman Louis van Gaal may have won the FA Cup but his was a joyless reign and this superpower needed an X Factor on and off the pitch to renew their damaged status.
The Portuguese will provide it as manager and striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic will do the job on the pitch - although there is an element of "Hollywood" about signing a 34-year-old at the end of his career who has never played in the Premier League. Will it be more style than substance?
The shining symbol of United's new future is the return of Paul Pogba from Juventus for a world-record £89m - although this was the same player allowed to escape for about £1.5m four years ago.
The creative spark provided by former Borussia Dortmund midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pogba will arguably be of greater long-term significance than Ibrahimovic's short-term sparkle.
There are, though, still questions to be answered.
Where will Wayne Rooney fit into Mourinho's grand plan? And what about United's defence? How will £30m Eric Bailly from Villarreal adapt to the Premier League?
Despite this, expect United to be back in the title shake-up.
Players in: Eric Bailly (Villarreal), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (PSG), Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Borussia Dortmund), Paul Pogba (Juventus).
Manager out: Louis van Gaal.
Players out: Tyler Reid (Swansea City), Victor Valdes (Middlesbrough), Jimmy Dunne (Burnley), Nick Powell (Wigan Athletic), Joe Rothwell (Oxford United), Ashley Fletcher (West Ham United), Guillermo Varela (Eintracht Frankfurt), Paddy McNair (Sunderland), Donald Love (Sunderland).
Stamford Bridge's revolving door spins again and in steps Antonio Conte as manager.
The charismatic, combustible Italian created a huge impression at Euro 2016 in France as he guided his nation to wins over Belgium and Spain based on superb tactics and fierce organisation before they lost to Germany on penalties in the last eight.
Conte will need all of this at Chelsea as they recover from a desperate 10th-place finish last season following their implosion under Mourinho after winning the title the previous term.
The superb N'Golo Kante will provide the legs and energy needed in midfield after he played a huge part in Leicester City's title win while Conte will hope Belgium's Michy Batshuayi will provide goals - with the possibility of more firepower arriving before the deadline.
Everton's Romelu Lukaku remains a target but the Merseysiders are in no mood to sell the striker they brought from Stamford Bridge for £28m two years ago.
This squad and team was so much better than it showed last season. Expect Conte, who will not suffer fools or any political manoeuvring in the dressing room, to flourish.
Players in: Michy Batshuayi (Marseille), N'Golo Kante (Leicester City).
Players out: Lewis Baker (Vitesse Arnhem), Nathan Ake (AFC Bournemouth), Jeremie Boga (Granada), Tomas Kalas (Fulham), Kasey Palmer (Huddersfield Town), Alex Kiwomya (Crewe Alexandra), Mohamed Salah (Roma), Tammy Abraham (Bristol City).
How do you even start to work out Arsenal?
The temptation is to simply put them in the top four because they always finish there.
No chance of the title, but they always seem to win enough games to keep qualifying for the Champions League. Granit Xhaka's arrival from Borussia Moenchengladbach for a reported £35m will add steel to midfield.
Manager Arsene Wenger will need to reach for the chequebook to buy class in attack and in central defence. If he does, the outlook may be brighter. If he doesn't, expect more of the same - or even less.
And will be that be enough in the final year of his contract?
Fourth place prediction...but with doubts and with fingers crossed.
Players in: Granit Xhaka (Borussia Monchengladbach), Takuma Asano (Hiroshima Sanfrecce), Rob Holding (Bolton Wanderers)
Players out: Mikel Arteta (released), Tomas Rosicky (released), Mathieu Flamini (released), Isaac Hayden (undisclosed), Dan Crowley (Oxford United), Jon Toral (Granada), Wellington Silva (Fluminense), Wojciech Szczesny (Roma).
Tough call this one as Mauricio Pochettino's side were excellent last season and were right in the title shake-up for so long.
In reality, you could throw a blanket over the likes of Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool and Arsenal in the battle for top-four places. But when you think about Spurs, will a hangover from England's Euro 2016 fiasco in France effect the likes of Harry Kane, Eric Dier and Dele Alli?
Midfielder Victor Wanyama will provide power and energy after his arrival from Southampton while striker Vincent Janssen, the powerful 22-year-old bought from AZ Alkmaar for £17m, will give Kane support.
At this stage fifth, but they will be a danger to everyone they play.
Players in: Victor Wanyama (Southampton), Vincent Janssen (AZ Alkmaar).
Players out: Filip Lesniak (Slovan Liberec), Grant Ward (Ipswich Town), Federico Fazio (Roma), Alex Pritchard (Norwich City).
This is Jurgen Klopp's first full season in charge and he has spent the summer putting his imprint - ostensibly tactical awareness and intense fitness demands - on a new-look squad.
Last season was mixed as Liverpool reached the Capital One Cup and Europa League finals but lost them both- now Klopp can attack on the domestic front without the extra pressure of European football.
Winger Sadio Mane and Gini Wijnaldum have been the biggest buys from Southampton and Newcastle United respectively with a total expenditure of about £50m, so there is plenty to be optimistic about. But will old frailties such as Simon Mignolet in goal and a vulnerable central defence let them down?
The biggest plus will be that Klopp now has the squad he wants.
The first title since 1990? No - but a good bet for a cup.
Players in: Joel Matip (Schalke), Loris Karius (FSV Mainz 05), Sadio Mane (Southampton), Ragnar Klavan (Augsburg), Alex Manninger (Augsburg), Georginio Wijnaldum (Newcastle).
Players out: Joao Carlos Teixeira (Porto), Jerome Sinclair (Watford), Kolo Toure (released), Lawrence Vigouroux (Swindon Town), Jordan Rossiter (Rangers), Danny Ward (Huddersfield Town), Jose Enrique (released), Samed Yesil (released), Sergi Canos (Norwich City), Martin Skrtel (Fenerbahce), Jordon Ibe (AFC Bournemouth), Adam Bogdan (Wigan Athletic), Joe Allen (Stoke City), Brad Smith (AFC Bournemouth), Jon Flanagan (Burnley).
West Ham's biggest challenge may be settling into new surroundings at their new London Stadium. Yes, they will be watched by bigger crowds and the environment may be more luxurious, but Upton Park had an atmosphere that could win points. Can it be replicated at a new home?
The Hammers have shown plenty of ambition with striker Andre Ayew signing for £20m from Swansea City, to go along with additions such as former Valencia striker Toni Martinez, exciting winger Sofiane Feghouli from Valencia and Gokhan Tore from Besiktas.
Slaven Bilic has proved an inspired choice as manager and he will elevate his reputation even more if he can finish higher than last season's seventh. This a talented squad so watch out for a cup run.
Players in: Toni Martinez (Valencia), Havard Nordtveit (Borussia Moenchengladbach), Domingos Quina, Sofiane Feghouli (Valencia), Gokhan Tore (Besiktas), Ashley Fletcher (Manchester United), Arthur Masuaku (Olympiacos), Andre Ayew (Swansea City).
Players out: Joey O'Brien (released), Elliot Lee (released), James Tomkins (Crystal Palace).
This prediction comes with a warning attached after forecasting relegation for the eventual champions last season - but it will be neither a title nor relegation for Claudio Ranieri's side this time around.
I do not expect another run at the Premier League title but there is good reason to believe the momentum and confidence gained from one of the greatest sporting stories ever told will lead to another very good campaign.
And what a prospect Champions League nights will be at The King Power Stadium.
The loss of N'Golo Kante to Chelsea is a real blow but keeper Kasper Schmeichel and 24-goal top scorer Jamie Vardy have signed new long-term contracts, the latter rejecting Arsenal in the process.
And no-one can accuse the champions of standing still, with Nigerian striker Ahmed Musa a potentially exciting addition from CSKA Moscow for a club-record £16m plus highly-rated former Nice midfielder Nampalys Mendy arriving as a £13m acquisition to strengthen midfield.
If the Foxes can fight off any late moves for Riyad Mahrez then top 10 is very attainable.
Players in: Ron-Robert Zieler (Hannover 96), Luis Hernandez (Sporting Gijon), Raul Uche Rubio (Valencia), Nampalys Mendy (Nice), Ahmed Musa (CSKA Moscow), Bartosz Kapustka (KS Cracovia).
Players out: Andrej Kramaric (Hoffenheim), Mark Schwarzer (released), Paul Konchesky (released), Ryan Watson (released), Dean Hammond (released), Harry Panayiotou (released), N'Golo Kante (Chelsea), Joe Dodoo (Rangers), Michael Cain (Blackpool), Hamza Choudhury (Burton Albion).
Everton's new ambition under major shareholder Farhad Moshiri was proved when manager Ronald Koeman was lured away from Southampton after taking them into the Europa League last season. And Leicester's influential Steve Walsh was taken from the champions and appointed director of football.
It is yet to materialise on the pitch as the collection of expected big signings have yet to arrive. On this basis Everton will just make it into the top 10.
Koeman, however, is a shrewd and ruthless operator. It should also be remembered he inherited a debacle from his predecessor Roberto Martinez, with a squad that had clearly lost faith in its manager and almost unprecedented levels of discontent among supporters.
John Stones left for Manchester City for £47.5m, making him the world's second most expensive defender, while Wales captain Ashley Williams has arrived from Swansea for a reported £12m. But keeping Romelu Lukaku is essential. Who could Koeman buy to replace a virtual guarantee of 20 goals a season?
Players in: Bassala Sambou (Coventry City), Chris Renshaw (Oldham Athletic), Maarten Stekelenburg (Fulham), Idrissa Gana Gueye (Aston Villa), Ashley Williams (Swansea City).
Manager out: Roberto Martinez (sacked on 12 May).
Players out: Steven Pienaar (released), Leon Osman (released), Tony Hibbert (released), Tim Howard (Colorado Rapids), John Stones (Manchester City).
Manager Mark Hughes built on the work of Tony Pulis to make the Potters genuine top-10 material and it should be no different this time around.
Joe Allen was an excellent signing at £13.5m from Liverpool after an outstanding Euro 2016 for Wales and Marko Arnautovic has agreed a new contract to provide threat along with Xherdan Shaqiri.
Stoke are still in the market for West Bromwich Albion's Saido Berahino so Hughes is determined to have plenty of firepower.
The excellent Jack Butland will be back in goal after injury so I expect another very decent season for Stoke.
Players in: Ramadan Sobhi (Al Ahly), Joe Allen (Liverpool), Ryan Sweeney (AFC Wimbledon).
Players out: Peter Odemwingie (released), Steve Sidwell (Brighton & Hove Albion).
Pretty much in keeping with the boom and bust nature of some of manager Alan Pardew's managerial career, expect a better season to follow a disappointing one last time out.
Palace have done some ambitious work in the transfer market, with highly-rated goalkeeper Steve Mandanda arriving from Marseille on a free transfer and Andros Townsend a £13m capture from Newcastle United.
Pardew has also spent £10m on central defender James Tomkins from West Ham United and has a long-standing interest in Liverpool's Christian Benteke, so Palace are looking in an upward direction.
Do not expect any relegation fears but a comfortable mid-table finish.
Players in: Andros Townsend (Newcastle United), Steve Mandanda (Marseille), James Tomkins (West Ham United).
Players out: Emmanuel Adebayor (released), Marouane Chamakh (released), Brede Hangeland (released), Adrian Mariappa (released), Patrick McCarthy (released), Dwight Gayle (Newcastle United), Jake Gray (Luton Town), Alex McCarthy (Southampton), Jerome Binnom-Williams (Peterborough United).
It has been a groundhog summer for the Saints as their manager and various players left St Mary's.
They lost boss Ronald Koeman to Everton, having lost Mauricio Pochettino to Spurs before him in 2014, while striker Sadio Mane followed the path to Liverpool that was previously taken by Adam Lallana, Dejan Lovren, Rickie Lambert and Nathaniel Clyne.
Victor Wanyama also went to Spurs to continue the pattern that has characterised their recent history.
And yet Southampton have not simply survived but flourished despite key losses in recent years.
The experienced 54-year-old Claude Puel is now manager, having a reputation forged at Lyon, Nice, Lille and Monaco. Nathan Redmond is in from Norwich City and midfielder Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg, from Bayern Munich, brings real potential.
The question is how long can Southampton keep pulling off this same trick? Expect another solid season but not another top six.
Players in: Nathan Redmond (Norwich City), Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg (Bayern Munich), Alex McCarthy (Crystal Palace), Jeremy Pied (Nice).
Players out: Gaston Ramirez (released), Kelvin Davis (retired), Juanmi (Real Sociedad), Victor Wanyama (Tottenham Hotspur), Sadio Mane (Liverpool), Jason McCarthy (Walsall), Graziano Pelle (Shandong Luneng), Paulo Gazzaniga (Rayo Vallecano).
Sunderland's reward for Sam Allardyce guiding them to safety last season was to see their manager succeed Roy Hodgson with England after their Euro 2016 failure.
David Moyes seems to be the perfect fit as replacement, especially as he is on a mission to repair a reputation damaged by successive sackings at Manchester United and Real Sociedad.
Moyes will have the Black Cats well-drilled and hard to beat. The Scot will also feel at home at a club where a finish away from the relegation zone and in the comfort of mid-table would be regarded as success and greeted with gratitude. Expect this outcome.
Players in: Papy Djilobodji (Chelsea), Paddy McNair (Manchester United), Donald Love (Manchester United).
Players out: Danny Graham (Blackburn Rovers), Steven Fletcher (Sheffield Wednesday), Wes Brown (released), Mikael Mandron (Eastleigh), Emanuele Giaccherini (Napoli), Santiago Vergini (Boca Juniors), Adam Matthews (Bristol City), Will Buckley (Sheffield Wednesday).
Will the Chinese takeover bring new ambition or turbulent waters after the stability of the Jeremy Peace era?
If stability and Premier League status is what is required then expect Pulis to deliver again, but there was not much to excite at The Hawthorns last season.
Will more of the same be enough for the Baggies' new owners and their supporters?
Players in: Matt Phillips (Queens Park Rangers)
Players out: Victor Anichebe (released), Stephane Sessegnon (released), Anders Lindegaard (released).
Swansea have confirmed Francesco Guidolin will remain as manager and an American consortium now has a controlling stake in the club - so this should ensure the Welsh club cement their reputation as a permanent member of the Premier League.
Whether this means they will improve on last season's 12th place remains to be seen.
Fernando Llorente will hope to enjoy an Indian summer to his career in South Wales after the 31-year-old Spain striker arrived from Sevilla, while Atletico Madrid's Borja Baston is the man lined up to replace Andre Ayew, who has moved to West Ham.
The loss of captain Ashley Williams to Everton is a serious blow but still expect a solid, if unspectacular, season from Swansea.
Players in: Leroy Fer (Queens Park Rangers), Mike van der Hoorn (Ajax), Tyler Reid (Manchester United), George Byers (Watford), Mark Birighetti (Newcaste Jets), Fernando Llorente (Sevilla).
Players out: Matthew Grimes (Leeds United), Eder (Lille), Alberto Paloschi (Atalanta), Kyle Bartley (Leeds United), Liam Shephard (Yeovil Town), Matt Grimes (Leeds United), Ryan Hedges (Yeovil Town), Bafetimbi Gomis (Marseille), Andre Ayew (West Ham United), Ashley Williams (Everton).
Eddie Howe did brilliantly to ensure Premier League safety for the Cherries last season - now he will be looking to build on that.
The reality, however, is that Premier League status is success in itself for Bournemouth.
This has not stopped Howe making his summer moves. The £15m signing of Jordon Ibe from Liverpool is intriguing as the 20-year-old was regarded only last summer as good enough by some at Anfield to compensate for Raheem Sterling's £49m sale to Manchester City.
Lewis Cook from Leeds United is another good deal and if they can avoid the serious injuries that sidelined the likes of Tyrone Mings, Max Gradel and Callum Wilson last season, then they will be secure again.
Players in: Emerson Hyndman (Fulham), Nathan Ake (Chelsea), Lys Mousset (Le Havre), Mark Travers, Mikael Ndjoli (Millwall), Lewis Cook (Leeds), Jordon Ibe (Liverpool), Brad Smith (Liverpool).
Players out: Sylvain Distin (released), Tommy Elphick (Aston Villa), Matt Ritchie (Newcastle United), Stephane Zubar (released), Glenn Murray (Brighton & Hove Albion), Lee Tomlin (Bristol City), Harry Cornick (Leyton Orient).
It is great to see Middlesbrough back in the top flight - reward for an outstanding supporter of his football team and town in chairman Steve Gibson.
Gibson is fiercely ambitious and loyal but this season will be about consolidation.
Manager Aitor Karanka has injected experience in the shape of former Barcelona keeper Victor Valdes and loan striker Alvaro Negredo, who flourished briefly in the Premier League while at Manchester City.
Karanka will hope Marten de Roon, the 25-year-old Dutch midfield man bought from Atalanta for £12m, will provide midfield solidity.
Players in: Viktor Fischer (Ajax), Bernardo Espinosa (Sporting Gijon), Marten de Roon (Atalanta), Jordan McGhee (Heart of Midlothian), Victor Valdes (Manchester United), Antonio Barragan (Valencia), Alvaro Negredo (Valencia), Gaston Ramirez (Southampton), Brad Guzan (Aston Villa).
Players out: Jonathan Woodgate (released), Damia Abella (released), Rhys Williams (Perth Glory), Connor Ripley (Oldham).
Watford slumped badly in the second half of last season and will hope new manager Walter Mazzarri can re-ignite the optimism of the first part of the campaign after the departure of Quique Sanchez Flores.
The experienced Italian will lean heavily on the goals of captain Troy Deeney and his partnership with Odion Ighalo. Jerome Sinclair has arrived from Liverpool with a big reputation but is unproven.
Watford will also have high hopes for the wonderfully-named Isaac Success, the young Nigerian striker signed from Granada for a reported club record fee of £12.5m.
It will be a dogfight near the bottom. Can The Hornets survive? I'm not sure they can.
Players in: Jerome Sinclair (Liverpool), Christian Kabasele (Genk), Isaac Success (Granada), Juan Camilo Zuniga (Napoli), Brice Dja Djedje (Marseille).
Players out: Joel Ekstrand (released), Gabriele Angella (Udinese), George Byers (Swansea City), Jose Manuel Jurado (Espanyol), Almen Abdi (Sheffield Wednesday), Daniel Pudil (Sheffield Wednesday), Steven Berghuis (Feyenoord).
Burnley is another exemplary club that it is a pleasure to welcome back to the Premier League under the management of Sean Dyche.
This will not be the only place where their hopes of survival are written off and it is a prediction made in the hope it will be proved spectacularly wrong.
The Clarets' difficulty is competing in an increasingly fierce transfer market but they have struck a significant blow by so far rebuffing the interest of champions Leicester City in defender Michael Keane.
It will be a long hard season but perhaps, helped by the atmospheric surroundings of Turf Moor and the excellence of Dyche, Burnley can make this forecast go astray.
Players in: Jimmy Dunne, Johann Berg Gudmundsson (Charlton Athletic), Nick Pope (Charlton Athletic), Jon Flanagan (Liverpool).
Players out: Joey Barton (Rangers), Matt Gilks (Rangers), Matt Taylor (released), Michael Duff (retired), Josh Ginnelly (Walsall).
The loss of manager Steve Bruce and the instability around Hull City has robbed the club and its fervent supporters of the optimism that should surround their return to the Premier League.
Bruce has experienced relegation and promotion with the Tigers - and he was as well equipped as anyone to navigate this campaign. It is now hard to see them surviving in their current state after his disagreement with vice-chairman Ehab Allam.
There is still takeover talk and Hull fans are planning a protest against the running of the club at the opening Premier League game at home to Leicester City. Not the ideal start.
Long, hard season ahead and the signs do not look good.
Players in: Will Mannion (AFC Wimbledon).
Players out: Sone Aluko (released), Ryan Taylor (released), Mohamed Diame (Newcastle United).
All transfers sourced from the Premier League website. All transfers correct as of 10:00 BST on 10 August.
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Can Leicester retain their title? Who's destined for relegation? Phil McNulty predicts where your team will finish in the 2016-17 Premier League.
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Cannes'da tesettür mayo yasaklandı
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20160815044328
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Fransa'da Cannes Belediyesi, toplumsal düzeni bozabileceği gerekçesiyle tesettür mayolara yasak getirdi.
Cannes Belediye Başkanı David Lisnard, haşema da denilen tesettür mayoların "İslami aşırılık sembolü" olduğunu ve huzursuzluğa neden olabileceğini belirtti.
Yasağa rağmen tesettür mayo ile sahile gidenlerden önce tesettürlerini çıkarmaları ya da sahili terk etmeleri istenecek, karşı gelirlerse 38 euro para cezası kesilecek.
Yasağın Temmuz ayı sonunda uygulamaya konduğu, şu ana kadar kimseye ceza kesilmediği açıklandı.
Lisnard, yerel medyaya yaptığı açıklamada haç ve Yahudi kippasına izin verileceğini, başörtüsünün de yasak kapsamında olmadığını söyledi.
David Lisnard "Sadece İslami aşırılığın simgesi olan bir üniformayı yasaklıyorum. Kamusal alanda yaşıyoruz ve uymamız gereken kurallar var" dedi.
Hafta başında da Marseille kentinde bir su parkı, haşema ile havuza girmek isteyenler için ayırdığı özel gün uygulamasını, gelen tepkiler nedeniyle iptal etmişti.
Fransız insan hakları kuruluş "İnsan Hakları Birliği" LDH, kararı mahkemeye taşıyacağını açıkladı.
LDH Başkanı Herve Lavisse, "Siyasetçilerin ayrımcılık heveslerini bir kenara bırakıp Cumhuriyet'in değerlerini savunması zamanı" dedi. LDH ayrıca kararın Fransa'daki Müslümanları daha da yabancılaştırabileceği uyarısında bulundu.
Fransa İslam Karşıtlığı ile Mücadele Kuruluşu (CCIF) da mahkemeye gideceğini duyurdu.
Örgütün avukatı Sefen Guez, kararı "yasa dışı, ayrımcı ve anayasaya aykırı" olarak niteledi.
Fransa 2010 yılında "kamu güvenliğini tehdit ettiği" gerekçesiyle toplumsal alanda yüzü örten kıyafetlerin giyilmesini yasaklamıştı.
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Fransa'da Cannes Belediyesi, toplumsal düzeni bozabileceği gerekçesiyle tesettür mayolara yasak getirdi. Temmuz sonunda uygulamaya konan yasa nedeniyle şu ana kadar kimseye ceza kesilmedi.
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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/donald-trumps-campaign-manager-faces-criminal-charge
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Donald Trump's campaign manager faces criminal charge
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20160815131531
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If there’s never been a competitive presidential candidate quite like Donald Trump, it stands to reason that there’s never been a presidential campaign manager quite like Corey Lewandowski.
Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski turned himself in to Florida police Tuesday after being charged with assaulting a reporter at a campaign event earlier this month, according to the Jupiter Police Department.
Michelle Fields, a reporter for Breitbart, filed charges alleging that Lewandowski pulled her arm while she attempted to ask Trump a question at an event at Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida. Lewandowski has been charged with misdemeanor battery and turned himself in to police shortly after 8 a.m., according to the report.
I can’t speak with any authority to the seriousness of the controversy – I’ll leave it to attorneys to comment on the significance of “misdemeanor battery” – but as a rule, when a campaign manager for a leading presidential campaign has to turn himself in to police, it’s not a positive development.
Though when it comes to Lewandowski, this is not the first controversy of note.
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If there's never been a candidate quite like Donald Trump, it's no surprise that there's never been a presidential campaign manager quite like Corey Lewandowski
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Thousands turn out for annual City2Surf
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More than 80,000 people registered for the event. (Supplied: William Lynch)
Among the tens of thousands of competitors pounding the pavements between Hyde Park and Bondi Beach in the City2Surf were several Australian politicians.
Sydney athlete Harry Summers won the event in 42 minutes, while Queenslander Cassie Fien was the first woman across the line five minutes later.
Steve Moneghetti's 25-year-old race record of 40.03 still stands.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten completed the iconic race as well as Labor MP Andrew Leigh, while South Australian Greens MP Mark Parnell ran the half marathon in Adelaide.
"Off for a jog with a few good friends," Mr Leigh tweeted before the run.
Mr Shorten crossed the line in 80 minutes, with an average pace of 10.5km/h, while his Canberra colleague was 25 minutes ahead of him.
The politicians weren't the only eye-catching athletes running through Sydney's bays on Sunday morning.
Gorilla and platypus costumes, traditional surf life savers and even a giant inflatable pig family were spotted along the 14 kilometre course.
Australian wheelchair athlete Kurt Fearnley crossed the line first in the wheelchair race in under 30 minutes.
More than $4 million has so far been raised for charity from the event, in which over 80,000 competitors took part.
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More than 80,000 people have set off from Sydney's Hyde Park, heading for Bondi Beach in the annual City2Surf.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3649212/Is-this-Britains-most-beautiful-cinema.html
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Is this Britain's most beautiful cinema?
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This would have been the big news story in this corner of Hertfordshire had the gas explosion at nearby Hemel Hempstead earlier on the same day not produced the country's biggest conflagration since the events depicted in the film. The session went on for longer than the film itself. On other occasions, to an equally absorbed gathering, Mike Leigh has answered the questions.
The Rex dates back to the 1930s. It had been converted into a two-screen venue by the time it closed in 1988. The council's plans to sell it on to developers who would knock it down and convert it into flats or offices or a conference centre were fortunately thwarted by English Heritage. In 1994, a meeting was convened to work out a space that could be developed for shared use by, among others, the local arts trust, the film society and amateur dramatics groups.
One of the people there was James Hannaway, who ran an arts centre for children in Hemel Hempstead. "When storage space was mentioned for the Scouts," he recalls, "that's when I left the group. I then started to tackle stuff on my own." It took him a long time. His serious involvement in restoring the Rex to former glory began five years later. Eventually the council came to a deal in which the front part of the building was converted into flats, while Hannaway and a co-owner took possession of the rest.
In late 2004, they opened with a screening of The Third Man - an appropriate choice given that its scriptwriter Graham Greene went to school in Berkhamsted.
"It wasn't my choice," says Hannaway. "Our first film should have been Cinema Paradiso, but the only print was in Italy. We are still trying for it."
Hannaway, 58, seems eager not to be mistaken for a film buff. Cinéastes are catered for by the Rex, which has had screenings of Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali and Jean Vigo's L'Atalante, but, he says, "I think being a buff would be a handicap. Anyone who gets too excited about what they do is bound to fail. We don't censor anything. It's more likely if I don't like it, it will get on." The programming policy walks the line between populism and good taste.
The first screening of The Motorcycle Diaries proved so popular that it is now shown to full houses once a month, but January's programme consists mostly of the classier autumn releases. "We keep an eye out for whatever's new that looks interesting, whatever is going on selected release, whatever is not going to the multis. We have to wait for the big films. We don't want to pay the percentages that the distributors ask for in the first week." King Kong arrives at the Rex in February, and, even though it opened nationally two months earlier, people will travel to see it in this quiet corner of the green belt. Rex regulars come from south of the Thames, from east London and rural Oxfordshire.
The cinema employs five full-time staff and provides work for two dozen mostly young part-timers. It is making money and Hannaway is paying all the bills. He attributes its success partly to location. "If you've got a place like this in London you'd be in competition with everything else." Perhaps it does help a bit that there's not a lot else to do in Berkhamsted. But the appeal of the Rex goes beyond the fact that it fills a gap in the market.
Audiences start arriving a good 90 minutes before the screening to sit, drink and talk.
If the appeal to audiences is obvious, it may not take long for the industry to cotton on to the promotional opportunities to be had at the Rex. For its first birthday, the cinema was offered a British première screening of George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck, while directors and actors such as Leigh and Dench are a thousand times more likely to make personal appearances here than in Leicester Square.
Dance is now a firm friend of the Rex, having had, he says, "a really joyous experience when I came here with Ladies in Lavender". Dame Judi describes the cinema as "absolutely awe-inspiring", and privately tells Hannaway she'll come back any time she's asked. "It's just civilised," he says. "It's grown up."
You need further proof? Crisps and sweets are decanted from their crinkly wrapping into bowls. And at the Rex, no one bothers to ask for popcorn. It's not on sale.
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A world away from the popcorn-strewn multiplexes, the Rex is a restored treasure from cinema's golden age. Jasper Rees reports.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1411080/H-M-Queen-Geraldine-of-the-Albanians.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160815210735id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/news/obituaries/1411080/H-M-Queen-Geraldine-of-the-Albanians.html
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H M Queen Geraldine of the Albanians
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20160815210735
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But when Gladys then remarried, to a French army officer, the Apponyi family insisted that the girls be returned to Hungary to be brought up. She agreed, and they were sent to board at the Sacred Heart School at Pressbaum, near Vienna, spending the holidays with their grandmother and aunts and uncles at the family's country estate.
When Geraldine was 16, her grandmother died, and thereafter she and Virginia spent most of their holidays at Zebegny with their go-ahead aunt Countess Fanny Karolyi. In the mornings at Zebegny, the girls learnt shorthand and typing.
At 17, staying at the Karolyi Palace in Budapest, Geraldine came out at a ball given by the Hungarian Monarchists; one of several photographs taken of Geraldine at that ball would fix the direction of her life.
Some years later she received, out of the blue, a letter from one of King Zog's six sisters inviting her to stay in Albania. Anxious to find a European bride (and one without a past), King Zog had sent his sisters to Vienna and Budapest in search of a suitable candidate. They had sent back to Tirana copies of the photographs taken of Geraldine at the ball.
King Zog's trusty General Cyczy visited Geraldine and the Apponyis in Budapest to confirm the invitation, and Geraldine's friend Countess Katherine Teleki was sent to Tirana to thank the King and to "have a good look round".
Subsequently, Geraldine Apponyi wrote to accept the invitation, and straight after Christmas 1937 she set off. The visit was a complete success; King Zog proposed marriage on New Year's Day and, after a decent interval, on January 10 Geraldine accepted. Her guardian, Count Charles Apponyi, gave his consent to the match, and Geraldine was given the rank of Princess of Albania.
The marriage - a civil ceremony (King Zog was a Muslim, his bride a Roman Catholic) - took place in the spring of 1938. Geraldine wore a pearl and diamante wedding dress which the King had ordered from Worth, in Paris, and orange blossom in her hair. She had six bridesmaids and the wedding cake, which she cut with her husband's sabre, was 10 ft wide.
The wedding presents included a phaeton and four Lippizzaner horses from Admiral Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, and a scarlet supercharged Mercedes from Adolf Hitler. King Victor Emmanuel of Italy sent a bronze equestrian statue of a dragoon; Mussolini sent some copper vases.
With the Italian invasion of Albania in April 1939, the King and Queen fled with the infant Prince Leka - who spent only three days after his birth in Albania - via Greece to England. The puppet government announced that the Crown of Albania had passed to King Victor Emmanuel of Italy.
After a prolonged odyssey through Europe - Greece, Turkey, Romania, Poland, the Baltic states, Sweden, Belgium and France - the King, Queen and Prince arrived at the Ritz Hotel in London in 1940, with an entourage of 30 including the King's six sisters. They would remain in England for the duration of the war, moving from the Ritz to Parmoor House, a country house they rented in the Chilterns.
When Auberon Herbert (son of that enthusiast for Albania, Aubrey Herbert) paid them a visit in Buckinghamshire, it seemed to him that King Zog - once described by Aubrey Herbert as "a reader of Shakespeare and a fine fighting man" - did "nothing but nurse his majesty and take tiny Parisian walks".
After the war, once it was clear that they would be unable to return to Albania, they moved to Egypt, at the invitation of King Farouk, where they were joined by other exiled European Royalty to whom King Farouk was ready to grant refuge.
Following Nasser's toppling of King Farouk and the latter's departure from Egypt in 1952 - Queen Geraldine watched Farouk board his yacht at Alexandria through binoculars - King Zog, whose health was failing, moved his family and entourage to France.
After nearly a decade of declining health, King Zog died in hospital in Paris in April 1961; by the time of his death he had survived 55 assassination attempts. Queen Geraldine subsequently lived in Spain and South Africa, before returning to Albania at the invitation of 40 members of parliament four months ago.
She is survived by her son Leka, who was proclaimed King of the Albanians by the Albanian National Assembly in exile, in Paris, after his father's death.
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Consort of King Zog whose wedding presents included a scarlet supercharged Mercedes from Adolf Hitler
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http://time.com/money/4130052/black-friday-cyber-monday-2015/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160816000009id_/http://time.com:80/money/4130052/black-friday-cyber-monday-2015/
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Biggest Winners, Losers
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20160816000009
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The epic Thanksgiving-Black Friday-Cyber Monday shop-a-thon is over. There were stores that opened for sales on doorbuster deals at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving. There were brawls on Black Friday at malls around the country. And there was an astonishing amount of money spent—particularly online— throughout. Here’s who is winning (and losing) thus far in the 2015 holiday shopping season, and we’re not talking about those dudes involved in the Black Friday brawls.
Shoppers in general. Retailers have constantly been expanding the shopping season with deals that last longer and are readily available online, in stores, and pretty much anywhere else consumers want them. The result is that consumers can find cheap prices before, during, and after Black Friday, in sharp contrast from years past, when many of the best Black Friday sales were limited to shoppers who waited in line for hours early in the morning after Thanksgiving. Likewise, Walmart promised that most of its deals would be available in abundance throughout the entire season, rather than being restricted to a few lucky (or desperate) shoppers who waited for hours.
As the Miami Herald noted this past weekend, the malls weren’t particularly crowded during the wee hours of Black Friday. When shoppers can snag the best deals at almost any hour of day—and often from the comfort of their homes—there’s no real reason to physically go shopping at, say, 5 a.m. on Black Friday. “The thrill of scoring a pre-dawn Black Friday deal has mostly disappeared as many stores open Thanksgiving night and offer bargains online throughout the week,” the Herald summed up.
Online shopping in general. Whereas brick-and-mortar sales have slumped (at least on Black Friday), e-retail sales are humming along. The Verizon Retail Index estimated that broadband traffic from e-commerce was up 18% on Saturday and 21% on Sunday compared with normal daily volumes. Meanwhile, total online sales on Cyber Monday 2015 are expected to top $3 billion, a rise of roughly 18% over Cyber Monday 2014.
Mobile shopping in particular. A big reason why online sales growth has been so strong is that people are shopping with more devices than just the classic desktop. According to data from Custora, 36.1% of online sales on Black Friday were placed via smartphones and tablets, compared with 30.3% a year ago.
Amazon.com. Given how e-retail is faring during the early 2015 holiday shopping season, it’s a given that the world’s largest e-retailer is doing quite well for itself. ChannelAdvisor estimated that Amazon sales on Cyber Monday were up 22% compared with last year, while a local TV station in Seattle reported that Amazon would be handling roughly 500 orders per second on the day.
Apple. As The Street observed, Apple Stores were crowded with eager shoppers throughout the big weekend, and deals on Apple products were among the most popular sellers from retailers such as Target and Best Buy. On Monday, MarketWatch quoted one analyst’s observation that, “Apple probably had the strongest [Black] Friday sales in its entire history.”
REI. The digital analytics firm SimilarWeb reported that there were noticeable benefits for retailers that decided to remain closed on Thanksgiving this year. Online traffic at GameStop on Thanksgiving 2015 was up 132% compared with the previous year, while Staples, Nordstrom, and PetSmart—all closed on Thanksgiving—also saw significant increases in e-commerce on the holiday.
Perhaps REI benefited the most, though. The retailer was closed on Thanksgiving and Black Friday and encouraged consumers to play in the great outdoors rather than go shopping. But many shoppers didn’t listen and went shopping anyway. “The REI site saw a 10% combined web and desktop increase in one-day traffic on Thanksgiving, followed by a further 26% one-day rise on Black Friday,” SimilarWeb stated.
Black Friday. While the term “Black Friday” is used more than ever, the traditional Black Friday experience—going shopping in physical stores on the day after Thanksgiving—has essentially become meaningless. As mentioned above, when people do “Black Friday” shopping online, and perhaps on the Sunday or Wednesday before actual Black Friday, it’s inevitable that the “real” Black Friday will suffer. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that sales on Black Friday 2015 were down roughly $1 billion this year.
Physical shopping in general. Foot traffic fell on Thanksgiving and Black Friday alike, as more consumers opted to shop online—or perhaps shop well before Thanksgiving arrived.
Thanksgiving Day shopping. The backlash against Thanksgiving shopping, combined with the fact that sales launch well before the holiday, making store hours on a family-focused holiday pretty much unnecessary, resulted in lower sales totals for brick-and-mortar retailers this year.
Target.com. Cyber Monday was an especially huge day for Target, which launched an unprecedented discount of 15% on everything sold. Unfortunately, target.com was not up to the challenge. The site went down a few times on Monday, and shoppers experienced tons of delays while trying to place popular items into their virtual shopping carts.
Sears & Kmart. Observers from The Street reported that Sears and Kmart were “alarmingly absent of traffic and overstuffed with clothing inventory” on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
Read next: Here’s the Gift College Students Say They Really Want for the Holidays
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Further proof that Black Friday as we know it is dying.
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http://time.com/4172866/white-house-silicon-valley-encryption/
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Top White House Officials Talk Encryption in Silicon Valley
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20160816022102
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Some of the highest ranking national security officials in the Obama administration are meeting Friday with technology firms in Silicon Valley, where they plan to discuss how to prevent terrorists from using new technologies to carry out acts of violence, the White House said Friday.
News of the meeting came just as the National Security Council announced the establishment of a new Countering Violent Extremism Task Force designed to “harmonize” the efforts of several federal agencies and their international partners in preventing terrorism at home and abroad.
Today’s meeting in San Jose, is expected to reinvigorate the bitter and long-standing controversy over encryption technology, which has pitted counterterrorism and law enforcement officials against privacy advocates, computer scientists and cryptologists.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco, and other senior administration officials are all expected to attend the meeting, Earnest said.
The agenda for Friday afternoon’s meeting will include how to prevent terrorists from using the Internet to plan attacks, how to amplify messages that counteract extremist propaganda and how to disrupt terrorist organizations from using message rooms, apps and social media platforms to radicalize and recruit new members, said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
Read More: Can Silicon Valley Help Beat ISIS?
He compared today’s cooperation between the government and Silicon Valley to prior successful efforts to combat the exploitation of children on the internet. “Tech leaders are patriotic Americans,” he said. “They don’t have any desires for child pornographers or potential terrorists to use their tech for harm.”
For years, top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the National Security Agency have been demanding that tech firms build “backdoors” into their encrypted apps and devices that would allow law enforcement officials, with warrants, to access suspects’ phones and messages.
The CEOs of the biggest tech firms, including Apple and Facebook, as well as privacy advocates and computer engineers, have pushed back. They say that “backdoors” don’t make technological sense. They argue that hackers, snoops and cybercriminals from Russia and China could just as easily use those “backdoors” to access droves of private consumer information, like bank account information and health records.
In October, the Obama administration appeared to side with Silicon Valley, releasing a report concluding that any vulnerability designed to help American law enforcement and intelligence agencies access consumer information could also be exploited by cybercriminals and terrorists. The decision, which was a major victory for open Internet advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, infuriated top brass at the FBI and the NSA.
The horrific attacks in Paris or San Bernardino late last year reopened the debate. While there is no evidence that the terrorists in either incident used encryption to hide their communications, top law enforcement officials in the U.S. and Europe argued in the aftermath that encrypted platforms were thwarting their efforts to track criminals and prevent future attacks.
Read More: Paris Attacks Fuel New Debate on Surveillance and Encryption
End-to-end encryption, which is used in popular messaging apps, like Facebook’s WhatsApp and Apple’s iMessage, makes it impossible for anyone except the end users to read the messages. As a result, even if law enforcement officials have warrants or court orders to tap an encrypted platform, all they can intercept is scrambled gobbledy-gook.
FBI Director James Comey has been one of the most outspoken critics of technology companies. “Lots of good people have designed their systems and their devices so that judges’ orders cannot be complied with, for reasons that I understand,” he said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in December. “I’m not questioning their motivations. The question we have to ask is, ‘Should they change their business model?'”
Nearly every Republican presidential candidate has sided with the NSA and the FBI, although most were vague about how they would go about forcing tech firms to cooperate. At the Republican debate in December, frontrunner Donald Trump called for “closing areas” of the Internet. In a previous statement, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said encryption “makes it harder for the American government to do its job.”
Read More: Read the Full Text of the Dec. 15 Republican Debate in Las Vegas
Democratic candidates have been more circumspect. In June, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton said government officials and tech firms needed to have a “real conversation” about how to prevent terrorists from using encryption, but said “there are really strong, legitimate arguments on both sides.” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was more forceful. “I worry that we are moving toward an Orwellian form of society, where Big Brother—whether in the corporate world, or the government—knows too much information about the private lives of innocent people,” he said in an interview in June.
President Obama has also been vague. He said that the government and counterterrorism officials should work “more closely” with the tech community to fight terrorism.
Earnest, calling encryption a particularly “thorny element,” said that administration officials were aiming to stake out “common ground,” balancing the need for both “robust encryption” and “civil liberties and privacy,” while recognizing that it’s not ok for terrorists to use encryption “as some type of safe haven online.”
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Renewing a long-standing debate.
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http://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/20490368
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160816105806id_/http://www.bbc.com:80/sport/formula1/20490368
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Meet Sebastian Vettel: three-time F1 world champion
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20160816105806
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When Sebastian Vettel became the youngest Formula 1 driver to score a point after coming eighth on his debut in the 2007 United States Grand Prix, the signs were there that he was special.
But few could have predicted that the young man from Heppenheim, Germany, would go on to win three world titles in the following five seasons.
On Sunday, the 25-year-old became only the third driver to win three world titles consecutively, along with Michael Schumacher and Juan Manuel Fangio, when he finished sixth in the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Add to that the accolade of being triple world champion, to join the likes of Ayrton Senna, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet, Sir Jackie Stewart, Jack Brabham, and he is well on his way to solidifying himself as one of the greats.
BBC Sport takes a look at the career of a man who has always been in a hurry when it comes to clocking up the achievements...
A carpenter's son, born in 1987, Vettel began racing go-karts when he was just three years old, but it wasn't until 1995 that he entered a karting series.
Red Bull clearly saw something in him, because they signed him to their young driver programme in 2000 before upgrading him to the Red Bull junior team.
He graduated to Formula BMW single-seaters in 2003, going on to win 18 out of 20 races on his way to the title and developing a relationship with the German manufacturer who would later give him his F1 debut.
Times were tougher in the super-competitive F3 Euroseries, where he was runner-up to Paul di Resta in 2006 before moving across to the World Series by Renault while acting as the third driver at the BMW Sauber F1 Team, making appearances in free practice sessions at grands prix during that season.
Vettel was leading that championship when he got the call from BMW Sauber that he was required to step in for Robert Kubica at the 2007 United States Grand Prix following the Pole's heavy crash in Canada.
He impressed, taking eighth to become the youngest driver to score a Formula 1 World Championship point. The dye had been cast.
Toro Rosso snapped him up for the rest of the 2007 season, dumping Scott Speed, before Vettel went on to give the team their first win with a Michael Schumacher-esque wet weather drive to victory in the 2008 Italian Grand Prix.
In doing so, he became the youngest grand prix pole sitter, race winner and driver on the podium. The records, though, would keep on coming.
Red Bull snapped him up from their sister team from 2009 and he rewarded them with their first pole and victory in the third race of the year in China.
2010 hinted at a difficult season for the German with a number of crashes.
Few will forget when he and Mark Webber clashed in Turkey while he also came to grief with McLaren's Jenson Button in Belgium, sparking McLaren chief Martin Whitmarsh to call him the "crash kid".
But in the most unlikely of circumstances, Vettel overturned a 15-point deficit to Fernando Alonso at the final race of the season to win his maiden championship, taking the lead of the standings for the first time that year and becoming the youngest ever world champion, with five victories during that season.
The title came much easier in 2011 as he secured 15 poles, 11 victories and 17 podiums in 19 races to become the youngest double world champion and youngest back-to-back world champion.
His third triumph in 2012 proved tougher, but the German maximised points scored when his Red Bull wasn't quite quick enough in the early part of the season and then capitalised when it was, winning four races in a row from Singapore.
Tipped into a spin in the title-deciding race in Brazil, the German fought back valiantly, rising up to sixth which was enough to claim the title.
Vettel isn't your ordinary racing driver. The German doesn't have a need for a manager, instead negotiating all his own contracts.
He has made no secret that his childhood heroes were the "three Michaels" - Michael Schumacher, basketball star Michael Jordan and pop legend Michael Jackson - and he even wanted to be a singer like the latter before realising his wasn't good enough.
The 26-time F1 race winner is good friends with F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone, and is known to meet up with him for a game of backgammon now and then.
He also loves British humour and is a big fan of Monty Python and Little Britain.
And the 25-year-old always names his racing cars. The first was 'Kate', followed by 'Kate's Dirty Sister', 'Luscious Liz', 'Randy Mandy', 'Kinky Kylie' and this year's model 'Abbey'.
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BBC Sport profiles the youngest ever triple Formula 1 world champion following his triumph in Brazil
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/16/03/33/accused-vic-dangerous-driver-back-in-court
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160816114713id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/16/03/33/accused-vic-dangerous-driver-back-in-court
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Accused Vic dangerous driver back in court
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20160816114713
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A Melbourne woman released on bail after she allegedly killed a father-of-three by dangerous driving is due back in court.
Tara Brennan, 27, of Altona Meadows, is facing a charge of dangerous driving causing death over the fatal crash in May.
She is accused of killing Alan Dunlop when she drove into another vehicle parked in the emergency lane of the Western Ring Road.
Brennan cried throughout her first court appearance earlier this year before being released on bail.
Mr Dunlop's family said at the time they were disgusted Brennan had been granted bail.
She is due to face a committal mention in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Tuesday.
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A Melbourne woman who allegedly killed a father whose car was parked in an emergency lane will face court on Tuesday.
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http://www.aol.com/article/2016/08/15/geologist-found-part-lost-ocean-existed-long-before-atlantic/21452172/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160817023054id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/08/15/geologist-found-part-lost-ocean-existed-long-before-atlantic/21452172/
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A geologist has found part of a lost ocean that existed long before the Atlantic
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20160817023054
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Earth isn't the steadfast planet we assume it to be. Its continent-size slabs constantly move, buckle, and vanish beneath each other over the millennia, all while hardly leaving a trace.
But geologist Roi Granot, a senior lecturer at Ben Gurion University in Israel, says he's discovered the most ancient slab of seafloor on Earth to date.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight CenterThe roughly 60,000-square-mile piece of crust has been hiding below the eastern Mediterranean Sea for about 340 million years (give or take 30 million years).
That means it's from right around when Earth's landmasses came together to form the supercontinent Pangea, which later separated into the continents we recognize today.
It's also about 70% older than any other seafloors researchers know of, including those of the Atlantic and Indian oceans.
What's more, Granot thinks the ancient slab might be a remnant of Earth's long-lost Tethys Sea (or Ocean).
RELATED: Deep ocean images from the Mariana Trench
Mariana Trench, deep ocean scariness
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 27: (BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE) (CHINA OUT) A submersible 'Jiaolong' works at a depth of 7,062 metres on June 27, 2012 in the western Pacific Ocean. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying two people, reportedly reached the depth during its fifth dive into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 27: (BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE) (CHINA OUT) A submersible 'Jiaolong' works at a depth of 7,062 metres on June 27, 2012 in the western Pacific Ocean. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying two people, reportedly reached the depth during its fifth dive into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 27: (BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE) (CHINA OUT) A submersible 'Jiaolong' works at a depth of 7,062 metres on June 27, 2012 in the western Pacific Ocean. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying two people, reportedly reached the depth during its fifth dive into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 27: (BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE) (CHINA OUT) A submersible 'Jiaolong' works at a depth of 7,062 metres on June 27, 2012 in the western Pacific Ocean. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying two people, reportedly reached the depth during its fifth dive into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 19: (CHINA OUT) Submersible 'Jiaolong' is put into the sea for the second dive during a series of six scheduled ones to attempt the country's deepest-ever 7,000-meter manned dive on June 19, 2012 in At Sea, Unspecified. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying three people, reportedly reached a depth of 6,965 meters in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, on June 19, local time. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 19: (CHINA OUT) Submersible 'Jiaolong' is put into the sea for the second dive during a series of six scheduled ones to attempt the country's deepest-ever 7,000-meter manned dive on June 19, 2012 in At Sea, Unspecified. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying three people, reportedly reached a depth of 6,965 meters in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, on June 19, local time. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 27: (BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE) (CHINA OUT) A submersible 'Jiaolong' works at a depth of 7,062 metres on June 27, 2012 in the western Pacific Ocean. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying two people, reportedly reached the depth during its fifth dive into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
QINGDAO, CHINA - JULY 16: (CHINA OUT) Submersible Jiaolong returns from the ocean on Monday, July 16, 2012 om Qingdao, Shandong Province of China. The submersible reached a record depth of 7,062 meters in June in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. Jiaolong returned in glory from a six-week mission to its home port and received new orders for another research dive. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 27: (BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE) (CHINA OUT) Workers take down samples captured from the Mariana Trench on June 27, 2012 in the western Pacific Ocean. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying two people, reportedly reached a depth of 7,062 metres during its fifth dive into the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
AT SEA, UNSPECIFIED - JUNE 19: (CHINA OUT) Submersible 'Jiaolong' is taken out of the water after completing the second dive during a series of six scheduled ones to attempt the country's deepest-ever 7,000-meter manned dive on June 19, 2012 in At Sea, Unspecified. The submersible 'Jiaolong', carrying three people, reportedly reached a depth of 6,965 meters in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world's oceans which is located in the western Pacific Ocean, on June 19, local time. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)
"[W]e don't have intact oceanic crust that old ... It would mean that this ocean was formed while Pangea, the last supercontinent, was still in the making," Granot wrote in an email to Business Insider.
No one had spotted the slab before because it's buried under more than 8 miles of sediment, according to Granot's new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
To test his hunch that the Mediterranean Sea was hiding something big, Granot conducted four research cruises from October 2012 through October 2014.
A crew towed three large sensors behind a boat, zigzagging across the sea during each trip to hunt for magnetic anomalies — the signatures of magnetic rocks locked in crust that was made by undersea volcanic ridges — buried deep beneath miles of ocean sediment.
NASA/Goddard Space Flight CenterA pattern of magnetic anomalies, Granot reasoned, might reveal the existence of an ancient block of seafloor crust.
And after 2 years of gathering data, his results revealed just that.
"I was shocked," said Granot, who was stuck on a 16-hour flight when he finished processing the data. "The picture was quite clear — I see oceanic crust! Since I had no one to share my new understanding, I had to walk back and forth in the airplane until [we] landed."
The findings could mean the Tethys Ocean formed about 50 million years before scientists thought.
"But we are not sure that it is really part of the Tethys Ocean. It could be that this oceanic crust is not related at all," Granot said, noting that it instead may be part of some other, unknown ocean bottom.
And aside from rewriting textbooks on plate tectonics, Granot says the discovery "could also help to understand heat flow in the eastern Mediterranean, which in turn will help to assess the potential of hydrocarbon [oil and gas reserves] in that region."
Other geologists will likely be working to confirm this finding, and Granot noted in the paper that the different tectonic possibilities that may have generated this discovery should all be tested in future studies.
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Earth's continent-size slabs constantly move, buckle, and vanish beneath each other over the millennia, all while hardly leaving a trace.
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http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/49ers-sign-Christian-Ponder-to-bolster-depleted-9146264.php
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160817053110id_/http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/49ers-sign-Christian-Ponder-to-bolster-depleted-9146264.php
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49ers sign Christian Ponder to bolster depleted QB corps
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Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle
Oakland Raiders' Christian Ponder scrambles in 4th quarter of 30-23 loss to Arizona Cardinals in preseason game at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015.
Oakland Raiders' Christian Ponder scrambles in 4th quarter of 30-23 loss to Arizona Cardinals in preseason game at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015.
Oakland Raiders' Christian Ponder in 4th quarter of 30-23 loss to Arizona Cardinals in preseason game at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015.
Oakland Raiders' Christian Ponder in 4th quarter of 30-23 loss to Arizona Cardinals in preseason game at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015.
Oakland Raiders' Christian Ponder readies to pass in 4th quarter of 30-23 loss to Arizona Cardinals in preseason game at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015.
Oakland Raiders' Christian Ponder readies to pass in 4th quarter of 30-23 loss to Arizona Cardinals in preseason game at O.co Coliseum in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015.
Oakland Raiders quarterback Christian Ponder passes in the first half of a preseason NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
Oakland Raiders quarterback Christian Ponder passes in the first half of a preseason NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks, Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
QB Christian Ponder signed a one-year deal with the 49ers on Tuesday.
QB Christian Ponder signed a one-year deal with the 49ers on Tuesday.
Oakland Raiders quarterback Christian Ponder passes during warmups of a preseason NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings, Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Andy King)
Oakland Raiders quarterback Christian Ponder passes during warmups of a preseason NFL football game against the Minnesota Vikings, Saturday, Aug. 22, 2015, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Andy King)
Minnesota Vikings Christian Ponder runs through some drills before the game against the Oakland Raiders, Friday, Aug. 8, 2014 in Minneapolis. (Mike McGinnis/AP Images for Panini)
Minnesota Vikings Christian Ponder runs through some drills before the game against the Oakland Raiders, Friday, Aug. 8, 2014 in Minneapolis. (Mike McGinnis/AP Images for Panini)
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder hands off to Adrian Peterson (28) against the Seattle Seahawks in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder hands off to Adrian Peterson (28) against the Seattle Seahawks in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 4, 2012, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine
Quarterback Thad Lewis (9) walks off the field with trainers during a preseason game between the 49ers and the Houston Texans at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on Sunday, August 14, 2016.
Quarterback Thad Lewis (9) walks off the field with trainers during a preseason game between the 49ers and the Houston Texans at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on Sunday, August 14, 2016.
Quarterback Thad Lewis (9) evades the pass rush during a preseason game between the 49ers and the Houston Texans at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on Sunday, August 14, 2016.
Quarterback Thad Lewis (9) evades the pass rush during a preseason game between the 49ers and the Houston Texans at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, on Sunday, August 14, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers quarterbacks Jeff Driskel, Colin Kaepernick, Blaine Gabbert and Thad Lewis, from left, throw during NFL football training camp Sunday, July 31, 2016, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
San Francisco 49ers quarterbacks Jeff Driskel, Colin Kaepernick, Blaine Gabbert and Thad Lewis, from left, throw during NFL football training camp Sunday, July 31, 2016, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio
Christian Ponder, who was a Viking for four years, last year was signed and quickly released by the Raiders and Broncos.
Christian Ponder, who was a Viking for four years, last year was signed and quickly released by the Raiders and Broncos.
49ers sign Christian Ponder to bolster depleted QB corps
The 49ers now have Blaine Gabbert, Colin Kaepernick and Christian Ponder on their roster.
And, yes, that would be considered quite a collection of quarterback talent if this was 2011.
On Tuesday, shortly after they finished practice with two healthy quarterbacks, the 49ers signed Ponder, and he joined their two other once-heralded twentysomethings: Gabbert (No. 10 overall), Ponder (No. 12) and Kaepernick (No. 36) were the third, fourth and sixth quarterbacks selected, respectively, in the 2011 draft.
Five years later, Gabbert has been traded for a sixth-round pick, Kaepernick has gone from star to second-stringer, and Ponder was released twice last year and hasn’t thrown a regular-season pass since Oct. 2, 2014.
Given his recent unemployment status, it’s possible Ponder, 28, is just a Band-Aid for an ailing quarterbacks corps. Thad Lewis suffered a season-ending torn ACL on Sunday and Kaepernick didn’t practice again Tuesday because of a lingering shoulder injury, leaving just Gabbert and rookie sixth-round pick Jeff Driskel to throw during the no-pads session.
Kaepernick hasn’t thrown a pass since last Wednesday, a day before a team spokesman said he didn’t throw in practice because he was taking a “planned rest day.” Kaepernick’s fatigued right arm will have had a week of rest if he doesn’t participate in the first of two joint practices with the Broncos on Wednesday in Denver.
On Sunday, after a preseason loss to the Texans, head coach Chip Kelly was asked if there was concern Kaepernick wouldn’t be able to practice against the Broncos this week.
“That’s not what I’ve been told,” Kelly said. “But it’s really a day-to-day thing. It’s nothing that’s a long-term thing. It’s just a day-to-day thing. He says he feels better as we go, but we’re not going to push him so that we can make a proper evaluation of him.”
With Ponder, the 49ers are now guaranteed to have three quarterbacks available to practice with the Broncos in advance of their preseason game Saturday at Sports Authority Field.
Ponder spent his first four seasons with the Vikings, who didn’t re-sign him after he posted a 14-21-1 record and had the third-lowest passer rating (75.9) among the 29 quarterbacks with at least 1,000 pass attempts from 2011-14.
Last year, Ponder signed with Oakland, but failed to beat out Matt McGloin for the backup job and was among the Raiders’ final roster cuts in early September. He spent 13 days with the Broncos when Peyton Manning was injured before he was released Dec. 8.
Injury report: Wide receivers Quinton Patton (hamstring) and Bruce Ellington (leg) did not practice. Patton played 19 snaps in the preseason opener two days after tweaking his hamstring in practice. Ellington’s legs were stretched out by trainers before practice. He was briefly attended to by trainers Sunday, but returned to the game. … Defensive tackle Arik Armstead (shoulder) and cornerback Rashard Robinson, who was limited to six snaps Sunday, did not participate in team drills. … Cornerback Dontae Johnson had his wrist examined by a trainer at the end of practice.
Schedule: The 49ers will practice with the Broncos starting at 9:30 a.m. MDT Wednesday and Thursday.
“We’re going against the defending Super Bowl champs,” defensive coordinator Jim O’Neil said. “And if you can’t get excited for that, something’s wrong with you.”
Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Eric_Branch
From 2011-15, 35 quarterbacks had at least 1,000 pass attempts. Here’s how 49ers quarterbacks Colin Kaepernick, Christian Ponder and Blaine Gabbert rank among that group in passer rating:
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Five years later, Gabbert has been traded for a sixth-round pick, Kaepernick has gone from star to second-stringer, and Ponder was released twice last year and hasn’t thrown a regular-season pass since Oct. 2, 2014. Thad Lewis suffered a season-ending torn ACL on Sunday and Kaepernick didn’t practice again Tuesday because of a lingering shoulder injury, leaving just Gabbert and rookie sixth-round pick Jeff Driskel to throw during the no-pads session. Kaepernick hasn’t thrown a pass since last Wednesday, a day before a team spokesman said he didn’t throw in practice because he was taking a “planned rest day.” On Sunday, after a preseason loss to the Texans, head coach Chip Kelly was asked if there was concern Kaepernick wouldn’t be able to practice against the Broncos this week. With Ponder, the 49ers are now guaranteed to have three quarterbacks available to practice with the Broncos in advance of their preseason game Saturday at Sports Authority Field. Ponder spent his first four seasons with the Vikings, who didn’t re-sign him after he posted a 14-21-1 record and had the third-lowest passer rating (75.9) among the 29 quarterbacks with at least 1,000 pass attempts from 2011-14. Last year, Ponder signed with Oakland, but failed to beat out Matt McGloin for the backup job and was among the Raiders’ final roster cuts in early September. Wide receivers Quinton Patton (hamstring) and Bruce Ellington (leg) did not practice. Patton played 19 snaps in the preseason opener two days after tweaking his hamstring in practice. Defensive tackle Arik Armstead (shoulder) and cornerback Rashard Robinson, who was limited to six snaps Sunday, did not participate in team drills. … Cornerback Dontae Johnson had his wrist examined by a trainer at the end of practice. “We’re going against the defending Super Bowl champs,” defensive coordinator Jim O’Neil said.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/germans-love-spezi-the-swamp-juice-soda-will-anyone-else-1457542759
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160817103820id_/http://www.wsj.com:80/articles/germans-love-spezi-the-swamp-juice-soda-will-anyone-else-1457542759
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Germans Love Spezi, the ‘Swamp Juice’ Soda. Will Anyone Else?
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20160817103820
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FRANKFURT—Erika Torchia holds a glass of cloudy brownish liquid to the light in her dining room and considers one of Germany’s most popular soft drinks.
“It looks like carbonated swamp juice,” says the American.
It’s actually a mix of cola and citrus soda that Germans call spezi and gulp down in vast quantities. PepsiCo Inc. has made a...
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The cola-citrus soft drink called spezi can put off outsiders with its murky, brown appearance. A boutique soda maker from Hamburg is seeking converts outside the German-speaking world.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/kroger-plans-to-buy-online-vitamin-seller-vitacost-1404300842
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160817125839id_/http://www.wsj.com:80/articles/kroger-plans-to-buy-online-vitamin-seller-vitacost-1404300842
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Kroger Agrees to Buy Online Vitamin Seller Vitacost
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20160817125839
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Kroger Co. KR -1.92 % agreed to buy Vitacost.com Inc., an online seller of vitamins and other health-related products, in a move that would give the largest U.S. supermarket chain a stronger presence in Internet retailing.
The $280 million deal, which Kroger announced Wednesday, is small in financial terms for a company with $100 billion in annual sales. But Kroger expects the acquisition to enhance its technology expertise and give it a platform for fulfilling home delivery of online orders—an area of increasing importance for grocery chains amid burgeoning competition from companies like Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.58 % and FreshDirect.
Kroger Chief Executive Rodney McMullen said the grocer plans to add some of its own natural and organic foods, sold under the Simple Truth brand, to Vitacost's website, which currently offers more than 45,000 products to about 2.3 million active customers. Kroger expects Simple Truth, which includes products from oatmeal to fresh ground beef, will hit $1 billion in sales this year.
"In terms of shipping to home, [Vitacost's] infrastructure is incredibly strong for that," Mr. McMullen said in an interview. "That's one of the reasons we are really excited about the merger."
Boca Raton, Fla.-based Vitacost was founded in 1994 as a catalog retailer and began shifting online five years later. The Nasdaq-listed company sells beauty products and natural and organic foods in addition to vitamins and supplements. Its revenue in 2013 grew 16% to $382.7 million but it reported a net loss of $13.7 million, the company's fourth-straight year in the red.
In February, Consac LLC, a New York money manager that owned nearly 8% of Vitacost, publicly called on the company to pursue a sale. Vitacost responded at the time by saying that it had hired Jefferies LLC in December to help explore strategic alternatives.
"We are both extremely focused on the customer, and we believe we will be able to leverage our solid e-commerce platform with Kroger's expansive reach," a spokeswoman for Vitacost said.
Kroger said it is paying $8 a share in cash for Vitacost under the terms of the deal, which it said both companies' boards have approved. That represents a 27% premium to Vitacost's closing price of $6.28 on Tuesday, and a 51% premium to the stock's price before Consac's letter was disclosed. The tender offer requires the approval of owners of a majority of Vitacost's shares outstanding. Kroger said holders of more than 26% had agreed as of Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday, Vitacost's shares rose 27% to $7.97.
Cincinnati-based Kroger, the nation's biggest pure-play grocery by sales and the second largest food retailer after Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has outperformed other supermarket chains, in part by lowering prices ahead of the recession and expanding its store-brand products faster than most rivals. Sales at Kroger stores open at least 15 months, or same-store sales, have grown every quarter for more than decade.
The grocery chain said for now it plans to limit home delivery to shelf-stable groceries, as fresh food requires a much more expensive process and few companies have figured out a way to make a profit selling it online and delivering it to homes.
"This accelerates where we are by a few years, much faster than if we went and tried to build it on our own," Mr. McMullen said, referring to the Vitacost deal.
Kroger employed a similar strategy with its recent acquisition of Harris Teeter for $2.44 billion. That deal gave it access to what is called click-and-collect technology, where people order online and pick up at the store. Kroger says that model has more potential for growth in fresh food sales. The company also is testing home delivery with its King Soopers stores in Denver, but it said that business isn't producing the kind of results that make it scalable to other stores yet.
Kroger said it plans to finance the Vitacost transaction with debt, and it expects the deal to close in the third quarter.
Write to Annie Gasparro at annie.gasparro@wsj.com
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Kroger agreed to buy Vitacost.com Inc., an online seller of vitamins and other health-related products, in a deal that would give it a stronger presence in Internet retailing.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/getting-the-national-parks-back-up-to-speed-1462121757
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160817143204id_/http://www.wsj.com:80/articles/getting-the-national-parks-back-up-to-speed-1462121757
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Getting the National Parks Back Up to Speed
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20160817143204
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Shawn Regan’s “National Parks: Lost in the Wilds of Neglect” (op-ed, April 25) fails to note that the underlying reason our parks have a repair backlog is because Congress hasn’t been giving parks the level of support they need. The Park Service budget has been insufficient for years, leaving necessary repairs undone and ranger positions unfilled just as the parks are expecting a surge in visitors during the National Park Service’s centennial this year.
We agree that there is a role for private dollars and other innovative solutions to support our parks, including pending centennial legislation that would supplement the Park Service’s annual budget with a public-private partnership fund and an endowment. But in the end it is Congress’s responsibility to ensure the Park Service has the resources it needs to fulfill its mission. Selling off or franchising our national parks aren’t acceptable solutions. Properly funding them is.
I agree with Shawn Regan’s five ways to turn around America’s national parks. But perhaps the biggest reason for selling unneeded lands is that thousands of acres would get added to local tax roles. The Park Service would get much needed cash for improvements, and counties and municipalities get a revenue stream they can count on. What a tremendous boost to the local and national economy.
The deferred maintenance at national parks isn’t new. Consider a change of ownership and the transfer of all nonmilitary lands to the beneficiaries of the funds for Social Security Trust, Medicare Trust, Aviation Trust and Highway Trust. Such “private ownership” by each beneficiary will fund maintenance, use resources efficiently and encourage revenue-producing activities.
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National Park Service, deferred maintenance backlog, underfunding by Congress, increasing demand,
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/12095727/Want-an-answer-from-HMRC-Better-off-writing-a-letter-than-using-the-phone-say-accountants.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160817154853id_/http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/finance/personalfinance/tax/12095727/Want-an-answer-from-HMRC-Better-off-writing-a-letter-than-using-the-phone-say-accountants.html
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Want an answer from HMRC? Better off writing a letter than using the phone, say accountants
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20160817154853
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The institute’s annual survey of it accountant members found that of HMRC’s “service standards” remained “below an acceptable level” despite the department’s own claims of recent improvement.
It said: “The telephone is an unsatisfactory way for agents to engage with HMRC.
“The post service is marginally better but neither method is the most appropriate or cost effective way of communicating with HMRC in the digital age.”
The institute found that “the majority of members share the view that HMRC postal services can be relied on for providing a high quality and accurate information and resolving complex queries.
“In this respect HMRC postal services appear to outperform the telephone”.
The survey of 400 accountants which was carried out last Autumn found that 43 per cent felt HMRC’s service had “deteriorated”, up from 34 per cent in the same survey this time last year.
Fewer than a fifth of accountants who phoned HMRC “on a regular basis” thought the department’s staff were up to the job and “capable of dealing with such queries”.
The HM Revenue and Customs building in Whitehall, central London Photo: Alamy
Frank Haskew, the institute’s head of tax faculty, said: “Our members don’t sense that anything has really improved and delays of 30 to 45 minutes are still quite commonplace.”
He said HMRC had been reluctant to move to email communication with taxpayers because of concerns about security.
But he said: “You need to have a digital way for taxpayers and agents to interact with HMRC.
"We have got to have digital communication between taxpayers and HMRC that is fit for the 21st century"
“We have got to have digital communication between taxpayers and HMRC that is fit for the 21st century.”
The news came as Angela Knight, new head of the Office of Tax Simplification, was warned by MPs that a planned requirement for taxpayers to file quarterly tax returns was “an onerous burden”.
Ms Knight says her department was now examining how the proposals will “feel” from the point of view of members of the public.
A HMRC spokesman said: "Many of the issues raised with us by accountants over the phone require careful analysis in relation to the law before we can give a substantial answer. We aim to give accurate answers as quickly as we can, but we want to get it right and that can sometimes take longer than we would like.
"Following the last report we set up a working group to address the issues raised and since then we have announced the digital transformation of the tax system giving individuals and agents more direct access to the tax system.
"We aim to give accurate answers as quickly as we can, but we want to get it right and that can sometimes take longer than we would like"
"We are committed to ensuring tax agents are fully engaged with the implementation of new digital services and expect agents to remain central to the effective working of the tax system. We will be working closely with tax agents to address the issues raised in this year's report."
HMRC sources added that security of information was "paramount so communication by email is limited".
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The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales' annual survey of its members found that of HMRC’s 'service standards' remained 'below an acceptable level'
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-union-appeal-in-trump-taj-mahal-case-1464702634
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160817161739id_/http://www.wsj.com:80/articles/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-union-appeal-in-trump-taj-mahal-case-1464702634
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Supreme Court Declines to Hear Union Appeal in Trump Taj Mahal Case
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20160817161739
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WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a union appeal that challenged a move by the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City to scale back worker benefits as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.
The court, without comment, left in place lower-court rulings that approved the casino’s move to unilaterally change the employment terms for its workers, which included cuts to retirement and health-care benefits. A bankruptcy judge in 2014 said the casino was in dire financial shape and would have been forced to close without more favorable labor terms.
While presidential candidate Donald Trump’s name remains on the casino, he no longer owns it and hasn’t been involved in managing it for years. The business now belongs to billionaire Carl Icahn, the secured lender who took over in bankruptcy.
The union, Unite Here Local 54, argued that the casino’s bankruptcy didn’t give it the right to reject its duty under federal labor law to bargain with its workforce.
A collective-bargaining agreement between the two sides expired shortly after the bankruptcy. Under federal labor law, key parts of an expired agreement remain in effect during new negotiations. But lower courts allowed the Taj Mahal to impose its own cutbacks, citing a section of the bankruptcy code that allows struggling employers under certain circumstances to reject previous labor terms.
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com
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The Supreme Court declined to take up a union appeal challenging a move by the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City to scale back worker benefits as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.
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J&J to Pay $70 Million to Settle SEC Case
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Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $70 million to settle U.S. and U.K. allegations that it paid bribes to doctors in three European countries, as well as kickbacks to Iraq to illegally obtain business under former leader Saddam Hussein.
The health-care giant also agreed to enhance its compliance with U.S. anti-foreign bribery laws and other requirements. If it meets these enhanced standards for three years, it may avoid criminal...
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J&J agreed to pay $70 million to settle U.S. and U.K. allegations that it paid bribes to doctors in three European countries, as well as kickbacks to Iraq to illegally obtain business under former leader Saddam Hussein.
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Mystery illness poleaxed me and perplexed my doctors
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My reaction to this was, at first, intense annoyance – I was fit, 44 years old and used to running around; I had played cricket earlier that week and was looking forward to playing again.
Assuming that I had been hit by some sort of virus, I guessed that I had overdone it on the day I carried on working and was now paying the price. I had only ever been really ill once before, a few years ago, when vicious sinusitis knocked me over and left me with a similar sort of weakness.
So I told myself that I must have some sort of post-viral fatigue. I didn’t go to the doctor because I had a fortnight’s holiday coming up and assumed that a decent rest and some sunshine would sort me out.
A week later my family and I flew off to Greece for what turned out to be one of the more catastrophic holidays we have taken. I could barely lift a carrier bag, much less a suitcase, and wanted most of all to lie in a dark room on my own, rather than help keep charge of our five-year-old daughter and noisy, dangerously mobile 15-month-old son.
As well as constant thirst, I felt the need for big and frequent meals; if I delayed lunch by even half an hour I felt weak, dizzy, a little panicked, and I seemed to need sugar, usually in the form of a Coke, to get me through even the shortest walk.
Perhaps I was wrong, but I couldn’t see the point of visiting a doctor on a small Greek island with a set of symptoms that I was having difficulty describing, and for which I didn’t think there would be an instant remedy.
By the time I saw a GP at home I had been ill for three weeks. The basic check-up – blood pressure, eyes and ears, prodding of glands – showed nothing, so I was sent off for a blood test to check for hepatitis, the Epstein-Barr virus (which causes glandular fever) and a few other suspects. The results – negative – took a week to come back. I spent another week lying at home before going back to the GP, who sent me for another round of blood tests, principally for viral 'titres’, markers for various viral infections. All negative, again.
It was probably at about this point that I could be said officially to have entered mystery illness territory. My GP had, I think, satisfied himself that I was not suffering anything likely to kill me.
There was nothing visible to work with and my blood tests all looked normal. 'Post-viral fatigue’ seemed to cover it, for which rest was the only prescription. But that’s no kind of diagnosis if you are off work, and feeling increasingly anxious and guilty about your absence.
All I could do was tell myself, and colleagues, that another week should sort me out, but that was simply based on hope and the sense that if being off sick for two or three weeks was awful, then the prospect of that becoming a month or two months was unimaginable. It took many weeks to accept that this was going to be a long haul, and to lose the habit of thinking 'another week will do it’.
Having tried acupuncture a couple of times before, I took myself off to a Chinese medical centre in the hope that needles might at least ease the pressure in my head. I emerged £75 lighter, carrying several bags of dried herbs to boil up at home, and not feeling noticeably better – but I went back for more because this was treatment of a sort, which was more than my GP had to offer.
That’s the trouble with a mystery illness. You’re very open to everyone else’s theories about what might be wrong with you and are eager – desperate even – to try any remedy. Inevitably, friends and colleagues wondered if I might have ME. Some judicious Googling eliminated that quite quickly. I say judicious because while it’s true that you can find a website to confirm your worst suspicions about any medical condition, it doesn’t take long to find the calm and sensible voices.
What appeared to be the most thorough and exact description of the symptoms of ME or chronic fatigue syndrome suggested that sweating, muscular pain and intense sleepiness were usually noticed, and I didn’t have any of them. Other friends suggested a thyroid problem or diabetes but blood tests didn’t point to either, and while I was thirsty I seemed to be craving sugar rather than trying to expel it, as a diabetic would.
By now it was late September and I had been ill for nearly two months. I gave osteopathy a try because I’ve found it useful before for back and shoulder pain. Anything that relieved the pressure in the back of my head was a help and so, on the osteopath’s advice, I spent long periods lying on the floor at home, my head supported by two tennis balls knotted inside a sock. That felt OK, but it wasn’t making me better.
At this point, I made a leap that is not open to everyone and which I should have made weeks before: I went private, using the company’s insurance scheme. In retrospect, I can’t see what held me back, except that making any decision at all when you need to lie down after climbing a few stairs is hard; and trying to explain yourself to a stranger on the telephone is doubly difficult when you’ve no idea what sort of specialist you need to see.
I sent myself to an ear, nose and throat consultant who had operated on my nose after I had sinusitis. It seemed the right place to start, since my headaches felt at least a little like those that sinusitis had given me. He sent me for an MRI scan of the head, and for a long list of blood tests, on a scale that I doubt any cost-conscious NHS GP would countenance, none of which showed a thing.
So he referred me to a neurologist, on the reasonable assumption that if someone is complaining of tingling feet and pressure in the head, neurology will supply the answer. The neurologist sent me for his own set of blood tests and nerve conduction studies, which show whether nerves supplying muscles are working properly – it was the connection between my head and my feet that interested him, he said, not my headache per se.
Several sets of tests led nowhere. He even tested me for Lyme disease, the tick-borne infection, after a friend mentioned someone he knew who had had it and felt as I did. Negative again. The neurologist said that he saw people every week with symptoms something like mine and in many cases there was no diagnosis possible. 'I’m afraid we can’t explain everything,’ he said.
Strangely, I found this reassuring. It was a reminder that those are words you are unlikely to hear from alternative practitioners, whose pitch is based on being able to explain everything, in particular those conditions that mainstream medicine can’t. Real diagnosis, meanwhile, is about the patient elimination of possible causes, one by one. And a long list of potentially threatening conditions had been eliminated from my notes.
There was one thing that people in my situation sometimes found helpful, the neurologist said: a very small dose of a tricyclic anti-depressant – amitriptyline was the one he had in mind; no one knew how it worked, but it seemed to have beneficial effects on the brain and nervous system.
I pointed out that I wasn’t depressed; he said he was thinking of a dose so small that it wouldn’t be effective for depression anyway. I have since discovered people who have had it prescribed for a variety of conditions, including backache and migraine.
So I started with one tiny tablet, which didn’t seem to do anything and worked up to three, which began to ease the constant pressure in the back of my head. But I still had the other symptoms, and any sort of exercise brought the headache back; I was waking regularly throughout the night, too, and would lie listening to my heart thumping much too fast.
All of this was difficult for my family to live with. Someone my wife knew, a young father, died from a mystery virus that autumn. I never imagined that I wouldn’t get better, but who could say how long I would be shuffling around the house, desperate for her to take the children out, even in pouring rain, so that I could have a couple of hours’ peace on the sofa?
Late in October my wife and some friends suggested I go away somewhere to recuperate. I sensed that I needed more than a rest, but removing myself from the house seemed like a good idea for everyone, so I spent a week in an almost empty seaside hotel near Margate, eating large meals, sleeping in the afternoons and taking feebly short walks along the promenade. Looking out to sea was a tonic after sitting at home for three months, and the wind and spray were, like Skegness in the posters, bracing, but I didn’t feel very different at the end of my stay.
It must have been after about six weeks in his care that I found myself telling the neurologist that I felt sure I was not suffering the after-effects of anything: that whatever was wrong with me, I was still right in the middle of it. I told him that as well as everything else I had an intense aversion to alcohol and that some foods went right through me, as granny used to say.
Mm, he said, perhaps there’s someone else you ought to see, a physician with a particular interest in fatigue-related disorders. So off I went for another round of blood tests and interrogation. Had I had a glucose test, my new doctor asked. He seemed a little surprised that I hadn’t.
The oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT), with which diabetics are familiar, couldn’t be simpler. You turn up first thing in the morning and drink two cups of Lucozade on an empty stomach; blood is taken regularly for the next three hours and the glucose level measured. About an hour into the test I had to lie down, feeling not only weak but full of morbid thoughts. Shortly afterwards, the nurse showed me a graph tracking my blood sugar level. What’s supposed to happen is that the line rises, briskly but steadily, as the Lucozade is absorbed, before briefly flattening at the peak and descending as steadily as it rose. Instead, my blood sugar shot up instantaneously, before plummeting just as quickly to what the nurse described as 'barely above seizure levels’.
The diagnosis was 'reactive hypoglycaemia’ – the body reacting to a sudden introduction of carbohydrate or glucose by dumping it far too quickly; it’s roughly the opposite of diabetes, where the glucose level remains too high. There’s lots to learn on these medical journeys and what I learnt that day was that the brain must have glucose to function. So when it doesn’t have glucose, it thinks it’s dying. Hence my morbid thoughts. 'We sometimes describe it as a sense of impending doom,’ my physician said. 'One of the most unpleasant feelings there is.’
At last there was something to tell people – not an -ism or a disease but a condition that when translated began to explain why I had been feeling so wretched. I would need to snack regularly and keep an eye on the glycaemic index (GI) of foods, the nurse said, choosing the slow-burn sort rather than pasta, potatoes and sugar-heavy puddings.
Was that it then? Hardly. It was around Christmas, four months into the episode, when the physician said, 'I think we should look at your chest.’ So off I went for an X-ray, then a CT scan. What came back were pictures I imagine a first-year medical student could have decoded – great shaded areas on each side of my chest. There was nothing wrong with my lungs, so what we were looking at was probably inflammation of the lymph nodes.
'It’s possible you have a disease called sarcoidosis,’ the physician told me. I think he was enjoying the detective work, and I felt the same. Sarcoid (doctors use the short name), which sounds like something you might catch from the French president, is an inflammatory disease in which granulomas (clusters of immune cells) appear, most often in the lungs or the lymph nodes, though they can be found in almost any organ. In some cases there are no symptoms at all; in others, all sorts of debilitating disruption is caused.
It’s difficult to diagnose and much of the work seems to involve eliminating other suspects. An abnormal level of something called angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) in the blood is one marker for sarcoid and several blood tests showed I had it (I’ve made several attempts to understand what ACE is and does, but am still baffled). Calcium levels in the urine are also significant. Measuring that means collecting 24 hours’ worth of pee in a plastic jerry can – simple enough, though I struggled to carry it to the lab. That, too, pointed to sarcoid, though my combination of symptoms seemed unusual.
I had a further scan – a PET scan, where a radioactive tracer is injected – to get a sharper picture of my chest. The tracer shows areas of the body where glucose is used; a PET scan is most often deployed to find cancer tumours because, in the process of growing, they use more glucose than healthy tissue does. These pictures showed my lymph nodes flaming with activity.
Clutching a CD-rom that contained my scans, I was sent to a chest expert at another London hospital for a second opinion. He peered at the images on his screen for no more than 30 seconds before giving a reassuringly decisive verdict. 'You’ve got one of three things – lymphoma [cancer], tuberculosis or sarcoid.’
The way to get a definitive diagnosis would be to cut out some tissue from the chest for a biopsy, but he warned that it would be pretty unpleasant and was probably unnecessary. I had none of the symptoms of tuberculosis and as for cancer, I was feeling slightly better than I had been six months earlier – one useful marker was that I could lift and carry for a short distance our by now 21-month-old son, who, obviously, was getting heavier by the month. If I had had untreated cancer for six months, I would more likely be dying.
Nevertheless, there was an anxious week’s wait until the chest man reported the results of a case conference, where it was agreed, on the basis of all the available evidence, that the likeliest cause of my symptoms was sarcoidosis.
So there, six months on, was a diagnosis. But even then, it came with caveats. We had to assume, my physician said, that sarcoid was to blame and that the unusual combination of feelings in my head and feet meant that it had got into my nervous system, but we couldn’t be sure. The reactive hypoglycaemia appeared to be only one of a bundle of unpleasant side effects that accompanied the illness.
By and large, sarcoid seems to go away of its own accord – another doctor told me that typically it took between nine and 18 months. I was still taking amitryptiline, six times the original tiny dose the neurologist had given me, in fact – enough, I was told, to have knocked a healthy person into a deep sleep, but for some unfathomable neurochemical reason, it did me good. The physician reiterated what the neurologist had said: no one knew how it worked, but it was best thought of as a sort of 'acupuncture for the brain’.
A couple more weeks passed before he said he was tempted to try steroids. They wouldn’t be a cure but they might help alleviate my symptoms and get me back to work. While I was not bed-ridden, I was almost house-bound. I could manage a 400- or 500-yard walk to buy a morning paper but I needed to sit down and have a cup of coffee before attempting the walk back home, and even then my pace was no more than a steady shuffle.
Knowing that reactive hypoglycaemia was part of my problem, I was eating meat and green vegetables, rather than pasta or potatoes, and was avoiding anything too sweet. I had mental energy – a decent night’s sleep would see me through the day – but none of the physical reserves to deal with a busy street or a crowded room. I could carry my small son a short distance but I couldn’t have carried a bag of shopping the length of the street. The moment I over-exerted myself, the symptoms kicked in – pressure in the head, wobbly feet and a dry mouth.
I started on a small dose of a steroid, prednisolone, in March last year. It did what steroids are known to do – puffed up my face and my stomach – but it also seemed to lift the peculiar sensation from my feet, at least enough to allow me to walk further than I had in eight months. By late April I was ready to make a tentative return to work; three days for the first few weeks, then four, before returning to five full days last September.
There have been little landmarks along the way, unnoticeable to anyone else, but small victories to me. Carrying my son up the stairs without feeling poleaxed (November); walking at the same speed as everyone else on a London pavement (January); stopping the drugs (April). My next little goals are to lift up my daughter, now seven, and to run up the stairs; even now, nearly two years after falling ill, I know I couldn’t do either without reeling.
It has all been very strange, but it hasn’t been life-threatening and I will, I hope, feel fully fit again later this summer. Sarcoid can return – the chest man says the longest gap he has seen between a disappearance and a recurrence is 12 years – but since no one knows why it comes, there isn’t much point my worrying about it reappearing. The hypoglycaemia just seemed to fade away – simply another element in the mystery of how the body regulates itself in times of trouble, I suppose.
There’s no reason why having a disease should teach you anything, other than that feeling well is something to be treasured, but if nothing else in the past two years, I have come to see that it’s fine to walk slowly, that calm and patience are almost always more useful to the spirit than adrenaline and panic, that the support of family, friends and colleagues is beyond price. Above all I have learnt that diagnosis remains an extraordinary art, however much we think we know who we are and what we are made of.
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One moment Richard Preston was a healthy, active 44-year-old man, the next he could barely lift a carrier bag. Worse, nobody could work out what was wrong with him.
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Ron Palillo Dead at 63 -- Horshack from 'Welcome Back, Kotter' Dies from Heart Attack
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-- the actor who played Horshack on "
" -- died this morning at his home near Palm Beach, FL from an apparent heart attack ... this according to someone close to the actor.
We're told Palillo was found by his partner of many years Joseph Gramm around 4:00 AM. Gramm called an ambulance and Palillo was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
We're told the heart attack was very unexpected. Palillo was 63.
According to one of Palillo's colleagues at G-Star School of the Arts, Palillo had appeared to be in good health ... but was a heavy smoker. We're told he had been suffering from a bad cough and had even scheduled a doctor's appointment for today.
Palillo was known for calling out, "Ooh ooh ooh, Mr. Kotter" as one of the Sweathogs on the show ... which he appeared on with
After Kotter, Palillo appeared in "Laverne & Shirley" and voiced a character on the Disney cartoon, "Darkwing Duck."
Palillo's "Kotter" co-star Robert Hegyes -- who played Epstein -- also passed away earlier this year after suffering a heart attack.
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Ron Palillo -- the actor who played Horshack on "Welcome Back, Kotter" -- died this morning at his home near Palm Beach, FL from an apparent heart…
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https://www.thesun.co.uk/2016/08/10/lewis-hamilton-sinks-his-teeth-into-time-off-by-wrestling-a-tiger/
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Mercedes F1 star Lewis Hamilton wrestles a tiger on his time off from the track
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Brit Formula One star's summer break from the race track allows him to catch up with a furry friend in Mexico
LEWIS HAMILTON is sinking his teeth into his time away from the Formula One track… or by the looks of these pictures, the British driver was the one on the menu.
The 31-year-old has been enjoying a break from the F1 season by taking a summer break.
He has been keeping fans updated with his travels, posting snaps from Barbados, Grenada and New York.
And his latest stop has seen Hamilton, who leads the drivers’ championship by 19 points, touch down in Mexico to visit some furry friends.
Hamilton is a huge supporter of The Black Jaguar-White Tiger Foundation, and he took the opportunity to pay his furry friends at the charity another visit after touching down in Central America.
And he may be ruthless behind the wheel, but Hamilton showed what a pussycat he is at heart by declaring his love for his favourite tiger at the sanctuary via Instagram, the purrrr-fect Nicole.
The Hertfordshire-born Mercedes ace will be hoping to take a step closer to claiming his fourth championship when the F1 season resumes with the Belgian GP on Sunday August 28.
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LEWIS HAMILTON is sinking his teeth into his time away from the Formula One track… or by the looks of these pictures, the British driver was the one on the menu. The 31-year-old has been enjoying a…
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Can you see the THREE cheetahs in this picture...one is hard to spot
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The cheetahs are camouflaged as they hunt for prey on the Kenyan plains
NOT all of the cheetahs in this photo are easy to spot – there are in fact THREE cats looking for prey on the Kenyan plains.
The picture was taken by German wildlife photographer Ingo Gerlach.
The ease with which one of the animals has hidden itself shows how good their camouflage is when it comes to staying undercover.
The three cheetahs, which are brothers, were stalking wildebeest in the Masai Mara savannah, when the photo was taken.
While two can be seen, one manages to blend perfectly into his surroundings.
One of the fastest animals on land, cheetahs can reach speed of up to 70mph.
However they use their speed in a huge burst of energy and cannot maintain it for long.
So they often target their prey carefully.
When not speeding after their next meal, they have a calm and relaxed manner.
Their slender bodies are built for speed and they have tear drop markings on their coats.
Usually found in eastern and southern Africa, they can also be found in Iran.
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NOT all of the cheetahs in this photo are easy to spot – there are in fact THREE cats looking for prey on the Kenyan plains. The picture was taken by German wildlife photographer Ingo Gerlach…
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Ghostbusters' See the First Poster of Kate McKinnon
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Kate McKinnon may have made a name for herself impersonating Hillary Clinton on Saturday Night Live—and, more recently, TIME’s Person of the Year Angela Merkel—but today she debuts a new role: Jillian Holtzmann in the forthcoming Ghostbusters reboot. In her first character poster for the movie, premiering exclusively at TIME, McKinnon sports a polished chrome proton pack, some serious goggles and a stone-cold ghostbusting mug.
The Ghostbusters movie, due out July 15, 2016, and directed by Paul Feig of Bridesmaids and Spy fame, breathes new life into the 1984 classic that just this week was named to the National Film Registry. McKinnon’s Holtzmann, Feig tells TIME, is a “nuclear engineer, munitions expert, proton wrangler.”
Check out the exclusive premieres of McKinnon’s Ghostbuster castmates over at People (Melissa McCarthy), InStyle (Leslie Jones) and Entertainment Weekly (Kristen Wiig).
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McKinnon plays nuclear engineer Jillian Holtzmann in the forthcoming reboot
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DuPont and Dow Talks Put Spotlight on Agricultural Industry
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The potential merger of DuPont Co. DD 0.87 % and Dow Chemical Co. DOW 0.53 % could spur agricultural rivals to forge their own partnerships, further shrinking the handful of companies that dominate the global seed and pesticide business.
The two U.S. chemical giants are considering a combination that would lead to a three-way split of their businesses post merger, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Uniting Dow and DuPont’s agricultural units would create a deeper pesticide portfolio against weeds, bugs and fungi and a stronger franchise in genetically modified seeds, ratcheting up competition with Monsanto Co. MON -1.15 % , the top global seller of seeds, and Syngenta AG, the world leader in pesticides.
Dow and DuPont get most of their revenue from sales of chemicals and materials, but a combination wouldn’t sharply shift the competitive landscape in that relatively fragmented industry. A deal would, however, be the first major shake-up in more than a decade for the seed-and-pesticides business currently led by six firms including Germany’s Bayer AG BAYRY -1.80 % and BASF SE. BASFY -0.18 % Those companies are contending with weak crop prices world-wide that have pinched farmers’ wallets and forced them to curtail spending on everything from seeds to fertilizer and tractors.
“It is just the beginning” of consolidation in that area, said Mark Gulley, principal of New York-based chemicals consultancy Gulley & Associates LLC. “The industry’s overdue.”
Monsanto kicked off the current deal making wave last spring when the biotech seed giant proposed to buy Swiss rival Syngenta. After unsuccessfully courting Syngenta investors and sweetening its offer to $46 billion in cash and stock, Monsanto dropped its pursuit in August, though Monsanto executives have continued to say the deal would have been a good one.
Syngenta has at least one other suitor—China National Chemical Corp., or ChemChina—interested in acquiring the company, people familiar with the discussions said. The state-owned Chinese company isn’t currently a major force in the agriculture sector, but biotech crops’ capacity to simplify pest control and improve yields has gained prominence in China.
Though China’s government has put restrictions on cultivating GMO crops, the country is investing in plant biotech and pushing to consolidate its fragmented seed industry in an effort to modernize its agricultural industry. Chinese firms’ expansion has contributed to overcapacity in some parts of the chemical industry, pressuring profit margins.
Some Syngenta investors say the company’s board should consider deals since a Dow and DuPont merger would shrink the playing field.
“If Dow and DuPont are gone. that does reduce the favoured options for Syngenta,” said Folke Rauscher, a Swiss-based investor relations executive and Syngenta shareholder who in October helped form a shareholder group to push for changes at the company.
Mr. Rauscher, who met with Syngenta chairman Michel Demaré in late November to discuss his group’s concerns over Syngenta’s stand-alone prospects, said the group would refresh its call for Syngenta to begin an auction process.
Monsanto has stressed its own independent strengths after dropping its Syngenta pursuit. But executives have said the company continues to eye potential deals as a way to expand Monsanto’s chemicals franchise, a business the company had de-emphasized over the past 15 years as it focused on developing biotech seeds.
“We like where we sit today, both with what we have in hand right now, as well as the ability to pursue additional options,” a Monsanto spokeswoman said. Acquisitions must fit Monsanto’s strategy, allow for cost reductions and provide new ways to grow. “There are options out there that can meet those objectives,” she said.
“Despite a lot of noise, we have no pressure to act rashly,” she said.
Industry executives say mergers could help develop new seed and chemical products faster, and strip out costs in a research-heavy business. It can cost about $136 million to identify helpful genes, successfully insert them into crop seeds and secure regulatory clearances around the world, according to a 2011 study by Phillips McDougall Ltd.
For BASF and Bayer, a counterbid for Syngenta would be costly and would likely require significant divestitures to resolve antitrust concerns, say analysts. A sale of Syngenta to ChemChina, a relatively minor competitor in the global market for agricultural chemicals, wouldn’t pose the same competitive threat to seed rivals as a Syngenta-Monsanto combination, bankers say.
Unlike a combination with Monsanto, a tie-up with ChemChina, one of China’s largest state-owned businesses, likely would face fewer antitrust hurdles, people familiar with the situation said.
Some Syngenta investors prefer Monsanto as a partner. “The synergies in terms of costs, distribution and R&D would create huge value for shareholders and establish a dominance that would be difficult for any competitor, including a Dow/DuPont, to rival,” said Magnus Spence-Jones, an analyst at fund manager THS Partners LLP.
Merging Dow and DuPont could provide an opportunity for the German companies to expand their North American seed franchises, which lag those of rivals. The combined company might keep DuPont’s highly regarded seed business, which holds 35% of the U.S. corn market and a third of soybeans, and divest Dow’s smaller units to ensure antitrust clearance, according to analysts.
“If Dow’s seed business is going to be up for sale, you can be sure the Germans are going to bid on it,” said Mark Connelly, an analyst with CLSA Ltd.
A spokeswoman for BASF declined to comment. A spokesman for Bayer said that agriculture “is a core business of Bayer” but declined to comment on specific deal possibilities.
—John Revill contributed to this article.
Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com and Eyk Henning at eyk.henning@wsj.com
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The potential merger of DuPont and Dow Chemical could spur agricultural rivals to forge their own partnerships, further shrinking the handful of companies that dominate the global seed and pesticide business.
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EgyptAir hijack: Cyprus airport hostage drama ends
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The hijacker of an EgyptAir passenger jet was arrested at Cyprus' Larnaca airport after a five-hour standoff. No one was hurt in the incident after the man surrendered to authorities.
The EgyptAir domestic flight from Alexandria to Cairo was hijacked on Tuesday morning and forced to divert to the island.
Egypt's civil aviation ministry said the pilot of the plane, Omar al-Gammal, was threatened by a passenger strapped with explosives, but it later said the hijacker's suicide belt was fake.
Photographs shown on Egyptian state television showed a middle-aged man, named by Cypriot authorities as Seif el-Din Mustafa, on a plane wearing glasses and displaying a white belt with bulging pockets and protruding wires.
"From the search of the aircraft, no explosives were found - not on the 59-year-old suspect, nor on the aircraft itself," Cypriot police spokesman Andreas Angelides told reporters.
Egypt's interior ministry released a video showing the suspect going through security checks at Alexandria's Borg al-Arab Airport, as well as a photograph of the x-ray of his carry-on bag. The ministry said the alleged hijacker had later assembled his fake explosive belt from permitted personal belongings in the bag.
Conflicting theories emerged about the hijacker's motives.
Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said the man seemed to have a personal motive and the incident was "not related to terrorism". Cyprus state TV said he wanted to contact his ex-wife, who is Greek-Cypriot and lives in Larnaca.Â
Earlier reports said the man demanded the release of women prisoners in Egypt.
EgyptAir said flight 181 had 81 people on board, including a crew of seven. Most were released shortly after landing in Cyprus.
At 11:30 GMT, the last seven people were seen leaving the aircraft, one whom escaped though the cockpit window.Â
Speaking to reporters after the crisis ended, Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said the hijacker was an Egyptian national but that his motives remained unclear.
"At some moments he asked to meet with a representative of the European Union and at other points he asked to go to another airport, but there was nothing specific," he said, adding the man would now be questioned to ascertain his motives.
Farrah El Dibany, who was on board the flight at the time of the hijacking, said passengers noticed that there was something wrong when they saw the sea out of the plane window.
"It was a bit weird to see the sea because usual when you go to Cairo you don't pass by the Mediterranean Sea," she told Al Jazeera after the end of the ordeal.
"Then one of the cabin crew passed by all of the passengers and collected all the passports without saying any reason - he just said that they had a problem, that they cannot say anything more ... and about 45 minutes later one of the cabin crew members told us that we've been hijacked and that was it. They didn't say by whom, or what his demands, are or where we're heading," she added.
"I was horrified," she continued. "I had several scenarios on my mind, trying to figure out what can happen and I was trying to make peace with it."
Cypriot foreign ministry official Alexandros Zenon told reporters that during the crisis the hijacker appeared to be "unstable".Â
Witnesses told Cyprus Mail newspaper the man threw a letter on the tarmac of the airport in Larnaca, written in Arabic, asking that it be delivered to his ex-wife.
"Our passengers are all well and the crew is all well ... We cannot say this was a terrorist act ... he was not a professional,"Â Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fethy told reporters.
Egypt's vital tourism industry was already reeling from the downing of a Russian passenger plane in the Sinai in late October.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has said it was brought down by an attack. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) has said it planted a bomb, killing all 224 people on board.
Source:Â Al Jazeera And Agencies
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Hostage drama ends after EgyptAir jet is diverted to Cyprus with man wearing a suicide belt that turned out to be fake.
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What will Egypt death sentences mean for press freedom?
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"An unprecedented assault on freedom of expression."
That is how Al Jazeera Media Network is describing an Egyptian court's death sentences against two of its journalists.
Alaa Omar Mohamed Sablan and former director of news Ibrahim Helal were sentenced in absentia.
Asmaa Mohamed al-Khatib, identified as a reporter with a pro-Muslim Brotherhood news outlet, was also sentenced to death.
Al Jazeera categorically denies allegations that it was collaborating with former President Mohamed Morsi's elected government.
The case against Morsi, who is also facing charges of spying for Qatar, has been adjourned.
But he has already been sentenced to death and life in prison in three separate trials.
Saturday's sentences will now be examined by Egypt's Grand Mufti - the country's highest legal authority.
What implication will this case have for journalists inside Egypt? And press freedom around the world?
Abdel Fattah Fayed - Editor of Egyptian Affairs and Former Cairo Bureau Chief for Al Jazeera.
Saad Djebbar - International Lawyer.
Mohamad Elmasry - Egyptian Political Analyst and Professor of Communications at the University of North Alabama.
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An Egyptian court has sentenced six people including three journalists to death.
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Syrian refugees: 'We would not consider Europe'
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Beirut, Lebanon - Caught between a civil war and Europe, which does not seem to want them, Syrian refugees in Lebanon are struggling to find a place to call home.
Among them are Asim and Zeinab, who have been married for 20 years and are the parents of two children. (Their names have been changed to protect their security.) Before the war, they owned land in their hometown of Talkalakh, and worked in construction and tending olive trees.
Now, they live in an informal tent settlement in northern Lebanon, and own nothing.
"We used to celebrate every occasion. We used to fast during Ramadan and buy clothes and toys for our children. But we stopped celebrating anything. We stopped fasting, because of bad living conditions and lack of income. We don't feel joy any more," Zeinab, 40, told Al Jazeera.
In May 2011, the Syrian army raided their hometown. With their two-month-old son, Fahim, and 13-year-old daughter, Rama, Zeinab and Asim fled over the al-Kabir River into Lebanon.
Asim and Zeinab are two of the more than one million Syrians who have registered as refugees in Lebanon since the Syrian civil war began. A total of 1.5 million Syrians are estimated to be living in Lebanon, including those who are not registered refugees.
READ MORE: Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in fear of deportation
Despite their growing frustration and depression, Asim and Zeinab have ruled out attempting to be resettled in Europe.
"We would not consider the option [of going to Europe]. I prefer to eat a piece of bread with salt here - close to my country, rather than die abroad, where no one knows me," said Asim.
He walks every day to a nearby hill, from where he can see the roof of his home in Talkalakh. He hopes that eventually, the time will come when he can take his family back to Syria.
Salwa, a 52-year-old widowed mother of 13 who is renting a home in northern Lebanon, feels similarly. "My dream is to go back to Syria to rebuild decent graves for my children and to see my family reunited," said Salwa, who is from the village of al-Zara, near Homs.
Her daughter Ramia died when shells hit their house in the spring of 2014. Just two months later, her sons Youssef and Mahmoud were killed during clashes between rebels and the Syrian army near the Krak des Chevaliers, a 12th-century Crusader castle.
"My boys did not deserve to die. We never thought that one day we would be living in garages in Lebanon. We feel humiliated," said Salwa. "But I never thought of going to Europe. How could I abandon my family and go to an unknown place? I don't want to go anywhere except to my country, as I have God and my children as priorities in my life."
Salwa used to run a successful shoe shop, but today she is struggling to make ends meet, and often has no money to buy basic products like milk or bread.
"Every refugee I talked to said that they would like to go back to Syria," said Dana Sleiman, spokeswoman in Lebanon for UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. "In the ideal world, refugees want to go back to Syria as soon as they can. They wish to stay here [in Lebanon] not because they like it, but because they are close to home."
We never thought that one day we would be living in garages in Lebanon. We feel humiliated. But I never thought of going to Europe. How could I abandon my family and go to an unknown place?
Salwa, a Syrian refugee living in Lebanon
But, Sleiman added, resettlement to Europe could be the only chance for the most impoverished Syrian refugees to secure a better future for their children. The percentage of Syrian refugees in Lebanon living under the poverty line - approximately $3.84 a day - drastically increased from 49 percent in 2014 to more than 70 percent in 2015.
Single mothers and people with specific healthcare needs are prioritised for resettlement. Sleiman explained that UNHCR officers will analyse the database of registered refugees and contact those whom they believe meet these criteria.
Yet it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of Syrian refugees will be resettled.
"Resettlement is definitely a good option. However, [it is] available only for a limited number of Syrians, while the vast majority will stay in Lebanon waiting for the war to end," said Hala El-Helou, adviser to the Ministry of Social Affairs in Lebanon.
READ MORE: Lebanon - No formal refugee camps for Syrians
The Lebanese government, along with experts and humanitarian agencies, has warned the international community not to lose sight of the Syrians who will stay in Lebanon and will need more humanitarian assistance.
Helou admitted that Lebanon was not prepared to host 1.5 million Syrians, and does not have a long-term plan to deal with the spike in its population. "Lebanon does not have job opportunities for Syrians, [nor] for Lebanese," Helou said. "The presence of refugees is not the only crisis Lebanon is facing."
The solution for Lebanon, Helou believes, must be in finding a peaceful solution inside Syria - and then attracting international investment to Lebanon, to generate job opportunities for both Lebanese and Syrians.
Sami Atallah, executive director at the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, said: "The key is to be proactive in creating jobs [in Lebanon], reducing the cost of such services as electricity or water. This requires serious efforts going beyond humanitarian assistance".Â
"In Syria I worked as a mechanic, but would you think of repairing your car when a war breaks out? Everything was suspended. People were dying every day," recalled Mahmoud, 52, who escaped the Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs after clashes between rebels and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad erupted in October 2011.Â
As a father of 11 children, Mahmoud was determined to create stable living conditions for his family upon their arrival to the village of Aidamoun in northern Lebanon.Â
"When we came, we did not have anything to start a new garage. I used to borrow screwdrivers from my clients to work on their cars. The Polish aid agency PCPM provided us with cash for rent, so I was able to invest half of my income to buy necessary tools," Mahmoud told Al Jazeera.
Wojtek Wilk , the chief executive of PCPM, explained that direct financial assistance allows refugees to set up new businesses or find other types of employment. "PCPM extends its cash-for-rent programme also to Syrian refugee families with men unable to find decent employment in Lebanon, because we know that if a man is unable to sustain his family, he might be pushed by the extreme poverty to go back to Syria and join one of the armed groups to get any income," Wilk told Al Jazeera.
"We want to prevent it. If this person is a refugee in Lebanon, we want this person to stay in relative safety in Lebanon until they can return to Syria," Wilk added. Since 2012, PCPM has assisted 17,000 Syrian refugees in northern Lebanon with funding from the Polish foreign affairs ministry.
In Wilk's opinion, Mahmoud's family is a positive example, because they were able to become financially stable.Â
"It's true that we are living in good conditions, better than other refugees," Mahmoud said. "But we are not lying down, or smoking cigarettes and shisha, waiting for the money to arrive. We are sleeping under the car and working hard for our earnings."Â
Despite Mahmoud's success, he does not consider Lebanon his new home. "I am not as happy as if I was in Syria. I wish I could go back. We would go even today, on foot, if only it was safe."
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In Lebanon, many Syrians who fled the war simply want to return home, and have little interest in resettlement.
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How to buy a $3.8 million beachfront Sydney mansion for $5
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This is the $3.8 million home that will be raffled off. (RSL Art Union)
Anyone who has ever dreamed of owning a beachfront home in Sydney’s northern beaches may now be able to make that dream a reality - and for just $5.
RSL Art Union has launched a nationwide raffle to help raise money for veterans, and the main prize is a $3.85 million property in Freshwater.
The group said the 298 square metre, four-bedroom home on Carrington Parade “offers multiple levels of panoramic ocean views, from your spacious rooftop terrace, upstairs retreat and bright first-floor open-plan living, kitchen and dining area.”
This kitchen could be yours. (RSL Art Union)
The master bedroom. There are four rooms in total. (RSL Art Union)
It is understood to be one of the most expensive beach houses ever given away in Australia.
There are more than two million raffle tickets available, with no limit on how many times people enter.
The Daily Telegraph reports RSL Art Union bought the home in 2014 for $2.2 million and rebuilt it to raffle off – prior to this it had been owned by one family for more than 100 years.
The upstairs retreat. (RSL Art Union)
The view from the balcony. (RSL Art Union)
RSL Lotteries general manager Tracey Bishop told the newspaper it was built to capitalise on the rare views.
“The house is on one of the most spectacular pieces of land you could get,” she said.
“We’re hoping the winner enjoys having a new home where they can sit on the veranda watching the ocean and wales go by.”
The winner will also enjoy more than $160,000 worth of furniture and electrical appliances, as well as rates and water paid for for the first 12 months.
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016
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Anyone who has ever dreamed of owning a beachfront home in Sydney’s northern beaches may now be able to make that dream a reality - and for just $5.
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Why Are the Playoffs So Long?
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You have no time to read this column. You are busy, busy, busy! This is presumed in 2012. You are too hurried to pay cash for your coffee—oh, it's so arduous, removing the bills from the pocket, unfolding them, handing them to the cashier, waiting for change, which can take up…to…nine…agonizing…seconds. So you pay with an app on your smartphone—blip, done. You brush your teeth on the train. You watch "Mad Men" on the treadmill. Breakfast makes itself. The dog gets walked by a dog-walking robot.
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Modern life may be swift and harsh, but the NBA and NHL playoffs just go on and on and on and on and on.
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Audi's car-to-traffic signal system, GM's safety bungle, and more
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Two of the world's largest automakers are tangled up in litigation, one because it's equipment didn't work how it was supposed to, the other because its equipment worked exactly how it was supposed to. General Motors' faulty ignition switches cost lives and Volkswagen's emissions cheating software did untold damage to the environment—two very different crimes, for which both companies are still paying.
Before we get into that, we'll check in with Volkswagen's sub-brand, Audi, to see what it is doing to make some of its vehicles safer.
This is your Tuesday edition of the Daily Drive-Thru:
In the race for self-driving cars, Audi is about to cross a major mile marker: this fall the German luxury brand will debut connective software in select 2017 Q7, A4 and A4 Allroad models that enables the cars to communicate with traffic signals.
If this seems like one small step for car technology, it’s because it is. The only practical benefit this technology offers is a timer that informs the driver of the time remaining before a red light turns green, which, don’t get me wrong, is pretty darn cool, though far from a game-changer.
However, this is actually a giant leap toward the future of autonomous driving. Not only will this technology enable autonomous cars to stop and start automatically in response to changing traffic signals, but also it can also conceivably allow cities to collect traffic data and adjust traffic lights accordingly in real time.
Like most new technology, this connective software from Audi is equal parts exciting and terrifying. It could improve safety and efficiency but it could also impede upon privacy and personal freedoms, an ethical crossroads at which society often finds itself as in the 21st century. Either way, it’s an important step and one that should be monitored closely.
General Motors Chief Executive Mary Barra admitted in a taped deposition that her company failed to properly identify a lethal ignition switch malfunction as a safety concern and, instead, classified it as a “customer satisfaction issue”—a distinction that delayed the launch of a mandatory recall and possibly cost human lives.
Barra was deposed last year, but the video of her questioning was used during a trial in Texas on Monday. The faulty ignition switches, which are prone to shifting into the off position while the car is driving, causing safety features such as power steering, power brakes, air bags and seat belt pretensioners to stop functioning, have caused at least 124 deaths and 275 injuries.
This week, the family of Zachary Stevens, whose ignition switch cut off in 2011, causing him to crash and kill another driver, is suing GM for compensation of his medical bills and the cost of his criminal defense. The criminal charges against Stevens were dropped after the car was recalled along with 2.6 million other vehicles.
Meanwhile, elsewhere at the intersection between the automotive industry and the criminal justice system, Volkswagen is reportedly nearing a deal with the U.S. Justice Department to bring an end to the ongoing criminal investigation into the company for its use of illegal, emissions regulation-cheating software in its TDI diesel engine vehicles.
Citing two unnamed sources, Reuters is reporting that the deal being discussed would require Volkswagen to admit guilt, agree to an independent monitor to oversee its activity and pay a hefty fine, likely of more than $1 billion—this would be in addition to the civil settlement in which Volkswagen agreed to pay more than $15 billion to compensate owners and individual states.
Ford is taking its all-new Super Duty lineup on the road and giving the general public the opportunity to take the trucks on a spin around a specially designed test course. The “Drive the Future of Tough” course demonstrates new features including adaptive steering,adaptive cruise controlandtrailer reverse guidance.
The test-drive tour starts later this month and runs into November. It will feature a mix of vehicles that includes the F-250, F-350 and F-450 in various trim levels and with both 6.2-liter V8 gasoline and 6.7-liter turbo diesel engines. Here’s a complete list of stop dates and locations (sorry friends in New York City and the Northeast, the closest it gets to you is a late September stop in the middle of Pennsylvania).
Hot hatch enthusiasts rejoice: Honda is bringing the Civic Hatchback to the U.S. this fall for the 2017 model year. The stylish and spacious vehicle looks impressive in the few photos Honda has shared so far and, with a 1.5-liter double overhead cam, direct-inject turbocharged in-line four-cylinder engine, it should be a joy to drive.
This is the first five-door hatchback Civic ever to make its way to the States. Though popular in Europe and Asia, hatchbacks have never really taken off in the U.S. Perhaps with the backing of the popular Civic nameplate, this latest attempt will put up a solid fight.
Read more about the 2017 Civic Hatchback here.
Check the Daily Drive-Thru every weekday morning to get the latest on the most important news and trends in the automotive world.
You can find Monday's installment of the Drive-Thru here and view the rest of our archiveshere.
Got a news tip or a comment? You can find me on Twitter where I go by @ByKyleCampbell or email me at kcampbell@nydailynews.com.
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 details on a deal that could end a probe into Volkswagen, a Ford Super Duty test tour, and more in today's Daily Drive-Thru.
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Bộ Ngoại giao VN thêm hai thứ trưởng
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Thủ tướng Việt Nam Nguyễn Xuân Phúc vừa ký quyết định thêm hai thứ trưởng cho Bộ Ngoại giao Việt Nam, nâng số thứ trưởng hiện tại lên 7 người.
Trong khi đó, Luật Tổ chức Chính phủ, có hiệu lực từ 1/1/2016, quy định số lượng thứ trưởng ở các bộ không quá 5. Riêng Bộ Quốc phòng, Bộ Công an, Bộ Ngoại giao không quá 6.
BBC hiểu rằng điều này là vì trong thời gian tới, một hoặc hai thứ trưởng ngoại giao hiện nay dự kiến sẽ được điều động sang vị trí mới.
Trong quyết định mới công bố, ông Nguyễn Bá Hùng, Vụ trưởng Vụ Châu Mỹ, Bộ Ngoại giao kiêm Giám đốc cơ quan Việt Nam tìm kiếm người mất tích, được bổ nhiệm giữ chức vụ Thứ trưởng Bộ Ngoại giao.
Một thứ trưởng mới nữa là ông Nguyễn Quốc Dũng, Trợ lý Bộ trưởng, Vụ trưởng Vụ Tổ chức cán bộ, Bộ Ngoại giao.
Năm thứ trưởng ngoại giao đã bổ nhiệm trước đó là các ông: Bùi Thanh Sơn, Lê Hoài Trung, Hà Kim Ngọc, Vũ Hồng Nam, và Đặng Đình Quý.
Trước đây, hai thứ trưởng ngoại giao khác, Nguyễn Phương Nga và Đặng Minh Khôi, đã đi công tác nhiệm kỳ nước ngoài.
Bà Nguyễn Phương Nga làm Đại sứ, Đại diện thường trực Việt Nam tại Liên Hiệp Quốc từ tháng 11/2014.
Ông Đặng Minh Khôi đảm nhiệm vai trò Đại sứ Việt Nam tại Trung Quốc từ tháng 11/2015.
Theo Luật tổ chức chính phủ Việt Nam, có hiệu lực từ 1/1/2016, Số lượng Thứ trưởng, Phó Thủ trưởng cơ quan ngang bộ không quá 5; Bộ Quốc phòng, Bộ Công an, Bộ Ngoại giao không quá 6.
"Trong trường hợp do sáp nhập bộ, cơ quan ngang bộ hoặc do yêu cầu điều động, luân chuyển cán bộ của cơ quan có thẩm quyền thì Thủ tướng Chính phủ trình Ủy ban thường vụ Quốc hội xem xét, quyết định," Điều 38 qui định thêm.
Theo thông tin của BBC, trong thời gian tới, ít nhất một thứ trưởng ngoại giao Việt Nam hiện nay sẽ được điều động sang vị trí mới.
Tại Hoa Kỳ, chức Đại sứ do ông Phạm Quang Vinh, nguyên là Thứ trưởng Ngoại giao, đảm nhiệm từ tháng 7/2014.
Hồi năm 2014, trước câu hỏi vì sao số thứ trưởng ngoại giao có 8 người, Bộ trưởng - Chủ nhiệm Văn phòng Chính phủ khi đó, Nguyễn Văn Nên, trả lời vì có những người sắp nghỉ hưu.
“Khi thực hiện quy trình bổ nhiệm, có lúc không phải chờ đến lúc người trước nghỉ thì mới thay đổi, bổ sung,” ông Nên khi đó giải thích.
Năm 2015, khi Quốc hội Việt Nam bàn về dự thảo Luật tổ chức Chính phủ (sửa đổi), số lượng thứ trưởng cũng được nhắc tới.
Nhắc đến Bộ Ngoại giao, một đại biểu Quốc hội, Chu Sơn Hà, cho rằng nên “ghi mềm” vì số lượng thứ trưởng của Bộ Ngoại giao phụ thuộc vào quan hệ quốc tế.
Ông Hà giải thích Việt Nam cần bố trí một số người hàm thứ trưởng để làm đại sứ ở một số nước hay tổ chức quốc tế như Liên Hiệp Quốc, vì thế không nên quy định chỉ có 6 thứ trưởng.
Tuy nhiên Luật tổ chức chính phủ sau khi được thông qua vẫn giữ quy định Bộ Quốc phòng, Bộ Công an, Bộ Ngoại giao không quá 6 thứ trưởng.
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Thủ tướng Việt Nam Nguyễn Xuân Phúc ký quyết định thêm hai thứ trưởng cho Bộ Ngoại giao, nâng số thứ trưởng hiện tại lên 7 người.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/opinion/campaign-stops/trumps-misguided-embrace-of-tax-cuts.html
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Trump’s Misguided Embrace of Tax Cuts
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In a speech in Detroit on Monday, Donald J. Trump put forward a huge tax cut as the centerpiece of his economic program. He compared his plan to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, saying his proposal would be “the biggest tax revolution since the Reagan tax reform, which unleashed years of continued economic growth and job creation.”
I know something about the Reagan tax cut. In 1977, while working for Representative Jack Kemp, Republican of New York, I drafted the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which Reagan sent to Congress in early 1981. The law cut statutory tax rates by about 25 percent across the board.
It is G.O.P. dogma that the Reagan tax cut set off an economic boom. Every Republican presidential nominee since the 1980s has promised big tax cuts and another economic surge. Tax increases, Republicans believe, are the kiss of death for the economy.
While Mr. Trump has been unafraid to differ with Republican doctrine on many issues, such as Iraq and trade, he is embracing party orthodoxy on taxes. But the Reagan tax cut is not the medicine the economy needs.
Tax rates were very high when Reagan proposed cutting them — much higher than today. The high tax rates from the World War II era had been only partly cut by John F. Kennedy, and the top income-tax rate was 70 percent. Inflation was pushing workers into higher tax brackets when they received cost-of-living pay raises.
Federal income taxes on the median American family — the midpoint of U.S. incomes — have dropped by more than half since the 1980s.
Taxes divided by income —
what the median family actually pays.
Taxes divided by income — what the median family actually pays.
According to the Tax Policy Center, the average federal income-tax rate on a family of four with the median income rose from 9.1 percent in 1972 to 11.8 percent in 1981. The marginal tax rate — the tax on the last dollar earned — rose from 19 percent to 24 percent in the same period.
By contrast, the average tax rate on the median family in 2014 was just 5.3 percent, and the marginal rate was 15 percent. Inflation is nonexistent, and no one is being pushed into higher tax brackets by it.
In short, taxes were too high in 1981 and needed to be cut — including for the rich. The tax rates above 50 percent were not bringing in much revenue because wealthy people were likely to invest in tax shelters.
But the Reagan tax cut played only a secondary role in the 1980s boom, which wasn’t really much of a boom. Real G.D.P. grew 37.9 percent in the 1970s, compared with 36.1 percent in the 1980s. The economy felt better because inflation came down extraordinarily quickly, far more quickly than economists in 1980 thought was possible. But this was primarily a result of the Federal Reserve’s tight money policy, not taxes.
The tax cut deserves credit for softening the blow from the reduction in inflation, which brought on a sharp recession in 1981-82. But what we think of as the Reagan boom was the typical rebound from a sharp recession, just as we had seen after all previous postwar recessions. Much credit for growth in the Reagan years must go to the sharp increase in government purchases for his defense buildup.
What many Republicans also forget is that Reagan cared about deficits and supported 11 different tax increases from 1982 to 1988 that collectively took back half of the 1981 tax cut. Although many conservative economists predicted doom from the 1982 tax increase, which equaled 1 percent of G.D.P., the beginning of the boom coincided with its enactment.
These economists also predicted catastrophe from the 1993 tax increase enacted under President Bill Clinton and from the expiration of many of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2013. But in each case financial markets and the economy grew sharply afterward. By contrast, the economy tanked during the Bush years despite numerous large tax cuts.
The final proof that tax cuts are not the be-all and end-all of growth policy is the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which dropped the top income-tax rate to 28 percent. Conservative doctrine predicted an economic boom, but I don’t remember one, nor can I find one in the data.
Those economists who claim to be following Reagan’s policies by supporting Mr. Trump’s large tax-cut proposal are guilty of one-size-fits-all economics. There is far more evidence from the last 35 years showing that tax increases do more to stimulate growth than tax cuts.
I wouldn’t suggest that tax increases are always the answer. Whether taxes should be raised or cut can be determined only by analysis, not by dogma.
Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. He is the author of “Reaganomics: Supply-Side Economics in Action.”
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 13, 2016, on page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Don’t Use My Tax Plan. Today's Paper|Subscribe
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The Reagan tax plan is not the medicine the economy needs.
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http://www.aol.com/article/2016/08/17/family-returns-from-make-a-wish-vacation-to-find-house-robbed/21453806/
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160819132320id_/http://www.aol.com:80/article/2016/08/17/family-returns-from-make-a-wish-vacation-to-find-house-robbed/21453806/
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Family returns from Make-A-Wish vacation to find house robbed
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HENRICO, Va. (WTVR) -- A family returned home Monday night to find their Eastern Henrico home broken into and thousands of dollars worth of electronics missing after a Make-A-Wish vacation in Florida.
Keisha Wallen said her family flew to Orlando on August 9 and spent a week visiting theme parks, thanks to the generosity of the non-profit foundation. Make-A-Wish grants "wishes" to children with life-threatening medical conditions.
Her son, 12-year-old Rell, was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy about two years ago.
Wallen said four TV's, a Playstation 4, Xbox One, a laptop, hoverboard, and studio equipment were taken from the home.
"When I came into the living room the TV was gone," Rell said. "I then went into my room and my games and my TV were gone, too."
Keisha Wallen said the gaming system was Rell's chance to escape from the confinements of his wheelchair.
"Sometimes I'd fall asleep talking to my friends," Rell said. "I have nothing to watch or play. Please bring our stuff back."
Rell's medical equipment now sits beside the table where he used to play his video games.
"It's just frustrating to come home, your child is so excited to come home and play something that he no longer has," she said. "It's just sad. It hurts me because they take his most important thing."
It's been a tough year for his family. In August 2015, Rell's older brother, Roderick, died from the same disease at 18 years old.
The Wallen's have filed a police report, but Henrico Police said they didn't have additional information about the crime.
If you'd like to help the family, a GoFundMe has been set up.
RELATED: Make-A-Wish brings college dreams to life:
More from AOL.com: Man found guilty in murder of IU student Hannah Wilson Woman hit by car near hospital, delivers baby before dying Big clue found in the murder of New York Google manager?
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A family returned home to find their home broken into and thousands of dollars worth of electronics missing after a Make-A-Wish vacation in Florida.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/19/12/30/nz-bikie-accused-of-threatening-vic-man
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Debt collector threatened to kill Vic man
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A debt collector who allegedly threatened to cut a man's head off as he held him down next to a saw in Melbourne will remain behind bars after a magistrate decided he's a threat to the public.
Timoti Kapene Te Amo, 46, appeared before the Melbourne Magistrates' Court on Friday accused of threatening to kill a stone mason and holding him against his will unless he paid $32,000.
The stone mason had employed the New Zealander and his 23-year-old son as debt collectors before the men allegedly assaulted him at his Braybrook factory on March 30 and demanded payment for their services.
The pair initially demanded $8000 before increasing the amount to $32,000, police say.
Kapene Te Amo allegedly held the business owner's head to a stone cutting machine while it was running and yelled, "Where is the money or I'll cut your head off."
When the owner managed to escape, Kapene Te Amo allegedly pursued him in a car.
"The accused said, 'Don't call the police or I will come to your house and rape your wife,'" said Detective Senior Constable Owen Matthews.
The 46-year-old grandfather also allegedly threatened to come to the business owner's home and take his children.
Kapene Te Amo has been charged with 10 offences, including extortion with threat to kill, assault, armed robbery, false imprisonment and threatening to commit a sexual offence.
He applied for bail on Friday, which was refused by magistrate Luisa Bazzani.
"There is a risk you would endanger the safety of the public ... and the witnesses," she said.
She described Kapene Te Amo's alleged offending as "downright thuggery".
Police argued Kapene Te Amo should remain behind bars and said the 46-year-old had a flagrant disregard for the law.
"The accused is believed to be heavily involved in criminal activities," Det Snr Const Matthews said.
Police alleged he and his son, Denzil Rawiri Kapene Te Amo, are members of the Mongrel Mob, a New Zealand street gang.
Investigators found Mongrel Mob patches and clothing at Kapene Te Amo's residence, and found photos of him wearing Mongrel Mob patches on Facebook.
Kapene Te Amo will return to court in October.
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A New Zealand man with links to a notorious street gang was working as a debt collector in Melbourne when he allegedly threatened to cut off a man's head.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/22/20/49/victorian-woman-drowns-in-cambodia
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‘Heart of gold’: Friends pay tribute to Victorian woman who drowned in Cambodia
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Friends and family of a young Victorian woman who drowned while travelling alone in Cambodia have paid tribute to her, describing her as a "beautiful person" with a "heart of gold".
Kristy Blackney, aged 24, drowned near Kampot on Sunday, reportedly in a flash flood.
Ms Blackney, who grew up in Inverloch on the Victorian coast, had left Perth for Bangkok on July 26 for an extended holiday in south-east Asia, according to her Facebook page.
Australian authorities have confirmed a woman died in Cambodia, but declined to comment any further, ABC News reports.
"The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian woman who died in Cambodia, in accordance with the Consular Services Charter," it said in a statement.
Ms Blackney has been described on social media as "a beautiful girl with an infectious smile that touched so many people's lives".
"It's a sharp shock and the hearts of my family are broken," her cousin posted on social media.
"The hardest part of any friendship is when it's time to say goodbye," one friend wrote.
"Thank you for your friendship over all these years and for making the lives of everyone you met a little bit brighter," another wrote.
Others said they would never forget Ms Blackney’s smile and positivity.
The Inverloch Kongwak Football Netball Club, where Ms Blackney played from 2004 to 2010, posted their condolences on Facebook last night.
“IKFNC wish to convey their heartfelt condolences to the family and close friends of Kristy Blackney. Kristy was a valued and much loved member of our junior netball club,” the post read.
“We remember Kristy for the beautiful girl she was.”
A fundraising page to raise money to bring Ms Blackney’s body back to Australia has raised more than $21,000.
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A 24-year-old Victorian woman has died in floodwater while travelling alone in Cambodia.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/23/08/56/qld-students-suspended-over-porn-pics
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Qld students suspended over porn pics
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More than 20 Gold Coast students have been suspended for sending and receiving naked images of fellow pupils.
Palm Beach Currumbin High School principal Stephen Loggie says he suspended 22 students last week for sharing inappropriate images.
"(The school) is working with the parents of these students to ensure their young people make better decisions in the future," Mr Loggie has told The Gold Coast Bulletin.
The Year 9 girls and boys will have to undertake a cyber safety course when they return to school from their suspensions, which range from three to 20 days.
The father of one suspended student, who didn't want to be named, told the paper his son had only received the images, and had not passed them on.
But the man said he'd had a very stern conversation with his son about the dangers of such activity.
"It's mortifying to think this is going on and innocent kids are getting caught in the crossfire," he said.
"This is going on right under our noses and there's probably a lot more to it than we know about. These pictures will very easily go up online of naked 14-year-old girls - our daughters. It's just disgraceful."
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A Gold Coast principal has suspended 22 students for sharing naked pictures of fellow pupils.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2016/08/25/prince-home-paisley-park-open-for-public-tours/h1vZDgFkwXX4KYLK1hfHHP/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160826191148id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2016/08/25/prince-home-paisley-park-open-for-public-tours/h1vZDgFkwXX4KYLK1hfHHP/story.html
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Prince’s home, Paisley Park, to open for public tours
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Paisley Park, the private estate and studio complex of the late rock superstar Prince, will open for daily public tours starting Oct. 6, the trust company overseeing his estate announced Wednesday, and the company that runs Elvis Presley’s Graceland will manage it.
Bremer Trust said in a statement that millions of Prince fans will get the chance to tour the 65,000-square-foot complex in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen, where Prince collapsed in an elevator and died of an accidental overdose of the painkiller fentanyl in April.
‘‘Opening Paisley Park is something that Prince always wanted to do and was actively working on,’’ Prince’s sister, Tyka Nelson, said in the statement. ‘‘Only a few hundred people have had the rare opportunity to tour the estate during his lifetime. Now, fans from around the world will be able to experience Prince’s world for the first time as we open the doors to this incredible place.’’
The tours will be run by Graceland Holdings, which has overseen Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, since 1982, according to the museum’s business plan. Graceland, where Presley died in 1977, has welcomed more than 20 million visitors since opening to the public, averaging over 600,000 annually in recent years. Graceland is providing the initial funds for capital improvements and operating costs.
Besides being the music star’s home, Paisley Park has been ‘‘the center of Prince’s creative endeavors’’ since its opening in 1985, Nelson and other siblings said in an additional statement.
The plan says the tours will include studios where Prince recorded, produced and mixed most of his biggest hits, and the soundstage where he rehearsed for tours and hosted exclusive private concerts. Also featured will be thousands of artifacts from his personal archives, ‘‘including iconic concert wardrobe, awards, musical instruments, artwork, rare music and video recordings, concert memorabilia, automobiles and motorcycles.’’
Tickets go on sale online only on Friday at 2 p.m. CDT. Standard tickets will cost $38.50, but VIP tours will be offered for small groups priced at $100 or more. Tours will last about 70 minutes, starting every 10 minutes, and each group is expected to include 25-30 guests. Graceland officials expect 1,500 to 2,000 guests on peak days. No walk-up sales will be allowed.
The plan requires rezoning approval from the city, which posted documents about the plan on its website. The planning commission hearing is scheduled for Sept. 20 and the City Council will consider it Oct 3.
‘‘Chanhassen will be pleased to demonstrate to the thousands of visitors to Paisley Park the same hospitality and respect that Prince enjoyed during his time in Chanhassen,’’ Mayor Denny Laufenburger said in a statement.
Prince, 57, left no known will. The judge overseeing the case has not ruled on who his heirs will be. But court filings indicate they’ll likely include Tyka Nelson and five half siblings because Prince was divorced, his parents are dead and he had no confirmed children. Bremer Trust said the family supports the museum plan. The court has not ruled on whether a woman and girl who say they’re Prince’s niece and grandniece are entitled to share in the estate, which Bremer Trust has said could be worth up to $300 million.
The criminal investigation is continuing. Some of the pills taken from Paisley Park after his death were counterfeit drugs that actually contained fentanyl — a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin, an official close to the investigation told The Associated Press on Sunday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said records show Prince had no prescription for any controlled substances in the state of Minnesota in the 12 months before he died. Authorities are still investigating how Prince obtained the drugs.
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The company that runs Elvis Presley’s Graceland will manage the Minn. estate.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/29/06/26/army-could-fight-terrorists-on-home-soil
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Army could fight terrorists on home soil
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Army special forces may get the nod to storm terrorist hostage situations on home soil.
The proposal is part of a Defence department secret review of military call out powers, The Australian reports.
It comes two years after the 17 hour deadly Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney, which ended with the deaths of hostages Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson as well as gunman Man Haron Monis.
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The Defence department is reviewing call out powers for the Army which may result in special forces intervening in terrorist hostage situations on home soil.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/08/29/11/04/vic-man-gets-seven-years-for-stabbing-wife
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Vic wife stabber could be freed in 4 years
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20160830170837
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A Melbourne man with a history of domestic violence could serve as little as four years in prison for the attempted murder of his wife who he stabbed in the neck 10 times.
Sukhwinder Sandhu, 39, snuck up on Ramandeep Kharod in their bedroom, grabbed her by her pony tail and viciously attacked her because he believed she was trying to poison him.
Friends who lived in the Tarneit house with the couple ran to Ms Kharod's aid when they heard her screams.
Sandhu said, "she makes me mental," after the attack and later admitted when police arrived that he had tried to kill her.
He pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder.
In the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday, Justice Michael Croucher said Sandhu was delusional when he attacked the mother of his child.
The court heard submissions Sandhu suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and was likely in the grip of psychosis when he stabbed Ms Kharod on February 4 last year.
He had previously told a marriage counsellor he believed his wife had a lover and demanded a paternity test for their daughter.
"He was so deluded that his moral culpability was reduced - not to nothing - but to a very low level," Justice Croucher said.
Justice Croucher jailed Sandhu for seven years, with a minimum of four to serve, saying he was an unsuitable vehicle for general deterrence due to his mental impairment.
He said Sandhu had a history of violence towards his wife, including once kicking her in the stomach when she was pregnant.
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A man who snuck up on his wife and stabbed her 10 times in the neck has been jailed for seven years with a minimum of four.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/08/29/mondelez-says-ended-talks-buy-hershey/g2HjhAOI2m73ccfqIQBiNN/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160831155614id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/08/29/mondelez-says-ended-talks-buy-hershey/g2HjhAOI2m73ccfqIQBiNN/story.html
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Mondelez says it ended talks to buy Hershey
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20160831155614
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NEW YORK — Oreo cookie maker Mondelez says it has ended discussions to buy The Hershey Co., a combination that would have created a global powerhouse selling some of the world’s best-known chocolates and snacks.
Hershey had said in June that it rejected a preliminary takeover bid from Mondelez International Inc. valued at roughly $22.3 billion, according to FactSet. It said at the time that the offer provided ‘‘no basis for further discussion.’’
A representative for Hershey said the company had no comment beyond acknowledging that it had been in talks with Mondelez and that they had fallen through. A deal would have been subject to the Hershey Trust, a controlling shareholder.
Hershey shares slid 11 percent in after-hours trading, to $99.25. Mondelez shares added 3.4 percent, to $44.50, in extended trading.
In a statement, Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld said the company decided ‘‘there is no actionable path forward toward an agreement’’ following additional discussions.
Mondelez Internationa has made a $23 billion takeover offer for Hershey in what would be one of the biggest deals of the year.
Mondelez, based in Deerfield, Ill., makes Nabisco cookies, Cadbury chocolate, and Trident gum. The company was created after a split from Kraft Foods, which has since combined with ketchup maker Heinz to create the Kraft Heinz Co.
Back in June, The Wall Street Journal had reported that Mondelez told Hershey it would take the chocolate maker’s name and move its global headquarters to Hershey, Pa., as part of the deal. The acquisition would have made the combined company the candy industry’s largest player, according to Euromonitor International, passing the current No. 1, Mars Inc.
The deal was seen as complementary in part because Mondelez gets most of its revenue from overseas, while Hershey gets most of its revenue from North America.
The offer to buy Hershey came as the charitable trust that controls the company has been in turmoil. In July, the trust said a board member was resigning. Later, Pennsylvania’s attorney general said it reached an agreement with the trust that involved five board members leaving, and limiting compensation. The agreement came from an investigation into the trust’s compliance with a 2013 agreement.
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Oreo cookie maker Mondelez International Inc. says it has ended discussions to buy The Hershey Co.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2016/08/31/angel-olsen-woman-delivers-explosive-pop-confessions/U6QLcA6vGoqA3jcF5Z8tnK/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160902141841id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2016/08/31/angel-olsen-woman-delivers-explosive-pop-confessions/U6QLcA6vGoqA3jcF5Z8tnK/story.html
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Angel Olsen’s “My Woman” delivers explosive pop confessions
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20160902141841
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The most indelible pop songs are rich with a sense of urgency — a message from the heart, boiled down into four minutes or less and given some banging drums and richly wrung emotions to make the point stick. Angel Olsen knows this. The North Carolina-based musician’s new album “My Woman” is full of vibrant songs that take twists in chronicling the deep-seated feelings that brought them to life. Pugilistic tracks like the fuzz-drenched “Shut Up Kiss Me” contrast with more stretched-out offerings like the fever-dreamy “Woman,” but despite these sonic differences Olsen’s narrators have something in common: More often than not, her protagonists are the types of people who grab you by the collar in order to make their points.
Olsen has been releasing music since 2009, but 2014’s “Burn Your Fire for No Witness” established her as a rock ’n’ roll force, someone who takes the idea of folk-rock confessionalism and explodes it for all to hear. “My Woman” builds on the promise of “Burn” thrillingly and succinctly. Taking a page from the pre-streaming days when flippable media — LPs, cassettes — were pop music’s vehicles of choice, Olsen has loosely organized “My Woman” into an A side and a B side, with the first half focusing on crunch while the second offers up more atmospheric sounds. Side A is all angles: The spiky guitars of “Give It Up” offer a bed of nails for her breathy, passionate plea to reunite with an ex; the dry riffing of “Not Gonna Kill You” holds back while Olsen, wailing in a way that recalls the caterwauls of PJ Harvey, sings of how she “can’t help feeling the way that I do.” The back half, meanwhile, uses droning guitars and languorous rhythms to make its points, with songs like the lullabye-gentle “Sister” unfolding as Olsen seemingly figures out her emotions in real time. It’s a roller coaster, to be sure, but it’s one that Olsen controls with a steady hand even as she sings for her life.
ESSENTIAL “Shut Up Kiss Me”
Angel Olsen plays The Sinclair in Cambridge Sept. 20 and 21.
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Maura Johnston reviews a new album from North Carolina rock and roll force Angel Olsen.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/09/04/11/25/turnbull-meets-with-chinese-president
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PM Malcolm Turnbull meets Chinese President ahead of G20
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Malcolm Turnbull has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit.
Tax reform and open markets are on the agenda in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou and it’s hoped the G20 summit will boost economic confidence around the world.
"With joint efforts of all parties the G20 Hangzhou summit will achieve fruitful results, boost the confidence of countries in the world and inject new impetus to the global economy," President Xi said.
The Chinese leader has described Australia as an "important member of the G20" and stressed the importance in developing relations.
The Chinese leader has described Australia as an "important member of the G20" (AAP)
He said he hopes the two sides would remain committed to "mutual trust and mutual benefit, expanded practical co-operation, increased people to people and cultural exchanges and healthy and stable development of our comprehensive strategic partnership".
Mr Turnbull has expressed support for China's G20 agenda.
"The agenda you set recognises that the keys to ensuring economic growth ... are trade, open markets, innovation, investment in infrastructure, ensuring we have economic reform behind the border."
Mr Turnbull said the G20 trade facilitation agreement being discussed at the summit would be important to opening economic borders.
New action was also needed to tackle multinational tax avoidance.
Mr Turnbull has expressed support for China's G20 agenda (AAP)
"We are very pleased to see the very strong agenda to tackle multinational tax avoidance that was begun in Brisbane several years ago is being continued," he told President Xi.
"I can assure you my government has already enacted and committed to further strong measures to ensure that, in this very transformed digital economy the benefits of which we all enjoy ... the people of our country and indeed the people of all countries should ensure that their governments are able to collect the taxes they need to provide the services their citizens deserve."
He said the summit, which begins this afternoon, should strive to ensure "all people understand the benefits of trade, open markets and innovation".
The two leaders have met in the Chinese city of Hangzhou ahead of the G20 summit (AAP)
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Malcolm Turnbull has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
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Free trade good for Australia: minister
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20160907152954
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Trade Minister Steve Ciobo has sought to quell the fears of some Australians who feel "alienated" by globalisation, amid a revival of protectionist attitudes around the world.
Mr Ciobo told ABC radio on Wednesday free trade had delivered Australia a standard of living that was the envy of the world, playing a major role in the nation's prosperity over the past 25 years.
The minister is in Europe laying the groundwork for free trade agreements with the European Union and Britain, once the latter wraps up its exit from the EU.
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Trade Minister Steve Ciobo has sought to quell protectionist fears as he lays the groundwork for free-trade agreements with the European Union and Britain.
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http://www.people.com/article/calvin-harris-ellie-goulding-taylor-swift-gq-awards
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Calvin Harris Hangs with Ellie Goulding at British GQ Awards : People.com
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20160909035027
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09/07/2016 AT 09:15 AM EDT
may have a new lady in his life,
Eiza González. But on Tuesday night, it was longtime friend
The "I Need Your Love" collaborators attended the
Men of the Year Awards in London Tuesday night, where Goulding presented Harris with the Patron Solo Artist of the Year Award.
Harris looked dapper in a sleek black three-piece suit and crisp white collared shirt – sans tie. Goulding, 29, stunned in a lilac, floral, short Marchesa number with silver strappy sandals.
Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding
The 32-year-old Scotsman's appearance came after PEOPLE confirmed that his ex-girlfriend
had split from new boyfriend
after just three months of dating.
Harris and the 26-year-old "Bad Blood" singer were an item for 15 months – having been
was revealed in early June. Nearly two weeks later, Swift was
, 35, on a Rhode Island beach.
In his acceptance speech for his big award Tuesday night from London's Tate Modern Museum, Harris addressed how his life has changed over the past decade – and how he's handled the media storm since his breakup from Swift.
"This is a big week for me because this week, 10 years ago, was the week that I left
in Clapham South – where I carried out such tasks as date-rotating sandwiches and moving the salmon," he revealed.
Harris continued: "I'd like to dedicate this to my manager Mark Gillespie for being a fantastic man. We started out at the same time. We've been through a lot and discovered a lot this year – whether it be touring or dealing with the endless amount of bulls--- written about people in 2016."
Goulding and Harris previously dated in 2013,
, though they have remained pals – pairing together on three songs so far.
"To call our next winner a superstar deejay barely hints at it," she said while introducing him. "He is the best deejay in the world. At 32, he's just getting started. He is my friend – I'm so very proud of him."
The two had a playful night at the Awards, documenting much of it on Snapchat. "We just had a massive fight at the
Awards, and we've fallen out," Harris joked at one point. "It's horrible, really. Awkward as f---."
"Not really!" Goulding said, laughing in the background.
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'I Need Your Love' collaborators Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding were side by side at the British GQ Awards Tuesday
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Slow progress on South China Sea issue: PM
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20160909161152
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has lamented the slow progress on resolving the South China Sea dispute.
Mr Turnbull told reporters at the ASEAN summit in Laos there was a "sense of cautious optimism" towards an agreement on a code of conduct.
"Territorial disputes should be resolved in accordance with international law, peacefully and by negotiation," he said, adding all countries should refrain from conduct that adds to tensions with their neighbours.
Mr Turnbull is about to head into bilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang where he expected the maritime dispute would be discussed.
There was a lot at stake over the issue because over the past 40 years there had been relative peace and harmony in the region and that had been the foundation of much prosperity.
"Everybody has a vested interest from the biggest countries to the smallest countries," he said.
"It calls for cool heads, calm disciplined communication and a measured response to these issues."
The South China Sea dispute involves overlapping claims between the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says there is a sense of cautious optimism about a code of conduct on the South China Sea.
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NSW public kept in dark on land sales
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20160909170712
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Millions of dollars worth of land has been sold off by the NSW government in closed-door deals that don't allow the public a say, according to a new report.
A scathing auditor-general's review found half of all Crown land sales and 97 per cent of leases between 2012 and 2015 were negotiated with just one party, with no public expression-of-interest process.
Minister for Lands Niall Blair said "there is no doubt that management of the more than 33 million hectares of Crown Lands in NSW needs to be improved, and brought into the 21st century" in a statement overnight.
The investigation by Auditor-General Margaret Crawford found the lands department complied with the law by publishing notices about land sales in its gazette and the local paper, but the public wasn't given a consistent chance to have a say.
"The Department routinely negotiates directly with a selected party for the sale or lease of Crown land rather than using an open, competitive process," said the report, released on Thursday.
"The commencement of a direct negotiation is not announced publicly, so the public is not aware of the transaction until after the decision has been made."
From 2012-2015 almost $22 million worth of land was sold and 27 high-value leases were approved - each worth $52,000 per year on average.
One secret deal involved the Paddington Bowling Club, which was sold to a developer on a 50-year commercial lease after direct negotiations with a senior government official.
A review sparked by community concerns later found the negotiations were inappropriate and the government withdrew its consent for the site to be turned into a for-profit childcare centre.
The auditor-general recommended the Department of Industry overhaul procedures to improve oversight and transparency.
Opposition spokesman for lands, Mick Veitch, said the community was being left in the dark by a government "veil of secrecy".
"This is a scathing report and (Premier) Mike Baird and (Deputy Premier) Troy Grant should sit up and take notice that the community can no longer be shut out of the process," he said in a statement.
Mr Blair said his department accepted all the recommendations and findings of the auditor-general, and would implement operational improvements as part of its response.
"Labor has no credibility on the management of Crown Lands in NSW. The previous Labor Government left behind a litany of examples of dodgy back-door deals, secrecy and maladministration of Crown Lands in NSW, and a former Labor Minister for Lands was found by ICAC to have engaged in corrupt conduct," Mr Blair said in a statement.
A new Crown Lands Management Bill 2016 is being drafted, and is due to be introduced into the NSW Parliament before the end of the year.
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State-owned land in NSW is being sold and leased in secret deals without adequate public consultation, an auditor-general's report has confirmed.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/09/12/13/38/backpacker-accused-in-brisbane-facility
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Backpacker accused in Brisbane facility
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20160913172131
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Accused backpacker murderer Smail Ayad has been moved from Townsville to a secure Brisbane mental health facility.
The Frenchman is accused of killing British backpackers Mia Ayliffe-Chung and Tom Jackson at a north Queensland hostel in August.
Mr Jackson died almost a week after being stabbed multiple times at a hostel at Home Hill after he came to the aid of Ms Ayliffe-Chung.
Ayad's aggressive behaviour and mental health has been of concern since his arrest, when he allegedly assaulted a dozen police officers, including biting one on the leg.
He did not appear in Townsville Court on August 26 when the charges were first mentioned because of security concerns.
While in custody, the 29-year-old has reportedly "baited guards", been ordered to lie face down before guards enter his cell, and told psychologists he wants to die.
News Corp reported Ayad was moved from Townsville to Brisbane under heavy guard on a charter flight late last week.
His matter is set to be mentioned again at Townsville Magistrates Court on October 28.
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A Frenchman accused of a deadly knife attack in north Queensland has been moved to Brisbane but is still scheduled to appear at a Townsville court in October.
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http://www.thepostgame.com/peyton-manning-praises-crooked-stick-staff
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Peyton Manning Praises Crooked Stick Staff
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20160914153742
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Over the weekend, Crooked Stick Golf Club hosted the BMW Championship in suburban Indianapolis. Dustin Johnson won the third leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs by three strokes, playing 23-under for the weekend.
After the final putt, the golf world moved on from Crooked Stick. Well, everyone except for Peyton Manning.
Manning, a member of the club, played for the Indianapolis Colts from 1998-2011. He sent a letter to the Crooked Stick staff thanking them for their efforts in hosting the tournament. WISH-TV sports director Anthony Calhoun posted the note, printed on Crooked Stick letterhead.
#Peyton is the BEST! Read this letter he sent to the staff at Crooked Stick for their hard work on @BMWchamps wow!!! pic.twitter.com/QChEzanpdx
— Anthony Calhoun (@ACwishtv) September 12, 2016
Seeing the Sheriff shouting out "people behind the scenes" makes Jeff Saturday smile. And of course, the Papa John's and Budweiser plugs are loud subtleties.
For the record, Manning was in Denver for Thursday night's Broncos-Panthers game, in Bristol for Saturday night's Tennessee-Virginia Tech game and in Dallas for Sunday's Giants-Cowboys game. So no, he didn't see any golf in person, but the reigning Super Bowl champion still managed to thank the course for its hard work in his absence.
-- Follow Jeffrey Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband.
BMW Championship, Budweiser, crooked stick golf club, Denver Broncos, Dustin Johnson, FedEx Cup Playoffs, Football, Golf, Indiana, Indianapolis, Indianapolis Colts, NFL, Papa John's, Peyton Manning, PGA Tour
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Peyton Manning sent a letter to Crooked Stick to thank the staff for hosting the BMW Championship outside of Indianapolis.
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All the Nominees : People.com
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20160914165547
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09/13/2016 AT 10:30 AM EDT
this year belongs to you!
That's according to the CMT Artists of the Year list announced Tuesday morning.
The annual special, airing on CMT, honors artists who have dominated country radio and CMT's platforms, as well as ruled the charts and sold out arenas.
The artists on top this year will be celebrated at Nashville's Schermerhorn Symphony Center for the special premiering on CMT on Thursday, Oct. 20 at 9p.m. E.T. The celebration will include performances, surprise tributes and celebrity toasts.
Bryan now holds the distinction of being one of two artists (the other is
) with the most wins with five consecutive years (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), and joins fellow veterans Underwood (2010, 2012, 2016), Florida Georgia Line (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016), as well as first-time recipients Stapleton, who received a nod last year as breakthrough artist, and Thomas Rhett.
This year's breakthrough artist goes to
, who just scored her third No. 1 hit in a row with
and became the only female artist in country music history to hit the top spot with her first three consecutive singles from a debut album.
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Plus, which history-making newcomer will receive the breakthrough artist award
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Drink driver hits police car in Sydney
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20160914165839
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A 31-year-old man who crashed into a police car twice in Sydney's inner city has been charged with drink driving and drug possession.
The driver crashed into bollards when officers tried to pull him over in Surry Hills on Tuesday night, before he allegedly reversed into the police car.
The man, who hit the police car again before being arrested, allegedly returned a breath test of 0.071, while officers also found cannabis in his car, police said.
He remains in police custody and is due to face Central Local Court on Wednesday, charged with reckless driving, low-range drink driving and drug possession.
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A drunk driver is facing multiple charges after crashing into a police car twice in Sydney.
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Ben Rector on Possibility of Singing at JoJo Fletcher's Wedding : People.com
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20160915182349
|
09/14/2016 AT 05:15 PM EDT
Ben Rector's been busy traveling the country
over the last couple months, but even he can't escape
was unveiled on the finale of ABC's hit dating show,
revealed on a morning show "their song" was Rector's very own "When I'm with You."
"I watched all of JoJo's season," Rector – who admits the
franchise is a "guilty pleasure" for him – tells PEOPLE exclusively. "I was geeking out when somebody tweeted or texted me when they said that was their song!"
So would the "Brand New" singer make a special appearance at their wedding if they asked? "I probably would," he says. "I don't play a ton of weddings, but I think I probably would do that."
The singer-songwriter also took a day off from his busy tour schedule earlier this summer to film his fan-filled music video for "Brand New" at Six Flags.
"I don't get super excited about music videos where you gotta try to look super cool," he says of the low-key shoot. "I wanted to do something that sounded fun, and selfishly I got to ride rollercoasters. They let us in before the park opened."
Once the singer's tour wraps up in October, he plans to "slow down and be a person again," which includes spending time with his wife Hillary.
"It's been a couple crazy years for me, so I'm just looking forward to being home and normal and all of that," he says. "I'll be 30 in November, so I want to reassess where I am and what I want to write about [next]."
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"I don't play a ton of weddings, but I think I probably would do that," says the "Brand New" singer
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Debris in Tanzania confirmed from MH370
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20160916203116
|
Malaysia says a large piece of aircraft debris discovered on the island of Pemba, off the coast of Tanzania, in June, is from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370.
A search of more than two years has turned up few traces of the Boeing 777 aircraft that disappeared in March 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board, soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, bound for Beijing.
The debris, an outboard flap, will be examined further to see if it can yield any insight into the circumstances around the missing plane, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a statement.
Investigators have previously confirmed a piece of plane debris found on the French island of Reunion in July 2015 as being part of MH370. T
They are examining several other pieces of debris found in Mozambique, South Africa and Rodrigues Island, a territory of Mauritius.
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A piece of aircraft debris discovered on an island off the coast of Tanzania has been confirmed as belonging to the missing Malaysian Airlines jet MH370.
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Teen who wore Kap jersey to work on 'Wear A Football Jersey Day' sent home to change
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20160917004729
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Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press
In this Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, file photo, San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid (35) and quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams in Santa Clara, Calif. The dozen NFL players who have joined Kaepernick’s protest of social injustices by kneeling or raising a fist during the national anthem have faced vitriolic, sometimes racist reactions on social media and at least one has lost endorsements. None are deterred by the backlash. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
In this Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, file photo, San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid (35) and quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Los Angeles
Colin Kaepernick #7 and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the national anthem prior to playing the Los Angeles Rams in their NFL game at Levi's Stadium on September 12, 2016 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Colin Kaepernick #7 and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the national anthem prior to playing the Los Angeles Rams in their NFL game at Levi's Stadium on September 12, 2016 in
San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid (35) and quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams in Santa Clara, Calif., Monday, Sept. 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid (35) and quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams in Santa Clara, Calif., Monday, Sept. 12,
Colin Kaepernick #7 and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the national anthem prior to playing the Los Angeles Rams in their NFL game at Levi's Stadium on September 12, 2016 in Santa Clara, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
Colin Kaepernick #7 and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the national anthem prior to playing the Los Angeles Rams in their NFL game at Levi's Stadium on September 12, 2016 in
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick against Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick against Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick walks off the field after 28-0 win over Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick walks off the field after 28-0 win over Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick kneels during National Anthem before playing Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick kneels during National Anthem before playing Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick leaves the field after 28-0 win over Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick leaves the field after 28-0 win over Los Angeles Rams during NFL game at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Monday, September 12, 2016.
Teen who wore Kap jersey to work on 'Wear A Football Jersey Day' sent home to change
Elijah Scott, a 16-year-old working at a Kroger grocery store in Springfield, Ohio, threw on his Colin Kaepernick 49ers jersey Sunday before he headed out to work. His store was having a special Sunday "Wear a Football Jersey Day" for its employees to celebrate the start of the season.
However, when Scott's lunch break came around, he was pulled aside and asked to go home and change, according to the New York Daily News. A customer that visited Kroger that day was offended by Scott's "disrespectful" jersey and told the store manager that he "wasn't going to shop there again" if Scott kept wearing it.
When Scott's mother Diane called Kroger's manager to find out what happened, she found the store "doubling down" on their stance. "It was September 11th," she recalled the manager saying, "and Elijah was on company time and would not be allowed to disrespect customers."
For the last few weeks, 49ers quarterback Kaepernick has refused to stand for the National Anthem in an act of protest.
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick said to media after a pre-season game in late August. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."
Kaepernick's stance has turned into a topic of heated debate, prompting football players (both current and former), politicians, media personalities, and the general public to take sides.
Kroger's corporate office says they have since addressed the issue, giving SFGATE the following statement:
We are proud and privileged to employ a workforce and to serve a customer base as diverse as America. We are aware of this situation and have apologized to Elijah and his mother. Diversity, inclusion and respect are among our company's core values and ones we strive to live up to every day.
Alyssa Pereira is a staff writer for SFGATE. Follow her here on Twitter.
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Elijah Scott, a 16-year-old Ohio teen working at a Kroger grocery store in Springfield, Ohio, threw on his new Colin Kaepernick 49ers jersey last Sunday before he headed out to work.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/09/16/09/12/gold-coast-beaches-high-risk-for-tourists
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Gold Coast beaches high risk for tourists
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20160917140745
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Gold Coast surf lifesavers will trial night vision surveillance cameras and increase patrols after two of its beaches were found to be among the state's most dangerous.
Figures released by Surf Life Saving Queensland (SLSQ) identified Surfers Paradise as Queensland's most fatal beach, with eight confirmed drownings in the past decade.
The Southport Spit was also listed as one of six high-risk beaches in Queensland.
SLSQ said there would be a return of dusk patrols and livesavers would engage with beachgoers to educate them about surf safety and conditions.
"Moving forward we'll continue to investigate and explore all options when it comes to saving lives, but at the same time, we're pleading will all beachgoers to help us out as well," SLSQ's George Hill said.
There were 11 drownings at Queensland beaches last year. All of the drownings occurred at either unpatrolled locations or outside designated patrol times.
More than 18 million people visited a patrolled beach in 2015/16, up from 15.75 million and 13.5 million in the previous two years.
* Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast
* Green Island, North Queensland
* Southport Spit, Gold Coast
* Discovery Beach to Point Arkwright, Sunshine Coast
* Fraser Island (ocean side)
* Noosa River to Rainbow Beach, Sunshine Coast
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Gold Coast lifesavers will trial new equipment and services after revelations two of its beaches are among Queensland's most dangerous.
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Penthouse Pet in the big house until 2019
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20160917141939
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A former Penthouse Pet will be in the "big house" until at least 2019 after being sentenced for her role in an ice-smuggling racket.
Simone Farrow, 41, was sentenced to at least six-and-a-half years in jail for helping to bring the drug ice into Australia concealed in bath products.
A Sydney District Court judge ruled the former model played a principal role in the delivery of 740g of pure methamphetamine in packages from the US before her arrest in October 2009.
With time served, Farrow will be eligible for parole in February 2019.
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A former Penthouse Pet has been sentenced to at least six-and-a-half years in jail for her role in an ice-smuggling racket.
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Wells Fargo hearing before Elizabeth Warren Tuesday -- what to know
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20160920130906
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Beleaguered Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf is expected to get the “what did you know and when did you know it” treatment Tuesday when he appears before a US Senate committee tasked with investigating widespread consumer fraud at his company.
The issue? Thousands of Wells Fargo employees have been surreptitiously signing customers up for new accounts — without bothering to get the customers’ permission.
Details have been leaking out for years but last week the company was hit with a wrist-slapping $185 million fine and an embarrassing report showing how strangely counterproductive the whole operation was. It never helped the company make money; it just helped employees meet misguided sales targets.
Stumpf himself may stay quiet at Tuesday’s hearing — given the risk of incriminating himself in the ongoing criminal probe. But the senators will insist on being heard, not least among them Elizabeth Warren, the wolf of Wall Street regulation who is already taking aim at the big bonuses executives earned as their employees cheated customers.
Bankers at local branches were encouraged to focus their salesmanship on existing customers, getting them to sign up for additional Wells Fargo products. And that’s exactly what they did.
Only, sometimes they opened those new accounts without the customers’ knowledge or permission.
It’s a perverse case of “you get what you ask for.” If you press employees with unreasonable targets — while promising bonuses or threatening layoffs — some of them will cross lines in order to hit those goals.
The city of Los Angeles put it this way when they filed a complaint in 2015: “Wells Fargo imposes unrealistic sales quotas on its employees, and has adopted policies that have, predictably and naturally, driven its bankers to engage in fraudulent behavior to meet those unreachable goals.”
You could write this behavior off as the work of a few bad apples, except this was a big orchard. Over 5,000 employees have been fired for similar behavior since 2011, apparently all across the country.
It’s not what you think. This isn’t about bilking customers to boost profits. It couldn’t be, because fraud at this level isn’t profitable. We’re talking about teeny sums of money.
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the unauthorized accounts and credit cards brought in about 2.5 million in fees, which amounts to .003 percent of Wells Fargo’s annual revenue.
That shouldn’t be surprising. When people have accounts that they don’t really need — or even know about — they tend not to put much money in them.
It was all about personal incentives, rather than the company’s bottom line. Retail bankers needed to create fraudulent accounts in order to meet goals and keep their jobs. But the same kind of logic applies further up the ladder. When employees are hitting their tough targets, the executives above them are often rewarded with big bonuses. In this climate, who has an incentive to check for fraud?
Particular attention has been focused on Carrie Tolstedt, the long-time Wells Fargo executive who oversaw the community banking division where all the illegal activity occurred. Tolstedt allegedly earned $20 million in bonuses between 2010 and 2015. Now, Senator Warren and several of her colleagues are arguing that those bonuses are ill-gotten and should be clawed back.
Don’t expect damning revelations during Tuesday’s hearings. Stumpf should be well-prepared, tutored by his lawyers on how to answer and when to evade.
And while the committee will also hear from investigators, they too have reasons for reserve. In particular, they don’t want to interfere with ongoing criminal probesthat have the best shot at meting out meaingful penalties — higher fines or even jail time.
But so what if nothing new comes out Tuesday? That’s not what committee hearings are for. They’re about drawing attention to a key issue, embarrassing bad actors, and letting politicians advance their priorities.
If nothing else, by the time Tuesday is done, there’s likely to be some viral video of Elizabeth Warren excoriating a big banker for bad behavior.
Whatever the sins of Wells Fargo, the real issue is broader. Why do we keep ending up here, with maligned financial executives sitting tight-lipped before railing politicians?
Whether it’s the big-time risk-takers who brought down the US economy in 2007, those who were found manipulating interest rates, or those caught laundering money, there always seems to be more outrage than consequence.
Tuesday’s hearing won’t just be about Wells Fargo and John Stumpf. It’ll be about all these cases, all the other executives who briefly took the hot seat but ultimately slipped comfortably away.
If you want to understand the fire and passion likely to erupt Tuesday, that’s where you have to look. Beyond the fraud at Wells Fargo to the abiding question of whether executives will ever be held accountable for the excesses and misdeeds of their farflung businesses.
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The CEO of Wells Fargo will face senators, including Elizabeth Warren, amidst an investigation about widespread fraud at the bank.
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Couple found guilty of setting ex on fire
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An Adelaide couple has been found guilty of dousing the woman's ex-boyfriend and another man in petrol and setting them alight.
A District Court jury on Tuesday unanimously found Kerry Leanne Ross and Ben Corey Woodhardt guilty of burning the two men while they were in a car at suburban Davoren Park in 2013.
Ross and Woodhardt, both 29, were each charged with one count of aggravated causing serious harm and one count of aggravated causing harm.
They had denied the allegations and will return to court in October for sentencing submissions.
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An Adelaide couple has been found guilty of intentionally burning the woman's former boyfriend and another man in 2013.
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Nominee Shares Her Sick-Days Lessons with PEOPLE : People.com
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By Sandra Sobieraj Westfall and Lindsay Kimble
09/21/2016 AT 06:00 AM EDT
Three sick days for her recent
"I'm not great at taking it easy," the Democratic presidential nominee tells PEOPLE. "I bounce off the walls a little bit."
when she nearly fainted at the National September 11 Memorial in New York City earlier this month.
After just three days of rest,
, 68, was back on the campaign trail last week.
In an email followup to her PEOPLE interview with running mate
for the new issue on newsstands this week, Clinton said, "I will admit it was nice to spend some time hanging out with our dogs and binge-watching a little TV."
Tim Kaine and Hillary Clinton
She says she also got to catch up on her debate-prep briefing materials – and get a little reflective about taking time to take care of herself. "Most of all, it really brought home for me how lucky I am."
Michael Strahan on the cover of PEOPLE
"When I'm feeling under the weather, I can take a few days off," she explains. "A lot of people can't – they go to work sick, or lose a paycheck. Getting sick is devastating for some families, but a bump in the road for others. That's not right."
The former Secretary of State adds, "Something as fundamental as affordable health care or financial security – that shouldn't come down to luck. They should be within reach for every family in America. That's why I got into this race, and that's what I'll fight for as president."
The takeaway wasn't exactly the more practical lesson Clinton's husband had hoped she would learn from her brief health scare.
would want me to say that it has taught me to drink more water," she says. "Always a good thing to do!"
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Hillary Clinton tells PEOPLE she's grateful that she was able to "take a few days off" – because "a lot of people can't" afford to do so
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Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes Not Married : People.com
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20160922131232
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Eva Mendes and Ryan Gosling
09/21/2016 AT 04:25 PM EDT
No, they haven't made their crazy, stupid, love official.
are not married, PEOPLE confirms.
Sources tell PEOPLE that reports that the notoriously private couple tied the knot earlier this year are untrue.
for five years. The stars first met on the set of the 2012 drama
, in which they played parents.
Mendes, 42, and Gosling, 35, are now parents, themselves, to two daughters. They welcomed
in April, joining big sister
, who celebrated her second birthday this month.
"It sounds so clichéd, but I never knew that life could be this fun and this great," Gosling told PEOPLE of the joys of fatherhood in a
Gosling returns to the big screen in
, due out in December.
The musical drama, which costars
, just nabbed the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival's People's Choice Award.
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Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes, who share two daughters, did not wed in a secret wedding earlier this year
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http://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/The-unlikely-alliance-Colin-Kaepernick-and-the-9240549.php
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The unlikely alliance: Colin Kaepernick and the Seahawks
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20160922233844
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Photo: Elaine Thompson, Associated Press
Colin Kaepernick is dropped for a sack in a loss to the Seahawks in December 2014.
Colin Kaepernick is dropped for a sack in a loss to the Seahawks in December 2014.
San Francisco 49ers strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) tackles Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin (89) during the first half of an NFL football game in Santa Clara, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
San Francisco 49ers strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) tackles Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin (89) during the first half of an NFL football game in Santa Clara, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 22, 2015. (AP
SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 15: Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers looks on as Richard Sherman #25 of the Seattle Seahawks celebrates a saftey during their game at Qwest Field on September 15, 2013 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)
SEATTLE, WA - SEPTEMBER 15: Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers looks on as Richard Sherman #25 of the Seattle Seahawks celebrates a saftey during their game at Qwest Field on September 15, 2013 in
San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick,(7) and Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, (3) greet each other after the game as the 49ers lost to the Seattle Seahawks 23-17 in the NFC Championship game at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington on Sunday Jan. 19, 2014.
San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick,(7) and Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson, (3) greet each other after the game as the 49ers lost to the Seattle Seahawks 23-17 in the NFC Championship game at
49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, (7) on a 58 yard run in the second quarter, as the San Francisco 49ers take on the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship game at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington on Sunday Jan. 19, 2014.
49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, (7) on a 58 yard run in the second quarter, as the San Francisco 49ers take on the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship game at CenturyLink Field in Seattle, Washington
Colin Kaepernick on the cover of Time magazine.
Colin Kaepernick on the cover of Time magazine.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, left and safety Eric Reid, right, kneel during the playing of the national anthem on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016 at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. (Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer/TNS)
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, left and safety Eric Reid, right, kneel during the playing of the national anthem on Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016 at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C. (Jeff
FILE - Int his Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, file photo, San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid (35) and quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams in Santa Clara, Calif. The dozen NFL players who have joined Kaepernick�s protest of social injustices by kneeling or raising a fist during the national anthem have faced vitriolic, sometimes racist reactions on social media and at least one has lost endorsements. None are deterred by the backlash. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
FILE - Int his Monday, Sept. 12, 2016, file photo, San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid (35) and quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Los
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick warms up before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Mike McCarn)
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick warms up before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Mike McCarn)
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Mike McCarn)
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Mike
A San Francisco 49ers fan holds up a Colin Kaepernick jersey in the first half of an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Bob Leverone)
A San Francisco 49ers fan holds up a Colin Kaepernick jersey in the first half of an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Bob Leverone)
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick takes a selfie with fans before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Bob Leverone)
San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick takes a selfie with fans before an NFL football game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Sept. 18, 2016. (AP Photo/Bob Leverone)
The unlikely alliance: Colin Kaepernick and the Seahawks
Once an object of their derision, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has served as an inspiration to the rival Seattle Seahawks this season.
Six days after Kaepernick’s national-anthem protest became public, Seattle cornerback Jeremy Lane and 49ers safety Eric Reid became the first NFL players to join him in not standing for the national anthem. Ten days later, the Seahawks locked arms before their season opener. It was a gesture of unity that wouldn’t have happened without Kaepernick’s decision to not stand during the anthem.
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t for him bringing it to light,” Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin said in advance of the 49ers’ visit to Seattle on Sunday. “He stood on the table, and shouted and got everybody’s attention. And now we have to work on the follow through collectively.”
Baldwin, who graduated from Stanford, said he’s had “extensive conversations” with Kaepernick over the past month. Baldwin, cornerback Richard Sherman and defensive tackle Michael Bennett were among a group of more than 70 players that communicated before Week 1 via a texting app about their plans for the national anthem.
This week, both Sherman and Baldwin have spoken passionately to the Seattle media in the aftermath of police shootings of black men in Tulsa, Okla., and Charlotte, N.C.
Baldwin called for the 50 state attorney generals to review police training policies to eliminate “militaristic cultures.” Sherman, who also graduated from Stanford, said the police shootings can produce hopelessness among young black children and, again, supported Kaepernick: “When a guy takes a knee, you can ignore it. You can say he’s not being patriotic. He’s not honoring the flag. I’m doing none of those things. I’m saying it, straight up, this is wrong and we need to do something.”
As Reid said Thursday, the societal issues being discussed are far weightier than football, but it might surprise some that Kaepernick has formed an alliance with players recently viewed as his chief antagonists.
Sherman, of course, gave Kaepernick the choke sign during the 2013 NFC Championship Game after he tipped a potential game-winning pass intended for Michael Crabtree that resulted in an interception. Sherman later mocked Kaepernick, who also failed to connect with Crabtree at the end of a loss in Super Bowl XLVII: “You would think he would learn,” Sherman said.
For his part, Bennett repeatedly kissed his bicep in celebration - a gesture known as “Kaepernicking” -- during a 3.5-sack performance in a 20-3 win over the 49ers in October.
Those moments have been part of a rivalry that’s been regarded as among the NFL’s most intense, although the 49ers’ 14-20 record since 2013 has removed some ferocity. Still, Reid said he viewed many of the Seahawks as kindred spirits even at the height of their twice-annual NFC West slugfests.
“It’s funny, on the field, there really is a strong distaste for each other,” Reid said. “Whenever I line up against the Seahawks, the only game I can compare it to is playing Alabama in college (at LSU). I really don’t like those guys. But off the field, I mean, it’s completely different. They might as well be my teammates off the field.
“I think it’s great that we can categorize our life. When it comes to football, yeah, we can not like each other very much. But when it comes to the issues outside of football, we can work together.”
Baldwin said his discussions with Kaepernick have centered on just that: Figuring out the appropriate “next step” to take in their quest to create change. It was clear Baldwin felt Kaepernick is equipped to serve as a leader in a movement that continues to gain momentum.
“He’s a very intellectual human being,” Baldwin said. “He’s very intelligent. Very thoughtful. Very passionate, obviously. I didn’t know him as a person, I only knew him as a football player. Obviously, getting to speak to him and getting to know him a little bit more, you can tell that he’s got a lot of depth to him.”
Because of Kaepernick’s stance, it’s likely more than half the 92 players in uniform at CenturyLink Field on Sunday will adopt a unique stance during the national anthem. The Seahawks will join arms. And at least six members of the 49ers are expected to kneel or raise a fist.
After kickoff, it’s quite possible Kaepernick, the 49ers’ backup quarterback, won’t play, but this is clear: He’s already had an impact on the opponent.
“We’re already focused on our follow through and what we’re going to do in our communities here in Seattle,” Baldwin said. “We’re trying to get as much knowledge as we can and try and see how impactful we can be in our own communities.”
Briefly: RT Anthony Davis (concussion) missed his third straight practice. … CB Keith Reaser and G Andrew Tiller were full participants after they were limited Wednesday.
Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @Eric_Branch
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Once an object of their derision, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has served as an inspiration to the rival Seattle Seahawks this season. Six days after Kaepernick’s national-anthem protest became public, Seattle cornerback Jeremy Lane and 49ers safety Eric Reid became the first NFL players to join him in not standing for the national anthem. Ten days later, the Seahawks locked arms before their season opener. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t for him bringing it to light,” Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin said in advance of the 49ers’ visit to Seattle on Sunday. Baldwin, cornerback Richard Sherman and defensive tackle Michael Bennett were among a group of more than 70 players that communicated before Week 1 via a texting app about their plans for the national anthem. Baldwin called for the 50 state attorney generals to review police training policies to eliminate “militaristic cultures.” Sherman, who also graduated from Stanford, said the police shootings can produce hopelessness among young black children and, again, supported Kaepernick: When a guy takes a knee, you can ignore it. Sherman, of course, gave Kaepernick the choke sign during the 2013 NFC Championship Game after he tipped a potential game-winning pass intended for Michael Crabtree that resulted in an interception. [...] Reid said he viewed many of the Seahawks as kindred spirits even at the height of their twice-annual NFC West slugfests. Because of Kaepernick’s stance, it’s likely more than half the 92 players in uniform at CenturyLink Field on Sunday will adopt a unique stance during the national anthem. After kickoff, it’s quite possible Kaepernick, the 49ers’ backup quarterback, won’t play, but this is clear:
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http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/09/24/13/30/uk-ex-tv-star-runs-for-labour-in-cox-seat
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http://web.archive.org/web/20160925140602id_/http://www.9news.com.au/world/2016/09/24/13/30/uk-ex-tv-star-runs-for-labour-in-cox-seat
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UK ex-TV star runs for Labour in Cox seat
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20160925140602
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Former Coronation Street actress Tracy Brabin has promised to be a "loud, proud and strong Yorkshire voice" after she was selected as the Labour candidate for the by-election called following the death of her friend Jo Cox.
Brabin, who has appeared in just about every British TV soap during the last 20 years, is virtually guaranteed to be the next MP for Batley and Spen, in West Yorkshire, as all the other major parties have vowed not to contest the seat out of respect for Cox.
The actress and screenwriter was selected by around 300 party members on Friday night ahead of the only other shortlisted candidate, Jane Thomas, following hustings at a Batley school.
"This was a by-election none of us wanted, brought about by tragic circumstances," Brabin said.
"Jo Cox was a friend of mine. She was a wonderful person and an absolutely outstanding MP for the constituency which she, like me, was proud to have grown up in and call home.
"No one can replace Jo, but I promise that if you put your faith in me at this by-election, I will be a loud, proud and strong Yorkshire voice speaking up for everyone in Batley and Spen."
She said: "I want to reassure people who have voted for other parties in the past - parties which are not contesting this election - that if elected I will stand up for you just as much as I will for Labour voters.
"I am the only candidate in this election who can stand up for everyone, bringing our community together rather than dividing it."
Brabin was brought up in a council flat in the constituency and her mother owned a popular local cafe called Betty's.
She worked with Cox on her campaign to save the local library.
Ms Brabin played Tricia Armstrong in Coronation Street in the 1990s before appearing as Roxy Drake in EastEnders, and Carole in Emmerdale.
She has also written for shows including Family Affairs, Tracy Beaker and Hollyoaks.
The by-election, which will take place on October 20, was called following the death of Cox, who was 41 and had two young children when she was shot and stabbed to death on June 16.
Her killing shocked the country and provoked an outpouring of bewilderment and soul searching around the world.
The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and UKIP have said they will not field a candidate in the by-election but fringe parties Liberty GB and the English Democrats have said they will contest the seat. An independent candidate has also said he will stand.
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Former Coronation Street actress Tracy Brabin has been selected as the Labour candidate for the UK by-election following the death of Jo Cox.
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UK royal pics in hacked Pippa data: report
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20160925143403
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Pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge and her children are reportedly among 3000 images stolen from the duchess's sister Pippa Middleton by computer hackers.
The images, taken from an iCloud account, were offered to reporters by an anonymous seller via WhatsApp, The Daily Mail reports.
The paper said the images offered included some of the royal children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, as well as wedding dresses and parties, the seller wanting to sell in the US because of UK privacy laws.
The alleged theft comes two years after a host of celebrities, including Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence, fell victim to a hacker attack on the iCloud - which stores private photos from phones and computers online - images from which were later posted online.
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Images allegedly hacked from an iCloud account showing the Duchess of Cambridge and her children are being offered for sale to media, a UK newspaper reports.
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49ers RT Anthony Davis retires again
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20160927014027
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Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press
49ers RT Anthony Davis retires again
For the second time in 15 months, 49ers right tackle Anthony Davis has decided to leave the NFL and this time his retirement is presumably permanent.
The 49ers announced Davis’ retirement Monday afternoon in a 16-word statement.
Davis, 26, reportedly pondered retirement when he missed practice Sept. 10. Less than a week later, the team said he reported experiencing concussion symptoms after practice on Sept. 15 and Davis hadn’t practice since.
Shortly after the team announced his retirement, Davis said, via Twitter, “I just want my time and mind intact, when you lose em both, you can't buy em back.”
Davis left the league in June 2015, citing a desire to let his “brain and body” heal after an injury plagued 2014 season in which he sustained the first concussion of his football career. That concussion sidelined Davis for four games. He said at the time he was scared when he struggled with serious symptoms that left him in a “white fog” in the days after he was injured.
Given his history, Davis’ departure isn’t surprising, although his return to the 49ers was initially met with great optimism.
Davis reported to training camp at 332 pounds, about 35 pounds less than he weighed in 2014, and his teammates and head coach Chip Kelly hailed his dedication.
“I can’t say enough (about) his growth,” center Daniel Kilgore said in early August. “The year he’s been out of the game, just his attitude — the growth that he’s had has been unbelievable.”
Davis, however, was unable to unseat Trent Brown for his former starting spot at right tackle during training camp. Kelly said Davis was asked to move to right guard, a position he hadn’t played since his freshman year at Rutgers in 2007, and he quickly earned the starting spot at the new position.
But Davis was no longer the starter after he missed practice two days before the season opener against the Rams in which he was set to face All-Pro defensive tackle Aaron Donald.. Both Kelly and Davis said he missed practice because of a “miscommunication” and his move from the starting lineup was never explained.
On Sept. 14, Davis, whose primary role became backup right tackle, declined to offer a direct answer when he asked if he wanted to stay at guard. He smiled when asked if he wanted to clear anything up.
“No,” he said. “Just leave it. Let it fester.”
Starting left guard Zane Beadles served ass the team’s emergency tackle the past two weeks when Davis was sidelined. Rookie tackle John Theus, a fifth-round pick, has been inactive for the first three games.
Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @Eric_Branch
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For the second time in 15 months, 49ers right tackle Anthony Davis has decided to leave the NFL and this time his retirement is presumably permanent. Davis left the league in June 2015, citing a desire to let his “brain and body” heal after an injury plagued 2014 season in which he sustained the first concussion of his football career. Davis, however, was unable to unseat Trent Brown for his former starting spot at right tackle during training camp. Kelly said Davis was asked to move to right guard, a position he hadn’t played since his freshman year at Rutgers in 2007, and he quickly earned the starting spot at the new position. [...] Davis was no longer the starter after he missed practice two days before the season opener against the Rams in which he was set to face All-Pro defensive tackle Aaron Donald.. On Sept. 14, Davis, whose primary role became backup right tackle, declined to offer a direct answer when he asked if he wanted to stay at guard. Rookie tackle John Theus, a fifth-round pick, has been inactive for the first three games.
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http://www.foxsports.com/arizona/story/arizona-state-sun-devils-focus-on-eliminating-mistakes-vs-ucla-bruins-100115
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ASU focused on eliminating mistakes vs. UCLA
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TEMPE, Ariz. -- Among the many things plaguing ASU football on its path to a 2-2 start, the self-made errors â most notably ball-control issues â are what's stood out the most.
Through four games, the Sun Devils have lost seven fumbles, putting them at 125th in the FBS. Only Florida Atlantic has lost more, with nine. ASU coach Todd Graham has preached ball security, but he still can't put a finger on why it's been such an issue.
"The No. 1 thing we've got to do is come out of this game with 100 percent ball security," Graham said after practice Thursday. "We've got to take care of the football like we always have."
Graham's not wrong in noticing this has been uncharacteristic of his teams at ASU. Last season, the Sun Devils only lost four fumbles all year. In 2013, the Sun Devils lost six. They've already exceeded both those numbers in just a third of the games.
RESPONSE TO BLOWOUT: Graham and quarterback Mike Bercovici stressed that the team's focus in practice this week has been themselves.
"From the second we entered the building Tuesday morning, I think you can tell we have leaders and it's showing," the redshirt senior quarterback said. "It's been fun. That's kind of been the motto this week â to have fun."
After a 42-14 whooping, it could have been difficult for ASU to stay positive, especially after Bercovici looked downtrodden at his Monday news conference. But the message has been to keep an upbeat attitude and that the season's not over yet.
INJURY UPDATE: After playing in his first game of the season against USC, sophomore running back Kalen Ballage will continue to work his way back into the rotation Saturday against UCLA.
Returning from mononucleosis, Ballage played every special teams snap and carried the ball nine times for 33 yards.
"He had a hard time last week," Graham said. "Coming off that type of illness, that's not easy â he wasn't able to do anything for three weeks."
Entering the season, the plan was for Ballage to provide pass-rush help at Devilbacker. However, he's not yet at the point in his conditioning where he can play both ways. Any snaps Ballage gets against UCLA will come on offense and special teams.
While Ballage is not yet ready to take on a full workload, the emergence of redshirt freshman Ismael Murphy-Richardson has provided Graham with another option at Devilbacker.
"He's very talented," Graham said. "We have to continue to polish the raw off him. The only thing keeping him off the field is him and his development. But he has developed, and that's why you see him playing more.
"I think Ismael can handle the pass-rushing deal for us."
Murphy-Richardson didn't play Week 1 against Texas A&M but has seen the field every game since. He's recorded three total tackles this season, including one last week.
With Ballage continuing to work his way back, ASU should be at close to full strength on Saturday.
Cornerback Lloyd Carrington had been limited in practice all week, but Graham said he will play. Safety Armand Perry progressed off crutches and into a walking boot this week, but he will not play for the second straight week after he injured his left ankle against Cal Poly.
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Among the many things plaguing ASU football on its path to a 2-2 start, the self-made errors are what's stood out the most.
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http://www.people.com/article/drew-barrymore-will-kopelman-divorce-praises-father-in-law
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Drew Barrymore Says Ex Father-In-Law Arie Kopelman is the 'Ultimate Grandparent' : People.com
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20160929144520
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09/27/2016 AT 08:45 PM EDT
It was an unconventional family affair for
at New York Advertising Week on Tuesday.
Speaking at a panel about building online brands for companies, the actress was joined by her ex-husband
's father Arie as well as his brother-in-law, Harry Kargman.
And the three didn't let
get in the way of their family bond.
After Arie made a joke about not receiving royalty checks for helping Barrymore come up with the packaging details for her cosmetic company Flower Beauty, the actress was quick with a response.
"I gave you two granddaughters," Barrymore said to a laughing crowd. "And they love their poppy."
And after Kargman pointed out that he gave him three grandchildren with his daughter actress
, Berrymore admitted that Arie was quite the doting grandfather.
"He's the grandfather of all grandfathers," Barrymore lovingly told the crowd at the Time Center Stage on Tuesday afternoon. "He always says there's nothing overrated about being a grandparent and he is the ultimate grandparent."
But Arie wasn't about to let his former daughter-in-law off that easily.
"And you know the old joke, why are grandparents and grandchildren so close? They have a common enemy," the vice-chairman of Chanel quickly said before laughingly adding that he was "just kidding."
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Drew Barrymore isn't letting her recent divorce get in the way of her relationship with father-in-law Arie Kopelman
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2017 Subaru Outback Review: A Cult Leader With All-Wheel Drive
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20160930040941
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THERE ARE THOSE among you who would be happy if I reviewed the Subaru Outback every week. For you, there are no other cars to consider, no competitive set. Compared to Subaru loyalists, Harley-Davidson customers are fair-weather friends.
Subaru has the second-highest owner loyalty among major automakers in the U.S., after Ferrari. That is so sad! But anyway, Subaru, owned by Fuji Heavy Industries , is on fire. The company’s U.S. month-to-month sales have increased for seven years, practically the entire Obama administration. Year-over sales have were in double digits for four years ending in 2015 (582,625 units).
Subaru has nearly doubled capacity at its Lafayette, Ind., campus, but it’s like trying to catch a runaway kite.
The Outback, a midsize, all-wheel-drive crossover, is the company’s granola-y icon, of course. Or maybe its heroin. At one point this year the national supply of Outbacks dwindled to nearly nothing, a seven-day supply. “I’ve only got one Outback on the lot, and it’s sold,” a Colorado Subaru dealer pleaded with managers at a recent car show. “You’ve got to get me more cars!”
What is the laughing gas in Subaru owners’ balloon? How has this audience, this pecuniary relationship between buyer and bought, morphed into a tribe? Subaru does have a big-tent message, including a long-term commitment to the LGBT community. OK, that accounts for a certain percentage of buyers. But who are all these other people?
Subaru’s sales neatly track the rise of crossovers and the Outback gets credit for being the ur-crossover.
I go round and round on this. One year, I feel nearly smothered by the sameness, the adequacy of mass-market cars. I find my gall rising at every marketing message that says this car or that rises above commodity status. See past the code. Take the blue pill, Neo. They’re all the same!
Then after being thoroughly convinced it’s all finely curated horse manure, I start to think: No, it really is about product. It’s the marketing that’s all the same. The machinery begs to be appreciated on its own terms, its unique courtesies and capacities, and by its own value.
I have spent long minutes contemplating these mysteries from inside the 2017 Subaru Outback 2.5i Premium ($32,160, as tested). The Outback comes in six trim levels: four with the 2.5-liter flat four engine; and two with the 3.6-liter flat-six.
As a refreshing change for me, our tester was not pride of the fleet, but the 2.5i Premium, with the smaller engine (175 hp, 174 lb-ft of torque). That allowed me to more fully appreciate what you might call the Outback’s background level of accommodation.
So, for instance, the ignition switch was a conventional affair with key and key lock—no keyless entry and push-button starting with the key fob in the driver’s pocket. That’s included with the next trim level up. I wonder if some small percentage of Subaru buyers seeks them out because they prefer the old-style keys? I regularly get letters from such people snapped out on typewriters.
No leather seats, but a really nice combo of premium-feeling fabrics. No wood or plasti-wood trim; instead, our Outback’s innards were ringed with metallic trim pieces like finely knurled aluminum. The armrest padding is thick. The dense coated urethane of dash and doors was soft to the touch.
One of the mysteries of the Outback’s apotheosis is that, well, sure it’s a good car, but a lot of cars are good. A key has to be the steadiness in the color and trim department, the interior design and materials. The Outback’s cabin décor is restrained in line, almost Vulcan, but it does splurge on materials. The high-gloss fascia around the central display is very nice. The painted metallic climate controls and switches, also very cut-above. Stitched-leather wheel, OK. Ten-way power adjustable driver’s seat, with seat heating elements in the bottom and back cushion.
And where Subaru has gotten it wrong before, the company makes amends. It practically took an act of Congress to get two USB ports in the Outback’s cabin. Now, there they are, up front, with an aux jack too.
You can get USB ports from anybody, but you can’t get Subaru’s clever, durable approach to all-wheel drive traction. There are other vehicles powered by boxer engines and all-wheel drive, but they are named Porsche. Subaru’s embrace of horizontally opposed engines means, among other things, a lower center of gravity to compensate for the raised suspension and ground clearance (8.7 inches). That never gets old.
Of course, the company’s boxer engines used to leak oil through the head gaskets and burn gas like crazy. But the 2.5-liter engine, mated to the CVT, gets excellent on-paper mileage: 32 mpg on the highway and a whopping 25 mpg in the city. I saw a rock steady 29 mpg in interstate traffic.
The car’s pick-up from a stoplight is pretty all right, certainly brisk enough to nip past slower-moving urban traffic. Even though it’s straining mightily through the CVT gearbox, the naturally aspirated flat-four doesn’t sound it. The engine compartment is swaddled in soundproofing materials and hood sealing.
It’s got to be the lack of fussiness, the sense of purpose that the Outback has. This is a life-moving machine, complete with roof rails and tie downs. It does what it does, and no more, a hero of the reasonable.
Who would have guessed there were so many reasonable people?
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This all-wheel-drive crossover is Subaru’s granola-y icon. But what makes legions of drivers so devoted to the Outback?
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Murder charges over Sydney woman's death
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20160930172830
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A 42-year-old man has been charged over the murder of a woman following a domestic incident at a Sydney home.
Police discovered the 35-year-old woman's body at a Potts Point residence, in the city's eastern suburbs, when they followed up on a call about concerns for her welfare on Thursday morning.
It's alleged she suffered multiple stab wounds.
The woman's father reportedly called police from overseas after the 41-year-old man had contacted him.
"It is alleged that the son-in-law told him certain things, which brought the concern from the father to speak with police today," Superintendent Michael Fitzgerald told reporters.
Police believe the Iranian couple had been living in Australia on bridging visas for the past four years.
The man was refused bail and is set to face Central Local Court on Friday charged with murder.
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Police are investigating after a woman's body was found in a Potts Point home early on Thursday morning.
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Two dead in separate Qld crashes
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20161002125742
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A pedestrian and a motorcyclist are dead after being struck by cars in two separate crashes in Queensland.
A man aged in his mid-20s was hit by a car on the Sunshine Coast Motorway near Maroochydore, north of Brisbane, shortly before 4.30am on Saturday.
He died at the scene.
An hour later a 42-year-old rider was fatally injured after a car lost control in Hay Point, south of Mackay, and veered onto the wrong side of the road into the oncoming bike.
He was taken to Mackay Bay Hospital but died a short time later.
Meanwhile, a 39-year-old man is undergoing surgery at a Brisbane hospital for extensive head and arm injuries after he was struck by a ute in Bundaberg on Friday night.
The man had just crossed Walker St with a 40-year-old woman when he went back onto the road for an unknown reason and was hit by the vehicle.
He remains in a serious but stable condition.
The woman was treated for shock while the 28-year-old driver was not physically injured.
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A man has died after being struck by a car on the Sunshine Coast Motorway in Queensland.
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Hugh Hefner Squashes Rumors That He's 'Sick' - and Enjoys Movie Night with Wife Crystal!
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20161002183831
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09/30/2016 AT 09:55 PM EDT
is setting the record straight on his health.
magazine founder took to Twitter Friday evening after reports swirled earlier in the day that the businessman was not doing well.
"I wish the tabloids had informed me a little earlier in the week that I'm sick. I might have cancelled my weekend plans," Hefner, 90, quipped in a tweet.
I wish the tabloids had informed me a little earlier in the week that Iâm sick. I might have cancelled my weekend plans.
A rep for the former
reality star also confirmed to PEOPLE that Hefner is "fine."
And since the Playboy Enterprises founder is not under the weather, he kicked off his weekend with a movie night and his bride,
"Tonight's Mansion movie is the classic western, 'Shane,' " he tweeted in addition to a photo of him and the 30-year-old Playmate.
Tonight's Mansion movie is the classic western, "Shane." pic.twitter.com/CJsidHQoPQ
"I do" to Crystal at the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills. Although the
in June for $200 million, Hefner continues to live on the estate.
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"I wish the tabloids had informed me a little earlier in the week that I'm sick," Hefner quipped
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Abs Exercise That Also Makes Your Arms Bigger
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20161005191339
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The farmer's walk is a great exercise for building up your core strength, shoulder stability and grip. But if you hold the weight in a goblet position, you’ll also pack muscle onto your arms.
"This is one of my favorite farmer's walk variations," says Men's Health Fitness Director BJ Gaddour, C.S.C.S., who demonstrates the goblet carry in the video above.
Not only is this version great for your biceps, entire shoulder girdle and abs, the more you do it the better you'll get at front-loaded exercises like the front squat, Gaddour says.
To perform the goblet carry, simply walk forward and backward while holding a dumbbell or kettlebell close to your chest. (Your upper body should look the same as it would for a goblet squat.)
"With a heavy load, go for one minute; with a lighter load, go for two minutes," says Gaddour.
Do three to five rounds -- resting for one minute between sets -- either as a finisher after your next workout or as a core exercise in a circuit.
More Men's Health: -- 10 Fitness Tools That Make Every Workout Better -- Build A Butt Women Will Want To Grab With This One Simple Exercise -- How To End Shoulder Pain From Lifting -- The J.J. Watt Workout
Abs, Core, Exercise, Fitness, Goblet Carry, Health, Men's Health, Mens Health, Workout
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Sculpt your entire upper body, particularly abs and arms, with this one move.
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Obeid's sentencing hearing delayed again
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20161006140310
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Former NSW minister Eddie Obeid's misconduct sentence hearing has been delayed again due to a report on his "constellation"of medical issues and his life expectancy.
In the NSW Supreme Court on Wednesday, Justice Robert Beech-Jones vacated Thursday's hearing, adjourning it to December 1, to enable the crown to have the 72-year-old examined by a consultant gerontologist.
The crown wants the specialist to respond to the opinions of defence neurologist, Dr David Rosen, who referred to Obeid's "constellation of conditions" affecting his longevity.
He assessed his life expectancy as between 76.6 and 77.7 years.
Referring to overseas studies, he went on to say that every 12 months incarceration would reduce life expectancy by two years, 24 months by four years, and 36 months by six years.
While agreeing to the delay, the judge said Obeid would be sentenced before the end of the law term, December 16.
He referred to the "overwhelming public interest" in having the period between conviction and punishment minimised.
In June, a jury found Obeid lobbied a senior public servant about lucrative Circular Quay leases without revealing his family's stake in the outlets.
His August 12 sentence hearing was adjourned to October 6 after he suffered a stroke.
"It was evident from early on that the crown was contending that no sentence other than a full-time custodial sentence should be imposed," the judge said.
But the defence would say that the combination of his age and medical conditions was such that even if jail was considered appropriate, the term should be substantially cut.
"The crown anticipates that substantial reliance will be placed on (Dr Rosen's) conclusions on behalf of Mr Obeid," the judge said.
As well as obtaining the gerontologist's report, the crown wants updated information from authorities about how the issues raised by Dr Rosen are dealt with in jails.
In December, Obeid, along with his son Moses and former NSW mining minister Ian Macdonald, is also due to face another court hearing.
They are charged with conspiracy over the issuing of a coal mining exploration licence on Obeid family land at Mount Penny in the Bylong Valley near Mudgee.
In 2013, the Independent Commission Against Corruption found the licence enabled the Obeid family to make $30 million.
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A misconduct sentence hearing has been delayed again for former NSW minister Eddie Obeid, who suffered a stroke in August.
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A Legacy of Botanical Art and Books
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20161008105312
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The late Rachel “Bunny” Mellon was half of one of the nation’s most renowned philanthropic art-collecting couples. She and her husband, banking scion Paul Mellon, were major benefactors behind museums such as the National Gallery of Art. Their personal collection overflowed with masterpieces.
Still, one of her most profound sources of beauty involved digging in the dirt.
A self-taught horticulturalist who began designing formal gardens while in her 20s, Ms. Mellon revamped the White House Rose Garden at Jackie Kennedy’s invitation. She spent decades cultivating her own extensive gardens at Oak Spring Farm, the elegant home and stud farm she and her husband built in Upperville, Va. And with scholarly fervor, she built a botanical library of some 16,000 items, including rare books and manuscripts, botanical art and artifacts.
A new exhibit opening Saturday at the New York Botanical Garden, Redouté to Warhol: Bunny Mellon’s Botanical Art, offers 80 highlights of that lifelong passion project.
The show digs out the rarest and most unique works, items both beautiful and scientifically instructive.
“One of our curatorial criteria was to choose objects not represented in other botanical libraries,” said Susan Fraser, director of the botanical garden’s LuEsther T. Mertz Library and co-curator of the show.
Works on view range from a 14th-century German manuscript of a comprehensive encyclopedia of the natural world to an eerily lifelike 19th-century papier-mâché melon blossom to a 1990 painting of a dandelion by Sophie Grandval, who designed textiles for haute couturiers like Dior and Givenchy.
“These are the objects that really appealed to Mrs. Mellon,” said Tony Willis, librarian for the Oak Spring Garden Library in Upperville, Va., where the collection is still housed, some two years after her death. “She viewed them daily.”
Early on, she opened her botanical library to visiting scholars; this exhibit inaugurates a new directive to make the materials even more accessible to a wider public.
The exhibit curators—Mr. Willis, Ms. Fraser and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, an authority on herbals and botanical art from the University of Pisa—didn’t skimp on exuberant floral imagery. There is a medieval Book of Hours prayer book with illustrated margins, watercolors on vellum depicting flowers in Marie Antoinette’s garden by her official court artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté, crayon drawings by Picasso and even an illustrated recipe by pop artist Andy Warhol.
Perhaps the most revealing documents included in the show are Dutch bookkeeping records of sales of tulips during Holland’s Tulipmania of 1634-37—a period when certain bulbs became so valuable they were used as currency. Ms. Mellon collected a wide range of material, including books, catalogs, pamphlets and paintings, that illustrate the historically swift inflation.
The curators also dug deeply for artworks by women, since botanical illustrations was one fertile medium in a field dominated by men.
“It was an acceptable form of employment for women,” said Ms. Fraser, “though many times the finished works were left anonymous.”
She pointed to a c. 1735-1736 watercolor of a wood strawberry by the Scottish artist Elizabeth Blackwell, a much sought-after illustrator of her day, having completed 500 drawings of medicinal plants flourishing in London’s Chelsea Physic Garden.
“She painted out of necessity, selling the works to help get her husband out of debtor’s prison,” said Ms. Fraser.
Ms. Mellon was fascinated, too, by the effects of trompe l’oeil—the French term for “fool the eye”—and the show opens in the library’s rotunda with large photographs of illusionistic murals Mellon had commissioned for her greenhouse, in which the painted garden-shed handles appear to project in three dimensions from the walls.
And series of more than a dozen 17th-century paintings on copper by Jan van Kessel, originally displayed in a Dutch cabinet of curiosities, reveal butterflies in flight, bulbous spiders and slithering lizards with a dynamism and shadowing so lifelike the creatures seem to occupy the gallery space.
“The flowers and insects pop from their copper surfaces and the works are completely modern looking,” Ms. Fraser said.
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Eighty rare pieces from Rachel ‘Bunny’ Mellon’s botanical library go on display Saturday at the New York Botanical Garden.
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Britney's Next Act
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20161008124010
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Britney Spears has a scraped knee, and she has Brad Pitt to thank for it. On the prowl for some excitement one recent afternoon, the 20-year-old pop singer bought a star map of L.A. celebrity homes. Soon she and a girlfriend were parked outside the Beverly Hills mansion Pitt shares with wife Jennifer Aniston. “I stood on top of my car, trying to see in,” says Spears, who fell off when she spotted the resident hunk in the driveway. “I busted my knee open. I felt like the biggest dumbass ever.” Did Pitt see her? “No, and thank you, God,” she says with a laugh. “I would’ve been so humiliated.”
If Spears sounds like a bored young woman with plenty of time on her well-manicured hands, she admits as much. “I honestly don’t know what to do with myself,” she says. Which is just what she had hoped for in announcing an indefinite hiatus from recording and performing beginning this month. Of course, that won’t prevent her from reading film scripts and appearing Aug. 29 on MTV’s Video Music Awards. Still, says Spears, “I need this break to rejuvenate spiritually and to just play.”
She may have playtime in mind, but tabloid editors are working overtime on Britney breakdown stories. Following her parents’ divorce in May, her split from ‘N Sync heartthrob Justin Timberlake in March, sliding record sales and a spate of public relations disasters from London to Mexico, she remains genuinely mystified by the public impression that she’s imploding. “I’m taking a break, so people are writing that I’m having a meltdown,” says Spears, in a midriff-baring T-shirt and bebe hip-huggers slung low enough to reveal a hint of pink lace. “I don’t get it.” As for hard living, Spears happily agrees to a spot check of the Grated contents of her purse: Juicy Fruit gum, Pinkie’s mints, vanilla perfume and a tiny bottle of the herbal supplement St. John’s wort. Says mom Lynne, 47: “My daughter is doing beautifully. She’s never, ever been close to a breakdown.” Yet Spears admits that her fresh-scrubbed role-model days are over. “I never wanted to hide who I was,” she says, “but until about a year ago I was trying to fit an image and trying to be someone I wasn’t.”
Translation: Sugar-and-spice Britney is out, fire-and-ice Britney is in. In the past few months she has been photographed with a cigarette (“This may sound really cheesy, but I was holding it for a girlfriend”), flipping her middle finger at paparazzi who swarmed her car in Mexico (“We couldn’t move. They were shaking it”) and cozying up to Leonardo DiCaprio at the Playboy Mansion. (“He looks hot these days. But all I remember is seeing a bunch of naked girls and thinking, ‘I got to get out of here.’ “) And despite her famous 1999 remark that she intended to remain a virgin until her wedding day, she isn’t lobbying for sainthood. “Who really cares if I’ve had sex?” she says. “It’s nobody’s business. Trust me, I’m not going to have a press conference to announce it. If I mess up, I’m human. If I have a drink or I’m with someone, I’m human. I’m no different than anyone else my age.”
Um, not exactly. For starters, there’s that $100 million bank account (“I’m rich, freakin’ rich. It’s crazy”) and the No. 1 spot on this year’s Forbes list of most powerful celebrities, ahead of Madonna, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. On Madison Avenue, though, some are worried that as a pitch-woman, “any more outbursts like the one in Mexico could be damaging to her career,” says Jessrey Wolf, director of account planning at the firm Deutsch Inc. Her three albums have raked in a combined $46 million t worldwide, even as ’01’s Britney sold a disappointing 3.8 million copies compared to her 10.4 million-selling debut, Baby One More Time. “Yes, there’s a chink in the armor, but we won’t know if she’s no longer hot until her next record comes out,” says Rich Christina, a senior director at Atlantic Records. The declining numbers don’t faze her. “Selling 5 million records is still good,” says Spears. “I don’t want to get jaded thinking I have to sell 10 million every time. It’s not about that.”
These days it’s also not about being in a relationship. It has been five months since her split from Timberlake, 21, and Spears is adjusting to singledom with a wide open calendar. Two weeks ago she visited a Sunset Boulevard psychic (“which is kind of lame”), who advised that her aura is blue (“That’s why I’m filled with creativity”) and “told stuff about my love life that was hard to take.” Such as? “He said I have a problem with intimacy,” she says. “When I get close to someone, it’s like a defense mechanism kicks in. I’ll start an argument because I’m not good at being vulnerable.”
For the record, Spears says that “first Justin broke up with me, and then I broke up with him.” Why? “The two of us were always on the same page,” she says, denying that either side cheated. “If he was starting a tour, so was I. But now we’re doing different things.” Although they “recently tried to get back together,” she notes that “right now in my life, it’s not right.” For his part, Timberlake—who told PEOPLE in April that he holds Spears “in the highest light” but declined to comment for this story—has since been linked to dancer Jenna Dewan, 21, and singer Janet Jackson, 36. “Justin’s 21, and I would expect him to go out with girls,” says Spears, who first met Timberlake in ’93 when the pair costarred on The Mickey Mouse Club. Not that it doesn’t sting. “[The breakup] was horrible. Very upsetting and it took a lot out of me. He was my first real love, and I doubt I’ll ever be able to love anyone like that ever again,” she says. “But I’d rather spend two days with my soulmate than the rest of my life with some guy who doesn’t mean as much.” Mom Lynne, who still talks to Justin, adds, “I pick on him for going out with those other girls.” As for her daughter’s next boyfriend, says Lynne, “Britney needs somebody into his career, so he won’t be jealous of her. I think someone older too. Britney’s very mature. Always has been.”
Her maturity, and not junk food, she insists, is what helped her cope with the split. “If anything, I lost weight,” says Spears in response to reports of her binge eating. “When I’m under stress, I do yoga. It’s when I’m happiest that I have a problem with junk food.”
Spears admits she’s just about ready to start dating again but isn’t sure how. “I suck at flirting,” she says with a laugh. “There’s one thing I don’t understand about Hollywood. How they have a relationship, end it, and go right into the next.” She adds, “It’s hard for a woman in this industry. Either the guy’s going to be really intimidated, or they’re going to kiss your ass. I’m just a girl wanting a guy to love me.”
At home, love is never a concern. Her family—Lynne, who helps manage Britney’s career, dad Jamie, 50, a contractor, brother Bryan, 25, a Manhattan businessman, and sister Jamie Lynn, 11, an actress on Nickelodeon’s All That—has been struggling through an emotional summer. Lynne’s sister Sandra Covington, 55, is battling ovarian cancer and recently underwent a bone marrow transplant. “Sandra’s like a second mother to her,” says Lynne. “This kind of thing makes you grow up. We’ve been separated a lot—I’ve been with my sister, and Britney’s had to take care of Jamie Lynn.” Says Spears: “I pray every night about it.”
Dealing with the breakup of her parents’ 30-year marriage has been far easier. “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to my family,” says Spears. “My mom and dad, bottom line, do not get along. When I was a baby, they argued. I wanted this to happen 10 years ago.”
If things on the home front have been tumultuous, they haven’t been much smoother on the road. The first sign of trouble came last March in London, where Spears stopped to promote her big-screen debut, Crossroads. Dashing past a rain-soaked throng of 3,000 fans, Spears was soon doused with chants of “Britney go home.” Spears says her security team warned her that the crowd could be dangerous. Besides, she says, “you can’t make everyone happy.”
Perhaps that should be the motto for Spears’s troubled new Manhattan restaurant, Nyla, whose June opening was marred by a downpour and mostly tepid reviews. Spears has visited only three times but says she plans to stop in more often with the recent purchase of her four-story apartment in lower Manhattan.
London and New York City seemed but a prelude to Mexico City, the last stop on Spears’s $18.9 million world tour, which ended on July 28. The bird-flipping incident, which took place prior to her concert, didn’t endear her to locals, who then jeered when she called it quits five songs into her final stage show before 50,000 fans. “It was raining and lightning,” she says of her hasty exit. “Two of the dancers almost fell off the stage. It wasn’t safe.”
Spears, who turns 21 on Dec. 2, acknowledges that when the tour ended, “the first week, I was so excited I was off that I partied every night. I drink.” But, she adds, “everything in moderation. Smoking, drinking, sex—why is it such a big deal with me? As you get to 20, you grow up, you experiment. You feel more comfortable in your skin.” She certainly does: “I don’t have trouble with nudity or sex,” she says. “When I was younger, honestly, I walked around the house naked. Bottom line, I think it’s the way you carry yourself.”
Given the hectic past few months, Spears says that “now I’m starting to be a hermit,” though she probably doesn’t run into many fellow hermits at haunts like L.A.’s Trashy Lingerie and Domaine, where she was tempted to buy a $20,000 bed, or even Contempo Casuals, where she still hunts for bargains. She crashes at the new $4.5 million Tudor estate in Kentwood, La., she built for her mother and her own $1.7 million Spanish-style Hollywood Hills mansion, where she relaxes by the pool, watches American Idol (“Tamyra is amazing; she sounds like Whitney Houston”) and reads film scripts. Spears says she’s hoping to do a romantic comedy that could start shooting in October (so much for the hiatus). The music business, meanwhile, is waiting anxiously. “Britney will have to deal with the fact that she won’t sell as many records when she reinvents herself,” says producer Rodney Jerkins, who worked on Spears’s last album. “She can’t do the pop candy stuff anymore. She’s going to have to sing songs that are edgy.”
Spears is eager to do exactly that. “I need to find new influences, get reinspired.” She also wants to write more songs. Has she grown up? “In a sad way, yeah. I feel like a totally different person than I was two years ago. I feel like so much of my innocence is gone. I’m still me, but this business makes you grow up so fast.” As for the time off, “I give it a couple of months,” says Lynne. “For Britney, who’s used to running at 90 miles per hour, it’s hard to slow down.”
So, what does the future hold? Spears didn’t ask her psychic about that. “I’m at the state where I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” she says. “Everything’s usually laid out for me. But I don’t know what I’m going to do next. This may sound weird, but I’m kind of the happiest I’ve been in a really long freakin’ time.”
Michelle Tauber Todd Gold in Los Angeles and Dimitry Elias Léger in New York City
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Britney Spears has a scraped knee, and she has Brad Pitt to thank for it. On the prowl for some excitement one recent afternoon, the 20-year-old pop singer bought a star map of L.A. celebrity homes…
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/08/09/19/keep-triple-zero-service-in-australia
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http://web.archive.org/web/20161008170802id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/08/09/19/keep-triple-zero-service-in-australia
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'Keep triple-zero service in Australia'
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20161008170802
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The federal government has ruled out sending the triple-zero emergency call service overseas following its call for tenders to take over from Telstra.
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has hit back at comments from the Communications Union, saying the service will remain in Australia.
"This is a tender requirement as per the notice on the Austender website," he said in a statement on Saturday.
"The Union should cease its entirely predictable fearmongering."
The comments come after Communications Union National President Shane Murphy said the government's announcement opened the door for overseas call centres.
"Are they simply looking to cut costs by shipping Australian jobs offshore at the expense of a skilled, qualified workforce providing an efficient essential service?" Mr Murphy said in a statement.
"If this tender is simply about savings costs by sending Australian jobs overseas, the government should be ashamed of itself."
The government called for expressions of interest for the national emergency system on Thursday following a review that focused on keeping pace with technological advancements.
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The Communications Union says the triple-zero emergency service call system should not be outsourced overseas.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/08/12/58/community-supports-racing-ban-rspca
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http://web.archive.org/web/20161009154107id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/08/12/58/community-supports-racing-ban-rspca
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Community supports racing ban: RSPCA
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20161009154107
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About two in three people in NSW and the ACT support a ban on greyhound racing, according to a survey by the RSPCA.
Sixty-four per cent of the 834 residents polled by the animal protection group supported the ban.
Approval ratings remained above 60 per cent regardless of whether respondents were coalition, Labor or swinging voters, according to the survey released on Saturday.
RSPCA Australia's Dr Jed Goodfellow said the result was proof "the majority of caring Australians are opposed to killing dogs for sport and gambling".
"The NSW and ACT governments have made the right decision in responding to their concerns by ending greyhound racing in those jurisdictions," he said.
The RSPCA survey found support for the ban was 77 per cent in metropolitan areas and 67 per cent among suburban respondents.
Support was close to 60 per cent in rural and regional areas (59 per cent) and non-capital cities (58 per cent).
The NSW government has vowed to shut down the greyhound industry by July 2017, while the ACT government has repeatedly warned the sport has no future in the territory.
The decision has contributed to a slump in NSW premier Mike Baird's approval ratings.
It has also led to reports that several senior NSW National MPs are ready to unseat Deputy Premier Troy Grant as leader if he does not step away from the controversial policy.
The NSW government is also facing pressure from from Canberra, with some federal NSW MPs arguing the ban plan is starting to affect the Turnbull government in outer suburbs and regions.
Nationals MP Chris Gulaptis, who was one of three party MPs to vote against the bill in August, this week said he remained hopeful Premier Mike Baird might change tack on the damaging issue.
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An RSPCA survey of NSW and ACT residents has found 64 per cent support a greyhound ban.
| 18.833333 | 0.888889 | 1.666667 |
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/08/17/28/the-seven-types-of-selfie-identified-by-australian-researchers
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http://web.archive.org/web/20161009160950id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/08/17/28/the-seven-types-of-selfie-identified-by-australian-researchers
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The seven types of selfie identified by Australian researchers
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20161009160950
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A snapshot of selfies worldwide: The study identified seven distinct types of selfie. (AAP)
A study of more than 5000 Instagram selfies has found the photographs aren’t just a form of narcissism but are just as much “a part of everyday life”.
Australian National University (ANU) researchers also found three quarters of selfies are posted by women, but only around one in ten selfies are posted by users looking to gain ‘insta-fame’.
"There were a lot more selfies aimed at friends and family than there were trying to gain an audience. It's neither narcissism nor self-empowerment. People are using selfies as a tool as part of their everyday life,” the study’s co-author, Dr Toni Eager, said.
She said that while posts looking to attract freebies and endorse products were common, the bigger trend were selfies “aimed at friends and family” rather than ones “trying to gain an audience”.
The seven distinct types of selfie identified in the study include:
The most common form of selfie, accounting for 35 percent of the photographs in the study, are the ones ranging from weddings and graduations to the simple and mundane.
Selfies highlighting relationships with significant others made up 21 percent but weren’t just for loved-up couples. They also included celebrating singledom or selfies after a recent break-up.
Humorous selfies poking fun at stereotypes, trends and current events made up 12 percent of the photos surveyed.
Selfies used “for the sole purpose of seeking followers” including celebrities endorsing products or heavily-edited images to try and gain a bigger following accounted for 11 percent.
The coffee table book selfie:
The researchers describe these as “high art” and “artistic” selfies. Common hashtags include mentioning the type of camera lens used, such as the popular #35mm hashtag for the specific film format
Selfies spruiking knowledge in an area including diet, fitness, beauty or fashion. For example, a selfie depicting the results of a 12-week fitness regime.
Around 6 percent of selfies are used to spruik holidays and glamorous locations, which often make followers feel little more than travel envy.
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016
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A study of more than 5000 Instagram selfies has found the photographs aren’t just a form of narcissism but are just as much “a part of everyday life”.
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http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2016/10/05/girl-train-goes-entertainingly-off-rails/HjJ0UWgMQ7Ym8SGOL99ibJ/story.html
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http://web.archive.org/web/20161009184324id_/http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2016/10/05/girl-train-goes-entertainingly-off-rails/HjJ0UWgMQ7Ym8SGOL99ibJ/story.html
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‘Girl on the Train’ goes entertainingly off the rails
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20161009184324
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Who hasn’t wondered about what happens in the houses we race by on trains? They back onto the tracks, undesirable as real estate but fertile canvases for our imagination, glimpses into other families and other lives, alternate planets of domestic possibility. Like Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” but seen on the fly.
“The Girl on the Train” takes this idea and runs in the wrong direction, with trashy, enjoyable results. Based on the best-selling novel by Paula Hawkins, Tate Taylor’s film falls almost too neatly into the “Gone Girl” genre of modern marital-suspense melodramas — films that used to be sneeringly called “women’s pictures” but often convey sharper, more uncomfortable truths about women’s inner lives.
The movie honors that heritage without tapping into its vein of craziness until almost too late in the game. You can imagine the trio of beleaguered heroines being played by Joan Crawford, Susan Hayward, and Ida Lupino, except that those classic-era dames would probably grow impatient with this movie’s self-important pace and break out the whiskey and the scissors.
Instead — and this isn’t a knock — we have Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, and the great Emily Blunt as (respectively) Good Girl, Bad Girl, and Seriously Effed-Up Girl. Or so it seems. The last is the one on the train, Rachel Watson, staring out the windows every time the commuter local passes 13 Becket Lane and its occupants.
Rachel’s obsessed with the unknown woman who lives there — the curvaceously named Megan Hipwell (Bennett, last seen in “The Magnificent Seven”) — and the perfect home life Megan seems to embody. Slowly we come to realize that two doors down live Rachel’s ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux), and his new wife, Anna (Ferguson, “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation”), along with their baby. We learn that Rachel is a spurned spouse, a fantasist, a black-out drunk, and a stalker. A narrator unreliable even to herself, in other words.
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But everybody in the film’s picturesque Westchester County appears to live right on the edge, not to mention right on the train tracks with a great view of the Hudson River — the movie’s a real estate Mobius Strip. Rachel’s self-destructive behavior gets worse, even as we drop into the happy lives of Anna and Tom and the more fraught existence of Megan, a hotsy-totsy with skeletons in her closet (or, more properly, her bathtub), a jealous hothead of a husband (Luke Evans), and a psychiatrist (Edgar Ramirez) who looks like he models for the men’s fashion supplement of The New York Times.
Someone winds up dead — don’t look at me, I’m not telling — and because Rachel’s short-term memory has been short-circuited by all that vodka in her water bottle, it’s unclear whether she did or didn’t dunnit. For much of its running time, “The Girl on the Train” doesn’t care. It’s a lugubrious wallow in its heroine’s self-loathing, with Blunt going impressively gaunt and shaky and the camerawork (by Charlotte Bruus Christensen) coming in close and playing games with focal planes to keep us off-balance. Every so often Allison Janney wanders through as the detective on the case and sets the movie back on its feet.
The subtexts, true to the genre, are marriage and motherhood, and the anxieties and ambivalences and repressed rage surrounding each. Rachel wanted a child but couldn’t have one — although maybe she wants Anna’s — while Megan can have a child but doesn’t want one. The men are interchangeable, as they always are in melodrama; one of them has to be the cad but it almost (almost) doesn’t matter which. The women, their choices and mistakes, the emotional sidings they get shunted onto, are the dramatic grist of “The Girl on the Train.” It makes sense that Hawkins’s novel has been adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson, who penned the empathetic kink of “Secretary” (2002), among other provocations.
If only the movie had the courage to be as gonzo as it wants to be! “The Girl on the Train” keeps feinting toward the truly purple — those scenes that bounce back and forth between one month ago and two weeks from now and five days before yesterday!, those sultry therapy sessions and tortured inner monologues!, the gaslighting! — but it settles for the pale lavender until the home stretch, when the kitchen implements finally come out and unexpected bonds are forged over spurts of arterial blood.
Even if it takes too long to let its hair down, “The Girl on the Train” deserves to be a minor guilty-pleasure hit, for its performances and hot-house plotting, and for its keeping of the compact of classic women’s films, where the heroine most wronged turns out to be most right. In fact, it’s said of one character, when they’re mopping things up at the end, “She was right about everything.” You won’t come closer to the secret heart of the genre than that.
★★½ The Girl on the Train
Directed by Tate Taylor. Written by Erin Cressida Wilson, based on the novel by Paula Hawkins. Starring Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Edgar Ramirez, Allison Janney. At Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs. 112 minutes. R (violence, sexual content, language, and nudity)
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A classic marital suspense drama, it doesn’t get crazy until almost too late.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/11/14/51/views-split-on-bp-dumping-bight-drilling
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http://web.archive.org/web/20161012150126id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/11/14/51/views-split-on-bp-dumping-bight-drilling
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Views split on BP dumping Bight drilling
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20161012150126
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BP DROPS BIGHT DRILLING PLAN. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING:
"In the current external environment, we will only pursue frontier exploration opportunities if they are competitive and aligned to our strategic goals." - managing director for exploration and production Claire Fitzpatrick.
"I think every Australian has a right to feel disappointed by BP." - SA Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis
"This is a great win for the community who made it clear that BP weren't welcome from the beginning." - Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young
It's just a very joyous day, for the whales and the sharks and the seals and the dolphins and the penguins and all the other incredible marine life that call the Great Australian Bight home." - Sea Shepherd Managing Director Jeff Hansen
"This is the right decision. The Great Australian Bight is an utterly inappropriate place to be turning into an oil field." - Peter Owen, Wilderness Society SA.
"Other companies such as Chevron, Bight Petroleum, Santos and Murphy are still eyeing the Great Australian Bight and have exploration permits. They should take the lead from BP, pack up their bags and go home." - Greenpeace Australia Pacific Oceans campaigner Nathaniel Pelle
"Growing public opposition sent BP packing." - Former Greens Senator Bob Brown
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Oil giant BP has dropped plans to drill exploration wells in the Great Australian Bight, a move criticised by the SA government by welcome by conservationists.
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http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/13/09/35/justice-for-bride-to-bes-family-as-killer-sentenced
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http://web.archive.org/web/20161017230058id_/http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/10/13/09/35/justice-for-bride-to-bes-family-as-killer-sentenced
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Stephanie Scott's killer sentenced to life in prison
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20161017230058
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Stephanie Scott’s mother has fought back tears after her daughter’s killer was sentenced to life in prison.
Merrilyn Scott told media that her family had lost everything after her daughter was raped and murdered by Vincent Stanford.
“So much has been taken away from us. Stephanie has had everything taken away from her. Losing her has shattered so much lives and we are all struggling with the consequences.”
Ms Scott said tomorrow would have been Stephanie's birthday.
“We have had to show restraint in all we have said and done and have to grieve in the public eye. The prosecutors have worked tirelessly to secure justice for Stephanie,” she said.
“Tomorrow we begin to celebrate Stephanie's too short, amazing life. This should be her 28th birthday, the second one we celebrate without her. We will be having a cup of tea and a mint sliced biscuit at 3pm.
Stephanie Scott was raped and murdered just days before her wedding.
School cleaner Vincent Stanford was sentenced to life in prison this morning for the 2015 rape and murder Ms Scott.
Stanford, 25, appeared in the Griffith courthouse in southwest NSW this morning for sentencing after pleading guilty in July to the aggravated sexual assault and murder of Ms Scott at Leeton High on Easter Sunday April 5, 2015.
Justice Robert Hulme handed down the sentence to a packed courthouse, which included Ms Scott’s parents and fiance, Aaron Leeson-Woolley.
Stanford stared at the ground as Justice Hulme recounted the details of the school teacher’s murder.
The court was told Stanford stalked other women in Leeton prior to Scott’s murder, keeping track of when they left work each day.
He had thousands of photos of a 12-year-old girl in his possession.
The courtroom heard how Stanford said he never had any negative confrontations with Scott prior to her murder, describing his actions as simply “cold blooded violence”.
Following the attack, the 25-year-old calmly went home and had a cheese sandwich and a coffee for lunch.
Justice Hulme recounted a police interview with the former school cleaner who told authorities he had only one feeling, hatred, and that he rarely thought about Scott’s murder anymore because it was so long ago.
On Tuesday, a courtroom packed with Ms Scott's family and supporters was shown disturbing video footage of him confessing to the murder.
Stephanie Scott's fiance, Aaron Leeson-Woolley (right), arrives at Griffith Local Court. (Source: AAP)
Stanford told detectives, "I think I went a little nuts."
He said when he saw the bride-to-be alone at the Leeton High School on Easter Sunday 2015, he felt "just that I had to kill her".
He dragged Ms Scott, 26, into a storeroom at the school and attacked her with his fists and a large knife.
"I beat her and I hit her in her carotid artery with the knife," he said.
Aaron Leeson-Woolley with bride-to-be Stephanie Scott.
He washed the scene with a high pressure cleaner and took Ms Scott's body 70km away to the Cocoparra National Park, where he burned it.
In the interview Stanford calmly told police he laid in wait and grabbed the unsuspecting 26-year-old as she was leaving the school that day.
She had come in on the Easter Sunday to prepare lessons for a substitute teacher before going on leave for her wedding and Tahiti honeymoon.
According to an agreed statement of facts the cleaner had regularly searched for violent rape, hard-core porn and murder online and had ordered handcuffs and a "half-sword" through a security company.
Soon after he began working at Leeton High School he made a number of internet searches related to brides, including "bride rape" and "bride kidnapping", according to the facts.
Ms Scott had been due to marry her fiance Aaron Leeson-Woolley six days after she was murdered.
Ms Scott said her daughter “embodied all that is good about human kind”.
“She made a tangible difference to the lives of so many people. Stephanie would want us to resume our lives. We need to be kind to ourselves and let the music and fun back in. We need to be able to fade from public view, to mourn our beautiful girl.”
His identical twin brother Marcus Stanford was released from prison last month after serving 15 months for selling Ms Scott's rings and burning her driver's licence.
© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016
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School cleaner Vincent Stanford has been sentenced to life in prison for raping and murdering NSW teacher Stephanie Scott.
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