.In one of my previous columns, I already “predicted” about this result simply because she was, all along, telling the “truth” based on her own effort to uncover it and bolstered by her immense knowledge and experience as BoC official for the last three decades.
On the other hand, those customs officials who managed to “convinced” Comm. Sid at the very start of this controversy that the lifters were ‘No Suspect’ (did not contain anything suspicious), did so simply to protect their back and their lucrative racket of getting a regular “tara” from each container van arriving at the piers, whether subject to X-Ray inspection or not.
I mean, if you are collecting from a low of P200 to a high of P1,000 per container for each container van, why would you not scamper to convince Comm. Sid -- and malign Coll. Mangaoang in the process -- that the SMYD containers that delivered the lifters to GMA, Cavite was “clear” of any suspicious cargo?
And you do the math, dear readers, even if we take the “low” figure of P200 “tara” per container multiplied by 2,000 containers (this is also on the low side) arriving daily at the POM and the MICP, we arrived at the mouth-watering figure of P400,000 “tara” EACH DAY.
But to be fair to Comm. Sid, he has been CONSISTENT in saying, FROM THE VERY START, that his claim that the 4 magnetic lifters did not contain shabu was because of the fact that, one, no shabu, not even its traces’, were found at the Cavite warehouse and that two, this fact was also bolstered by the swab test done by the PDEA.
To be fair also to Comm. Sid, he has also consistently posited that he would “abide” by the result of the ongoing investigation being done by both houses of Congress on this issue.
And on Wednesday, he averred that the expert testimony of the DPWH as regards the magnetic lifters finally “convinced” him that, yes Juan, they were used to ship illegal drugs into the country.
Translation? “Ginawa siyang gago” ng mga nakapaligid sa kanya.
Stated differently, since the start of the congressional hearings last month and until last Wednesday, it has become a “test of will” between him and the PDEA and Coll. Mangaoang, with the latter claiming all along that, yes Juan, Comm. Sid was wrong for there was shabu -- lots of it -- contained in those magnetic lifters and which are now flooding the local market.
Now, over this “concession” of Comm. Sid, should he now resign from his post? Was what happened glaring proof of his “incompetence” and gross mismanagement?
On the contrary, dear readers, what Comm. Sid should do is not to resign but, to become angry, really angry. In fact, all of us should be very angry.
For what can a commissioner do, indeed, what can Batman even do, if all along, powerful and influential individuals whom he believed are together with him and Pres. Duterte in combating illegal drugs were the ones conspiring to bring them into the country?
And as a “bonus,” to see him booted out of the BOC with his name and reputation in tatters. Sa inyo “gawin” ang ganyan, dear readers, hindi rin ba kayo magagalit?
I am of course referring to the so-called Acierto-Fajardo-Guban Drug Syndicate who had planned this “scenario” that would gain them further fame and glory (plus the reward money) as “heroes” in our war on drugs, while all along ensuring that their regular shipments of illegal drugs can now come in right under everybody’s noses, especially if there “corollary goal” of removing Comm. Sid also happened.
Aside from being “mad,” for making a fool of all of us, a “study” of their operations and connections should also be a wake-up call to our authorities that “something” is quite rotten on how government agencies approach the myriad of problems related to the war on illegal drugs.
Come to think of it, dear readers, despite being on ‘floating status’ (before he was axed from the PNP late in August), Col. Jojo Acierto continues to be allowed to meddle in the PNP’s anti-drug operations.
Until his name cropped up in this controversy, I doubt if Col. Acierto has been the subject of an in-depth counter-intelligence operation by the PNP that should have been done a long time ago, if only to find out if he has been “coopted” by the drug syndicates that he has sworn to unmask and destroy, as what seemed to have happened in his case.
There too, is PDEA deputy director Ismael Fajardo whose lifestyle and “unexplained wealth” has been the subject of whispers in the corridors of PDEA for some time already.
I also doubt if, on assuming office last year, DG Aaron Aquino took the effort to validate these negative “whispers” about his trusted deputy. Heck, even up to now, despite all the sordid revelations, I was told that the PDEA has not even detained or restricted Fajardo. What gives, DG Aquino?
On the contrary, DG Aquino appears to have taken, ‘hook, line and sinker,’ so to speak, the “whispers” to him of Fajardo and Acierto that “may nakalusot na shabu,” referring of course to the (already) abandoned lifters in GMA, Cavite.
For even as he was holding a press conference with Comm. Sid at the MICP last August 6 on the discovery of the 355 kilos of shabu brought in by ‘Vecaba Trading,’ DG Aquino went on the record, expressing his “suspicion” that illegal drugs have gotten away from Customs.
Unnoticed at the time and the records would also show, DG Aquino was with Acierto and Fajardo at the MICP, prompting Comm. Sid to ask, “What is Acierto doing at the MICP, in the company of DG Aquino?
And what about Jimmy Guban? Aside from his already notorious reputation at the waterfront, he has proven to be the “weakest link” in their ‘Triumvirate’ by “singing” out all the details that he knows -- enough to damn his more senior partners.
If he suddenly turns up dead, I doubt if tears would be shed over his grave. Not from the millions of families and lives he helped to destroy. His sudden “departure,” would, indeed, be a cause for celebration by drug syndicates. Abangan!


Hank Moody is finally ready to get his life together in the final season of Showtime’s Californication — premiering April 13 at 9:30/8:30c — but as you’ll see in TVLine’s exclusive first-look promo, it might already be too late.
His first misfire comes when he tries to make amends with Karen. “I have always loved you, and I will always love you,” he tells her — just moments before she introduces him to her handsome new yoga buddy, played by Roger Howarth (General Hospital, One Life to Live). Strike one.
Then there’s Hank’s career. Considering he’s already “taken a s–t” on books, movies and theater, there’s only one medium left on which Hank can metaphorically defecate: television! And defecate he does, by sleeping with his actresses and fighting with his writers. Strike two.
Will Hank find a way to reach strike three? Given his track record, we’re remaining optimistic.
Hit PLAY on the promo video below for your first look at Californication‘s final season.


Generally, a better design version of the NEX-5N. The interchangeable lens Sony Alpha NEX-5R delivers similarly excellent photo quality and somewhat improved performance over that model. The look is about the same. The addition of the control dial and a function button make a big difference in usability and its streamline shooting for those of us who like direct access controls for everything. The menu system still gets a little annoying. And now it has the card submenu rolled into setup, which makes it quite tedious to find important options like card formatting and Wi-Fi set up. The Wi-Fi features are pretty basic. The most competitors offer the same. You can upload to Facebook or Sony's play memory service or you can transfer directly to your phone. There's also remote shutter app that lets you use your phone or tablet as a larger screen, but only can really do is snap the photo. Also is the ability to download and install proprietary apps, but the whole operation seems to offer more benefit to Sony than to camera owners. For instance, the free picture effects plus app duplicates the effect in the camera with the exception of adding watercolor and illustration. But of these are built in to the NEX-F3 so they took them out to put them into the app. The photo quality really is quite good with clean JPEGs as high as ISO 400, and for the most part, usable images as high as ISO 3200 depending upon the scene. Sony's image processing is so well done that I really couldn't get better noise reduction at any ISO level by processing the RAWS, though shooting RAW still helps for recovering highlights or shadow detail. Colors look relatively accurate. The Sony doesn't offer a neutral color option and the camera renders a nice tonal range. The video has some artifact notably aliasing in more ray, but the low light tonal quality looks better than average and there are lots of colored noise than usual as well. It's not the fastest camera in its class, but it's certainly fast enough. I find the interface feels a little bit sluggish though and the LCD is really hard to see in direct sunlight. It tilts, but you really need a flip out or AVF to compensate in bright situations. The design of the 5R feels especially suited to street photography and I like shooting with it. As long as you're considering it for reasons other than the app support or wireless capability, it comes highly recommended. I'm Lori Grunin and this is the Sony Alpha NEX-5R.


These kids are teased, taunted and physically assaulted by their peers — reflecting racism, xenophobia, homophobia and sexism. This bullying epidemic also spreads far beyond classroom walls to strike countless communities from coast to coast in different social environments. Bullying is particularly acute in the elderly community. It is reported that one in 10 elders in America has experienced mistreatment in the past year. It has also been reported that for every case of elder abuse, neglect, exploitation or self-neglect reported to authorities, five more go unreported.
Students at the University of Virginia were outraged by the dismissal of Teresa Sullivan.
Editor's note: Stephen Joel Trachtenberg is president emeritus and university professor of public service at George Washington University. He is chairman of the Korn/Ferry Higher Education Practice and senior client partner at Korn/Ferry International, an executive recruiting firm.
(CNN) - Those who have been following the recent soap opera at the University of Virginia may think that it has to do with the blundering dismissal of the president, Teresa Sullivan, and her subsequent re-engagement by the Board of Visitors under instruction by the governor of the state to put their house in order or resign.
In fact, the heart of the drama is not about the president. Nor is it about the board. Rather, it is about the principle stakeholders of the University of Virginia and American higher education in general.
Those who recall the campus disruptions protesting the Vietnam War will remember a slogan of the time, "power to the people." It was meant to be a challenge of the "rulers" by the "masses." In 2012 in Charlottesville, Virginia, we see a similar confrontation.
But in place of chanting "Close the university," on this occasion the students, faculty and others assembled on the quad claimed the right to open the university as their own and called for the right to select their own leader - their own president.


A 2-year-old boy who was struck and badly injured by a vehicle in Manchester, New Hampshire on Saturday morning, is still in critical condition, according to local police.
The toddler was initially unresponsive when brought to Elliot Hospital in Manchester. He was later transported to a Boston-area hospital for further treatment.
Manchester police said in a statement that, around 9:12 a.m., a woman driving a 2016 Chrysler Town & Country minivan was backing out of a residential garage when it collided with the child.
Neither the child nor the driver's identities have been released at this time.
The accident, which took place on Dwight Street, is currently under investigation by the Manchester Police Traffic Unit Collision Reconstruction and Analysis Team.


Hooch, an American Bulldog that underwent emergency surgery.
Hooch, an American Bulldog that underwent emergency surgery at PDSA's Bradford Pet Hospital after swallowing a corn on the cob husk.
Last year PDSA treated almost 400 pets who had swallowed foreign objects, with its Bradford surgery treating 33 cases - the most in Britain.
One animal who is lucky to be alive is American Bulldog Hooch. His owners rushed him to the PDSA surgery in Bradford after he stole and ate a corn on the cob from the bin.


After experiencing the marvels of traveling or living overseas, the International Friendship Club invites residents to build new relationships. While it is not a requirement to have traveled or lived overseas, the club focuses on other cultures.
The club is composed of people who speak more than 20 different languages.
Hal Meeks, club president, lived in Caribbean for more than 35 years before moving to Sun City. Over those years, Meeks lived in St. Thomas, St. Croix, Puerto Rico and Saba, Netherlands Antilles.
After graduating from the University of Oregon, Meeks and his wife Judy Meeks decided to travel overseas.
"I got a job as a news anchor in the Caribbean, but my plan was to stay there a year then travel somewhere new," Meeks said. "Somehow we ended up spending 35 years there and continue to visit every year."
Meeks became interested in the Caribbean after a college professor shared his experiences of the island life. When Meeks moved to Sun City in 2000, he joined the International Friendship Club.
While mostly a social club that meets to build friendships, it also educates residents on the diverse backgrounds and cultures of people who live in Sun City. In October, the club met and shared in the Hispanic art, culture and food.
"It was a fun meeting with the Hispanic theme," Meeks said. "Members dressed in the vibrant clothing shared dances and foods that displayed their culture."
This year, the International Friendship Club plans to have about five meetings which inform the members about a different culture. Lore McMillen, club vice president, is a native of Lebanon. In February, McMillen plans to share with the members about the Lebanese wine industry.
Originally from the United Kingdom, Patrick Beer joined the club in 2011 shortly after moving to Sun City from Charlotte. As club secretary, Beer hopes to continue encouraging members to share in their overseas adventures. "Like it is implied in the name most people join the club to make friendships," Beer said. "Since joining, I've enjoyed meeting new people with diverse backgrounds."
Beer said he may be interested in sharing his traveling experiences to Indonesia, Iran or Norway.
"Members enjoy the friendships made and is the primary reason they keep coming back," Meeks said. "When we have meetings, most just sit at the table where their friends speak the same native language they do and enjoy their company."
With about 110 members, the International Friendship Club welcomes all people who have an interest and respect for other cultures.


This story originally appeared in DukeMed Alumni News.
Most scientists can point to an instance when serendipity played a role in their work. Some of the most exciting scientific discoveries have happened by accident. Penicillin resulted from a spoiled bacteria culture. The radioactivity of uranium without outside light was discovered when a cloudy day derailed an experiment with sunlight.
Indeed, two scientists at Duke University School of Medicine feel their careers have been transformed by serendipity. One, a pharmacologist and cancer biologist, has found his way into an unexpected avenue of work that may lead to a new treatment for HIV. Another, a neuroscientist, is recognized as an innovator in understanding brain injury and repair, but he never planned to go into science in the first place.
Drug discovery can involve conducting a massive screen in which millions of potential drugs are tested for their ability to bind to one target of interest -- a receptor or other structure in the body that is known to be associated with a particular disease. To Tim Haystead, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology, that method seemed like spinning a roulette wheel and hoping your number comes up. So he developed a new method that thoroughly interrogated one drug candidate at a time by screening it against all of an organ's vital cellular proteins at once.
He limited the group of proteins in the screen to only those likely to be involved in key processes in many of the body's cells. "We had this way of catching a very large piece of what we call the druggable proteome, which is all the proteins that use a certain type of nucleotide in cells called ATP," Haystead says. Proteins that bind to ATP often function as control switches for the most important functions inside a cell. "We could immobilize this ATP on a medium, and it would catch about 2,000 proteins at once," Haystead says. The scientists would isolate the vital proteins from specific tissues such as brain, liver, or testes. Then they used this medium to screen individual drug candidates against all these vital proteins at once. These screens provided a snapshot of all the diseases the drug could be useful in, as well as any possible side effects. "Drug discovery involves a lot of luck," Haystead says. "But the intellectual part was in trying to increase the probability that we would get a positive outcome. We tried to make luck work for us."
In 2000, Haystead (pictured below) founded a company to commercialize his drug discovery platform, and he named it Serenex, which can be translated as "out of serendipity."
After several years of exploration, Serenex began developing a handful of promising new drugs it had discovered using that platform. In 2008, the company was sold to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, based largely on interest in one of those drugs, SNX5422. Serenex had found that the drug blocked an enzyme called HSP-90, which is used by many different oncogenes (genes that can turn normal cells into tumor cells). The drug is now in clinical trials as a potential treatment for several types of cancer, including lung, neuroendocrine, and blood cancers.
Though the company had closed up shop, the experience of launching it completely changed the focus of Haystead's work. "I literally dumped all the work I used to work on, which was focused on the whole process of muscle plasticity and signaling. After the company was bought, all I wanted to do was use this technology in an academic setting to explore new therapies that might not attract industry interest, but that are badly needed," he says. One example -- a therapy for HIV that wouldn't have to be taken daily, which would be more useful in developing countries than current therapies.
Back in his lab at Duke, Haystead began using his proteome-mining technology to find out how HIV infection affects all the body's vital proteins. While screening those 2,000 proteins for their activity in HIV, HSP-90, the same protein involved in cancer, came up again. The screens showed that HSP-90 is activated in immune system cells that are infected with HIV, but not in normal immune system cells.
That excited Haystead because it opened up the possibility that the same drug Serenex had developed to fight cancer might also have a lasting effect against HIV.
As Haystead explains, HIV isn't very robust on its own. In order to survive and keep making copies of itself, HIV hijacks immune system cells called CD4 cells. In early studies, the Serenex drug latches on to CD4 cells infected with HIV, and in some manner it prevents them from producing more virus. But it leaves normal CD4 cells intact. "One of the big hopes is that this drug could block the HIV life cycle," Haystead says. "If you can block that, you would control or possibly even clear the virus." Such a drug could save lives everywhere but would be especially beneficial in Africa, where taking expensive daily medications is not realistic for many people.
Haystead's HIV research is being conducted in the Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI), in collaboration with Barton Haynes, MD, the Frederic M. Hanes Professor of Medicine and director of DHVI. "We hope Tim's HSP-90 inhibitors will attack HIV in novel ways and be able to add a powerful new approach to controlling or preventing HIV-1 infection," Haynes says. "Working with Tim is terrific because he brings both insightful creativity and lots of energy to all he does."
Chay T. Kuo, MD, PhD (right), the George W. Brumley Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, is a big believer in making room for luck in his science. Even his becoming a physician-scientist was a happy accident. After earning a bachelor's degree in architecture, Kuo was set to go to graduate school in that field. But his father, a neurosurgeon, insisted he apply to medical school. Kuo applied, assuming he would never get in. He did.
Once in medical school, Kuo found he liked answering scientific questions more than clinical ones, and during a neurology rotation he was struck by the fact that there were few if any good medical therapies to treat people who've had a stroke or traumatic brain injury. He has set about trying to change that. By exploring how and when stem cells help repair injury in the brain, he hopes to make discoveries that can lead to the development of drugs to enhance repair.
Most scientists who aim to manipulate stem cells in the lab to enhance brain repair try to coax the stem cells to produce new neurons. But neural stem cells alone in a culture dish won't make new neurons. Kuo has shown why, and he has also shown that making new neurons may not be the only key to repairing brain injury. He and his colleagues demonstrated this discovery in two significant publications -- one published in the journal Neuron in 2011 and featured on the cover, and another published in 2013 in the journal Nature. Both findings would probably never have been made, he says, were he not at Duke. "The questions remain the same, but if I were anywhere else, I could be working on something totally different," he says.
When Kuo first met with Brigid Hogan, PhD, chair of the Department of Cell Biology and George Barth Geller Professor for Research in Molecular Biology, to discuss joining the faculty at Duke, they talked about his interest in a region of the brain where stem cells make neurons. This region contains many ciliated cells that provide the stem cells with a supportive niche. Hogan suggested that he should take a look at a protein called Foxj1. Hogan had been studying Foxj1 in the lung for its ability to control production of ciliated cells, but its role in the brain was unknown. Then Kuo met another person who would provide him the inspiration he needed -- Vann Bennett, MD, PhD, a James B. Duke Professor and then vice chair of the Department of Cell Biology. Bennett studies a class of structural proteins called ankyrins; they would end up playing a big role in Kuo's subsequent findings. In 2011, Kuo and postdoctoral fellow Patricia Paez-Gonzalez, PhD, found that in order to produce new neurons, brain stem cells must be surrounded by a niche of supporting cells that he calls "the fountain of youth," and that Foxj1 must activate a particular type of ankryin to form that structure.
"Chay is an exceptionally creative and energetic young scientist," Hogan says. "He has succeeded by being open to ideas from different fields and applying them to an important clinical problem in neurobiology."
Later, Kuo and his team made a discovery that challenged the assumptions of the field to such an extent that peer reviewers for the journal Nature initially rejected it. He found that even in the "fountain of youth," stem cells don't always produce new neurons when the brain is injured; sometimes, they make cells called astrocytes. Astrocytes have generally been thought to be undesirable in this context because they can lead to scarring, and because they can undergo gene mutations that can lead to brain tumors.
But Kuo and former postdoctoral fellow Eric Benner, MD, PhD, now an assistant professor of pediatrics, showed that there is something special about the astrocytes that are produced by stem cells in response to injury. These astrocytes stop bleeding in the immediate aftermath of injury, directed by a molecule called Thrombospondin 4. In experiments in mice, when production of these astrocytes is blocked, the injured brain region doesn't heal. "Bleeding after brain injury is a serious and common problem for patients," Kuo says. He adds that he wouldn't have known where to look to find out what made these astrocytes different if he hadn't talked to Cagla Eroglu, PhD, assistant professor of cell biology, who works down the hall from him, and who intensively studies thrombospondins and other proteins secreted by astrocytes.
"If the belief is that neural stem cells inherently know what's best for the brain, then we suspect that making astrocytes instead of neurons for a time after injury is perhaps a good thing," Kuo says. "In most of our therapeutic efforts, when we're trying to suppress neural stem cells from making any other type of cells but neurons, maybe we're going down the wrong road. We have lots of other studies now building in this direction."
With both of these scientists, some of their discoveries could be chalked up to good fortune. Or maybe it's that they have a willingness to let luck in. Kuo, for instance, is not afraid to question scientific assumptions, and he sees connections that others may not.
"Maybe it helps that I'm not a particularly linear thinker," Kuo says. As Haystead likes to say, quoting Louis Pasteur: "Luck favors only the prepared mind."


Touts are a three-piece rock band from Derry. The name is a reference to the Northern Irish colloquialism for a police informer, which is scrawled and sprayed around their home city; the music they make is full of a sense of Derry’s violent past and its uneasy present. It harks back to the distant days of punk rock, but its sheer velocity also speaks of an urge to get on with the future, whatever that might be. The band are part of a lineage of music interwoven with Northern Ireland’s difficult politics and history: as the Belfast-based music writer Stuart Bailie’s brilliant book Trouble Songs puts it, raw art that has “challenged given stories” and provided “succour and a sense of collective worth”.
Over four very sobering days, this was a sentiment I heard time and again. After I left Derry, with ringing ears, I drove along the often labyrinthine border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, stopping to talk to people for whom that largely invisible line had been a complete irrelevance until the great convulsion of June 2016 put it back on the political agenda. Just about everyone I met knew perfectly well that Theresa May’s travails over the so-called backstop are the product of politicians and voters elsewhere forgetting about the island of Ireland, only to be reminded that for the people who live there, Brexit represents a profound set of dangers. No one was that surprised about this amnesia, but many were very angry about it.
The boredom with Brexit that I have endlessly encountered in England was nowhere to be seen. Eighty-eight miles from Derry in the old port city of Newry, people talked about a place that had lived in the shadow of the old border for more than 60 years and suffered dire economic consequences, only to undergo an amazing recovery that suddenly feels fragile. Here and elsewhere, there was exasperation at the historical accident that had made Theresa May dependent on the Democratic Unionist party, whose original opposition to the Good Friday agreement still rankles and whose hostility to the backstop is a central part of Northern Ireland’s current pain. On the other side of the sectarian divide, in even the sleepiest places, I spotted newly printed posters and hoardings demanding a united Ireland, their strident tone betraying the fact that setting out on that road would inevitably trigger no end of strife.
Everywhere I went, people whose views were less entrenched asked the same set of questions. If the UK leaves the EU with no deal, and Northern Ireland and the Republic are suddenly separated by tariffs and new regulations, would that mean the return of what official-speak calls “border infrastructure”? If it did, wouldn’t that give people spoiling for a fight something to shoot at, or blow up? Whatever the prime minister’s current contortions, what if Brexit – even with a deal – and the Ireland envisaged by the Good Friday agreement turn out to be mutually exclusive?
Such points were usually balanced by a set of convictions people seemed to be clinging to: that no one wants the border back, and any kind of reversal of the peace process is unthinkable. But then the unease would return as it was acknowledged that Brexit is a veritable Pandora’s box, brimming with unforeseen consequences.
What lots of people understood as a matter of instinct was obvious: that in the context of the peace process, the UK’s exit from the EU is a colossal breach of trust, made infinitely worse by the fact that it has been perpetrated so casually. The guilty parties stretch from mindless Tory Brexiteers, through the Labour politicians who have accepted our exit as a given, to the kind of voters who seem to have instant recall of the distant glories of the second world war but huge blind spots when it comes to a conflict that was still rocking the UK only a quarter of a century ago.
As a recent car bomb in Derry proves, the challenges of peace and stability are by no means over. Thanks to an arcane scandal about government subsidies for renewable fuels – which involved vast amounts of wasted public money – and tensions between Sinn Féin and the DUP over the Irish language, there has been no devolved government since January 2017. The damage caused to relations between Dublin and London by Brexit is hardly helping. Among people of Touts’ generation, some of the most pressing political issues centre on the fact that as the Republic has been pushed into a new era of social liberalism, Northern Ireland has been exposed as the last redoubt of very different official attitudes, where abortion remains illegal and equal marriage is still being fought for. And stark regional inequalities have yet to be tackled: for all its cultural vivacity, Derry has deep-seated problems with unemployment, and a gross median wage £69 per week lower than in Northern Ireland as a whole.
All this feeds into a deep sense of anxiety and uncertainty, not least among young people who yearn to escape the pull of the past and find out what the future might hold.
Touts have a song titled Bomb Scare, which, they say, juxtaposes observations of racism in the US and the European refugee crisis with the insecurities of their home turf. Its chorus sounds like a glimpse of very real fears: “Checkpoint Charlie / It’s not my heaven / It’s where we’re headed / It’s really not that far away.” To my English ears, it also suggests a finger angrily pointed at people who averted their eyes from Northern Ireland, and thereby committed the gravest Brexit folly of all.
• This article was amended on 14 February 2019 to remove a reference to the UK leaving “Europe”; this has been changed to “the EU”.


On Saturday, April 20, the C&O Canal Trust, in partnership with the C&O Canal National Historical Park, kicked off the 6th annual C&O Canal Pride Days, the single largest volunteer event to take place in the park. Approximately 85 volunteers from the local communities in Montgomery County invested their time and effort to help restore and revitalize the C&O Canal National Historical Park at Great Falls.
Saturday’s event at Great Falls, which is among the most popular and heavily-visited sites in the 184.5-mile-long Park, coincided with Earth Day, National Park Week, and National Volunteer Week.
This year’s projects at Great Falls included painting historic buildings and park landmarks, raking leaves, and removing trash and debris from the parking lot and surrounding areas. Immediately following the projects, there was a Volunteerism Fair set up for those who were interested in learning about or participating in future volunteer and service opportunities, ranging from long-term volunteer positions such as Bike Patrol and Billy Goat Trail Stewards to one-time projects available for corporate and civic groups.
C&O Canal Pride Days will continue Saturday, April 27, with projects taking place at Williamsport, Md., in Washington County, followed by the revitalization of Spring Gap Campground in Allegany County, Md., on Saturday, May 18. Canal Pride Days will culminate with a return to Great Falls for even more fun volunteer projects on June 1 for National Trails Day.
C&O Canal Pride Days 2013 is sponsored by Guest Services, Inc., Minkoff Development Corporation, Friends of Historic Great Falls Tavern, Rust-Oleum, and Chesapeake WildlifeHeritage.


After a nearly three-week trial last November, a Queens jury failed to agree on a verdict for the charges against Chanel Lewis, 22, and retrial is slated to begin March 12.
The Brooklyn man accused of killing and sexually abusing Howard Beach jogger Karina Vetrano more than two years ago was checked out at a hospital after he got into a fight with another inmate at a Suffolk County jail, officials said Saturday.
According to a spokesman for the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office, Chanel Lewis, 22, got into a fight on Friday and was sent to nearby Peconic Bay Medical Center where medical staff there cleared him for a return to the Riverhead Correctional Facility. Chanel is being held there while awaiting retrial.
The spokesman couldn’t elaborate about the nature of the fight or any injuries but said that after Lewis was returned to Riverhead he was housed in a different part of the jail. Internal disciplinary charges could result because of the fight, the spokesman added.
After a nearly three-week trial last November, a Queens jury failed to agree on a verdict for the charges against Lewis and retrial is slated to begin in Queens State Supreme Court on March 12 .
Lewis was arrested in February 2017 on charges that he strangled and sexually abused Vetrano, 30, as she jogged in a park near her home the evening of Aug. 2, 2016. Police said Lewis dragged Vetrano’s body into the weeds of Spring Creek Park.
A spokesman for the Legal Aid Society, which is representing Lewis, declined to comment Saturday. Spokeswomen for the Queens District Attorney's Office, and the New York City Department of Corrections, which had originally housed Lewis at Rikers Island, didn’t return email messages for comment.
It remained unclear over the weekend why Lewis, who lived in East New York, was being housed in the Suffolk jail. Last December, Lewis had reportedly complained about his living conditions at Rikers, alleging that the city jail traumatized him .


Eleven passengers were injured when an air-conditioned bus in Bangkok crashed into a tree on a slippery road following rains on Thursday.
Pol Lt-Colonel Chitawan Nua-on, deputy inspector of Ratburana Police Station, said the accident happened in front of the Ratburana district office at 11.30am.
Bus No Por-Or 6 plying the Bang Lamphu-Phra Pradaeng route crashed into a large roadside tree on Ratburana Road.
Many of the 11 passengers suffered head injuries and bruises. They were rushed to the Suksawat Hospital.
Driver Thongsuk said his bus was heading to the Phra Pradaeng stop and most passengers were getting ready to get off when he lost control of the bus.
He said the road was slippery and the wornout bus tyres could not grip properly.
He said that as he lost control, he saw many vehicles on the right lane so he decided to stop the bus by crashing it into the tree instead of the other vehicles.
Chitawan said police would interrogate the injured passengers before deciding whether to charge the bus driver.


Michele Cox of Howell celebrated her 50th birthday by running 50 miles in the Chicago Lakefront 50/50, her 50th race of the year.
Michele Cox celebrated her 50th birthday just over a week ago by running 50 miles.
The milestone was also the 50th race in a year marking a half-century of life.
The night before the Chicago Lakefront 50/50 Ultramarathon, Cox didn’t sleep well at her father’s nearby home, afraid she wouldn’t hear the alarm and miss the race — the one race she could not miss, with no others to make up for it before her birthday.
She made it to the starting line, joined by about 55 runners on the dark, cold, windy morning — with a temperature of 33 degrees, about 27 or 28 degrees with wind chill.
Cox was dressed for the weather with hat, gloves and socks and shirt made of “smart wool,” but the real preparation for the race, an out and back course in which she would complete four loops of 12.5 miles each, came from all the miles she had logged leading up to this moment.
Her running, and the subsequent milestones that came along with that endeavor, commenced in 2008, not long after she celebrated her 40th birthday. She had no other goal than to simply lose weight. She accomplished that, shedding about 20 pounds, and soon, the woman who had never liked running had a new habit.
Cox didn’t start racing until 2010 and from there it was a natural progression, going from 5Ks to 10Ks to 10 miles. She ran a half-marathon, then a marathon. While the 26.2 mile distance is the pinnacle of running for many in the sport, the goal-oriented Cox just kept going, completing a 50-mile ultra-marathon, and then a 100-mile ultramarathon last year.
While running the latest 50-miler, the longest distance she had run in this past year with a plethora of 5K races behind her, as well as a few longer distance races including a marathon, she was focused on the training that had gotten her to this point. She runs five to six days a week, 5-15 miles each time for a total of 30-40 miles, all outside, in every kind of weather and often with the Howell Underground Running Team (HURT).
Mostly, she said, what is needed for 50 miles is simply time on your feet.
“You want to run on tired legs — you want to know what your body will do,” said Cox, who has run two half-marathons in a single weekend.
But between 20 and 25 miles, when standard marathoners are hitting the wall from exhaustion, Cox was thinking about the heat on her feet, still clad in winter socks and vortex shoes.
Aid stations were every 2.5 miles in the ultramarathon, with runners offered refueling options including peanut M&Ms, olives, trail mix, chips, water and Gatorade. In other ultramarathons Cox has run, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and boiled potatoes were choices. In this one, she snacked on pickles and olives for the salt to avoid cramps. After the third loop, she took a salt tablet as well.
A runner she had spent some time chatting with had dropped back. Cox was tired. She wondered what she was doing out there, on a cold, cloudy, Chicago day, running 50 miles, sore and exhausted and wanting to simply stop. But she said she had other thoughts too — how she wanted to be a role model for her 23-year-old daughter. How her father would be waiting for her at the finish line. How she had worked to get to this point.
And she knew one thing without any doubt. She hadn’t come all this way, run 49 races in the 12 months prior, spent all that time training, not to finish her 50th race of 50 miles commemorating 50 years of life.
Five miles from the finish line, she slowed to a walk momentarily.
“Then I thought, ‘Why am I walking? This is ridiculous,’” said Cox, who wears a bracelet that reads, ‘God’s got this,’ and occasionally looks down on it to remind herself that she’s got this, too.
Volunteers at the final aid station 2.5 miles out asked what she wanted, but nothing sounded good.
Cox acknowledges that “50 miles is another level of crazy” and she isn’t going to continue increasing her ultramarathon distances or try to complete more than 50 races in a year. Instead, she has her sights set on another goal — qualifying for the Boston Marathon. She missed the mark by 2 minutes in a qualifying race this year.
Next year she will be in a new age bracket and allowed an extra 5 minutes. Running may also take her to another goal, too-- reaching her 100th birthday in the great race of life.


JACKSON, Ga. -- Georgia executed its ninth inmate this year on Tuesday night, putting to death a man convicted of killing his father-in-law more than a quarter century ago.
William Sallie, 50, was pronounced dead at 10:05 p.m. after a lethal injection at the state prison in Jackson.
Lawyers who sought to block William Sallie’s execution said he should be granted a new trial because of alleged juror bias, but courts haven’t properly considered that evidence because he missed a filing deadline by eight days at a time when he didn’t have a lawyer, his lawyers said in court filings.
Georgia has put to death more people this year than any other state, including Texas with seven. There have been 68 men and one woman executed in Georgia since 1976, CBS affiliate WGCL reports.
Sallie was the 46th inmate put to death by lethal injection, according to officials.
Sallie was convicted of murder in the fatal shooting of John Lee Moore in March 1990. His first conviction and death sentence were overturned because his attorney had a conflict of interest.
At his second trial in 2001, a woman eventually chosen as a juror lied during jury selection and failed to disclose domestic violence, messy divorces and a child custody battle that were “bizarrely similar” to Sallie’s case, his lawyers said. They add she later bragged to his attorneys’ investigator that she persuaded her divided peers to vote unanimously for death.
The defense team made those arguments in a clemency petition to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, urging it to act as a “fail safe” against a miscarriage of justice. But the board, the only authority in Georgia with power to commute a death sentence, declined to spare Sallie’s life following a clemency hearing Monday.
Sallie’s lawyers asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the scheduled execution, but it declined. They argued that the high court’s ruling in a pending Texas case with ineffective counsel issues could remove the procedural bars that are keeping the lower federal courts from considering their juror-bias claims.
Attorneys for the state have argued the Texas case isn’t similar enough that its outcome would affect Sallie, particularly because that case doesn’t involve a federal petition that wasn’t filed on time. Furthermore, they argue, even if the issues were identical, the federal appeals court in Atlanta is bound by its own precedent - which doesn’t allow such an extraordinary admission of the procedurally barred evidence - and not by the future possibility of new precedent from the Supreme Court.
Sallie’s lawyers also have argued in a state court petition that carrying out his execution would violate his constitutional rights. Lawyers for the state rejected those claims and a court dismissed the petition. Sallie’s lawyers appealed to the state Supreme Court, which on Tuesday declined to stop his scheduled execution. His lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court which also declined Tuesday evening to stop his execution.
At the time of the killing, Sallie’s wife was living with her parents in rural south Georgia after having filed for divorce and after the two had fought bitterly over custody of their young son.
After cutting his in-laws’ phone lines and breaking into their house about 12:45 a.m. March 29, 1990, Sallie went to the master bedroom and shot John and Linda Moore, according to a Georgia Supreme Court summary of the case. John Moore died from his injuries, and his wife was injured.
Sallie then took his wife and her sister to his mobile home, leaving his son behind, the summary says. Sallie released his wife and her sister that night and was arrested a short time later.
Sallie’s lawyers have said the shooting was a botched attempt to take his son and leave.
There have been 18 executions so far this year in the United States, including those in Georgia and Texas and one each in Alabama, Florida and Missouri. Alabama has one more scheduled Thursday.
Sallie received visits Tuesday from six family members, four friends, three clergy members and four paralegals. He accepted a final prayer and recorded a final statement, according to officials, WGCL reports.


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Thomas Jefferson was just the beginning. Using DNA and other high-tech tools, scholars are ransacking the pasts of Beethoven, Emily Dickinson and Samuel Coleridge, among others -- looking for the historical equivalents of the blue Gap dress. A report by Philip Weiss, in the Times Magazine.


The birthday isn’t until August 2, but the celebration is this week. Israeli President Shimon Peres is turning 90 and there’s no shortage of big names heading to Israel to celebrate the world’s oldest head of state.
For the festivities, Bill Clinton is being paid $500,000 to speak at an event today at Peres Academic Center in Rehovot, the Daily Mail reports. The Jewish National Fund is fronting the bill, donating the money to Clinton’s charity, The William J. Clinton Foundation.
And what’s a party without a serenade from Barbara Streisand? The Jerusalem Post reports that the singer arrived in Israel on June 15 with her dog in tow. Streisand will sing at the main event on Tuesday night, which will kick off this week’s Israeli Presidential Conference at Hebrew University.
Peres has asked that those invited not bring him gifts. “It is not something celebratory that I grew by a year, but it is a good opportunity to show the world Israel’s accomplishments, and for this I am happy.
For some more about Peres, here’s his recent Washington Post interview.
For The President to recite a daily popular verse from Tehilim with a mistake is not be treated lightly especially at 90.


When Wall Street withdrew its support for auction-rate securities, many investors discovered their cash is trapped. Their brokers told them their investments in instruments that were marketed as cash-equivalents were suddenly illiquid. Issuers who depended on the securities for financing are being told by their banks that they must refinance, and of course hand over deal fees to the very institutions that allowed the markets to collapse. And now many want to know why the auctions were in such dire condition that the banks decided the cost of supporting them was not longer acceptable.
“How long did they know the auctions were on life support?” one investor with nearly half-a-million dollars in now illiquid auction-rate securities asked DealBreaker.
The immediate cause of the auction failures was the pullback of the banks and brokerages. In mid-February the financial institutions conducting the auctions stopped acting as principals or buyers of excess ARS inventory. Investors and issuers were caught off guard, surprised by the sudden change that occurred nearly simultaneously and without warning. Even some within the financial institutions were caught off guard, with brokers learning only after the fact that their auction desks were allowing the auctions to fail.
“Wall Street executives have defended their conduct, saying losses on holdings such as mortgage assets have curtailed their ability to use their balance sheets to support faltering markets,” the Wall Street Journal’s Randall Smith and Liz Rappaport report in their article today about a large bond marketer lashing out against Wall Street over the auction failures.
But this raises the question of why the markets were faltering in the first place. In our earlier reporting, we revealed how accounting changes may have set some corporate buyers running for the exits from this market. More recent conversations with a broader array of bond traders and dealers points toward another possiblility—the market never had enough buyer demand to support itself and has been dependent on stabilization from the banks for a very long time.
“The truth is there was no natural auction success rate. But for the banks acting as market makers, these auctions would have failed from the get go,” a bond trader told DealBreaker.
Rather than merely acting as buyers of the last resort, the financial institutions have been consistently called upon to stabilize the ARS market. In many cases, investors were lead to believe the market was much healthier than it has ever been. But with balance sheet capital at a premium due to recent losses, the banks decided that the fees received for structuring the auctions and managing clients money in ARS were did not justify deploying the capital necessary to support the market.
If these bond traders are correct about the way the ARS market operated, Wall Street may soon find itself the subject of yet another round of lawsuits and investigations by authorities.
Did The Auditors Trigger The Sell-Off of Auction Rate Securities?
Auction Rate Securities: Were They Sold As 'Highly Liquid'?
Do Auction Rate Securities Lawsuits Really Face Tough Hurdles?


NILES Go Blue? The University of Michigan battle cry is popular with many in the Niles area, but it hits a stop sign at 1205 S. 11th St., where John Dampeer operates his State Farm Insurance office. Dampeer's Good-Neighbor surroundings include a picture of former Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian and a poster depicting photos of a century's worth of Fightin' Irish football captains. Closer examination of the latter reveals that Dampeer isn't simply a fan. His mug is displayed for the year 1972, when Dampeer earned All-American status. Like most football linemen, the former offensive tackle didn't receive a great deal of recognition in college. But he managed to impress the one person who mattered most -- the former Susan Combs, a Sturgis native and a student at Saint Mary's College when the two first met. Today, they've been married 34 years and have two grown children. "I tell people I made a big mistake at Notre Dame. I fell in love with a girl from Michigan,'' he said. "I'm still here, with the gray (skies) instead of the sunshine.'' The sunshine would be Texas, where the 57-year-old Dampeer grew up. Born in Kermit, a West Texas town half the size of Niles, Dampeer recalled that his high school team his senior year was ranked in the state's top 5 but lost a season-ending game that would have propelled it into the playoffs for the state championship. The game Dampeer's team lost was played in the same stadium in Odessa that's depicted in the film "Friday Night Lights.'' "We had 15,000 to 16,000 people at that game,'' said Dampeer, a guard and defensive end in high school who made all-state on both offense and defense. "One had strong Notre Dame connections and wrote a letter (to ND). He said, 'You need to contact this guy.'æ" At the time, Dampeer knew nothing about the university and its football tradition. But he did know it had a strong academic program and, unlike a lot of universities, it didn't have separate dormitories for its athletes. "I liked that. I wanted to be able to mix with the other students ... to be a little more normalized,'' he said. Another perk was playing for Parseghian, who was so popular fans Lou Mumford Mum's the Word Lou Mumford is a Tribune columnist.


How long do typhoid and dengue microbes stay in a person's body?
Home » Frequently asked Questions on Health » How long do typhoid and dengue microbes stay in a person's body?
Q: How long does it take for dengue and typhoid virus to completely disappear from the patient’s blood and body?
A:Salmonella typhi and Salmonella paratyphi (bacteria)- the causative agents for Typhoid do not persist in patients who have been successfully treated with appropriate antibiotics for 2 to 3 weeks period. Dengue virus disappears from blood completely within 7 to 10 days.


Netflix will not bring any films to this year’s Cannes film festival after a new rule change.
Last year, Netflix brought Okja and The Meyerowitz Stories to the Croisette, which led to protests from French cinema owners. French law states that movies cannot be available on home platforms for 36 months after being shown in cinemas. This would directly conflict with Netflix’s day-on-date release for their films.
This year, Thierry Fremaux, the festival’s artistic director, imposed a ban on movies competing for the main prizes without a theatrical release. Sarandos called the decision “completely contrary to the spirit of any film festival in the world”.
This year’s lineup is yet to be announced but Netflix removing films from consideration would mean new pictures from Alfonso Cuarón and Paul Greengrass would miss out.
Earlier on Wednesday, 2018’s official festival poster was released, before Thursday’s announcement of which films will be premiering. Everybody Knows, a psychological thriller from The Salesman director Asghar Farhadi, has been revealed as the opening film, while new projects from Lars von Trier, Claire Denis and Jacques Audiard are also predicted.


This is the debut week of the Z10 on AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, and at the same $200 price point as the iPhone, Android smartphones, and Windows Phone devices, I wonder if consumers will choose BlackBerry.
As T-Mobile joins Verizon and AT&T this week with the release of the BlackBerrry Z10, I continue to wonder why someone would buy a Z10 over an iPhone, Windows Phone, or Android smartphone. I've been enjoying the Z10 for over a month, but I like using my Nokia N9, and we all know how well MeeGo is doing right now.
I have a great job where I get to try out lots of phones and thus part of the appeal of the Z10 is the new, fresh BlackBerry 10 operating system. I've been able to sideload many Android apps I use daily, but we can't expect consumers to do this , so there is still lots of work to do in BlackBerry World. Then again, the OS packs a lot and you don't always need a ton of apps.
As I previously mentioned , the BlackBerry Z10 is an outstanding communications device and even though I have some amazing phones to test I keep going back to using the Z10.
The iPhone 5 is a solid smartphone, and for most people that come to me for advice, that is the phone they end up buying and they are often overwhelmingly pleased. The Galaxy S III, soon the S4, the Note II, the HTC One, and various Motorola Droid products are all solid Android smartphones. Nokia's Windows Phones are excellent smartphones with lots of value-added services. With all of these products that have a huge selection of apps I am a bit worried that consumers might pass on the Z10.
The BlackBerry Z10 hardware is nothing especially unique, but it is solid and functional. I like the smaller 4.2 inch display, compared to the monster screen devices, and the form factor as it is very pocketable. The camera is OK, but those found on the iPhone 5, Lumia 920, and Galaxy Note II/SIII/S4 are all better.
I imagine people who like BlackBerry devices will like the Z10 and upcoming Q10, but some previous BlackBerry owners have already moved on to something else, and it is going to be tough to bring them back. The BB10 experience is unique, but it also requires people to learn new gestures, and we didn't see lots of excitement for the PlayBook that has the same gesture-based UI. Palm's webOS had a similar gesture-based OS and didn't fare well in the marketplace. I believe BlackBerry has more interest than Palm in making sure the Z10 succeeds.
The Z10 will be out on Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile this week, so we'll have to see what consumers think of it in a few weeks. At a price the same as leading smartphones, do you find enough compelling about the BlackBerry Z10 to justify a purchase?


The communications vendor signs on as board member and agrees to lead a project to create a framework for mobile Java developer tools.
Nokia Corp. Monday is expected to announce it has joined the Eclipse Foundation as a Strategic Developer and board member, becoming the second major company to announce this level of membership in Eclipse in two weeks.
Nokia officials said the mobile communications giant will contribute software and developers to the open source application development platform and will head a new Eclipse project. Iona Technologies announced membership as a Strategic Developer and board member of the Eclipse Foundation last week.
Officials at Nokia said their company, based in Espoo, Finland, will lead a project to create a framework for mobile Java developer tools, including complete tooling support for J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition). For instance, Nokia officials said the company will donate several components of its Java development tool set and build new tools for building MIDP- (Mobile Information Device Profile) and CDC- (Connected Device Configuration) based mobile Java applications.
Nokia has been an Eclipse user for some time, announcing enhanced support for the Eclipse Platform last year at the JavaOne 2004 conference. Pertti Korhonen, chief technology officer at Nokia, delivered a keynote presentation at the conference highlighting the companys commitment to Java. However, at the time, DArcy Salzmann, senior manager of product management and tools partners at Nokia, said the company was possibly interested in other facets of the Eclipse platform.
"We started this investigation into Eclipse at the grass-roots level, and the end result is we have our first products here," Salzmann said. "Were also looking at Eclipse as a C++ development environment."
Indeed, Nokias 2004 initiatives included support for the Eclipse platform in the Nokia Developers Suite for J2ME and the Nokia Mobile Server Services SDK (software development kit). The company also contributed to the Eclipse Foundations Embedded Rich Client Platform (eRCP) project.
/zimages/2/28571.gifEclipse makes moves to pass Microsofts Visual Studio. Click here to read more.
Going forward, Nokia officials said the company will enable developers to integrate any Nokia platform SDK supporting MIDP into the Eclipse environment. And Nokia plans to make additional Eclipse tools announcements later this year as part of its plan to host the majority of its tools offerings in Eclipse, company officials said. Moreover, Nokia reiterated its plans to use and promote the Eclipse platform beyond the scope of Java.
"By tightly integrating with Eclipse and proposing a new open source mobile development tools project, we are able to provide the more than two million registered developers in our Forum Nokia program with complete integrated tool packages optimized for Nokia platforms, helping them improve productivity when creating new mobile applications," said Korhonen in a statement. "Developers will significantly benefit from using the same Integrated Development Environment for multiple programming languages and software platforms."
Previous Microsoft: Software Security Trendsetter?


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With just three months until the recreational use of marijuana becomes legal in California, state public health officials are hoping their “Let’s Talk Cannabis” web page will encourage residents to think twice before they consume, and if they do, to understand there could be some risks.
The California Department of Public Health “engaged in extensive conversations with stakeholders in California and partners in other states with legalized cannabis to target the most vulnerable populations and apply their lessons learned,” said CDPH health director, Dr. Karen Smith.
The health agency’s web page is part of a statewide campaign to educate the public about what’s legal in California and the potential health impacts of cannabis use.
Effective Jan. 1, 2018, its will be legal for adults 21 and older to possess, consume and cultivate marijuana. It will also be legal to sell marijuana at retail outlets where permitted by local ordinance. Marijuana dispensaries will also continue to be permitted.
SB 94, the legislation legalizing recreational consumption, included funding for the state to conduct outreach and education to consumers.
“We are committed to providing Californians with science-based information to ensure safe and informed choices,” said Smith.
—The potential harms of overusing cannabis or cannabis products.
According to Smith, the CDPH will continue to incorporate the latest data available into public messages to increase awareness about how cannabis affects bodies, minds and health.
On the CDPH’s website, individuals can find information about legal, safe and responsible use, and health information for youth, pregnant and breastfeeding women, parents and mentors, and health care providers. There is also information about how to safely purchase and store cannabis for personal use.
For additional information, visit the Let’s Talk Cannabis web page.


The Weiss School 2012 Academic Taekwondo state and national-level teams brought home 15 medals – seven gold, three silver and five bronze - from the 2012 USAT National Qualifer/ Florida State Taekwondo Championships in Miami April 14. The event was held at St. Thomas University.
Eighth-grader Rebecca Weissman qualified to compete in the World Class Poomsae division at the 2012 USAT Junior & Senior National Championships in Dallas by winning a gold medal in the 14-17 black belt division. She will be joined by several other Weiss School teammates at the competition.
Rebecca Weissman (center) celebrates her gold medal.


I tend to open these sites in a private window as the cookies will be removed when I exit.
Washington Post isn't alone. i'm finding more and more websites now bring up a popup that forces accept our cookies or leave popups.


Controlled and stable electrical doping of organic semiconductors is desirable for the realization of efficient organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices. Thus, progress has been made to understand the fundamental doping mechanisms.1-3 In 2016, Aizawa et al. reported the use of 12-molybdophosphoric acid hydrate (PMA) to induce p-type doping and crosslinking of neat films of poly[N-9’-heptadecanyl-2,7-carbazole-alt-5,5-(4’,7’-di-2-thienyl-2’,1’,3’-benzothiadiazole)](PCDTBT).4 Later on, a more general approach of sequential solution-based doping was presented, by post-process immersion of donor-like polymer films in PMA-nitromethane solutions.5 However, critical to the method is the use of nitromethane, a highly unstable solvent, to dissolve PMA and thus limited the applicability to large-scale fabrication of organic solar cells.
A collaboration between a team of researchers from the Kippelen Research Group at Georgia Tech and the Toney Research Group at SSRL developed a solution-based doping method using the highly stable solvent, acetonitrile. Figure 1a displays the chemicals used in this work. In Figure 1b, the optical properties of poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl)(P3HT) films immersed for 30 min in a 0.5 M solution of PMA in acetonitrile (PMA-im-P3HT) were studied by comparing their transmittance spectra against pristine P3HT and P3HT immersed similarly in a 0.5 M solution of PMA in nitromethane. The normalized change of transmittance ΔT T-1 as a function of wavelength (inset of Fig.1b) reveals the same spectral signatures reported for PMA-im-P3HT films when PMA was dissolved in nitromethane. That is, changes in the region where ΔT T-1< 0 correlate with the P3HT polaron bands, and deviations in the region where ΔT T-1> 0 correlate to the bleaching of the main π-π* absorption bands.6 The data suggests electrical p-doping into the depth of the organic film. Figure 1c shows that the performance of PMA-doped OPV devices using PMA in acetonitrile is comparable to that of OPVs made using PMA in nitromethane or MoO3, under simulated AM 1.5G solar illumination. Furthermore, if the light soaking mechanism is used before each measurement, OPVs made using PMA in nitromethane or acetonitrile remain stable for up to 524 h in the air, retaining 80% of their initial power conversion efficiency (PCE).
Figure 1. Optical and electrical properties of P3HT films immersed in a PMA solution in acetonitrile or nitromethane. a, Chemical structures of PMA, nitromethane, acetonitrile and P3HT. b, The transmittance of pristine P3HT and PMA-im-P3HT (after post-process immersion in nitromethane or acetonitrile) films, with the normalized change in the transmittance data in the inset. c, Direct comparison of J-V characteristics measured in the dark and under 1-sun illumination and stability test for PMA-im-P3HT:ICBA OPVs exposed to air at room temperature. All measurements were conducted after 10 min soaking under 1-sun illumination in a N2-filled glovebox.
Acetonitrile, nitromethane, and ethanol were used to dissolve the polyoxometalate and the morphology of PMA-im-P3HT films fabricated on Si substrates was analyzed using grazing-incidence wide-angle x-ray scattering (GIWAXS). As expected, the images show that the preferred orientation of P3HT on the SiO2 surface is edge-on, with distinctive (100), (200) and (300) lamellar peaks observed in the out of plane direction with q values of 0.37 Å-1, 0.77 Å-1 and 1.14 Å-1 (Fig. 2b). Also as expected, there is a clear peak on the (010) direction with a q value of 1.68 Å-1 in the in-plane line profile (d-spacing ca. 0.37 nm), which is due to the π-π stacking of P3HT.
Figure 2. GIWAXS data as measured on pristine and PMA doped P3HT, when using various solvents to dissolve the PMA. a, Two-dimensional GIWAXS data converted to q-space for pristine P3HT and P3HT immersed in PMA solutions in nitromethane, acetonitrile or ethanol for 60 seconds. b, One-dimensional scattering profiles (out-of-plane and in-plane profiles), obtained from the two-dimensional GIWAXS data.
Interestingly, the PMA doping does not appear to alter the location of the peaks in the in-plane line profile, which implies no change of the π-π stacking distance of P3HT. Instead, additional peaks appear in the out-of-plane line profile of P3HT samples doped with PMA, when the polyoxometalate is dissolved in either nitromethane or acetonitrile, pointing out to the intercalation of doping molecules between P3HT lamella. Specifically in doped samples using PMA in nitromethane or acetonitrile, near the (200) diffraction, the original neat P3HT peak at 0.77 Å-1 of the out-of-plane line profile appears next to a new peak at 0.69 Å-1. Moreover, near the (300) diffraction, there is a new peak at 1.03 Å-1, in addition to the original peak at 1.14 Å-1. Thus, the GIWAXS data shows that the dopant molecules, when using PMA dissolved in nitromethane or acetonitrile, become intercalated between the lamellar while producing no distortion in the π-π stacking of P3HT. However, such effect is not present when immersing P3HT films into PMA in ethanol. This is consistent with the less effective doping of the PMA-ethanol solution as observed in the past.
In conclusion, the research team reports on the use of acetonitrile, a solvent that is stable in air, as an alternative to nitromethane to enable PMA-based electrical doping of organic semiconductors within a limited depth from the surface. The morphology of doped organic films (using PMA dissolved in nitromethane or acetonitrile) was studied using GIWAXS and the data revealed that the dopant molecules intercalate between the P3HT lamella but cause no change in the π-π stacking. Based on these findings, they propose an explanation to the observed solvent-selectivity of the PMA doping method. Finally, they validated the use of acetonitrile to fabricate solar cells and discovered that these devices showed increased stability when exposed to atmosphere conditions, compared to reference devices fabricated using nitromethane.
1. B. Lussem, et al., Chem. Rev., 116, 13714-13751 (2016).
2. I. Salzmann, et al., Acc. Chem. Res., 49, 370-378 (2016).
3. I. E. Jacobs, et al., Adv. Mater., 29, 1603221 (2017).
4. N. Aizawa, et al., Chem. Comm., 52, 3825-3827 (2016).
5. V. A. Kolesov, et al., Nat. Mater, 16, 474-480 (2017).
6. P. J. Brown, et al., Phys. Rev. B, 63, 125204 (2001).


For patients who have lost their sight to various eye diseases, artificial retina technology allows them to experience limited vision once more.
The external parts of the artificial retina device include glasses with a mounted camera and a small computer.
The device also includes an electrode implanted onto the patient’s retina. When the camera “sees” an image, the computer is able to translate these into a pattern of neural signals. This pattern is then transmitted to the implanted electrode, and directly stimulates the optic nerve. These signals are then able to be processed by the brain and interpreted as very rudimentary images.
The first artificial retina to be implanted in a patient, known as Argus I, included only sixteen electrodes that stimulated the optic nerve. However, the patient with this implant was still able to tell the differences between light and dark, and could make out basic shapes. The newer version of the technology, Argus II, now includes sixty electrodes. However, it is still limited in that patients can only tell the differences between light and dark areas, and can only see shapes, outlines, and blurs, and not detailed images. Regardless, this is a large improvement over no sight, and patients with the implant are satisfied with simply a partial regain of their vision, and are hopeful that the technology will continue to improve. As of late, a third model of the artificial retina is in development, and will include over 200 electrodes.
Though the project began almost ten years ago, the implant has recently been approved for patients in Europe. The company has not yet submitted approval to the FDA, but hopes to do so by the end of this year.
Second Sight – How is Argus II Designed to Produce Sight?
Vision is one of the most impressive functions of the human brain. It interprets nothing but electromagnetic waves and paints a glorious picture of our daily existence from the scattered chaotic sea of intertwining light waves that we call home. Many see their vision deteriorate and the world blur as time goes on and these problems can be corrected by optometry, but blindness comes on like a relentless infidel for more than two million people worldwide in the form of retinitis pigmentosa (RP). RP is a heritible genetic disorder that leads to degeneration and loss of function in the retina’s photoreceptor cells, and can lead to full blindness in a matter of years. There is no cure or treatment for RP, but new research may change that very soon.
Vision starts in the photoreceptor when light activates rhodopsin, a G-protein coupled receptor pigment consisting of light sensitive opsin and retinal. Light triggers a conformational change in retinal that kick starts a G-coupled visual cascade and the flow of visual information to the brain. In retinitis pigmentosa, rhodopsins in the photoreceptors become insensitive to light starting in the rod cells, and blindness sets in gradually. Rod cells are used in low light and deteriorate first, leading to night blindness, and dysfunction in cone cells used for color vision and acuity sets in until full blindness plagues the individual. Fortunately, a team of French scientists has investigated this degradation and has found a way to combat it by reactivating the photoreceptor cells through genetics. Their study was featured in the July 23rd issue of Science.
The scientists isolated an achaebacterial rhodopsin analog called halorhodopsin that functions in the yellow and green wavelength range. They then introduced a halorhodopsin encoding gene into retinitis pigmentosa model mice via a viral vector and also created a control group. In their experiments, it was found that both slow and fast degrading retinal cells in the experimental mice regained their light sensitivity in response to integration of halorhodopsin into their insensitive photoreceptor cells. Electrical responses were recorded from ganglion cells (the third tier cell in the visual cascade) and healthy photoreceptor spikes were observed in response to light stimulation. Most importantly, lateral inhibition (the mechanism by which the brain discriminates edges of objects) was fully preserved, while mono-directional movement was retained. Halorhodopsin mice also performed significantly better than the control RP mice in a battery of visually guided tasks, demonstrating that their photoreceptors had been successfully resensitized by halorhodopsin integration. The scientists also tested the resensitizing ability of halorhodopsin on cultured human retinal cells. They were successful in integrating halorhodopsin into human cells via viral vectors, but could not conduct any clinical trials. However, photoreceptors expressing halorhodopsin demonstrated photocurrents and photovoltages that would be adequate to restore human vision.
This opens the door to treatment of retinitis pigmentosa in the genes – the same place where it starts. Although halorhodopsin therapy will not fully restore all wavelengths in human vision, it can still serve as a tool to bring restore vision in the blind through optical devices. For example, an RP patient could be treated with halorhodopsin gene thearpy, then outfitted with a device that images the visual field and translates it into halorhodopsin recognizable wavelengths. This light mosaic is then projected onto the patient’s eyes and the can “see” what is in front of them. The supplied image of the device is from a perspective article in the beginning of the current issue of Science.
View the full text Science article here (HTML) or here (PDF) and the perspective piece about the article here. Be sure to discuss in the comments!


MUMBAI: On the festive occasion of Diwali, Arzoo.com, India‘s leading travel portal, today announced a special offer where customers can avail guaranteed 10% discount on domestic airfare bookings on Go Air, Spicejet, Indigo, & Indian for travel anywhere within India.Similarly customers can also avail guaranteed 7% discount on International airline bookings to US, Europe and Gulf.
Commenting on this special offer, Mr. Sameer Patil, Head-Marketing of Arzoo.com said, "Diwali is one of the most Grand festival of India and therefore we have announced this special offer to provide 10% discount on 4 domestic airlines to our customers to celebrate, rejoice & travel more by taking benefit of this special offer". This offer is valid for bookings done via any bank credit card or even by paying cash on delivery between 2nd Nov to 15th November, 2007 for travel on any date till 31st March 08.


Services through a station were delayed after someone got on to the tracks.
A veteran politician who served as an MP for almost 30 years has died.
A claim by a Kent MP that scrapping primary school tests would let down children has sparked a backlash online.
The safety concerns of parents who fear crossing the road with their children is leading to calls to improve the "dangerous" layout.
Firefighters battled a garden blaze for about 40 minutes in the middle of the night.
A mum has hit out after her autistic son had to miss the end of a screening of Dumbo at the cinema after complaints.
Faversham joint-manager Phil Miles demands more from his players after defeat to Herne Bay.
Police are investigating vandalism at more than 30 locations across a town.
A suspect has appeared in court accused of criminal damage and driving offences after a police car was damaged.
Dramatic footage shows the moment cars go up in flames on the M2 following a crash.
A team of school pupils are set to compete on the world stage after racing to success at the F1 in Schools national finals.
Faversham joint-manager Phil Miles reacts to Herne Bay's managerial departures ahead of Saturday's local derby.
The body of a man found dead in a field has been repatriated following a fundraising plea from friends as an inquest into his death opens.
The M2 is open again after a crash caused three cars to catch fire earlier this morning leaving two people needing hospital treatment.
Talented young footballers were coached by Chelsea legend, Dennis Wise and the match was broadcast to seven million people.
The family of a tireless campaigner, who died recently, have described her as “ahead of her time” and welcomed a call to name a bridge after her.
Police were forced to close the M2 this morning following a crash.
Two men have been arrested after more than 2,000 cannabis plants were found growing in a building.


The Daily Leader of Brookhaven reports that the truck caught fire Thursday morning while headed southbound on Interstate 55 near Summit.
SUMMIT, Miss. (AP) — State officials are cleaning up after a truck carrying a chlorine-based chemical burned in southwest Mississippi.
Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Cpl. Brandon Fortenberry says a motorist warned the driver there was a fire under one of two trailers.
The driver pulled off at the Lake Dixie Springs exit, but was unable to put the blaze out with a fire extinguisher.
A trailer of calcium hypochlorite, often used to chlorinate swimming pools, burned. Firefighters put out the fire before it claimed a second trailer.
A hazardous materials team from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality is cleaning up. The interstate remains open, but the exit is closed until cleanup is complete.


Updated. Motorola’s(s MMI) quest to ban Apple’s(s AAPL) push e-mail notifications from its iCloud and MobileMe services was upheld in a Germany court Friday. This is a victory for Motorola: Not only did the judge agree that an earlier injunction granted should be upheld, Apple was also ordered to pay Motorola unspecified damages in the case, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Motorola sued Apple over the way iCloud and its predecessor MobileMe send “push” emails, claiming the method used is a violation of “multiple pager status synchronization system and method patents” — basically technology Motorola once used in pagers. Apple said following the initial ruling that Motorola’s “old pager patent is invalid.” But a judge disagreed and forced Apple to come up with a workaround in early February. Apple did that: The overall services of MobileMe and iCloud still work in Germany, but users have to check their email manually, rather than it being automatically pushed to them.
While it’s a win for Motorola, it’s just one battle in the all-out mobile patent war that has engulfed most of the world’s major mobile device and software makers. For a visualization of who’s suing whom, don’t miss this helpful graphic illustrating the global patent suit mess.
Pager tech is actually still relevant if the concepts are being updated into modern tech.
It’s no fun when the rabbit has the gun!!!


Staged by the playwright, who also appears in the unbilled role of Monkey (a kind of money whisperer), Lazy Fair is in the tradition of Reyna’s earlier, shorter The Scottish Play. That one cleverly used a family breakup to explore Scotland’s independence movement.
Lazy Fair looks at the execution and aftermath of a heist somewhere in the world (Paul Tei’s costumes suggest the Middle East). The caper plays out in flashback. In the present, a decade after the theft went all kinds of wrong, the three plotters reunite and turn on each other.
Rip (Ken Clement) is the conniving ringleader who wound up with the spoils: what looks like an empty box, though Monkey assures him it contains the spirit of money. Otto (Andy Quiroga), a tightly wound worrier, suffers from memory lapses because of an injury he suffered in the bomb blast 10 years earlier — at least, that’s how Rip tells it. Sandra (Meredith Bartmon) has remained friendly with Otto, but she has a tendency to vanish and reappear. As for Rip, he’s dead to her, and she’d like to make that literal.
The three rationalize their crime initially by deciding the rich have way too much money, so a little redistribution of wealth is in order. Otto frets that money will change their friendship, and he’s right. There is talk of Super PACs, the sub-prime mortgage collapse, the Sinaloa Cartel, ponzi schemes, the Koch brothers. The idea that friends shouldn’t discuss money comes up more than once.
Lazy Fair is a relatively short play overstuffed with ideas. Though Reyna, a gifted theater artist, writes good dialogue, the beginning of the play is so deliberately puzzling that the audience takes too long to get invested in the characters and story. Since Reyna is also acting in the play, Lazy Fair might have benefitted (as so many first productions do) from having someone else direct it so that Reyna could focus on his work as a playwright.
Even so, Mad Cat gives the play an intriguing production. Sound designer Matt Corey contributes subtle music and a horrific effect suggesting repeated executions. Tei, who also did the set, and lighting designer Melissa Santiago Keenan create a world of shadows and smoke. And three fine actors (well, four counting Reyna) give it their all. Clement’s Rip is a smooth-talking bully whose loyalty is nonexistent. Bartmon’s Sandra is pragmatic and every bit as ruthless as Rip. Quiroga, a ball of nervous energy, supplies most of the laughs as Otto.
Mad Cat, now the resident theater company at Miami Theater Center, has a 15-year history of new, boundary-pushing, category-busting work. Lazy Fair is now part of that tradition, and with some rewrites and tweaks, it could emerge as a play with a future.


For Gilbert Arenas (and his children), all good things must come to an end. With the final installment of his lucrative $111 million contract coming on October 31, Arenas plans on making several cuts in spending, which includes taking his kids out of private school, according to TMZ Sports.
With the NBA checks no longer coming in, TMZ Sports is reporting that Arenas will be living off $169,895 in investment income every year, and as a result, his kids cannot continue to attend a private school, which costs $91,600 per year. "I anticipate that the children will need to transfer to public schools in 2017 and beyond," Arenas said.
Welp, you had a good run, Gil.


Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council still hasn’t provided clarification on the future status of one of its members who has been convicted of sexual assault.
It remains unclear if the local authority can or will take any action against ex-SDLP councillor Brian Duffin, who earlier this week was sentenced to four months in prison for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl in June 2016.
Having been freed on bail to appeal against the conviction and sentence, the independent member told a BBC reporter that he intends to continue to serve as a councillor.
Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council has said it is “taking advice on the matter”.


If you Google images of "Elle Magazine Covers," you'll finds lots of covers featuring skinny women wearing tight outfits or low-cut dresses, showing lots of skin. In fact, you'll have a hard time finding anything else.
So when Elle magazine offered the cover to Melissa McCarthy (The Heat, Bridesmaids) for its "The Women in Hollywood" issue, many were happy to see a bigger woman finally chosen for the cover. But now that the magazine has unveiled a look at it, we see that the actress is wearing a heavy coat that's covering almost every inch of her.
Critics immediately attacked Elle for their wardrobe decision, but the magazine says that McCarthy had lots of input into what she would be wearing. "Melissa loved this look, and is gorgeous on our cover," said Elle.
Take a look at the cover below and let us know if the magazine should be ashamed for covering up McCarthy.
They should be ashamed for putting her on the cover. Period!
I can't f*cking stand this unfunny irl Miss Piggy, she's terrible.
A wise choice indeed !!
Bullit beat me to it.
When will people stop with forcing everyone to accept fat people? Everyone's up in arms if a girl is slightly underweight on one of these magazine covers, but they cream their pants when they get some 250lb cow on the cover.
She's fat, we get it and it's still not funny.
Well f*cking said kickit! I'm sick of it!
You know what, and I hate to sound like a f*cking preacher here, but I am fine with people being who they are and all. That's great. But encouraging the idea of being overweight as something to be PROUD of it horrible! You know what will come from it! This girl will die by the age of 50 and that what role model will she be! She's funny enough, way better than the idiot Rebel Wilson, but holy sh*t like really people are mad an obese woman was paraded around?! f*cking ridiculous people. Fine be proud to be who you are, but when actual health issues fall with your lifestyle, don't f*cking promote it to other people.
Yeah, they should've treated her like every other actress on a magazine cover...just dress her up in a skimpy outfit and photoshop the f*ck out of her until she's impossibly perfect in a way that makes young girls develop eating disorders and yearn to commit suicide.
Dreamcast, just because you love fatties doesn't mean everyone else has to. No one's advocating eating disorders, but we're not advocating obesity either.
Actually, those hypocritical bastards from Elle mag should definitely have that annoying fatso taken pics of her just like every other girls before and that would have been epically fun!
Show to the max how the annoying c*nt really looks like in a skimpy outfit.
They actually got her to fit on the cover?!!?
The article says Melissa McCarthy, so why am I looking at Roseanne Barr?
That's not a coat, it's a parachute.
watched The Heat. This movie made me hate life even more.
Rebel Wilson is actually 1000x funnier than Melissa McCarthy Sleuth, so you are wrong there.
Are you kidding me? She's a female, Aussie version of Russell Brand! She does gross out comedy, over-uses her accent as a running joke, and not to mention she is a one trick pony.
Guess if they showed anything else they would havr been criticized for airbrushing out all the cottage cheese.
how long did it take to airbrush out all the skintags?
Like I said before, I think funny girls, no matter their looks, put blood in my d*ck, but I gotta say my feeling for McCarthy's roles lately have left me...how do you say?...flaccid.
But she did get screwed over with that cover. Showing only her face?! That was a f*cking slap-in-the-face...then why put her on the cover in the first place!! Plus more than half of the readers HAVE McCarthy's body anyway!! Putting her in an unimaginative, body long overcoat?!! This thing looks like the "I'm not racist!! I rrttrmake small talk at work with a black guy..." kinda feel.
lol...a bunch of "guys" arguing over a fat chick on the cover of a woman's magazine...good one, Alex, you f*cking stooge.
Melissa Mcarthy = Fat Hitler.


The critical buzz on The Brave One and In the Valley of Elah.
The critical buzz on 3:10 to Yuma and Shoot ‘Em Up.
The critical buzz on Ladrón que roba a ladrón and The Nines.
The critical buzz on The Nanny Diaries and The King of Kong.
The critical buzz on Superbad.
The critical buzz on Stardust and Rocket Science.
The critical buzz on The Bourne Ultimatum and Charles Simic, poet laureate.
The critical buzz on No Reservations and Arctic Tale.
The critical buzz on I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
The critical buzz on Talk to Me and Interview.
The critical buzz on the haute couture collections and License To Wed.
The critical buzz on Ratatouille and Evening.
The critical buzz on A Mighty Heart and Evan Almighty.
The critical buzz on Nancy Drew and Eagle vs. Shark.
The critical buzz on TheSopranos and the Tony Awards.
The critical buzz on Knocked Up and Crazy Love.
The critical buzz on the Lost season finale.
The critical buzz on Shrek the Third and Brooklyn Rules.
The critical buzz on Paul Poiret and 28 Weeks Later.
The critical buzz on the Tribeca Film Festival.


Bill Collings liked to build things. And while he was blessed with good engineering genes, nobody would have guessed just what he would wind up building: a guitar.
His grandfather’s uncle was a pioneering automaker. His grandfather was the innovative president of Dow Corning, the manufacturer of silicone products. His father was an engineer. His parents hoped he would become a doctor, but he dropped out of a pre-med program at college.
He built hot rods, mostly as a hobby. But after working for five years in an Ohio machine shop and experimenting with improvised string instruments in his spare time, he finally found his true calling when he was about 30.
Abandoning metal for wood, he began a quest to perfect the kind of fretted musical instrument he had dabbled with since he was 13, in his case a C-1 model Gibson.
Self-taught and by then living in Houston, he learned on the job largely by fixing other people’s instruments before venturing to build acoustic guitars on his own in his two-bedroom apartment, making machine parts for them as well.
Mr. Collings, who died July 14 at 68 at his home in suburban Austin, Tex., became one of America’s pre-eminent luthiers, as string instrument makers are called. His company, Collings Guitars, said the cause of death was bile duct cancer.
Beginning in 1979, Mr. Collings’s company produced some 20,000 guitars for many of the world’s most accomplished rock, country, jazz and folk musicians, including Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Joni Mitchell, Eddie Van Halen, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Bill Frisell and Emmylou Harris.
His company later branched out into mandolins, electric guitars, concert and tenor ukuleles, and custom guitar cases, becoming a leader in mass-produced musical instruments.
“Every day out here around the world I hold a piece of your excellence and heart and soul in my hands when I pick up your guitars,” the singer, songwriter and guitarist Charlie Sexton wrote in a tribute to Mr. Collings on Facebook.
Business grew at first mostly by word of mouth. In the late 1980s, Mr. Collings produced two dozen custom guitars for George Gruhn, a vintage collector and retailer in Nashville, under the Gruhn logo. He then began placing his own surname in distinctive script on the headstock of every instrument crafted in his shop.
He explained that making a single Collings guitar takes about 20 craftsmen more than 35 days working in a climate-controlled plant in Austin (temperature 72 degrees, humidity 48 percent). The company turns out about six acoustics, three electrics, two mandolins and two ukuleles every day, or more than 3,000 a year.
A new Collings guitar ranges in price from about $3,300 to about $13,500.
“His devotion to form and function dictated the elegant construction of his instruments, which are known for their warm, crystalline tone and projection,” Steve Grimes, a fellow luthier, wrote this month on the website Premier Guitar.
Mr. Collings is survived by his wife, the former Ann Shaughness; his daughter, Sara Thomas; and his sisters, Martha Howell and Laura Putnam.
William Ralph Collings was born Aug. 9, 1948, in Midland, Mich., to Wallace Collings and the former Angeline Commora, and was raised in suburban Cleveland.
He left the Ohio machine shop for Houston, where he worked for an oil field pipeline company during the day and indulged his passion at night.
He made his first guitar, a hybrid composite of a Gibson Dove, a Martin D-28 and a Guild D-25, from Brazilian rosewood on his kitchen table using a hand saw, hammer, chisel and plane.
In the late 1970s, Lyle Lovett was at a Houston nightclub when he became intrigued by the flattop guitar that Rick Gordon, a songwriter, was playing.
After learning that it had been made by Mr. Collings, Mr. Lovett called him to repair the frets on his own Martin D-35.
After building about 50 more guitars, Mr. Collings was heading to California when he stopped in Austin. There he met the luthiers Tom Ellis and Mike Stevens and decided to move into their shop instead of continuing on to the West Coast. He hired his first employee in 1989. The roster eventually grew to nearly 100, but each instrument got personal attention.
Collings guitars are usually fabricated from ebony, Indian rosewood, mahogany and quilted maple, which is sanded repeatedly between 12 coats of nitrocellulose lacquer.
Still, he was never fully satisfied.


Deleted tweets for House Representative Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.
Deleted Tweets From Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass.
Deleted after 6 days at 7:55 AM on 20 Apr. Original tweet by @BLeeForCongress.
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Deleted after 4 days at 2:38 PM on 20 Mar. Original tweet by @RepPressley.
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Today marks the 4th mass shooting THIS WEEK & the real #NationalEmergency. My heart breaks for the victims of yet another senseless tragedy. We must #EndGunViolence now.
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Tpoday marks the 4th mass shooting this week & the real #NationalEmergency. My heart breaks for the victims of yet another senseless tragedy. We must #EndGunViolence now.
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RT @LeaderHoyer: Wishing a happy birthday to my friend and a new, powerful voice on @OversightDems, @RepPressley.
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Very nice commercial building with 1649 sq. ft. which can be an open floor plan if need be. 1 bath, utility room, counter tops with cabinets, window units, ceiling fans, space heaters, and wired for an alarm system. There is also a driveway leading to rear parking.
Great first time home buyer house, investment property, or empty nester. Home has fresh paint, new roof, new flooring in all areas except for beautiful hardwood floors in bedroom. Home has an eat-in kitchen and opens to living area. Nice size bedrooms and large closets. A must see!
Lots of potential for this 1.5 acres of land on the outskirts of town that is located in a quiet neighborhood. Don't let this property pass you by. Call us today!!
Build your dream home on these two lots combined that total just over 1.5 acres! 1500 minimum square footage and all brick homes. No mobile allowed.


Brian Ernest Arbizu was born July 17, 1964, to Ernest E. and Muriel Ann Arbizu. He was one of twins. Brian passed away Jan. 6, 2019, in Shawnee at the age of 54.
Brian was preceded in death by his parents and sister Johnni L. Kinnard.
Brian is survived by his three children, Jeremy, Daniel, and DeLanie of Phoenix, Arizona; brother David A. Rogers of Shawnee; three sisters, twin sister M. Dianne Arbizu of Arizona, Terrisa M. Allen of Wisconsin, and Samantha A. Garcia of Arizona.
Brian was kind and generous and would bring laughter to even your darkest days. Upon meeting him you could never forget him. Brian was excited about his new life that he had found in Jesus, his family, his church family, and several close friends. He attended C3 Cross Connection Church in Shawnee. He had such an outgoing personality and attracted folks to him with his smile. Brian would give you his last dollar or his sack lunch if he thought you needed it more than him.
A memorial service officiated by Pastor Ken Kerbo will be held Friday, Jan. 18, at 6 p.m. at C3 Cross Connection Church located at 329 N. Pesotum in Shawnee. A potluck dinner will follow the service.


TransDigm Group Inc. said Tuesday that it is seeking an additional $650 million term loan, tied to its consideration of a special cash dividend in the range of $1.1 billion and $1.5 billion. The timing and aggregate amount of the dividend is yet to be determined, nor is the dividend or financing definite. The airplane components producer also reconfirmed its guidance. Sales are expected to be at or slightly below the low end of the $3.17 billion to $3.19 billion range. And earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization are expected to be at or slightly above the midpoint of the range of $1.48 billion and $1.50 billion. The company will announce fiscal third-quarter results on Nov. 14. TransDigm shares are inactive in premarket trading and up 33.2% for the past year. The S&P 500 Index is up 10.8% for the last 12 months.