Two pipeline protesters who caused millions of dollars in property damage have gone into hiding, prompting many to wonder if they will ever face justice.
Construction workers were subjected unprecedented levels of protests from environmental and progressive activists when building of the Dakota Access Pipeline started in 2016. Protesters gathered by the thousands in an attempt to stop the completion of the crude oil pipeline that now runs from Illinois to North Dakota — cutting across Iowa along the way. Many of them resorted to criminal activity in the process.
President Donald Trump’s approval of the project in January 2017 has not deterred many of these pipeline protesters.
In what was an apparent public admission of guilt, Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya — two longtime activists — held a news conference on July 24, 2017 outside the Iowa Utilities Board’s offices in Des Moines to explain their own anti-pipeline activity. Reznicek and Montoya detailed a litany of crimes they committed as part of their “direct action” campaign to interfere with construction: Torching at least five pieces of heavy construction equipment in Buena Vista County, Iowa; using oxyacetylene cutting torches to destroy valves along the pipeline route through South Dakota and Iowa; and using gasoline-soaked rags and tires to set fire onto construction sites.
The damage caused onto the Buena Vista County site alone cost over $2.5 million. To put that into more perspective, Energy Transfer Partners — the operator of the pipeline — has been victim to at least $3 million in arson damage from protesters prior to November 2016, before Reznicek and Montoya claimed to have begun their campaign.
However, a year after their news conference, neither women have been charged with their admitted vandalism. It’s unclear if they will ever be held responsible. In fact, both women have since left Iowa and no one appears to know of their exact location.
“They have basically moved on with their lives. They don’t want anybody to know where they are, and they are not telling me,” said Frank Cordaro, a Catholic Workers activist who has worked with the two women. Both Reznicek and Montoya were involved in the Des Moines Catholic Workers’ social justice movement. Cordaro claimed they left Des Moines last September.
Reznicek and Montoya boast a long history of social justice activism. Before her Dakota Access Pipeline protests, Reznicek was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Both women were involve in the “Mississippi Stand” anti-pipeline protests.
While federal prosectors have not divulged why charges haven’t been levied against the two women, there appears to be ongoing investigation into the matter. FBI agents in August 2017 raided their prior residence at a Catholic Worker House in Des Moines.
If they do decide to move forward with charges, finding them could prove difficult.


ANN ARBOR, Mich. — How can we keep more people from joining the ranks of the 29 million Americans already diagnosed with diabetes? What if we could tell with precision who has the highest risk of developing the disease, and figure out which preventive steps are most likely to help each of them individually?
The new model may allow better targeting of drugs and lifestyle changes to those who can benefit most.
Researchers have just released a “precision medicine” approach to diabetes prevention that could do just that – using existing information like blood sugar levels and waist-to-hip ratios, and without needing new genetic tests.
Their newly published model examined 17 different health factors, in an effort to predict who stands to gain the most from a diabetes-preventing drug, or from lifestyle changes like weight loss and regular exercise. Seven of those factors turned out to matter most.
The model is published in the British Medical Journal by a team from the University of Michigan, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
They hope to turn it into a tool for doctors to use with patients who have “pre-diabetes”, currently defined by abnormal results on a test of blood sugar after fasting. They also hope their approach could be used to develop similar precise prediction models for other diseases and treatments.
“Simply having pre-diabetes is not everything,” says lead author Jeremy Sussman, M.D., M.S. “This really shows that within the realm of pre-diabetes there’s a lot of variation, and that we need to go beyond single risk factors and look holistically at who are the people in whom a particular approach works best.” Sussman is an assistant professor of general medicine at the U-M Medical School and a research scientist at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.
The team developed the model using data from a gold-standard clinical trial of diabetes prevention: the Diabetes Prevention Program, which randomly assigned people with an elevated risk of diabetes to placebo, the drug metformin, or a lifestyle-modification program.
The team developed and tested their model by carefully analyzing data from more than 3,000 people in the study, all of whom had a high body mass index and abnormal results on two fasting blood sugar tests. Most also had a family history of diabetes, and more than a third were African American or Latino – all known to be associated with higher risks of diabetes. In all, they looked at 17 factors that together predicted a person’s risk of diabetes – and his or her chance of benefiting from diabetes-preventing steps. They found seven factors were most useful.
The seven were: fasting blood sugar, long-term blood sugar (A1C level), total triglycerides, family history of high blood sugar, waist measurement, height, and waist-to-hip ratio. They developed a scoring scale using the clinical trial data, assigning points to each measure to calculate total score.
Fewer than one in 10 of trial participants who scored in the lowest quarter would develop diabetes in the next three years, while almost half of those in the top quarter would develop diabetes in that time. Then, the team looked at what impact the two diabetes-preventing approaches had.
Hayward is a professor of medicine and public health at U-M and a senior research scientist at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research. He and Sussman are members of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation.
Key question: Who gains the most from prevention?
The team found that metformin benefited only the people who the model showed had the very highest risk of developing diabetes. But for them, it really made a difference, bringing down their risk of the disease by 21 percentage points.
By contrast, exercise and weight loss, with encouragement from a health coach, benefited everyone in the DPP study to some extent, the new model shows.
For the one-quarter of study participants who the model says had the highest risk of diabetes, this lifestyle intervention cut their chance of developing the disease by 28 percentage points. For those who had the lowed diabetes risk, this same intensive lifestyle change brought down their risk too – but only by 5 points.
Figuring out who is in the highest-risk group, by applying the new model to members of the general population, could really help guide doctors – especially since metformin does come with side effects, but also can help some patients get a jump start on losing weight.
On the flip side, just because exercise and weight loss didn’t make a huge dent in the diabetes risk of those who were on the lower end of the risk scale to begin with, that doesn’t mean it’s not useful, the researchers make clear. Exercise and weight loss have many other benefits besides lowering diabetes risk – including reducing cardiovascular risk and improving mood and mobility.
The researchers hope their paper serves as a proof of principle to researchers studying other disease and prevention strategies, showing the power of the approach, technically called multivariate risk prediction to understand heterogeneity of treatment effect.
The study was funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (1IP2PI000722), the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U01 AA022802), the Department of Veterans Affairs Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI DIB 98-001), and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (P60 DK-20572). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Jason P. Nelson, MPH, a statistician at Tufts, is a co-author of the report.


Great Mills and Lighthouse Productions presents Footloose the Musical!
One of the most explosive movie musicals in recent memory bursts onto the live stage with exhilarating results. When Ren and his mother move from Chicago to a small farming town, Ren is prepared for the inevitable adjustment period at his new high school. What he isn't prepared for are the rigorous local edicts, including a ban on dancing instituted by the local preacher, determined to exercise the control over the town's youth that he cannot command in his own home. When the reverend's rebellious daughter sets her sights on Ren, her roughneck boyfriend tries to sabotage Ren's reputation, with many of the locals eager to believe the worst about the new kid. The heartfelt story that emerges is of a father longing for the son he lost and of a young man aching for the father who walked out on him. To the rockin' rhythm of its Oscar and Tony-nominated top 40 score (the soundtrack album reached number one on the Billboard charts and has sold over 15 million copies!) and augmented with dynamic new songs for the stage musical, FOOTLOOSE celebrates the wisdom of listening to young people, guiding them with a warm heart and an open mind.


Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are also exiting the unscripted series to topline a new fashion reality series for Amazon Prime Video.
“Threads: Paintings from the 1960s and ’70s” will run though June 23 before Schnabel launches another exhibition of Posen’s work in Switzerland.
“Right now, I’m staying away from bringing my brand into politics," Posen said.
The full-service building was designed by architect Emery Roth and constructed in 1928.
Dasha Zhukova, Priyanka Chopra, Christie Brinkley and Georgina Chapman are among the moms hosting the event.
Delta Air Lines has rejected a series of Posen’s early designs because they are too fabulous, fussy and fitted.


Looks like Shane Keisel has some company.
The Utah Jazz fan garnered national attention this week after a profanity-laced incident with Russell Westbrook earned the Oklahoma City Thunder star a fine from the NBA and Keisel a lifetime ban from Vivint Smart Home Arena.
Keisel, who is now suing Westbrook, joins another unidentified Jazz fan who received a permanent ban from the Salt Lake city venue for “degrading and offensive conduct” after repeatedly calling Westbrook “boy” during Game 4 of a first-round matchup with the Thunder in the 2018 playoffs, according to the Deseret News.
“The Jazz aren’t taking these matters lightly,” a source told the outlet.
Jazz owner Gail Miller addressed the crowd on Thursday ahead of a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, specifically referencing the altercation between Westbrook and Keisel.


General picture of knives handed in during an amnesty.
Thousands of banned items including knives, tools and alcohol have been confiscated at courts in West Yorkshire.
During the last five years a total of 34,476 items were seized by court security staff, including 489 knives bigger than 3in and 2,735 containers of alcohol.
The two crown courts in Leeds and Bradford, where the most serious cases from Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield are sent, as well as Leeds Magistrates’ Court had the highest number of items seized year on year.
Bradford Magistrates’ Court was the only court to confiscate replica guns from people attending court, with four found in 2012-2013.
No genuine firearms have been confiscated in the past five years.
A total of 209 banned items were confiscated at Calderdale Magistrates’ Court including 19 knives, only one of which was longer than 3in, as well as 69 items from the “others” category, which has included umbrellas, aerosols, drinks cans or anything else that security thought could be used as a weapon or cause a hazard.
Only six containers of alcohol were found at Calderdale during the last five years.
But at Kirklees Magistrates’ Court a total of 813 items were confiscated, including 135 containers of alcohol and 61 knives, 29 of which were bigger than 3in. At Wakefield Magistrates’ Court only nine knives were found, four of which were bigger than 3in, but 413 containers of alcohol were confiscated.
Criminal defence lawyer and former chairman of the Law Society Committee Ian Kelcey said: “I suspect that the figures you have received are probably replicated around the country other than perhaps the number of knives seized at Leeds Magistrates’ Court being over 3in in length.
He said the number of tools taken into court, a total of 1,991, was surprising and wondered if nail clippers or scissors were included in the category.
Thousands of cameras and recording devices were also taken, but Mr Kelcey said this was likely to include the number of mobile phones and laptops that even lawyers were not allowed to take in for a period of time.
“They have now allegedly withdrawn that instruction on this but that has not filtered through to a number of courts and it may well be that the 2013 figures for recorders as well as the 2010-2011 2011-2012 figures reflect that.
“Personally I think it would be far more helpful for the Ministry of Justice to put on its website exactly what items you cannot take into court building, many of the American Courts do and even Wimbledon does, in much the same way as you get that list when you go to an airport to board a plane.
The data, revealed in a Freedom of Information request, has certain details missing from the years 2011-2012 and 2012-2013.
The lowest number of items seized were recorded during those years, at 6,299 and 5,733 respectively, with the remaining three years ranging from 7,089-7,787.
This suggests the number of items seized has remained at similar levels throughout the five years. But the number of knives bigger than 3in seized has varied significantly with 291 confiscated in 2013-2014 but only 26 confiscated in 2014-2015.
A spokesman for HM Courts and Tribunals Service said: “HM Courts and Tribunals Service takes the issue of security within courts extremely seriously and has a robust security and safety system to protect all court users and the Judiciary.


Science and the digital world have overhauled our world, but the stakes just got higher: Now technology wants to remake you, using everything from the internet to stem cells.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus taught man how to farm. But when he gave man fire, the gods felt he had gone too far. And so as punishment, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock where every day an eagle would come and eat his liver, which would regrow because he was immortal.
Prometheus’s story is about mankind’s dominion over its world and how much power is too much. But counterintuitively it is Zeus, not Prometheus, who many artists and writers in the last thousand years have sided with. The story is relevant today because humanity is at a turning point, and two opposing forces are locked in a war that is just beginning to come into being. On one side are our innovations and the power that comes with them, and on the other side is the fact that when it comes to us ourselves, there seems to be no innovation.
For tens of thousands of years, technology has been directed outward—on the world at large. Now, for the first time in human history, technology has reached a point where it can be directed inward—back on its creators. Technology has found something new it would like to change: Us.
Another experiment in 2001 involved injecting human stem cells, of all things, into the brains of aging mice. Soon after, the mice began to perform better on the Morris water maze test. In other words, the stem cells had made them smarter.
When people think of stem cells, they usually think of a potential cure for diseases like Parkinson’s. But there is another, potentially far darker, use for stem cells, and that is on people who are perfectly healthy. It is this application, fundamentally changing the human body, that gave me the idea to write my novel, The Prometheus Man.
We’ve all heard stories about a mother who’s able to lift a car off her child as her body mainlines adrenalin. Imagine using stem cells to triple the size of a person’s adrenal gland. You’d produce something on par with one of those people who are so zombified on PCP that they get shot three times and still manage to beat up six cops. The military uses for such a technology, the parts of the human body that could be “improved,” pass through your mind like something from a sideshow in a bad dream.
And we haven’t even gotten to the most lethal part of the human anatomy: the brain. There’s a fixed amount of space in our skulls. Theoretically by growing the parts of the brain you want enhanced, like the part that controls reflexes and coordination, you could also shrink the parts of the brain you want diminished, like, say, the part that contributes to a person’s remorse.
Bear in mind things need not actually play out this way in the real world. As I attempted to capture in my book, it is often the attempt itself that is the true source of horror.
The 20th century saw the innovation of weapons of mass destruction. It also saw innovations in ideology that cheered the destruction of 200 million people, roughly 8 percent of the world’s population, in wars and oppression. But the technologies in their infancy today take things in the opposite direction. By augmenting our bodies, they increase our ability to commit more intimate—and thus more covert—violence. They take us back to our roots. And they do it at a time when wars aren’t fought by equals on a battlefield. They’re often quick attacks—over before most people know about them—where the goal is to inflict maximum despair not on the target but on the people viewing at home.
But it doesn’t end there. Technology can weaponize the human body, but with the internet, governments and other actors have the ability to go after the mind.
The internet is the greatest source of data on the human spirit in history, and it’s about to go even deeper with virtual-reality. People’s hopes and dreams, their fears, their hatreds, it’s all right there. And over the last decade, we have witnessed the rise of something perfectly designed to make use of it: algorithms. Algorithms regularly outperform human analysts on Wall Street. They also make more accurate diagnoses of mental illness than psychiatrists. The algorithms are so much more effective than the doctors that the doctors underperform even when they’re given the results of the algorithm.
Algorithms are getting so good at predicting human behavior that they have the power to identify not just undesirable urges and interests but the activities that predict those undesirable urges and interests. Serial killers, terrorists, dissidents—it’s highly likely that their online habits cohere around some common patterns of behavior. Theoretically we could understand the direction of their lives better than they understand it themselves. And once you understand something enough to predict what it will do, you can control it.
Yet intervention isn’t the real goal. The real goal is to go much further. It is to alter something fundamental to who we are: our experience of reality.
Research is uncovering patterns in our most primal needs that can be exploited. If that sounds paranoid, consider Robert Cialdini, PhD. Dr. Cialdini wrote a bestseller, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, about the ways others play on our programming to create impressions that aren’t true and compel behavior that isn’t in our interests. The stated goal of his book was to free us from this manipulation, but this ideal didn’t stop Dr. Cialdini from becoming an adviser to the Obama campaign. Obama’ objective merits were evidently insufficient on their own. The good doctor felt the candidate’s presidency was so thoroughly in your best interests that he had no qualms about using the dark arts to place his thumb on the scales of your mind.
There’s a conclusion here. People start out simply wanting to understand reality, but in truth they always hunger to change it.
But Dr. Cialdini was targeting something voluntary: voting. Consider, by contrast, the Reid technique, a nine-step algorithm of sorts that the FBI uses to pressure suspects during an interrogation. The Reid technique has been tested and refined on tens of thousands of suspects, but it has a bug. It produces false confessions. In other words, the technique is so effective it causes innocent people to sign away their freedom, just to make it stop.
The Reid technique, at the height of its powers, creates a false reality in the suspect’s mind more powerful than the fact-based reality outside it. Forget changing someone’s body. The Reid technique achieves the most fundamental change of all. And it is an innovation of perhaps the most frightening kind of violence, the kind that gets us to hang ourselves.
Manipulating our bodies, manipulating our minds—these are pretty scary things. In response, there are those who believe the ethical issues raised by these new technologies can be resolved through debate. But when have we ever done that before? Nuclear weapons could destroy the human race, and yet they still came into existence. Strike that. It was rational for some countries to bring them into existence. That says something pretty stark about us. That says that the larger truth may be the scariest thing of all: we’re not really in charge. It is us—our morality, our virtue—that lags technology, not the other way around. Maybe there was a reason that Zeus didn’t hash things out with Prometheus, but simply put a stop to him altogether.
I love to read things that were written long ago—centuries ago, even thousands of years ago. I’ll tell you what got the hook in my mouth. I realized that many of these writers were just like me. And I felt this … connection. Because it meant the things that frustrated me and fascinated me weren’t unique. They were a part of what it means to be alive.
But there’s a corollary to this. If someone who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago is just like me—and also you, assuming you’re as retrograde as I am—then that means to a large degree we have stayed the same. Yet in the meantime, aided by technology, our power grows. Think about what that means. Technology doesn’t just shrink the world to our convenience. It is magnifying what’s inside us. And in freeing us from a hard-scrabble existence where we have to work 12-hour days to survive, it is giving us room to express our deepest selves.
Our deepest selves, though, are deeply problematic. For the last 50 years, the developed world has experienced unprecedented peace, prosperity and technological comfort. And this is the result. In the U.S., one in four women is taking a prescription drug for mental health. According to the Centers for Disease Control, life expectancy isn’t increasing. It’s just dropped. Data from the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows 25 percent of men age 25 to 64 don’t work full-time, and most of them are no longer looking for a job. You would expect people to have become less violent. Instead, starting in the ’70s, there was an explosion of violent crime, which was eventually brought under control only by incarcerating the highest percentage of our citizens of any country in the world. Meanwhile, according to the General Social Survey, from 1972 to 2006, women rated themselves less and less happy each year, as by almost every objective measure their lives improved.
Because we are more free from hardship than anyone before us, you would expect us to be healthier, wealthier, and wiser. But in significant ways, we have become the opposite. Why? Because we’re flawed. Because our deepest selves want things they perhaps were never meant to have. And for many of us, prosperity has simply given us room to go to pieces.
The world, it turns out, isn’t infinitely progressive. It’s mean-reverting, and not due to the impersonal factors of randomness or scarcity, but because of the most personal factor of all: us.
There are those who believe that people are so flawed that society must step in and control them with vast amounts of regulation, i.e., with force. But there’s a limit to this, and we can see it by looking at Europe. Europe, with its giant welfare/regulatory states, has higher unemployment than the U.S., lower GDP growth, far less technological innovation, and fertility rates that can only be described as self-repeal. Every problem the U.S. has, Europe has it 20 percent worse. And the funny thing about all that regulation? In Europe, the informal economy, i.e., the part that doesn’t pay taxes or obey the law, is bigger than it is in the U.S., much bigger. So instead of making people more moral, the attempt to control them has only driven them underground. At a certain point, idealism breaks itself on the reality it is attempting to bend.
The Europeans have attempted to take the risk out of life. Instead they’ve taken the life out of themselves.
What emerges from all this, and what’s so amazing about the world, is that life is something we just can’t win. It seems there will never be a war to end all wars, enough wealth to end all poverty, or a perfect order to end all disorder. And there will never be a formula for the human spirit. Experts can’t solve us. We can’t solve us. That thing technology is magnifying, the gravity holding it all together, is the thing we control least of all.
Joe Kennedy once described his children as “hostages to fortune.” I think of my own hostages to fortune, a tough little two-year-old boy and the girl currently incubating in my wife. The world may have its problems, but it really is a wonderful time to be alive. One thing, though, is certain. As technology and prosperity begin to enhance not just our stuff but us ourselves, the future will increasingly be one of our own creation. The problem is that we seem to be the biggest variable of all. And that variability is something we never have been able to suppress or engineer away. That variability, in fact, seems to be a large part of what it means to be alive.
As for Prometheus, Hercules eventually came and broke his chains. Mankind, it seems, will always find a way to set him free.
Scott Reardon is a graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern Law. He currently works at an investment management firm in Los Angeles. The Prometheus Man is his first novel.


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Thirty-one passengers and a crew member aboard an Etihad Airways flight were injured Wednesday when their plane ran into sudden turbulence as it prepared to land in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
The United Arab Emirates' national airline said flight EY474, which departed from its hub in the Emirati capital of Abu Dhabi, was hit by "severe and unexpected turbulence" about 45 minutes before landing at Soekarno Hatta International Airport.
The Airbus A330-200 landed safely but nine passengers and a crew member were taken to a local hospital for their injuries, Etihad said. Paramedics treated the other 22 at the airport's clinic for minor injuries and they were released, the airline said.
Haerul Anwar, a spokesman for the Jakarta airport, described nine of the injuries as serious. He said officials from the airport and Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Committee were inspecting the plane.
The airline did not provide details on the severity of the injuries, but said the turbulence was severe enough that it damaged cabin storage bins.
Indonesian Transportation Ministry spokesman Hemi Pamuraharjo said at least eight Indonesian passengers and a foreign flight attendant onboard were hurt, with several suffering broken bones.
Etihad did not immediately answer questions about how many passengers were onboard. It said the airline's planned Jakarta to Abu Dhabi flight on Wednesday on the same plane had been cancelled and the airline was assisting passengers.
Passengers onboard who spoke to Jakarta-based news website Okezone said oxygen masks tumbled out in the turbulence and passengers, including Muslim pilgrims returning from Saudi Arabia, were hurt.
"It happened when I was performing pray," passenger Nenden Nurhaini told the website. "The plane suddenly began to shake so fast."
Etihad, like its older Gulf rivals Qatar Airways and Dubai-based Emirates, has grown rapidly in recent years primarily by attracting long-haul transit passengers. Founded in 2003, it has a good safety record and last year carried 17.6 million passengers. It holds stakes in several other airlines, including Air Berlin, Alitalia and Virgin Australia.


The Anaheim City Council on Wednesday night voted down a historic ballot proposal that would have created voting districts to help increase Latino representation in a community that has been riven by two recent fatal police shootings.
The proposal, supported by Disneyland Resort and many of the hundreds of people who packed the special council meeting, was killed on a 3-2 vote following several hours of emotional testimony.
Mayor Tom Tait and Councilwoman Lorri Galloway supported the measure. "There is no reason to waste time," Galloway said. "Let the people vote."
Council members Kris Murray, Gail Eastman and Harry Sidhu cast the dissenting votes for the majority. "I strongly believe we should take the time and do it right," Murray said to boos from the audience.
Council members opted instead to establish a citizens advisory committee on elections and community involvement. The move angered dozens in the audience, who began chanting, "We'll be back. We'll be back," as they left the auditorium at Anaheim High School.
The council vote came in the wake of a series of heated protests over the deadly police shootings last month of two Latino men. The demonstrations rocked the city and laid bare the wide gulf between Anaheim's pockets of glitz and affluence and its less-prosperous Latino neighborhoods, where residents have voiced outrage about police conduct.
The effort to switch to district-by-district voting received an influential boost when Disneyland Resort, the city's largest employer, weighed in to back the proposal. The entertainment giant rarely involves itself in local politics.
In a letter to Anaheim's top officials, resort President George Kalogridis said that district elections would result in a City Council that more closely mirrors the community.
"We believe that city leadership should reflect the diversity of its entire population," Kalogridis said in his letter to the mayor and council members. "We support a City Council elected from districts and encourage the city of Anaheim to move from at-large elections to district voting. This shift will allow each valued neighborhood to be represented by a local council member of their choosing."
Anaheim is the largest city in California that has at-large voting. The mayor and four council members are elected by residents across the city. The ballot proposal would have also expanded the size of the council so that the mayor is elected citywide and six council members are elected from separate districts.
Critics say the current voting system tips the scale in favor of the wealthier hillside neighborhoods, where there is a strong white majority. About 52% of the city's 336,000 residents are Latino, but few have ever won council seats.
One of those Latinos elected was Richard Chavez, who came to Wednesday's meeting to support the ballot proposal. He said only three Latinos have been elected to the council, a number he described as "horrific."
Chavez, 57, a retired firefighter who served on the City Council from 2002 to 2006, said Latinos in Anaheim have been marginalized for years, which has helped to breed fear and hostility among young people in the community.
"These children are growing up, and they are angry," he said.
Genevieve Huizar, the mother of Manuel Angel Diaz, who was killed by officers on July 21, told the council: "It's time to make a change in Anaheim.
"I want young children to have hope, have peace, for all of us to have justice," said Huizar as tears rolled down her cheeks.
She was interrupted as a man stood in the front row. "You're a horrible mother," he said, along with a string of expletives.
Others in the audience stood and shouted at the man as he stormed out of the auditorium. People rushed to comfort Huizar as she walked out.
For Al Jabbar and others, having district-by-district voting was a matter of fairness.
"When we have districts, each and every corner of Anaheim is going to be represented," said Jabbar, 34, who lives in the west end of the city. "Let's have the districts and move on."
Kandee Beas grew frustrated as she listened to one speaker after another criticize the city she chose to retire in three years ago.
"If you listen to these people, it sounds like it's all bad. That's not the truth," said Beas, 56, as she knitted a pink dishcloth. "I feel sad for my city."
After the meeting, Tait said that the independence of the committee could be questioned because its members will be appointed by the City Council.
"The best people to ask how they will be governed are the people themselves," he said. "I don't think we need a committee to tell us that answer."


New Delhi: India, the world’s largest buyer of vegetable oils after China, may impose tax on imports to protect oilseed growers as cheap palm oil floods the domestic market.
The government may levy the tax after Diwali on 28 October, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said in New Delhi on Wednesday. Duty on crude soya bean and palm oils was scrapped in April and the levy on refined edible oils was cut to 7.5% to bolster supplies.
Lower vegetable oil purchases may pressure palm oil prices, which have fallen to a two-year low in Malaysia, which trades the global benchmark. The tropical oil makes up 90% of India’s total purchases of edible oils.
Edible oil imports in September gained 9% to 623,208 tonnes from 569,538 tonnes a year ago, the Solvent Extractors’ Association said last week. Imports climbed 14.5% to 4.82 million tonnes (mt) in the 11 months ended 30 September, the trade body said.
January-delivery palm oil dropped as much as 6.7% to 1,542 ringgit (Rs22,097) a tonne, the lowest since October 2006, on the Malaysia Derivatives Exchange. Prices have halved this year as demand lags behind supply.
The government may also lift the ban on export of cooking oils after Diwali, Pawar said. Sales abroad were halted for a year in March to bolster domestic supplies. A levy on exports of the aromatic basmati rice may be lifted, Pawar said, adding the government won’t scrap curbs on exports of other varieties of the grain.
India, the world’s second biggest rice producer, is forecast to harvest a record crop this year after rains spurred farmers to boost sowing. The monsoon crop, planted in June, may total 83.25mt, the government said last month. That’s 0.5mt more than a year earlier.
Thomas Abraham Kutty in Mumbai contributed to this story.


When Jerry Brown was unveiling his final state budget this month, a reporter asked him about the legacy of his record-long governorship.
Well, yes they do, and during his second gubernatorial incarnation, Brown has often invoked the accomplishments of his father, Pat Brown. It has been a marked contrast to his first stint as governor four decades ago, when, as sons are wont to do, he was trying to project his own identity.
In fact, one could infer that Jerry Brown’s entire second governorship has been, at least partly, an effort to bury the “Governor Moonbeam” image he acquired the first time around and compare favorably with the father he now embraces.
That inference was bolstered by Brown’s final State of the State address last week, one devoted largely to recounting what he and the Legislature have done over the last seven years and only minimally to any agenda for his final year.
Brown punctuated his speech with lists of what he clearly regards as major accomplishments, such as pension reform, workers compensation reform, creation of a “rainy day fund” to protect the state budget, a multibillion-dollar transportation improvement program financed by new gas taxes and fees, education finance reform and the cap-and-trade approach to curbing greenhouse gases.
“All are big and very important to our future, and their passage demonstrates that some American governments can actually get things done — even in the face of deepening partisan division,” he said after one such list.
Later, he effusively plugged the two huge public-works projects that would be, if completed, comparable in scope to those of his father — tunnels to carry water beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and a north-south bullet train system — and insisted that they will happen despite deep financial woes.
If that’s not braggadocio, it certainly is pointing with pride. So let’s assume that Brown’s speech was, indeed, bidding for a commendable legacy. Does it qualify?
Yes, but with a caveat. Most of the items he cited are, in fact, works in progress that may, or may not, pan out in the longer run.
For example, his education reform, aimed at raising the academic performances of poor and English-learner students, is certainly needed. But it has not had a material effect yet and is plagued by indications that the extra money meant for those high-needs kids is being dissipated.
Likewise, the pension reform will have very little impact on what has become an immense crisis for local governments.
The two big infrastructure projects he promotes may never happen, because they face potentially intractable financial shortfalls.
The rainy-day fund seems immense, topping out at $13.5 billion. But Brown’s own budget staff says even a mild recession could cost the state $60 billion in lost revenue over three years, thanks to an imbalanced tax system that Brown has been unwilling to address.
In brief, it’s way too early to assess Brown’s governorship.
Dan Walters writes for CalMatters, a nonprofit formed to promote citizen awareness of public policy in California. He is a former long-term columnist for the Sacramento Bee.


The Village Board voted 4-2 Monday night to support the efforts of Rosemont and Calumet City to get state licenses to operate casinos. In return, Palatine would share some of the gambling revenues with those towns if the licenses are awarded.
The proposal was approved despite a request from Rev. Ken Hewett, associate pastor of Grace Community Church in Palatine, who asked the board to give residents a chance to voice their opinions on the matter.
Some trustees said the village's decision to accept annual checks from Rosemont of between $130,000 and $500,000 and from Calumet City of $65,000 to $250,000--if those towns get casinos--is different from allowing gambling in Palatine.
"If they are going to have (a casino) anyway, we might as well get the cash from it," Trustee Keith Harris said. "I can see no reason not to accept these funds."
"I think it's ill-gotten gains," Hewett said, "that it's going to come back and bite you."


BAGHDAD, Iraq—Shiite Muslim assassins are killing former members of Saddam Hussein's mostly Sunni Muslim regime with impunity in a wave of violence that, combined with the ongoing Sunni insurgency, threatens to escalate into civil war.
The war between Shiite vigilantes and former Baath Party members is seldom investigated and largely overshadowed by the insurgency. The U.S. military is preoccupied with hunting down suicide bombers and foreign terrorists, and Iraq's new Shiite leaders have little interest in prosecuting those who kill their former oppressors or their enemies in the insurgency.
The killings have intensified since January's Shiite electoral victory, and U.S. and Iraqi officials worry that they could imperil progress toward a unified, democratic Iraq.
"It's the beginning, and we could go down the slippery slope very quickly," said Sabah Kadhim, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. "We've been so concerned with removing terrorists and Islamists that this other situation has reared its ugly head. Both sides are sharpening their knives."
An intelligence memo distributed Feb. 15 to the U.S. military and private security contractors in Iraq said the renewed militia presence in southern Shiite cities "may be a defensive measure by one of the successful political parties following the release of the election results, and may explain the reason for the link to the Badr corps."
Hadi al Ameri, the leader of the Badr Organization, was among the powerful Shiites elected to Parliament last month and is said to be a top contender for defense or interior minister. In an interview Friday at his heavily guarded home, al Ameri denied that Badr fighters are behind the assassinations and said his men abided by the calls for restraint from Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, Iraq's highest-ranking Shiite cleric.
"The head of Iraqi intelligence accused us of these assassinations and I told him, `If you have proof against us, give me the intelligence.' I offered to form a committee and hand over any guilty men," al Ameri said. "We don't want revenge from anyone. We've been oppressed and we shouldn't oppress others."
The guerrilla-turned-politician conceded that some Shiites were attacking former Baathists of their own accord. If al Sistani hadn't asked militiamen to use the courts—not guns—for revenge, he said, the situation would be much worse.
"The Baathists should pray day and night for Sistani," al Ameri said with a chuckle.
Knight Ridder tried to contact several former Baathists whose names appeared on a hit list; only one agreed to speak about the threat. The man, a Shiite in his 50s who was a security official under Saddam, received a note at his home last month that read: "You are a Baathist and we are watching you." He'd refused to fly a white flag in his neighborhood, he said, so he wasn't surprised to find his name among those marked for death.
Abu Muqdad—he asked that his full name be withheld for protection—said that since the elections, the targeting of former Baathists was "like a plague spreading through a town with no doctor." He accused political parties of quietly funneling names and addresses to their militias or hiring criminal gangs to carry out the killings.
"Go to the morgue and you'll find all our old (Baathist) luminaries," Abu Muqdad said. "Why were they killed, and who killed them? For revenge, by the Iranian-trained militias inside Iraq. They can do whatever they like now. Let's hope God grants us all restraint."


This is not the kind of earnings growth you ordinarily get from a stodgy "industrials" company.
Shares of heavy-manufacturing company ITT Inc. (NYSE:ITT) popped 16% after reporting a big earnings beat this morning. Expected to earn only $0.79 per share on sales of $671.4 million, ITT reported $0.82 per share in pro forma profits -- and an even better $1.25 per share in GAAP.
Sales, likewise, came in ahead of estimates at $680.6 million.
ITT's stock has been seesawing all day -- but it's still up strongly. Image source: Getty Images.
Revenues for the fiscal third quarter inched up 6%, but ITT parlayed improved profit margins into a 28% increase in net profit per diluted share. Management also highlighted a 10% increase in new orders during the quarter -- faster than revenue growth and probably foreshadowing more revenue growth to come.
So why has ITT stock already given back nearly half its gains from earlier in the day? (As of 3:10 p.m. EDT, the stock is up only 8.4%). That's hard to say.
On the one hand, free cash flow at ITT still isn't quite measuring up to reported income. So far this year, ITT has reported $282 million in income under GAAP, but actual cash profits are only $183 million. That's still nearly twice the $99 million in free cash flow ITT had accumulated by this time last year. What's more, if you consider Q4 data in the mix, free cash flow for the last 12 months actually matches reported net income almost exactly at $215 million, indicating a strong quality of earnings.
Strong ... and getting stronger. As a final note, ITT tightened its guidance in a good way this morning, assuring investors it's on track to grow earnings 21% by the end of this year to about $3.72 per share (or $3.13 "adjusted") on sales growth of 6% to 7%.
ITT has a 21.5 times multiple to free cash flow and strong earnings growth, and probably 21% growth for the year. Its stock deserves every bit of the gains it's enjoyed today -- and maybe even some of the gains it gave back.


NASHVILLE — The Jets face a losing team for the third straight week, hoping for their third straight win.
Gang Green has kept its slim playoff hopes alive by beating the Cardinals and Jaguars the last two weeks. Tonight, they face the Titans in what amounts to an elimination game for the Jets (6-7). If they lose, they are out of the playoffs.
The Titans (4-9) have lost three straight games and are in a tailspin. The Jets, though, are not looking at their record.
“I don’t think at this point we can overlook anybody, regardless of their record,” safety Yeremiah Bell said.
No they can not. The Jets have taken care of business the last two weeks against some dismal offenses. They held the Cardinals and Jaguars to a combined 2-for-31 on third downs.
Tennessee enters the game with the 23rd ranked offense in the NFL. The Titans have only one starter on the offensive line who began the season as a starter, as injuries have hit that group hard.
The Jets won’t feel any pity. They know that to make the playoffs they have to keep winning. The Bengals’ victory Thursday gave the Jets no wiggle room. They need a win or they are mathematically eliminated from the postseason.
The Jets have been playing with that mentality anyway since their loss to the Patriots on Thanksgiving night.
The Jets were ultra-conservative on offense last week as they tried to keep quarterback Mark Sanchez from turning the ball over. Expect more of the same tonight against a Titans defense that was ranked 27th in the league before yesterday.
Jets front seven vs. Titans RB Chris Johnson. The Jets have struggled against the run this season, giving up 136.5 yards per game on the ground, 29th in the NFL. Now, here comes Johnson, who is capable of scoring from anywhere. He has 1,037 yards this year despite a slow start.
The problem for Johnson, who hasn’t topped 100 yards in a game the last three weeks, is he is playing with a depleted offensive line.
He’s baaaack. All indications are wide receiver Braylon Edwards will play tonight despite his injured hamstring. How much and how well seem to be the bigger questions.
Edwards has done very little in practice this week, so it’s hard to imagine him having a big role. Then again, with the Jets, you never know.
The Jets have feasted on several young quarterbacks this year. Now, they get Jake Locker, the second-year quarterback from Washington.
Locker has had seven interceptions and three touchdowns during Tennessee’s three-game losing streak. But Locker is capable of running (9.9 yards per scramble) and he throws a nice deep ball. The Jets have to be careful not to be overly aggressive against him.
The latest chapter of the Tim Tebow saga has involved Ryan’s back-and-forth act on whether Tebow can go back to his old role of running some Wildcat and zone-read option plays. First, Ryan said he couldn’t. Then, he said he could.
Tebow’s ribs seem healed. He is practicing fully. It may just be a question of whether the Jets coaches want to use Tebow in that role anymore and they just don’t want to admit that publicly.
Tonight will be telling. If Tebow watches the entire game from the sideline again, it will appear Tebow’s time with the Jets is over before it ever really began.
Rookie wide receiver Kendall Wright is having a good year for the Titans. His 59 receptions are tops in the NFL among rookie receivers. The 20th overall pick in the draft out of Baylor, Wright is someone the Jets know they have to be aware of.


We're coming up fast on the 42nd anniversary of Apollo 15 (26 July-7 August 1971), the first advanced J-class Apollo mission and the first to include a Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). I've been looking for an opportunity to use the two panels above, which display the LRV deployment sequence in colorful detail. I had thought to include them in the post I am writing now, which is about an alternative to the LRV that (literally) never took off, but these panels are just too detailed and well-wrought for that; they pull attention away from the real focus of the post. So, I decided to give them a post of their own.
Boeing built the LRV on contract to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Alabama, starting in mid-1969, though the company (and several others, such as Bendix) had studied lunar rovers since the early 1960s. Three LRVs now rest on the moon where their Apollo astronaut drivers parked them. In a program chock-full of remarkable machines, the LRVs stand out from the rest. Had they not extended the exploration range of the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 astronauts, we would know a lot less about the moon than we do today.
In the images above, a pair of astronauts release the tightly folded LRV from a compartment built into the side of the Apollo Lunar Module. They do this mainly by pulling lanyards in sequence; then, after the LRV sits on four wheels on the dusty lunar surface, they unfold seats and other appendages by hand. Fully deployed, the LRV measured 10 feet long and 7.5 feet wide. Although its mass was just 463 pounds, it could carry a payload mass (including two space-suited astronauts at about 370 pounds each) of about 1080 pounds on the moon.


Justo Gallego has spent 40 years single-handedly building a cathedral, only to discover that his quixotic passion for the offbeat building was not widely shared.
After four decades of toil the 78-year-old former Cistercian monk says his obra, or work, which rises out of the Castilian plain at Mejorada del Campo 15 miles from Madrid, is now almost finished.
But as many of Spain's dilapidated churches are increasingly given over to storks rather than worshippers, the Church sees no need for another.
"It's not a cathedral and it never will be," said a spokesman for the Alcala diocese, to which Mejorada del Campo belongs. "It's not necessary and it needs the kind of investment that the diocese just can't make."
The local authorities also wonder what they will do with a building that never had planning permission and is built with techniques unorthodox even by Spain's variable standards.
Miguel Valero, a planning councillor at Mejorada del Campo, echoed doubts over the future of the illegal cathedral. "It is a very tricky issue. We are trying to find ways of preserving what is a symbol of Mejorada," he said. "We're going to try to come to an arrangement with the diocese."
It is easy to see why the cathedral arouses such anxiety. The massive but still skeletal Romanesque building is adorned with a medley of 115ft Byzantine towers, a cupola modelled on the Vatican, hanging turrets and a Mozarab arch.
It has a semi-circular entrance based on the White House and concrete moulds of Jesus and the saints pinioned on the leaky, 60ft-high, corrugated roof. When finished, claims Mr Gallego, its towers will reach 180ft, rivalling the Tower of Pisa.
The cathedral is largely made of smashed building blocks, with empty tins moulded into mullioned windows. Soon to be added are 1,000 round plastic tubs, donated by the local baker, to be recycled as moulds for the vaulting.
But Mr Gallego, the son of a landowner, does not suffer from tremors of faith. His steady, light-brown eyes peer from an angular face that breaks easily into an irreverent and largely toothless chuckle. "I started building because I wanted to purify my soul. We sin all the time - I do every time I see a beautiful woman," he said.
"Kings, lords and bishops, they can all build cathedrals. But here is just one simple believer doing it."
The work of piety began when, after studying for eight years to become a Cistercian monk, Mr Gallego was expelled from the brotherhood because, he says, he contracted tuberculosis. Local people suggest that his departure could have been due to some other peccadillo.
He now lives in avowed poverty with his sister. He has sold parcels of land to meet some of the construction costs but said that his work is still dependent on donations and occasional help from his nephews and, more rarely, a builder.
When he started to build the cathedral on a hill overlooking where he was born, Mejorada del Campo was a village surrounded by countryside. Now it has become part of the concrete belt closing in on Madrid and is home to 20,000 people.
The town is divided over Mr Gallego's bequest. Some of his neighbours think he is mad, deluded or an egomaniac. Others compare him flatteringly to Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan architect of the unfinished Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. He rejects both opinions.
"They say I'm quixotic or mad. No doubt they'll nail me to the cross. But Quixote does not interest me. This is real."


August 29, 2016 social reaction.
Some questioned the ability of new Austin residents to accept the “weird” that accompanies an art-focused neighborhood in a pro-art city. Several people who personally know Reichert or have visited his theater spoke out in defense of his character and artistic venture.
Where do you stand on the issue of the secret theater? Treasured neighborhood art venue, noisy nuisance or something else? Comment below or on Facebook and let us know.


Martin says issues of skin color are nothing new in the black community.
(CNN) - Acura found itself in a bit of hot water this week when it was revealed that a casting agency in Los Angeles only desired light-skinned African-American actors for the company's Super Bowl commercial featuring Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld.
The company apologized, but that hasn't stopped a lot of the chatter criticizing Acura for not doing more to keep the casting agency in check. This really isn't a new story considering how many times in the past we've heard similar stories, including that advertising agencies have non-urban dictates like refusing to buy advertising space on black-focused radio, TV, magazine and online properties.
But there is another critical discussion that must be had, and that is the belief that the lighter skinned you are, the better your life will be.
Being called the "White House" has nothing to do with white people. It wasnt even called that until 1901.....300 years after the countrys founding....1776 was the date the union was founded, not Americas birthyear. Prior to 1901 it was called the presidents mansion or palace.
The white man and the black man are both myths. The dark flesh tone man and the light flesh tone man do however. Race is a figment of your imagination. Ethnicity is a different story. Nigerians do not call themselves African, they call themselves Nigerian.
Black is beautiful, tan is grand, but white is the color of the BOSS MAN.
If you aint white, you aint rite!


The Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom’s dual-lens rear camera, long battery life and generous storage capacity help it break the trend of unimpressive smartphone upgrades.
The Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom ships with a 5.5-inch display featuring full HD resolution. The screen supports up to 10 simultaneous touchpoints and has a blue light filter to protect user eyes. It also features Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5 to protect against falls and a fingerprint- and smudge-resistant coating for better visual quality.
The Zenfone 3 Zoom has a massive 5,000mAh battery that can last up to two days of continuous talk time. When the phone is in standby mode, its battery can hold out for 42 days before it needs to be recharged.
Fast-charging has become a critical feature in the smartphone market, and Asus was quick to note that not only does its smartphone support it, but it’s using cutting-edge charging technology. The Zenfone 3 Zoom comes with a USB-C port that allows it to add two hours of charge time in just five minutes. Perhaps best of all, the Zenfone 3 Zoom comes with a power bank feature that lets users connect the Zenfone 3 Zoom to other devices and charge those, as well.
The Zenfone 3 Zoom won’t blow anyone away with its power, but it should work for most. It runs on a 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chip and has up to 4GB of RAM. On the video side, users will find the Adreno 506 GPU. Together, the Snapdragon and Adreno should work just fine with most apps. Sophisticated apps, however, might have trouble on this device.
Although the Zenfone 3 Zoom is a midrange device, it comes with a surprising amount of storage. Customers will be able to choose up to 128GB with the Zenfone 3 Zoom, which can accommodate an additional 2TB of storage on a microSD card. Owners also can get up to 100GB of free space in Google Drive for two years after purchase.
The Zenfone 3 Zoom is running on Google’s Android Marshmallow—a somewhat surprising move, considering new, higher-end Android devices are now shipping with its successor, Android Nougat. Asus has once again bundled its ZenUI user interface atop Marshmallow to customize its look and feel. The device also ships with several Asus-designed apps, including its ZenFit health app, a to-do list and Mobile Manager, which keeps users abreast of how their handsets are performing.
The Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom comes with a 5-magnet speaker and SonicMaster and High-Res Audio certifications. All of that translates to outstanding audio quality to deliver superior sound quality during phone calls. The feature also could help those who prefer speakerphone calls to get a bit more quality from the handset.
The Zenfone 3 Zoom has a dual, 12-megapixel camera on the rear with high-light sensitivity and 12x zoom. According to Asus, the camera performs exceedingly well in low-light conditions and can focus a picture in just 0.03 seconds. On the front, users will find a 13-megapixel selfie-friendly camera that similarly can perform well in low-light conditions.
Those who travel often might find some value in the Zenfone 3 Zoom’s dual-SIM support. The feature provides the ability to have two SIM cards in the device to use it in most places around the world. The second SIM tray is also where the microSD card is housed, however, so the storage card cannot be plugged into the device when two SIMs are in it.
Asus has kept its pricing and availability information on the Zenfone 3 largely close to the vest. For now, the company is saying only that the handset will be available to customers in February and that the handset will cost less than $400 unlocked. It’ll be available in the United States, China and many other markets around the world.


A Very Fun physics based bow and arrow shooting Game.Your goal in this fun Archery shooting cartoon game is to shoot the apple off from your friends head using a bow and arrow. Dont miss or you might end up hitting your buddy. Each level positions you further away thus increasing the difficulty.Touch the Screen and adjust the archer's arrow to target the apple and release it to shoot.A Great Game for all the Archery Lovers.


What's in a Photograph? What's in a Photograph?
Home » The Public Humanist » What's in a Photograph?
I visited Mary Beth Meehan’s City of Champions, a display of large-scale images of Brockton residents on the walls of buildings in downtown Brockton. Meehan photographs people she gets to know and comes across in Brockton, a town that is struggling with economic hardship, a changing population, and a growing rift between “old” and “new” Brockton, a rift that is at least partially racial.
The images will be up for a year, and the project also includes various kinds of participatory programming, a project web site, and newspaper articles. Mary Beth Meehan wrote a couple of articles about her project including one for the Public Humanist, and it has received local publicity. Many of the articles include slideshows, which feature photos that are now large-scale banners hanging on buildings in Brockton and others which are part of the larger project, which is explained on Meehan’s own web site.
The project also received a nice spread in the Globe, so I won’t bother you with a full report, save it to say that there were 100 or so people there, and that the premise —mounting good, provocative, billboard sized photos on buildings downtown gets people to think and talk about them–seems to work.
For sure, the images are kicking up some dust around the question of “how does Brockton look in the hands of Mary Beth Meehan,” “did she get it right,” or, “is this what we want the world to know about Brockton?” Meehan, however, wasn’t sure that the talk was the kind of talk she was hoping to inspire, and the question must be asked: Can she get people to actually look at each other and imagine each other’s hopes and dreams? Will they replace nostalgia for a clearer time with the images of a new, struggling, Brockton along with an older, settled, successful working class city? And that is what I would like to talk about: how these photos do their work in our intensely visual culture.
The Brockton of Meehan’s youth, she explained, was one that was sure about itself and is reflected in images of people who know who they are and who know what their place is in society: police officers at inauguration day, a political meeting with a bucolic Irish backdrop, an elderly woman in her well-appointed dining room; an old man walking into a yard dominated by a swimming pool, decorated for July Fourth. That last image was the America I immigrated into: a working class that had done well enough to become middle class, where life was centered on the children the pool was for.
Meehan herself grew up in this world and she wishes, she says, that everyone could have such a secure youth. Maybe, if you were a child. But if you were a grown-up? The “old Brockton” photos exude a mild sense of celebration and loss, but, image by image, they are not nearly as strong as the photos of “new Brockton.” Without the other half (a strong American photographic tradition that runs the gamut from Jacob Riis to Robert Frank, both undoubtedly influences on Meehan) the project would be unremarkable. With them, the whiteness and sameness becomes jarring, not of today, a harking back to an oppressive culture of conformity: be part of the group, be in the kitchen, vote Irish. You can’t see the limitations of old Brockton without contrasting it with the new.
What makes these images controversial? There are others of people of color that are not controversial, so it isn’t simply about “there are non-white people here.” We are continuously inundated with strong visuals, good and bad. With “strong” I mean full of effect: things flash by, they are bright, large, they move at you. In your face is the modus operandi of much moving and not moving imagery, often accompanied by in your ear. A certain ennui factor plays a role in the prevalence of ever faster, more visually challenging nature of imagery: we have easily “seen it all.” In a world of bombs blowing up people at our dinner table, how does a portrait on the wall of a parking garage stack up?
You would think all that exposure to images makes us sophisticated: we have learned how to look, we are not easily swayed by what in the past might have been stunning simply in its richness. And in some ways we have evolved as viewers, for instance, in the power of color photography to convey what is “reality.” My parents’ childhood photos are black and white and small. I don’t see them as representing a reality I know, even if they are quaint, and cool as photos. A perfectly wonderful Kodachrome would have sufficiently impressed friends and family with the actuality of a 1950’s Hawaii vacation – but by 1973 everything looked “worse in black and white.” What those old photos lacked was verisimilitude, “the look of real,” which is necessary for an image or story to sway us.
By the eighties, however, in a comic reversal, color realism had outdone itself in realism: as black and white became less real, it was seen to represent a more authentic –less plastic – world of the past. Images could gain verisimilitude by looking like the photos that were taken at a time when, we thought, experience was more interesting (probably because the photos looked as if what they depicted was more interesting or significant than contemporary reality. Tautology, anyone?). As Calvin’s father says in the famous cartoon, “In fact, those old photographs are in color, it’s just the world was black and white then.” Paul Simon changed his lyric about black and white from “worse” to “better” by 1981 and whole generations of photographers, of which I am one, worked in black and white in order to gain the grit of art-reality.
But the clarity of digital photography has brought us full circle: large, vivid full-color photos represent the banal realism of our plastic world very well. So well, in fact, that it isn’t interesting to look at in ordinary formats. Hence the nauseatingly ubiquitous Hipstamatic and Instagram software, which tinges a perfectly ordinary image of a Massachusetts sunset (so inured are we to the wonders) with the lurid hippishness of a 1950’s Hawaiian postcard.
Enter Marybeth Meehan and her large-scale full color billboards of Brockton residents.
Where a generation ago her photos might have gained documentary impact from being black and white, today, they get it from the unadorned (though very professional) color photograph blown up gigantically. The photos hit one with large dose of “reality” because they expose up close the way a billboard would: they are not “nice” photos. “I am here” say the people in the photos, “I am real. Deal with me.” Each of these people is not larger than life or part of a group or there as a representative. Each is one person among many, but they are persons in a particular situation, and their place is not comfortable or voluntary, like that of the “old” Brockton residents. And it is this one-for-one relationship with the “real” of these central photos that makes the project work.


Dramatic offices for rent that can be used for showroom, art gallery, medical or general office use, just steps off Madison Avenue between Madison and 5th Avenue. Majestic old world lobby entrance from the street, with interior 11 ft. high ceilings and some rear windows. The space is available immediately for a long or short lease.


Jay Z is making moves to expand his entertainment empire, but there’s at least one artist who isn’t too thrilled about it: British chart-topper Rita Ora.
The “Body on Me” singer, 25, filed a complaint against Jay Z’s Roc Nation record label on Thursday, December 17, claiming that the company has not been taking care of its own since it expanded into sports management and other interests.
California Labor Code Section 2855 (better known as the “seven year rule”) was enacted in 1944, when actress Olivia De Haviland took issue with her contract with Warner Bros. after the studio refused to let her go or let her sign on for roles outside of the ones they’d suggested for her.
Ora’s main complaint is that she is currently “self-funding her promotional television appearances, recording costs and video projects” now that she’s been “orphaned” by Roc Nation after it switched distribution partners from Sony to Universal — but left her behind at Sony.
“Between Sony’s limited economic return from its orphaned relationship with Roc Nation and Sony’s indirect relationship with Rita, Rita is caught in a political quagmire of dysfunction,” the complaint reads.


Graham: Why didn't the FBI warn Trump like they warned Feinstein?
Graham: Why didn’t the FBI warn Trump like they warned Feinstein?
In order to get Lindsey Graham’s point in this discussion with Harris Faulkner, first you’d have to know about the spy on Dianne Feinstein’s staff. Thanks to the collective silence of most media outlets, the audience for this argument might be somewhat limited — but that doesn’t make it any less powerful. Graham wants to know why the FBI warned Dianne Feinstein about a suspected spy but never bothered to tell Donald Trump about their suspicions over Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
I’m gonna send a letter to Director Wray next week and ask him what is the policy? Why didn’t you tell president Trump that you had concerns about Carter Page? Is there a double standard here?
If this was a counter-intelligence investigation and not a criminal investigation, the FBI should have told President Trump they had concerns about Papadopoulos and Page. Why didn’t they do for Trump what they did for Feinstein?
Let’s not forget that the penetration in Feinstein’s case was much more significant, too. The warning from the FBI came after the man had been in Feinstein’s employ for “two decades,” as the local CBS affiliate noted last week. The FBI had evidence of direct and covert contact between the suspect and China’s intelligence operatives. Feinstein was also a high-value target as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, with access to the most sensitive information held by the US government, including from our intelligence partners around the globe. And yet, the FBI reached out to Feinstein rather than open a counter-intelligence probe with her as a potential target, even though Feinstein’s family has profited extensively through contacts with China during her tenure.
When it comes to the Trump campaign, why didn’t they tell him about Papadopoulos and Cater Page? And at the end of the day, what has Carter Page done wrong? He’s still walking around a free man.
Here’s the point. A counter-intelligence investigation is designed to protect American institutions from infiltration. The right thing for the FBI to do is if they find somebody working for a political campaign, a bank, or any part of the government, is to inform the people in charge that this person you hired has got unsavory connections. That’s what they did for Feinstein. Why did they not do that when it came to Manafort, Gates and Papadopoulos?
That’s a very good question … if we know for sure that the FBI didn’t give a specific warning to Trump about those three men. Are we positive about that? The FBI has said that they gave a standard security briefing to both the Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns after they locked up their respective nominations. The campaigns are responsible for properly vetting their staff and their advisers, after all, especially after getting even a generic counterintelligence briefing by the FBI about the need to do so.
If the FBI didn’t follow up when specific suspicions were raised about Carter Page, however, Graham’s got at least a good point about the differences between their treatment of Feinstein and Trump. Too bad readers of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times won’t know what Graham’s talking about.
Update: I wrote “Congress” where I meant “president.” Thanks to the Monster for the heads-up on my error.


Cardinal Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Bombay, Credit: Archdiocese of Bombay.
Bangkok, Thailand, Jul 23, 2013 / 12:07 pm ().- Pope Francis' encyclical “Lumen Fidei” is notable for exploring the “valuable richness” of faith and for being an “answer to the present challenges to faith,” according to the Archbishop of Bombay.
“Lumen Fidei” is a “challenge to us not to take our faith for granted, but to understand our faith, to live it ethically, and proclaim it confidently,” Cardinal Oswald Gracias told CNA July 22.
The encyclical has the “theological depth” and insights of Benedict XVI as well as the “direct approach” of Pope Francis, making concrete examples to form direct appeals to people of God.
“I think the combination has been excellent (in) the depth, clarity and appeal” of the document.
While the encyclical is addressed to all the faithful, Cardinal Gracias examined it in the light of his Asian context, linking it to Blessed John Paul II's 1999 apostolic exhortation “Ecclesia in Asia,” which promoted a “great harvest of faith” on that continent.
“Lumen Fidei” is addressed to the “universal” Church, Cardinal Gracias said, and each diocese is called to pastorally “apply” the teaching of the Bishop of Rome to its “particular” situation.
The cardinal indicated that the years between Blessed John Paul II's apostolic exhortation to Asian Catholics and the present Holy Father's encyclical letter have been the occasion of a “reawakening,” a call to rediscover the richness of the faith in Asian cultures.
There is a “cry against corruption,” a cry for “good governance” and an “attitude of servant leadership” all over the world, Cardinal Gracias reflected, adding that “Lumen Fidei” is an effort to inculturate the light of faith so as to let the Gospel form better societies.


The merger of SunEdison and Vivint Solar has investors excited today.
What: Shares of TerraForm Power (NASDAQ:TERP), SunEdison (NASDAQOTH:SUNEQ), and Vivint Solar (NYSE:VSLR) all surged today after a merger involving all three companies moved a step closer to becoming reality.
So what: Vivint solar agreed to take $2 less per share in cash than originally agreed upon from SunEdison, now down to $7.89 per share. And SunEdison kicked in $0.75 per share in additional stock, although it didn't change the old offer of 0.12 shares of stock per Vivint Solar share, despite the stock's drop since June.
In addition, Blackstone will provide $250 million in financing, and Goldman Sachs is adding another $300 million to fund the transaction. Those sources of funding, and $799 million in asset purchases being dropped down to TerraForm Power, should get the deal done.
Now what: Clearly, investors are cheering this adjusted merger today. Keep in mind, however, that it was the Vivint Solar acquisition that started the decline of SunEdison in July, partly because it's an expansion into the difficult residential solar market, and partly because it'll add more debt.
All three stocks are also popping off very low bases after getting pummeled by the market, and the sentiment that traders see today may not last. Before buying into the new SunEdison, I'd like to see it execute on becoming profitable building solar projects. There's no evidence it can do that, and if losses continue, there's billions in debt that could be a weight for the company's recovery. The potential is big in renewable energy, but the risk in SunEdison, et al. is just too high.


What if the Toronto International Film Festival threw a party, and no one wanted to come? That's traditionally been the dilemma when it comes to TIFF's opening-night film – an ostensibly prestigious slot that's been so littered with charity cases, flops and embarrassments that it's practically toxic. Does anyone remember – or, more accurately, want to remember – last year's entry, The Judge? How about The Fifth Estate the year before that? Or – apologies in advance for bringing it up – Score: A Hockey Musical?
Programming the spot is a tricky calculus. If the film is too Canadian, it will scare off the few foreign press who show up on the first day. Too Hollywood and it will incite the usual cris de coeur from talking heads across the country. Once upon a time, the slot was reserved for homegrown productions, often the splashier of Telefilm Canada's wares. But that was also back when the festival had its Canada First! program and a distinct inferiority complex regarding its own countrymen's cultural output (which is different from the festival's current inferiority complex regarding competing festivals such as Telluride and Venice).
This year, though, TIFF tried to strike the best possible balance it could. On Thursday night, Roy Thomson Hall saw the world premiere of Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts – household names in any country – and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, the Quebec filmmaker who single-handedly rehabilitated the careers of Reese Witherspoon (Wild) and Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club). The drama is not a Canadian production per se (TIFF lists its official country as the United States), but it's awfully close. Even Gyllenhaal is an unofficial friend of Canada, having starred in the Toronto-shot (and, more shockingly, Toronto-set) Enemy.
Yet as much as TIFF wants Demolition to solve its opening-night obstacle, the film comes with its own set of problems. First, it's a non-starter in the awards-season conversation: The film won't be released until April. For a festival that so desperately clutches onto its reputation as the starting line of the Oscar race, it's a curious move. By the time the film opens, the 2016 Oscars will have come and gone, and the next Academy Awards chatter won't pick up again until that fall, leaving Demolition as one big, fat, lingering "oh yeah, that thing" lump in critics' minds.
Unless, of course, Demolition is so exceptional that it will resonate for seven more months and spark a renewed campaign. Sadly, this is not the case. A manic mixture of dark comedy and high drama, Demolition is a wonderful showcase for Gyllenhaal as a Wall Street goon who loses his wife to a car crash, but it doesn't deliver anything close to a McConaughey-like reinvention. At points, it can also be aggressively cruel.
TIFF's artistic director, Cameron Bailey, naturally trumpets the selection, pointing out that Vallée and the festival are close accomplices. "He's closed the festival with The Young Victoria, he's been here the last two years with Dallas Buyers Club and Wild. … The film was an obvious one," he said in an interview with The Globe when Demolition was first announced. "The timing was working against us, but all the stars aligned."
Yet after watching Demolition and a handful of TIFF's official Canadian selections, it's easy to imagine another cure for the festival's opening-night woes. Instead of trying to appease both sides of the homegrown/Hollywood divide, why not counterprogram? Avoid Americans, but also ditch the tired Canadian star system, too (sorry Egoyan/Mehta/Cronenberg, etc.).
Instead, select something small and weird from our country's burgeoning indie movement – projects birthed with little cash and no recognizable names that deserve a platform far more than Jake Gyllenhaal or Paul Gross. Films such as Kazik Radwanski's How Heavy This Hammer, Igor Drljaca's The Waiting Room or Andrew Cividino's Sleeping Giant – scrappy dramas that are worthy of inciting real cultural conversations, even if it's only among us fellow Canadians.
If we're going to tie ourselves into knots each year over the state of opening night – and if few outside Toronto actually care what plays that first Thursday – then why not reserve the spot for films that will benefit from the exposure? TIFF can still revel in its Oscar hopefuls during that all-important first weekend, but also champion this country's emerging talent, and underline its commitment to independence.
Or, you know, we could just wait for Score 2: Overtime.
The 2015 Toronto International Film Festival continues until Sept. 20 (tiff.net).


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Thursday marks 10 years since anyone has heard from or seen Kyle Fleischmann.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – There is a somber anniversary for the mysterious disappearance of a young man.
Thursday marks 10 years since anyone has heard from or seen Kyle Fleischmann. The 24-year-old was last seen on video surveillance walking alone after police say he left a group of friends in uptown Charlotte.
Now, Kyle’s grieving father is sharing his thoughts about the cold case. Richard Fleischmann tells NBC Charlotte he hasn’t heard from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department since 2013 and he still has several questions about his son’s case.
“It’s hard to believe it’s 10 years, it seems like yesterday for us,” Richard said.
NBC Charlotte interviewed Richard through Skype. New technology also makes the grieving father wonder, what if?
“Ironically, if this were to happen tonight, he would have pressed Uber and probably been alive today,” Richard said.
Video surveillance shows the last images of his son, Kyle. At around 2:20 a.m., he was walking alone past the Buckhead Saloon and then vanished.
Richard says he last heard from CMPD in 2013 with an email about a potential out-of-state lead.
“I’ve never seen any further follow up, where they stand on that or if anything came from that,” Richard said.
NBC Charlotte asked CMPD what happened after that 2013 communication.
“We would have contacted him if there was some new information in reference to that,” Detective Lee Tuttle with CMPD said.
Detective Tuttle has been on the case from the beginning. He said they continue to follow leads even from this year, but so far no major developments.
NBC Charlotte asked Detective Tuttle if he has any hope Kyle is still alive.
“Missing person cases are just that, we don’t know what happened to him,” Detective Tuttle said.
Meantime, Kyle’s father believes his son was likely killed, but he’s still hoping one tip will lead to his son.
“I wouldn’t want the people who took his life, for them to decide where he ended up,” Richard said.
Both Kyle’s father and police say someone out there knows something. They’re hoping anyone with information will come forward.


While many people who have endorsed Donald Trump for president have withdrawn their support over the candidate’s vulgar comments about women, the National Border Patrol Council and Customs Enforcement Council have not.
The unions have said they support Trump because of his tough stance on the nation’s borders and immigration laws.
Posted: 10/19/16 at 12:35 AM under News Story.


Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne could both return to action as champions Manchester City face Everton this weekend.
Aguero, City’s record scorer, has missed the last four games with a groin injury while playmaker De Bruyne has been troubled by knee injuries all season.
The Belgian has been restricted to just three substitute appearances in the Premier League and not featured at all since the first week of November.
The pair’s return would ease a lengthy injury list that left Guardiola with just 15 senior fit players for the Champions League clash against Hoffenheim in midweek.
Former Everton defender John Stones, who was substituted at half-time on Wednesday with a knee problem, Fernandinho and Danilo will also be assessed ahead of the Toffees’ visit to the Etihad Stadium on Saturday.
Speaking at his pre-match press conference on Friday, Guardiola said: “Yesterday (Stones) was in treatment and today we train at 4pm.
David Silva, Benjamin Mendy and Claudio Bravo remain on the sidelines.
Guardiola added that the recent spate of injuries will not change City’s plans in January.
“No, we are not going to sign anyone,” said Guardiola, who joined in the City staff Christmas jumper day by sporting some festive knitwear.
City are looking to get back to winning ways in the Premier League after defeat at Chelsea last weekend saw them knocked off the top of the table by Liverpool.
Everton, however, have proved difficult opposition for Guardiola since he took charge at City. The Spaniard has won just one of his four meetings with the Merseysiders. City were thrashed 4-0 at Goodison Park in January 2017 and their two most recent meetings in Manchester have ended 1-1.
Everton are currently seventh in the table after making a promising start under new manager Marco Silva.
Guardiola said: “Of course, it’s important (to win again). Last season one of the secrets was when we dropped points we were able to make another big run, winning games and winning games. It’s important but we must focus on what we have to do and try to beat them.
“We’ve dropped points (against Everton) here but tomorrow’s another game. Everton have completely changed their team in terms of players – Bernard, (Gylfi) Sigurdsson, Richarlison, (Lucas) Digne, Yerry Mina. I’m really impressed how well they do.


The Utica Center for Development is asking the public to donate their empty bottles and cans left over from their holiday celebrations for the Central New York Center for Veterans.
The Utica Center for Development is askingthe public to donate their empty bottles and cans left over from their holiday celebrations for the Central New York Center for Veterans.
Cans and bottles can be dropped off at 726 Washington St. in Utica. The group also will pick up cans and bottles for residents who cannot deliver them.
More information is available from Vincent Scalise at 527-7161.
Volunteers will be working on the Washington Street facility from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, and Friday, Jan. 2, and Saturday, Jan. 3.
Members of the public can volunteer or bring painting supplies for the project.


The brand will stage its first show at the Mona Bismarck hotel on Jan. 17.
“I want to be the first luxury brand out of North Africa,” said Charaf Tajer who, riding the luxury sportswear wave, is set to unleash his own colorful “après-sport” spin on the world. Having presented his first collection in a Paris showroom last June, the designer on Jan. 17 will stage his first show at the Hôtel Mona Bismarck.
He’s been building up to this moment. With a background in architecture, Tajer was a partner in PPP — a multidisciplinary Paris-based creative collective spanning the fashion label Pigalle and the Pain O ChoKolat and Le Pompon fashion events and nightlife concepts — and has collaborated with Virgil Abloh.


The supreme court has ruled that electoral candidates cannot seek votes in the name of religion, caste, creed, community or language. A seven-judge bench, headed by chief justice of India TS Thakur, said and that the relationship between man and God is an individual choice and the state should not interfere in it.
While the bench called election a secular exercise, three of the seven judges expressed dissent by saying that the matter must be left to Parliament to decide. The three dissenting judges, as quoted by the Hindustan Times, added that prohibiting people from articulating legitimate concerns reduced “democracy to an abstraction".
The bench was hearing petitions in a 21-year-old SC verdict that had called Hindutva a "way of life" and not a religion. The 1995 apex court’s decision had given many political parties the leverage to attract voters on religious lines.
In the near future, the latest decision of the SC can have serious implications on campaigning in assembly elections due this year in five states, especially in Uttar Pradesh where the Ram temple in Ayodhya still remains a poll issue. In the long-run, this could effectively dilute the practice of seeking votes on religious lines and creating disharmony among communities.


HE HOSTED the show in 2013, but that didn’t stop Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane revealing what he sees as the Oscars’ biggest problem during yesterday’s ceremony.
FAMILY Guy creator and one-time Academy Awards host Seth MacFarlane has spoken out about what he sees as the “big problem” with the Oscars following yesterday’s ceremony.
MacFarlane, who drew mixed responses when he hosted the 2013 Oscars, tweeted his thoughts after a ceremony yesterday that saw fantasy film The Shape Of Water and dramas like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and The Darkest Hour take home many of the major awards.
MacFarlane’s issue with the Oscars is the lack of acknowledgment for excellent comedy films.
“Here’s another big problem with the Oscars no one talks about: It’s 99% drama. Until a movie like Bridesmaids or Airplane! gets a Best Picture win or even a nomination, it’s all conspicuously incomplete. Get Out is a breath of fresh air to be sure, but it’s the exception,” he tweeted.
Horror film Get Out won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay yesterday — and some on Twitter were quick to point out that in fact, Bridesmaids scored two nominations back at the 84th Oscars, one for Best Supporting Actress and another for Best Original Screenplay.
MacFarlane also provided examples of comedies over the years that have deserved a Best Picture nod, nominating Arthur, Tootsie, Little Shop of Horrors, Groundhog Day and Back to the Future as worthy contenders.
Comedy winners of the Best Picture Oscar have indeed been few and far between over the years, but include musical comedy Going My Way in 1944, Woody Allen rom-com Annie Hall in 1977 and silent film The Artist in 2011.


A 12-year-old boy was accidentally shot in the lower leg Wednesday evening on East Jacobs Road north of Spokane Valley.
Spokane County sheriff’s deputies responded to a report of an accidental shooting around 8:45 p.m.
The boy and his grandfather were roughhousing together in the living room of a home on the 14000 block of East Jacobs Road when a handgun in a concealed holster on the grandfather’s belt went off, according to the Sheriff’s Office. The bullet went through the boy’s right calf.
The injury wasn’t life-threatening, the Sheriff’s Office said, and the boy was taken to a local hospital for treatment.
A Moscow man charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of an acquaintance now faces a drug charge.
Nathaniel H. Nisbet, 28, has been charged in 2nd District Court with possession of a controlled substance, the Lewiston Tribune reported.
Police say they found methamphetamine in a backpack while searching a trailer following a Nov. 10 shooting.
Prosecutors say Nisbet shot and killed 42-year-old Charles “Pat” McMichael during a confrontation at a Moscow home.
They say McMichael was supposed to help Nisbet’s estranged wife change the locks on her mobile home, but McMichael found Nisbet inside with a 9 mm pistol.
Nisbet has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. A trial is scheduled for March 18.


Bailey’s Bay, Somerset Cricket Club, Willow Cuts, Western Stars, Devonshire Recreation Club and Warwick Workmen’s Club all recorded victories in this weekend’s First and Premier Division cricket action.
At the Sea Breeze Oval, Cleveland County batted first and were bowled all out for 83 in 22 overs. Clay Darrell was the top scorer with 24, Kyle Hodsoll led the Bailey’s Bay bowling attack with figures of 6-1-26-4.
In reply Bailey’s Bay scored 84/2 in 15.1 overs, Stephen Outerbridge was the top scorer with 27, Treadwell Gibbons was the pick of the Cleveland County bowlers with figures of 4-0-8-1.
At the Somerset Cricket Club, Joshua Gilbert scored 94 runs to lead the Somerset Cricket Club to a total of 242, Delyone Borden led the St. David’s Cricket Club bowling attack with figures of 9.2-1-54-4.
In reply St. David’s Cricket Club were bowled all out for 92, Rudell Pitcher was the top scorer with 25, while Justin Donawa returned bowling figures of 6.2-1-19-5.
At Lord’s in St. David’s, Willow Cuts were bowled all out for 162, Kavon Fubler was the top scorer with 38, while Paul Carr led the Flatt’s Victoria bowling attack returning figures of 9-2-23-3.
In reply Flatt’s Victoria were bowled all out for 136, Reginald Baker was the top scorer with 37, with Fubler also shinning with the ball claiming 4 wickets off 8 overs giving up 42 runs.
At the Wellington Oval, Western Stars were bowled all out for 102, Brian Hall was the top scorer with 38, while Onias Bascome returned bowling figures of 7-3-23-4 for St. George’s Cricket Club.
In reply St. George’s Cricket Club were bowled all out for 98, Charlie Marshall III was the top scorer with 31, Makai Young was the pick of the Western Stars bowlers returning figures of 8-0-33-8.
Devonshire Recreation Club scored 273 as the away team at the Devonshire Recreation Club, Chris Douglas was the top scorer with 75, what helped was a total of 69 extras that included 50 Wides. Charles Trott was the pick of the PHC bowlers with figures of 10-1-35-4.
In reply PHC were bowled all out for 134, Dante Wellman was the top scorer with 42, Kenny Phillips returned figures of 6-1-16-3 to lead the Devonshire Recreation Club bowling attack.
At the Southampton Oval, Somerset Bridge batted first and were bowled all out for 153, Jamaine Salaam was the top scorer with 48, while Cameron Jeffers led the Warwick Workmen’s Club bowling attack returning figures of 10-2-22-4.
In reply Warwick Workmen’s Club scored 156/6, Chare Smith was the top scorer with 28, Noel Woods was the pick of the Somerset Bridge bowlers returning figures of 10-0-37-2.


Unlike actual suicide, it's really easy to change your mind about fake suicide, which can be both a plus and a minus. It's a minus if your goal is to evade the law, as in the case of the Indiana businessman Marcus Schrenker, who faked his death in a plane crash.
WaPo: Schrenker had been missing since Sunday, when he flew from Anderson, Ind., bound for Destin, Fla. Southwest of Birmingham, Ala., he radioed that his plane's windshield had imploded and that his face was covered with blood.
Authorities said they think Schrenker then bailed out of the Piper Turboprop, parachuting to the ground and speeding away on a motorcycle he had stashed away in the pine barrens of central Alabama. Military jets tried to intercept the plane and found the door open, the cockpit dark. The plane crashed in the Florida Panhandle after traveling more than 200 miles on autopilot.
Authorities suspect Schrenker, president of a wealth management company, was trying to escape legal and financial troubles, including allegations of fraud. Schrenker's wife also had filed for divorce, alleging that he was having an affair.
Schrenker had sent some emails from the campground -- a pretty clear indication that the suicide was faked.
In other fake suicide news, the (ex?) girlfriend of hedge fund fraudster Sam Israel is due to appear in court today on charges of abetting his attempt to evade authorities.
Is Bernie Madoff under fake suicide watch?


Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for a story about a child heroin addict she fabricated.
In 1921, New York World reporter Louis Seibold won a Pulitzer Prize for an interview he conducted with President Woodrow Wilson. The problem: Wilson was incapacitated due to a stroke, and the interview was faked with the help of the president’s wife and chief of staff.
Now known for his frequent presence on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Barnicle was forced to resign from the Boston Globe in 1998 after plagiarizing the comedian George Carlin in a column. Barnicle had troubles dating back to 1973, when a court ruled Barnicle made up a quote and the Globe was forced to pay $40,000 in damages. In 1990, he quoted Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz as saying he likes Asian women because they’re “submissive.” The Globe paid $75,000 in a settlement after Dershowitz sued.
In 2004, Fox News apologized to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) after Cameron falsely reported Kerry had received a manicure before a presidential debate. Cameron wrote a story posted to Fox’s website with made-up quotes from Kerry. “I’m metrosexual — he’s a cowboy!” the senator “said” in the story.
Blair resigned from The New York Times in 2002 after it was discovered he had lifted material from other papers, invented scenes and filed stories from places he had never been. Dozens of Blair’s stories contained such problems, including reports about the Washington sniper shootings and wounded Iraq war veterans.
Kelly, a foreign correspondent and Pulitzer finalist, resigned from USA TODAY in 2004 after he was caught working with a translator to mislead his editors. The paper’s investigation of his work found at least eight of his major stories to be false, including an account of a “high speed hunt” for Osama bin Laden in 2003.
Cooke won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1981 for her Washington Post profile of an 8-year-old heroin addict, “Jimmy’s World.” Jimmy turned out not to exist (although then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry claimed to have located the child). Cooke admitted making up the story after editors at the Toledo Blade — where Cooke had previously worked — noticed she had inflated her resume.
Smith, a Boston Globe metro columnist like Barnicle, resigned two months before her co-worker after an editor caught her creating characters in her columns. Smith, who doubles as a spoken-word poet, admitted that four of her columns contained fictional elements and resigned.