The nation's second largest mobile carrier, AT&T, went on the offensive Wednesday, claiming it would not be breaching so-called net neutrality rules by limiting the iPhone's FaceTime video calling on cellular networks to users with new, shared data plans.
AT&T will make the video-chat service available on its cellular network for those with generally more expensive, shared data plans, which the company unveiled last month. (There are some configurations where the shared plan is less expensive for the same service for individuals).
To date, Apple's FaceTime has worked only over Wi-Fi, but Apple is changing that, opening the Skype-like service to function over cellular connections. The change comes when Apple's newest mobile-phone operating system debuts in September, likely the same time the next generation of the iPhone lands.
An AT&T spokeswoman, speaking on background, disputed it was using cellular FaceTime as a "premium" feature, but acknowledged the company was using it as a lever to get users to switch over to the new plans which charge for data usage in tiers.
Bob Quinn, an AT&T senior vice president, said the main reason why there is no breach of the Federal Communications Commission's net-neutrality rules is because the FaceTime application comes pre-installed.
"The FCC's net neutrality rules do not regulate the availability to customers of applications that are preloaded on phones," he said in a blog post. He said AT&T is not blocking the app, but that it reserves the right to enforce "some reasonable restrictions" to manage expected traffic congestion of the data-hogging app.
Digital rights groups scoffed at the suggestion.
"AT&T is inventing words that are not in the FCC's rules in a weak attempt to justify its blocking of FaceTime," said S. Derek Turner, research director for Free Press. "The FCC's rules are crystal clear: AT&T is not permitted to block voice or video telephony applications that compete with its own services. There is simply nothing in the rules that distinguishes 'preloaded' applications from 'downloaded' applications."
John Bergmayer, a staff attorney with Public Knowledge, said FCC rules "prevent carriers from blocking certain kinds of apps – period. AT&T is blocking FaceTime for all of its iPhone customers who do not subscribe to its premium 'Mobile Shared' plans, and this runs afoul of the rules."
The regulations do allow for certain kinds of mobile network management during periods of congestion, but these cannot unfairly target services that compete with the carriers' own services.
Quinn added that "customers will continue to be able to use FaceTime over Wi-Fi" regardless of their data plans.
"We are broadening our customers' ability to use the preloaded version of FaceTime but limiting it in this manner to our newly developed AT&T Mobile Share data plans out of an overriding concern for the impact this expansion may have on our network and the overall customer experience."
AT&T shared data plans allow customers to share as much as 20 gigabytes of data use among multiple devices, and include unlimited texting and talking.
Apple's FaceTime app allows live video conversations between users of Apple devices.
At issue are new net neutrality rules that went into effect in November.
The rules prohibit DSL and cable companies from unfairly blocking services they don't like and require them to be transparent about how they manage their networks during times of congestion.
Mobile carriers like AT&T and Verizon face fewer rules, but are banned from interfering with alternate calling services such as Skype that compete with the carriers' services.
The nation's largest carrier, Verizon, which has remained mum on its FaceTime plans, is already suing the FCC over the rules. A federal appeals court struck down a previous FCC attempt to enforce similar principles against Comcast after the cable internet provider was caught secretly interfering with peer-to-peer file sharing.
Sprint, which strives to differentiate itself from Verizon and AT&T by stressing its unlimited usage plan, has said it would not charge for cellular FaceTime use. T-Mobile, the smallest of the Big Four carriers, does not carry the iPhone.


I still want to cut. Sometimes I feel so awful and in pain that I just- want to do something to stop it. And to punish myself for having it in the first place. I have a hard time crying- it doesnt come naturally to me anymore... and Ive found that thoughts of self harm have taken its place.
So. Sometimes I want to cut or just- hurt myself extremely. Wont go into more details because I dont want to trigger anyone... but its been years and years since Ive self harmed and it just makes me a little sad that I still think about it sometimes. I feel broken.
I don't know how to cry instead of cut either. I'm sorry. HUGS. But we are here, listening and caring.


If you're tired of city hassles but love the convenience, come see this spacious 3 bedroom, 2 bath home just minutes away from town situated on over half acre lot. Home features include split bedroom plan, large living room with cathedral ceilings, open kitchen and dining area, 12x12 deck over looking large fenced in back yard, 2 car garage with lots of storage, tile and hardwood flooring throughout. Move in ready condition.... This home is a must see!


ATLANTA, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Philadelphia got another huge performance from lefthander Randy Wolf Tuesday night when he and Jose Mesa combined on a three-hitter and Bobby Abreu and Scott Rolen homered as the Phillies stunned the Atlanta Braves in the opener of their critical series, 3-1.
The Phillies closed within one game of the Braves in the National League East. The teams play two more games at Turner Field, but this might have been the most difficult pitching matchup for Philadelphia as they went with Wolf against four-time Cy Young Award winner Greg Maddux.
Banished from the rotation at midseason, Wolf missed nearly the entire month of August with a sprained left ankle. But in his last seven starts, Wolf is 4-1 with a 1.68 ERA.
His latest outing was a gem in which he bested the pitcher with the most wins in the major leagues since 1991. Wolf allowed an unearned run, three singles and a walk. He struck out five and took a 2-1 lead into the ninth.
After Rolen homered in the top of the ninth, Mesa needed just nine pitches in the bottom of the inning to notch his 40th save in 44 opportunities.
Maddux allowed Abreu's two-run homer in the fourth. The veteran righthander allowed six hits without a walk over eight innings but remained winless since August 22. That seven-start stretch is the longest without a win for Maddux since June 11-July 11, 1991, when he was with the Chicago Cubs.


EA Sports have released four phenomenal Ultimate Team Icon cards but you'll be lucky to earn any of them.
Every Icon has three cards and the 'prime' cards are the ones with the highest rating. The prime Icons for Thierry Henry, Rio Ferdinand, Roberto Carlos and Gheorghe Hagi are now available in packs and in new, permanent Squad Builder Challenges.
However, the requirements for these challenges are ridiculous and the if you are somehow able to earn the card, it will be untradeable.
Apart from Hagi, the new Squad Builder Challenges require you to trade in a different icon as one of the many challenges. All of the Squad Builder Challenges include the requirement to trade in squads with a rating of 87 however, Henry also requires an 88 and 89 rated squad on top.
It's going to take a lot of work (or money spent on packs) if you want to get your hands on that glorious, 93-rated Henry card. If you want to buy him straight up on the market he will cost you a preposterous 6million coins!
Unsurprisingly, Romanian legend Hagi is the cheapest out of the four on the market but will still set you back around 1.4million coins.
90 rating... now we’re getting there @easportsfifa! Get my Prime ICON now in #FIFA18 Ultimate Team!
With 83 pace and 91 defending, his prime Icon card is one of the best available - there's very little reason to complain. But if he really is that fussy, then he can add the 'anchor' chemistry style which transforms his card into an absolute machine.
His pace was already good for a centre-back but with anchor card that gets upgraded to 90 - making Ferdinand quicker in-game than Lionel Messi!
It also increases his defending to 98, meaning he'll almost never miss a tackle.


Then tragedy struck. Mac unexpectedly died only a month before the store’s 10th anniversary last June, on the last day of their one-week vacation.
Despite her grief and fear of facing the future without her life partner, Mary continued on.
Miraculously she and a former math student, Jessica, promoted to store manager, made it work. They were ready in the fall for the next semester’s book-buying rush. Mary never considered closing the business — she felt she owed it to Mac to keep the shop going, continuing his dream.
It all paid off June 4 when Campus Books was honored with a Small Business of the Year Award. Mary accepted in tears.
The perseverance and sheer guts it takes to make a small business successful was evident in many of the finalists and award winners. If they faced an obstacle, they found a way around it. If their efforts failed, they came up with new ideas. They made it work.
And so did the 13 public and private companies in Manatee and Sarasota counties listed in the just-released list of top companies in the state by Florida Trend Magazine.
The top four public companies on the list from Manatee/Sarasota are No. 26 Roper Industries with a revenue of $2.3 billion in the production of industrial equipment and components; No. 61 Gevity, the professional employer organization which just merged with Tri-Net of California; No. 90 Sun Hydraulics, an hydraulic equipment manufacturer with $178.3 million in revenue; and No. 136 Teltronics, with $34.6 million in revenue.
The nine private companies making the list included No. 20 Bealls, No. 27 Boar’s Head Provisions, No. 49 FCCI Insurance Group, No. 58 Progressive Employer Services, No. 99 W.G. Mills general contractor, No. 117 Clockwork Home Services, No. 159 Dental Care Alliance, a dental practice management company, No. 164 Kellogg & Kimsey, general contractors, and DooleyMack Constructors, No. 190.
I’d say we had a good representation from our two-county area. Although some of the companies reported drops in revenues and profits, they had the tenacity to hang in there and persevere.


Woodmore finished third in the league tournament Tuesday at the Green Hills Golf Course. The Wildcats were led by Austin Berkel who shot an 84 and earned first team All-NBC honors. Mitchell Miller shot an 89 and earned second team All-NBC honors and teammates Zach Schmeltz (86) and Jay Connor (87) earned honorable mention.
Kyle Geary led Bellevue in a league triangular match, carding a 39 at Sleepy Hollow Golf Course. Noah Lawson shot a 40, Cody Snyder shot a 44 and Drew Erdmann and Joe Wetten both shot 45s.


Fishing at Pyramid is better from a boat or tube.
FRENCHMAN LAKE: Lake is fully open. Mountain Hardware, Truckee 530-587-4844.
LAKE DAVIS: The lake is 95 percent full and fully open. No ice. Fly-fishing at Coot Bay produced seven fish in an hour using Copper John under indicator 2 feet. Grasshopper Cove should be fishing good as well. Lightning Tree boat ramp is accessible and useable. Coot Bay and Mallard Cove are accessible, but watch out for the tire eating potholes at Mallard Cove. Mountain Hardware, Truckee 530-587-4844.
TRUCKEE RIVER: The Truckee is running hard with flows coming out of Lake Tahoe at 895 CFS. By the time it gets to Boca Bridge it is 2,600 CFS and on the Nevada side in Reno it is 2,500 CFS. These flows are way too high for most anglers to have any success on the river and it can be dangerous to try and wade in these conditions. Reno Fly Fishing Outfitters, 775-742-1754.
PYRAMID LAKE: The water temps are coming up fast and the fish are cruising, looking to spawn. This is a tough year to fish Pyramid Lake. Popular beaches are still closed to the public and the shelves are buried around the hatchery, due to the rapid rise in the lake levels last year. The last time Pyramid had conditions like this was 2006-07. Going back to fishing reports from that year, anglers were doing a lot more fishing from the lake. Boats, float tubes and pontoon boats were being used to get anglers out over the shelves and a lot of the best fishing was in 10-13-feet of water. April is shaping up to resemble that same pattern. On less windy days, this could be the ticket to catch more fish.
On windy, stormy days, the fish will start to come up over the shelves into shallow water and that has been the case so far this year. As crowded as the lake is this year due to the closures and no shelves, this will also give anglers more room to spread out and fish. Maholo Midges fished under an indicator have been the most effective as always in the spring. Other flies to have for a floating line set-up are Pyramid Lake Balanced Leeches in size 8 and Maholo Nymphs in size 12. If you are thinking about fishing in deeper water, a deep-water indicator leader is also a good thing to have. For shooting head set-ups, Martini Olive Wooly’s, Midnight Cowboy’s and Loco Tadpoles are all good choices. Reno Fly Fishing Outfitters, 775-742-1754.
EAST WALKER RIVER: Flows on the East Walker have finally come down to fishable levels on both the California and Nevada sides, and 165 CFS is a great number for any time of year. The river is making a quick comeback after the drought two years ago and the fishing is improving. The best reports are from anglers fishing on the California side and also the upper Nevada side. The warmer weather has the fish active and looking up. Dry dropper set-ups fished in slower water near main channels are a great way to go. Nymphing in the deeper pools is also turning some fish. This is a great time of year to be on the East Walker, the weather is great and everything is starting to grow. Keep an eye on the flows as they can change and shoot up again at any time. Renoflyfishingoutfitters.com 775-742-1754.
BOCA: Out-flows have increased to 864 CFS below dam. Some people have been able to launch boats from the shore at the inlet. Kokanee fishing has been slow as water temps are 45 degrees. Fishermen will find most of the fish at the dam or at the north end of the lake to the last riffle of the Little Truckee River (special regs exist here so read up on the rules). Great fishing for the Cutthroat and Rainbows from shore with the occasional Brown thrown in. With steady flows coming out of the LT, fish won’t be so apt to venture up the river, but one will find that some spawning fish will return to the lake. Mountain Hardware, Truckee 530-587-4844.


Reality TV star Kim Kardashian ditched her blonde locks for her usual and darker hue.
The 'Keeping Up With the Kardashians' star stepped out in Los Angeles on February 2 to show her new hair colour, reported E! Online.
Kim, along with her sisters Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner were spotted leaving Naimie's Beauty Center, with the 32-year-old mother of one looked fab in a gray crop top, and a high-waist skirt.
Kanye West's fiancee first debuted her blonde hair last September, while heading to a friend's barbecue in Beverly Hills.


The 108th rural show has something for everyone. Kids will love the junior farmer competition, petting farm, big dig, bouncy castles and free swimming at the Taihape Swim Centre.
There is plenty to do for grown-ups too like craft and food stalls, vintage display, wood chopping and shearing events. Home Industries will be there to at the Utiku Rugby Club rooms.
15 years and under are free.
Gumboot Throwing will also be happening at this year's A and P Show from 10 am to 2 pm. Come along and have a go, all ages are welcome. The top six men and six women go through to compete in the North Island championships which will be happening from 2.30pm.


A DIY machine uses sound vibrations to make sketches.
Interactive sound artist Ranjit Bhatnagar’s Sketching Device #1 is an art machine that is able to draw pictures using sound. The device is made from acrylic, Teflon and speakers that transmit low-frequency vibrations through a writing surface to guide a pen in any direction to make sketches on the surface.
sketching device #1 from ranjit on Vimeo.


Struggling Devils goalie Cory Schneider is expected to be back in action this week after a long layoff with an injury.
NEWARK -- Cory Schneider, a diehard Boston sports fan, would rather talk about the Super Bowl than having reporters ask him for maybe the millionth time in the last year how his body feels.
For the record, Schneider said he feels great physically after returning from an abdominal strain.
Schneider returned to Newark after at the conclusion of an American Hockey League conditioning assignment with a guarantee that he will make a start in at least one of the Devils’ four home games this week.
It’s been a long road back for Schneider, who is having the worst season of his career and trying to reestablish himself after offseason hip surgery and now the ab injury. It’s unclear whether or not the ab injury stemmed from the hip injury, but what is clear is that Schneider, who is 0-7-1 in nine games this season with a .852 save percentage and a 4.66 GAA, is ready to prove he’s still capable of winning hockey games.
The results in Binghamton weren’t great on paper, but Devils’ goalie coach Roland Melanson was very encouraged by what he saw on film from his five starts. Schneider himself thought his fundamentals were strong, his footwork was good and he was making the saves he needed to make.
Schneider is unsure why he struggled with letting in early goals in Binghamton, although a source said the team didn’t exactly defend well in front of him in a few of those games. But he acknowledges that’s been a problem since late in 2017 and it’s a problem he’s still trying to find an answer to.
That could almost be the mantra for Schneider right now as he attempts to battle back and recover from all that has plagued his body and his game this season and last. Schneider isn’t going to deny that this season hasn’t been tough for him mentally and physically, but he’s also not about to ask for sympathy.
He wants to get back to his old self and everyone around him sees him trying to do so.
General manager Ray Shero has taken a personal interest in the status of Schneider, having several one-on-one conversations with the goalie throughout the season and during this latest rehab period. The organization made sure he and his family had all they needed while he was in Binghamton and they remain committed to a tandem of Schneider and Kinkaid right now.
Schneider is in a good spot with a long-term contract and a no-trade clause. He’s owed $6 million in each of the next three seasons. With Mackenzie Blackwood knocking at the door, it’s Kinkaid who may be feeling the heat as the Feb. 25 trade deadline approaches.
But Schneider is still putting pressure on himself to return to his old form. The Devils want him to know that they believe in him and they hope he believes in himself as well.


From top: Carlos Gonzalez Jr., Isaac Jauregui-Ramos and Andres Valdez.
A Hailey man who was stabbed Monday evening in Hailey has been released from a Boise hospital. Meanwhile, Hailey police are keeping a close watch on the Balmoral apartment complex in the Woodside neighborhood because of the possibility of further violence between feuding neighbors.
Hailey Police Chief Jeff Gunter said stabbing victim 26-year-old Christian Aguirre was back in Hailey on Wednesday, where he was interviewed by police regarding the Monday night incident in a parking lot and commons area at Balmoral. Aguirre, who suffered a knife wound in the lower back, was flown by air ambulance to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center in Boise following the incident that occurred shortly before 9 p.m.
Gunter said police have been to the apartment complex several times since the incident. On Tuesday evening, they investigated a complaint from 26-year-old Kimberly Martinez, a woman who police reports describe as Aguirre’s “significant other.” Gunter said Martinez, fearing possible reprisal, called police after someone knocked on her door. Gunter said police responded to the call but whoever knocked was no longer there.
“We’re keeping a close eye on the situation,” Gunter said.
Martinez, who is pregnant, was also injured in the fight and was treated and released at St. Luke’s Wood River hospital. According to a probable-cause affidavit filed by Hailey Lt. Steve England, Martinez was trying to break up the fight when she was allegedly punched in the face and choked by Isaac Jauregui-Ramos, an 18-year-old Gooding resident. England wrote that Jauregui-Ramos stopped his attack on Martinez after she told him she was pregnant.
Jauregui-Ramos is one of three men charged with crimes in the attack on Aguirre and/or Martinez. The others are Carlos Gonzalez Jr., 20, of Gooding, and Andres Valdez, a 21-year-old neighbor of Aguirre and Martinez at the Balmoral complex.
According to court records, all three of the suspects have now been released from the Blaine County jail, Jauregui-Ramos on $10,000 bond, Gonzalez on $25,000 bond and Valdez on $25,000 bond.
Preliminary hearings for all three defendants are scheduled for 9 a.m. on June 11 before magistrate Judge R. Ted Israel, who will determine following the hearings whether sufficient evidence exists to order further prosecution at the higher district court level.
All three defendants have been provided with public defenders, Jauregui-Ramos with Ketchum attorney Andrew Parnes, Gonzalez with the Roark Law Firm, comprised of Hailey attorneys Keith Roark and Douglas Nelson, and Valdez with Hailey attorney Douglas Werth.
England reported that Valdez was charged earlier in May with four misdemeanor crimes for alleged harassment of Aguirre and his friend Erik Munoz, who also lives at Balmoral. According to court records, Valdez faces two counts of disturbing the peace, one count of battery and one count of unlawful entry for incidents involving Aguirre and Munoz on May 7.
England wrote that Monday night’s fight erupted after Valdez and Aguirre began yelling at each other and making challenges and threats. England reported that Gonzalez, who is accused of stabbing Aguirre, and Jauregui-Ramos became involved to help their friend Valdez.


AKRON, Ohio — Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past three years, you’ve probably heard about LeBron’s famous Halloween bashes.
He kills it every year. But, not just with the party … the costumes are epic and generate big-time LOLs.
Then there’s J.R. Smith and his wife, Jewel, as “The Coneheads,” and Kevin Love and his girlfriend, Kate Bock, as pro wrestlers Sting and Hulk Hogan, respectively.
Cavs guard Kyle Korver definitely earned his golden ticket with his spot-on Willy Wonka costume.
Last, but certainly not least: You can blame it on the rain, but you can’t knock the creativity. Well done, Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union, as Milli Vanilli. You get first place in our book.
Oh, and that “lost rehearsal” footage on Instagram? Amazing.


Towson area residents filled the seats – and the aisles – of the Sheppard Pratt Conference Center on May 8 during a community input meeting to discuss the development of a Royal Farms that has been proposed for the corner of York Road and Bosley Avenue.
The proposed development would be located at the former Towson Fire Station and would include a convenience store, a gas station with 12 pumps and two retail and restaurant buildings.
Community members in attendance raised questions and concerns about the project to representatives from the Baltimore County government and the property’s developers, Caves Valley Partners.
The Baltimore County Council passed a resolution approving a Planned Unit Development (PUD) last December, allowing the developers to build a gas station on the property.
Prior to the approval of the PUD, zoning prohibited the construction of gas pumps at the site.
The council approved the PUD in exchange for $50,000 to be used for “community benefits” including improvements to the West Towson Trail, tree planting throughout the West Towson community and two solar-powered speed display signs in the area. However, many residents said that the development itself fails to benefit the community.
Some community members said there is no need for an additional gas station and convenience store because there are currently two other gas stations within a block of the project site and six others within two miles of those stations.
Attendees at the meeting also expressed their fears that the development would negatively impact the environment.
In April, 30 trees on the property were cut down to make room for the new development. Residents complained that the trees that are included in the plan do not provide sufficient shade coverage and are not large enough to fight air pollution from the gas station.
The development’s southern border would face the neighboring Immaculate Conception School. While the current plans depict trees along that border, West Towson resident Karen Camp said those trees do not provide a sufficient buffer.
Vivian Kreller, an Idlewylde resident, is concerned with how the development might increase traffic congestion in the area.
“I feel that it’s already a very densely populated area with a lot of businesses and a lot of gas stations and convenience stores, and there are a lot of communities that would be adversely affected by the amount of traffic that it would create in the area,” she said.
Residents are particularly concerned about traffic congestion that may result from vehicles turning left across Bosley, or crossing Bosley head on from Kenilworth Drive, to enter the development.
According to Caves Valley’s attorney Christopher Mudd, there are currently no plans to build a traffic light at the development’s proposed entrance.
Katrina Kamantauskas-Holder, a West Towson resident, said the development has no value to the local community and could impede pedestrian travel.
Mudd said the developers are listening to the community’s input and have been receptive to some of the concerns that residents have raised in the past, such as furnishing the retaining wall with shrubbery and other landscaping.
Towson resident Mike Ertel is not opposed to the retail portion of the development, but said Towson doesn’t need another gas station because it will cause light pollution.
Ertel, a Towson University alumnus, hopes that students will care about the neighborhood where they live and go to school.


Take That star Gary Barlow gave a Merseyside bride a wedding she'll never forget when he appeared and sang on her big day.
Anita Jayne Morrissey-Booth had just got married to her new husband Alex in Knowsley when the Take That frontman appeared and sang A Million Love Songs at her reception.
It comes after Gary pledged in January that he would sing at three weddings in 2015 and since then has stayed true to his word.


TAIPEI: A Cathay Dragon flight from Taiwan to Hong Kong made an emergency landing at the city it departed from after experiencing a “technical issue” shortly after take-off, the carrier said.
Cathay Pacific, the parent company of Cathay Dragon, said flight KA451 from Kaohsiung to Hong Kong made an “air return” and landed safely back at Kaohsiung.
An official with Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said the emergency was caused by a “technical failure on one of the engines” and denied Taiwanese media reports that the plane had hit a bird.
The official, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak with media, added an investigation was now under way.


A new report shows that there's little correlation between ranking well in YouTube search and doing the same in Google video carousels.
According to a new report released by RankRanger, a good ranking in YouTube search doesn’t guarantee that a video will also rank well in the video carousel in Google search, and vice versa.
This study clearly showed that the YouTube search ranking algorithm is significantly different from the algorithm that Google search uses for videos in the video carousels.
This confirms a past belief that YouTube and Google search are handled separately and that having a well-ranked video on YouTube might not result in your video ranking well in Google search.
You can learn more about this study and the data, with a lot more examples, at RankRanger.


The Obama administration pursuit of the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers is akin to McCarthyism at its worst or Richard Nixon’s enemies list, former Solicitor General Theodore Olson has charged.
And it’s all because Charles and David Koch are an attractive punching bag for the left due to their public stances promoting liberty and free enterprise, Olson said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article.
“How would you feel if aides to the president of the United States singled you out by name for attack, and if you were featured prominently in the president's re-election campaign as an enemy of the people?” Olson asked.
Olson said government attacks on private citizens should be resisted by all. “If a journalist, labor-union leader or community organizer on the left can be targeted today, an academic or business person on the right can be the target tomorrow.
“If we fail to stand up against oppression from one direction, we abdicate the moral authority to challenge it when it comes from another.
“The misuse of government power to damage or demean one's political enemies is abhorrent and the very antithesis of a free society and a government of laws, not men. It is time for the public to ask those engaged in these practices, 'Have you no sense of decency?"


The advance tax for heavy vehicles in Jaipur for the year 2018-19 will be deposited online until March 25, an official said on Wednesday.
“For the first time, advance tax for heavy vehicles will be deposited online,” said Jaipur regional transport officer Kalpana Agarwal.
The advance tax for heavy vehicles contribute more than ₹100 crore to the department, which is around 59% of the target for the month of March that is ₹ 170 crore, and more than 11% of the annual target of the Jaipur regional transport office of ₹869 crore for 2017-18, she said.
She further said that until last year, the advance tax was being deposited manually due to which there were a number of problems.
If truck driver deposited the advance tax and lost the receipt then he had to get the details from where he had deposited the tax, due which lot of time and manpower is wasted, she said.
Now, by depositing the advance tax online, the tax will automatically show in the account of the vehicle owners and amount will get deposited in the transport office and in the district from where the vehicle is registered, Agarwal said.
While getting a fitness certificate, the driver has to show the receipt of the advance tax deposited and then only the fitness certificate is issued and now it being online, the receipt can be easily found on the system.
The truck owner or driver can easily deposit the advance tax online even on holidays through the e-GRAS (online government receipts accounting system) and through internet banking.
Additional counters have been opened at Jhalana Dungari, Jagatpura, Vidyadhar Nagar, Transport Nagar union office and Jai Shankar Transport Company at Gajsinghpura so that truck owners do not face any problem in depositing the advance tax, the RTO said.
Agarwal said that tax collection will not be done manually or offline under any condition and appealed truck owners to deposit the tax before March 25, so that they do not face any problem.
Advance tax is charged as per the cost of the vehicle that ranges between ₹25,000 and ₹ 35,000 for each heavy vehicle every year, she said, adding that classification of heavy vehicle is determined based on the gross vehicle weight, which range from 16,200kgs to 49,200kgs.
There are approximately 40,000 trucks in the Jaipur RTO area.


If you've got a well-organised contacts book, our hats are tipped in your direction. Keeping track of hundreds of people across dozens of sites and services is no easy task, and it seems strange that no one's quite cracked the formula for getting all this information sorted out. Here are four apps taking on the challenge.
Most of the places that store contacts — Google, iCloud, Outlook — let you import and export them, so there is the option of cobbling together one master list from all your different platforms. However, here we've focused on apps that do a lot of the hard work for you and offer some level of cross-platform sync to keep everything in order.
FullContact promises that "all your contacts are in one place and automatically up to date" — which sounds good to us — and you can sign in with a Google account if a lot of your contacts are already stored there (you can also use an email address to register).
Once you're in, you get the option to add all of your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn contacts to the mix as well — that will either terrify you or be exactly what you were looking for, depending on just how tidy you keep these networks. You can manually import data from images, vCards and CSV files too.
FullContact has some neat features, such as the way scanned business cards are transcribed by hand by the app's staff, and the public data that can be pulled in from the web about the people in your address book. Tagging is a neat way of splitting your contacts into smaller groups.
We found the duplicate spotting to be a bit hit-and-miss, but doing the task manually isn't too laborious. It's great to be able to mine Facebook for contact pictures rather than having to do it yourself. The web interface is slick and easy to navigate and the search feature works well.
A basic account on FullContact is free — that gives you room for up to 5,000 contacts, once-a-day syncing with Google, and monthly contact updates. Pay $US9.99 a month and you get 25,000 contacts, real-time syncing with Google, and daily contact updates. There's an iOS app out now, and Mac OS X and Android apps are in the pipeline.
Brewster starts off by using your Google contacts as its backbone before giving you the opportunity to import more information from services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (we've previously spoken very highly about the service, and its got better since then).
Brewster takes its time processing your contacts and when it emerges out the other end you'll find a sparse report on the state of your address book. Beyond a basic people search, it doesn't actually give you access to your contacts on the web or on iOS, it just syncs everything back to your Google account.
And Google being Google, that means all of your newly improved contacts are available just about everywhere. By connecting to your friends and colleagues on Brewster itself, you can make sure you always have their most up-to-date contact information (and that they have yours in return).
A lot of the magic of Brewster happens behind the scenes as it picks out the relevant information from each profile, merges contacts together and so on. It's perfect if you want to relinquish all control of your contacts management and let everything be taken out of your hands. It's less appealing if you want to be able to tinker and tweak yourself.
Brewster is completely free to use and there are apps available for iOS and Android (you don't actually need them if you're already syncing all your Google contacts to these devices). Having little control over the two-way sync is a little unnerving, but some are going to find it fits their needs perfectly.
Cloze draws you in with the tempting offer of a "no-work way to see everything about your contacts in one place." Right off the bat you'll be prompted to add Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and once you've jumped through these hoops you can import contacts from Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Outlook.com, Yahoo and iCloud too.
Cloze takes a few minutes (or hours) to chew through all of the contact data you've imported, working out how often you communicate with each person in your network. When you're in, you get to the inbox — this holds recent email messages and mentions on social networks. You can sort the inbox by date or by person (so people you interact with most often appear higher).
The Contacts section lets you quickly search for people based on name, location, job title and so on (assuming Cloze has been apple to import this data from your networks). There are filters and sorting options to play around with and you can add people to customised lists.
Each contact pane shows social updates, a timeline displaying recent interactions, related people and your relationship strength with the person in question. Cloze not only unifies all of your contacts, it helps you intelligently sort through them based on their importance.
There's an iOS app and an Android app in beta. Cloze Pro removes all of the various API limits and includes bonuses like follow-up reminders and smart context profiles automatically calculated by the app. It costs $US19.99 per month but you can sign up for a 14-day free trial to see if you're going to find it useful.
Zoho is an impressive online suite of tools that holds its own against the might of Google Drive, OneDrive and iCloud, but even if you don't use any of the company's other online apps, ContactManager is definitely worth a look. It provides a centralised database for all your contacts, and also links in tasks, notes and emails accordingly.
Sign up for Zoho ContactManager and you can import contacts from a CSV file, Gmail, LinkedIn or Outlook (note the business angle here?). It's not quite as slick as some of its rivals but once you're up and running, you can link individual contacts to their Facebook and Twitter profiles and get updates right within the app.
There's the ability to find and merge contacts, but Zoho gives you more control over the process than most of its rivals, and you can add your own sets of customised tags to make it easier to switch between different groups. Tasks and deals can be added on a contact-by-contact basis if you're using the contact manager professionally.
The online interface of ContactManager has recently been given a refresh: It's clean and tidy and chunky, and most of the options you need are easily found. It's perhaps not as dynamic and interactive as some of the other apps here, but if you want to dive deep into your contacts management then this Zoho offering won't disappoint.
A free account gives you 500 contact slots to play around with, but you can up that to 10,000 contacts for $US15 every month or an unlimited number for $US25 every month (you know, if you really need to do some serious networking). There are no mobile apps, though — everything is accessed through the web.


Add strong and gusty winds to the list of wild weather conditions impacting the London region lately.
After days of Londoners dealing with a deep freeze, a record high-tying for the warmest Feb. 4 in history and freezing rain – all within a two-week span – Environment Canada has now issued a special weather statement Friday, warning of strong winds gusting up to 80 km/h.
These winds, expected to diminish Friday afternoon, can cause minor tree damage and a few local power outages, Environment Canada said.
The weather statement now in effect covers London and large portions of Middlesex County, including Parkhill, Strathroy and Komoka.
After a relatively balmy Thursday, which saw a high of 11 C near midnight, temperatures are expected to drop on Friday, with a daytime high of –5 C. The wind chill effect will make it feel more like –11 in the morning and –17 in the afternoon.
Friday night, the national weather agency is forecasting a low of –13 C, feeling more like –22 C overnight.
The forecast also calls for a chilly weekend, with daytime highs of –5 C on Saturday, –6 C on Sunday, as well as –4 C for Monday.


Published: June 14, 2012 at 04:58 p.m.
Doug Martin was drafted in the first round to replace LeGarrette Blount as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' featured back. Most NFL observers expect Martin to be atop the depth chart sooner rather than later.
It's worth noting that sooner hasn't happened yet. With organized team activities and minicamp drawing to a close, PewterReport.com notes that Blount has taken the majority of reps with the first team all offseason. Blount has worked on the parts of his game that are most lacking: pass protection and receiving. Just like Blount said, he's the starter until told otherwise.
Bucs coach Greg Schiano lauded Blount's hands, although he wouldn't make any promises for what that means in the Bucs offense.
We trust game film and what happens during the regular season more than any offseason storyline. Martin was drafted for a reason. If Blount improves the weak parts of his game, Schiano will have a good problem on his hand.
But we still think it's Martin's job to lose, no matter how things look in mid-June.
"NFL could move draft indoors if weather worse..."


For me the odometer rolls over in December. I'll turn 65 then. I've been fortunate all my life where health care is concerned. As a kid, in my parents' home, I was unconscious of how the medical bills got paid. Those were simpler times, before the corporations ran rough-shod over public and private life, before our national leaders had devolved to a gang of thugs in the pay of corporate masters, before a privileged upper middle-class dominated policy development at the behest of these same corporations. When I was a child the perpetual proletariat of today, informed by propagandists aping the exercise of free speech, had not yet come to dominate political discussion, to drown out informed debate. When I was a child the vicious forces of rapacious greed were hidden in an emerging consumer society, their presence only hinted at by the chimera of a communist menace invoked by heroes and fools alike. From Winston Churchill to Joseph McCarthy there was a unity of opinion regarding our freedom, our way of life, and the challenges and dangers that a nebulous "other," the red menace, posed to peace and prosperity.
When I was a student, the University provided health care (for which I was grateful once when I needed spackling and repair following a motorcycle accident).
Those first twenty years or so of my life were, I guess, the good old days.
When I found work in Northern California, I became a member of the Kaiser Permanente HMO, where I remained for twenty years. Mostly, I never saw the money that Kaiser cost me as anything more than a modest deduction noted on a pay stub. Health care was easy, inexpensive, and more than adequate. My twin sons were born prematurely at Kaiser Hospital in San Francisco. The week or more they spent in the premie intensive care nursery cost no more than if their mom had delivered normally and gone home with them the next day. I was certainly grateful for that.
Those next twenty or twenty-five years of my life were, I guess, the good old days too.
For the last twenty years Beth and I have had great health insurance coverage. We had the luxury of choosing which of our employer paid plans would benefit us more. Then, when I started my own business, I had coverage under Beth's plan, nicely avoiding the health care overhead that so many sole proprietors face.
These may still be the good old days.
But Medicare has appeared on my personal horizon just as the country is engaged in the great Health Care Reform debate and it is held up as a model of health cost coverage. Medicare may be the lowest common denominator for Health Care Reform legislation. It may be the model for our new system.
This may not be a good thing and here's why.
First, about $1,200 will be withheld from my retirement checks in 2010 to pay for Medicare Part B coverage. Second, if I'm hospitalized, I have to pay a $1068 deductible before Medicare kicks in. Third, the Part B coverage that's costing me $1200 only covers 80% of medical expenses.
But there's a solution waiting in the wings! First, I'm still covered by Beth's group policy until she retires. Then, when she's retired too, we can choose to pay $1200 or so a year (each) for continued coverage on her group plan, coverage which will fill in the awkward gaps left by the Medicare Part A and Part B deductibles and 80% payment limitations and so forth.
Medicare Part A and B provide enough coverage to help you avoid bankruptcy if you are hospitalized with a serious condition. Sure, you'll be forced to live a penurious existence after that. Your home will be sold to pay the deductibles, you'll move into a public housing project and be forced to eat government cheese, but the fixed income from your pittance of a retirement annuity won't be attached by the hospital to help pay for your cardiologist's fifty foot sailboat.
Mindful of this, congress added a few more bureaucratic hoops: Medicare Part C, and Medicare Part D. Part C covers the deductible gap and Part D helps you manage the outrageous prescription prices the pharmaceutical industry has foisted off on us. The extension of Beth's group coverage, while not precisely a "Medicare part C" product functions nicely to fill in the gaps that other private insurers cover with Part C and Part D plans. These plans have different names, like "Medicare Advantage" and "Medicare Select," but, hey! Branding is part of competition and competition is what keeps this great wheel of commerce turning, right?
A person could get downright confused. Fortunately, I have until December to get it all sorted out. Unfortunately, it seems likely�after we are both retired�that in order to get complete health care coverage, we're going to have to spend four or five hundred dollars a month (including $200 that goes straight back to the government). Oh, well. I'm one of the fortunate ones. I'll have coverage and I can just about afford it. But I wonder if the insurance industry and the government will get together on a "public option" for the forty or fifty million uninsured Americans, a "public option" that includes squeezing them for $5,000 a year that they just don't have.


Great buy on this 1990 double wide featuring 1044 SF. 3 bdrms, 1 bath – open floor plan with pergo and carpet flooring. Inside Utility, Single attached garage, Fenced back yard, enclosed sunroom, 2 garden sheds and water feature. Located in the heart of Amity with easy access to McMinnville, Newberg and Portland.


A local wrestler is working toward his goal before heading to college next year.
CLEAR LAKE, Iowa – For our Student-Athlete of the Week, KIMT searches for students who are not only motivated on the playing surface but also in the classroom. One local wrestler has that drive, desire, and determination – leading us to Eric Faught of Clear Lake.
One thing that Eric Faught continues to stay dedicated to is his studies, knowing that good grades can lead to a great future.
“I’m working on my grades and I’m getting some college credits in at the same time, just do my best and be ready for the next step,” said Faught.
Before the next step, Faught has some goals he wants to accomplish as he enters the season ranked number one in the 132-pound wight class.
“Finish the job, get a state title, do what I’ve been trying to the past three years, and hopefully, finally get it done this year,” added Faught.
Coach Lester says Eric is more than qualified to get the job done.
Either way, Faught will take his talents to the mats of Upper Iowa next season, a place he is excited to.


The Brakpan woman standing trial for the murder of her husband told the Pretoria High Court that she was tired of constant sexual harassment.
On Monday she sought to unravel a deadly web of murder‚ divorce and perjury. This led to alleged revelations of horrifying sexual abuse since she was a little girl.
Cathy van Oudtshoorn‚ 31‚ is accused of murder‚ robbery‚ possession of a firearm‚ unlawful possession of ammunition‚ and having intentionally defeated or obstructed the course of justice. This is after she allegedly shot her husband - who was also her foster parent.
Chris van Oudtshoorn‚ 58‚ was killed in April 2016 while watching television.
In a statement read out by her Legal Aid lawyer‚ Thembi Bokako‚ Cathy claimed that Chris had sexually abused and made her life a living hell.
“I have never had parents; I did not know what it’s like to have a loving family‚” she said.
She submitted that although she had shot him‚ it was out of temporary insanity.
Judge Hennie De Vos had requested Cathy‚ the defendant in the case‚ convince the court why she should be referred to the Weskoppies psychiatric hospital to back up her claim that she suffered non-pathological criminal incapacity when she shot her husband.
“I walked to the safe in the bedroom and got the gun out. I cannot explain what I was thinking… I just could not take another night. I then walked to the lounge and pulled the trigger‚” she said‚ through Bokako.
The mother of two said she was legally adopted by Chris and his then wife Jorina van Niekerk‚ 55. She claims Van Niekerk was privy to the sexual abuse and would leave her with Chris at their home.
Despite these claims‚ her step mother helped her conceal the crime scene. She was convicted and jailed as an accessory to the murder and is currently serving a five-year sentence.
“I asked her to help me. She started opening drawers and got a cloth to wrap the gun. On the day of the funeral I walked into the church and it was too much for me. Later I took 90 sleeping tablets‚ I was then taken to the hospital‚” her lawyer read.
When her statement was read out‚ Cathy wept and hid her face in the dock.
The day after the funeral police arrived at her home and asked her and her step mother to go for questioning at the Brakpan police station.
“I was still drowsy and confused. The police officer did not read out my rights to me or anything. They slapped me on my face and I told them ‘I did do it’‚” she said.
The family of Chris's ex-wife was present in court on Monday. While the statement was being read the family murmured in shock. Some wept at the end.
One of the family members told TimesLIVE that what had happened was “not fair”.
Accompanied by a friend‚ Cathy started the day with bravery and a smile - but as the day went on she became more and more emotional. She was carrying her baby‚ born just last month.
The trial continues on Tuesday morning‚ when the court is due to rule whether Cathy should be referred for psychiatric treatment or not.


Liverpool are monitoring Southampton's Jay Rodriguez, 24, but Arsenal are also said to be impressed by the striker, who was called into the England squad this week.
Tottenham will make a move for Manchester United's 25-year-old striker Javier Hernandez in January if they can transfer 29-year-old Emmanuel Adebayor.
Arsenal are considering making a £22m bid for Real Madrid striker Karim Benzema, 25, after fears that the Spanish giants will pip them to the £50m signing of Liverpool striker Luis Suarez, 26.
Belgian side Anderlecht are considering a loan move for Chelsea midfielder Kevin de Bruyne, 22, in the January transfer window.
Stoke City boss Mark Hughes is keen to reunite with Manchester City defender Joleon Lescott, 31, who he signed while he was manager at the Etihad Stadium in 2009.
Newcastle are keen on PSV Eindhoven midfielder Ola Toivonen and could make a cut-price £2.5m bid if the 27-year-old Swede fails to sign a new deal for the Dutch side.
Manchester City boss Manuel Pellegrini has lost patience with Joe Hart, 26, after a series of mistakes and want to replace him with Barcelona goalkeeper Victor Valdes, 31.
Fulham manager Martin Jol is set for talks with the club's owner Shahid Khan following his side's 4-0 defeat at Liverpool, with Roberto Di Matteo and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer potential replacements for the Dutchman.
England manager Roy Hodgson has set Joe Hart, 26, a deadline of three months to return to the Manchester City team if he wants to remain as his country's first-choice goalkeeper. Costel Pantilimon, 26, has recently played instead of Hart for his club side.
Hodgson is also keen to persuade Liverpool's Steven Gerrard, 34, to continue as an England player beyond the World Cup finals in Brazil next year.
Cardiff City boss Malky Mackay has reiterated his commitment to the club amid rumours linking him with the vacant managerial post at Crystal Palace.
Mackay has refused to deny rumours that he could quit Cardiff and link up again with the South Wales club's former sporting director Iain Moody, who has been appointed to the same position at managerless Crystal Palace.
Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand, 35, is back doing his coaching badges after a two-year absence and wants to become a top manager.
Arsenal striker Nicklas Bendtner has criticised Arsenal for relegating him to the reserves and training with the youngsters and the Dane, 25, says he is training "more seriously than ever" to get a move out of the Emirates club.
Roy Hodgson hopes to solve England's penalty problems by turning to the sports scientist Dave Reddin, whose expertise helped make Jonny Wilkinson rugby's best penalty-taker.
Everton defender Sylvain Distin used his Twitter account to explain why he confronted fans who were unhappy with their team's performance in the 0-0 draw with Crystal Palace.
Meanwhile, West Brom goalkeeper Ben Foster also went on the micro-blogging website to vent his frustration after the controversial late penalty awarded to Chelsea that denied the Baggies a win at Stamford Bridge.


Each week during the high school football season, FOX8 provides an updated scoreboard here, with live scores powered by you, the fans!
Want to add scores? Download the ScoreStream app today to share your team scores, photos and more with fellow fans in real time!
Tune in at 11 p.m. for the FOX8 Friday Football Frenzy.
After the show, look for game highlights, the Play of the Night, Rookie Anchor, Coach Talk and Fan Cam — all on myfox8.com.


This is the scene of this morning's rocket attacks on a five-storey, dilapidated apartment block, that killed three people as they ate their breakfast.
The kitchen sink in the flat that suffered the direct hit is filled with the usual pots and pans, sitting in a masses of broken crockery and chunks of plaster that was blown over.
An upside down kettle lies beneath what looks like a broken part of a kitchen cupboard. A fridge lies overturned on its side, covered in rubble. If you stumbled across the room by accident, you would be forgiven for thinking that it had been abandoned for months, and not just since a fatal breakfast meeting that morning.
Thick grey dust covers everything except for the odd flash of a yellow dustpan, or a red cerial box.
In a room that resembles a bedroom, the mattresses are turned on their sides, springs are poking out and the legs of the bed base point sharply upwards at odd angles. The overhead lights have been blown off and are now swinging slowly on a flimsy wire from the ceiling.
The walls are cracked and are splashed in places with what looks like drying brown blood. Bright sunlight pours in through the giant hole where a fourth wall should have been - from here, you can see directly towards Gaza.
The tree branches outside the flat are no longer bare - clothing which was blown several metres from the flat now hang there. The ground is strewn with bits of metal, splintered wooden boards and items of clothing. Occasionally, bits of glass collapse from the window frames above and fall on the ground.
The Israeli army said some 250 missiles were launched from Gaza in revenge for the airstrike assassination of Hamas's top military commander yesterday.
One young yeshiva student I met along the way said that he heard a loud blast 'as if it was happening just outside' and ran into the shelter in his seminary.
The residents of the apartment block that was hit had no such luxury. Arie Spekter, a resident of the second floor for the past year, said that the single shelter room for the 16 flats is downstairs and stuffed full of people's belongings.
'The flats are very small here and people need all they storage space they can get,' he says.
When the rockets hit there was nowhere to run. Mr Spekter has bloodshot eyes and is holding his 11-year-old daughter Dina close to him.
'I'd just finished a night shift, and came home and wanted to relax,' he says. 'As soon as the alarms started we woke up.
'We opened the doors and gathered the neighbour's children in our flat so that they would be safe from this side.
Mr Spekter said that safety was the first issue on his mind when he moved into the flat.
I follow him inside the apartment. On the second floor, all the windows have been blown away. On the fifth, instead a wall is a blasted hole, approximately four metres square.
The light pouring into the devastated room illuminates clothes, household utensils, pillows and blankets which are scattered around, everything discoloured by the thick grey dust still falling from the ceiling. In the corner lies a still unopened plastic packet of baby clothing.
'My wife wants to go to Rehovot,' Mr Spekter tells his friend on the phone.
Later on, she curls up on the sofa and covers her head with her arms.
'What's remarkable is that I'm more angry with the Israeli government than with the Arabs', says Mr Spekter.
Gilad Erdon, a member of parliament from PM Netanyahu's Likkud party, and minister of environmental protection arrived on the scene in the late afternoon.
When asked how it was possible that residents in this building had no safe shelter, he replied 'It's almost impossible to protect our citizens 100 per cent, especially in areas such as this, where families live with many children in cramped conditions.
Another neighbour from the next street, Yosef Ladayo, an ultra-Orthodox resident in his 60s, describes how his daughter could not sleep because of the alarms.
'She was so scared,' he says.
Onlookers and neighbours are gathered outside.
'I'm standing here and I'm still scared in case there's another alarm. Where can we be safe?' asks Maya from Tajikistan who has been a resident here over the past 20 years.
When asked if she would consider moving, she shrugs and throws up her hands.
Some time in the late afternoon, two more explosions are heard.
Although they sound far away, a woman screams. A little boy, no more than 7 years old sitting huddled up holding his pet turtle. He asks quietly, 'mama, will you protect me?' A neighbour comes in and tries to reassure everyone - "they never hit the same building twice".
People want to leave their houses, at least for a few days, but are worried about losing their jobs.


A pregnant Colorado mother who was killed with her two children made a poignant Facebook post about protecting her daughter just days before they were killed.
Shanann Watts’ husband Chris Watt’s has been arrested on suspicion of allegedly killing his 34-year-old wife and their two daughters - four-year-old Bella and three-year-old Celeste.
Just a fortnight ago, Ms Watt’s posted a photo on Facebook of her daughter Celeste playing happily on the beach.
Alongside the photo she wrote: "The older she gets the more scared I am to let her out into the real world. The world of evil, the world of hate, the world of bullying!"
"I was reading a post the other day where a kid was being bullied at school because of his nut allergies and a kid put a peanut in his drink as a joke! He could of died!
"The world is a scary place. I will do everything in my power to teach her right and to protect her, advocate, stand up for her and defend her! I pray everyday that she never feels any less than the rest of the world. I pray that she’s protected when I’m not around to protect her! Nothing or no one will stop me!"
Police arrested Watts, 33, late Wednesday over the murders. His wife and children’s bodies were found on Thursday on a property owned by Andarko Petroleum, one of Colorado's largest oil and gas drillers, where Watts worked as an operator.
Court documents filed by his defence lawyer James Merson said the girls had been submerged in barrels of crude oil for four days.
Watts’ lawyer filed but was denied a request in court asking for DNA to be collected from the necks of the two girls, suggesting they may have been strangled to death.
Weld County prosecutors said Watts was jailed in protective custody and that charges were expected to be filed this week.
The Denver Post reported that the couple had suffered from financial trouble in the past, filing for bankruptcy in 2015, but had possibly begun to turn their fortunes around in recent times.
Ms Watts’ brother Frankie Rzucek, wrote in a Facebook post that his older had sister was a dedicated mother who “beat all the odds” with her pregnancies.
Ms Watts had suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause fertility issues.
“No matter if her lupus was acting up or if she was pregnant, nothing stoped [sic] her from doing what needed to be done. She was very successful and driven,” Rzucek wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.
“I was exhausted by just watching my sister. She made being a parent look easy,” he wrote.
Ashley Bell, a friend of Ms Watts, said she had planned a party Saturday to reveal the gender of her baby. Mr Rzucek said his sister planned to name her baby boy Niko.


Below is a compilation of independent polls assessing voter preferences in the June 26 Democratic primary for Maryland governor. The April Goucher Poll gauged how Democratic candidates would fare against Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in the Nov. 6 general election.
~Kevin Kamenetz died of cardiac arrest on May 10, 2018. His former running mate, Valerie Ervin, ran in his place before suspending her campaign on June 13. Gonzales included Kamenetz in the poll to reflect what voters will see on the official ballot.
From June 4-10 landline and cellphone poll of likely Democratic voters. Margin of error: ±4.5% View the full results and methodology.
From May 29-June 6 landline and cellphone poll of likely Democratic voters. Margin of error: ±4.4% View the full results.
From May 29-June 3 landline and cellphone poll of likely Democratic voters. Margin of error: ±6% View the full results and methodology.
^Kevin Kamenetz died of cardiac arrest on May 10, 2018. His former running mate, Valerie Ervin, ran in his place before suspending her campaign on June 13.
From April 14-19 landline and cellphone poll of Maryland adults. Margin of error: ±3.9% View the full results and methodology.
From Feb. 20-24 landline and cellphone poll of likely Democratic voters. Margin of error: ±4.5% View the full results and methodology.
From Feb. 12-18 landline and cellphone poll of likely Democratic voters. Margin of error: ±4.8% View the full results and methodology.
From Dec. 27-Jan. 5 landline and cellphone poll of likely Democratic voters. Margin of error: ±4.5% View the full results and methodology.
From Sept. 14-18 landline and cellphone poll of likely Democratic voters. Margin of error: ±5.4% View the full results and methodology.


The offering makes Sling “the first live standalone Internet TV service to deliver Cinemax to an audience of cord-cutters and cord-nevers,” says the streaming company’s CEO Roger Lynch.
Cinemax’s Max Go streaming app is limited to traditional pay TV subscribers.
Like with Max Go, Sling customers who also buy Cinemax will be able to watch the live channel and access more than 500 movies and TV shows on demand. The programming includes original series The Knick, Banshee, Strike Back, Hunted, and upcoming series Quarry and Outcast.
Last year, Sling began to offer HBO for $15 a month.


ISLAMABAD: The federal government has announced public holiday on 9th and 10th of Muharram that falls on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st September 2018.
The interior ministry has issued notification for the public holidays on Ashura.
Strict security arrangement has been made for the Muharram processions across the country. All the four provincial government has requested to shut the cellular services to avoid any untoward situation.
The provinces have written letter to the federal government for closing the mobile service during Ashura.


As soon as he came out on stage, we knew we were in for a treat. When Charles Ross in “One Man Star Wars” began to mime the words that fly across the screen in Episode IV and hum the theme song, the audience immediately warmed up. Over the course of an hour, Ross acts out the entire original Star Wars trilogy, with aid from nothing except knee pads, a bottle of Poland Springs, and some creative lighting. I knew something of what to expect from this show because I saw Ross do “One Man Lord of the Rings” last year, but even still I was blown away by his energy, creativity, and vocal range.
Ross plays the scenes where Darth Vader intimidates and kills various Empire generals well. One would think it would be distracting to have a guy playing many characters at once, but with a radical change in voice, blocking, and posture with each switch, one could mostly keep track of what was going on. That said, this play is not for someone who hasn’t seen “Star Wars.” I had trouble following at times because I don’t know the “Star Wars” movies past one or two recent viewings. This made the show a bit more strenuous than I would have liked. On the other hand, I’m much more familiar with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, thus Ross’ rendition of that was much easier to follow and more fun.
While Ross remains true to the “Star Wars” plot, he brilliantly slips in jokes right and left. One gets used to one guy playing all the characters. We weren’t laughing at him because of these antics, but because of the many jokes he slipped in. Some were only obvious to people who knew the movies well, but many were accessible to all. Highlights of the show included the Luke and Darth Vader spaceship chase scene around the Death Star, the walker takedown on Hoth, and of course Vader’s death scene.
“One Man Star Wars” had but a brief run in Boston, but Ross will be playing in New York for a while. If you so happen to be in the neighborhood where he’s performing, and you’re a “Star Wars” fan, I urge you to go see this play. At only an hour, its highly concentrated energy will leave you with a smile on your face.


It’s been a year of extremes for science and technology. From camera footage of the deepest living fish, swimming some 5 miles beneath the surface of the Pacific ocean, to the creation of the smoothest ever surface – a lead and silicon film.
Here are eight more extremes that New Scientist brought you in 2008.
In July, an international team of craftsmen unveiled an unusual pair of balls – believed to be the roundest objects in the world. “If you were to blow up our spheres to the size of the Earth, you would see a variation of only 3 to 5 metres in the roundness,” said optical engineer Achim Leistner. The silicon balls are designed to each contain a near-identical number of silicon atoms, and become a new way to define the kilogram.
The shortest ever pulse of light – just 80 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second) long – was created in June. That’s short enough to act like a kind of superfast flashgun to study the movement of electrons around large atoms. But there’s still room for improvement – it’s theoretically possible to produce pulses of just a zeptosecond (trillionths of a billionth of a second).
Concerns about global warming are put in the shade by the discovery of a planet called WASP-12b, which is 1.5 times as massive as Jupiter and takes just over a day to circle its host star, orbiting at 1/40th the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The tight embrace heats WASP-12b to an estimated 2250 °C – about half as hot as the surface of the Sun – making it the hottest planet yet discovered, as well as the planet with the fastest orbit, say researchers.
Later in the year, archaeologists unearthed the earliest nuclear family – an adult couple and their two children, buried together 4600 years ago in Eulau, Germany. “The two kids have her mitochondrial DNA, and his Y chromosome – that’s a nuclear family,” said molecular anthropologist Brian Kemp of Washington State University. But the real-life Flintstones had it much worse than their cartoon counterparts. Their shared grave is one of a number in the area, apparently marking the site of an ancient massacre.
At the time of those murders, a Norway Spruce a few hundred miles to the north was just entering middle age. Today, it is believed by some to be the oldest living organism in the world, we reported in April. At 9,555 years old, it smashes the record set in 2002 by The Old Man, an ancient bristlecone pine in the white mountains of California.
An out of this world news story back in January reported on a true heavyweight – the biggest black hole in the universe. With a mass of 18 billion Suns, it’s six times as massive as the previous record holder, according to Mauri Valtonen of the Tuorla Observatory in Finland.
Not to be outdone by the Europeans, NASA discovered its own extreme black hole in April. With a mass just 3.8 times that of the Sun, the black hole in a binary system called XTE J1650-500 is the tiniest on record. “This black hole is really pushing the limits,” Nikolai Shaposhnikov of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center told New Scientist.
Finally, to end on a not-so-bright note, in December US astronomers discovered the dimmest bulbs in the Milky Way. The “failed stars” each shine with a million times less power than the Sun, making them half as bright as the previous record holder.


With the Senate taking up the border security bill we passed in the House last week to construct 700 miles of physical fence and a virtual fence along the entire border, now is the time it must be serious and follow through. It is clear to me that what we need to secure the border is the proper combination of boots, barriers and technology. I call on the Senate to join the House and take action to pass this meaningful legislation.
The border agents I talked with while on the Southern border are ready and willing to do the job if given the proper tools. This bill is will provide some of those tools and we must provide them now to stop this growing problem.
Border security is long overdue and it has to be addressed before Congress can implement any sensible, comprehensive immigration proposals. As we continue to work toward a solution to stop illegal immigration, I will persist in supporting only limited, legal immigration to keep our economy stable and our families safe.


It might have been the most widely advertised coup in history. Rumors and warnings had begun as early as the summer of 1990. According to British intelligence, elements of the Soviet army and KGB actually rehearsed a coup (under the guise of a countercoup) in February of this year. June brought what was soon called the "constitutional-coup attempt." Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov asked the Supreme Soviet for the authority to issue decrees without Mikhail Gorbachev's knowledge, but was rebuffed. In late July hard- liners published an announcement appealing for "those who recognize the terrible plight into which our country has fallen" to support dramatic action to end disorder. They might as well have put up billboards shouting COUP!
In hindsight, even the timing seems screamingly obvious. Gorbachev had designated Tuesday, Aug. 20, for the ceremonial signing of a new union treaty with the presidents of the Russian and Kazakh republics; other republics were expected to sign later. The treaty would transfer so many powers -- over taxes, natural resources, even the state security apparatus -- to the republics as to make restoring ironfisted Kremlin control of the whole country impossible. Moreover, a new national Cabinet would have been named by representatives of the republics. Some of the eventual coup leaders, including KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and Interior Minister Boris Pugo, would almost certainly have lost their jobs. The plotters could not afford to let that treaty go into effect.
Yet Gorbachev by his own testimony was totally unprepared. To some scholars and Soviet officials that appears so odd as to suggest that the President himself had staged a Potemkin coup to win domestic and foreign sympathy. But that seems farfetched. More probably, the very volume and intensity of coup talk had dulled his political antennae; the cry of wolf was sounding old and tired. Alexander Yakovlev, a close adviser, claimed after it was all over that he had even given Gorbachev the names of some likely -- and, as it turned out actual -- plotters. The President, according to Yakovlev, had scoffed that they "lack the courage to stage a coup."
As late as 4 p.m. Sunday, working at his Crimean vacation retreat at Foros on the speech he intended to give at the treaty signing, Gorbachev telephoned Georgi Shakhnazarov, an aide and friend, who was vacationing nearby. They chatted briefly; Shakhnazarov heard nothing to indicate that his boss was in any way troubled. Less than an hour later, however, at 10 minutes to 5, the head of Gorbachev's security guards entered the President's office and, as Gorbachev later recounted the story, announced that "a group of people" was demanding to see him. Who were they, asked Gorbachev, and why had they been let into the house? They were accompanied by Yuri Plekhanov, the chief of the state security-guard organization, said Gorbachev's man; that was all he knew. Gorbachev picked up a phone to call Moscow. "It didn't work. I lifted the second ((phone)), the third, the fourth, the fifth. Nothing." All his communications had been cut.
Instantly realizing what might be up, Gorbachev went to another room, called in his wife, daughter and son-in-law and warned them that his visitors might "attempt to arrest me or take me away somewhere." Returning to his office, he found that the delegation had already bulled its way in. There were four besides Plekhanov. Gorbachev initially named only one: Valeri Boldin, his own chief of staff. It was as if John Sununu had joined a coup against George Bush. The others were finally identified as Oleg Baklanov, deputy chairman of the National Defense Council and in effect leader of the military-industrial complex; a Communist Party hack named Oleg Shenin; and General Valentin Varennikov. In the name of the so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency, the visitors demanded that Gorbachev sign a decree proclaiming an emergency and turning over all his powers to Vice President Gennadi Yanayev. Gorbachev's reply: "Go to hell."
By then, a special detachment of KGB troops had surrounded his vacation house. Just in case Gorbachev somehow got out and tried to return to Moscow, KGB units drove tractors across the runway of the nearby airport to prevent Gorbachev's TU-134 presidential jet from taking off.
Roughly 12 hours passed before the outside world knew anything. But at 6 a.m. Monday, TASS, the Soviet news agency, reported falsely that Gorbachev was ill and had yielded his powers temporarily to Yanayev. An hour later, TASS announced the formation of the eight-member State Committee for the State of Emergency, ostensibly headed by Yanayev. Actually, this gray and ineffectual apparatchik was only a figurehead; the real power probably was held by Kryuchkov, Pugo and Yazov, plus possibly lesser-known figures. Some of Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin's aides later fingered Baklanov as the chief plotter. The committee announced that it would rule by decree for six months, and began setting up some of the machinery of dictatorship. All newspapers except for nine pro-coup sheets were ordered to stop publishing, political parties were suspended and protest demonstrations banned. Muscovites going to work or to shop Monday morning had to maneuver around troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers that were moving to cordon off or seize key installations.
Yet it was obvious even that early that the coup was ill planned and curiously halfhearted. The plotters neglected to carry out that sine qua non of successful coups: the immediate arrest of popular potential enemies before they could begin organizing a resistance. In particular, the failure to make sure that Yeltsin was taken into custody (there were some reports that an attempt at an arrest was made, but botched) was fatal. Inexplicably, the putschists did not even pull the plug on the communications of anyone except Gorbachev. Bush and other foreign leaders were amazed at how easily they could get through by telephone to Yeltsin; he in turn seems to have had no difficulty coordinating action with other coup opponents across the country.
Most successful coup organizers also begin by moving reliable troops into key positions. Yet U.S. intelligence analysts, poring early Monday over satellite pictures taken during the previous two days, detected no evidence of any unusual troop movements. The Soviet plotters used troops and equipment that happened to be on hand in Moscow and other cities and gave the soldiers only the vaguest idea of what they were supposed to be doing. In Moscow some seemed to think they were participating in an odd sort of parade or drill.
Far from being prepared to crush opposition, the troops were obviously under orders to avoid confrontation if possible and above all not to shoot. Citizens shouted "Fascist!" or worse at the troops, scrawled swastikas in the dirt on tanks parked outside the Russian Parliament Building, climbed aboard armored personnel carriers to argue with the commanders and urge them to turn back -- all with impunity. When the coup leaders decreed a curfew from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., the soldiers made no attempt to enforce it.
In Leningrad troops based inside the city stayed in their barracks throughout the coup. Armored assault units headquartered nearby at one point started moving on the old czarist capital, but reformist Mayor Anatoli Sobchak -- another leader the coup conspirators foolishly left at large -- persuaded the tankmen to halt outside the city.
Why were the coup plotters so inept and halfhearted? Simple incompetence might be one answer; several were party or government hacks who had never displayed much imagination or initiative. They may have thought that the economic collapse that had made Gorbachev wildly unpopular, coupled with a long Russian tradition of submissiveness to authority, would win the populace to their side without any need for bloodshed. They may even have been corrupted, so to speak, by the new atmosphere of democracy and legalism -- at least to the extent of feeling a need to give their coup a cloak of constitutionalism, which in turn prevented them from acting with the ruthlessness a successful coup generally requires. Alternatively, some American officials think the plotters were not so much inept as unable to round up enough support to flaunt any more muscle than they did.
There were many indications that an early and decisive use of force might have carried the day. According to British sources, heads of government and foreign ministers of the major Western powers had agreed during a long series of very secret talks on a coordinated policy to oppose any Soviet coup attempt. But though all of them condemned the coup, some initially hinted that they might eventually live with it. On Monday morning Bush asserted that "coups can fail" but at the same time voiced hope that Yanayev too might turn out to be a reformer. French President Francois Mitterrand on Monday night treated the coup as a fait accompli.
Within the U.S.S.R. many powerful figures who wound up opposing the coup were initially noncommittal, stayed conspicuously out of sight or played highly ambiguous roles. Alexander Dzasokhov, a secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, tried to paint the party as a resolute opponent of the conspirators. "From the very beginning of the coup," he said, the committee secretariat "kept trying to get in touch with the state Emergency Committee and demanded that they see Gorbachev." In fact, though, Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, says the Central Committee on Monday secretly urged local party organizations to support the junta.
Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander Bessmertnykh came down with a vaguely defined illness, one of several seeming cases of "coup flu." (Symptoms: cold feet and a weakening of the backbone.) After initially cabling Soviet ambassadors around the world to put a "good face" on the coup, Bessmertnykh climbed out of his sickbed to denounce the plot only after it was falling apart -- too late, as it turned out, to keep from getting fired. General Mikhail Moiseyev, Chief of the Soviet General Staff, was perhaps conveniently on vacation in the Crimea when the coup began. But some of his subordinates claimed he wrote out the orders for the troops to occupy key points in Moscow -- as well as the orders for them to go back to their barracks when the coup was palpably failing.
Even the indomitable Yeltsin reportedly had a moment of irresolution. On Monday morning he hurried to the Russian republic headquarters -- nicknamed the White House because of its marble facade -- and was quickly joined by other coup opponents. One of them, former Soviet Interior Minister Vadim Bakhatin, says they urged Yeltsin to proclaim himself in command of all army and KGB units on Russian republic soil. Bakhatin recounts that Yeltsin was reluctant; he feared that such an order would split the army and perhaps start a bloody civil war. Bakhatin and others, however, convinced Yeltsin that if no one exercising constitutional authority was willing to countermand orders from the junta, the army might eventually if reluctantly invade the White House and arrest them all, and the coup would succeed.
From then on, Yeltsin never wavered. At 12:30 p.m. Monday he clambered atop an armored truck outside the White House to announce the decree assuming command. He denounced the coup as illegal and unconstitutional and called for a general strike to thwart it. In retrospect, that was the first and perhaps the biggest turning point. Yeltsin had made it obvious that the coup would face determined resistance; his appearance helped inspire protest demonstrations throughout the country. At the time, however, its significance was not entirely apparent. No more than about 200 Muscovites had gathered outside the Russian republic building to see and hear his fiery performance. But as word spread, the crowd grew and grew until it eventually numbered in the tens of thousands.
At 5 p.m. Monday the conspirators finally called a press conference to introduce themselves. Their performance was a disaster. Far from coming across as a take-charge group, they appeared nervous and half apologetic. They gave a preposterous excuse for assuming authority (Gorbachev was too tired and ill to retain command); stressed that the coup was a constitutional devolution of authority to Yanayev, although it clearly was not; and proclaimed a highly dubious devotion to continued reform. Junta member Vasili Starodubtsev sniffled continually, and Yanayev seemed twitchy. As Gorbachev later commented, "They said I was sick, but they were the ones whose hands were shaking."
Gorbachev apparently was listening if not watching. His security guards stayed with him at the Foros dacha, scrounged up some old radio receivers that had been forgotten but not discarded, and set up a jury-rigged antenna so they could monitor foreign radio coverage of the coup. Gorbachev later praised the reporting of the British Broadcasting Corp., Radio Liberty and Voice of America -- without seeming to recognize the irony that all three networks had been jammed by the Soviet government not so very long ago. Though he said he had been subjected to intense "psychological pressure," this apparently consisted of isolation rather than any actual interference with his activities. The President spent part of his time drafting an angry condemnation of the coup, and was so incensed at the reports of his illness that he made four videotapes of himself (he did not say how he got hold of a camera) to prove he was not sick at all. Fearing that the worst might happen to him, he also recorded his last will and testament. Gorbachev's wife Raisa was apparently quite shaken by the experience. She was later reported to have suffered some paralysis of her left hand and was said to be receiving medical treatment.
In the outside world, the tide was beginning to turn. By Tuesday morning the Western powers had got their act together and unanimously, though separately, proclaimed a clear line: no normal relations with the Soviet Union until legitimate authority was restored, and a quick and indefinite cutoff of most of the economic aid that the U.S.S.R. desperately needs.
Coal miners in Siberia and the far north left their pits. Resolutions condemning the Emergency Committee were passed in communities from Sakhalin Island in the far east to Petrozavodsk, near the border with Finland. In Leningrad tens of thousands gathered in front of the Winter Palace, which Lenin's forces had stormed to begin the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
In Moscow resistance organizers had fanned out across the city Monday night to post leaflets in subway stations calling for a mass demonstration at noon Tuesday. From a second-floor balcony of the Russian republic building, speaker after speaker led a throng of up to 150,000 Muscovites in chants of "We will win!" Shouted Yeltsin: "We will hold out as long as we have to, to remove this junta from power." Bush telephoned on Tuesday morning to encourage that ( determination by making it clear that the putschists would get no foreign support.
Tuesday afternoon brought one telltale indication that the junta was losing what grip it had established. After obediently reporting all the pronouncements of the so-called Emergency Committee and little else, TASS suddenly began interspersing them with reports of the burgeoning resistance. For example, it let Soviet citizens know that Aleksei II, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church and a signer of a December appeal for a law-and-order crackdown, had come out against the coup.
Tension nonetheless built toward a climax Tuesday night. It was obvious that the junta could no longer prevail unless it began using deadly force, starting with an armed assault on Yeltsin's White House. All afternoon and evening, loudspeakers blared warnings that tanks were rolling toward the building and 60 planes filled with paratroopers were preparing for an airborne assault. Thousands of people worked through the night building barricades to deter an attack, supplemented by human chains of unarmed protesters. At the foot of the main staircase, an organizer with a megaphone called, "All courageous men who are willing to defend the building, please come forward!" About 90 men -- the forerunners of many, many more -- formed up in three rows on the stairs. An Orthodox priest in full regalia read the Lord's Prayer to them.
Just before midnight, short bursts of gunfire did echo from nearby streets. It was not, however, the start of an assault but a confused scuffle between tanks and protesters around a trolleybus barricade. Three demonstrators were left dead -- the only casualties in Moscow of the coup.
Otherwise, nothing happened. During the daylight hours Tuesday, Ruslan Khasbulatov, first deputy chairman of the supreme soviet of the Russian Federation and a close Yeltsin adviser, was on the phone to KGB chief Kryuchkov and Defense Minister Yazov. He asked them point-blank if the junta planned to storm the White House. "Yazov did not deny it," he reported. Late Tuesday night and again Wednesday morning, Gennadi Burbulis, another Yeltsin aide, spoke twice more with Kryuchkov. Finally Kryuchkov promised, "You can sleep soundly." There would be no shoot-out.
Why not? Reports within the Soviet Union and from Western intelligence sources differed in detail, but agreed in essence: the armed forces would not carry out any order to attack. One story was that senior army commanders had met secretly Tuesday night and decided they would not storm the White House or countenance any firing at civilians.
Some troops sent to menace the Russian republic headquarters turned to defending it instead. By agreement with Yeltsin, Major General Alexander Lebed, a commander of airborne troops, on Tuesday afternoon ordered the tanks and armored personnel carriers from his Tula division parked around the building to turn their turrets around so that they could not fire at Yeltsin's headquarters; no ammunition was distributed to the vehicles' crews. In effect, the tanks and APCs became part of the barricades protecting the building. Some American officials believe that the junta did intend to storm the building but Lebed's virtual defection derailed its plans. Another version, not necessarily contradictory, was that Colonel General Gennadi Shaposhnikov, commander of the Soviet air force, and Lieut. General Pavel Grachev, chief of the airborne troops, flatly refused to order an attack on the White House. That story gained credence at week's end when Shaposhnikov was appointed Defense Minister, with Grachev his chief deputy.
Wednesday morning there was a seemingly ominous flurry of military activity. Soviet troops in Lithuania and Estonia took control of several radio and TV stations; in Moscow paratroopers shut down an independent radio station that had resumed broadcasting the day before. But those actions quickly turned out to be the plotters' last gasp. The failure to storm the White House on Tuesday made clear that the junta would not or could not resort to the serious bloodshed that by then would have been necessary to crush resistance. By Wednesday the plotters evidently concluded that the jig was up, and the coup fell apart with astonishing speed.
At 2:15 p.m., Yeltsin announced to the Russian parliament that some of the conspirators were running to Vnukovo Airport to get out of town. A delegation headed by Yeltsin's vice president, Alexander Rutskoi, chased after them to arrest them. One hour earlier, TASS announced that the Defense Ministry had ordered all troops to clear out of Moscow, and this order was happily obeyed. Bystanders cheered as soldiers, some waving prerevolutionary Russian flags, rode atop armored vehicles on their way back to bases. The order to clear out, in fact, came from Gorbachev. For two days he had demanded that his captors let him phone Moscow again and supply a plane so that he could return to the capital; his requests were ignored. But on Wednesday he was suddenly allowed to use the phone once more. He called General Moiseyev, who by then was back in Moscow, and Moiseyev passed on the order to the Defense Ministry.
After two days of isolation, Gorbachev was suddenly again besieged by visitors from Moscow, this time competing for his favor. How many conspirators tried to flee the capital on Wednesday is still not entirely clear. Pugo, for example, was originally rumored to be aboard a plane headed for Central Asia, but in fact was soon admitted to a Moscow hospital with gunshot wounds, apparently self-inflicted, from which he died. Kryuchkov and Yazov, however, did get to Vnukovo Airport ahead of their pursuers from Yeltsin's headquarters, and hopped a plane for Gorbachev's resort. They were accompanied by Anatoli Lukyanov, chairman of the Soviet parliament. Though he is an old friend and law-school classmate of Gorbachev's, Lukyanov played at best an ambiguous role in the coup; he was not a member of the Emergency Committee but has been accused by some of Yeltsin's aides of being the mastermind behind the whole plot. Hard on their heels, Rutskoi and his avengers also took off for the Crimea -- taking care to bring guns.
Possibly Kryuchkov and Yazov hoped to negotiate with Gorbachev an end to the coup that would preserve some of their power. Or maybe they simply intended to beg for forgiveness and leniency. Rutskoi and his friends, however, feared they might want to kill the Soviet President. The thought that some of the plotters might try to execute him in a last attempt to save the coup occurred to Gorbachev as well. One of his first calls on Wednesday was to the chief of his personal guard at the Kremlin, working out arrangements to guarantee his safety on a return to Moscow.
When Kryuchkov and Yazov arrived at his dacha, Gorbachev refused to see them; he demanded that they be arrested (Lukyanov was not arrested but was suspended from his job pending an investigation). Rutskoi and his gun-toting party, who got to the dacha shortly after, were delighted to do that job. They frisked both Kryuchkov and Yazov; Kryuchkov offered no resistance, but the Defense Minister grumbled (neither was armed). Even then Rutskoi and his companions were worried that other plotters might try something. "We told the airport to prepare two planes to mislead the scoundrels," Rutskoi later said on Soviet television.
All this took so long that Gorbachev did not get back to Moscow until 2:15 a.m. Thursday. Stepping off the plane, he looked haggard and drawn but flashed a relieved smile, rather like the released hostage that he was. In theory, at least, he was back in full command. In fact, he faced gigantic tasks of rounding up the plotters, alleviating the economic and social chaos that had given the excuse for the coup, and working out a modus vivendi with Yeltsin. As for the surviving plotters, all of whom had been arrested by week's end, they were facing not only treason trials but also the knowledge that their mismanaged coup had intensified the move toward democracy and decentralization they had tried to stop. The three days that shook the world were over.


Update: Microsoft also reportedly has deals in place with Facebok and MySpace which will see these social networks integrated with Outlook as well.
Original Article: Email and social media continue to get closer together in a variety of ways. Google launched Google Buzz in Gmail, Mozilla has Raindrop, and Facebook is said to be working on its own web mail service. MySpace already created one. These are a few examples.Today, LinkedIn announced a partnership with Microsoft that will put LinkedIn user networks in directly in their Microsoft Outlook inboxes.
"At LinkedIn, we believe every professional is more productive when their professional network is close at hand and available wherever they spend their professional time," says LinkedIn Director of Product Management, Elliot Shmukler. If users spend that time in Outlook, this should help.
LinkedIn for Outlook is still in beta, and may require some tweaks before it’s perfect, but LinkedIn is actively encouraging feedback, so users can voice their concerns easily.
Not only do moves like this reinforce how important social media has become to business, but they also reinforce the staying power of email. There has been a great deal of discussion in the past about how social media could kill email, but to the contrary, we’re seeing more and more moves by social networks to become more integrated with the email channel. For email marketers, this is great news.


Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, questions witnesses during a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren will take a seat next year on the Senate Armed Services Committee, a move that will allow her to burnish her foreign policy credentials in areas ranging from defense spending to Russia’s global ambitions.
With the new posting, the Massachusetts senator has decided to follow the path of other Senators, who have used the committee as a stepping stone to a run for national office.
Warren considered running for president in 2016 and is seen as potential contender in 2020. The seat on the Armed Services Committee will put Warren at the center of debates over defense policy, military spending and weapons research, areas in which Warren is not known for her expertise. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, another possible Democratic presidential contender, announced he would be joining the Senate Foreign Relations Committee next year.
After joining the Senate, Hillary Clinton took a posting on the committee before her 2008 presidential campaign. Joe Lieberman, the former senator from Connecticut, served on the committee before joining Vice President Al Gore’s Democratic ticket in 2000 and attempting his own run in 2004, and Sen. Ted Kennedy sat on the committee when he was considering a second run for president in 1984. Clinton’s 2016 running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, joined the Armed Services Committee after being passed over by Barack Obama as a running mate in 2008.
Liberal groups pressured Warren to run for president in 2016, and the outside draft effort Ready for Warren established offices in Iowa. Warren’s advisers even produced fundraising projections for a presidential campaign, but she decided against it in part because Clinton had already signaled her candidacy.
Many Democrats are keenly hoping that she will run in 2020. “Elizabeth Warren would make a wonderful president,” said Adam Green, one of the co-founders of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which encouraged Warren to run for the Senate in 2012.


MUMBAI, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Shares in India’s top three oil marketing companies surged on Wednesday, as investors cheered the slump in global crude oil prices that bode well for the profitability of Indian refiners.
India’s biggest state-owned refiner Indian Oil Corp was up 7.81 percent on the National Stock Exchange, while Bharat Petroleum Corp and Hindustan Petroleum Corp rose 7.44 percent and 8.57 percent, respectively.
International benchmark Brent crude oil futures struggle to claw back after plunging 7 percent on Tuesday, over concerns of a potential supply glut in 2019.
The sharp drop came after the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) said late Tuesday that crude oil output from seven major shale basins in the country was expected to hit a record of 7.94 million barrels per day (bpd) in December.
This coincided with a monthly report from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) that the market would see a lower demand than expected in 2019.
A low crude oil price is a boost to India’s state-owned oil marketing companies and the economy in general which imports 80 percent of its crude oil requirement.
The three public sector companies were forced to take a price cut last month hurting their margins as the government wanted to cushion the impact of high crude oil price on the public.
Shares in Indian airline companies InterGlobe Aviation Ltd , Jet Airways Ltd and SpiceJet Ltd also rallied on Wednesday, as the surge in oil prices earlier this year had pushed them into losses.