First-term Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Westside L.A.) found a fine way to greet incoming Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego). He proposed legislation that would effectively ban SeaWorld’s most popular attraction, performing orcas—in her district.
Bloom said he was inspired by “Blackfish,” a documentary built around the Orlando SeaWorld orca Tilikum that killed three people (two trainers and a trespasser) and the conditions of captivity that may have contributed to its behavior. Bloom announced his bill with the film’s director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, at his side.
SeaWorld disagrees and spokesman David Koontz explained why. It’s unAmerican not to like performing orcas. “We engage in business practices that are responsible, sustainable and reflective of the balanced values all Americans share.” That would be all Americans except the “extreme animal rights activists” Bloom has chosen to associate himself with.
Clearly, that claim in a lawsuit had publicity value. A lot more people are now aware of research that indicates captivity takes a heavy mental and physical toll on the highly intelligent animals—shortening their life spans, impairing them physically and driving them a bit nuts.
But the orcas sure are entertaining to a lot of people. San Diego’s SeaWorld reportedly draws around 4.4 million visitors a year from all around the world, comparable to the world famous San Diego Zoo. The park generates 4,000 jobs and pays the city $9.6 million in rent, according to U-T San Diego.
SeaWorld currently has around 10 orcas and is the only theme park in California that has them.
Newly-elected Mayor Kevin Faulconer defended SeaWorld, touting its educational and conservation efforts, as well as its economic importance. But his position may not be as important as that taken by future Speaker Atkins, who will become the most powerful person in the Assembly this summer.


Venables Bell & Partners took home the coveted Best of Show award at The One Show in New York on Friday night for REI's #OptOutside, a cross-platform campaign in which the outdoor retailer closed on Black Friday and urged employees and customers alike to get outside and enjoy nature on a day best known for rampant consumerism.
"This is an amazing honor," said Will McGinness, executive creative director at the San Francisco agency. "This wouldn't have been possible without our incredibly brave clients who were willing to take their beliefs as a company and act on them in such a bold way. #OptOutside was an idea that came from the core of who they are as a company and ended up transcending marketing into an actual movement. Which is something you rarely see."
Mediavest | Spark, Tool of North America, North Kingdom and Edelman also worked on the REI campaign.
Ellie Kemper, star of the Netflix comedy Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, hosted the 43rd Annual One Show Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on Friday night, which honored the year's best film, interactive, cross-platform, IP, mobile, social, UX/UI and radio work. The One Show also hosted a separate gala on Wednesday night at Gotham Hall, hosted by Michael Ian Black, at which the print and outdoor, design, direct, branded entertainment, responsive environments and PR winners were announced.
The Martin Agency was named Agency of the Year, and Geico was named Client of the Year. Together, they also picked up the inaugural Penta Pencil, given to an agency-brand team that has created stellar work for five continuous years. Wieden + Kennedy also won a Penta Pencil for its work with Procter & Gamble's Old Spice.
BBDO won Network of the Year for the second year in a row, with eight of its offices winning Gold Pencils, including Best in Radio (Sancho BBDO in Bogotá) and the first Gold Pencil win from Russia (BBDO Russia Group).
WPP was named Creative Holding Company of the Year.


Established more than 30 years ago, the Port of Lancaster Smokehouse has retained and maintained the traditional methods of preparing and curing fish and meats of all kinds.
Its commitment to quality and high customer service has won such overall acclaim for its smoked foods.
It sources many of its products locally and visitors can watch the fishermen land their daily catch at its factory shop at Glasson Dock.
Always keen to reach as many customers and bring its local produce across the region, the Port also attends farmers markets.
Customers are keen to shout out about how good Green’s, in Poulton Street, is. Staff individually prepare and make hot and cold sandwiches, salad boxes, and soups, all fresh to order. The menu varies, with daily specials, ensuring no two days are the same.
The deli also serves meats, pies, cheese and cakes, which are all brought fresh in, daily.
With three deli restaurants, in Penwortham, Preston and Garstang, this eatery is growing in popularity.
Using local farmhouse ingredients for its home-made deli products, it sells a wide variety of Italian cheeses, meats, biscuits, liquors, wine, and olives. For those looking for something different, there is an arts and crockery section, plus cookery demonstrations and wine tasting evenings.
The deli also provides home-made outside catering, home-made hampers and wholesale to restaurants and cafes.
The Food Shop at Cedar Farm, Mawdesley, is run by husband and wife Phil and Esther Cropper. The beef and lamb is reared in Tarleton and the chicken is free range and also sourced locally. Milk and cream come from Rolands dairy in Mawdesley and the local and speciality cheeses are from Preston. As well as a range of home-cooked meals, now over 20 varieties, Phil and Esther also produce their own chicken liver pate, rice, cous cous, spicy bean and pasta salads, luxury dairy ice cream and fruit sorbets. It has a Fill Your Dishes service for dinner parties, suitable to reheat at home.
Barrique is a wine Shop, bar and deli, offering a vast array of wines from around the world, and offers wine tasting, using its state-of-the-art Wineemotion vending machines. It also sells pastries, small plates, meats and cheeses sourced from local suppliers.


Federal immigration officials Thursday announced the creation of a telephone hotline to ensure that detainees held by local police are informed of their rights.
The toll-free number, (855) 448-6903, will field queries from detainees held by state or local law enforcement agencies if the detainees "believe they may be U.S. citizens or victims of a crime," the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said in a statement.
An ICE official in Washington said agency representatives had not been authorized to comment about the hotline but that more information soon would be posted online.
The hotline will be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week by ICE personnel, according to the statement, with interpreters available in several languages.
"ICE personnel will collect information from the individual and refer it to the relevant ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field office for immediate action," the statement said.
As part of the new initiative, ICE officials plan to issue a form to all detainees informing them that ICE will assume their custody within 48 hours, according to the statement. The form will be available in English as well as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese and Vietnamese, the statement said. ICE posted a sample copy of the form online Thursday.
"It also advises individuals that if ICE does not take them into custody within the 48 hours, they should contact the [law enforcement agency] or entity that is holding them to inquire about their release from state or local custody," the statement said.
The hotline comes amid controversy over local law enforcement agencies’ ability to detain people they believe to be illegal immigrants.
Scores of local law enforcement agencies partner with the federal government under the 287(g) program, established in 1996, which deputizes police to turn over suspects or criminals to immigration authorities for possible deportation. Normally, police do not enforce federal law.
ICE has 287(g) agreements with 69 law enforcement agencies in 24 states, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Since January 2006, the program is credited with identifying more than 217,300 potentially removable illegal immigrants, mostly at local jails, according to ICE records. Also under the program, ICE has trained and certified more than 1,500 state and local officials to enforce immigration law, the agency says.
Immigrant rights groups say the program has led to civil rights violations and racial profiling, and such authority has been especially controversial in Arizona. There, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been criticized for what many people call mistreatment of suspected illegal immigrants.
This month, the Justice Department announced it was suspending its 287(g) agreement with Arpaio and his deputies after an investigation found they had pursued a campaign of racial profiling against Latinos, making unlawful arrests and violating civil rights laws in an effort to crack down on illegal immigration.
Separately, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a former governor of Arizona, ended the Maricopa County jail officers' authority to detain people on immigration charges, barring them from holding immigration violators who have not been charged with local crimes.
“ICE needs to focus on fixing the problems up front,” Saenz added, avoiding unconstitutional arrests and monitoring local law enforcement agencies it partners with rather than relying on detainees to report abuses.
“It relies on the individuals being detained to have the courage, knowledge and wherewithal to make a call to the hotline and follow up. They may feel intimidated or unable to adequately navigate their case,” Saenz said.
Photo: In this February 2009 file photo, about 200 illegal immigrants are handcuffed and moved within Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's "Tent City" in Phoenix for incarceration until their sentences are served and they are deported to their home countries. Credit: Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press.


A month-long conference to toughen global controls on nuclear arms has ended without any agreements amongst the parties involved after four weeks.
From Japan's "extreme regret" to Norway's "profound disappointment," delegates expressed frustration that the failure to agree on an action plan for growing nuclear threats might weaken the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the pact that has helped keep a lid on nuclear weapons for 35 years.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said through a spokesman on Friday that the inability to strengthen collective efforts through the talks was bound to weaken the treaty.
Annan said world leaders would look at the issues again at a global summit scheduled for September.
The failure comes at a time of heightening nuclear tensions in the world. North Korea has pulled out of the treaty and says it is building atom bombs. Iran's uranium-enrichment programme raises questions about possible weapons plans.
Arab states view Israel's nuclear arsenal as increasingly provocative.
The conference had debated proposals to address all these issues.
"If we allow agreements at one conference to be rolled back at the next, we will undermine the very premise the multinational system is based upon"
Many delegates were also disturbed over Bush administration talk of modernising the US nuclear force, and sought US reaffirmation of commitments made to disarmament steps at the nonproliferation conferences of 1995 and 2000.
In this meeting's final hours, the US-led Western group of nations blocked any mention of those commitments in the conference's already-thin final report.
The disagreements even kept conference president Sergio de Queiroz Duarte from issuing a statement endorsing nonproliferation principles. "It would be very difficult for me in the face of so many divergencies," the Brazilian diplomat told reporters.
Members of the 188-nation Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty convene only once every five years to assess the workings of the 1970 treaty and find ways to make it work better - political commitments that give a boost to nonproliferation initiatives.
Under the nuclear pact, states without atomic arms pledged not to develop them, and five with the weapons -the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -undertook to eventually eliminate their arsenals. The nonweapons states, meanwhile, were guaranteed access to peaceful nuclear technology.
Citing that guarantee, Iran has obtained uranium-enrichment centrifuges, which can produce both fuel for nuclear power plants and material for bombs. Washington contends Tehran plans to build weapons, but the Iranians say they are interested only in peaceful energy.
Delegations there had promoted ideas, for example, for limiting access to such dual-use technology with bombmaking potential, along with proposals to strengthen inspection of nuclear facilities and to pressure nuclear-weapons states to shrink their arsenals more quickly.
On treaty withdrawal, which North Korea managed without consequence under the nonproliferation pact, some delegations supported plans to make the process more difficult and penalty-laden.
But the dozens of proposals were stalled for more than two weeks while delegations squabbled over the agenda. Then, when debate finally started, it proved impossible to win consensus in committees.
Iran objected to any mention of it as a proliferation concern. Egypt balked at toughening treaty withdrawal, since it wants that option open as long as ex-enemy Israel has nuclear bombs. And the United States fought every reference to its 1995 and 2000 commitments.
Those commitments included, for example, activating the nuclear test-ban treaty and negotiating a verifiable treaty to ban production of bomb materials - both steps the Bush administration opposes, but other weapons states support.
In final speeches on Friday, delegation after delegation, including the European Union representative, spoke of the importance of the 1995-2000 commitments.
"If we allow agreements at one conference to be rolled back at the next, we will undermine the very premise the multinational system is based upon," said South Africa's Abdul Minty.
The lead US delegate, Jackie Sanders, countered that the United States has a "strong record on nuclear disarmament." She expressed only mild disappointment at the conference outcome, instead pointing to unilateral Bush administration initiatives to halt the spread of ultimate weapons, such as its efforts to intercept illicit nuclear trade.
"It is vital that we pick up the pieces and look forward"
In an interview with journalists from his Vienna headquarters, the UN nuclear agency head, Mohamed ElBaradei, said of the failed conference, "It is vital that we pick up the pieces and look forward. We have a golden opportunity at the summit meeting in New York" in September.
As the conference closed, the UN spokesman's office said Annan "challenges leaders to use that (summit) opportunity to make bold commitments and address the pressing challenges."


Alkonost MaxFormat enables you to format floppy disks to maximum capacity with maximum efficiency. Non-standard diskette formats give extra storage space! MaxFormat provides optimal sector interleave to increase reading and writing speeds. You can also verify, make bootable, clear disks, format only when needed, copy files and whole directories to the diskette automatically after formatting and duplicate diskettes with standard and non-standard (such as DMF) formats.


Former U.S. government scientist Stewart Nozette was sentenced to 13 years in prison for trying to sell secrets to Israel.
The sentence handed down Wednesday by a federal judge was part of a plea deal, Reuters reported.
Nozette pleaded guilty last September to seeking to sell classified information.
Nozette, who was arrested in 2009, offered classified information on U.S. satellites, early warning systems and other communications intelligence to an undercover FBI agent who was posing as an Israeli Mossad agent.
Nozette had been a renowned scientist during his many capacities in the government and with the space program, as well as his work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he helped design lightweight satellite radar technology.
This story "Scientist Jailed for Trying to Sell Secrets to Israel" was written by JTA.


With a couple of months still left to go in the year, Chicago has already managed to tie the 2011 mark for homicides.
The 435th killing was recorded Sunday night when a man was shot in the chest on the South Side. A total of six people were killed over the weekend and another 14 injured by gunfire.
Chicago police Supt. Garry McCarthy appeared live on NBC 5 News Today to discuss violence in the city. McCarthy called the numbers disappointing.
"You can't manage murder. One murder is too many, and if we ended the year with 400, that's 400 too many," McCarthy said. "Unfortunately we knew this time was coming. We got way behind at the beginning of the year, and unfortunately this is going to overshadow the progress that we're making."
NBC 5s Stefan Holt get's an exclusive look at how the Chicago Police Department operates when he rides along with Superintendent Garry McCarthy.
McCarthy says those signs of progress include 5,500 individual recognizance bonds being denied to gang members in order to keep them in jail, 5,000 more gang members arrested this year than last year and more than 300 more gun seizures.
McCarthy says the month-to-month numbers are more encouraging, with October 2012 murders down 30 percent and shootings down 15 percent when compared to 2011.
McCarthy believes a requirement to report the loss or theft of a gun in Cook County will help stem the tide of illegal guns available to criminals.
Chicago's crime surveillance system is getting some ears. Police Supt. Garry McCarthy shows off new technology that can listen for gunshots and pinpoint the location for responding officers.


There's more than you think at your local library. Whether you want to tackle a new sport, find out about your favourite hobby, learn a new language or just find a great read or movie – they will help you out.
Community libraries offer a wide range of services including access to the Internet, including Microsoft suite, and other electronic resources ; magazines, books, jigsaws, and movies; local history collections with reference materials and newspapers including digital. Space to study or relax.
Your library card is your passport to the riches! If you haven’t got one, head down to your local library and ask them how to get one, or visit our website and apply online.


FARNBOROUGH: Britain’s Defence Minister Gavin Williamson will unveil a model of the country’s proposed new fighter jet at the Farnborough Airshow and earmark 2 billion pounds (US$2.7 billion) in funding for the project, a source close to the matter said on Monday.
The aircraft, which will eventually replace the Typhoon fighter jet, will be developed and built by partners BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Leonardo, the source said.
Britain is in talks with other countries to find more companies to help develop the jet, the source added, with Sweden seen as the most likely partner, although countries such as South Korea, Japan and Turkey, or Gulf arms-buying countries like Saudi Arabia, are also possibilities.
Under the plans, the new jet will be operational by 2035, ready to replace the Typhoon fleet, which is due to be retired in 2040.
The UK-led project comes as Britain is due to leave the European Union in less than nine months.
It will face competition from a rival European project after France announced in June that it would take a leading role on a new fighter programme, saying it would start as a bilateral effort with Germany that could be expanded later.
The Typhoon, in contrast, was developed by the four-nation group of Germany, Spain, Britain and Italy in the 1980s.
Britain has not developed a fighter jet alone since the 1960s. However, it has helped to develop and build the most advanced stealth fighter in the UK fleet, which is the US-made F-35, with BAE Systems carrying out about 15% of the work on each jet.
Airbus and its long-time rival, France’s Dassault Aviation, have agreed to work on the Franco-German project together.


One burglar is even recorded on camera petting the guard dog.
Police in an Arizona city are looking for a man and woman who were caught on camera breaking into a home through a dog door.
The incident occurred around 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 8 in Peoria, a suburb of Phoenix.
Home surveillance video captured the entire ordeal on camera from several angles, including interactions with the family pet. In the video, the suspects are seen backing into the driveway in a black, four-door Chevy Impala with temporary license plates.
The homeowner, who asked not to be identified, said the burglars made off with thousands of dollars worth of electronics and other valuables.
"They knew exactly what to look for, where to go and what to take," he said.
The man and woman exit the car and knock on the front door before the man jumps the wall to get through the back dog door. The man lets the woman inside by unlocking the front door, and they proceed to remove items from the house.
"Me leaving the house was planned," the homeowner said. "If you look at the tape, they were driving around before I even left."
The whole time the thieves were at the home, the family dog was following them around and was left in the driveway when they took off with the stolen goods. Fortunately, a neighbor found the dog and took him to safety.


Had Navarasa Thilagam released somewhere round 80's, the film would have been a sure hit. Now our audiences are exposed to world cinema so clichéd comedy sequences with a village bumpkin as a protagonist doesn't work anymore in Kollywood.
Ma Ka Pa Anand is a carefree youngster and tries his luck in several business that he loses all the wealth of his dad (Ilavarasu). The only thing remains for Ilavarasu is a wine shop and most of the time, Anand prefers to roam with his friend and business partner (Karunakaran).
As said earlier the director has made Navarasa Thilagam with truckloads of clichés—right from falling in love with the heroine (Srushti Dange) at first sight to stopping her sister’s marriage for the so called twist in the intermission, the entire film is a plodding ride.
With Siddharth Vipin’s character, the director has literally introduced a new genre called fart comedy but the sad thing is only he has to laugh for the so called jokes.
Ma Ka Pa Anand has tried his best to become another Sivakarthikeyan but he neither got the comic timing nor the charming screen presence like the latter. Shrusti Dange looks cute but there is no scope for her to perform while good actors like Karunakaran and Jayaprakash dissapoints.
The background score is such a pain and none of the songs stay in your mind. The cinematography, editing and the entire technical team lag behind at least twenty years and they must immediately update themselves to the current trend to survive.
Overall, Navarasa Thilagam is a damp squib and the joke is only on us!
Navarasa Thilagam review- Verdict: Avoid !


With all the Metro expansion, housing development and seemingly endless road maintenance going on in Copenhagen over the past few years, residents are no doubt wondering when it will all end.
Well, don’t hold your breath, as it may be a while yet.
The Danish capital’s infrastructure maintenance place was initially expected to be completed in five years, but a new report suggests it will continue to 2027.
“Not enough money has been set aside to keep up with the speed required. If we are to be finished by 2022, there will too many roads that need to be closed simultaneously, and traffic will simply grind to a halt,” Ninna Hedeager Olsen, the deputy mayor for technical and environmental issues, told DR Nyheder.
An extension to the city’s roadworks period will not only make the municipality’s planning ability more flexible, but it will also allow for more co-ordinated work to avoid more roads being dug up at the same time.
Olsen admits that an extension isn’t ideal for drivers, cyclists or pedestrians, and she realises that many citizens are more probably growing weary of the road work and accompanying noise.
But there is at least one thing that residents of Copenhagen can look forward to – the completion of the City Ring Metro line, which is due to open in July 2019. Recently, the unsightly green wall surrounding the station at City Hall came down.


A group of 27 Danish Muslim organisations has filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper that first published the contentious Prophet Muhammad cartoons, their lawyer said.
The case was filed on Wednesday, two weeks after Denmark's top prosecutor declined to press criminal charges, saying the drawings that sparked a firestorm in the Muslim world did not violate laws against racism or blasphemy.
Michael Christiani Havemann, a lawyer representing the Muslim groups, told The Associated Press the lawsuit sought 100,000 kroner ($16,100) in damages from Carsten Juste, Jyllands-Posten editor-in-chief, and Flemming Rose, culture editor, who supervised the cartoon project.
"We are seeking judgment for both the text and the drawings which were gratuitously defamatory and injurious," Havemann said.
He said the lawsuit was filed in the western city of Aarhus, where Jyllands-Posten is based. The court confirmed it had received the lawsuit but said a date for a hearing had not been set.
The newspaper published the 12 cartoons on September 30 with an accompanying text saying it was challenging a perceived self-censorship among artists afraid to offend Islam.
One of the drawings showed the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Another portrayed him holding a sword, his eyes covered by a black rectangle, and a third pictured a middle-aged prophet standing in the desert with a walking stick, in front of a donkey and a sunset.
The cartoons were seen as an insult to the prophet, depicting him as violent and primitive. Sunni Muslim tradition bans any image of the prophet, since depicting him risks insulting him or encouraging idolatry.
The newspaper apologised for offending Muslims after violent protests against Denmark erupted in the Middle East but stood by its decision to print the drawings, citing freedom of speech.
Rose, who went on indefinite leave in February, and Juste could not be immediately reached to comment on the lawsuit Thursday. Jyllands-Posten spokesman Tage Clausen's only comment was: "We'll take it as it comes."
The petition, a copy of which was obtained by the AP, said the cartoons depict Muhammad "as belligerent, oppressing women, criminal, crazy and unintelligent, and a connection is made between the prophet and war and terror".
It said the drawings were published "solely to provoke and mock not only the Prophet Muhammad but also the Muslim population".


YANLORD Land Group is partnering a subsidiary of China Ping An Insurance, Shenzhen Lianxin Investment Management Co, to jointly develop a 295,000-square-metre prime integrated development in Suzhou city's Gusu District.
Yanlord has acquired a 30 per cent stake in the project company which holds the prime residential site that was acquired through a public land auction for four billion yuan (S$804 million).
Situated within Suzhou city's administrative district, the site enjoys connectivity through key thoroughfares and is adjacent to stations of the city's metro line.
Future residents of the project will enjoy amenities such as shopping malls, hospitals, libraries and schools, Yanlord said.


An internship is an outstanding way to augment your classroom experiences.
4 What Do You Put for Reason for Leaving if Last Job Was Volunteer Work?
As an engineering student, you face no better way to gain experience in your chosen field than to secure an internship. Just as if you were a job seeker, you will have to write a cover letter that describes your academic record, why you would be a good fit for the organization and the skills and attributes you bring to the table. In other words, you will have to sell yourself in an honest and forthright manner. Whether the internship is paid or non-paid, be mindful that you'll probably be competing against other students. But don’t be daunted; try to look at writing a cover letter as great experience for the professional working world. After all, landing the internship of your dreams may one day help you land the job of your dreams, too.
Read the internship posting carefully and highlight the key qualifications and personal traits the organization is seeking. Your goal is to show that you fit the description without misrepresenting yourself or your talents. If the posting does not include the name and title of the intended recipient, call the organization and find out so that you can address your cover letter accordingly.
Select a professional font such as Times New Roman, Tahoma or Verdana. Center your name at the top of the page in a large font size, such as 18-point, so that it stands out. Put your contact information under your name in a smaller font size such as 14-point.
Select the same font for your letter or choose one that looks compatible, but don’t use more than two different fonts for your cover letter. Use 11- or 12-point type for the body of your letter -- and set your margins so that they are flush-left. Space once between lines and twice between paragraphs.
Cite your GPA as well as the names of the most recent courses you completed. Refer to the classes you anticipate taking in the next term to give the internship manager a good idea as to where you stand in your educational career. Be specific and provide the full names of the courses.
Describe your other campus involvements. Showing that you've assumed leadership roles will look particularly favorable to an internship manager. Even if you've focused much of your energy on sports, underscore the point that your activities have taught you important lessons about teamwork, following directions and mentoring.
Segue to your personal attributes, referring to the internship posting for prompts, while remaining sincere in portraying yourself. For example, you might say that you possess good analytical and problem-solving skills and enjoy working on both short- and long-term projects.
Demonstrate your thoroughness by showing that you researched the organization and know something impressive about it. For example, you might refer to an engineering project that elevated its profile, or a guest speaker who enhanced your knowledge of the field.
Refer to your enclosed resume and references and say that you hope the internship manager will review the material before you phone in a few days to hopefully schedule an interview. Thank the recipient for her time and consideration.
Proofread and edit your letter before sending it to ensure that it is flawless. Read it out loud and, if you have time, put it aside for a day and read it again with a fresh pair of eyes.
Include a recommendation letter with your resume, cover letter and references, even if the internship posting doesn’t ask for one. An endorsement from an instructor, adviser or coach could give you a distinct competitive advantage over other students.
Wroblewski, M.T.. "How to Write a Cover Letter for a Summer Engineering Internship." Work - Chron.com, http://work.chron.com/write-cover-letter-summer-engineering-internship-10691.html. Accessed 17 April 2019.


AFTER the end of World War II, our "occupation" experts in West Germany were extremely careful that none of the onetime Nazi newspaper editors was able to pick up where he left off. There hadn't been, of course, anything but onetime Nazi editors, and some of them were unhappy to be included in a generalization about something over which they had no choice. Our experts came to realize our hasty postwar decisions might have faults, and it was my happy lot to be asked to "survey" the West German press and r ender some advice. I shook hands with over 400 "oldtime" hometown editors and enjoyed every minute - although I think my "advice" had little to do with much of anything. My mission was not so much to change anything as it was to assure the journalists of West Germany that Uncle Sam wasn't altogether a rascal and wanted to be friends.
One consequence of this three-month visit is my ability to meet a German somewhere and tell him the name of his hometown paper and (as of 1953) who publishes it. This happened lately with Maria Louisa Mineau, who told me she was born at Starnberg. I am not likely to forget Starnberg and its "Bote" right away. A good part of my State Department stint was routine, and diplomatically arranged, but here and there something happened to give a town special meaning.
Take Bremen, for instance. The State Department boy there told me he had not made an appointment for me to meet the publisher "because he's anti-American." Knowing nothing about the amenities of the diplomatic program, this interested me, and I felt that might indeed be a top reason for talking with the gentleman. The State Department boy said a couple of GI's had broken into a freight car on a siding, had stolen foodstuffs, and had worked them off on the black market to their shameful profit. This edito r had been asked not to print a story about it, but had done so anyway - and was accordingly "anti-American." I conceded to the boy that he might, indeed, be antagonistic, but that his instincts appealed to me, and I felt he should be called upon.
The morning he received me in his office, he had the lord-mayor of Bremen there as well so we could talk. I assured the editor his attitude about suppressing news would please any Yankee slotman, and I told the mayor we were in favor of his policies whatever they might be. It turned out the mayor was running Bremen without any help from our consulate and was delighted to greet me.
As to Starnberg: Starnberg is maybe 15 kilometers from Munich, a charming village perched on Lake Wurms, which is otherwise called the Starnberger See. The newspaper there is named The Starnberger Land und See Bote. It was at that time one of four such newspapers in West Germany published by a woman. All had been inherited, and the lady-owners deferred completely to the gentlemen who made up their staffs. The German word Bote means messenger. But this lady owner had whimsically accepted our English word boat. There was a prominent cartoon-logo showing a boat leaping from Lake Starnberg up onto the sandy beach with wheels to suit.
It wasn't much of a funny, but in 1953 there wasn't anything that humorous in German journalism. The land-and-sea messenger might be a land-and-sea boat. The lovely lady who had inherited this paper presided at our supper, which was served at a window table so we looked off across the lake. Meals in Germany are never devoted to business, so we bantered pleasantly with Madame - I, her editor, her business manager, her technical superintendent, and the erudite Herr Doktor who composed for her front page th e obligatory and profound "lead article" whose omission would instantly improve every German newspaper. When supper was over, milady arose with outthrust hand, bade us all goodnight, and left with the chauffeur who had come with the status Mercedes to fetch her home. The business manager said, "Now!" and we took our chairs to spend two hours in shop talk. Being a lady, the owner of the paper left such things to her workmen.
It was at that meeting, after she left, that I heard for the first time the German saying, "sour pickle time." When things aren't going well, it's sour pickle time. The editor of the Starnberger Land und See Bote assured me the newspaper had its sour pickle time behind it.


Home. SMB group home page.
Robosync. A mailing list dealing with automated sample mounting systems.
Staff area. Secure site for SMB staff.
Facilities. Experimental facilities for users.
Resource policies. Beamline use policies and rules for using heavy metals, cryogenics and compressed gases.
Hardware. Beamline equipment available to users.
SAM. Stanford Automated Sample Mounting System.
Gas pressurization. Preparation of Xe and Kr derivatives.
Other hardware. Information on crystal offset, beamstops, heating shield, ice removal tool, microscopes and tool board items.
Software. Beamline control and data analysis software.
MAD scripts. Shell scripts to solve the structure by MAD or SAD.
Other software: A complete list of software installed on SMB computers.
Computing. Computing environment at the beamlines.
Remote Unix desktop. Remote access to the beamline software.
User's guide to remote access.
Sample spreadsheet database. Web interface to spreadsheet uploads.
Web-Ice. Web interface to experiments.
Links. Travel, accommodation, eating and other useful links for SSRL visitors.
Forms. Forms and administration procedures.
Pre-Trip Requirements for On-Site Users.
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The image swept the internet: A lone woman on a busy Tehran street, black hair flowing, waving a white hijab on a stick — a symbol of the White Wednesday women’s rights movement in Iran. Iran’s rulers have noticed, too, arresting 29 White Wednesday protesters last week. Their names have not been released.
The new wave of arrests recalled for me the words of the Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, when he was released from Iran’s notorious Evin prison: “The prisoner’s worst nightmare is the thought of being forgotten.” We must not forget those arrested by tyrannies around the world who remain imprisoned based on their fidelity to conscience.
We may not know all of their names, but we must speak for these heroes in the war for freedom and the rule of law — to let them know we stand in solidarity with them, and that we will not relent until their freedom is secured.
For that to be realized, there are concrete steps we must take.
To begin, democratic governments should take action to punish those responsible for the culture of corruption and criminality, and the impunity that underpins them. One solution is the passage of what has come to be known as Global Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act, like those recently passed in Canada, the United Kingdom, United States, Estonia and Lithuania. These acts are named for Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who uncovered the most brazen corruption scheme in Russian history and documented those responsible. His reward was to be jailed, tortured and ultimately killed by Russian authorities.
The Magnitsky Act allows democratic governments to sanction those involved in major human rights violations such as those Magnitsky suffered by imposing visa bans, asset seizures, and excluding the perpetrators from the benefits of travel and doing business in the world’s democracies.
Extending Magnitsky to the jailers of Iran’s White Wednesday protesters should become a human rights priority.
Both governments and non-government organizations must recognize that abuse of governmental power for political purposes is not an isolated act, but often happens to similarly-situated persons in groups. For example, it does not require study of each individual arrest to recognize as prisoners of conscience the White Wednesday protesters and all of those scooped off the streets of Iran during the recent protests. We do not need to know their names to recognize that the pattern of persecution and prosecution is the same: arbitrary arrest, torture in detention, denial of the right to a fair hearing, trumped-up charges, and the like.
Our approach to the Iranian freedom protesters can be informed by what has come to be known as the “Yukos Affair” in Russia. That case led to the arrest and imprisonment of employees of the former Yukos Oil Company as part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to silence Yukos’s politically active leadership and to expropriate Yukos’s assets, funneling them into state-owned companies operated by Putin cronies. Accordingly, top-level Yukos executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev were recognized as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, and were ultimately released from prison after diplomatic, political, and legal pressure was applied.
Others arrested on the same baseless charges have been left behind.
Former mid-level Yukos manager Alexei Pichugin, jailed since 2003, remains Russia’s longest serving political prisoner. As Mr. Khodorkovsky recently wrote, “Mr. Pichugin has held in his hands the key to his freedom: All he needs to do is bear false witness against me and other Yukos executives. Lie, and walk free….” It’s time for organizations such as Amnesty to recognize Mr. Pichugin as the prisoner of conscience that he is, and as our Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights has done.
In every case, Bahari’s words about the political prisoner’s nightmare should serve as our call to action on behalf of the “nameless” ones, whether they are the White Wednesday protesters arrested in Iran or those such as Alexei Pichugin, locked away in distant prisons of the world’s tyrannies. One way to remember them is to recognize these groups of cases and patterns of persecution for what they are — common injustices that demand shared redress. Doing so is essential, for the freedom of these individuals and for the humanity of us all.
Irwin Cotler is founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, emeritus professor of law at McGill University, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and longtime Parliamentarian, and an international human rights lawyer.


�Friday night and the lights are low � looking out for a place to go�� Are you? The Dancing Queens have just the answer: the second annual Dance for Peace dance-a-thon from 6 p.m. to midnight Sept. 30 at the Leominster Elks, 134 North Main St.
The dance floor will be hopping with Crystal Entertainment of Townsend providing the tunes for the YWCA Central Massachusetts� Battered Women�s Resources fundraiser.
Besides Lunenburg�s Dancing Queens, the Mount Wachusett Community College Dance Crew, the Clinton Savings Bank Sashayers, the Dancing Divas and Twinkle Toe and Happy Feet teams from Fitchburg and Leominster will be bopping to the music.
Teams from Fitchburg State University, Clark University, Holden, Princeton, Sterling and Westminster also plan on attending.
Salsa Passion of Fitchburg will perform the merengue and teach anyone and everyone how to step and slide to the Caribbean dance style. Leominster�s Dance2Swing will also demonstrate basic dance steps. Rock �n� roll your thing? Rock �n� rollers will show you the latest and greatest.
If you are not a dancer, there will be food, a cash bar, prizes and raffles.
�This is a unique and innovative fundraiser bringing people together for a fun evening, to celebrate a united front to address domestic violence,� said Ginger Navickas, director of domestic violence services for the YWCA of Central Massachusetts and manager of the Battered Women�s Resources program.
For more than 30 years, the Battered Women�s Resources program has provided emergency shelter, court advocacy, crisis intervention, community education and counseling, all free to families in 33 North Central Massachusetts cities and towns.
�We also want to raise awareness in the region about domestic violence and address the needs of its victims. We have a program that is designed to respond to families impacted by domestic violence, providing shelter, nonresidential services, counseling, outreach and support groups,� Ms. Navickas said.
The program includes SAFE PLAN, with advocates in the Leominster, Fitchburg, Clinton, Ayer, and Gardner District courts, assisting people with restraining orders and providing safety plans and referrals.
Community educations programs begin with Head Start through grammar, middle and high school to provide violence-prevention skills, change attitudes, provide resource information and encourage young people to talk to a trusted adult when in fear of being harmed.
A $90 check can buy a new set of bedding for one shelter bed, $100 provides a woman with advocacy and support in pursuing a restraining order, $500 provides three nights of emergency shelter for a woman whose life has been threatened by an abusive partner, and $10,000 would cover the annual utility costs of Aralia Shelter, a confidential emergency shelter for victims of domestic violence and their children.
More than 2,000 people, including children, are served by Battered Women�s Resources each year.
�This is a great opportunity for people to come out and support our program and have a lot of fun at the same time. We need this kind of enthusiastic support for the work that needs to be done,� said Ms. Navickas.
Admission is $20 and is tax deductible. For more information, call (508) 791-3181 or visit www.ywcacentralmass.org.


A bitter BBC technical operations engineer used the corporation’s account to order nearly £8,000 worth of electronics, which he placed in various offices to 'implicate' the manager who sacked him, a court heard.
Former BBC News team leader Dominic Di Chiera, 50, of Battersea, south London admitted ordering a 3D Blu-ray player, LED televisions, a mobile phone, a camera drive and other electrical items as his contract neared its end.
'When ordering these items the defendant had the electrical goods delivered to his home address,' prosecutor Miss Amanda McCabe told Hammersmith Magistrates’ Court.
'He said he committed the offences on being told that his contract would not be renewed and wanted to implicate a BBC colleague responsible for budgeting, who was responsible for not renewing his contract.
Australian-born Di Chiera pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud by false representation, namely fraudulently using a BBC account to make purchase orders totalling £7,773.63p between June 4 and 26.
He was employed at a variety of BBC sites and has also worked for Channel 4 and BSkyB.
'There is an element of breach of trust here and the items were of a high value,' added Miss McCabe.
The court heard Di Chiera was close to a nervous breakdown after hearing his employment was coming to an end and is keen to receive help to ensure he does not repeat this type of behaviour.
He is currently working with police to locate the electrical equipment he says he left at BBC offices.
Di Chiera was bailed until October 1 for a pre-sentence report.
A BBC spokesman confirmed the corporation was aware of the case but declined to comment.


Think of a figure, double it, add your age and subtract the number of eels in Oakley Creek: that, it seems, is as good a guess as any for the price of completing the Waterview Connection.
I'm not surprised Transport Minister Steven Joyce and the NZ Transport Agency waited until the eve of the Christmas exodus to sneak out the highly embarrassing news that a tunnel was, after all, the most cost-effective and environmentally sensitive way to join State Highway 20 up to the Northwestern Motorway at Waterview.
Mr Joyce called this backflip, a "fine-tuning of the alignment", while Transport Agency chairman Brian Roche's press release was even more buttoned-up, referring to "design improvements". The only reference to cost was by Mr Roche, who said the new tunnel "can be completed within the original project budget and is the most cost-effective option for constructing this section while also responding well to community concerns".
In other words, at Christmas 2009, a three-by-three-lane tunnel could be built for around $1.15 billion. Yet just 10 months before, Mr Joyce signed the death warrant for the defeated Labour Government's similar tunnel project, saying costs had blown out from $1.89 billion to "in excess of $3 billion". On closer examination, his bloated $3 billion included all sorts of add-ons the Labour-backed plan did not.
Even with the politicking put to one side, what is alarming is the huge variation in estimates provided by the bureaucracy for similar outcomes. This time last year, the incoming National Government received a briefing from the Treasury and the Ministry of Transport on the business case for the Waterview Connection.
The Transport Agency's preference, which Labour had endorsed, was a bored tunnel, with two lanes in each direction. The estimated cost in 2008 was $1.752 billion. The three-lane option would be $2.039 billion. Various cut-and-cover options were listed, but all were considered less acceptable, socially and environmentally.
Mr Joyce found them all too expensive and demanded a rethink. The agency came up with a hybrid solution involving a tunnel, a surface stretch, and a section of cut and cover. It was a compromise which made no one happy except the Government, who couldn't see past the bargain $1.15 billion price tag.
What's still to be explained is how, in December, the experts suddenly decided they could come up with a three-by-three tunnel solution costing not much more than half their original tunnel estimates. In September, the Transport Agency board voted that the bitsy compromise scheme "was the best option to complete the Western Ring Route within available funding". Mr Roche said it was "affordable" and "provides the best balance between the need to complete the Western Ring Route with the impacts on surrounding communities". But within three months, this "best option" was scrapped and a tunnel was back in favour.
True, the original tunnel was to have been 3.2 km long, compared with the 2.4km of the new tunnel. Also, instead of using an expensive boring machine, the roading authority plans to fall back on less sophisticated tunnelling techniques. We are told that between the two estimates, the road builders got "a better understanding of the local geology". Fair enough, but as I understand it, both tunnelling projects are based on the same premise, that it's easier to go underneath the lava flow running north into the upper Waitemata Harbour, than to try to cut through the hard-surface volcanic rock.
You have to ask why this cheaper tunnelling option was not considered earlier. When, for example, locals were up in arms about their neighbourhood being cut in two. And especially a year ago when Mr Joyce was signalling his and his Government's intention to scrap the full tunnel plan in favour of a cheaper, and more environmentally and socially unfriendly, option.
There's no doubt the reversion to a single-tunnel solution, albeit shorter than the original, is to be applauded. That it took the transport boffins so long to come up with an affordable way through is not.


"Old Europe" is blocking U.S. efforts to find an exit strategy for Iraq. Further evidence emerged on Thursday that Old Europe holds the only key to the door from Iraq marked "Exit," but don’t expect to see it used any time soon.
After the reconquest of Fallujah (Fallujah II), the field for American military options has dramatically contracted. Politically and diplomatically, "Old Europe"  France and Germany  are the ironic gainers from a pyrrhic U.S. military victory, and unless the Bush administration undertakes to forgo permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq, the exit door will stay shut.
The Pentagon’s Fallujah-based exit strategy hinged on the success of the campaign  initiated on Nov. 8  to subdue the Sunni city. Military planners had hoped that the reconquest of Fallujah would severely cripple the insurgency and thereby herald a period of relative calm before the January Iraqi elections. It was also believed that the success of Fallujah II would preclude the necessity of calling up further U.S. troops.
Military planners anticipated that if Iraqi elections could take place amid relative calm, they would therefore be viewed as valid  relatively free of boycott and violence.
The Pentagon exit strategy presupposed valid Iraqi elections as an essential prerequisite for garnering international peacekeepers to supplement overstretched U.S. troops. In the event that the elections were deemed a success, Old Europe would be hard-pressed to refuse afterwards to participate militarily alongside the U.S.
It was hoped at the commencement of Fallujah II that the campaign would break the back of the insurgency and thereby obviate the need for calling up additional U.S. troops. But those hopes were dashed just 23 days later, when on Dec. 1, the Pentagon announced the not-previously-forecast dispatch of 12,000 more U.S. soldiers to Iraq.
Although the city of Fallujah has been almost reconquered militarily, it is now virtually uninhabitable for its 300,000 citizens, who are now refugees in their own country.
It was anticipated that Fallujah II would be the initial operation in a series of rapid reconquests of other Iraqi cities  with insurgent-held Ramadi slated to be next.
The anticipated reconquests did not take place because of the inability of U.S. forces to concentrate sufficient forces in multiple regions. Simply put, there are not enough troops to implement the envisioned reconquest of the areas controlled by the insurgency. In desperation, the military is now seeking to compensate for its manpower shortage by initiating a strategy of high-tech civilian population control.
To implement this new strategy, the same interrogation database software system currently used to manage the interrogation and cross-referencing of insurgent detainees at Abu Ghraib prison will now be applied against the entire male population of Fallujah.
Indeed, the entire city of Fallujah will virtually become a 300,000-person open-air detention center. It will be accessible only through checkpoints and will be a guaranteed car bomb-free zone since the biometrically catalogued inhabitants will not be allowed to possess private vehicles.
Politically, Fallujah II as a postmodern concentration camp can only become a public relations disaster for the United States. Militarily, the failure of Fallujah II is illustrated by the fact that after a month of fighting, the city is still a contested war zone  so dangerous that the citizens of Fallujah have not yet been allowed to return. Five weeks on, the military and political goals of Fallujah II have not been met.
Without more boots on the ground, the insurgency will continue to thrive because U.S. troops are stretched too thin. More U.S. troops are needed  unless, that is  a non-U.S. source for troops can be found.
The administration’s plan for solving the troop crisis is for the UN to endorse a NATO-led peacekeeping mission to Iraq. Such a NATO peacekeeping mission would allow the U.S. to maintain operational control of its troops on the ground while utilizing the troops of allied countries to accomplish U.S. policy goals.
One of the main U.S. policy objectives for Iraq is the establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in the country.
This is unfortunate, because continental Old Europe (France, Germany, and their close allies) will under no circumstances allow the U.S. to establish permanent military bases in Iraq.
Although the "Continentals" and the Anglo-Americans rarely discuss this disagreement in public, the contentious issue of a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq lies at the center of the diplomatic friction between the U.S. and its "Old Europe" continental allies.
As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter told CNN’s Larry King last Thursday night, there will be no multilateral solution in Iraq unless the U.S. gives up its goal of "permanent military bases" in that country.
Old Europe’s "no permanent U.S. bases" demand is non-negotiable, because it is an essential component of Franco-German foreign policy. This European demarche was again reinforced by the statements of French and German diplomats on Thursday that under no circumstances would French or German NATO combat troops be allowed to participate in Iraq.
The essential fact remains that no combat troops will be forthcoming from Old Europe to help U.S. forces in Iraq unless the United States relinquishes all claims for a permanent military presence in that country.
NATO troops cannot participate without French and German approval because NATO military missions outside of Europe are decided by consensus and require the unanimous approval of every NATO member.
If the Iraqi elections fail, either because of boycott or large-scale violence, then Old Europe will continue its objections to a UN-mandated NATO peacekeeping mission. Old Europe is quite pleased to see the U.S. twist in the wind in Iraq.
If the elections ultimately fail to produce a freely elected legitimate government, then the current insurgency may soon evolve into a form of institutionalized chaos  some combination of civil war, anarchy, and intercommunal violence. In that case, public expectations for Iraq’s future might then be lowered to accord with the new reality of "stabilized anarchy."
In accord with such a new reality, the expectations for U.S. military successes could also be lowered to just coincide with enforcement of the status quo. If Iraq slips fully into a state of stabilized anarchy, then current U.S. troop levels would be more than adequate for maintaining the predominance of the U.S. military as the ultimate arbiter of force among the contending militias and armed groups. Such chaos might further fractionate the Iraqi insurgency along ethnic, geographic, and sectarian lines and thereby act as a "force multiplier" for superior U.S. forces.
Under this scenario, Franco-German unwillingness to cooperate would be to blame for the chaos, but the continuation of a dominant U.S. military position in the country would be assured.
While a state of stabilized anarchy under U.S. military suzerainty is not a U.S. policy goal, it is viewed as preferable to the alternative  which is that Old Europe will force the U.S. out of Iraq with it tail between it legs.
While not an "exit," it is at least a strategy.
Next Next post: Next Target: Iran?


Does Britain really want an isolated future, buffeted by forces beyond our control?
One day, a second people’s vote will bring us back into the EU. But when?


I generally do one or two episodes a year. I just shot one!
It looks like 2018 will be when fans of The Big Bang Theory will see Laurie Metcalf next reprise her role as Mary Cooper. Specifically, it has been noted that Metcalf will return in the episode "The Solo Oscillation," which is due to air Thursday, January 11 at 8:00 p.m. ET. Metcalf last appeared in the Season 11 premiere, which makes her statement to EW about doing one to two episodes a year accurate.
What Laurie Metcalf will be up to in theBig Bang Theory episode remains to be seen. The synopsis doesn't appear to feature her character heavily, so its possible this appearance could be a phone call or something of that sort. Given Metcalf's statement about her involvement, it's possible she could've been on set to film the episode featuring Sheldon and Amy's wedding, and this upcoming performance could've been something filmed quickly the same day.
But that's just taking Laurie Metcalf at her word, and its possible she wasn't speaking literally when referring to how many times she'll appear in this season. That said, Metcalf was spot on and has never appeared in a season of The Big Bang Theory beyond 2 episodes. Considering how busy she might be with press related to Lady Bird and Roseanne in 2018, it's a good thing the sitcom was able to snag her before things really started to pick up.
The Big Bang Theory returns to CBS with new episodes and Laurie Metcalf Thursday, January 4 at 8:00 p.m. ET. For a look at when other shows will return or premiere in 2018, head on over to our midseason premiere guide. Those still curious as to what's coming to television in the final days of 2017 can visit our fall premiere guide. Anyone wondering why their show isn't featured on either list might find an answer as to why when heading over to our cancellation guide.


Google’s chief executive Larry Page has admitted that the company has outgrown its mission statement to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” from the launch of the company in 1998, but has said he doesn’t yet know how to redefine it.
Page insists that the company is still focused on the altruistic principles that it was founded on in 1998 with the original mission statement, when he and co-founder Sergey Brin were aiming big with “societal goals” to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
Google has unprecedented resources brought about by its search and web advertising dominance, which has seen countries become uneasy in the face of a company that wields so much influence over a universal resource such as the internet.
It has faced anti-monopoly probes by the European commission and most recently pressure from Europe over the “right to be forgotten” forced to remove search listings to information deemed to be outdated and not in the public interest which saw Britons request over 60,000 links be deleted by October.
Page said he aims to use the resources at his disposal to go far beyond today’s technology and market, creating spurs into tomorrow’s technology spaces from artificial intelligence and robotics to health, disease and biotechnology lead by Brin and his “moonshot” Google X labs, from which Google’s self-driving cars, smartglasses and nano technology pill sprouted.
While some aspects of Google’s moonshot research have seemed logical extensions of the company’s existing interests – artificial intelligence fits perfectly with advanced search – some have drawn concerns that the company is overstepping its bounds.
Research areas in biotechnology, health and medicine, for instance, have been traditionally funded by public money with universities and other research centres, at least in their infancy, rather than private companies.
Page’s attitude is “well, somebody’s got to do it” and Google’s resources allow it to do more than most.
This article previously stated that “don’t be evil” was part of Google’s mission statement, and has been corrected.


The founder of PayPal is living large but continues to work.
SAN FRANCISCO - Max Levchin is not easily distracted from his work.
A few years ago, Levchin, one of the young princes of Silicon Valley, bought his first home, a 12-room Edwardian high atop a hill here, for $3.4 million.
But Levchin, who made a fortune at age 27 selling PayPal, the online payment service he helped start in 1998, never moved in. He sold it two years later without having slept there for even one night.
Since then, Levchin has moved into his second home, a more expensive one found for him by Nellie Minkova, his girlfriend of eight years who has become his fiancee. But so consumed is he by work on his second company, an Internet startup focused on sharing photos and videos, that the cartons that contain what Levchin described as "85 percent of my worldly possessions'' are still stacked in his living room, five months after moving day.
Levchin, who is now 32, is typical of a new generation of junior titans in Silicon Valley who might be called the prematurely rich - techies worth tens of millions of dollars, sometimes more, at an age when many others are just figuring out what to do with their lives.
They are happy to be wealthy, of course, but many of these baby-faced technology tycoons often seem indifferent to the buying power of their money, at least at this stage of their lives. Instead, nearly all of them have chosen to throw themselves back into a startup, not so much because they want a spectacular new home or a personal jet - though many of them do - but because they are in a competition with themselves and one another.
"For most of us, doing it again means surpassing what we've done previously," said Peter Thiel, Levchin's partner at PayPal, who also has started a new business, a hedge fund called Clarium Capital. "And that can be a really high bar."
Even among this jittery group of overachievers, Levchin stands out. In part that is because outdoing PayPal may be an all-but-impossible goal. Levchin acknowledges he has already earned more money than he could ever spend. But he said he would not consider Slide.com, the photo and video sharing site he founded in 2005 that is still in its startup phase, a success unless it is ultimately worth "at least $1.54 billion" - the price eBay paid for PayPal.
"Otherwise," he asked rhetorically, "what have I learned?"
During his PayPal days, Levchin was so committed to seeing the company succeed that he often sacked out at the office in a sleeping bag he kept under his desk. Considering that he described his apartment during some of this time as "scary," that had a certain logic. Cardboard boxes served as his living room furniture; a discarded computer desk was his dining room table.
These days, despite the phenomenal success of PayPal, which gave him the bulk of a fortune worth around $100 million, Levchin continues to work an average of 15 hours a day.
"We occasionally go out to eat, he sleeps a few hours, he works out," Minkova said. "But other than that, Max works."
She half-joked that she might appreciate her rare evenings out with Levchin more, if only he were not on his BlackBerry, answering e-mail messages and checking his Web site.
So committed is Levchin to seeing Slide.com succeed that he keeps a blood-pressure monitor on his desk. "I don't know what I would do if I couldn't start companies," he said. "I'd probably think about slitting my wrists."


Julian Assange and The Fifth Estate: Wiki Wacky Who?
With Julian Assange a refugee in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June 2012, what’s his whistle-blowing website been up to? Well, last year WikiLeaks published the Syria files — more than 2 million emails and papers from Bashar Assad‘s government — and a hundred or so classified files from the U.S. Defense Department revealing its policy on detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere. This year WikiLeaks released CIA and State Department documents from the 1970s, including secret cables from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Just last Wednesday it posted a new installment of its Spy Files 3 project, detailing the internal workings of European companies specializing in surveillance technology. That’s corporate spying to you, or maybe on you.
All very noteworthy, and newsworthy. But WikiLeaks hasn’t received the attention that a few years ago made it arguably the top source for exposés of government and industrial corruption. The Iraq and Syria War Logs, which the site obtained from U.S. Army analyst Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, made news around the world, thanks in part to the editorial validation of The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel.
But that was in 2010, so very long ago that it makes Assange and the site he founded seem almost nostalgic. The same with The Fifth Estate, the fun, zippy, ultimately empty new portrait of the wired wonder from Down Under. The Toronto Film Festival’s opening-night attraction, it comes to U.S. movie houses Oct. 18.
Directed by Bill Condon — who made his name in bio-pics (Gods and Monsters, Kinsey) before going old Broadway with Dreamgirls and young-adult with the last two Twilight movies — The Fifth Estate crams a spanning-the-globe crash course in international politics into the crevices of a lopsided bromance. As Aaron Sorkin’s script for The Social Network traced the spiral of admiration into disillusionment in the relationship of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his colleague Eduardo Saverin, so The Fifth Estate treats the collaboration of Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and fellow hacker-activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl). Domscheit-Berg’s memoir of Assange and WikiLeaks is one of the sources for the script by Josh Singer, who had written for Sorkin’s TV series The West Wing.
They meet in Berlin in 2007 and quickly become, in Assange’s words, “an army of two” — rather, an army of one Supreme Commander and one devoted, obliging grunt. In a great shot, Assange is seen working at his computer in a huge office; track slowly back, and all the desks are manned by Assanges. Using a myriad of false IDs to make WikiLeaks appear fully staffed, he is everywhere and everyone. What upsets Daniel is that Julian may be a genius, but he’s no gentleman. He disses Daniel’s parents and barges in on his affair with the lovely Anke (Sweden’s Alicia Vikander, the young charmer in the Keira Knightley Anna Karenina). The Mandarin and the mensch are bound to collide and, when they do, WikiLeaks briefly crashes with them.
The movie is all about him, and thus about Cumberbatch. The actor, who brought his upper-class hauteur to TV’s Sherlock Holmes and as the revived Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness, manages to occupy, glamorize and parody Assange. He is a mix of tics and grandeur, a creature apart and above, both worldly and otherworldly. No one so conscious of his own legend, and so practiced in promoting it, is likely also to be a decent, caring human being. That is Daniel, at least in this movie made from his book. But nice doesn’t make for scintillating cinema, not when naughty is there to steal every scene.
Singer and Condon offer a little sympathy for the Devil with occasional references to his peculiar upbringing: his time with the cult known as The Family, and the revelation that he was in his twenties before he met his birth father. He also mentions that he has a 19-year-old son named… Daniel, suggesting a paternal affection for Domscheit-Berg (who is only seven years younger than Assange). Having established the father-son connection, The Fifth Estate then casts Julian as Darth Vader to Daniel’s Luke Skyhacker, dueling not with light sabers but with computer strokes. In the process, the impact of WikiLeaks is reduced to a workplace drama about a brilliant boss who mistreated his one wonderful employee.
Told in a jazzy, chaotic style that throws computer algorithms and text messages on the screen, and with dialogues that the camera keeps swiveling and jerking to catch up with, The Fifth Estate means to be both a filmic and an Internet experience. But it’s really an old-fashioned falling-out-of-love story, as seen from Domscheit-Berg’s perspective. It upends Assange’s battle cry of “Privacy for the individual, transparency for the institutions,” and reveals more about the founder’s quirks than about the content of his scoops. It’s the film equivalent of celebrity journalism. Which, some would say, is no journalism at all.


Chennai: Raghav Verma, co-founder, Chaayos, introduced free Wi-Fi in his outlet for customers to sign in and possibly share updates on social media. Little did he realise that Wi-Fi became a channel to increase customer engagement.
Wi-Fi analytics — which uses data from customers signing in to free Wi-Fi provided at cafes and large retail stores to push in offers and increase conversions – is used by brick and mortar establishments.
"When a customer signs in through free Wi-Fi, we get some of his details, including phone number, email and possibly his occupation. We also get to know the kind of phone he has used and understand when he last signed in and what he purchased. We roll out offers through the details he gives when he signs in the next time and that ends up increasing customer engagement and retention," said Verma. Chaayos provides real time SMS alerts in the periphery of selected cafes as promotion to customers in vicinity tracking the location if they have Wi-Fi in search mode.
Satyam Darmora, founder, I2E1, a company that provides Wi-Fi analytics says that brick and mortar retailers are warming up to having real-time analytics, compared to e-commerce players where it is easier to track customer behaviour. “Customers can use free Wi-Fi and the retailers can get a profile of people who walk in – including where they have last used free Wi-Fi — and send targeted offers. For instance, if one has used the free Wi-Fi in McDonalds and Shoppers Stop many times, one can gauge the preferences,” he said. Wi-Fi sign ups, as a means of measuring footfall, is also used by NBFCs to gauge the business performance of restaurants, salons etc, to whom they lend money. Tribe, a fintech startup, which estimates the capacity of the business to pay back the loan, uses Wi-Fi as means to estimate footfall and hence the average billing per day and in turn the health of the business.
“We work with the NBFCs in the Aavishkar-Intellecap group to keep track of the restaurants in Mumbai and Bengaluru that offer free Wi-Fi. A week after demonetisation, a restaurant that used to record an average footfall of over 500, suddenly dropped to 88 and we were able to find that their business was slow, with the data,” said Atreya Rayaprolu, co-founder & COO, Tribe. Using free Wi-Fi and getting customer preferences & data is a technique of brick & mortar stores to improve instore engagement. Harsh Shah, founder, Fynd, says that for apparel brands, compared to the footfalls, close to 1/3rd end up buying.
“In addition, large format stores can look at spots where most of the customers spend a longer time and place products accordingly. Also, they send out personalised offers based on their past buying, spending capacity etc, just using the free Wi-Fi provided,” he added.


CINCINNATI – After seven hours of meetings, dozens of political speeches, and plenty of complaints about last-minute cuts and adds to city spending, Cincinnati City Council finally passed a new $1.4 billion budget on Wednesday.
There were few surprises during the marathon session at City Hall, which included three meetings and a veto by Mayor John Cranley. That veto was later overturned – the first time this has happened to Cranley during his tenure as mayor.
Cranley vetoed an amendment to the budget which cut police overtime and delayed a police recruit class, but gave a $550,000 earmark to the Center for Closing the Health Gap.
“I think that supporting the police and crime-fighting initiatives is far more important than supporting an organization that a number of audits and independent coverage by the media has raised significant concerns about their effectiveness and their results, or lack of results,” Cranley said.
Cranley had proposed wiping out the Health Gap’s direct funding next year after it faced a 2017 city audit and was the target of several media investigations into how it spends taxpayer money.
But city council restored much of that funding, and six council members later overrode Cranley’s veto to guarantee funding for the Health Gap, which works to improve minority health disparities.
Since 2007 the Health Gap, led by former mayor Dwight Tillery, has collected nearly $4.3 million in city funding. And it will get an additional $550,000 in city funding next year – more than any other outside group.
Cranley suggested the $550,000 would be better spent at the city’s health department, on dental care and school nurse programs, which would directly help minority communities. But many of the six council members who supported funding the Health Gap – David Mann, PG Sittenfeld, Tamaya Dennard, Greg Landsman, Chris Seelbach and Wendell Young – spoke about the positive impact of the Health Gap.
Dennard hopes to see the Health Gap work alongside the health department.
“We have to give them an opportunity to do better,” she said.
Cranley was also critical of the police overtime cut and the three-month delay of the next police recruit class, which a majority of council had approved on Monday.
But that changed later on Wednesday, when council voted to restore $200,000 for police overtime funding. It also restored cuts to REDI, the Greater Cincinnati Redevelopment Authority, and $88,000 to bring back a state lobbyist for the city.
But council did not restore funding that would have moved a police recruit class forward, so it will still be delayed until April 2019.
In the end, city leaders were able to plug a $32 million deficit and restore human services funding in large part by raising fees and taxes.
Council approved higher parking meter rates, higher building permit fees, increased storm water rates, and greater commercial waste hauler fees for many people who don’t get their trash collected by the city. It also passed a new tax on billboards in the city that would bring in $709,000 in the coming year.
"I'm beyond frustrated ... you want to raise $700,000 from two companies. It's just not right," said Tom Norton of Norton Outdoor Advertising. The new tax will cut his company’s revenue by 10 percent, he told city council.
Council also voted to bring a ballot measure to voters in November that would raise the city’s ticket tax by two percent.
$500,000 for Queen City and Boudinot Recreation areas.


There’s a scenario that is becoming all too common on the battlefield. A soldier, sweating in the unrelenting desert sun, is buried under mounds of gear, both protective and connective.
Although body armor claims the lion’s share of the bulk, the ballistic exoskeleton is far from the only necessity added on to the soldier’s growing gear list. In addition to a Kevlar helmet, water and scopes, personal Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) devices can easily help tip the scale to more than 70 pounds in weight. And troops are finding that all that gear is making for a tight squeeze in military vehicles, which contain more communications gear that clutters dashboards and spaces needed for personnel.
However, that is all about to change.
In the years immediately following the Korean War, the advent of long-range radio transmission of three teletype channels and one voice channel was made possible by a B-52 turbine engine mounted to a truck bed. Despite generations of technological advances, troops are still feeling tethered and weighed down by tactical communications systems.
The story is no different for Marine Corps tactical communications systems, said Capt. John Pico, capabilities integration officer for tactical radios at the Marine Corps Combat Development Command's Combat Development and Integration Division.
Multiband radios now have embedded Global Positioning System and wideband networking capability, which can automatically repeat traffic from neighboring radios to extend the communications range, he said.
“Another important advantage of wideband networks is the ability to extend secure data connectivity to dismounted small unit leaders, giving them the ability to reach back to information databases, interactive maps, e-mail and tactical chat programs,” Pico said. The corps’ most recent fielded radio addition — the AN/PRC-117G — has improved the size and weight of older radios by 35 percent, which has left operating forces wanting more of them, Pico said.
Although network modernization remains a continuous endeavor, Pico said he has his eyes on the needed next step. “The next challenge is to provide more capable tactical handheld radios that retain a multiband capability but also provides access to wideband networks,” he said. However, the ultimate hurdle is paying for it. “Better equipment costs more money, and the funding looks tight in the near future,” Pico said.
Military engineers agree that conserving and improving power options for communications goes a long way toward trimming the bulk.
That goal couldn’t come soon enough for the typical soldier who carries between seven to 11 battery types for a 72-hour mission. That battery load alone can total 70 pounds, said CERDEC electrical engineer Christopher Hurley. “And that’s just for a 72-hour mission,” he said, adding that the numbers scale up dramatically for longer missions.
One battery in development is the conformal battery, which soldiers could use to power all their applications. “It will fit the contour of soldier’s body, and it will provide power to all their on board electronics,” Hurley said. Through a hub power manager, soldiers would be able to connect all their devices and have one centralized power source. “This is great because it allows the soldier to significantly reduce the amount of batteries they need to carry because they will have one high-power, high-energy conformal battery that will provide power to all their end items for a 72-hour mission,” he said.
The Army has already deployed some conformal batteries to Afghanistan for research and development, and future programs are slated to further develop the chemistry that is going into these batteries.
Solar panels continue to be the darling of alternative military powering solutions, and some troops are deploying with the Rucksack Enhanced Portable Power System, which provides a power supply for small laptops and sensors. The team at CERDEC is also developing a biological battery that would use table sugar, which is already in the logistics supply chain, to fuel low-power sensors and recharge small batteries, such as AA batteries. That technology could be ready for the field in a year.
“The key to the soldiers is to have many adapters so that the soldiers can use those adapters to power their system with whatever power source he has available — AC, DC, vehicular, solar or lithium battery,” Casanova said.
Streamlining vehicle communications through open architecture is an opportunity to battle the critical size, weight and power issues that have emerged from rapid acquisition of command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, one Army official said.
Inside typical military vehicles, “there’s not an awful lot of room for the soldier and his equipment,” she said. “We’ve got boxes all over the place. Not only does he have a cluttered work environment, there’s redundant equipment,” which adds to the complexity of the space. Then there are the second-order effects. The redundant systems add weight to the vehicle, which becomes a huge unanticipated power draw that has a consequence for vehicle maintenance.
Griffith-Boyle is leading the Victory initiative, or Vehicle Integration for C4ISR/EW Interoperability, which aims to change the way of doing business through common data bus Ethernet networks, shared smart displays and integrated GPS. “We’re going after an architecture owned by the government,” she said. For more than a year, a Victory standards setting body has been working with a group of industry and government representatives to develop a standard specification for all the interfaces inside military vehicles.
In late 2009, Victory achieved its proof of concept when it demonstrated experimental architecture that allowed for the display of a Boomerang shot detection sensor to be distributed throughout a Stryker as opposed to displayed on a single device. It delivered its first standard specification in July.
The Victory initiative highlights a similar problem encountered years ago by car makers, said Isaac Porche, senior engineer and defense analyst at Rand. “What the Army is doing is putting in place what the automotive industry already has — an architecture that allows you to plug in new IT systems, to have your networks talking to each other, and to share data so you don’t have multiple sensors,” Porche said.
Car designers, like military planners, seek to trim down weight that could be added in other spots, he said. “It’s especially true for military vehicles because you don’t want to waste any weight on the inside on electronics when you could be using that for extra armor,” he said. “You have so many different systems, and they’re not combined into one, so every box takes up space.” On top of that, each device creates heat, which in turn creates heating ventilation and air conditioning problems.
Moving toward an open architecture will go a long way in lightening the load off the military’s shoulders through increased competition, Porche said.
The military often finds itself locked into an old system supported by a certain vendor, he said. “That’s never a good situation.” Without competition for system upgrades, the military continuously faces the problem of technological obsolescence, which can push off system improvements for years, he said, pointing to the Vietnam-era SINCGARS radio system. In the civilian world, similar devices could be switched out or upgraded as fast as personal budgets allow.


P&G is a good outfit, but share holders took a serious hit about 2000 - I want to say 40 or 50%. The dividend was not changed, but do you really want to be concentrated in a small number of stocks?
Instead you might look at some broad mutual funds. Ones that come to mind are the Retirement funds or even Vanguard's Wellington. Not very exciting, but it has a long track record and it is diversified.


This booking photo obtained from the Morton County Sheriff's Office in Mandan, N.D., shows Actress Shailene Woodley after her arrest Monday.
BISMARCK, N.D. — Actress Shailene Woodley has been arrested during a protest of the four-state Dakota Access pipeline in southern North Dakota.
Morton County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Rob Keller says the ‘‘Divergent’’ star was arrested Monday for criminal trespass and engaging in a riot during a protest at a construction site that involved about 300 people.
Both charges are misdemeanors that carry a maximum punishment of 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine. Woodley’s publicist did not immediately comment.
Keller says 27 people were arrested during protests at two construction sites that prompted the shutdown of a state highway for several hours. No injuries were reported.
The $3.8 billion pipeline is being built by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners and will cross through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.


When both of my favorite "foodie" type people e-mailed me in less than a week to rave about Lime Leaf, I could barely wait to get over there. They are never wrong - at least about food - so on a recent evening, hubby and I headed to the Tinseltown area for dinner.
Now, "charm" is not the word that comes to mind when I describe this part of Southside Boulevard, but the new Tapestry Park development has it in spades, with brick streets and tasteful shops just waiting for tenants.
Another winner is Lime Leaf itself. While a debate went on over dinner about the acoustics in the tiled space - it was very loud - everyone had good things to say about both the service and the food.
The kitchen got a head start, with experienced owners and chefs from a popular Thai restaurant on Baymeadows making this their new home. They are clearly on solid ground here, and it shows.
We started with the Chicken Satay ($7.95). While the large chicken strips were tasty, the crisp cucumber salad and peanut dipping sauce completely elevated this simple dish. Another table-pleaser was the Crab Rangoons ($7.95). The crab was plentiful, but a winning addition of curry and chives put these little morsels over the top. We split on the Fried Spring Rolls ($7.50), with one diner complaining that they weren't crispy enough. I found them to be delicious, with fresh vegetables and a nice kick of black pepper.
Dinners ranged from very good to fantastic with the Drunken Noodles ($14.95) being the table favorite. The rice noodles were stir-fried with egg, sweet red bell peppers, mushrooms, jalapenos, cashews, spicy chili sauce and plenty of Thai sweet basil.
I also enjoyed a dish called "The Amazing" ($14.95). My chicken was simmered in a coconut milk and a peanut curry sauce before being spooned over fresh spinach. Steamed broccoli adds color and plenty of crunch to what may be my new favorite Thai meal.
The Massamun Curry with Beef ($17.95) came with fork-tender potatoes, while the Thai Fried Rice ($14.95) was fragrant with jasmine rice and chunks of fresh crabmeat. The Lime Leaf Seafood Special ($25.95) was a delicious take on a sweet Thai chili dish, and the bowl was overflowing with large shrimp, scallops, crab claws, squid and mussels.
Worth noting: This place does not skimp on anything. When they say "seafood," they mean it - and you won't leave hungry.
Once again, my foodie friends were right. Lime Leaf is now near the top of my list for Thai food in Jacksonville.


Who: The Hemsley sisters – Jasmine, 35, and Melissa, 29, with the fringe – are the only ones of our healthy cooks who eat meat and they don’t do it by halves. Their first cookbook, The Art of Eating Well, features roasted bone marrow, osso buco and a hunking great steak, fried in ghee or duck fat and served with a mustard leek sauce. In fact, you have to read many of their recipes very closely to realise they have any connection with eating virtuously. Hemsley & Hemsley do fried chicken, just with almonds in place of breadcrumbs and oven-baked; their shepherd’s pie is topped with cauliflower mash.
Since 2012, the sisters have blogged for the Vogue website; The Art of Eating Well, published last summer, has scarcely left the top 10 lists. “We’re really meat and two veg,” explains Jasmine, a former model, with a smile – it’s just the veg is likely to be rainbow coleslaw or carrots twirled through a spiraliser.
Word, however, of her exotic packed lunches spread, and in 2010 Jasmine began to prepare meals for private clients, mainly in fashion and entertainment. She soon had so much work that she brought in Melissa, who was then working in marketing for a chain of gastropubs. They share all duties now, although Jasmine likes to bake while Melissa takes the lead on curries.
This is a refreshing summer salad with cucumber noodles and Asian flavours. And it is the perfect way to use up leftover chicken. If you have no leftover chicken, serve instead with a little fish or sliced seared beef. We love raw chopped pak choi, but you can substitute with Chinese-style cabbage or finely shredded English cabbage. Eat this within a few hours as the cucumber will start to get watery, or make everything else up in advance and prepare the cucumber noodles just before serving.
If you’re taking this for lunch, pack the chicken first, then arrange all the veg on top so they don’t get squashed, and take your dressing in a separate jar.
Gently toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan until fragrant. Use a spiraliser or julienne peeler to make the cucumber noodles. Or use a regular vegetable peeler to slice the cucumbers lengthways into wide pappardelle-style ribbons. You might want to cut the long, spiralised strands in half to make them easier to eat.
Prepare the dressing by whisking together all the ingredients in a bowl or shaking them together in a jam jar. Add the lettuce, pak choi, spring onion and coriander to a bowl. Pour over the dressing and mix everything together.
Plate up with some shredded chicken, and top with toasted sesame seeds and the red chilli, if using. Serve immediately.
No leftover chicken? Just roast 2 large chicken thighs at fan 200C/gas mark 6 for 25-30 minutes until cooked, then shred quickly with two forks to cool the meat quickly.
Who: Deliciously Ella is, simply, the food-publishing phenomenon of 2015. Four years ago, 23-year-old Ella Woodward was a university student who couldn’t cook. Really, scarcely boil an egg: “I hated fruit, I hated vegetables, I’d never eaten brown rice and I lived off pick ’n’ mix,” she says. Now her recipe collection, Deliciously Ella, which came out in January, is the fastest-selling debut cookbook ever, spending six weeks at No 1 in the charts. Her blog receives 6 million hits a month and she has 400,000 followers on Instagram. Not bad for someone who has never cooked in a restaurant and has no TV presence.
Woodward’s food is unfussy, mostly quick to prepare and generous. She avoids labels such as vegan – she doesn’t touch meat, dairy, gluten or sugar herself, but unlike some others featured here, she is happy to include pasta or rice (very occasionally) in her recipes. “It’s just about trying to put the vegetable in the middle of the dish,” she explains. But perhaps the main reason for Deliciously Ella’s success is Woodward’s own story: she suffered from postural tachycardia syndrome, which can cause debilitating nausea, dizziness and blurred vision. She was laid up in bed for almost a year and says her change in diet – along with exercise – has been a key part of her recovery.
How she got started: Rock bottom for Woodward came when she took a trip to Morocco with her boyfriend before her illness had been diagnosed. The trip lasted less than 24 hours before she had to return home on a drip with food poisoning.
These brownies have consistently been the most popular recipe on my blog. And there’s a good reason for all this love – the brownies are divine. I know it sounds strange to put vegetables into sweet dishes, but sweet potatoes taste more like dessert anyway and they create the gooiest consistency.
If you don’t have any raw cacao powder, then you can use conventional cocoa powder, but you’ll need to at least double the quantity.
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Peel the sweet potatoes. Cut them into chunks and place into a steamer for about 20 minutes, until they become really soft.
Once they are perfectly soft and beginning to fall apart, remove them and add them to a food processor with the pitted dates. Blend until a smooth, creamy mix forms.
Put the remaining ingredients into a bowl, before mixing in the sweet potato and date combination. Stir well.
Place the mix into a lined baking dish and cook for about 20-30 minutes, until you can pierce the brownie cake with a fork and bring it out dry.
Remove the tray and allow it to cool for about 10 minutes. This is really important, as the brownies need this time to stick together.
Who: Jones, 36, was a chef long before she became a vegetarian or had much interest at all in healthy eating – and it shows. In the introduction to her 2014 book, A Modern Way to Eat, she explained that “flavour, above anything else, informs my cooking”: that’s why if she thinks a recipe needs butter or sugar or white flour – three of the great evils of the new health movement – that’s exactly what she will (sparingly) use.
Jones’s first kitchen job came as part of the original intake at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen project, and after that she worked for another seven years following Oliver around school canteens and America’s most obese towns. Jones clearly learned a lot about creating dazzling yet deceptively simple food, and she has also embraced Oliver’s don’t-be-too-hard-on-yourself mentality. A Modern Way to Eat is, Jones concedes, a grand title – one that is at odds with its modest author. But the book, already on its fifth print run, could be quietly revolutionary. It is vegetarian but so indulgent, unfussy and satisfying that even carnivores will soon forget that fact.
Roasting this wonderful brassica gives a deep savoury flavour and an amazing crunchy texture, not too far away from the Chinese restaurant crispy seaweed of my childhood.
Preheat your oven to 220C/gas mark 7. Halve the tomatoes and place them on a baking tray with some salt and pepper, a good drizzle of olive oil, the zest of both limes and the juice of 1. Roast for 20 minutes, until blistered and golden.
Next, pile the kale on to a baking tray with the coconut. Pour over the soy sauce and toss well until everything is coated. Roast in the oven with the tomatoes for the last 5–10 minutes of their cooking time, until crisp.
Mix all the dressing ingredients in a bowl with the juice of the second lime. Taste and add a little more seasoning or lime juice if needed, letting your taste buds guide you – remember the dressing will be less punchy once it hits the salad.
Pull the kale and tomatoes out of the oven and tumble them into a big bowl. Toss in the miso dressing, adding a little at a time and tasting as you go, and serve still warm.
Who: Sarah Britton lives in Copenhagen and it is tempting to label her food as the new Nordic take on healthy eating. Tempting but probably too simplistic. “Denmark is the land of dairy and pork and potatoes – none of which I eat,” explains Britton, 32, who was born in Toronto. She also points out that she started her blog My New Roots in 2007, a couple of years before she came to Europe, following a Dane, Mikkel, whom she’d met in New York City.
Britton is a graduate of the Institute of Holistic Nutrition in Toronto (she can practise as a nutritionist in Canada, but her qualification is not recognised by the medical community). She cooks mostly with ghee, never olive oil; her recipes are vibrant, heavy on “superfoods” and ruthlessly seasonal. Her recent cookbook, also called My New Roots, is in fact divided into five seasons: after working on a farm – and in common with the Chinese – she splits summer into “early” and “late”.
Britton decided to leave her job and concentrate on My New Roots. Steadily, her readership grew and then one day a recipe launched the site into the “blog stratosphere”… The Life-Changing Loaf of Bread is a dense, chewy loaf of nuts, seeds and gluten-free rolled oats bound together by psyllium seed husks. Since it originally appeared in February 2013, the post has received 1,500 comments.
Sprouting wild rice is a simple and delicious way to enjoy this amazing food completely raw. The process of sprouting wild rice is called “blooming” because the seeds actually unfold, very much like little petals, revealing the pale, tender insides. It’s a really fun thing to watch, however slowly, and it’s groovy to eat something you’ve seen transform over a few days.
This salad combines fresh springtime tastes and textures, all sauced up with a delicious dressing featuring bright lemon and spicy mustard. The herbs add the final layer of flavour, making this a salad that truly tastes alive! Because the rice is sprouted, it is very sweet, requiring salt in the salad – make sure to season it well to suit your own taste.
Rinse the rice well, put it in a glass jar or bowl, and cover with fresh, pure water. Let it soak on the countertop overnight. In the morning, drain and rinse the rice; then cover it again with fresh water and put the jar in the fridge. Drain and rinse the rice at least twice per day for 2 to 3 days, until it has “bloomed” when it should be tender enough to eat. Drain and rinse and put it in a large bowl.
Whisk the olive oil, mustard, lemon zest and juice, and maple syrup together in a small bowl, adding a few pinches of sea salt. Pour half of the dressing over the rice and fold to coat. Stir the raw peas, chickpeas, carrots, and herbs into the rice.
In a dry frying pan over a medium heat, toast the pistachios until golden and fragrant, about 5 minutes (be careful not to burn them). Add the toasted nuts to the salad. Pour the remaining dressing over and fold to combine. Serve.