In one of the biggest funding rounds of the year in education and technology, Altschool is raising $100 million from Founders Fund, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s foundation along with other venture backers and philanthropic organizations.
The move will mark the company’s shift from proving out its ideas around personalized education through building its own schools to sharing or licensing its individualized learning model with other educators that want to adopt its approach. It’s an ambitious and major test as to whether Altschool’s model can be done affordably and accessibly at scale in other parts of the country.
This round is split 50-50 between conventional venture firms like existing investor Andreessen Horowitz and other philanthropic organizations like Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective. Altschool is a B-corp, a special type of corporate structure where the goal is to not only be a profitable entity, but to also have a positive impact on society. And that’s written in and one of the entity’s legally defined goals.
Ventilla, who previously sold social question-and-answer startup Aardvark to Google, is one of a handful of entrepreneurs who have crossed over from the world of consumer Internet and social networking into big and hairy problems in highly politicized and regulated areas like health and K-12 education. Brian Singerman, the Founders Fund partner who led the round, recently backed another entrepreneur, Joshua Kushner, in another $100 million round he led toward healthcare for the insurance company Oscar a few weeks ago.
A couple of years ago, when Ventilla started looking at schools for his children in San Francisco, he was frustrated with the many waiting lists for schools across the city and that the education he would have paid for wouldn’t be suited to the economy that we live in today with flexible employment that prizes entrepreneurial and creative thinking.
He pointed out how the current U.S. educational system feeds top jobs today.
So instead of homeschooling his children, Ventilla began building his own schools from scratch to see if he could generate a model or platform that marries some of the learnings of Sal Khan’s experiments in individualized learning with real hands-on teaching in classrooms.
While those schools aren’t necessarily cheap at north of $20,000 per year, they are 10 to 15 percent less expensive than other private schools in San Francisco and 40 percent of Altschool’s students are on some form of financial aid. The ultimate vision is to scale the model down to a point where the price is marginally more than what it costs to educate a child in the public system.
In Altschool’s model, kids join mixed-age classrooms where they switch between project-based learning models and an individualized “playlist” of modules testing different schools. The student-to-teacher ratio is about 1 to 7, but it will settle more closely to 1 to 10 as the network expands.
One other notable difference is that Altschool uses “micro-schools” that they can quickly spin up in unusual urban environments instead of making very capital-intensive decisions around acquiring land for building campuses. That makes it more flexible, especially as major urban areas in the United States have grown their populations over the last few decades but haven’t been able to scale their schooling infrastructure to match that growth.
Altschool’s philosophy is based on “child-centered learning” where teachers follow the natural interests of students. It’s like a Reggio Emilia-approach mixed with tech. That’s a community-based schooling model that arose in post-war Italy where children are considered to have rights and are given more control over their learning.
When I visited a campus in San Francisco’s Marina District a few weeks ago, there were pre-teens building art installations and Arduino-based gum-ball machines. One project let the students even architect and re-design the school’s upper deck to house rabbits in SketchUp, a 3D modeling program.
While some Altschool teachers can earn north of $100,000 a year, Ventilla stresses that giving teachers flexibility and more autonomy is a more important motivator and a better way of attracting educators. When we talked the much-celebrated Finnish public educational system, he said that increasing mentorship and career development time was a key component of turning teaching into one of the more desirable professions in the country.
Of course, venture investors didn’t back Altschool just because it builds one-off private schools here or there. The bet is that it can scale.
So between the company’s 100 employees, the staff are one-third educators, one-third operators and one-third technical.
The technical team is building out a software platform that includes everything from personalized learner profiles that capture where a child is to tracking attendance to a “playlist” of interactive educational models that teach subjects from geometry to the parts that make up a single biological cell.
The 40 people on the platform team include product managers, user researchers, designers and engineers that work in a tight feedback loop with Altschool’s educators to build out software and features that are useful to them. In many ways, this is a kind of rebuttal to how traditional educational technology models work where research and development teams of giants like Pearson or McGraw-Hill or new startups are more siloed and companies effectively have to use an enterprise sales model to get large urban districts to adopt their tools.
“I’ve been watching educational technology for many years. There will be really smart people who think they have solutions. Then about six months before they launch, they’ll bring on an educator to help them drive teacher adoption. But that’s too late,” said Altschool’s director of education Carolyn Wilson, who is a 30-year teaching veteran who also researched school reform at Stanford University.
In Altschool’s platform is a Learner Portrait and a Personalized Learning Plan, which you can think of like a modern-day and iterative answer to the traditional report card. Wilson said the leaner portrait captures not only a child’s test scores and grades, but also what their passions are and what their long-term memory and mental energy is like.
There’s also a parent app that helps families stay in touch with the school and educators, in case their kids are sick and need to stay home. There’s something called a ‘TetraPod,’ or a wiki-like product that helps the best policies and practices bubble up across the Altschool network.
Ultimately, the company plans to license out these products. There will be a mixed model of “first-party schools” which are schools that strongly adhere to all of Altschool’s practices and then “third-party schools” that can adapt the company’s platform to whatever their needs are.
With Altschool’s financial aid model, educators and schools are blinded from knowing which students are on aid and which are not. They don’t track the racial make-up of the student body either.
The company is set to launch its first schools outside of the Bay Area this year in Brooklyn.
And after that? It’s the rest of the country.


Louisville basketball rolled to a win Saturday over Kent State thanks to an impressive performance from Christen Cunningham.
Taking the ball up the floor at breakneck speed, Christen Cunningham deftly sidestepped a defender to avoid a likely ankle sprain — and he got his reward at the end of the play.
After a near travel by Steven Enoch, a dangerous cross-court pass by V.J. King and a ball saved from going out of bounds by Khwan Fore, Cunningham picked up the ball just inside half court and was forced to shoot with three seconds left on the shot clock.
His 3-pointer went in as the shot-clock buzzer sounded with 7:10 left in the first half to cap a 6-0 Louisville run on an imperfect possession kept alive due to pure hustle.
Louisville (8-3) outworked Kent State (8-2) to earn an 83-70 win Saturday at the KFC Yum Center and remain undefeated at home.
After two games of imploring his team to get the ball inside, Louisville coach Chris Mack was rewarded Saturday with a strong offensive showing around the rim and on the perimeter.
The Cardinals shot 51 percent from the field and 9 of 18 from behind the arc (a season-high 50 percent) while scoring 28 points in the paint with just 10 turnovers.
"Kudos to our guys for being strong with the ball and making the right decision," Mack said. "I think we're getting better with getting the ball in the paint and making decisions from there."
Cunningham shot 5 of 6 from the floor while pouring in a season-high 17 points. Dwayne Sutton scored 16 points and hit 5 of 10 shots. Jordan Nwora finished with a double-double of 13 points and 10 rebounds.
Fore cracked the starting lineup for the second game in a row, taking the floor alongside Cunningham, Sutton, Nwora and Enoch.
Louisville shot just one 3-pointer in its first seven field goal attempts, scoring six of its first seven points in the paint. Kent State, however, was effective shooting mid-range and 3-point jumpers and took a 13-10 lead seven minutes into the game.
The Golden Flashes started to have trouble getting looks inside the 3-point line and at the same time struggled to keep pace with the Cardinals on offense.
Louisville shot 60 percent from the floor and closed the first half making 8 of 10 shots to wield a 17-point lead at the break. In the second half, the Cards continued to finish through contact and let their guards drive the ball just as much as the big men. Louisville went 22 of 29 from the foul line.
Cunningham had tallied 12 points by halftime, including a pull-up jumper buried two seconds before the buzzer.
“It’s really fun to coach CC because it’s like I'm coaching a 35-year old veteran out there, and that’s a luxury a lot of college coaches don’t have," Mack said.
Louisville's graduate transfer point guard made a point of drawing contact in the lane to get to the free-throw line. He demonstrated good situational awareness and stimulated ball movement but also took initiative, twice getting shots to fall with less than three seconds on the shot clock.
"I usually have the ball in those situations and I'm really comfortable with it," Cunningham said. "Just trying to create something whether it's a quick driving kick for the shooters or getting to the rim or me pulling up."
Cunningham was perfect from the free-throw line until he missed two shots with 2:30 left in the game, and missed his only field goal on a contested layup with 1:57 to go.
Darius Perry and Sutton took defensive responsibilities seriously when guarding Kent State's top scorers, Jaylin Walker and Jalen Avery. Walker and Avery combined for 14 first-half points and two assists but went 4 of 10 from the field and turned the ball over twice.
On one first-half play, with Malik Williams walled up between him and the basket and Perry reaching in and pestering from behind, Walker was called for a travel. Perry stomped his right foot three times on the hardwood as the public address announcer blared, "Louisville basketball!"
Although Walker finished with 28 points and Avery with 11 points, Kent State never closed the deficit from double figures.
"There are sometimes when you do everything you can defensively and a guy hits shots that you have no control of defending," Mack said. "Jaylin Walker, some of the circus shots that he hit at the end of the game I think made the margin a little bit closer than I really thought it was."
Twelve minutes into the game, the Cardinals still hadn't let the Golden Flashes grab an offensive rebound. The trend continued as the Cards emphasized boxing out on the defensive end.
Louisville finished with a 34-27 rebounding edge and allowed Kent State just 5 second-chance points.
Louisville's wings were most active on the glass as Sutton and Nwora pulled down 13 of the team's 24 defensive boards. Louisville finished with a 77-percent defensive rebounding rate.


Today is Friday, May 28, the 148th day of 2010. There are 217 days left in the year.
�On May 28, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, made up of freed blacks, left Boston to fight for the Union in the Civil War.
�In 1892, the Sierra Club was organized in San Francisco.
�In 1918, the Battle of Cantigny began during World War I as American troops captured the French town from the Germans.
�In 1929, the first all-color talking picture, �On with the Show,� opened in New York.
�In 1959, the U.S. Army launched Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, aboard a Jupiter missile for a suborbital flight; both primates survived.
�In 1972, Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, who had abdicated the English throne to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, died in Paris at age 77.
�In 1985, David Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, was abducted by pro-Iranian kidnappers; he was freed 17 months later.
One year ago: A white New York City police officer mistakenly killed an off-duty black colleague in a friendly fire incident in East Harlem. A grand jury declined to indict Officer Andrew Dunton in the shooting of Officer Omar Edwards, who had drawn his gun and was chasing a man who had broken into his car. Kavya Shivashankar, a 13-year-old girl from Kansas, spelled �laodicean� (indifference to religion) to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Today�s Birthdays: Rockabilly singer-musician Sonny Burgess is 81. Actress Carroll Baker is 79. Producer-director Irwin Winkler is 79. Actor John Karlen is 77. Basketball Hall-of-Famer Jerry West is 72. Actress Beth Howland is 69. Singer Gladys Knight is 66. Singer Billy Vera is 66. Singer John Fogerty is 65. Actress-director Sondra Locke is 63. Country musician Jerry Douglas (Alison Krauss and Union Station) is 54. Actor Brandon Cruz (TV: �The Courtship of Eddie�s Father�) is 48. Country singer Phil Vassar is 48. Actress Christa Miller is 46. Singer-musician Chris Ballew (Presidents of the USA) is 45. Rapper Chubb Rock is 42. Singer Kylie Minogue is 42. Actor Justin Kirk is 41. Television personality Elisabeth Hasselbeck (�The View�) is 33. Actor Jesse Bradford is 31. Actress Monica Keena is 31. Pop singer Colbie Caillat is 25. Actress Carey Mulligan is 25. Actor Joseph Cross is 24.
Ten years ago: President Alberto Fujimori of Peru won a lopsided re-election victory in a runoff vote that had been boycotted by his opponent.


The Democrat paid $150,000 to run the ad on Super Bowl Sunday.
Feb. 5, 2018, 10:51 a.m.
Three PACs supporting him are outspending another backing Bill Schuette.
Gretchen Whitmer attacked him for filing an amicus brief in the Janus case.
Gov. Rick Snyder praised him and appeared at a fundraiser for him.
Polling shows him leading the Republican primary.
His original tweet misspelled the Republican’s last name.
The remaining candidates can qualify for public financing without limiting expenditures.


Domestic messaging app Hike has announced new animated sticker packs for Valentine’s Day.
Domestic messaging app Hike has announced new animated sticker packs for Valentine’s Day. The sticker packs express love through teddy bears, hearts, and many other things symbolic of love.
The company says that with these stickers, users can celebrate every day of Valentine's week. Hike has a special pack for the LGBTQ community as well. Love is one of the most popular themes for conversation on Hike and the most used sticker packs are all about saying I love you, the heartbreak pack, ideal dates and more.
Available in the app, Hike users can download these expressive packs from the Play Store and App Store. As per the company, Stickers are one of the most loved features of Hike. Hike says that it offers a library of over 50K stickers in 40+ languages, covering multiple genres which highlight the colourful, cultural landscape of India, Bollywood, comedy, festivals, cricket, kabaddi, local catchphrases, emotions, and even excuses.
There is also the text-to-stickers feature on Hike chat that can turn any message you type into a fun sticker. Hike’s most popular stickers reflect love, laughter and fun followed by festivals and regional references. Over 300 million stickers are exchanged every day, as per the company.
Hike had earlier launched animated Sticker packs for Christmas and New Year during the festive season. Users could choose from over 100 stickers with traditional greetings and more. The Stickers were made available in the app from December 21 and could be download from Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The sticker packs highlighted the festive spirit of the season— feasts, midnight mass, Christmas carol phrases, Santa, Elves and reindeer, new year celebrations and more.


ATLANTA -- Christian Walker homered leading off the ninth inning and the Arizona Diamondbacks rallied against the shaky Atlanta bullpen for a 9-6 victory Tuesday night as the Braves squandered a massive, knee-buckling homer by Ronald Acuna Jr. and another strong start by Max Fried.
After Ozzie Albies went deep in the bottom half to tie the game at 6, Walker drove the second pitch from A.J. Minter (0-2) deep into the seats to start the ninth. Adam Jones brought home two insurance runs with a double that deflected off the glove of Acuna after a long run into the left-field corner.
Yoshihisa Hirano (1-1) claimed the win. Greg Holland got the final three outs for his third save.
With his right knee dipping to the ground as he delivered a mighty swing, Acuna launched a 448-foot shot over the Braves' bullpen in right-center field, putting Atlanta on the board in the fourth inning after Arizona jumped ahead 2-0 in the top half against Fried.
Atlanta tacked on four runs in the fifth against Robbie Ray. Fried sparked the outburst with a one-out single and came around to score the tying run on Freddie Freeman's double into the right-field corner. The Diamondbacks walked Acuna intentionally to load the bases with two outs, but Camargo foiled that strategy with a three-run double to the wall in left-center, pushing the Braves to a 5-2 lead.
Fried, who began the year in the bullpen, has quickly become one of Atlanta's most reliable starters. The 25-year-old left-hander went six innings, giving up seven hits, walking one and striking out three.
Over three starts, Fried has worked 18 innings, giving up 13 hits, two walks and two earned runs with 12 strikeouts. His ERA including two relief appearances is 0.93.
Unfortunately for the Braves, their bullpen has a 5.43 ERA, with a staggering 36 walks in 59 2/3 innings.
Walker went 3-for-4 with two RBI. Eduardo Escobar also drove in two runs.
Diamondbacks: LHP T.J. McFarland is set to make a rehab appearance Wednesday for Triple-A Reno. He worked a simulated game last weekend, throwing 17 pitches. McFarland has been on the injured list since the end of spring training because of left shoulder inflammation.
Braves: Struggling LHP Jonny Venters went on the 10-day injured list with a right calf strain. In six appearances, the 34-year-old reliever has surrendered six earned runs in 2 2/3 innings for a 20.25 ERA, giving up six hits, two homers and five walks. RHP Shane Carle, who began the season in Atlanta, was recalled from Triple-A Gwinnett to fill Venters' spot in the bullpen and pitched a scoreless eighth, working around two walks.
RHP Zack Godley (1-1, 7.41) will go Wednesday night for the Diamondbacks against Atlanta RHP Kevin Gausman (1-1, 2.84). Godley got a win last season against the Braves, allowing one run over six innings in a 2-1 victory. Gausman will be making his third start after beginning the season on the injured list.


WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new report suggests that pushback from California and some cities is slowing the transfer of inmates into immigration custody despite the Trump administration stepping up immigration arrests overall.
The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute said this week that about 69 percent of arrests during the first 135 days of the Trump administration were transfers from criminal custody. That's compared with more than 85 percent during the early years of the Obama administration.
"Pushback from California and other locations with sanctuary policies makes it quite unlikely that ICE will be able to match record enforcement levels," the report concludes.
The shift comes as California and a range of cities have passed measures limiting police collaboration with immigration enforcement. The report highlights dramatic differences between enforcement in different parts of the country and comes amid a raging debate over so-called sanctuary policies.
The Trump administration sued California over its laws earlier this year.
The report caps a year-long study that took MPI researchers to 15 locations across the United States, some fully cooperating with federal immigration enforcement and others not. Researchers interviewed senior ICE field leaders to state and local elected officials, immigrant-rights advocates, former immigration judges, and consular officials. The researchers also analyzed ICE enforcement data obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests.


This just in: BBC presenter Kate Silverton was forced into an on-screen apology to viewers after her "psychedelic" blouse had Middle England choking into its Coco Pops.
Silverton hit the sofa on BBC Breakfast yesterday in an ill-advised and potentially lethal lime green and yellow blouse/scarf combo, prompting outraged viewers to demand immediate action, the Evening Standard reports. She duly announced: "My blouse has divided opinion. I apologise if it has made you turn down the contrast on your set."
This is not the first time 35-year-old Silverton has courted TV controversy, the Standard notes. Last year her News 24 co-host Philip Hayton resigned from the Corporation after 37 years' loyal service, saying he "could not stand working with her".


The broad S&P 500 capped off its strongest weekly rally since mid-October and snapped a two-week losing streak after the Fed unveiled mild QE3 tapering plans.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 42.00 points, or 0.26%, to 16221.08, the S&P 500 gained 8.92 points, or 0.49%, to 1818.52 and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 46.61 points, or 1.15%, to 4104.74.
For the week, the Dow surged 466 points, or 2.96%, its best weekly percentage gain since mid-September. The Nasdaq advanced 2.59%, while the S&P 500's 2.42% rally was its strongest since mid-October.
After two weeks of selling on concerns about whether the Fed will pare back its vast bond-buying program, Wall Street finally found a reprieve this week. Ironically, it was the unveiling of the central bank's plans -- which was seen by most Wall Street analysts at a continuation of its dovish policies -- that caused this week's jump.
The Dow ended the week with its 47th record closing high of this year alone.
The economic docket was fairly light Friday.
The Commerce Department said the U.S. economy grew at an annual pace of 4.1% in the third quarter, the biggest rise since the fourth quarter of 2011, revised sharply higher than a previous estimate of 3.6%. Economists expected no change to the GDP reading.
On the corporate front, BlackBerry (NASDAQ:BBRY) posted a substantially wider-than-expected quarterly loss, and revealed a deal with manufacturing giant Foxconn to make cheaper devices. Jones Group (NYSE:JNY) shares surged after the apparel maker said it's being bought by Sycamore Partners. Cessna parent Textron (NYSE:TXT) reportedly crafted a deal to acquire luxury plane maker Beechcraft for nearly $1.4 billion.
In commodities, U.S. crude oil futures climbed 28 cents, or 0.28%, to $99.32 a barrel. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline rallied 1.6% to $2.783 a gallon. Gold climbed $10.10, or 0.85%, to $1,204 a troy ounce.


Samsung came under fire last year when it was discovered that the company was artificially inflating benchmark scores on the Galaxy Note 3. But it looks as if the deceptive benchmark boosting code has been removed in the latest update to Android(s goog) 4.4 KitKat. Ars Technica ran some tests on updated devices and found that KitKat restores benchmark scores back to normal.
You can see the full barrage of tests over at Ars Technica, but here’s the gist of it: After installing the KitKat update on a Samsung Galaxy S4 on AT&T(s t) and a Galaxy Note 3 on Sprint(s s), the CPU function went back to normal while running some well-known benchmark tests. Before the update, the devices were ramping up all four cores to the maximum clock speed and keeping them there for the duration of the test. After the update, this no longer happened.
Some developers have noticed the change as well. Developer “Wanman” told Android Police that “com.sec.android.app.twdvfs,” the code responsible for boosting CPU performance while running benchmarks, is not in the Android 4.4 ROM for the Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S4.
Hopefully benchmark boosting will begin to fade with Samsung’s example, though it seems to be a trend that will continue to surface from time to time. I think Samsung’s boosting days are over, though, at least for the time being. Either way, the Galaxy S5 is sure to come under very close scrutiny.


Increased imports would help reduce inflation, but China must overcome its mistrust of opening domestic markets.
With China's inflation – and inflation expectations – rising, how can price stability be maintained without threatening the country's booming growth?
Reconciling growth and fighting inflation is not impossible, but it does require that the government overcome its deep-seated suspicion of opening China's markets to imports.
The World Bank predicts 3.5 per cent growth for the world economy this year, and most analysts predict that the United States will grow at a similar pace.
As a result, external demand for China's exports will be strong, while the interest-rate differential between China and the world's advanced economies is resulting in massive capital inflows.
Thus, China will continue to accumulate large foreign-exchange reserves this year. As a result, the Chinese authorities are now deploying a combination of tools to stabilise domestic prices.
With the reserve ratio of banks already at 19.5 per cent and unlikely to be raised by a large margin, interest rates will most likely continue to be raised.
Indeed, the benchmark interest rate reached 7.47 per cent in August 2008, after a five-year climb. Given today's current lending rate of 5.56 per cent, the authorities have a great deal of upside room.
But raising interest rates has its downside: higher capital inflows, which will offset the disinflationary effect of higher borrowing costs. As a result, it is reasonable to expect that Chinese authorities will soon tighten controls on capital flows.
Foreign governments and international markets would like to see China fight inflation by letting the renminbi appreciate in value. To the extent that the renminbi becomes more expensive, appreciation would discourage the influx of foreign capital.
But any currency appreciation would also raise peoples' expectations of further appreciation – and thus invite higher capital inflows.
Appreciation will help China's fight against inflation only if it brings down China's trade surplus. But the experience of 2004-2008 suggests that moderate appreciation is not enough.
That is why some economists believe that China should take much bolder steps toward allowing the renminbi's exchange rate to strengthen.
For Chinese officials, however, this is out of the question, because it would almost certainly cause large-scale unemployment and thus threaten social stability, which is closely tied to the government's legitimacy.
Because the main inflation-fighting tools are double-edged swords, the Chinese authorities are likely to turn to other measures.
For one, they will likely introduce quantity controls on bank lending, though the effects of such regulations are diminishing because banks and other financial institutions have developed a range of ways to circumvent them.
A more effective measure is to expand the central bank's sterilisation operations. In theory, the People's Bank of China can sterilise any amount of money supply caused by foreign-capital inflows simply by issuing the requisite amount of bonds. In practise, the PBOC faces two kinds of costs.
The first cost is a direct accounting loss: the interest rate will inevitably increase when more bonds are issued. At the same time, the interest rate paid on the central bank's foreign reserves, mostly in dollar-denominated US Treasuries, is low.
The second cost is implicit, but potentially far more substantial: because sterilisation bonds are forced savings (and deflationary by definition), they absorb the potential investment and consumption implied by today's trade surplus.
For example, banks would curtail mortgage lending in response to higher rates paid on sterilisation bonds, forcing consumers to save more in order to buy houses. So more bonds today would deter domestic investment and consumption tomorrow.
Thus, the PBOC's sterilisation operations are likely to be self-defeating in the long run. The Bank sterilises the money supply caused by today's trade surplus, but in the meantime causes further current-account surpluses in the future.
So China's authorities must find new ways to address its external-imbalance problem. One way might be to increase consumer imports.
Right now, consumer goods account for only 2.3 per cent of China's imports, as they are subject to relatively high tariffs and value-added or sales taxes at customs, where procedures are complicated and slow.
Lowering the tariffs on consumer goods and simplifying customs procedures would improve consumer welfare while causing no significant harm to domestic industry.
To see why, consider potential imports from the US, most of which are likely to be brand-name products, furniture, high-end cars, and land-intensive agricultural products (such as beef). China has a comparative advantage in none of these areas.
Unlike exports, higher imports of consumer goods would thus help China combat inflation. Moreover, increased imports would reduce China's trade surplus and help balance China's external position, which would be much welcomed by the international community.
In short, a policy aimed at increasing imports would serve several important goals – and poses little or no risk to economic growth. There is no good reason why the Chinese authorities should reject such an effort.
Yao Yang is Director of the China Centre for Economic Reform at Peking University.
Yang Yao is Direct of the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University.


A glaring security flaw's been uncovered in Skype and other VoIP systems, potentially allowing hackers to access users' identities, locations and even files.
Skype claims more than a half-billion registered users, and one report suggests that one in five overseas calls is made using the service.
But researchers headed by a team at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University say that Skype can be used to track not only users’ locations over time but also their peer-to-peer file-sharing activity. It works even when a user's blocked callers or used a Network Address Translation (NAT) firewall.
And having done this, says the team, it's easy to link to information such as name, age, address, profession and employer using social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn in order to build profiles on a single tracked target or a database of hundreds of thousands.
"These findings have real security implications for the hundreds of millions of people around the world who use VoIP or P2P file-sharing services," says Keith Ross of NYU-Poly.
"A hacker anywhere in the world could easily track the whereabouts and file-sharing habits of a Skype user - from private citizens to celebrities and politicians - and use the information for purposes of stalking, blackmail or fraud."
When a call is initiated, the IP address of the recipient is revealed to the caller, who can then use commercial geo-IP mapping services to determine their location and Internet Service Provider (ISP).
And the team says it's possible to initiate a Skype call, block some packets and quickly terminate the call to obtain the recipient's IP address without any ringing or pop-up windows to provide an alert.
The attack can be made when the recipient isn't on the caller's contact list - and even when the recipient's explicitly configured Skype to block calls from non-contacts.
The researchers tested the flaw by repeating this process on an hourly basis to track the Skype accounts of about 20 volunteers as well as 10,000 random users over a two-week period - with all data anonymized.
They then used commercial geo-location mapping services and found that they could construct a detailed account of a user’s daily activities - even if the user hadn't turned on Skype for 72 hours.
In one example, they accurately tracked a volunteer researcher from his visit at a New York university to a vacation in Chicago, a return to a New York university, lodging in Brooklyn, then to his home in France.
"If we had followed the mobility of the Facebook friends of this user as well, we likely would have determined who he was visiting and when," they say.
In another experiment, they queried the 50,000 most popular downloads on BitTorrent. When a common IP address was found on both Skype and BitTorrent, the researchers were able to work out which files individuals downloaded or shared.
They say the flaw - which they've revealed to Skype and Microsoft - could be fixed relatively easily by redesigning the Skype protocol so that a user’s IP address is never revealed unless the call is accepted.


Given that Amazon was tanking the price of the Fire Phone down to 99 cents two months after launch (leading to many a “Fire sale!” joke), this probably won’t come as much of a surprise: the Fire Phone isn’t a success.
On the Amazon earnings call today, Amazon noted that the company was taking a $170 million writedown “primarily related” to overcommitting to the Fire Phone. They ordered too much inventory, and made promises to their suppliers that they couldn’t keep.
So, just how many Fire Phones is Amazon still sitting on? Any guesses? $5 million? $20 million?
The final count on Fire Phone inventory left at the end of Q3: $83 million.
Who would have guessed a phone that existed pretty much solely to sell you stuff from Amazon while relying heavily on a silly gimmick wouldn’t sell well?


SAN JOSE, CA-June 29, 2010-OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, releases the RevoDrive PCI-Express SSD, an innovative storage solution that focuses on both performance and affordability for consumers. The new RevoDrive was developed to push the limits of economical SSD technology to deliver a revolutionary product with a remarkable price point.
Moving beyond the bottleneck of SATA II (3Gbps), the OCZ RevoDrive features a PCIe interface to deliver superior speeds over 500MB/s reads and random small file writes up to 80,000 IOPS, nearly twice the speed of other consumer SSDs. Thanks to a proprietary RAID 0 design, the RevoDrive maximizes data access and bandwidth to promote a faster, more responsive PC experience compared to not only hard drives, but other SSDs on the market.
"The RevoDrive is the first PCIe SSD that delivers both performance and affordability and radically alters the SSD landscape," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "Up to this point PCIe SSDs have been reserved for enterprise applications and priced out of the range of many consumers, the bootable RevoDrive SSD changes the game by delivering a PCIe based solution that costs as low as $3 per gigabyte, exceptional small file write IOPS of over 80K, which is the most available in any low-cost solution."
Unlike competing PCIe solutions, the RevoDrive is bootable, ensuring the satisfaction of quicker boot-ups, load times, and computing, all while promoting cooler, quieter, and more energy efficient conditions compared to traditional mechanical hard drives.


Police suspect Nicholas Ray Burton of firing a rifle at the wood line near the softball field at Mar Len Park on South 18th Street.
LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Police suspect Nicholas Ray Burton of firing a rifle Tuesday afternoon at the wood line near the softball field at Mar Len Park on South 18th Street.
A neighbor in the area called police at 2:50 p.m. Tuesday to report hearing bullets land on his or her property, according to Tippecanoe County Sheriff's Office reports, but no damage was done and no one was injured.
Deputies found Burton, 24, 2627 W. 300 South, Shadeland, with a friend and his family members playing at the playground at the park on 18th Street just north of Tippecanoe County Road 500 South. Deputies asked if they had any weapons, and Burton told the officers he was carrying a .45-caliber pistol, according to the sheriff's office.
A search of Burton's vehicle also turned up a shotgun and rifle, according to the sheriff's office.
On the edge of the woods, deputies found shell casings that matched the rifle's caliber, according to the sheriff's office.
Deputies arrested Burton on preliminary charges of carrying a handgun without a license, and criminal recklessness. He was released from the Tippecanoe County Jail at 8:15 p.m. Tuesday after posting bond, according to jail records.


Phase two of GovDC complete.
The Unanderra GovDC data centre is one of two facilities operated by Metronode to house the computing needs of NSW government agencies, under the state's data centre consolidation project.
Unanderra boasts 8MW of capacity, with roughly 200 racks in each of its 10 data halls. It has just received Tier III certification by the Uptime Institute and is working towards the country's only five star NABERS rating.
Yesterday marked the formal opening of the second wing of the GovDC facility, and the completion of the final contstruction phase of the data centre reform program as it was orginally envisaged.
iTnews took a tour of the newly opened hall.
A few NSW government agencies have begun moving equipment into the new section, but the secure data rooms are mostly empty, awaiting the installation of servers.
Roughly 90 percent of the new data centre wing has already been leased to NSW government clients.
Both of the GovDC facilities, in Silverwater and Unanderra, rely on energy efficient evaporative cooling techniques to keep the data halls at the right temperature.
The system runs almost entirely on outside air that is drawn in and circulated throughout the data halls.
Each room is protected by automated louvres, which provide physical protection and also open and close according to the IT load within each, meaning that less-full areas don't draw in any more cool air than they need.
Behind the louvres exists the computing equipment that powers the state government.
Two air conditioning systems cool 8 megawatts of IT load at Unanderra.
Cables line the ceiling of the Unanderra data hall.
Phase one has been open since August 2013 and is operating at capacity.
The NSW government has also set up pre-powered and pre-cabled server racks for smaller state agencies that want to move into GovDC quickly and easily.
These were described as being like "the IKEA racks" of the facility".
Giant cannisters of fire retardant line the halls just in case anything goes wrong.
Metronode's Josh Griggs points out the vacant land adjoining the Unanderra data centre that has already been purchased and DA approved by the facility owner for when the time comes to expand.


Do you love Taiwan enough to spend months taking tens of thousands of pictures of its beautiful scenic spots? That's what Danish photographer Henrik Matzen did. The IT consultant came to Taiwan many years ago for Computex, fell in love with the island, and has been coming back ever since. But he's not just a tourist; he spends hours at each scenic spot taking thousands of pictures to capture the sunrise, sunset or night skyline. With the help of his colleague Jonas Høholt at his Denmark-based company FIRSTLAPSE, he used the photos to put together a time-lapse video of Taiwan, which they unveiled in May. The video, which only lasts one minute and 38 seconds, is made up of around 30,000 still images. It shows Taiwan in a way that it's never been shown before. To see the full video, click on Matsen's Facebook page: http://taiwan.firstlapse.dk. And to find out what motivated him, see what he told CNA in this video.


The US Interior Department's inspector general office has opened a probe into recently-confirmed Secretary David Bernhardt on several allegations, including conflict of interest, it said in a letter to lawmakers on Monday.
Mary Kendall, the Interior Department's deputy inspector general, told Senator Ron Wyden in a letter, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, that it received seven complaints from a "wide assortment of complainants alleging various potential conflict of interest and other violations when he was deputy secretary of the department."
Kendall said her office had opened an investigation and was continuing to gather information about the complaints. She did not detail the other complaints against Bernhardt, a Republican.
Wyden and Senator Mazie Hirono, both Democrats, had urged the inspector general in separate requests to investigate allegations that Bernhardt had inappropriately blocked a US Fish and Wildlife Service assessment of the effect of pesticides on several endangered species. The service is an office of the Interior Department.
Bernhardt, a former energy lobbyist, was confirmed by the Senate last week in a 56 to 41 vote. He replaced Ryan Zinke who resigned under a cloud of ethics investigations.
Wyden, who had pushed for a delay in Bernhardt's confirmation vote, had also asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether Bernhardt was in violation of lobbying disclosure laws.
"We now have an Interior Secretary who has been on the job for one full business day and is already under investigation," Wyden said. "With Bernhardt's track record and the number of allegations against him, it's no surprise. At least now, the American people will finally get the answers they deserve."
Bernhardt's critics, including environmental groups, have said his previous work as a lobbyist could risk conflicts of interest, unless he recuses himself from certain issues, because he worked for companies that could benefit by opening up lands to development.
The Interior Department, which employs more than 70,000 people and oversees more than 20% of the US land surface, has been central to President Donald Trump’s "energy dominance” policy of boosting energy production.
Interior spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort said Bernhardt "is in complete compliance with his ethics agreement and all applicable laws, rules, and regulations."
Vander Voort also said that the ethics office at the department had already reviewed many of the accusations at Bernhardt's request and determined that he was in compliance with his ethics agreement and all laws.


Flagler County and its cities were grinding back to a sense of normalcy Tuesday, four days past Hurricane Matthew’s offshore sweep of the area, with the last emblem of direst danger lifted Tuesday afternoon: there will be no curfew in Flagler Beach tonight, as power has been restored to the island and all travel restrictions were lifted.
But county and cities were also reckoning with the damage: $72.8 million-worth to homes and businesses alone, the county estimated today.
The price tag is very likely to exceed $100 million when damage to government infrastructure, including roads, parks, water plants, schools and beaches, including the Flagler Beach pier, are included. On Monday, U.S. REp. John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said early estimates of repairing State Road A1A and its adjoining beaches, which have been cleaved by the storm, run up to $35 million.
Meanwhile, as of 1 p.m., 1,130 customers remained without power in Flagler County, but that was less than 2 percent of customers. Florida Power and Light was sticking close to its revised pledge of restoring power to most by today.
Unincorporated Flagler County suffered $49,659,830 in estimated total damages, $48,033,938 of it in residential damages. That includes 462 affected single-family homes, 242 with minor damage, 159 with major damage, and six that were destroyed.
Flagler Beach had total estimated total damages of $15,178,829, of which $13,166,109 is to homes. Five homes were destroyed, another five suffered major damage, 27 minor damage and 558 affected residential homes were affected.
Palm Coast’s and Bunnell’s total damages were relatively minor, in comparison: $3,585,412. Total damages in Bunnell are estimated at $259,014.
Palm Coast specified its losses: 215 single-family houses had some minor or peripheral damage (they call it “affected” structures), seven multi-family houses did so, and three commercial buildings had peripheral damage.
The damage is limited, but the inconveniences are widespread because of power and septic issues, particularly in Palm Coast, where the local version of septic tanks, known as the PEP system, or Pretreatment Effluent Pumping, has kept city crews extremely busy for days.
PEP tanks amass a house’s effluent, which is then pumped off through sewer lines to a lift station. But the pumping and lift-station system depend on electricity. When the electricity fails, residents can still flush the toilet and take showers and so on, but only up to a point, because the PEP tank will fill up. Once that happens, it can back up into the house, causing a problem.
That’s been happening in numerous houses across the city. City crews, including cross-trained firefighters, code enforcement officers and building officials, have been fanning out with portable generators to those houses in crisis, hooking up the generators to the house’s PEP system, and pumping out the effluent. Also, in other cases, city tankers have been going down affected streets and pumping out PREP tanks.
This morning FPL officials told tiy officials that they expected power to be restored to the B, L, LL, S, and Z sections by noon, and power to be restored by 6 p.m. to the W, P, R, and E sections.
Drinking water has not been an issue in Palm Coast, however: even though all its water plants lost power, back-up generators kicked in and functioned well. So that part of the utility system was not affected.
Lane was expecting an update on the wastewater situation from Utility Director Richard Adams around 4 p.m.
County government waived hurricane-related repair permitting fees through December 5.
· Aluminum – permits still are required.
As far as drinking water is concerned for the rest of the county is concerned, boil-water advisories are in effect for two regions: Daytona North, where most people are on private wells, and Plantation Bay, where a contractor broke a valve at the water plant, causing water pressure to drop.
The county will issue a Code Red informing residents in Daytona North (also known as the Mondex) of the boil-water advisory. Residents are invited to have their water tested for free at the Flagler County Health Department, where they may take a container of their water for testing during regular business hours.
There is more than that with out power. And FPL just said they have to take down trees and hand do lines to repair them. So will be much longer with out power for most people.
Where is FEMA for homeowners !?!?!?!
What Hurricane?…..The Oracles of Rushbo and Drudge have told us low information citizens that the Hurricane was Climate Change Hype. I know this because I have been sitting with no power since Friday and was forced to listen to the radio. They told me alright!
I would like to know where they got these numbers from? There were more than that without power, and definitely more than 215 homes with damage?? These numbers do not seem to be correct. Anyway, hoping for FEMA for homeowners!!
No FEMA, no real help, see the lack of support from Hillary and her gang!!
FEMA is to busy buying Billions of bullets and armored troop carriers. Look it up!


Customers send text message to drug enforcement agency and get reply confirming medicine's authenticity.
Mobile phones are being used to detect fake medicine sold in Nigeria.
Customers send a text message to the country's drug enforcement agency and get a reply confirming the medicine's authenticity.


Against teams that are .500 or above, the Sox are 18-12.
Below .500 squads, the record is just 9-19.
What gives? It’s the proverbial “playing to the level your competition” cliche.
Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of these bad teams are filled with young pitchers that no one has any tape on, and the Sox consequently struggle against them? Do the home/road splits make a difference? And will that even itself out and eradicate the statistical anomaly.
An even more telling statistic is the Sox 10-13 at home record (just terrible, yes I know) versus 17-18 on the road. That will have to change now as the Sox have the next 16/22 at home. And between now and the All-Star break they’ll only be outside Chicago for nine days. And they’re certainly due- as the Sox have had more road games than any team in baseball up to this point.
But the best nugget of hope is not in their home/road or over/under .500 splits, but instead in the fact that Adam Dunn and Alex Rios are still not producing anything yet and the Sox aren’t dead. Yes, the White Sox still need to make up 8.5 on the Cleveland Indians, but Rios and Dunn are just too good and too consistent over their career histories to stay this bad for so long. Both of them may end up having a severely down year, but their numbers can’t and won’t stay this down. There will be a natural regression to the mean, and when it comes, the Sox will get a nice boost in their record when the high-priced duo finally pick it up.


The BJP Monday named the party's state vice-president Pitambar Acharya as its candidate against ruling BJD president and Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who is seeking re-election from Hinjili assembly seat in Odisha's Ganjam district, party sources said.
This will be the first time that Mr Acharya will fight the assembly polls though he has been in politics since his student days and was the president of the students union in Bhubhaneswar's BJB College in the 90s.
Mr Acharya, a senior advocate of Orissa High Court, is also the BJP's spokesman. He was assigned the responsibility of the party's vice-president two days ago.
The BJP is yet to name its candidate against Mr Patnaik in Bijepur assembly seat from where the BJD president will also contest from.
Confirming that he will contest from Hinjili assembly seat, Mr Acharya said he would contest against the chief minister to win the polls.
BJP sources said Mr Acharya was interested to contest from Cuttack Lok Sabha seat. But the party fielded former Odisha DGP Prakash Mishra in Cuttack and decided to pit him (Acharya) against the chief minister, sources said.
Mr Acharya's name as party candidate from Hinjili was announced in a separate press release issued by the BJP's central office.
Mr Patnaik, who is seeking re-election for the fifth consecutive time, had filed his nomination papers for Hinjili at Chhatrapur in Ganjam district on March 20.
Mr Patnaik has been elected to the assembly four times in a row from Hinjili since 2000. In 2014, he had polled 89,267 votes against his nearest Congress rival Sibram Patra's 12,681 votes. BJP candidate Debananda Mohapatra was in the third place by securing only 12,283 votes in 2014 polls.


Bob Dylan's handwritten lyrics of an unpublished 1961 song about Wisconsin will hit the auction block.
Bob Dylan‘s handwritten lyrics of an unpublished 1961 song about Wisconsin will hit the auction block on March 30th.
Nate D. Sanders Auctions will conduct the auction, with the opening bid set at $30,000. According to the auction house, Dylan penned the lyrics in November 1961, months after he moved to New York City and signed with Columbia Records. Dylan gave the lyric sheet to musician and one-time roommate Peter Crago.
Prior to moving to New York, Dylan had spent time (unsuccessfully) working the folk scene in Madison, Wisconsin in 1960 after dropping out of the University of Minnesota. Dylan also spent his summers as a youth at a Wisconsin’s Camp Herzl.
Although the lyrics don’t exactly hint at Dylan’s future Nobel Laureate greatness – “I’ll tune my banjo than the hills / And feast on milk and cream / And stamp my foot all thru the grass / And never know a care” – they are a heartfelt ode to the Badger State.
The winning bid will also receive a certificate of authenticity. It’s unlikely that the “Wisconsin” ode will approach the $2 million Dylan’s handwritten draft for “Like a Rolling Stone” netted at auction in 2014.


FICTION: Lively characters and a strong sense of time and place make this historical novel a rich delight.
And indeed it does when the ship’s captain returns to reveal he has sold not only the cargo but the ship itself to purchase Mr. Hancock a “genuine mermaid” — a desiccated, horrid creature with monkey head and fish tail — with which to make his fortune. “Only a fool could lose money on a mermaid,” Capt. Jones confidently asserts.
Author Imogen Hermes Gowar displays an unflinching eye for the economic calculations permeating a culture in which everything from human flesh to mermaids is monetized.
It’s hard to believe that this brilliant and sure-footed work is a debut novel. Gowar’s feel for the spirit of the period is spot on — unsurprising, given her background in archaeology, anthropology, art history and museum work. (Hancock’s mermaid was inspired by the “mermaid” displayed in the British Museum.) Gowar swims like a mermaid through the docks, slums and brothels of Georgian London with an unsentimental acknowledgment of the harsh entrapments occasioned by gender, class and race; her prose sparkles with sly wit, inviting inevitable comparisons to Jane Austen.
“The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock” is a superb historical novel, but there’s more. Interspersed with the realism is a series of lyrical passages in the Mermaid’s voice — yes, there’s a second mermaid, and, yes, she’s alive and real — that deepen the novel’s examinations of power and captivity, sexuality, freedom and independence. This is a long novel, clocking in near 500 pages, so it builds leisurely, in the best 18th-century tradition. But it richly rewards any reader willing to enter its world. Frankly, I was sorry to see it end.
Publisher: Harper, 487 pages, $28.99.


Pulling Grimm from the schedule for three months right as the show gained creative momentum seemed like just another bonehead move from NBC. And considering I was on vacation the last two weeks of the fall half-season, it’s been over fourth months since I’ve written about this show. But in the intervening months, Bree Turner returned to series regular status after giving birth, and the plot ramped up to the anticipated confrontation between Nick and Renard that has been building for the entire series so far. The promise of those final few episodes, particularly “The Hour Of Death” and “Season Of The Hexenbiest,” led me to expect that Grimm could turn the corner into something like Angel—and tonight’s episode “Face Off” follows through on that promise.
It’s not the riveting payoff like the Breaking Bad episode of the same name, but it’s yet another step in the right direction toward upgrading the show from a watchable diversion to consistently entertaining television. Though it’s an entirely serialized hour with a few glaring flaws, “Face Off” manages to resolve some of Grimm’s larger, lingering issues, while leaving two compelling cliffhangers—one for next week, and the other for the rest of the spring.
The action picks up right after the events of last fall’s midseason finale, as Monroe tells Nick that the man Juliette has been seeing, the man who woke her from a supernatural coma, is in fact his captain, Sean Renard. He’s understandably upset about the long-standing deception, but Monroe’s advice and a call to the scene of a quadruple homicide (that Monroe and Nick committed) forces him to bottle his anger and vengeful thoughts.
David Giuntoli has slowly improved as an actor over the course of the series, but he’s never has been able to carry a scene on his own. He depends on a scene partner with good chemistry, be that friendly, romantic, or otherwise. Nick and Monroe have become the best two-character combination on the show, but tonight Sasha Roiz shows how valuable he can be as a direct foil, as he and Nick slowly figure out what the other knows, but still have to play it safe in public around the other officers. That kind of constant tension is new for Grimm, and it’s untenable, but Rosalee’s return with some more levelheaded analysis calms Nick for the time being.
Nick’s obsession with Renard and Juliette leads him to the precipice of some violent and irrevocable decisions. He sees for himself that Monroe wasn’t mistaken, as Renard kisses Juliette and enters the house. But what he doesn’t see after Monroe calls him away is just as important: Renard and Juliette compulsively joining and violently thrashing each other and destroying the house.
What helps the Renard/Juliette/Nick love triangle is that strictly speaking it’s not a love triangle. It skips Sleeping Beauty sappiness or tormented romance, as the details emerge Renard and Juliette aren’t in love, and don’t even have true feelings for one another. They’re just intrinsically drawn to each other due to the force of the spell from Adalind’s cat. Framing it this way uses the supernatural elements of Grimm to shift the plotline from a more standard romantic betrayal to something that fits the world of the show and complicates the character relationships. Rosalee deduces from the purification concoction she made at the beginning of the season that Renard is the royal in Portland, which accelerates Nick’s desire for a battle, and once the key in his desk goes missing, it’s all the more important that he stops the captain.
Okay, a bit of a break from the action—how cute are Rosalee and Monroe? Seriously. I haven’t been this invested in a TV relationship in a long time, and Grimm’s tendency to background that development instead of making it the forefront of the show is what makes it so great. For its first 20 minutes, “Face Off” falls into an unfortunate trap of relying on exposition via visually boring phone calls that sap momentum. But once Rosalee returns (in the funniest scene of the episode, courtesy of Monroe fussing over a bouquet of flowers), then everyone can talk it out.
At the beginning of the series, Renard was purposely shrouded in mystery, but as the details crept out, he became a much more interesting character. He’s not a leader, but an outcast, a misfit in a different niche from Nick or the rebel Wesen. He has a wide range of allies in the Wesen world—the assassin from earlier this season, and the owl locksmith Wesen from tonight are two of his more interesting accomplices—and he can be menacing when required, as his sudden appearance to confront Adalind demonstrates: “I could scream.” “Or you could die. That’s the kind of mood I’m in.” He’s ambitious but fearful of the Verrat, of his brother, and Adalind’s new Wesen political power given that alliance.
But he’s still a bitter outcast looking to carve out something to call his own, and when the chips are down, he sides with a fellow rebel, halting a pretty good fight scene with Nick to broker a peace at a symbolically significant site: the house from the pilot where Nick first used his abilities. Renard returns the key to Nick, forming a tenuous partnership with a lot of potential and many questions to sort out. But this is the beginning of a larger struggle. Renard lies to Adalind, flouts his brother’s wishes, and finds a possible way to restore normal order by allying with Nick and attempting to fix the situation with Juliette.
Grimm has shown that when the serialized pieces click into place, it becomes far more compelling. The best case-of-the-week episodes—last season's “Organ Grinder,” last Halloween’s “La Llorona”—are good examples of how to keep the wheels spinning without losing interest. But the little tidbits of information that expand the Wesen world—the conflict between the rebels, the Verrat, the royals, and the Grimms they traditionally employ—is the most fascinating and important part of a supernatural/fantasy show like this. It’s taken quite a while for the mythology and characterization to catch up, but as the characters have been filled in and a clearer picture of what’s going on in this world is revealed, Grimm has improved more often than it has stumbled.
The final cliffhanger doesn’t leave any doubt—the series isn’t going to kill off Nick or do something drastic to him, but it is the first time I can remember really wishing I had the next episode on a screener to watch immediately. When the two-part season première did this, I was rolling my eyes with disappointment. But picking up after a long layoff and quickly finding a compelling rhythm that drives the plot forward is a very good sign that Grimm isn’t just stumbling blindly into its better episodes. Though I expect more case-of-the-week plots going forward, the major shifts in “Face Off” signal that the show will invest more in an overarching serialized story with new and intriguing character relationships. Finally, a fun reward for all the anticipation and hope that Grimm would get its act together.
The show still hasn’t figured out how to get that title sequence right.
It bears repeating every so often: The fact that the epigraphs of every episode are in Papyrus is just awful. What 12-year-old who just discovered how to change the font in Microsoft Word made that decision?
There are still a lot of little fussy questions surrounding Nick draining Adalind of her powers. That doesn’t seem to line up with every other Grimm/Wesen confrontation so far.
Very little Hank in this episode, perhaps because he’s recovering, but with Monroe, Rosalee, and Renard becoming more important, Hank gets shunted off to the side. I presume that won’t happen when the show gets back to more episodic plots.
Adalind also gets tied into the plot in a more significant way. Though she shifted her allegiance from Renard to his brother, she’s still not on safe ground. And since she’s a resourceful woman, she sets out to secure her own safety and continued importance. Seducing Renard and harboring a lovechild is just another way for her to hold cards to play now that she doesn’t have any powers herself.
If you have seen the brief web series that focuses on Monroe, Rosalee, and Bud the Eisbiber, take 15 minutes and watch it for how it displays Grimm at its most comedic.
“The flowers are too much aren’t they? Maybe you should give them to her.” Monroe continues to be a highly undervalued television character.
Thanks to Les Chappell for filling in last November while I was traveling. I always like reading his take on the show, especially the Portland details he can provide.


Life has moved fast for Hilton "Dinkles" Thomas. By age 15, he was selling cocaine for one of Baltimore's most notorious drug lords. By 17, federal prosecutors had linked him to six killings.
And yesterday, at age 19, he was sent to prison for the rest of his life.
"It's always tragic to see a young life thrown away," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert R. Harding said after Thomas' sentencing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. "But this was a very vicious killer that we were determined to see punished for his crimes."
Thomas was one of the teen-age henchmen employed by Anthony Ayeni Jones, whose $30,000-a-day cocaine and heroin ring has been linked to more than a dozen killings.
Jones, now serving a life sentence, made an infamous name for himself as the man who used a secret code in prison to order executions of federal witnesses.
One of those coded messages -- "that nergy jergy gotta get wergy tergy" -- was relayed to Thomas in February 1997. A few days later, he and an accomplice carried out the instructions by fatally shooting Jones' stepbrother, John Jones, at his East Baltimore home.
Thomas and the accomplice, Timothy "Denasty" Simms, then 17, were paid $3,000 each to carry out the "hit" because Anthony Jones wanted revenge on his stepbrother for cooperating with federal authorities investigating his drug ring. Thomas, a Northern High School dropout, later used his share of the money to buy cocaine and a Chevrolet Caprice.
"One of the more cynical aspects of the Jones organization was that it was willing to use juveniles as murderers," Harding said. "There was a little crew of young kids who would do hits for the organization's leaders."
Moments before being sentenced, Thomas asked Judge William M. Nickerson to overturn the verdicts of the federal jury that convicted him and Simms on Dec. 14, saying his trial wasn't fair.
"I ask that you please overrule the jury's verdict and grant me a new trial, because I've been prejudiced," Thomas said. He added that he objected to being tried alongside another gang member, Jerry "Black Jerry" Williams, who had previously been found guilty of drug conspiracy in the case.
Thomas and Simms were prosecuted as adults, though they were juveniles at the time of the Jones killing. Thomas was convicted of murder in aid of racketeering, conspiracy to retaliate against a federal witness and conspiracy to distribute narcotics. His life sentence carries no chance for parole.
Simms was convicted of narcotics conspiracy and faces a mandatory sentence of life without parole under federal guidelines because the crime resulted in at least one death. He will be sentenced later.
Harding and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie M. Bennett pointed to testimony of witnesses at the three-month trial who described Thomas' involvement in five other slayings. Although federal prosecutors chose not to charge him in those killings, they brought them to the judge's attention to be taken into account at yesterday's sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors linked Thomas to the March 6, 1997, contract killing of Sean "Black Sean" Smith in East Baltimore. A witness, Alonzo "Fonzo" Harper, testified that Thomas admitted shooting Smith after being paid about $5,000.
"Dinkles had told me that he was going out to smoke the boy Sean, and he showed me the Uzi that he had," Harper testified. "I heard some gunshots, and that's when I saw him later, like that day or the next day, and he told me that he got him."
Harper also testified about his knowledge of the John Jones murder, saying Thomas had described how he knocked on the door of Jones' home and pulled out a semiautomatic handgun.
"He said something to the man; the man was distracted and turned his head, or the man just wasn't paying attention, and [Thomas] shot him in the head," Harper testified. "And then Denasty came up and shot him in his body."
The other East Baltimore homicide victims who prosecutors say were linked to Thomas in 1997 include James Caldwell and Purnell Jennings on May 27; Jimmy "Funk" Martin on May 3; and Brian "China Man" Gillespie on Feb. 13.


Northumberland residents are being invited to give their input on how Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust can improve patient experiences in outpatients, at its urgent care centres and at the Specialist Emergency Care Hospital near Cramlington.
In November, the trust visited more than 20 locations and spoke to more than 500 people across the county and North Tyneside to gather opinions.
It now wants to ask more detailed questions focused on new technologies and new ways of working.
During the new roadshows, those who go along will also be able to learn more about its vision to ‘get fit for the future’ by helping residents to live well, providing care and support when people need it and using resources wisely.
Northumbria staff will be at Morrisons in Morpeth on Sunday between 10.30am and 2.30pm and Wansbeck General Hospital on Monday from 2pm to 4pm.


CRN presents Storage Week 2015, the CRN Test Center's wall-to-wall coverage of the latest storage drives, devices and apps for the enterprise and consumer markets. Bookmark this page for five days of reviews, slideshows and videos, all designed to bring you solid intel from the storage world. This year's coverage will include reviews of industry-leading storage arrays and solid-state drives, an examination of flash storage versus hybrid storage and much more.
While the performance of all-flash array is needed for certain applications where cost is an issue, it is the hybrid array integrating both flash and spinning disk capacity that is fast becoming the storage industry workhorse.
The CRN Test Center reviews a trio of solid choices in solid-state drives from Intel, Samsung and SanDisk.
If performance is the key requirement for an application's storage, nothing today beats high-performance all-flash arrays.
As part of Storage Week 2015, the CRN Test Center reviews the latest NAS devices from D-Link and WD, and the ThunderBay 4 DAS from OWC.
When it comes to implementing flash storage, solution providers say the choice between higher-performance all-flash storage arrays and lower-cost hybrid storage arrays depends mainly on the workload.
Senior Editor Joe Kovar discusses his feature for Storage Week 2015, which looks at the benefits of all-flash array storage compared to hybrid arrays.


Charlie Hebdo tragedy: Will 'clash of civilizations' become self-fulfilling prophecy?
Sonia Mansour Robaey is a Middle East observer and analyst. Sonia tweets at @les_politiques.
As the Charlie Hebdo tragedy has shaken France and the world, prompting a new discussion of Christian versus Muslim values, let's put the attack into a wider frame to answer the question what may trigger the so-feared ‘clash of civilizations’.
Imagine an editorial meeting discussing the next issue of a satirical magazine. Imagine gunmen searching and finding their way to this meeting. They assassinate, execution-style, twelve people, calling some by name: cartoonists, journalists, editorial writers, an economist, a policeman protecting cartoonists, a maintenance worker, and even a guest who happens to be there. They claim they are avenging the Prophet and chant “Allahu Akbar.” They escape the authorities, provoking a coordinated attack that targets a Jewish supermarket; another massacre; 17 killed in total. They give a TV interview crediting Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS aka ISIS) for the Jewish supermarket massacre. They die in a hail of gunfire during a final confrontation with France’s special intervention forces.
This is the Charlie Hebdo tragedy as it happened. Many compare it to 9/11, despite being on a smaller scale. But like 9/11, the target was symbolic, sitting at the core of national identity and rallying many in indignation. In the Charlie Hebdo case, the target is a form of expression rooted in the national psyche – satire. In solidarity and mourning, the world has become Charlie; "Je suis Charlie" was a “magical moment,” said a French TVjournalist, referring to the slogan that was adopted in the aftermath of the tragedy. But "Je suis Charlie" was also challenged by many Muslims and non-Muslims because of its black-and white narrative: us versus them.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, journalists, experts, analysts, politicians and activists offered the stricken masses the only narrative available, the one popularized after 9/11: the ‘clash of civilizations.’‘Je Suis Charlie’ became synonymous with the battle for the freedom of expression against radical Islam.
#CharlieHebdo? 》 Professor fired over anti-#Israel tweets sues University of Illinois http://t.co/ks3WEJNng6pic.twitter.com/Yflx9dmyhc"
But Charlie Hebdo did not merely exercise its right to freedom of expression by representing the Prophet; it represented the Prophet in a way shocking to Muslims and claimed the right to offend. Under their pen, not only did the Prophet become an ordinary man, but he became an undignified man.
For Muslims, the Prophet is not God, but he is the best of men. A man to whom most Muslims feel close and obligated to protect. A better self, an alter ego. Historically, not much is known about the Prophet, so Muslims’ understanding of the Prophet is mainly phenomenological, not historical. He is an integral part of their everyday experience and the way they see themselves. Muslims consider the Prophet as a better self, and this better self is the only thing that was left non-humiliated by hundred of years of colonization, injustice, and submission to the West.
These nuances are lost on many, and especially on French courts. Those courts ruled, more than once, in favor of Charlie Hebdo, distinguishing between offending real people – which is sanctioned by an anti-hate law – and offending religious beliefs, not sanctioned by any law but encouraged by many among French politicians and intellectuals, on the right and on the left.
Western advocates of military intervention and military solutions for the crises of the world, like the neoconservatives, have interest in the clash of civilizations, since a convergence of civilizations may produce more sympathy in the West for the Muslim world, and consequently for its open wound, the injustice done to Palestinians. The chances for a resolution of the Palestinian problem have been going down, as terrorist attacks and the war on terror have become central to the preoccupations of international actors. Palestinians themselves didn’t help reverse this tendency because a movement like Hamas has been ambiguous about its affiliations and acquaintances with the Islamists, who rose to meet the neo-Cons’ program for a clash of civilizations.
Islamist radicals have interest too in producing a clash of civilizations to keep the Muslim community in check and control the everyday life of Muslims, while preventing their religion from opening itself to influence and change.
The danger that lies in the theory of the clash of civilizations is that it is self-fulfilling. Once we stick to it as an explanation of terrorist actions, we stop wanting to understand, and once we stop wanting to understand, we realize and further extend the reach of the clash of civilizations.
Edward Said labeled it the ‘clash of ignorance.' But he could not have imagined when he wrote his critique of the clash of civilizations in October 2001 in The Nation, that ignorance can be extremely dangerous and that 13 years after 9/11, the world has extended the reach of the clash of civilizations with the reset of the war on terror, in what many politicians promised would be a generational war against terrorism.
For France and Europe in general, it was only a matter of time before the narrative of the clash of civilizations – nurtured by both the neocons and their arch-nemesis, Islamist radicals – became self-fulfilling, not only marginalizing their populations of Muslims and hindering their integration, but reversing it, with scores going to fight for jihad in Iraq and Syria, and feeding anti-Semitism at the same time. It is no coincidence that the Charlie Hebdo attack was accompanied by an attack on the Jewish community, provoking calls from Israel to French Jews, and everywhere in Europe, to make aliyah.
The clash of civilizations focuses on the non-resolvable nature of cultural and religious differences between the West and Islam becoming the source for conflicts.
But a demographic study of Muslim populations worldwide has demonstrated: a heterogeneity in Muslim societies, explained by factors tied to secularization; an equal rise in literacy among men and women; a decrease in fertility; and an erosion of endogamy. The authors of the study speak of a convergence of civilizations, directly challenging the clash of civilizations narrative with empirical data. But the authors warn that such a transition could fragilize the community and expose it to extremism.
The convergence of civilizations is a fine line that the West and Muslims have to negotiate and walk together – not battle all the way from one tragedy to the next, until something horrible happens.
A dialogue of civilizations aimed at a convergence of civilizations must take place now if we are to triumph over Islamist terrorism and prevent more killings. The best place to realize this is in the public sphere. But the mainstream media that occupies the public sphere is not allowing the dialogue of civilizations to happen, because it has been hijacked by people who want confrontation, not understanding and dialogue.
Imagine a press going from one economic crisis to the next, with the emergence of alternative media and technologies. Imagine businessmen making profits from weapons searching to diversify after the end of the Cold War, finding their way to editorial rooms across France. They use their economic and political leverage, put their men at the helm of regrouped news outlets, and finally enter editorial meetings. They claim they are saving newspapers. They have total support from politicians who facilitate their takeovers and to whom they offer protection from public scrutiny and from political adversaries. They escape accountability by creating new companies for their media business, allowing them to claim their activity as 100 percent media. They vassalize a press previously fiercely independent. They fire, they hire. They assassinate freedom of expression, corporate style, in silence.
Now imagine an editorial meeting in a new press overtaken by corporations making profits from wars and acquainted with the powers in place. The editorial meeting would look like Charlie Hebdo’s on the day of the tragedy – less gruesome, less spectacular, no physical killing, and no blood, with profits and political friends replacing automatic rifles and ‘Allahu Akbar,' lowered as a Damocles sword over editorial freedom.
This happened to the most read and most prestigious press titles in France – Le Parisien, Le Fiagro, Liberation, and Le Monde – from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. Oil and weapons magnates put their men in editorial rooms across France. They dispatched trusted "journalists" and "intellectuals" to manage these journals. This was most obvious in 2013, after the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks, when Le Monde’s editor-in-chief penned an opinion calling for military intervention in Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government. Nougayrede’s editorial was so hawkish and close to certain circles bent on war that her own journalists revolted against her. In a recent book on Syria, Chesnot and Malbrunot reveal how Le Monde journalists served as "mules," not investigators, for Free Syrian army doctors and certain elements of French intelligence in the chemical weapons accusations against the Syrian government by France.
The vassalization of France’s most prestigious press by the interests of corporations tied to the political class, having their own "royal" court of journalists and intellectuals willing to serve while serving their careers, was accompanied by the vassalization of France’s foreign policy by Gulf money and the neo-Cons – who are almost always tied to international corporations. Influenced by Gulf countries, France started seeing the problems of the Middle East through Sunni political Islam, and its obedient press was infiltrated by interests tied to the war establishment and the neocons. This combination explains the puzzle of France’s stance on regime change in Syria, the most hardline of all, which led France to work against its own interests and turn a blind eye on its youth traveling to make jihad, with the consequences that might ensue. Retrospectively, and with the problems France has had with its Muslim youth in the banlieues for the last two decades or so, it was a foolish thing to do.
Gulf "investment" overtook France’s long neglected banlieues and replaced the republic’s imams with their own, quick to exploit the banlieues’ rage to convert to their intolerant brand of Islam, which is alien to the republic’s values.
In this context, "Je suis Charlie" is a rallying cry and at the same time a "cri de guerre," excluding, inside France, scores of Muslims and non-Muslims who do not adhere to the idea of the clash of civilizations and its realization.
In the media landscape in the US after 9/11, satire has taken over a mainstream media complicit of false narratives, torture, and illegal wars, with people turning to Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Michael Moore to understand the news. Satire is salutary whenever the powers in place try to stifle and intimidate free expression, and this is one of many reasons why Charlie Hebdo’s satire and its context are so important.
The voice of satire is the freest of all. It reveres no one, it knows no boundaries. In its new form since the French revolution, satire has been used to voice social and political rage.
But now, warmongers are using satire to produce rage.
Most often, satire is unencumbered by nuances, it plays with the extremes, even when it is aware of nuances. The presence of satire of the Prophet in Western publications is taking place amid a general ignorance of nuances concerning Islam and Muslims, and it is this ignorance that can transform satire into a scathing attack that sharpens the dividing lines between civilizations.
According to Stéphane Mazurier, a history professor who did his Master’s thesis on the sociocultural history of Charlie Hebdo, the Charlie Hebdo supposedly resurrected in 1992 had nothing in common with the publication of the same name that was discontinued in 1982, except for some cartoonists.
From 1992 on, Charlie Hebdo was going to reinvent itself, with Philippe Val at its helm until 2009. Val is a controversial figure, supposedly from the left, but with political positions close to the neo-Cons, a staunch pro-Israel stance, and closeness to the powers-that-be. He was against free speech at Charlie Hebdo when he fired Siné for a cartoon on Sarkozy’s son's conversion to Judaism before his nuptials with a French Jewish heiress. He also invited onto Charlie Hebdo’s editorial board Caroline Fourest, a public figure from the French left known for her anti-Muslim stance.
Under Val, Charlie Hebdo published the Danish cartoons and the publication became obsessed with the Prophet. Its public seized on the satire of the Prophet to vent frustrations at immigration and the rise of the Muslim minority in France, made visible post-9/11. Leftists who attack Le Pen could not bear being labeled racists, they would rather prefer to be labeled Prophet-bashers, in the name of freedom of expression and the defense of French secularism.
Muslims and the religion of Islam challenge a central tenet in France’s peculiar and extreme form of secularism, la laïcité. La laïcité not only calls for the separation between religion and state – something that I believe Muslims do not challenge in France – but it takes secularism a step further and asks for religion to be totally removed from the public sphere, confined to the private sphere.
This is where Muslims, who literally wear their religion on their skin, have been challenging the French state and French society. But the French state has been unable to address the challenges to its laïcité from its modern multicultural society, and has unequally treated different religious communities according to different standards. In reality, France’s version of extreme secularism is an ideal that is difficult to attain in a multicultural society. It requires total assimilation.
Does the Muslim world play any role?
The realization of the clash of civilizations has also been encouraged by reactions from Muslims.
Each media attack against Islam receives unanimous response from Muslims, and each terrorist attack in their name elicits a unanimously defensive attitude. The common point between the overreaction in the first case and the absence of reaction in the second – and this has been ongoing since 9/11 – is the absence of diversity and initiative, at least in the public sphere, and concurrent to this, the absence of a conversation inside Islam on what’s being done in their name. This is a dangerous trend that takes the initiative from Muslims and puts it in the hands of both Muslim-bashers and Muslim extremists. This leaves most Muslims entrenched in an attitude of persecution and denial. As Muslim French philosopher Abdennour Bidar poignantly put it: The Muslim world is nurturing a monster in its midst and this monster will keep coming out as long as a profound transformation of Islam and the Muslim world is not operated to expel this monster.
This transformation will necessitate the emancipation of the individual, the last stage in the secularization process. Individual emancipation from religion does not necessarily mean leaving religion or becoming atheist, it means moving comfortably between different sets of values, and making singular and individual choices about these values. The impact of this is in loosening the hold of religion on the individual. Some philosophers, like Canadian Charles Taylor, defend a communitarian stance on religion, as they see the community as a moral space for defining good.. But Taylor thinks upholding the community is a value in itself, rather than upholding the values of a precise community.
The war of civilizations that the neo-Cons and Islamist radicals have initiated against Muslims and the rest of us not only risks defeating the integration of Muslims in the West and the transformation of Islam toward more openness, allowing the marginalization of extremists, but it risks sucking in its spiral of exclusion those who are left behind in the West by an increasingly unequal society. Indeed, the ailment of the West is not communitarianism, but extreme individualism that leaves many people behind. Isolated and rejected individuals feel welcome in the false warm embrace of the community of extremists.
This is happening now in Syria and Iraq. Europe, with its history of anti-Semitism, its current Muslim population mainly formed by immigration, conflicts from Asia and Africa at its door, and with its inability to successfully tackle economic and social problems as a united geopolitical space, it is particularly vulnerable to attempts to make the war of civilizations a reality.
And to Charlie Hebdo, a publication that found itself in the midst of the war of civilizations and that was decimated by terrorism, I say: "Tout est pardonné." All is forgiven.
Now let’s rise to the challenge of starting a civilized conversation about Islam and Muslims in the West before extremist voices on both sides drown the voice of reason and compromise the convergence of civilizations for generations to come.
The author thanks Ivor Crotty, head of social media @RT_com, for inspiration, encouragement, advice, and editing.


My longtime relationship with antiperspirants was like that of a social smoker and cigarettes: I knew they were ultimately harmful and comforted myself with the notion that I would one day just give them up for good. The problem is, I was never really certain when that day would come.
I started using more intense antiperspirants just before college, which was around the same time I got more invested in working out regularly. I was so frequently going from class to the gym to the cafeteria and wherever else life took me that I developed a preemptive fear of smelling bad in front of my peers and the people I was trying to befriend.
When I started interning at the start of my sophomore year, I grew to rely upon my intense deodorant habit even more. I was suddenly having to work in professional environments that felt so out of my league, and it kinda made me sweat.
Around the same time, I kept seeing stories about the harmful effects of common antiperspirant ingredients, which can include aluminum compounds and parabens. Antiperspirants than contain aluminum are especially risky because they can be absorbed into your bloodstream and have been linked to breast cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Here lies my real problem and the source of a lot of paranoia. My grandmother, my mom's mom, passed away from breast cancer in her 30s. Though she was diagnosed at a time when research and treatment were scarce, that's certainly not the case right now. If there's reputable information out there about the harmfulness of antiperspirants, then why the f*ck was I using them?
I gave it some thought and realized that my health and longevity were more important than the strength of my deodorant. My next issue, however, was finding the right natural deodorant that smelled nice and was still effective — although I was prepared to be let down by the effectiveness after years of using my stronger one. After arming myself with some knowledge about other aluminum-free deodorants, I ended up settling on Milk + Honey's cream deodorant in coconut and lemongrass scent.
I had a bunch of initial reservations. First of all, the deodorant is $16, which definitely doesn't make it an economical choice. Also, the notion of a cream deodorant that you have to scoop up with your hands — and thereby rub directly onto your armpits — kind of grossed me out.
While I have to admit I still feel weird about applying it by hand, the price has become slightly more understandable since I realized how a tiny amount of the thick cream can offer a lot of protection. I've also become obsessed with its refreshing scent. It smells crisp, fresh, and gloriously lacking in weird chemicals that my body does not need or want. Just the other day, I got a whiff of my armpit as I was working out and it actually smelled nice, ultimately passing the most difficult smell test.
I'm sure I'll try other types of natural deodorants, but for now, I feel at peace knowing that I can throw away my intense antiperspirant and rely on this pleasant option without fear of offending my co-workers and fellow gym-goers.


Hate group says the accused Florida school shooter did paramilitary exercises and got a rifle from members. Ex-students say he wore a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat in school.
PARKLAND, Florida—Nikolas Cruz, the man accused of killing 17 people in a Florida high school, was a member of a “white separatist paramilitary proto-fascist organization,” a leader of the group told The Daily Beast.
Cruz, 19, is accused of opening fire inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Jordan Jereb, a captain of the Republic of Florida, said Cruz trained with the group (as first reported by the Anti-Defamation League).
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday evening that the claim is “not confirmed at this time” but “we are looking into that.” After previous mass shootings, the alt-right has spread disinformation online about alleged perpetrators.
Jereb claimed Thursday morning Cruz was a part of the Republic of Florida.
After taking a moment to check notes, Jereb confirmed Cruz came to Tallahassee with the “secretive cell” from Clearwater.
“They called him ‘Nick,’ they didn’t call him ‘Nikolas,’” he said.
RoF was recently operating in Tallahassee and attempting to court new members, according to a local news report from last year. The group posts videos of training montages on the internet with members in fatigues brandishing weapons.
Cruz received at least one of his guns through the white supremacist group, according to Jereb.
“I think somebody bought him a Mosin–Nagant, but that’s bolt action. He had a semi-automatic in the school,” Jereb said.
Cruz bought the AR-15 rifle authorities say he used at the school in February 2017, the ATF said in an affidavit filed Thursday.
While no motive has been described by police, Jereb speculated that Cruz may have allegedly committed the massacre out of hatred for Jews or women.
Last year, an alleged school shooter in New Mexico also expressed alt-right ideology online, as The Daily Beast previously reported.
Seven classmates of Cruz told The Daily Beast he expressed extreme political views and disturbing behavior when he attended the high school he is now accused of attacking with a high-powered rifle.
Kamrie Bazal, 19, and Damar Osouna, 19, said they knew Cruz in school and that he talked about about guns but they did not suspect he would kill. Daniel Journey, 18, said Cruz was a troublemaker who was kicked out of class once for smashing windows.
Nyla Hussain, a 16-year-old junior, said her good friend sat next to Cruz in biology class last year and that he would regularly show her photos of dead animals.
“Whoever he sat next to in class he would show pics of animals that he hunted,” she said.
Two classmates said they saw Cruz wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat.
“I saw him wear a Trump hat,” said Sebastian Gonzalez, a 19-year-old who graduated in 2017.
Ocean Parodie, a 17-year-old junior, said Cruz was politically extreme.
“For example, he would degrade Islamic people as terrorists and bombers. I’ve seen him wear a Trump hat,” Parodie said.
Josh Charo, a 16-year-old junior who was in JROTC with Cruz, said he often expressed racist beliefs.
Cruz wore the Trump hat in a photo on an Instagram account the company said belonged to him. Over his face he wore a red, white, and blue bandanna. On that account and another one, Cruz posted photos of guns, knives, anti-Muslim slurs, and a picture of a toad he killed.
On YouTube, a person by the same name spewed hateful commentary about anti-fascists.
Cruz also celebrated Elliot Rodger, the gunman who killed seven people at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014 and who is considered a hero of the fringe men’s rights movement.
The FBI said on Thursday it had received a warning from a YouTube user about a “nikolas cruz” who wrote in a comment, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” FBI field agents interviewed the tipsters, but the bureau’s special agent in charge in Parkland said the FBI was unable to identify the user.
Rhonda Roxburgh told The Daily Beast she had run-ins with Cruz when she lived with her parents, who were neighbors of the Cruz family.
One summer day in 2013, Cruz slammed his backpack into the rear door of Roxburgh’s car as she passed his house on her way to work. She stopped the vehicle and got out to confront the teenager.
Later that day, Roxburgh knocked on his mother Lynda Cruz’s door and told her what had happened. “She said, ‘No, no, no. Not my Nikolas.’ She was pretty much in denial there was any issue with him at that point in time,” Roxburgh said.
As Roxburgh spoke to Lynda Cruz, Nikolas was walking through the yard and toward the street. She confronted him again on her way home.
“When he looked at me, that individual is a very, very cold, cold person. He did not care what I was talking about. He did not care what he did. I realized I was wasting my time with this child,” said Roxburgh, 45, who now lives in North Carolina.
Cruz was known to kill squirrels and birds with a pellet gun, and neighborhood cats would disappear, Roxburgh said. She said she once caught him jabbing a stick down a rabbit hole near his front yard.
At one point, Cruz walked his dog to a neighbor’s pen of piglets and tried to have the pooch attack them. “He was just a menacing child, to be quite frank,” said Roxburgh, who lived in the neighborhood from 2009 to 2015.
Roxburgh often saw Cruz and his brother, Zachary, together early on. In 2012, the siblings were the best of friends and were seen together in the street.
By 2014, the brothers “were definitely separate,” Roxburgh said. Nikolas would sit on the curb waiting for the bus, alone, with children 30 to 40 feet away from him.
“They would never really interact,” she said of the siblings. “Something happened there.” Zachary Cruz would ride his skateboard past his brother as he waited at the bus stop.
Meanwhile, Roxburgh said broken furniture—a damaged hutch, bookcase, and mattress—was often placed at the curb outside the Cruz family home. “I was thinking to myself, ‘They must not have any furniture left,’ because it was out there quite frequently,” she said.
Police were also called to the house often, Roxburgh said.
“Some of the other people in the neighborhood [said], ‘Boys will be boys.’ There was something else there, much darker than that,” Roxburgh said.
As for Cruz’s alleged right-wing link, Jereb claimed later on Thursday the media tricked him into identifying Cruz.
“It’s easy for them to misrepresent what I say. Are you really going to blame ME for the lying jew media?” he wrote on Gab, a social media site favored by the fringe right. Jereb did not reply to a further request for comment.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than 100 people have been killed or injured by perpetrators influenced by the alt-right since 2014.
Editor's Note, 2/15/18, 6:15 p.m.: This story has been updated throughout.


Can I Run Python From Notepad?
PYM files contain macros written in the Python scripting language.
Programmers use the Python programming language to develop applications for use in Web and desktop environments. Python facilitates this through its extensive collection of libraries and the flexibility of the language and its interpreter. While a programmer can enter Python programming in any text editor, such as Notepad, actually executing a Python script occurs by invoking the interpreter in some fashion. By using Notepad and the Python interpreter, a programmer can write Python programs and execute them, or create "batch" files that can execute multiple programs, including Python scripts.
The Python print command is simple, but right now it is just text. For the operating system to understand that the file should be read as a Python program, the programmer needs to save the file as a Python file, with the ".py" extension. In Notepad, just save the file, in this "hello" example, with the ".py" extension, as in "hello.py."
Note that the Python interpreter must be included in the user's PATH variable to function from the command line. How to set the interpreter in the PATH differs between Windows systems. The user should check the documentation for his particular version of Windows if he needs to set Python in his PATH.
Windows will then execute the Python command, because it is listed as the only element in the list of commands to execute.
Jackson, G.S.. "Can I Run Python From Notepad?" Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/can-run-python-notepad-26639.html. Accessed 18 April 2019.


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