The master of passionate and gentle human dramas, Hirokazu Kore-eda, returns to the screens once more this Friday with his latest Palme d’Or winning film, Shoplifters. Equal parts bitter and sweet, Shoplifters is a deeply moving tale about the ties that bind a struggling family together.
On the outskirts of Tokyo, inside a ramshackle bungalow, a family of outsiders have created a home together.
Shoplifters is a satisfying exploration of life lived on the margins and an incredible return to form for Kore-eda. If you haven’t had the absolute pleasure of seeing a Kore-eda film yet, Shoplifters is a perfect introduction to his work that will have you itching to discover more of his mesmerising portraits of family life: try Our Little Sister or Still Walking next as gentle steps into a world of cinema you won’t want to forget.
Speaking of unforgettable cinema, a new restoration of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée has been touring cinemas across the UK and will be joining us from 23 rd November. This haunting reimagining of the Orpheus myth marries classical legend with an equally mythologised version of the filmmaker’s own personal story.
Jean Marais plays a famous poet caught between two worlds when, seeking inspiration for his work, he follows a mysterious woman through Cocteau’s famous mirrored portal into the land of the dead. Dreamlike, poetic, and endlessly inventive, Orphée rightly stands as Cocteau’s most widely celebrated work of cinema.
Too Far! based on the play of the same name by Bola Agbaje. It follows London teenager, Yemi, whose street cred is under threat when his big brother visits from Nigeria. Gone Too Far! is a witty and heart-warming film about family and cultural identity that offers up an authentic slice of South London life. We are delighted to be joined by Destiny – one of BAFTA’s ‘Breakthrough Brits’ - after the screening for a Q&A.
There’s so much film-based fun to be had this weekend and beyond! Head to our website for more information on these screenings and check out even more of our jam-packed November programme.


BOSTON (AP) — Environmentalists are again taking aim at the company that proposed the Keystone XL pipeline — this time for another of its projects they fear would send hundreds of supertankers laden with crude oil down the Atlantic coast to refineries in Texas and Louisiana.
TransCanada is behind the Energy East Pipeline project, a 4,600-kilometer pipeline, or nearly 3,000 miles, that would carry crude oil from tar sands in Western Canada to the East Coast, where it would then be shipped to refineries along the Texas Gulf Coast. When completed, the project would carry 1.1-million barrels of crude oil every day from Alberta and Saskatchewan to refineries in Eastern Canada.
Plans call for converting a natural gas line for part of the route and then building a new pipeline in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Eastern Ontario, Québec and New Brunswick to connect to the existing pipeline.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and other environmental groups are concerned about potential spills of tar sands diluted bitumen along the route in Canada that goes over thousands of rivers, streams and lakes. They also warned a spill along the East Coast could prove devastating to communities that depend on tourism and fisheries and are not prepared to handle an event of this kind.
The groups held a conference call Tuesday with the media, in releasing a report , "Tar Sands in the Atlantic Ocean: Transcanada's Proposed Energy East Pipeline," that lays out their case against the project.
"What we have is a proposal to move nearly 300 super tankers down the eastern seaboard, and we don't have the techniques and technology to contain and clean a spill of tar sands diluted bitumen should one happen," said Anthony Swift, the Canada project director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.
TransCanada said that the project would adhere to stringent safety standards and that it would be the responsibility of its customers of where they ship the oil, noting that "it does not own or operate ships for the delivery of oil."
"Safety remains our top priority," TransCanada spokesman Jonathan Abecassis said in an email to The Associated Press. He said the port in New Brunswick "will have a number of preventive safety measures" including the use of trained pilots and advanced navigational and docking technologies.
"We are working in collaboration with local authorities and first responders during the development of our emergency plan to ensure that the plan is adapted to local circumstances with resources placed strategically across the route to react quickly in the unlikely event of an emergency," he said.
Abecassis said the project is being reviewed by the National Energy Board in Canada. Environmentalists are hopeful the United States will express its opposition to the project during this review process and enact a ban on the shipment of tar sands in U.S. waters.
The project comes less than a year after President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL project following seven years of political wrangling, arguing it would have undercut U.S. efforts to clinch a global climate change deal. The Paris agreement last December aims to keep the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial times.
Environmentalists are hoping the same grassroots success they had with Keystone will bring down the Energy East project. In a sign they may use some of the same tactics, the National Resource Defense Council has already launched a petition against the project that highlights the role tar sands play in worsening global warming.
"We're here today because the threat of climate change is increasingly dire, and we have a critical but narrow window of opportunity to take action," Sierra Club's Cathy Collentine said. "That includes action to stop tar sands infrastructure from being built and to take action to ban the transport of tar sands in tankers that would increase the threat to our communities, environment and our climate."


BERLIN—A crowd gathered at the Babylon Theater here Saturday for an annual memorial for Dean Reed, the American “rebel,” rock star, and filmmaker who famously defected to “East Germany” (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR) in 1972. Those in attendance were among Reed’s most ardent fans, of whom he had many thousands in the GDR when he died in 1986.
People who were around 20 years-old when the Berlin Wall fell—those who lived in and were educated in the socialist GDR—have spent the more than quarter-century since the demise of that country living under capitalism in a different Germany. Being old enough to remember what life was like in the GDR, they are perfectly situated to make comparisons of the two different social systems. At the Reed memorial, I had the opportunity to speak with a number of them.
These former GDR citizens, referred to these days as “Ossies,” a short for the German word “ost,” meaning east, said some things that were not surprising, but also others that were completely unexpected.
Heike Zastrow, who was exactly 20 when the Wall crumbled in 1989, was slicing cake to be served during intermission when I spoke with her.
“I wasn’t political at all and I didn’t like the steady talk of politics coming from the leaders,” she said. “I also hated that I couldn’t travel, I couldn’t go where I wanted to go.” Once the border around West Berlin, which was in the middle of the GDR, was closed in the early 1960s, most GDR citizens under retirement age could not travel freely to the West. Permission was granted for various reasons, but it was not the rule.
“But I have to say,” Zastrow said, “that I had a very good life in the GDR and that I had a very good education there.” I asked her to elaborate.
Another GDR citizen I interviewed had quite a different story. She came to the GDR as a three-month-old child and has been a German ever since. “I know no other country,” she said.
She also had praise for the free education system in the GDR, saying it had prepared her well for her chosen field of printing and publishing. At an early age, she started and remained at Neues Deutchland, a major GDR newspaper, doing typography and design.
She had complaints, however, about aspects of life in the GDR. One was that she felt the schools, equipped as well as they were to build knowledge and skills, were not adequately equipped to deal with children with special problems.
She had behavioral problems as a child, and in her schools the emphasis, when it came to behavior problems, was on conformity rather than searching for solutions. “I made it through though even though it would have been better if there had been more help from the schools,” she said.
None of her misgivings, however, seemed to have soured her on the idea of socialism.
She was asked to explain further.
One of the speakers at the memorial, a man who knew Reed personally, was Victor Grossman, known to People’s World readers as a frequent writer and reporter on European affairs.
Grossman was a young factory worker in Buffalo, N.Y. when he was drafted during the Korean War. He was stationed in Germany, where he learned that as a left activist he was about to be arrested and jailed in a McCarthyite campaign in the military that was running parallel to the hysteria back in the U.S.
The jail term would be five years and the fine $10,000 for having failed to list allegedly subversive organizations to which he had belonged. The story is complicated, but he fled the army base and ended up, like Reed, living in the GDR and has remained in Germany ever since.
Grossman’s experience is quite unique. He lived the first 20 years of his life under capitalism in the U.S., the next 40 under socialism in the GDR, and the last 27 under capitalism in a united Germany.
The biggest difference, according to Grossman, was in the area of job security. “In Buffalo, it was out of the blue that Fedders laid 200 of us off. That’s it, we were out of work, livelihood gone. In the GDR, you never, ever had to be afraid that you would be kicked out onto the street. Even if a job was phased out, the system was fully in gear to get you the next job without you ever suffering loss of pay or pension benefits or anything else. You can’t imagine how good it is to be free of that economic anxiety,” he said.
For some brief but shining years, the GDR was achieving more and more of the aims of socialism. The powers-that-be today are afraid of this. They don’t want people to know that there was an actual world in which fear of joblessness was gone, poverty was eliminated, women had equality, racism was illegal, and no child went hungry.
Grossman did just that, having graduated from Karl Marx Stadt University as a trained journalist. He went on from there to teach and write several books in the GDR.
None of this means there were no problems, Grossman said, and he had some of the sharpest criticisms voiced in the interviews on Saturday night.
Yet today, more than a quarter-century after the demise of the GDR, there is a persistent campaign here and all over the West against that country. Every official tour of Berlin is sure to include some anti-GDR points of information.
“Why do you think that is?” I asked Grossman. Why continue to vilify a country and a government that disappeared decades ago?


loss of nearly 9 percent.
weekly slide on the London Metal Exchange since December 2011.
by Cyprus to sell its gold reserves to finance debt.
nearly 1 percent or more.
and the demand outlook was still weak in many markets.
Street stocks, some analysts said.
Houston-based IAF Advisors, said, referring to oil.
percent lower on the week at $99.65.
impact gold in the near term.
protection against inflation and other market risks.
after Monday's price slump unleashed some pent-up retail demand.
trading at Vision Financial Markets.


A Southwest Airlines plane slid off of its runway Thursday morning at the Hollywood Burbank Airport because of unusually rainy conditions. The good news is no one was hurt, but it is proof that it’s not just drivers in L.A. who can’t handle rain.
I, of course, kid. This was a very scary incident for the 112 passengers and five flight crew members who were onboard when the plane lost control. Luckily there were no injuries, ABC News reports.
As we landed you could feel the brakes. I fly out of Burbank a lot so I know that you have to hit the brakes. It’s a short runway. Then mud started hitting the windows, you could see smoke and water and I started noticing the plane going sideways. Then we came to a stop and I noticed we were right up against a retaining wall.
Heavy rains reduced visibility at the airport and caused the plane to lose traction on its tarmac. Only one runway at the airport was closed due to the accident, however several flights were canceled due to an FAA inspection of the runways.
I’m sure the passengers were just fine with that. I imagine nobody who watched this plane lose control is in a rush to get aboard one.


The reception, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., will feature refreshments, live music and a chance to meet some of the featured artists, all of whom have ties to Arkansas: Brandon Maddox, LaToya Hobbs, Joshua Asante, Angela Davis Johnson, Ariston Jacks, Danny Campbell, Rex DeLoney, Cicely Trice, Donnell Williams, Sondra Strong and Danny Broadway.
Creativity Arkansas "reveals the hidden history of how African Americans have shaped the narrative of Arkansas throughout the state’s history," the museum's press release said.
The Creativity Arkansas collection began in 2008. By 2011, the collection had 42 works, according to an Eye Candy post. The collection is funded by a grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council.


A certain sense of fear starts to creep in about three weeks before finals, and suddenly, all 12,000 CofC students hit the books hard. It's great to see everyone being good students, really, but ... there's nowhere to sit and study. Not even at Stern Center, and especially not at the library. Never fear, Charleston holds many other options for studying when there's not a table to be found on campus.
Conveniently located about four blocks from campus, Black Tap offers studying space, natural light, free wi-fi, and some solid coffee. They also sell pastries, so you can snack during your caffeine binge for some staying power. Do make sure to get there early to stake out your spot, as there are a limited amount of seats, and it's a popular place.
Brown's Court is also located about four blocks from campus and has an extensive selection of goodies, like cookies, muffins, and breads. They carry Counter Culture coffee that you can sip while studying on the upstairs porch. Also included in their offerings is a sandwich with pretty much every breakfast food on it, aptly titled the Hangover, which will certainly come in handy for those study sessions after late nights out.
Hop on your bike and trek over to the old Cigar Factory where cafe/market Mercantile is located. There's an extensive coffee menu for all your caffeination needs, a bakery case stocked with fresh doughy goodness (be sure to check out their Wednesday donut selections), and a full lunch menu for sustenance. There's also free wi-fi, so feel free to stay posted up all day nibbling on food and working on that term paper. Bonus: you can buy loaves of bread, freshly cut meat, or prepared foods to take back home with you after the homework ends.
There's another library right near campus that is pretty underused by college students, so it's perfect for those looking for a place to sprawl out and take up a whole table. A Starbucks is located just down the block, so hit that first for a caffeine boost before locking yourself inside the walls of the library.
If you don't need wi-fi, take your studies outside to the tidal pond not too far from campus. The park was newly redone about a year ago, so the sidewalks and foliage around the water look pristine. Snag one of the many benches in the shade and take a look at the scenery (and all the dogs strolling by) whenever you need a break from reading.


Three months after Mark Zuckerberg pledged to stop external forces from disproportionately affecting U.S. elections, targeted ads are bombarding voters in a pivotal Senate race.
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama—Yvonne Trosclair doesn’t know who’s behind America First Action—which keeps running pro-Roy Moore ads here on television and on Facebook ahead of the U.S. Senate election on Tuesday—but she knows they’re not from Alabama.
Trosclair took to America First Action’s nascent Facebook page to vent her frustrations, just as several others have done over the past week after they were bombarded with targeted content from the pro-Donald Trump PAC’s $1 million ad buy. At press time, the group had a 1.7-star rating on Facebook out of 5.
What Trosclair didn’t find was much identifying information from America First Action, including where the PAC is based. That sort of pivotal disclosure is one of the several promises Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg made in his highly publicized address three months ago aimed at fixing veiled political advertising on the platform, which was said to have helped Trump win.
In response to the social media giant’s failure to prevent anonymous foreign actors from targeting U.S.-based elections, Zuckerberg laid out several promises aimed at stopping external forces from disproportionately affecting American elections.
Russia’s “troll farm” in St. Petersburg was able to target millions of Americans with just hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad money to push pro-Trump messages in an attempt to swing districts in the run-up to the 2016 election.
Former Trump campaign digital director Brad Parscale—who is working with America First Action's parent organization—told 60 Minutes in October that Facebook was “how he won.” Campaign officials used “embedded” Facebook staff to micro-target potential voters. Unofficial campaign groups also flooded Facebook with ads of dubious origin without clearly explaining where they came from or who paid for them.
With polls set to open in a pivotal nail-biter of a Senate race on Tuesday in Alabama, none of Zuckerberg's promised policies have taken effect.
So it's hard for ordinary Alabama voters to know where exactly these ads on their feed are coming from.
America First Action’s headquarters are difficult to pin down on the web, let alone on Facebook. The organization doesn’t provide a location on Facebook or its website. FEC documents show that the group is based out of 1400 Crystal Drive in Arlington, Virginia.
America First Action, the super PAC arm of pro-Trump dark money group America First Policies, was founded this year by top Trump operatives, including Rick Gates, the since-indicted former campaign aide, and Nick Ayers, now vice president Mike Pence's chief of staff. Now run by Republican consultant Brian Walsh, the group's only reported income this year has come from Ronald Weiser, the chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and a top RNC fundraiser in 2016.
In addition to location disclosure, Zuckerberg and Facebook’s vice presidents of advertising and public policy pledged a suite of new features that would force more disclosures from political advertisers and result in greater transparency for users.
None of those features are currently accessible to Alabamians being served ads by both pro-Roy Moore PACs, like America First Action, and, ostensibly, groups backing Democratic candidate Doug Jones, such as one called Alabama Values.
A Facebook spokesperson pointed The Daily Beast to an Oct. 27 blog post by Facebook vice president of advertising Rob Goldman that said the changes weren’t scheduled to be rolled out in the U.S. until next summer but are being tested elsewhere.
“We will start this test in Canada and roll it out to the US by this summer, ahead of the US midterm elections in November, as well as broadly to all other countries around the same time,” Goldman wrote on Oct. 27.
America First Action’s ads focus less on Alabama-related themes and more on divisive national issues pushed by the GOP such as abortion restrictions; and those championed by President Trump, like NFL players who kneel during the national anthem.
Another shows Jones tethered to strings like a marionette beneath a hand with the words “Nancy Pelosi” on its wrist. “PELOSI PUPPET,” it reads beneath a picture of Jones, who is also identified with a lapel pin.
America First Action poured more than $1 million into the state for the final stretch of the campaign just last week.
While outside dark-money groups have spent millions to support and tear down both candidates in the race, only Jones is actively campaigning in the run-up to Election Day. Moore has not appeared in public since last Tuesday and will hold his final campaign rally on Monday night in rural southeastern Alabama. Neither party has deployed its campaign apparatus to the fullest extent to aid their respective candidates in a race that could shift the balance of the Senate—and have lasting effects on Trump’s legislative agenda.
Trosclair has just a couple more days of hearing the ads that she says she’s “heard a billion times, blastin’ on my TV.” She hopes her Facebook post on America First Action’s page, complete with an eye-roll emoji and the hashtag #YouDontKnowUs, will get the group to take the hint—or at least change its ad copy.
“They’re clearly not from the state if they’re not saying Alabamians,” she said.
UPDATE: This story has ben updated to provide more information about America First Action and its backers.


Shepherd's pie meets hot dish in this fast comfort-food recipe that can make the most of leftover fresh herbs and sweet potatoes from the holiday. It is basic with just the two layers, but you could easily add a layer of cooked broccoli or cauliflower florets — or even add those to the saucy sausage mixture.
We tested this with a few different kinds of sausage, including a chicken-and-apple one. But our hands-down favorite was the fresh bacon sausage — yep, you read that right — from Harvey's Market at Union Market in Northeast Washington. The family-owned butcher shop has made it in 12- to 15-pound batches since 2012. But it has been part of a rotation of sausage varieties, so I have missed it, apparently. The blend is about 60-40 ground pork and Benton's bacon (ground at different consistencies), with garlic, marjoram, savory, salt, black pepper and roasted red peppers.
Serve with a steamed or sauteed green vegetable of your choice.
Adapted from the undated, spiral-bound "The Second Harvest Cookbook: Over 100 Inexpensive, Easy-to-Prepare Recipes for the Busy Cook," from Second Harvest in Toronto.
Peel the sweet potatoes, then cut into 3/4-inch chunks. Place in a microwave-safe bowl along with 1/4 cup water. Cover with plastic wrap (so the plastic is not touching the food). Microwave on HIGH for about eight minutes, or until tender. Let sit for two minutes, then uncover and mash the potatoes in their bowl, seasoning them lightly with salt and pepper.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Finely chop the onion. Discard any casings from the sausage, placing pinches of the meat in a 9- or 10-inch ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring to break up any large clumps, until the sausage loses its raw look. Use a slotted spoon to transfer to a plate, then add the onion to the skillet and stir to coat. Cook for about five minutes, or until softened.
Mince the rosemary or thyme leaves.
Sprinkle the flour over the onion, then stir to coat. Gradually pour in 2 cups of the milk, stirring with a wooden spoon, until thickened; over medium heat, this will take about seven minutes. Return the cooked sausage to the skillet, stirring to incorporate. Taste and season lightly with salt and/or pepper. Remove from the heat; stir in all but a few of the minced fresh herbs.
Add the remaining 1/2 cup of milk to the sweet potatoes, stirring to form a fairly smooth mash. Spread evenly over the sausage mixture, making sure to cover it completely. Bake (upper rack) for 10 minutes, or until the potatoes are just set and beginning to brown on top.
Serve hot, sprinkled with the reserved minced herbs.
Nutrition per serving (based on 5, using pork sausage and low-fat milk): 430 calories, 21 g protein, 31 g carbohydrates, 25 g fat, 8 g saturated fat, 75 mg cholesterol, 850 mg sodium, 3 g dietary fiber, 12 g sugar.
Bonnie S. Benwick has the job most envied among cocktail-party conversations. If they only knew ... Cook with her each week at Dinner in Minutes: washingtonpost.com/recipes.


Jem (formerly Jemma Griffiths) is already creating a Dido-style stir across the Atlantic, where this debut album has sold more than 200,000 copies.
Jem knows her samples and trip-hop beats, but she also has a keen ear for a sweet pop hook. The opening track and first single, They, sets a delicious choral counterpoint against a bumping beat - but that's only the start of her campaign to hypnotise punters.Stay Now has the dreamy allure of a doze on a sunny beach, while the lazy loops of Finally Waken slip down like Häagen-Dazs for the ears.
If this record has a problem, it's that it may be too cute for its own good.


Rival — the word comes from the Latin rivus, or a stream. Presumably keen rivalries began between people who shared a stream. One man’s fish-source is another man’s tannery drain.


Puig’s growth is certainly on display at this Miami Open, where with the help of a partisan crowd she polished off Maria Sakkari of Greece 6-3, 7-5 in the third-round.
This is a first for Puig in terms of securing a fourth-round berth at the Miami Open. In five previous appearances at Crandon Park she never journeyed past the second round.
The conclusion of the Sakkari match offered some frustration for Puig, who served for the match three times before she finished in dramatic fashion with an ace.
On Friday, Puig upset reigning Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki 0-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the second round. The second-seeded Wozniacki later complained on social media that her family members were threatened by fans while watching the late-night encounter.
Puig acknowledged seeing the comments but said she hasn’t discussed the situation with Wozniacki.
Puig will square off against 93rd-ranked American qualifier Danielle Collins, a native of St. Petersburg, in the next match with a quarterfinal slot the dangling prize.
Collins, a two-time NCAA champion out of the University of Virginia, where she graduated with a degree in media studies, outlasted Donna Vekic of Croatia 4-6, 6-2, 6-1.
Collins also did well at Indian Wells earlier this month with an upset of 15th-seeded fellow American Madison Keys en route to the fourth round.
“Nobody skyrockets to the top very fast, and the only difference is that most of the girls I’m competing against turned pro at 16,” Collins said. “I went a different route and went to college.
For Collins, a win over Puig, who she has known from junior events since she was 9 years old, would be monumental, But if Puig had a message ahead of the encounter it’s that she believes her Olympic vibe is returning.


NEW YORK — Flynn the bichon frisé was crowned Best in Show at the 142nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Tuesday night. The champion, a jovial 5-year-old, cut a striking, cloudlike figure in the ring: His powder-puff fur was painstakingly coifed, and he trotted jauntily across the floor with a step that looked almost lighter than air.
McFadden, who has been showing the breed at the Westminster Dog Show since 1991, said he believed this would be Flynn’s final year at the competition. He turns 6 in March.
“I’d have to ask the owners, but I’m pretty sure I can drop the mic and say he’s retired,” McFadden told Fox Sports.
Seven finalists had a shot at greatness this year. Aside from Flynn, Lucy the regal borzoi, a silly pug named Biggie and Slick the joyful border collie won their groups Monday night (hound, toy, nonsporting and herding). Ty the giant schnauzer, a winsome Sussex spaniel named Bean and Winston the impossibly cute Norfolk terrier advanced Tuesday in the sporting, working and terrier groups.
The winner was selected by Betty-Anne Stenmark of Woodside, Calif. Stenmark, a veteran judge, who has bred Saint Bernards, Salukis and Dandie Dinmont terriers.


(CNN) -- The late Gov. Mel Carnahan collected enough votes to beat out incumbent Republican Sen. John Ashcroft for the U.S. Senate seat from Missouri.
The incumbent Ashcroft was left running against a dead man after his opponent, the popular sitting governor, died in a plane crash on October 16. By that time, it was too late to remove Carnahan's name from the ballot.
No one had ever posthumously won election to the Senate, though voters on at least three occasions chose deceased candidates for the House.
Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson moved up to succeed Carnahan. Wilson said he would appoint Carnahan's widow, Jean, to the Senate seat should the deceased husband get more votes than Ashcroft.
Jean Carnahan said Tuesday night: "Abraham Lincoln never saw his nation made whole again. Susan B. Anthony never cast a vote. Martin Luther King Jr. never finished his mountaintop journey. My husband's journey has stopped short too, and for reasons we do not know or understand, the mantle has now fallen upon us. We remain heirs of a legacy."
"On this night I pledge to you -- rather let us pledge to each other -- we will never let the flame go out," she told supporters by speaker phone.
Ashcroft held the lead in polls until Carnahan's death threw the race into turmoil.
On election day, no one could predict how the sympathy factor would play at the polls. Jean Carnahan used ads to make emotional appeals for "the values and beliefs that Mel Carnahan wanted to take to the United States Senate."
Ashcroft was supported by two thirds of the voters who in exit polls said the federal budget surplus should be used to cut taxes. A majority of the voters who supported Carnahan said the surplus should go toward the national debt.
Republicans have vowed to fight Jean Carnahan's appointment on the grounds that a candidate must be an "inhabitant" of the state, a requirement a dead person can't fullfill. Her appointment must be approved by the Senate.
Both candidates were twice elected governor and had nine statewide victories among them.
The freshman Senator Ashcroft has a very conservative voting record. He favored term limits, was one of the first in the Senate to have his own web page, and was one of the first to say charges against Clinton might warrant impeachment.


Published: March 6, 2015 at 01:26 p.m.
Updated: March 6, 2015 at 03:28 p.m.
Justin Forsett is bound to find suitors on the open market if the Ravens don't come calling first.
NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport reported Friday that the Washington Redskins and New Orleans Saints are poised to make a run at the free-agent running back who led Baltimore last season with 1,266 yards on the ground.
"We will work to try and retain Justin," Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome told reporters last month, but they won't be alone after Forsett broke out in 2014 to finish fifth in rushing league-wide.
The Saints are a logical squad to chase after veteran help following the release of Pierre Thomas. With fellow runner Mark Ingram set to hit the open market, New Orleans is on the prowl for runners who fit into their zone-blocking scheme. The team must be convinced that Forsett will cost less than re-signing Ingram.
Washington is a puzzling destination. Alfred Morris has been one of the league's most reliable backs over the past three seasons, operating as a workhorse runner who benefits from a high volume of carries. Pairing him with Forsett isn't something we would have predicted, but the Redskins now rest on our radar.


current issues within Indigenous family services.
culturally safe and rehabilitative framework.
2. Intake Worker enters referral information into the Penlieu System.
1. Whether police should be contacted.
2. The current referral information has been previously investigated?
4. Which I & A worker will be assigned.
information within required time frame.
may be considered high risk, ie, suicidal, etc.
10. Intake Worker enters Case Closures into the Penlieu System.
services on a rotational basis.
experience working with Families and children in a child welfare role.
in Penlieu would be an asset.
7. Must submit a Vulnerable Sector Screening.
DEADLINE: Friday, January 25, 2019.


Business cards form a central element of the standard identity suite most graphic designers produce for new clients. Along with letterheads and envelopes, they serve as a centerpiece of a cohesive set of materials that can showcase company and individual identity while they provide essential contact information. EPS files can serve a focal purpose in the creation of identity materials because of the flexibility and fidelity with which they can enable you to present critical parts of these designs.
Based on the PostScript language developed by Adobe Systems, the Encapsulated PostScript file format enables you to build graphics that can be included in files you create in other applications, including page-layout and word-processing programs. EPS files can incorporate any combination of live text, vector artwork and bitmapped images. They support spot and process color and can pass their color content on to documents that incorporate them, work in RGB and CMYK color models, and allow for embedded font information to maintain the look of text without access to the original font software.
Whether you're incorporating your company's own logo as the primary identity element on cards for your business or setting up elements of an identity suite for a client, EPS files provide an ideal medium through which to incorporate vector-based versions of these elements. Building a printed project around a bitmapped representation of a logo limits you to using it at its actual size or smaller to avoid the pixelation introduced when you enlarge a TIFF or JPEG. Along with primary identity elements, you may need to incorporate EPS graphics on a business card to include logos that represent professional credentialing organizations.
You can build entire business cards in an illustration program using an EPS-format template file as the basis of a design. Whether you've designed the template yourself, obtained it from a client or found a downloadable asset that offers design elements you like, the file can provide text placeholders, press-ready colors, gradients and background colors. If the original colors in the file don't suit your design theme, you can replace them with the signature colors from an identity system.
EPS files make easy inclusions into larger projects. The logo you use on a business card can appear at a different size on a matching letterhead or #10 envelope. If the EPS file consists entirely of vector graphics, you can scale the identity element without worrying about distortion, loss of output quality or low-resolution results. When you use an EPS file in a program that incorporates rather than produces them, the for-position low-resolution header image built into the EPS format shows you a rough guide to the item's appearance and size. In a program that produces EPS files natively, you can see and manipulate file elements directly rather than simply scaling and cropping them.


Australia’s finale of “The Voice” was the most-watched show Monday night Down Under. But its ratings were well-down on last year’s massive grand final viewing figures.
Some 2.307 million viewers in the five metro cities tuned-in to watch teenager Harrison Craig crowned winner of the second series, according to preliminary ratings from OzTAM. Excluding the announcement, the prime-time finale on the free-to-air Nine Network averaged 2.035 million viewers -- well ahead of the night’s third-placed show, “The Block,” at 1.493 million (also on the Nine Network).
Last year’s inaugural season wrapped with a massive three-million viewers – making it the highest-rating entertainment show since ratings agency OzTam opened for business in 1999.
The fans' 2013 favorite Craig overcame a speech impediment to take-out the series and its spoils: a recording contract with Universal Music Australia, $100,000 in cash and a Ford Kuga.
Universal will hope the second series generates a sales effect similar to its predecessor. Contestants in that first run went to dominate the ARIA sales charts the following week, with winner Karise Eden grabbing the opening three songs on the ARIA Singles Chart and four of the top five – an achievement not seen since 1964 when The Beatles held all five best-selling singles in the country. Eden’s debut album “My Journey” was Australia’s best-selling album by a local artist in 2012, shifting double platinum and finishing the year-end ARIA sales charts in sixth place.
The second season was produced by Talpa and Shine Australia, and the series coaches were Seal, Joel Madden, Delta Goodrem and Ricky Martin. Seal has mentored both winners to-date.


While only a rumor, the following story could contain major spoilers for Wonder Woman 1984.
While pretty much everybody is excited for the forthcoming Wonder Woman sequel, the movie already has people talking because one of the few things we know about it is that Chris Pine will be making his return as Steve Trevor. Since the original film, and the entire timeline for the sequel, would seem to make such a thing impossible, fans are very curious how such a thing would happen. Now, one report claims to know how Steve Trevor returns. As one might suspect, there are supernatural powers at work.
Now to start things off, it needs to be made clear that this information should be viewed only as a rumor for the moment. The sources are unnamed and thus can't be verified. However, the report does fall in line with other, unconfirmed, details that we have. If this report is true, then it makes for a massive spoiler as it also lays out the plot of Wonder Woman 1984 pretty much entirely. This is your last warning. Here we go.
The unnamed sources spoke with We Got This Covered, and according to them, Steve Trevor's return is a magical resurrection brought about by Pablo Pascal's character. Pascal had previously been rumored to be playing DC villain Maxwell Lord in the new movie and according to the rumor, Lord is on the hunt for numerous magical artifacts in order to become all-powerful. He enlists archeologist Barbara Ann Minerva (Kristin Wiig) to help him locate these artifacts, but when one curses her to become Cheetah, she goes after him in revenge. Lord goes to Wonder Woman for protection, and as an inducement to help him, he uses one of his magical items to bring Steve Trevor back to life.
The issue with bringing Steve Trevor back for Wonder Woman 1984 is two-fold. First, there's the little fact that Steve Trevor was in an airplane that exploded in the original Wonder Woman. Second, said airplane exploded in 1918, meaning that even if Steve Trevor were to have miraculously survived, he'd be something like 100-years-old during the events that take place in the sequel.
To that end, something fantastical will almost have to be at play here, and this idea makes as much sense as anything.
I was working on the theory that the film was going to make reference to the 1970's TV series by having Chris Pine return playing the grandson of his original character. I would have found something like that utterly hilarious. I probably would have been the only one.
This theory certainly doesn't conflict with anything that we know, and it works as far as it goes. It would explain why Steve Trevor is a "deer in the headlights" in the sequel. If he's magically resurrected, then he'll make a mental jump from 1918 to 1984, and Diana will be the one that will need to explain to him how the world works this time around.
Unless a trailer gives us the answers first, we'll find out how Steve Trevor returns when Wonder Woman 1984 debuts in June 2020.


What does property crime have to do with the drug war?
twobits wrote: Ok, ya, it works again for me too.
Still does not mitigate this five day multiple 100k/yr officers for what is best classified as a social experiment that caught 3 known petty crime felons in 5 days. Whoohoo!!
No wonder Surrey wants a Police Force they have some input, direction, and expenditure control over.
The new Mayor of Surrey is going to ask how much this social experiment cost to apprehend......essentially 3 shoplifters......how these arrests made the community feel safer in general, and how they reduced the raging drug war shootings in every friggen Surrrey residential area on a daily basis???
Seriously? A five day Shopping Mall sting to catch three shoplifters is good value while driving on any Surrey street might mean catching a stray bullet?
You find something on the street, do you turn it in to police or keep it ?
I found a cart at Costco with a bottle of Tide detergent still on the bottom shelf, do I put it in my car or take it back to the store and turn it over as "lost property". Should/would I think in my wildest dreams if I choose to put it in my car that I would be arrested for theft ??????
BIG difference going into a store, taking something off the shelf, concealing it and walking out of the store, vs finding a shopping bag in a food court that was left behind and as you leave take it. Yes both wrong but a HUGE difference in culpability.
Worth police doing a one week project ????
It wasn't a one week project and wasn't done all in one stretch.
Fancy wrote: It wasn't a one week project and wasn't done all in one stretch.
Omnitheo wrote: I’d say when people post things like “don’t they have better things to do?” Or bringing up their taxes, then it sure sounds like they’re up in arms.
Nah, demanding an investigation, resignation or audit would be "up in arms" Commenting something being a waste of time, money or resources is a matter of opinion.
Last edited by OKkayak on Dec 31st, 2018, 4:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Not a matter of grasping at straws - just pointing out how people embellish and exaggerate (or just don't bother reading all the information available). Hindsight doesn't serve any purpose.
Fancy wrote: What does property crime have to do with the drug war?
Nothing at all except high priced police setting bait traps in a Mall instead of gang violence and property crimes in residential areas.
Personally, I would have the cops sitting in residential areas looking for thieves than baiting them in a warm shopping mall for cripes sake!!
Fancy wrote: Not a matter of grasping at straws - just pointing out how people embellish and exaggerate (or just don't bother reading all the information available). Hindsight doesn't serve any purpose.
5 vs 7 is hardly embellishing or exaggerating.
twobits wrote: Nothing at all except high priced police setting bait traps in a Mall instead of gang violence and property crimes in residential areas.
While I also think this RCMP sting ended up being a waste of time, its important to remember that the RCMP wouldn't have known the results ahead of time. They could have caught repeat offenders and found breach of probation. Obviously didn't happen.
The other important thing to remember is that this isn't a case of this or that. The RCMP is more than capable to conduct this sting, AND everything you listed above. I doubt the existence of this project would impact other projects in absolutely zero ways.


The Calgary Flames are ready to establish a new playoff tradition for all members of the C of Red to enjoy. During this year's playoffs, you have the opportunity to come and celebrate with your fellow fans at the RED LOT.
This event is free and available for all ages and will be held during each home playoff game. Fans in attendance can watch the game live on the enormous TITAN screen along with live music, Harvey the Hound, face painting, interactive stations, food and drink specials, and prizes available to be won.


SAN FRANCISCO — I was 14 when I first saw Ninoy Aquino in action.
It was 1978. Ferdinand Marcos, hoping to legitimize his dictatorship in the eyes of the world, had called for elections for a new legislature.
Marcos was confident he would win easily even if he let Ninoy Aquino, then the country’s most well-known political prisoner, join the campaign.
That was a big mistake.
During a televised interview with journalists clearly aligned with the dictator, Aquino showed the country why Marcos feared him so much. It was a mesmerizing performance.
He out-talked the panelists sent to discredit him, responding to questions and allegations, eloquently and brilliantly, shifting comfortably from English to Pilipino and back.
But my views of Ninoy eventually evolved.
By the time I entered UP Diliman in the early 80s, I saw Ninoy as neither a superhero nor a saint.
Yes, he was an important figure in the fight against tyranny. But I had more questions about what he stood for, having been exposed to broader, more progressive ideas on the Diliman campus. Like many young people of on the UP Campus I grew more critical of Ninoy’s role in Philippine politics.
He was a leading opponent of the regime, but in the eyes of many from my generation, he also represented the old-style, elite politics that caused many of the country’s problems in the first place.
We didn’t use the word ‘trapo’ then, but we saw Ninoy as a traditional politician on which that pejorative term is based.
Not that young Filipinos of my generation rejected all traditional politicians. Not at all. We admired the likes of Lorenzo Tañada, Jovito Salonga and Pepe Diokno.
They may have come from the elite, but, during the dark years of dictatorship, they aligned themselves, in very concrete ways, with people like us – students. They even linked arms with factory workers and farmers.
Diokno, in particular, or Ka Pepe as we called him, became the epitome of the activist-politician that many of my generation revered.
He was a regular speaker at student demonstrations. He became respected as a fearless human rights crusader and a consistent critic of U.S. support for Marcos.
I still remember a human rights lawyer’s story of how Diokno would join fact-finding missions in remote barrios where he would be actively interviewing survivors or witnesses of abuses. The Diokno house in New Manila was open to activists and ordinary people who had joined the fight against dictatorship.
We admired Diokno. Ninoy, we respected, but also viewed with some suspicion as just another old-style politician angling for power.
Then came August 21, 1983.
The next day, on the U.P. Diliman campus, a professor observed the sadness and rage he saw in the eyes of ordinary Filipinos he met on jeepneys and on the streets. I was one of the hundreds of thousands who joined the rain-drenched funeral march for Ninoy on Aug. 31, 1983.
And the next three years turned out to be the most exhilarating and confusing, most exciting and frightening, most emotionally-draining and intellectually-stimulating period of my life and the lives of many Martial Law babies.
We all know how that story ended — a united people kicked out a bully. The nightmare was over.
Thirty years later, there may still be disagreements on Ninoy’s political record, and there are still many questions about his motives. I still do not see him as either a superhero or saint.
Many of the criticisms, in my view, are fair and deserve closer scrutiny. Others are so clearly over-the-top, cruel and sinister, many of them being spread by supporters of the dictatorship.
But one thing is clear: Ninoy’s death set us free from dictatorship. His story still matters.
There’s been speculation on why Ninoy came home when he did. But one point cannot be disputed: He came home at perhaps the worst time for someone considered as Marcos’s most feared enemy.
The Pinoy Hitler was at the height of his power. Many of his opponents were in jail or in exile. Ronald Reagan’s Washington loved him. Reagan even sent his Vice President George H.W. Bush to Manila to praise Marcos for his “adherence to democratic principles.” And Reagan himself later embraced the despot as a friend and ally during the Marcos state visit to the U.S.
Why in the world would you give up the safety of life in exile in Boston to take on a powerful despot backed by a world superpower?
A coward would have just stayed put and waited for a better opportunity.
Which is why despite any misgivings one may have about his politics, I join others in giving Ninoy credit for having had the courage to return to the battlefield.
The risks were clear, and yet he boarded that plane.


“Final exam time,” said Bishop McGann-Mercy coach Les Williams.
The top priority is qualifying for the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Championships that will be run Nov. 11 at Wayne Central School in Ontario Center.
Among those making the trip upstate will be Shoreham-Wading River’s Joe Krause and Adam Zelin and Mercy’s Michael Senica.
Usually it’s downright cold by the time the Section XI Championships roll around, but that wasn’t the case Friday when temperatures reached the mid-70s and it was more humid than many runners at Sunken Meadow State Park would have liked.
Krause, a junior, missed qualifying for the state meet last year by one excruciating place. This time around he came in third place in Class B, completing the five-kilometer race in 17 minutes, 44.64 seconds. He finished behind Miller Place sophomore Tom Cirrito (17:12.66) and Southampton senior Gustavo Morastitla (17:27.35).
The weather didn’t seem to bother Krause, who said he did three or four runs a day over the summer while working as a lifeguard.
Following Krause were East Hampton junior Ryan Fowkes (17:55.94) in fourth and Zelin (17:58.44), a sophomore, in fifth.
A hip injury kept Senica from competing in the Section XI Division Championships a week earlier, but didn’t stop him from qualifying for the state meet for a second straight year. Senica collapsed at the finish line, a reminder of just how demanding the race and course are.
Senica’s time of 19:22.89 brought him 10th place in Class C.
Senica said his hip did not bother him. As for the heat and humidity, well, that was another story. “I hate it,” he said.
Riverhead’s Ryan Carrick might have figured it wasn’t going to be his day when felt the humidity in the morning. The junior was the top Riverhead runner, coming in 28th in Class A in 18:04.16. That was well off the 17:35.31 he had run in the Division Championships, an indication of the toll the weather took.


LONDON — The union has survived, comfortably enough in the end. Scotland will remain part of Britain. The queen’s title will stay unchanged: Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. Phew: In that mouthful lurks a lot of history and stability. Relief is palpable. The pound rallied. David Cameron, the Tory prime minister who risked all, exhaled.
A clear majority of 55 percent of Scots rejected independence in a referendum that had many merits. The questioning of democracy has become fashionable. Stillborn after the Arab Spring, paralyzed by discord in the United States, increasingly pliant to money, dithering in its processes beside the authoritarian systems of China and Russia, often unable to deliver growth or stem rising inequality, democracy has become the problem child of the 21st century.
More than two in five Scots voted for independence. Many of these “Yes” voters were young or struggling or both. Another merit of this “democratic process” was to demonstrate the alienation felt toward London with its giddy self-regarding boom and toward the Tory children of privilege running Britain. Scotland did not want to go it alone. Nor does it want more of the same. Cameron will have to deliver on his promise of a radical further devolution of power to Scotland, and to other areas of Britain, if he is to respect this result. Technology is a great enabler. It can now bring democracy closer to people, somewhat in the manner of the Athenian city state 2,500 years ago. That must be democracy’s future. Spain would be wrong to deny Catalonia a similar vote. Union can only make a legitimate claim to be stronger if it is prepared to test its strength at the ballot box. Scottish independence would have created havoc for a time, but an independent Scotland was no more an inconceivable notion than an independent Catalonia.
Tolerance and good sense are the bedrock virtues of the United Kingdom. As I listened to the BBC the other day, a segment on Scotland segued into the trial in China of a prominent Uighur scholar accused of separatism, a crime that can result in the death penalty. Ilham Tohti, a critic of Chinese policies toward his Uighur minority, is widely considered a moderate voice calling for dialogue with the Han majority. In China moderate separatism equals, with luck, a moderate prison sentence rather than execution.
Beijing is the great rising power of the world, a reminder in a time of insouciance that what was embodied in the Scottish vote is worth defending. The ballot is no mere trifle. It is liberty. Scotland, nation of the Enlightenment, has given a timely lesson. That, too, was a merit of this vote.
Mine was a family of immigrants in postwar Britain. They came at a time of great transcontinental reflux from retreating empire. For many, these shores have felt like David Copperfield’s experience of coming “home” to Aunt Betsey Trotwood and being given a good, warm bath. Prejudice for incomers has been inescapable in Britain, and sometimes bigotry, but stronger still were the traditions of a liberal nation of diverse peoples. That was the most important idea conserved in this result.
Whenever I walk in lovely Regent’s Park and see the minaret of London’s Central Mosque looming, I think to myself: Is it really that complicated? Can people of different faiths not accept one another’s beliefs and find common cause? They can, sometimes, but it takes centuries. It is fitting that on the day Scotland decided to honor its embracing identity, more than 100 British Muslim imams, organizations and individuals wrote to express “horror and revulsion” at the murders perpetrated by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, whose voice at the beheadings has carried a British accent.
Scotland has given another important lesson to Cameron. It is the most pro-European corner of Britain. Part of its restiveness stemmed from the appalling spectacle of Cameron toying with British membership of the European Union as he tried to appease his little-England right wing. If re-elected, he has promised a referendum on E.U. membership. Complacency followed by panic over the Scottish vote has not enhanced Cameron’s standing, even in victory. It is time to state unambiguously that the very qualities that prevailed in Scotland — good sense, economic interest, tolerance, openness, diversity and cultural ecumenism — also make an irrefutable case for Britain in Europe.


VMWare, the American cloud software company, said it will not participate in the joint venture cloud services Virtustream with its parent company EMC.
The announcement was made in a recent regulatory filling which you can read here.
“VMware announced that it will not be participating in the formation of the Virtustream Cloud Services Business previously announced by EMC and VMware on October 20, 2015,” it says in the filing.
The pull-out is most likely linked with the recent acquisition deal under which Dell would buy EMC for $67 billion, thus gaining control over VMWare’s shares. As part of the deal, a VMware tracking stock is being constructed and Dell would offer up to 50 per cent of Dell's shares on the stock market. VMware investors were unhappy with all this and the stock price has fallen.
Eight days after that deal was announced, EMC and VMware announced plans to create Virtustream as a 50-50 venture, Re/Code said in a report, adding that the Virtustream has been blamed for contributing to a 25 per cent decline in the value of VMware shares during the last two months.
Virtustream was expected to record a $200 million to $300 million loss in 2016, The Register reported.
“Virtustream was going to result in a, roughly, $200M to $300M non-GAAP hit to the bottom line for VMware in 2016, and this remains one of the more “head scratching” moves we have seen recently across the tech space,” Daniel Ives with FBR & Co told the Barron’s blog.


CANTON: Canton Winterfest 2019 events; Track And Field Winter League Championship Girls And Boys Varsity: St. Lawrence University, 6 p.m.; Singing Valentines: Representatives from the Canton Goldenaires Men's Barbershop Chorus will deliver Singing Valentines, starting at 8 a.m. and continuing throughout the day; all money for these deliveries are used for high school scholarship awards at all schools in St. Lawrence County; to order your Singing Valentine for your sweetheart, call Vickie at 315-379-9848.
MASSENA: Valentine's Day Dinner and Dance, VFW Post 1143, 101 W. Hatfield St.; prime rib or stuffed chicken, baked potato, tossed salad, cabbage noodles, rolls, and dessert; coffee, tea, and water will be available; complimentary glass of wine with dinner; tickets in advance only at the VFW; no take-outs; seating will be 5:30-6:30 p.m.; music by Betty Rufa will be from 6:30-8:30; all welcome.
MASSENA: Read to Beethoven the therapy dog 1-on-1 for a free 30-minute session at the Massena library Feb. 14, 2-4; ages 4-17 and caregivers. Registration required: e-mail [email protected] , call 315-769-9914, or at library.
OGDENSBURG: Community bereavement support group, hosted by Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center’s Palliative Care Services, 5-7 p.m., Medical Center’s Hess Auditorium; meets second Thursday of each month; facilitated by palliative care-trained nurses; 315-276-1037.
OGDENSBURG: Career fair held at Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center, 214 King St., in the auditorium, noon-4 p.m.; open recruitment for the positions of registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, certified nurse attendant, food service worker, environmental services worker, patient access clerk, diabetes educator, licensed clinical social worker, office nurse II, medical scribe and receptionist; positions feature benefits including health insurance and an employer-matched retirement plan, relocation allowance, tuition reimbursement and sign-on bonus available for qualified positions; specific interview times can be reserved; 315-713-5287.


Almost 1,600 people have objected to the proposed closure of Coundon Road in Coventry.
Plans to tackle nitrogen dioxide (N02) levels at the worst pollution hotspot in Coventry – Holyhead Road – include the proposed closure of Coundon Road.
Cllr Jim O’Boyle, Cabinet Member for Jobs and Regeneration, has previously said the plan would help encourage the use of trains while reducing N02.
A petition of 1,590 signatures has been collected in the space of a week objecting to the plans.
At full council on Tuesday, councillor Glenn Williams said: “To have nearly 1,600 people sign this petition in less than a week shows the level of concern amongst our residents and businesses.
“We understand the need to improve air quality in our city by there are serious questions around how closing Coundon Road will achieve this.
“It is claimed Holyhead Road has one of the highest levels of pollution in the city but investigations but residents suggest these figures are out of date.
“I do see the merit in closing the level crossing, but there must be a better way of closing that crossing and creating some sort of a tunnel underneath.
Does more need to be done to clean up Cov's air?
The proposal forms the council’s wider Local Air Quality Action Plan.
The council said a drop-in session with residents was held last Thursday, and further comments can be made to onairquality@coventry.gov.uk.
A spokesman added: “Whilst the potential closure of the crossing is only one of many measures making up the action plan that is aimed at improving air quality in the city, it is the proposal that has generated the greatest response from the public.
“This is understandable, given the impact that it would have upon the journeys that people make.
“No decisions can or will be taken without full and open consideration of local views. To solve one problem and create another is exactly what must be avoided and we welcome all suggestions.


The state Board of Education put a stamp of approval Thursday on a list of 1,000 schools deemed so bad that parents will have the right to transfer their children to a better school in their district or any other district - this school year.
The list fulfills a new state law passed in January requiring districts to provide parents an easier way out of the state's worst schools.
But the list is likely to leave many parents scratching their heads.
That's because not all of the 1,000 schools on the bad schools list are bad. In fact, several are actually pretty good.
The new law left state officials little wiggle room in creating the list. No one district can have more than 10 percent of their schools on the list. As a result, schools that perform at a higher level had to be added to get to the mandatory number.
On the list: Fremont's Grimmer Elementary School, with above-average test scores and an Academic Performance Index of 801, exceeding the state's good-school goal by one point.
Not on the list: Oakland's Hoover Elementary School, with test scores in the bottom 10 percent statewide and an API of 672.
That isn't very fair, said school officials.
"It mischaracterizes a school that is doing what the state has asked it to do," said Fremont Unified Superintendent James Morris. "In our community, the schools on that list have demonstrated strong and steady progress in meeting the state API standard of getting to 800."
In fact, Grimmer and Cabrillo Elementary, another high-scoring Fremont school on the bad schools list, were recognized as distinguished schools by the state and federal government.
"I have all kinds of parents trying to transfer into those schools," Morris said.
State education officials acknowledged the problem, saying their hands were tied by the law. While the list is preliminary and subject to change to address any errors, the formula is set and schools on the final list won't be able to appeal their status.
The intent of the law is to provide every child a quality education, said Teala Schaff, spokeswoman for state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, the measure's author.
"We agree the legislation isn't perfect," she said, adding that she expects any problems to be brought forward so the Legislature can address them in the future.
SBX5 4 was the byproduct of efforts to make California more competitive for federal Race to the Top funds earlier this year. The measure, however, failed to draw favor with federal officials who rejected the state's application.
Supporters, however, say the measure gives families more power to pull their children out of failing schools.
"Parents get one chance to give their children the education they need," said state board member Ben Austin. "If the school is that good, then the parents won't leave."
After the list is finalized this summer, districts will be required to notify families by Sept. 15 of their right to transfer.
Current law already allows transfers out of certain low-performing schools, and many districts already have open transfer policies both within their district and to neighboring districts.
For the 2010-11 school year, the new law allows children in any of the 1,000 schools on the list to apply to any school with a greater API score than the one they want to leave. But for this one year, outside districts won't be required to accept incoming transfer students. Participation is voluntary.
District officials must accommodate students wishing to transfer within the district and use lotteries if schools have more requests than seats, state officials said.
San Francisco and Oakland school districts already have policies that allow such transfers.
Still, the schools are well attended because parents are opting to stay in the city's so-called bad schools, said San Francisco Deputy Superintendent Richard Carranza.
"Schools are much more than the sum total of their API score," he said. "This is an unfortunate part of the No Child Left Behind legacy of vilifying and identifying schools and almost beating schools into improvement."
The complete preliminary list of schools can be found at sfgate.com/ZJZM.


Dutch firm Savage Rivale is working on a brand new supercar, but rather than going the traditional route of building a cramped two-seater and strapping a big engine to it the guys at Savage have managed to build something much more substantial.
Their creation is the Roadyacht GTS, which made its official world debut in race trim today at the Top Marques Monaco 2012, the premier show for performance and luxury cars.
This racing version is simply dubbed the "GTR" and only 69 examples are scheduled to be built.
It eschews the innovative telescopic roof system that the road-going version will feature, though keeps the scissor doors. It also features a more powerful engine, in this case a GM-sourced LS9 V-8 tuned to deliver between 700 and 800 horsepower.
The supercharged 6.2-liter LS9 is the same unit found in the Corvette ZR1 and in the Savage Rivale GTR, which weighs just 2,260 pounds thanks to its extensive use of lightweight carbon fiber in its construction, the engine guarantees 0-60 mph acceleration in 2.8 seconds and a top speed in excess of 225 mph.
Under the custom bodywork is a chromoly steel chassis, double A-arm suspension with fully adjustable coilovers, and chunky 20-inch wheels housing a set of carbon ceramic Brembo brakes. Inside, there's a pair of Recaro racing bucket seats with six-point belts and a six-speed sequential manual transmission.
Pricing for this ultimate track car starts at €141,250 ($186,715). If, however, you're interested in the more accommodating Roadyacht GTS, you'll have to wait until next year; it will be making its world debut at a major auto show in the Middle East.


Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday accepted her party's nomination in Philadelphia, saying "keeping our nation safe and honoring the people who do that work will be my highest priority."
The former secretary of state, senator and first lady criticized her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, for running a campaign that she said offered "dangerous proposals" and "zero solutions."
Trump last week blasted Clinton for what he called her failed tenure as secretary of state while pledging to "defeat the barbarians of ISIS" if elected president.
Clinton sought to detail her strategy for how her administration would "prevail" against the al-Qaida-inspired terrorist group that still controls significant territory in Iraq and Syria even after the U.S. launched airstrikes and deployed troops in both countries.
"We will strike their sanctuaries from the air and support local forces taking them out on the ground," she said. "We will surge our intelligence so we detect and prevent attacks before they happen. We will disrupt their efforts online to reach and radicalize young people in our country. It won't be easy or quick but, make no mistake, we will prevail."
Clinton also mocked Trump's claim that he knew "more about ISIS than the generals do," saying, "No, Donald, you don't." She also questioned whether he has the temperament to be commander in chief, saying, "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."
The former senator touted her experience on the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the military as "a national treasure," and praised the service of those who serve in uniform, including the Marine sons of both vice presidential candidates, Tim Kaine and Mike Pence, as well as the late Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan, whose father spoke at the convention.
While she acknowledged the threat from terrorism and referenced the recent attacks overseas in France and Belgium and stateside in Florida and California, Clinton didn't use the term "radical Islam" to describe the motivation of the attackers -- a point Trump and other critics have argued represents weakness. "We can't afford to be politically correct anymore," he has said.
During her speech, Clinton defended her role in the Iran nuclear deal. "I’m proud that we put a lid on Iran's nuclear program without firing a single shot," she said. "Now we have to enforce it, and we must keep supporting Israel’s security."
The 2015 pact was meant to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions, though defense hawks at the time expressed concern that the agreement would jump-start the Iranian economy and generate more revenue for the regime's military forces. More recently, the Associated Press this month reported "key restrictions" will ease before the 15-year accord expires, advancing the country's ability to build a bomb.
Clinton said she's "proud to stand by our allies in NATO against any threat they face, including from Russia." Trump has suggested his administration would not automatically defend the member states unless they contributed more to collective defense, comments that triggered alarms in Europe, particularly in the Baltic States.
Clinton also pledged to work to prevent terrorists from getting access to firearms.
"I'm not here to repeal the Second Amendment," she said. "I'm not here to take away your guns. I just don't want you to be shot by someone who shouldn't have a gun in the first place. We will work tirelessly with responsible gun owners to pass common-sense reforms and keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists, and all others who would do us harm."


Sean Scully once told me about his early days as a plasterer’s mate. At the age of 17 he was helping a craftsman who would often accidentally drop a good deal of plaster on his youthful assistant’s head, especially after a midday break in the pub. Scully spent his own lunchtimes differently. He would roar on his scooter to the Tate Gallery, and spend the time staring at a single picture: ‘The Chair’ by Vincent van Gogh.
That picture is one of two reference points in Sea Star, his beautiful exhibition at the National Gallery. Scully pays homage to it in two groups of three paintings, entitled ‘Arles Abend Vincent’ and ‘Arles Abend Deep’. Neither looks much like a chair; the panels resemble, if anything, sections of a wall (if not a plastered one). Scully has, in fact, taken a series of photographs of dry stone walls on the island of Aran. The walls are like a puzzle — some stones vertical, some horizontal, wider or narrower.
The ‘Arles Abend’ paintings are similar, except that they are built out of rectangles of loosely brushed, sumptuously rich colour. That’s something perhaps he learned from those lunch breaks in front of Van Gogh. The physical presence of a paint-stroke is something that can’t be replaced, he told me, containing as it does ‘the thinking, the feeling and the making, all compressed into a single action: a kind of low-relief sculpture of what happened’.
The wide brush marks give visible energy to Scully’s works — sweeping this way and that, here more agitated, there calmer. This movement interacts with the colour-chord of each picture — ochres, dark crimsons and olive greens in the case of the ‘Arles Abend’ pictures.
Encountering a room of Scullys you might think: ‘Oh, a lot of stripes and squares’. But if you look at one for a while it takes you over. Like the teenage painter spending his lunch hours with Van Gogh, you could stand and look for ages.
More recently Scully has fallen for a late Turner — ‘The Evening Star’ (about 1830) — which is hung in the exhibition (Van Gogh’s ‘Chair’ is upstairs in the main galleries). This is, at first glance, an arrangement of horizontal bands of colour which resolve into beach, ocean, cloud and a sky just changing from day to night.
Scully’s pictures don’t translate into landscape that directly. He remains on the non-figurative side of the border between abstraction and representation — but quite close to the frontier. His magnificent ‘Land-line Star’ (2017) remains a sequence of stripes, stacked above one another — blue, black, dark red plus one an indescribable whiteish, pinky, blue-tinged zone that seems to ripple and crackle. But still it is a bit like looking at a moving river or the waves of the sea.
Scully moved from plastering to painting in the early 1970s just as painting — especially abstract painting — was going out of style. He has consequently spent a creative lifetime not quite in fashion, which may be why it’s only now in his seventies that it’s becoming apparent what a terrific artist he is.
Being out of step with what art history was supposed to be doing has been the fate of many important painters. It befell Leon Kossoff who, a generation older than Scully, emerged only to disappear from view while abstraction ruled in the 1960s. Despite a Tate retrospective in the 1990s, Kossoff has still not quite received his due.
He is a truly great painter, but one whose work has not been seen enough in recent years. For that reason the current exhibition at Piano Nobile (96/129 Portland Road, W11) is especially welcome. Kossoff occupies a territory just on the figurative side of that frontier with abstraction. Each of his picture starts with what he has called ‘exciting visual encounters’ — either with one of his small circle of familiar models or a bit of London townscape, frequently in the environs of Willesden where he has long lived.
The places Kossoff selects would not strike everyone as exciting. But he makes you feel they are. A charcoal and pastel drawing of the railway lines at ‘Willesden Junction’ (1962) has the exhilaration and spatial expansion of Turner’s alpine scenes.
His oils are painted on boards, which has an effect on the way they look. Scully favours aluminium or linen, on which the pigment flows smoothly. In contrast Kossoff’s paint is slashed and scooped across the wood, building up in gnarled masses with a splatter of flying drips. ‘Christchurch, Spitalfields’ (1989) takes off like a rocket, a red brick school building trembling like a vision beneath a lowering sky. It is a great pleasure to see such paintings by natural light in the London townhouses which Piano Nobile occupies: the perfect environment for Kossoff. This show, like the Scully, is highly recommended.


Georgetown police are looking for a man who broke into a 19-year-old woman's home on Oct. 20.
Georgetown police are looking for a man who broke into a 19-year-old woman's home and climbed into her bed on Oct. 20.
In what police are describing as a burglary and unlawful imprisonment incident, a man went into the woman's bedroom while she was asleep in her home, per her report.
The woman told police the man entered her bed and held his hand over her mouth. She was able to free herself and began screaming, at which time the suspect fled the residence, according to police.
The suspect is described as a white male in his 40s, 180 to 200 pounds with some facial hair and wearing a white or light gray T-shirt and jeans.
The investigation is ongoing and anyone with information on the suspect is asked to contact Georgetown Police Department Detective Arnold.


The Solicitor-General could avoid any consequences of John Banks' acquittal but others in Crown Law will be nervous, a law professor says.
The Court of Appeal has cancelled the former ACT leader's retrial on charges of filing false electoral returns during his campaign to be Auckland's mayor.
It said the Crown withheld new evidence about a crucial lunch with Kim Dotcom, amounting to a miscarriage of justice.
Mr Banks told Morning Report the Solicitor-General, Mike Heron QC, should stand aside while an independent investigation is carried out into his involvement in the case.
He said Mr Heron must be held to account for behaviour that was delinquent at best.
"I have been held to account and I have been completely exonerated," he said. "We now need to ask why the Solicitor-General is not being held to account, because he has a lot to answer for."
He said no one in the justice system should be subjected to the treatment he had faced.
"If I hadn't have been tough and resilient with some support and some resources, I would have been burnt at the stake by this jihad."
In its decision yesterday, the Court of Appeal said it was satisfied the Crown's "serious error of process" was an error of judgement rather than misconduct.
Attorney-General Chris Finlayson said he would look into the Court of Appeal decision.
He said, as the Attorney-General, he stayed out of criminal matters, and the Solicitor-General had briefed the job to someone else because it was a criminal case involving a politician.
"Decisions were made by that person on the way in which the case should be conducted and the Court of Appeal has been critical of that aspect of it.
"So [in] broad terms, the Crown carries the can, as it were, but there are matters of concern that Crown Law will be wanting to be look at."
University of Otago law professor Andrew Geddis said Mr Banks would probably be awarded the costs he incurred fighting the charge.
"The fact he had to go back to the Court of Appeal because of the Crown's failure means that he should almost certainly get costs for that part of the courts process.
"And the original Court of Appeal decision - if the evidence had been tendered properly, he probably would have won that, so he's got a fairly strong argument for costs there as well."
Mr Geddis said, if Mr Finlayson's statement was correct, the Solicitor-General may not face any consequences as a result of the acquittal.
"Now if that's true, and there was some sort of Chinese wall keeping the Solicitor-General away from this, well then it may have no particular consequences for him because he just didn't know what was going on."
However, he said, someone in Crown Law would be feeling nervous after the court's judgment.
John Banks' political journey has been both colourful and controversial, rising from local to national politician, becoming a talk show host along the way, and Auckland mayor.


A few years ago, David McCarthy was on vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands when he looked out over the rocky islands surrounded by sparkling blue water and realized it would be a great place for rock climbing.
McCarthy founded the South Shore Center for Outdoor Education, which he has since converted into Top Rope, in 1994. Since then, he has taken children and adults rock climbing on the South Shore. In early 2008, he founded USVI Rock Climbing, a separate business in the Virgin Islands, as a way to take people climbing year-round.
Individuals or groups of tourists visiting St. Thomas or St. John can book half-day trips with USVI Rock Climbing directly or through their hotels. Then McCarthy�s crew picks them up in a boat and takes them to offshore rock outcroppings between the two islands.
Using a top-roped anchor, visitors rappel down from heights of 75 feet and then climb back up. Offshore climbing �is a different experience with the water and the waves crashing,� he said.
The level of difficulty is geared toward beginners to intermediates, and McCarthy said he gets many first-timers � though some experienced climbers sign up because of the incredible views. He also has adaptive equipment for climbers with disabilities.
McCarthy said the company takes out about 20 to 30 climbers each month. He is hoping to partner with Royal Caribbean to offer the climbing trips directly to its cruise ship passengers, and eventually he�d like to expand to other islands.
Trips run October through April, and cost from $115 to $135 per person, depending on the number of people in each group.
McCarthy�s two employees manage the business full-time in the Virgin Islands, and the Duxbury resident tries to get there once a month. For the summer, he will stay on the South Shore and take groups climbing through the recreation departments in numerous South Shore towns.
McCarthy closed the nonprofit South Shore Center for Outdoor Education in Rockland two-and-a-half years ago, converting the operations into Top Rope, a for-profit firm. He also eliminated his archery and canoeing programs. He now runs Top Rope out of his home and takes groups climbing in the West Quincy quarry. �Rock climbing has grown pretty much continuously,� he said.


Forestview�s Vincent Comesana and Kings Mountain�s Cassie Morton won their respective races at a 5K meet Tuesday at Forestview. Comesana won the boys� race with a time of 17:38 while Morton crossed the line after 22 minutes, 53 seconds for first place in the girls� event. Forestview�s boys and South Point�s girls won the team events.
Top 20 boys individuals: 1, Vincent Comesana, Fv, 17:28; 2, Quinn Barnette, SP, 18:29; 3, Malik Currence, HT, 18:41; 4, Walt Hambrick, HT, 18:47; 5, Jonathan Hilton, HT, 18:53; 6, Max Flores, Fv, 18:57; 7, Jackson Feezell, Fv, 19:13; 8, Taylor Adams, Fv, 19:16; 9, Logan McGill, KM, 19:52; 10, Thomas Will, SP, 20:00; 11, Nathan Davis, Fv, 20:06; 12, Collin Foster, KM, 20:18; 13, Chase Caldwell, Fv, 20:19; 14, Jordan Gray, Crest, 20:23; 15, Devin Asycue, KM, 20:31; 16, Jacob Turnbill, Crest, 20:37; 17, Karol Rodriguez, Fv, 20:38; 18, Jonathan Hildreth, HT, 20:41; 19, Brandon Howard, SP, 20:42; 20, Will Boyles, KM, 20:43.
Top 20 girls individuals: 1, Cassie Morton, KM, 22:53; 2, MacKenzie Smith, KM, 23:29; 3, Rebecca Rudisill, HT, 23:46; 4, Cassie Ward, Fv, 23:54; 5, Jenna Rayfield, SP, 23:55; 6, Russell Grace, SP, 24:01; 7, Rachel Terrio, HT, 24:22; 8, Hollyann Walker, Crest, 24:43; 9, Taylor Mitchell, Crest, 24:45; 10, Giermanski, SP, 24:55; 11, Grace LeGrand, HT, 25:16; 12, Asia Knox, Fv, 25:34; 13, Carly Emerson, For, 25:36; 14, Silvia Taylor, Fv, 25:42; 15, Megan Bullock, SP, 25:47; 16, Fulbright, KM, 25:48; 17, Hailey Bonnin, Fv, 25:53; 18, Page East, Fv, 25:55; 19, Anna Allf, For, 25:58; 20, Marin Roberts, KM, 26:16.
Shelby 9, Burns 0 -- The Lady Golden Lions improved to 3-0 in South Mountain Athletic Conference matches by defeating county rival Burns at the David Schweppe Memorial Courts.
Shelby will continue its league journey at Freedom on Thursday. Burns (2-3 SMAC) will visit Freedom on Tuesday.
Singles: Nancy Bridges (S) def. Kristin Dellinger 6-0, 6-0; Macey Wilkins (S) def. Candace Gold 6-3, 6-4; Keri Price (S) def. Laura Lineberger 6-1, 6-0; Chelsea Lee (S) def. Aubrey Edwards 6-0, 6-0; Laney Schenck (S) def. Bethany McCabe 6-1, 6-3; Kindale Bridges (S) def. Haley Queen 7-5, 6-3.
Doubles: N.Bridges/Wilkins (S) def. Dellinger/Gold 8-1; Price/Lee (S) def. Lineberger/Queen 8-6; Schenck/K.Bridges def. McCabe/Allison Carter 8-1.
Forestview 5, Kings Mountain 4 -- The Lady Jaguars pulled out a narrow win in non-conference action.
Kings Mountain, 3-3 overall, opens its Big South Conference slate Thursday at home with South Point.
Singles: Kaelon Forbes (Fv) def. Maddie Lutz 6-0, 6-0; Jennifer Javornik (Fv) def. Katie Holland 6-4, 6-1; Hannah Christenbury (KM) def. Taylor Black 6-1, 6-1; Kayla Pinner (KM) def. Phoenix Moser 6-3, 6-0; Allison Moore (Fv) def. Hannah Moseley 6-4, 6-4; Alyssa Greene (KM) def. Reaganne Goode 6-0, 6-4.
Doubles: Forbes/Javornick (Fv) def. Lutz/Holland 8-0; Christenbury/Pinner (KM) def. Black/Eunice McSwain 8-6; Moore/Maggie Long (Fv) def. Moseley/Greene 8-6.
Burns 3, Shelby 1 (26-24, 20-25, 25-12, 25-16) � Burns dealt rival Shelby a league defeat in volleyball action at Lloyd Little Gym Tuesday.
The Lady Bulldogs saw a 21-11 lead vanish in the first game into a 24-24 tie only to win the final two points to gain the advantage. Then after bowing in the second game, Burns controlled the action in the final two bouts to end it.
Shelby (0-4 SMAC) visits Hunter Huss in non-conference action today. Burns will travel to Freedom on Tuesday.
Kings Mountain 3, Ashbrook 0 (25-14, 25-7, 25-11 -- Kings Mountain scored a Big South Conference triumph.
North Gaston 3, Crest 1 (22-25, 25-12, 25-10, 25-22) -- Crest suffered a four-set lossTuesday night against Big South Conference foe North Gaston.
Crest is now 2-1 in league play, 7-5 overall and plays host to Hunter Huss Thursday.
North Gaston 2, Crest 1 (25-22, 22-25, 25-11) -- The Crest JV squad slipped to 1-2 in league play, 3-8 overall.
The first Cleveland County matchups of the season are slated in Tri-County Middle School Conference action today.
The Shelby Blue Devils will host the Kings Mountain Patriots, while the Crest Dragons entertain the Burns Eagles.
Both games kick off at 5 p.m.
East Rutherford 13, Shelby Middle 4 -- Taylor Canipe had two hits with Ashley Thomas, Brittany Sprouse and McKayla Eaker adding one apiece for the Lady Blue Devils. Canipe and Thomas shared time pitching against East.
The KMMS cross country team took first place in their first meet of the year held at West Lincoln.
The Patriot boys placed third with Austin McKee finishing second and Landon Ervin seventh overall.
The next meet is Monday at North Lincoln.


I’ve been sharing my health status with you guys all along, so I suppose I ought to continue even when the news isn’t as positive as I’d like. Here goes.
As you recall, a few days ago I got the 3-week results of my M protein level, a marker for cancerous plasma cells. It had gone down to 0.38, which was an OK result, but not great. It really needs to be zero or close to it. Yesterday I got the 5-week results, and my M protein level has increased to 0.56.
This is obviously bad news. It means I didn’t respond very well to the second round chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant. But there’s no point in wigging out about it yet. I won’t really know what it means until I get a biopsy and talk to my doctor later this month. At the very least, however, it means I’ll definitely begin maintenance therapy, and probably sooner rather than later.
For now, that’s all I know. In early July I should know more.


A petition to abandon Brexit has received more than 1 million signatures online and briefly crashed the UK government website where it was being hosted. The viral campaign comes as the European Union accepted a request from the United Kingdom to delay to departure date of Friday, March 29.
EU leaders have now agreed to an unconditional extension of this date to April 12 although should Brtish Prime Minister Theresa May succeed in getting her deal with the EU past her parliament, the UK will be allowed until May 22 to pass the required legislation to make an orderly departure.
The “Revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU” petition has gone viral seemingly in the past two days, however, amassing over 1,091,181 signatures as of Thursday morning and steadily growing.
According to the UK’s petition website, the UK government will respond to all petitions that get more than 10,000 signatures. Once a petition receives 100,000 signatures, Parliament must consider the topic for formal debate.
In February, a different petition was launched in the UK that asked whether the Republic of Ireland should re-join the UK as a way to avoid to issue of the backstop. That petition has since been deleted.
The 'Revoke Article 50' petition was launched by Margaret Anne Georgiadou, who told the BBC: "I became like every other Remainer - very frustrated that we've been silenced and ignored for so long."
Indeed, the petition took off following UK Prime Minister Theresa May's speech on Wednesday where she said she would ask the European Council to let the UK extend the Article 50 deadline, which is currently set for March 29.
This request has now been accepted as of Thursday night with an extension until April 12.
As of Thursday morning, a map showing the signatories of the petition shows that in Northern Ireland, the Belfast South constituency has the most number of signatures with 2,333, or 2.07 percent of the constituency.
In the 2016 vote, Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union. Now, the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland has become the main sticking point in Brexit negotiations.
Do you think the UK should revoke Article 50 in order to avoid Brexit? Let us know in the comments.


The agent & prostant apud Georg. Pawlett, & Guil Freeman ... represents an entity (e.g. person, organization, etc.) associated with resources found in Boston University Libraries.


Steve Amella knows a lot about beating the odds. For more than 40 years, the 63-year-old Pueblo native and longtime Springs resident has worked hard from the trenches, helping minorities and the disadvantaged, teaching special needs students and working as an equal opportunity officer in the military.
He's always held down two jobs -- most recently as an ESL teacher at East Middle School and a substitute in School District 11. He also helped organize the local chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Oh, and there was the trumpet playing with the middle school jazz band.
Everything changed in March when Amella's liver suddenly died. He refuses to follow along.
"I'll be there," Amella said, repeating the promise he's made to hundreds of friends and family who have rallied. "You know that." From his sickbed, Amella continues to work as an adviser in two civil rights discrimination cases.
Yet he acknowledges that now he's the one who must fight against the odds. Doctors have told him he has less than two years to live if he cannot find a donor who'll give him a new liver -- or a part of a liver that will regenerate inside him. And that may prove to be tough. Doctors restrict the pool of partial-liver donors to family and personal acquaintances with type O-positive blood. Amella thought he'd receive a transplant from his nephew in Texas, before doctors ruled out the young man due to blood complications.


I’m sure that all the iOS faithful out there knows all about Apple’s latest firmware, iOS 6, and no doubt most would like to opportunity to try out iOS 6 and all its new features; however as I am sure you are aware, Apple lets users install iOS 6 Beta 1 only if they have a Unique Device Identifier (UDI) registered with an iOS developer account.
However, it appears there is a way of getting iOS 6 onto your iPhone without having a developers account or the UDI being registered, and just so those iOS faithful out there that would like to give iOS 6 a whirl on their iDevice, we have a video tutorial on just how to accomplish that.
The How to Install New iOS 6 (Free) Without Dev Account video comes our way courtesy of the guys over at Daily iPhone Blog and by way of YouTube user DinoZambas2 that delivers an almost seven minute tutorial on how to get iOS 6 up and running on an iPhone 4 without that registered developer account.
Apparently to accomplish the feat there are three downloads required, iTunes 10.6.3, the iOS 5.1.1 firmware for your device, and lastly iOS 6 Beta 1for your respective device, and devices that are allowed to update to iOS 6 are iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 4th gen, Apple iPad 2 and the new iPad.
Anyway, rather than me write out what you have to do to get iOS 6 up and running on your iOS device, I’ll stop there and let you head on down to mash that play button and find out for yourself…enjoy.
Thanks guywrites! I got iOS 6 on my iPad now. Strangely enough my favorite feature is the fact that the appstore stays open when you go to update an app.
Â I would like one.
If I’m already running 5.1.1 do I still have to restore my phone?
Yes u need a fresh copy of a 5.1.1 firmware.
It might be work but I personally didnâ€™t use this method to get the iOS 6 beta.
Surely apple wouldnt make it thats easy would they….
you alredy hav ios 6 installed b4 u updated to ios 6. Just stop video on 2:55 and you’ll see the new maps icon there in your home screen.
hi. I already have 5.1.1 would I need to download the 5.1.1 ipsw again?
Sent you an email guywrites!
Has any tried this and had success on a iPhone 4S?
Â And how did you get the 3 downloads needed on your desk top?


The NHL’s labor negotiations shift back to Manhattan next week after today’s talks in Toronto. The fear is that Rockefeller Center will freeze its rink and light its tree before there’s a new collective bargaining agreement.
The sides hadn’t met for a full week with a Sept. 15 lockout looming, yet the NHL and its Players Association cancelled yesterday’s negotiations following 2 1/2 hours of morning talks among each team’s top two executives.
The cancellation was to allow each side “to consider how best to move forward with the process,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, Daly, and union executives Donald and Steve Fehr discussed economic and procedural issues before cancelling the afternoon meeting.
“You could probably observe that there is some degree of frustration between the parties,” Donald Fehr said.
Daly said there were “no cross words,” in yesterday’s session, nor any suggestion the sides were arguing “apples and oranges,” from their initial proposals.
The NHL initially asked the union to accept a share cut from 57 percent to 46 percent, which the union says would be 43 percent as currently accounted.
The union then proposed to limit payroll total increases to 2, 4 and 6 percent, respectively, in the next three years, with the option to revert to the present 57 percent cut of total hockey-related revenue in a fourth year. The players’ pot would increase 2 percent from the current $1.87 billion to $1.91 billion, then to $1.99 billion, then to $2.11 billion. If league hockey revenue rises 10 percent, the players’ share would revert to 57 percent.
Today’s talks conclude two weeks in Toronto, at PA HQ. Previous negotiations this month were held in midtown Manhattan at NHL headquarters.


HP Spectre 13 is 10.4mm thick, and thinner than the MacBook.
It weighs in at 1.11kg, with a carbon fibre and aluminium build.
The Spectre 13 was globally unveiled in April.
HP has launched the Spectre 13 in India, a laptop that's claimed to be the thinnest in the world by the US-based firm. With a thickness of 10.4mm, it's thinner than both the 12-inch MacBook and 13-inch MacBook Air. It has been priced starting at Rs. 1,19,990 in India, and will go on sale from Saturday.
The HP Spectre 13 weighs in at 1.11kg, which is heavier than the MacBook at 0.92kg, but lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air at 1.35kg. Apart from svelte dimensions, the company has decided to go all out with its latest top-end laptop, and the Spectre 13 is the first to sport its new logo for the premium range. The laptop was first unveiled back in April.
Built using carbon fibre and aluminium for lightweight durability, the HP Spectre 13 bears a two-tone finish with a copper-coloured spine. It comes with three USB Type-C ports, and sports a 13.3-inch full-HD WLED-backlit IPS display that's complete with a 0.4mm Corning Gorilla Glass 4 layer.
It also bears a full-sized island-style backlit keyboard, with dual HP speakers powered by Bang & Olufsen audio on either side.
HP hasn't compromised on the specifications either as the 64-bit Windows 10 laptop will come with a choice of Intel's 6th generation Core i5 or Core i7 processors with Intel HD Graphics, SSD storage up to 512GB, and 8GB of LPDDR3-1866MHz RAM as standard.
The company also claims that the 4-cell 38Whr Li-ion battery inside the device can keep the laptop running for 9.5 hours on a single charge.
Speaking about the HP Spectre 13, Rajiv Srivastava, Managing Director, HP India said, "HP as India's technology leader aims to make life better, productive and more fun. We are at the forefront of delivering industry-leading innovation and HP's Spectre 13 is a beautifully crafted Notebook and a reflection of what many millennials aspire to be --- exceptional, cool, dazzling, standing out from the crowd, but making an impact."


Is the Smartphone Kill Switch a Good Idea?
Home Blogs Data And Telecom Is The Smartphone Kill Switch A Good Idea?
The government seems to be hot on the trail of smartphone kill switches. The question is whether the concept is a solid one.
InformationWeek reports that two recent proposals, one at the state level and one in the Senate, seek to make it possible for a carrier to render a lost or stolen device useless. The story points out that the Federal Communications Commission says that 30 percent to 40 percent of robberies in major cities are of mobile devices; the number in some cases can reach half. Consumer Reports, the story says, found that 1.6 million people had smartphones stolen in 2012.
The intended goal of the kill switch is, of course, to make such thefts are far less attractive to the criminals. Opponents say that while the goal is a good one, a likely unintended consequence is that the kill switch technology would attract hackers.
In one scenario, groups of mobile phones can be permanently disabled by sending multiple messages, such as by incrementing the MSISDN (the telephone number) or IMSI (the unique identity of the customer) or the IMEI (the equipment identifier), CTIA said in the filing. Subscribers will not even be able to make emergency calls, it added.
The cellular industry trade group, along with the FCC and four of the largest US carriers are pushing a national lost-and-stolen phone registry instead, which would be used as a blacklist to deny activation of stolen smartphones. That database went live late last year and the group believes legislation should build upon this initiative by criminalizing tampering with mobile device identifiers as a workaround to the blacklist.
There is never going to be a single silver bullet that stops smartphone crime. The most effective approach to a kill switch will use a number of locking, disabling and tracking technologies in combination, so that their strengths are magnified and their weaknesses are mitigated. The ideal approach will ensure that every time a device is wiped or reinstalled, it automatically authenticates with manufacturer or operator servers to reestablish the correct security software and settings. Once reactivated, this software protects the device while advertising its true ownership, which kills the opportunity for the thief to cash in on his crime. Meanwhile, the device should silently begin to call for help by transmitting its location to the authorities even after the SIM card has been removed.
The basic question is whether it is possible to engineer and secure kill switches in a way that doesn’t offer opportunities to crackers. That seems unlikely, since crackers are just as smart as the folks fighting them. In any case, the hope is that the question will be part of the debates about the legislation in Washington and Sacramento.
The Senate bill is “The Smartphone Theft Prevention Act” and was introduced by Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota. The California legislation was introduced to the state senate by Senator Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco.